Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!! Plans for tonight include taking the boys to a party and doing a little trick or treating in another neighborhood. Some day I would like to stay home and see what it's like around our house, but there is always a party to go to. Probably a trip to my mom's house for pictures and possibly a trip to the in-laws so they can hear what the doorbell sounds like since this is the one time of year it actually get rung. And since they are in the middle of the country, the boys will be the only one ringing it.

We carved pumkins on Monday night. After I got done carving mine (pictured above) it reminded me of someone or something. What do you think?





It reminded me of Tim the Enchanter









Or the ghostbusters dog

Full Pumpkin Lineup

HAPPY FEET !!!!!!!

We tell Andrew that it is time for "Happy Feet" and he does a little dance around the area. Last night he threw in a new twist. When He would stop and we would say "yeah" and start to clap he now will take a bow. We didn't teach that to him, who knows where he got it.

MR Halloween party

By Saturday we were finally able to work out the logistics of actually going to MR's Halloween Party. My mom was out of town, Jen's parents were going to a party too, but lucky for us Jen's friend Tracy was available. Also Jen was able to rearrange and switch her work schedule to be able to make it. Her boss asked her why she needed Saturday off and Jen told her that she wanted to go to an adult party. Her boss says "ADULT" Party??? No, not that kind of Adult party, just one without kids. So anyway..... I had been looking for a week for a cheap costume. Costume's aren't required for MR's party, but it can be kind of fun to dress up. I just didn't want to spend more than $20 on a costume. Many trips to Walmart, Meijer, Halloween USA, and even some Internet shopping didn't even get close. The weekend before Halloween probably isn't the best time to get a deal on costumes, but I tried. I wasn't finding anything, but remembered that I had an old basketball uniform in the attic from the days when I played with the radio station. It was a pretty gaudy shiny turquoise outfit which was my backup costume idea. I got the uniform down and it still fit pretty well. The pants were a little snug, but I figured it would work. We decided to put Andrew down to sleep before we left and let Tracy put down William when he was good and tired. I gave both the boys baths and we put Andrew down. A few minutes later he started crying like he knew we were leaving. After about 10 minutes of crying it started to go into screaming which is not like him. The funny thing is that he did the same thing last Halloween to Tracy while we were at MR's party, but it was at 11:00pm and lasted an hour until we got home. Jen and I decided to go upstairs and calm him down before we left him with Tracy. We walk in the room to calm him down, and then "the cough" starts. Nooooooooo. Yep, he pukes spaghettioos all over the place. Crap. So we cleaned him up and his bedding. Jen rocked him to calm him down and he finally fell asleep after half an hour, but not without more struggle. So finally Andrew asleap, William set, Jen and Tracy start gabbing. Finally we get out the door around 9:00. We get to the party and see some new faces and a few familiar ones. Once again the food and drinks were fantastic. It was great to be able to visit with friends again, it has been too long and not often enough. MR did the whole Mentos/Diet Coke experiment and it actually worked out pretty well. MR got a neat little Margarita machine that could some in real handy during the year. The one bummer is that time went way to fast. Keith, Jeff, and wives left around 11:00ish and before I knew it the clock said 12:00 for us too. Time to get home. We got home to find Tracy the boys asleep on the couch. It was again a lot of fun and I am looking forward to MR's Christmas party. I also need to look around now for a good deal on a Halloween costume for next year. I am looking for the group picture of the party people to do have a little photoshop fun..

Venting

Yeah it's time for me to bitch again.....

Item #1: My freaking windows. We have two windows in our front room that are both screwed. The one window won't shut correctly and the other doesn't work for crap. So I decide that since it's almost fall and we won't be using it anymore, that THIS is the time to fix it. I decide that the window that is hard to close isn't really that big of a problem so I turn my attention to the one that doesn't work properly. From what I can see it has lost a couple screws on the bottom of the sash that keeps it from working properly, so I figure a couple screws and that would solve the problem. I got outside to see what kind of screws I need to reattach the bracket and I look on the bottom of the window to see Swiss cheese for wood. Son of a Biscuit!! All the wood on the bottom is falling apart and like a sponge. So my quick fix is probably now going to entail replacing the window since I am not sure if that could be fixed.

