Maybe it't time to hang out with the Protestants

Man it's been tough lately for my Catholic "Friends". I had to put the "friends" in quotes since they are people that I know pretty well, but wouldn't be in the core friends that I email every once in a while and try and get together with.


The first friend is Matt Kelty. Yeah he is the guy in the firestorm of the mayor's race. I met Matt at a "Christ Renews is Parish" retreat weekend at St. Judes. First he was with me as a member of the team and then when we hosted the weekend for other guys, so we hung out for about a year on and off. Matt is a great guy that knows his stuff and is very personable. For those of you who attended my wedding he did one of the reading during the mass. Not being a member of St. Jude's Church I had unfortunately fallen out of contact with Matt and all of the other guys in my group. I contacted him when I found out he was running for mayor and got a very nice response to my e-mail. The only thing that I worried about was that nice of a guy entering the world of politics, and I was pretty much right. He is getting grilled in the media pretty good right now, and I can't say for sure whether I believe it or not, but I think he did make a mistake with the campaign contributions and I think it's going to bite him in the butt in November, which is a shame since I think Matt would be a pretty good mayor even with his lack of experience. I still think he might have a chance at getting elected, but this is going to hang over him even if he does.

The second one gives me the heebie geebies. I have played volleyball for about 7 years now on Sunday night at St. Judes. (St. Judes again, maybe there is something in the holy water). I became good friends with most of the die hard group that played every week. There was about 6 of us that would get together outside of volleyball and play cards or have parties. Once again I fell out of contact with these people and stopped playing volleyball a couple years ago due to too much kids stuff to deal with on Sunday nights, and just being a lazy butt. One of the group was a girl named Michelle. She was a little strange, but a very nice person. She was a teacher and dealt alot with special needs kids, which you know takes a special kind of person. I thought I heard her name mentioned on the radio a few weeks ago, but figured that I heard wrong or someone else with the same name. I soon found out the story about what I heard. She took care of a special needs boy and was good friends with the family. I found out that she had molested the 15 year old brother of the special needs boy, and became pregnant with the 15 year olds' baby. WTF? This is the kind of thing you would read about in the paper happening in Kentucky or something. She had the baby a couple of months ago and the parent of the 15 year old found out. I haven't heard lately about charges against her or going to jail, but it's still haunting that I knew this person pretty well and that she would do something like that. I would be curious to reach out to her to make sure that she is alright, but this is one that it's probably better just to stay out of it and just pray for her and her baby. But how do you put your mind around something like that? Later I recalled that she went to the prom with the special needs boy which I thought was due to the fact that he was special needs and probably couldn't get a date, but now it makes me wonder.

