Chistmas '08

Christmas '08 started out with a bit of hard labor. I got home around 12:30 from work. Jen and I had a couple of things that we wanted to do before going to grandma's house. I had heard that we were expecting 1 to 3 inches of snow that night so I wanted to get the driveway cleared before it started. There was about 1/2 an inch of ice caked on the drive, but it was finally above freezing which gave me the opportunity to get underneath it. Grandma C's car actually slid down the driveway and into the street while she was watching the boys. (yes our driveway is steep and it sucks). The traditional snow shovel wouldn't work so I had to break out a regular shovel to break up the ice. For the most part the ice came up pretty good, but with only a 6 inch blade it took a lot longer than usual. After an hour I was almost halfway down the driveway and had shed my coat because I was just too flippin hot. At one point I stepped on the ice to get a better angle for the shovel and ended up taking a ride down the driveway. After busting my butt for an hour and a half, I got close to the bottom of the driveway and figured that was good enough. I found out later that the snow had been cancelled, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to get the ice taken care of.

Anyway, after the ice shoveling Jen and I did a few things around the house. Since the road conditions were still a little tricky I decided to skip church for the evening. Yeah I know I should have tried to make it, but the thought of dealing with 3 kids in a standing room only church for over an hour didn't sound like fun. We loaded the kids up and headed over to mom's house. Usually Jen has to close the store on Christmas eve, but somehow she ended up opening the store so we didn't have to wait for her to show up to mom's house. When Jen closed on Christmas she would show up and be half awake for the evening. I was able to talk mom into just doing appetizers instead of a meal for Christmas eve which worked out so much easier. Trying to get the kids to sit still for any food is a challenge. We had shrimp cocktail, cookies, crackers, chips, and some other snacks. We visited and snacked and started the presents early this year. It looked like we had taken it easy this year on the presents, but by the time everything was opened (along with presents being brought from other rooms) it was a madhouse of toys for the boys. The boys got a HUGE lincoln log set that Dan had set up in the front room that was alot of fun and destroyed minutes later. More snacking and drinking later we decided to head for home. I was amazed to see that we were loading up the car by 9:00pm. Last year we were delayed leaving mom's house due to me having to clean up Andrew's puke from mom's carpet. Yet another reason not to fill the boys up with food, especially Andrew. We got the boys to bed pretty quick and still had some present wrapping to do so we were up until after midnight doing that.

Christmas morning like almost every morning the first visitors come into our room before 7:00am (yawn). We trudge downstairs and the boys immediately start playing with the toys from last night and don't even notice the stockings or the presents under the tree. We grab a little something to eat before the present carnage II begins. I am not sure how many years ago,but I remember that a tradition started in the family that we have honey buns and orange juice for breakfast on Christmas morning. Now usually the honey buns were from the Morton company, but they went out of business or stopped producing honey buns years ago. So every year I search for a reasonable substitute. I have finally found a honey bun that is real similar and I can get it at Walmart/Sams club. The kids are finally getting the idea of gifts, almost too much, and started to get a little greedy toward the end of the day. One of the gifts that I found cool too was a miniature remote controlled helicopter. William actually understands how to control the helicopter and can hover it in place a couple of feet off the ground. Andrew (el distructo) only knows full throttle which drives the chopter straight into the ceiling and then bouncing off the fireplace. I am hoping that this toy will hang around a little while longer (yeah I like playing with it too). The funny part is that I sent one of these helicopters to my dad for Christmas too. I can never decide what to get my dad so I usually send him something fun to play with or something for the pool.

After carnage II we load up the boys to go to grandma and grandpa C's for carnage III. We had a very tasty turkey lunch and then opened more presents. Somewhere during the middle of present opening I look over at Andrew.... mouth opens... and hurl. Son of a B****. Jen grabs one of her brand new tupperware containers to catch the last bit of urp. So instead of my mom's house I get to clean up Jen's mom's house for Christmas. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful and pretty nice. I took Christopher into the in-laws bedroom to take a nap and ended up freezing my butt off while trying to get him to sleep. They like a cold bedroom for sleeping and so would I, if I would have had a blanket. Every time I tired to get up Christopher stirred and woke up crying so I was stuck. After a couple of hours (and a few cat naps) I took him back into the front room. We headed home around 8:00 or so.