Item #2: My WTF of the day. Over the years I have had what I would say is a questionable stomach. Over the years of test and diets and stuff it has actually calmed down. The one thing that I found to help was a over the counter medicine called zantac 150 (I highly recommend MR!!) It is a pretty efficient acid reducer/stomach helper. I noticed a commercial for this medicine over the weekend that now it's coated in mint... MINT.... WTF?? How is this flavorless medicine that you swallow with a glass of water going to be helped by a mint flavor??? What a waste of money for the company that will no doubt increase the cost of this already pricey medicine. Only thing I can think of it that it will taste minty when you burp. Lucky for me I rarely need this stuff anymore but still..

Item #3: Dumbledore is Gay. Why the Fark did JK Rowling "out" Dumbledore. It makes no sense at all for her to "out" a FICTIONAL character after the story is done and it had absolutely no relevance in the story. Great, now all the muggles who looked up to that character now have to worry about their own sexuality, did they like the character because he was a father figure or did they just like the way he "swung his wand". In my mind he will never be gay, he will always be giving it to professor McGonagall right the in the grand hall when no one is around and nearly headless Nick watching. What's next Frodo and Sam with the old slap and tickle with Gollum? Yeah I am a little pissed about this.

Thanks for Reading... whew.. I feel better...

Useful Internet

I am in the process of working on my basement including the installation of shelving in the furnace room and the basic organization of crap down there. The ultimate goal is to clear out enough stuff and put in in the furnace room so I can start to work on the basement remodel. Which means DE-MO-LI-TION.... God I love Demo... I am going to do a subdued demo with controlled dismantling of the drywall and not the typical sledgehammer. I really want to just see what I am dealing with behind the walls and under the ceiling. I decided to clear one room so I could get into the walls, but that means clearing the room. In the process of clearing the crap I decided that would be a good time to sort stuff and either pitch crap, earmark for a garage sale, or throw it into the attic to worry about it another day. One of the bigger items in the room was a 27 inch TV that I bought 8 years ago. It was a really nice set that made it through Tartan's Glen and then Pine Valley. But during the last move something must have happened to it. I noticed that when we got to the new house that it wasn't working. When you turned the volume up it turned the set off and nothing I did could solve the problem. I figured something in the 5 months in the garage must have cause the problem. Well I just threw the TV in the basement when we moved in and decided to deal with it later. So, here it is later. I decide that anything that I pull out of the room MUST be dealt with at that time and no stacking it elsewhere. I pull the TV out of the room and have to decide whether to pitch it or if it's worth taking somewhere to get fixed. I decided to surf the net to see if I could find an owners manual or some other help. I figure taking it to a repair shop would be a minimum of $75, nope, scratch that idea. I found the owners manual on-line that I could buy for $15, nope, don't want to do that. But I did find a forum on-line with one of the questions stating the exact problem that I had. HOLY CRAP!! The forum suggested a TV reset using the factory commands that only insiders in the TV repair world would know about, and wouldn't you know it.. it worked. The Internet is actually useful and not for just looking at kitties. Yeah I know I am lucky to find the exact problem that I had on a forum, but it was still cool that I fixed it pushing 4 buttons and at no cost. My elation of solving the problem and thinking of enjoying the TV in the basement was tempered by the knowledge that in a couple years it will be useless due to it not having a digital tuner. sigh. I only hope that the little box that they sell for us "old school" UHFers do convert digital signal to analog will be somewhat affordable.