Fun weekend

This weekend Jen didn't have to work at all so we decided to have some fun with the boys. Saturday we got the crew together and decided to go to the zoo, but on the way we decided to go to the Solomon Farm for a festival thing. The Solomon farm is an old farm on Dupont road. I believe that until recently it was a private farm, but I have heard this year they are open every Wednesday for a farmers market kind of thing. We decided to be adventurous and try it out. Overall it wasn't too bad of a thing. Pretty small event but there was a ton of people around. Mostly it was looking at old tractors and farm stuff with hayrides or should I say strawrides. There was a huge line for two food vendors. We spent the majority of the time at the petting tent. The boys got a chance to pet all of the animals that they read about and really seemed to enjoy that. After hanging out there for about an hour we headed for the zoo. St. Francis college was having an event so there was a huge crowd there. We basically hit the high points of the zoo. This is where I find out that William has developed a fear of public toilets. I guess he was scared by an automatic flush toilet last week and now he is paranoid. I knew he had to pee, but I couldn't get him to go a couple of times that I tried. (I finally had to force him on a toilet at the mall, hopefully that's the end of it) I took William to ride the horses and then both boys on the merry-g0-round. We were all able to ride the train also. For the boys it was there first time on the train, and for Jen and me it was the first time in ALOT of years. I remember the train being alot roomier back then, and I also remember it being a longer ride where you could actually see some of the animals. Now it's just a quick trip to the pond and back. It was cool, but nothing like I remembered. After the zoo and a quick trip to the mall we decided to go home and get dinner. As soon as we hit the door at home the boys wanted food, so much for planning something. So we put together a quick dinner of hotdogs and chips for the boys and Jen and I wondered what to do for dinner ourselves, which anymore is quite the ordeal. Run to the store and pick up something to eat? Eat fast food? Order something?...finally I had an idea. How about getting grandma to watch the kids while we go on a date? I could see immediately that Jen liked that idea. So a quick call to grandma Diane and we headed out the door only to meet the next decision... where to go? In our earlier discussions the name Texas Roadhouse came up a few times and I liked that since we hadn't been there in a while. We pull up to the restaurant to see people sitting outside which is nothing new for a Saturday night at 6:30pm in this town. We get inside and see a 60 -70 minute wait. Crap. But the hostess offers, "if you can find a seat at the bar you can get served right away" so we decide to give that a try, and sure enough there were a couple of seats at the bar I know it's not that romantic to sit at a bar and watch Notre Dame get creamed on a date, but neither is waiting an hour for a table when you are hungry. So we both had a nice meal and it wasn't too bad sitting there. After paying out bill and talking about what to do next they announce our names at the hostess table that our table is now ready. Oops forgot to take our name off the waiting list. We ended up the date at Menards looking at shelving for the basement.
Sunday we got up and headed to church. Church ends up usually being a feeding frenzy for both boys with us bringing cereal and water, but hey it keeps them contented for the most part. After church we went to Grandma and Grandpa's for lunch. After we had lunch, Jen and I headed out with Tom's truck while the grandparents watched the boys. We went home and looked at the furnace room and then headed over to Menards to buy shelving for the basement. We decided to buy this wood shelving system that is going to require a little more work on my end as well as my father in law cutting some plywood for me. After that home and bathtime for the boys. Overall a pretty fun weekend with only one hiccup of William waking up Sunday morning and not going back to sleep for a couple of hours. I tell you it's dangerous when Jen doesn't work on the weekend since we usually end up spending money, but at least it was fun.

Random Randomness

A couple things lately that have kinda bothered me a little bit and I thought I would vent a little bit.

The new Journal Gazette paper format - I finally got a chance this week to see the new smaller format from their new press. I am not a real big fan of it. I guess it's just a thing of where you get used to something for 40 years of your life and it's just strange and hard to get used to. Either that and I am an old fart that doesn't like change. I am sure I will get used to it eventually.

The bigger gripe is our dinning adventure on Wednesday night. A while back I found out this neat little thing that ONE Pizza Hut offered. There was a small building behind their restaurant on E. State Street. In this little shop you could pull up, pay $5 for a large peperoni or sausage PRE-MADE pizza, maybe a couple bucks for bread sticks that is pre-made and ready to go. Last time it was maybe 3 minutes and I was heading home with my pizza. Wednesday I decided to do it again since we needed to eat for cheap and fast since it was near the boys' dinner time. I pull up to the little shop and locked... crap. I look over and their signs say that the $5 is available in the drive-through, crap. Since I was already out of my car and 20 feet away from the restaurant I decided to pop in a grab the pizza. Of course it was 5:30pm on a pizza buffet night in the restaurant so it was very busy. I finally get up to the counter after 5 min and give her my order of one pizza and two breadsticks (with 8 breadsticks being more than the large pizza, so much for cheap). I had to wait at least 10 minutes for them to make a pizza and heat my breadsticks. I almost asked why they did away with the CONVENIENT store across the parking lot but decided to get going since I am sure the kids were chewing the trim work at home. I am sure there was a thing about the "freshness" of the pizza or a labor cost thing. $5 is a good price for pizza hut pizza, but definitely not worth driving 10 min to E. State, waiting for the pizza, and then driving 10 min home to let it get cold. On the way home I noticed that Marcos and Papa Johns had $5 larges too and much closer to the house. I prefer Pizza Hut pizza of all of them, but lately I have had to stress the "for cheap" aspect. We will see the next time.