Overall I think it was a very good Christmas..It was nice to start Christmas eve a little earlier and have Jen semi-conscious. For the most part the boys were very well behaved and Christopher stayed away from the tree. Their new thing is that every toy they have MUST be out of the box that it came in even if they don't plan on playing with it.

Ice Ice Baby

Thought I would put some pictures of the ice storm that hit the Fort last week. The above picture is the rose of sharon tree that is usually straight up in the air. I thought for sure that the limbs would break or the tree would split since it alreay has a bit of a crack in the trunk. After the ice melted the tree rebounded pretty well. I have quite a few small branches down in the back yard, but I am not stranger to that since it happens all year long.

I would love to post a video I took but blogger still won't let me load in video for some reason. If I get time I might look into that. Who am I kidding. I barely have time to blog.

My perfectly effed up Friday

** I appolgize in advance for any expletives that this entry might contain ***

My effed up Friday started Thursday night when I got home from work. I walk in the door and see William asleep on the couch. Now usually he doesn't sleep in the afternoon unless he is sick, and even then he hasn't slept in the afternoon in quite a long time. Usually a little side effect of his napping is that he is a bear to go to bed at night. The good news is that he doesn't have a cold, the bad news is that he was a bear to go to bed. Jen had to work Friday morning so the alarm has to go off at 5:30am. I would like to go to bed since it is going to be an early morning, but William keeps coming out of his room because he isn't tired. He went from just walking out on the landing to going into his brother's room and jumping on him (which Andrew doesn't budge, man, he's a heavy sleeper). Finally after midnight I just take him into our bedroom and set up a pillow and blanket on the floor for him to crash. I am not sure how much longer he was awake, but I only made it a few minutes before I was sawing logs. The 5:30 alarm came wayyyyy too early, so Jen got up and started getting ready with William sleeping on the floor. She informs me that school is cancelled for the day so that will make is easier on the babysitters not having to cart all the kids around to drop off and pick up William. Around 6:15 Andrew comes walking in the room and I try to get him to sleep next to me for just a little longer, but he is persistent that he wants and needs his "cereal and milk" ASAFP. He is real persistent about needing it as soon as he wakes up. The child has not patience (what kid does). As I am following him down the hall to get him "HIS PRECIOUS..." the power goes out in the house. Crap. So I take Andrew downstairs and get out the flashlights that I have stashed away for just such emergencies. I have come to find out that if a cricket farts it will knock out power to our grid so I have started putting together these kits so I know where they are. If the kids get ahold of them they become playthings so I can never find them and usually they have dead batteries. It really sucks being on the edge of the grid, I know that we are because I can look across the street and see their freakin' Christmas lights. I know it's not their fault they have power and we have a crappy grid, but it still pisses me off. The last time our grid went down for whatever reason it was gone for an hour or so, but in looking outside and seeing all of the trees bent over with ice I had a feeling that it would be alot longer. So I help Jen get out of the garage so she can leave for work and I run upstairs to get ready myself. We called Jen's mom (we knew she would be up at 6:30am) and arranged that I would drop the kids off to her house on the way to work. So I am trying to get myself and the 3 boys ready to go in the dark as well as bottles and food, and etc. It's so funny how I would still turn on light switches while going through the house, just a force of habit I think. Now usually if I leave at 7:30 I can make it to work on time, but trying to get everything packed up wasn't going to let that happen so I knew I was going to be a little late. Before I leave I go down to the basement to check out the sump pump since I can hear the back-up running. The back up pump is doing it's jog pretty well, but it seems to be running quite alot. This is where I notice that the check valve on the pump is not working correctly again and its allowing the water in the pipe to back up into the sump so its working twice as often as it should. I forget how long the battery is good for on this system, but I am thinking that it is 12 hours. So I load the kids up and head out on some real nasty roads. The mains aren't too bad, but the secondaries are dangerous. Of course the in-laws live 3 miles down on a hilly county road so that was real interesting. As I pull up to the in-laws house I hit the garage door opener and ... nothing. Finally I go up to the front door where my mother in law greets me and says that they just lost power. She tried to call me (oh by the way did I mention that my cell phone was dead) and let me know. So after debating what to do I decide to take the kids to my mom's house since the in-laws are on a well so they don't have any running water and my mom still has power. So I load the kids up for ride to my mom's house. She lives down the street from me so I had to backtrack almost all the way back to my house dodging trees hanging in the streets and broken limbs. Finally I head up to work and notice that the further North that I go the less ice there is on the trees. I get to work an hour and a half late,but ended up having a pretty good day there. How sad is it that the best part of my day was working. I kept calling the house hoping that the answering machine would pick up, thus letting me know that we had power again but no luck. After getting off work I headed home to check on things like the sump pump and the cat. Surprisingly it wasn't that cold in the house, I think around 60 degrees. I did