Geekfest II ????? maybe Geekfest 1.5

I came across this story about a new waterpark in Shipshewana. I was thinking that WHEN/IF the Q's come in town around the holidays of possibly heading up and doing geekfest II. It's no where near the quality of the Kalahari, but it's only about 65 miles away and would be easy to get to. It might be a pain in the butt getting some rooms around the holidays, but just wanted to throw that out there for you consideration. Of course we could always just do the Holidome for a day also for the Q's possible visit.

http://wanawaves.splashuniverse.com/

ps. The Kalahari is adding 93,000 square feet for next year by the way, let's plan ahead and start saving. Info HERE

Open for Business

More cool internet toys

A co-worker put me onto a website that looks like fun. The site is called Cafe Press. What you do is design something either a graphic, logos,text, or just a picture. Then you can take that file and place it on numerous items like t-shirts, mugs, magnets and other assorted mechandise. The cool part is that they do all of the work. It is a free site with no minimum orders with them taking care of shipping and stuff. You can either order the stuff you design at your cost or assign a profit to it to make a few bucks if other people order your stuff. You can either keep your site/store private for friends and family or make it public with a chance of making a few more bucks, but you have to think of a design that others would want. But even if they don't you aren't out anything since it's free. I am thinking about a design for Halloween but haven't found my inspiration, of course I don't think I have time before MR's party.

Here is the address of a store that I opened using an old logo design that I was playing with. I would need to tweek the design before I ordered anything, but it's mind boggling to think of the stuff you could do.

http://www.cafepress.com/hogansbeachbar

Yeah, Carrie.... I will get back to work....

Field Trip

Yesterday William's class went on a field trip to a pumpkin farm. It was his first field trip in school as well as his first bus ride. Lately he has been a little touchy about loud noises so I was concerned that the bus ride would be something that would upset him. Jen had to work so I took half a day off and went with him on the field trip (parents were welcome to come along). It was a nice little field trip. We loaded on the school bus without any trouble and got into a seat, (with seat belts nonetheless!!). We drove out to the Kurtz farm which is a little family farm along hwy. 37 going toward Harlan. This is the same place that we have been going for years to buy our pumpkins. They have this neat thing where the pumpkins are separated by size and price. It is totally on the honor system with a money drop box by the barn where you put your money, so you can go whenever you want, even though the prices are getting a little salty. After getting to the farm we got some instructions from Mrs. Kurtz and went into a barn for "Pumpkin School" where she described how pumpkins grow at a pre-school level. Of course being pre-school she was interrupted numerous times from the kids with real silly questions, but the got through the very interesting presentation. After Pumpkin School with numerous interruptions including the tractors, we loaded up into the back of a trailer for a (straw) hay ride out to the pumpkin patch so the kids could pick their own pumpkin. Nothing like asking a bunch of pre-schoolers to choose from hundreds of pumpkins. After that we loaded back on the buses for the ride back to school. Overall William did great on the trip and didn't have any problems at all. I think there was times when he totally forgot I was there with other classmates around and things to see so no problems if he does another field trip.

Man I haven't been on a school bus in at least 25 years. What a total "end-of-Ferris-Bueller-with credits-rolling-esque" moment that was. Numerous times I felt like I was Ed Rooney. Not much has changed on the school bus in all of that time, but the video camera was a bit foreboding pointing at me.

A side note to this post. I had about 40 minutes to kill between the time we got back to school and when I had to pick up William so I decided to run over to Keith's business and pick something up. After a few wrong turns I finally got there to a jammed pack parking lot. I parked in a sales rep slot, (screw it he should be out selling anyway) and went inside. I told the lady at front that I wanted to see Keith, and she told me ALOT of people would like to see Keith. She informs me that he is out to lunch..dang. I was heading out and I see him in the parking lot. I can see why he doesn't have time to blog or get together anymore. As I was following him around the office he was introducing me to people, putting out numerous fires, taking care of sales weasels, watching the packing, catching crap from his boss, and a ton of other stuff in the 10 minutes I was there. I can only imagine dealing with that ALL DAY long. There is a man in need of a serious "guys night" out or he will surely explode...