The third thing is when Jen and I were at her doctors appointment Wednesday. After her exam the nurse practitioner asked if we had any questions. I commented that I couldn't think of anything else that she had mentioned. The nurse says, "oh you mean complained about". No I meant "mentioned". I don't need a nurse to get me into trouble. I can do that all on my own thank you.

Picture Time

(Side view with baby head to the right)

Jen and I went to her first ultrasound for the new baby. We took William with us so he could see how there was a baby in mommy's tummy. Also so maybe he will stop crawling all over Jen like he does to me or at least understand why he can't crawl on mommy's tummy. Of course William was a little hesitant going into the exam room because usually if it is him and us, he usually ends up getting poked and prodded ending with a shot, but as soon as he realized that we weren't there because of him he loosened up a little bit. I think he enjoyed seeing the ultrasound being done and now when he sees the ultrasound pictures he will say "baby in mommy's tummy". Of course he still calls Andrew "Baby", but the will probably change now. Ultrasounds are very interesting in everything that they can see in the baby. They have a 3-D feature that she turned on, but the baby didn't look that defined just yet. With the first two boys we didn't want to find out the sex of the baby and be surprised, but we decided to go ahead and find out with this one. (of course we "decided" on the way into the exam room). aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnddddddddddd it going to be another boy. (Sorry mom, I tried to take a little off of it to give you that girl but just wasn't able.) I would have liked to have a little girl, but I now have "boy" experience and I wouldn't know how to handle "girl" stuff. So now the work begins on moving kids around and repainting rooms. And also the task of picking out a name, but at least now we know we only have to work on picking out a boys name rather than one of each.

(view from below)

The arrow pointing to his "boyness" was NOT put there by me in case you people were getting ready to yell at me. Maybe I should pixilate the image to make it family friendly. Of course I am not sure if you can actually tell what it is anyway.

We so need to get this for MR

I think we should all pitch in and buy this 6 foot inflatable homage to "A Christmas Story" for MR and his Halloween/Christmas Parties. (More Detail HERE) What better to celebrate both holidays than with 6 feet of "electric sex in the front window". I am sure the neighbors would LOVE to see this in the front yard from October through December.

I found this on a new website I came across "Things You Never Knew Existed". It's a pretty neat site with lotsa junk, but ALOT of it I already knew it existed or I have seen before. But still fun nonetheless.

The Mind Boggles.. which isn't saying much for me

So yesterday Jen and her parents took the boys down to Indy for a doctors appointment for Andrew and to visit relatives. So no kids or wife when I get home until at least 9:00pm, so I can do whatever I want. WHATEVER I WANT. The mind boggles. Usually when I get home from work there is kids to play with while Jen gets dinner ready while we talk about the day's events. If I want to try and get anything done, without "help", I have to wait until after bedtime which puts starting projects around 9:00 or 9:30 (or wait for the weekends) since the bedtime routine is taking longer and longer. YES I caved with putting William down to bed. I now will sit in the room until he goes to sleep, which luckily isn't very long. I stopped sitting in the room a while back, but it was at least an hour battle of him getting out of bed numerous times and sitting in the hallway with me going up and down the stairs constantly. So I figured me sitting there for 10 minutes beats the hell out of an hour of yelling at him, him crying and waking up the other one, threatening him and going up and down stairs. ANYWAY..... what to do? I figured one thing would be to grab something to eat, but where? I could go anywhere... Fast food? nah not that special of a thing. Sit down restaurant? nah I would feel kinda strange eating by myself. Go nostalgic and hit the Atz's for dinner at the counter? nah the kids might actually enjoy that. Run down to Coney Island? nah to far. I decide to decide later. The first thing that I did when I got home to the empty house was get some stuff done. I got the grass cut and put antifreeze in the jeep. Next I installed a light in the basement. For some reason the previous owner installed one light in the basement, but put a box in the ceiling for a second light on the other side of the room that was wired and ready for a light. The weird part is that they had the second light that matched the first one sitting on a shelf in the garage when we moved in, so I am not sure why they would take the time to install the electrical and box (including a cover) but not install the light, but I have stopped asking why a long time ago. Anyway the install went pretty fast and it actually works. While getting some light bulbs I found a replacement part for the freezer that Jen had bought months ago that I totally forgot about so that was also a project that I knocked out. After finishing that I decide that it's time to get something to eat. I decide to run to a few stores looking for a new light jacket and hopefully get inspired by the many restaurants in the area. My current light jacket has seem better days and bears the logo of the company I worked at 2 years ago. I hit Meijer, Walmart, and Target and no jacket and no food inspiration. All of the stores have little to no jacket selection at all or at least nothing that I would be caught dead in. So it's getting to be around 7:30 and figure it's time to eat. I am in the Target parking lot and think that I will just "bag the bell" and head for home, but then inspiration hits.... taco bell... Mexican.... food..... BANDITOS!!!!! I like their food and I can get it to go, so I run over there and order my usual... to go. I get home and stuff myself on chips, salsa and a Pollo Bandito and watch the usual crap on TV. I was close to putting in a movie, but I figure the family would be home soon. Around 9:30 the garage door opens and I go out to haul in two sleeping boys only to find two wide awake boys in the back of bumpa's car. I can tell it has been a long day for the grandparents. So we put the kids to bed, had a quick discussion of the days events, and fell asleep in front of the TV. It's kind of strange how I feel when no one is there when I get home or when the kids were at grandmas for the night. It just doesn't feel normal, and that's probably why I had such a hard time figuring out what to do. There is a freedom that I feel, but at the same time an emptiness for me. Whoa, did it just get deep in here?