notice the sump back up was still going off pretty often so I decided to try and drain the sump out to see if I could conserve a little of the battery life since it had been 12 hours of it running. Before getting the battery back up for the sump pump, the plan for getting power to the sump in an emergency was to plug into a DC converter that we bought for the car and run the pump. This was my ultimate back up plan before the battery. Of course I had never tested it and just assumed it would work. So I hook everything up and.. nothing. I couldn't even plug it an extension cord into the converter without it freaking out. Thank God I didn't have to use it before the battery or I would have been totally fubared. So I am trying to think of what to do next. I know there probably isn't a generator to buy or rent on this end of town and I am not sure I want to try getting another converter. I ended up heading over to mom's to have a little dinner and make a plan of attack with Jen. I have a little dinner and just sit there dazed, trying to think of what to do next. The boys and Jen are going to spend the night at grandma's and I decide to spend the night at our house to keep an eye on the sump and run the gas fireplace to get a little heat in the house so it doesn't get too cold for the cat or the pipes. After eating I am getting ready to head back to the house and the boys are in with grandma in her bedroom watching Christmas shows. All of a sudden I hear Andrew scream. Now I know Andrew's screams and this is the serious one. I take off to the bedroom and see mom running Andrew into the bathroom with blood running down his face. Supposedly mom's dog Willie was asleep on the bed and Andrew startled him, so Willie bit him on the face. We are working on cleaning him up and he calms down a little bit. The one gash on his lip looks pretty deep so I decide to take him to the ER just in case. So we load up Andrew and take off for the hospital. Of course we have to head home first since that's where our new medial insurance cards are. As Jenny is inside grabbing the cards I tell her to grab her frozen breast milk so we can store it in mom's freezer, just in case, but we were too late and all of her milk (or "white gold" as I call it) was already defrosted, but good news the sump was still running. So we take Andrew to the ER and got in pretty fast since no one in their right mind would be out in crappy weather like this. The doctor didn't see a need for stitches since it wasn't deep enough, so they just cleaned him up and put some medicine on the cuts. Thinking about it later, I think the doctor was a guy I went to grade school with, but I didn't make the connection since I had alot of other crap to worry about. This is the third time that Willie has bit one of the boys. So we get back to my mom's house and get the boys situated with their sleeping bags and pillows. I head back to our house and try to settle in and get some sleep. I took everything out of the fridge and put it outside to keep it cold. I should have done it earlier,but I just wasn't thinking straight. Everything in the freezers still looked pretty frozen. I start a fire in the fireplace, but it hasn't been on in years so the whole house gets filled with a burning smell for a while. The smoke detectors are beeping every couple of minutes to let me know the power is out and they are running on batteries since they are tied into the house electric. And the sump is running like crazy. So with the fire going, I crank up a radio (I actually had to crank it to get it to work) and listen to Christmas music. My old reliable Mag flashlight goes out with a burnt bulb (of course). I ended up going downstairs and manually emptying the sump pump with a bucket, thinking that it would be good for a while. I am settled in front of the fire with a beer thinking if I can just ignore the beeps of the smoke detectors that I can catch some sleep. Nope. The sump alarm goes off again, so back down to empty the sump. I am heading back down every 10 minutes and bringing up 3 buckets of water at at time. One of the times down there I notice one of the system lights is indicating that the battery is nearing a full discharge. The only way I can think of recharging this battery is to run it upstairs and jump it with the car. So I am past exhaustion, smoke detectors beeping, winding up the radio every few minutes, going downstairs every 10 minutes to empty the sump, I am preparing myself for a looooonnnggggggg freakin' night. It's a little after midnight when I am heading upstairs from the basement with another bucket of water when I hear some humming. But it wasn't the hum from the sump pumps, it sounded like the hum of the furnace, but there wasn't any lights on in the house. Then I remembered that I had turned them all off in the morning. I hit the switch in the kitchen and Thank God there is power. Rather than go back to mom's I decided to spend the night in the house in case the power went out again so I crashed on the couch. At 5:30am the garage door opens as Jen stopped by the house before going to work to brush her teeth (I forgot to pack that). I threw the food back into the fridge (saved most of it) and headed back to mom's. I ended up crashing on her couch until Andew woke up promptly at 6:50am and we were up for the day. As quickly as possible I packed up the kids to take them home. I figured that it would be easier to watch them at our house and I could possibly take a few cat naps while they played around me. I ended up having enough energy in the afternoon to make Christmas cookies. Jen got home and took a little nap in the afternoon as well. Later that night the in-laws came over to watch the boys while we went to MR's Christmas party. They still didn't have power so with babysitting the boys it was also an opportunity to take a shower, do some laundry and grab some water for flushing toilets. We had alot of fun at MR's party. It's so nice being around adults and not having to worry about what the boys are getting into. We ended up staying until after midnight which is alot later than I thought we would last.