Happy Birthday Andrew

Saturday we had a 2nd birthday party for Andrew. It was kinda thrown together at the last minute since Jen's work schedule was all over the place. We were looking at the middle of the month before we could do a party for him, but I saw an opportunity on Saturday since Jen wasn't going into work until 6:00. Unfortunately the plans didn't work with my mom and Jen's dad due to prior commitments, but we had a get together with them on Andrew's actual birthday on Wednesday. Jen's dad did get back in town to stop by for a visit at the end of the party. We decided to keep it real simple with just pizza, cake and ice cream, and surprisingly that's what it turned out to be. Usually when I try to keep it simple, it gets complicated or the menu expands alot, but it didn't. Jen did a fantastic job on the cake (pictured above) it really looked good. Actually it was better than the picture shows. It was a curious George inspired cake that turned out fantastic with little tufts of grass on the top and palm trees on the side that looked great.

For pizza we decided to run over to Papa Murphy's pizza take n' bake. We like their pizza and it is really affordable. I was instructed to get two "family" sized pizzas, one being peperoni and the other "whatever". I am really bad decided "whatever", but when I got there they had a special on a 5 meat stuffed pizza that looked interesting so I ordered it. I got back to the house as people were showing up and threw the first pizza and breadsticks into the oven since the stuffed pizza required a lower cooking temp. I pulled out the first pizza and put it on the table and put the second in the oven. The first pizza was quickly disappearing and I could only hope that the second would be done before the first ran out. Just after the first pizza was finished the second came out and they both were great. The stuffed crust one was de-lic-ious with thick crust. I got quite a few comments and questions about what kind of pizza it was and how good it was. At first I was worried about left over from two "family" sized pizzas, but there ended up being nothing left which was even better. I just noticed that that stuffed pizza is on special again now so I might have to get another one pretty soon.

After we ate the kids went outside and the adults were visiting, of course in the visiting room..... the kitchen. Thank God we have a big kitchen. After a little bit I decided to get things going since kids birthday parties are supposed to be short, but it was hard since we were all having a good time visiting. I didn't want to seem like I was rushing people out the door, but I also wanted to get things moving so people wouldn't feel bad if they had to leave, so it's a strange balance. We opened up Andrew's presents and he seemed to enjoy everything that he got. Of course he got to play with them for a short time until William decided to play with them. After presents, it's was cake and ice cream. I felt bad cutting into the cake but that's what they are there for. More visiting and people slowly made their way to the door.

It was a great party with good friends, but too short for a good visit. With everything on paper plates the clean up went very fast with only a few thing in the sink to clean or put in the dishwasher. Jen got to rest a little (I think we both took a nap) before she had to head into work for the night. A few more pictures can been seen on the neglected flicker site.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveandjj_ii/

mom story continued

Just putting together a collection of the fun stuff my mom does so I don't forget all the fun things....
I talked to mom the other day and we were talking about an upcoming surgery. She has to go through a 3 hour operation on her back to place a couple of rods to help support her spine and ease some of the pain in her back and arms. She was setting up her surgery for November and told the scheduling nurse that she really really really wanted a morning surgery... almost to the point of demanding it. The nurse asked her why she needed a morning surgery and my mom told the nurse that the surgery was scheduled for 3 hours and she didn't want the doctor to be tired when he did it. I suppose it makes sense, but I can't imagine that the doctor can't handle a surgery starting at noonish since they do surgery all the time, but still I find that funny.

Funny Funny Funny

Jen and I have been watching a new show called "the big bang theory" for the last couple of weeks. If you haven't been watching it, then you should start now. This is one of those rare laugh out loud sitcoms that doesn't come along that often. Jen and I both were almost on the floor both times that we have watched it. It is from the same people that brought us "two and a half men" so it doesn't surprise me how hilarious it is. There is similar aspects of geekness from the main characters that I see in certain friends of ours, or actually in all of us.

If you have watched it then the answer to your question of where you have seen the main character is... He was the kid in Roseanne who was Darlene's boyfriend, or also he was "Rusty" in Christmas Vacation.

I highly recommend a viewing of this new show....