Why do they keep tempting me like this????????

Introducing the newest ipod. It's the ipod touch or as I call it the itouch. It's basically the iphone without the phone part (thus without the extra $60 a month charge) It's either 8 or 16 gig of music, video, and pictures starting at $300. Also the itouch includes a wifi interface that can pick up wifi and display true websites. All the features of the iphone are on the itouch including using your fingers to scroll through covers of albums and pinching the screen to zoom in and out. Such a cool toy. Also improved was the ipod nono that now includes a video screen for the same price as the old one.

Would I like to have one?..... hell yeah

Do I need one?....................nope

Can I afford it?..................hell no

I look at the practicality of having one of those things and it really doesn't make sense. Nowadays the only time I spend listening to my music is the 45 minutes it takes me to cut the grass and my old tapeplayer walkman comes in real handy for that time, including my old Rush "show of hands" cassette tape. I can't even imagine when I would use the video or picture features unless I had alot of time to sit around or go places, and with 2.5 kids that aint happening. Much like the shoqbox mp3 player that I bought, I hardly ever use it, but at only $30 I could justify that purchase. So another toy to look at and drool over, I wonder where the technology will be at when my kids are teenagers.

More info: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

The Legend.....

I can say that it was my extreme pleasure that I knew and worked with a Legend, Bob Sievers. Bob passed away last monday at 90 years old. In my 7 years of working at WOWO I didn't get the chance to work with Bob every day, but I did have quite a few times of working with him when he would visit the station or attend an event. One such event is when WOWO was doing a remote at an airshow at Bear Field. Bob loved planes so he was attending the show and stopped by the Sunshine Studio to say hello. Bob was asked to be the DJ while (the late) Gary Noe took a cordless microphone up in a plane. At the time I was only the guy who drove the Sunshine Studio and worked the buttons so I was never on the air, but while I was telling Bob what was going on he put a mic in front of me and he and I ended up doing a play by play withBob with Gary up in the plane. So I can say I was on-air with Bob. I had other opportunities to visit with Bob and talk to him when he attended numerous Penny Pitch events. Every time Bob talked, everyone around would listen to every word because it was usually something very interesting. When the studios were still downtown (203 W. Wayne) I always knew that Bob had been to visit Chris Underwood overnights or Chris Roberts early in the morning because there would be a small paper bag with one Power's hamburger in it on the break room table. Of course by the time we got to the office the bag was almost translucent due to the amount of grease in one of those burgers.
I was greatly saddened by the loss of Bob. I had a chance to meet up with him and Ron Gregory in the past year for lunch a few times but could never work out the time off which I now regret. I attended the late viewing for Bob and was able to visit with some other former WOWO employees and we had a very good time telling our stories about Bob. I probably will never go back into radio ever again, but it's nice knowing that I had a chance to work with a Legend and at a time when radio was about fun and family and not the money grubbing machine it is now. I hope that the local PBS station continues to run the radio specials with Bob and the other legends every once in a while, since it definitely puts a smile on my face.

RIP MR. WOWO

Mosquito (Labor) Day weekend

Overall a good mixture of Labor and relaxation for this 3 day weekend.

Saturday: After a stellar 3 hours of sleep (see previous story) I woke up Saturday wide awake, yeah right. Jen had to work so I pretty much just hung out with the boys and played and watched TV. After putting Andrew down for his nap I decided to make some Cookies and brownies for the Clymer family fish fry on Sunday. I attempted Carrie's cookie recipe for a second time with the proper ingredients and proportions and they turned out much better. Of the three dozen cookies I took up Sunday, none of them made it back. And once again everyone was surprised that I baked them. Yes I have some skills. The Brownies were from a recipe that I found on-line that looked very simple to assemble. The recipe was from a store called Jungle Jim's in Cleveland (yes Carrie I know you have been there) that looks very interesting and I might have to go visit if I ever get down that way or if I can talk them into selling Kalik. I was real careful with the brownie recipe and tried to follow it to the letter. It looked good going into the pan, and it said on the recipe in very bold letters DO NOT OVER BAKE. So with a cook time of 25-30 minutes, I of course throw it in for 30. I was used to putting the cookies in for longer than the suggested time. Well I pull it out after 30 minutes and there is a 6 inch bulge in the middle of the brownies. It looked like something you would see on the Beverly Hillbillies. After cooling down the bulge went down a little bit and I cut the brownies up and they tasted like crap. Yep I overcooked them, but hey at least I have the cookies for tomorrow. This was also the start of the mosquito onslaught of the weekend. William left the door to the garage open a minute and let in a ton of mosquito's. This was only the start of many run in's with mosquitoes all weekend.

Sunday we got the crew together and headed up for the Clymer family fish fry at the in-laws camper. We tried to leave early, but ended up waiting for Jen's friend Tracy and her boys to follow us up. We finally got up there around noon and spent the day visiting and eating. My father in law and his brother take their positions in the back of the camp area and start up there skillets and spend the next hour or so cooking all the fish they spent the past year catching. Usually there is a group to batter and season the fish so all Tom and Ken have to do is cook them. They try alot of different spices and flavorings on the fish which make for a delicious choices in the fish. Again there was a ton of food and it was all very good. I took William and Tracy's boys fishing off the dock for a little bit and every one of them ended up catching one very small fish apiece after drowning alot of worms. Nothing like hooks flying past your head as 3 kids try to cast their lines on the same dock at different times. After feeding the fish we all went down swimming. We ended up swimming for a couple of hours. I was staying close to William since he is usually afraid of the water, but for some reason wasn't Sunday. Andrew of course is the daredevil and went straight for the 10 foot slide in the water. We got back to the camper and started the feast. No, not us eating, but BEING eaten by mosquitoes. We grabbed a quick bite (so to speak) and loaded the boys up and took off for home.

Monday Jen had to work again and mom was having a party at her house in the afternoon to celebrate Dan being home for good. I dropped the boys off at Grandma's early in the afternoon to get some stuff done around the house. It's so much easier to get grass cut and the family room steam cleaned without help. I headed back to mom's around 4:00 and spent the rest of the day visiting with mom and chasing down kids. Around 5:00 Dan,Rhonda,Alta, and Lynn show up and the pandelerium starts :)... Mom is trying to put together the food, Alta is trying to help her, Dan is trying to put together Pina Coladas (home-made) all at the same time in the kitchen, it was kinda crazy. I just stayed out of the way sipping my beer (Sam Adams.. very tasty). Oh and also in the middle of the pandelium in the Kitchen the handle on the microwave mysteriously broke so Uncle Dave was trying to fix it at the same time :). The food was very good and we had a good time visiting with everyone. All of the activity had to stay inside due to the mosquitoes outside. Andrew went outside for a few minutes and was covered with bites. Around 8:00 they boys were getting real cranky so I headed for home to get them a bath and then in bed.

So overall it was a pretty good mixture of getting some stuff done but having some time to relax a little bit. Of course the fact that I am finally getting to write about this on Friday tells you the kind of week that I came back to at work, but hey at least it's a short week.

Night Golf III

Friday: Night Golf III - I showed up to Lakeside around 8:00. There wasn't much of a crowd there yet which kinda surprised me, but I thought maybe I was just a bit early. I was talking to my mom and the organizers of the golf and found out that the number of people was going to be down this year (5 foursomes) due to moving the outing from last Friday (due to rain) to this Friday (Labor day weekend). My cousin Marc was the only friend that was available to play this year, so we ended up getting paired with two other guys who weren't part of a team. The one guy was the organizer of the outing who was a dentist and named Phil, so we spent the night calling him Dr. Phil. I grabbed a plate and headed for the food (after grabbing a beer). This year was supposed to be catered food from Ceruti's so I figured it would be very tasty, but it ended up being pretty bland. There was Salisbury steak, chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes with ham that had not flavor at all. But hey the night isn't about the food, it's just there to soak up the beer. They had some soft rolls that were delicious so I ate quite a few of those. I was surprised to see the sun going down in the middle of eating and it was totally dark by 9:00. I don't remember it being that dark last year. The weather was perfect with cool temperatures in the low 60's with a heavy kind of dewy night. So after taking a bath in bug spray we headed out to the course. The front 9 was still a little rough from all of the rain the past week so we ended up playing the back 9 which is new for me. The front 9 is totally different from the back since the fairways are wide open and there are par 5's and 3's. The back 9 is alot more narrow with tight fairways and a creek going along most of the holes. Almost all of them are par 4's. Stepping up to the first tee, it was again fun to see what kind of game you are going to play with the glowing little ball. All 4 of us put the ball straight on the fairway. Barry had one of those big drivers, and when he hit the ball you would hear this ear piercing "Clink" whenever he drove the ball. The nature of the glowing balls is that they don't fly as far or as accurate as regular balls which is probably good. You have to trust the yardage on the course. If the little steak says you are 100 yards out then you probably are. Depth perception of where you see the flag is never true. Overall I hit pretty well all night. I put a few in the trees, but lucky for me the glowing balls were easy to find. Another member of our team actually hit the glowstick out of the ball on one drive. We found the ball but had to replace the glowstick a few holes later. About halfway through the round we got to an area that was pretty open and we could see the moon rising up. It had been total pitch black dark then this huge full moon came up. The last half of the round was pretty lit on the course..the course not me. I borrowed my mom's pull cart so I wouldn't have to carry my bag, but it was a pain to keep track of my beer, so I will have to figure something out for next year where I can use the pull cart and mount the can coosie on the cart somewhere. We played a pretty quick round and didn't have to wait for the group in front of us or get pressure from behind which is a relaxing way to play. We got back to the clubhouse and the brought the food out again and I just had some more rolls. I found out halfway through the round that Dr. Phil wasn't actually writing down the score on the card, but just trying to remember how many over or under par we were. He thought we pared every hole but I thought we were one under par (thinking about it later I think he was right). We ended up tying for first place, but actually placed second with a backup scoring system. I got my little prize and headed for home around 12:30am which isn't too bad. But the story doesn't end there. As soon as I get home and in bed Andrew wakes up and does his 3 hour "I'm awake" thing so I didn't get to bed until around 4:00 or so. Of course William comes strolling into the bedroom at 7:30 wide awake. Sigh. But again it was a total blast on the course and I will be playing every year that I am able to do it. I usually put away some Christmas money specifically to play in this outing. I keep telling my friends and some year they will be enlightened like my friend Gina and cousin Marc.