All of the trees still have a ton of ice on them so there is a chance that we could loose power again, especially with it being a windy day outside. Currently it's 4 degrees outside and they don't call for temps to be anywhere near 30 degrees until the middle of the week, so we have all week to wonder if we will loose power again. My flashlights are ready .....

let it snow, let it snow

So the plans for the weekend were kind of busy Saturday, but Sunday was looking pretty good. Saturday morning we woke up to a snowy day. Just enough to coat the ground and the streets so driving was very nasty. Jen had to get up and go into work so the boys and I had kind of a lazy day. Well as lazy as it can get chasing 3 boys all over the place and trying to keep Andrew from distroying the house. Jen got home around 2 oclock so I trudged outside to shovel the driveway. There was only about an inch on the driveway, but I try and keep ahead of it if I can before we drive over it. The driveway clears much easier when you aren't hitting tire tracks. After getting the driveway done I had to do a little repair on the snow blower. The last time that we used the blower, Jen broke it. I think she did it on purpose so she wouldn't have to do it again. I mean she uses it once in 7 years and breaks it? (well maybe not once.... twice). When she was priming the blower and the primer bulb falls apart. I figured that I better get it fixed since you never know anymore when the "big one" might hit. I stopped by a local outdoor equipment place and plunked down $1.89 for a new one.I thought it might be a whole assembly, but it was a simple piece of rubber. Anywhooo after shoeveling I am out in the garage trying to get the new bulb put on. I am trying to follow the guys instructions on how to replace it, but it isn't going like it should (of course). It would go so much easier if I could pop out the primer assembly since it is only clipped in, but I am real hesitant on how much pressure I can assert on the clip seeing how the blower is at least 10 year old and knowing my luck I can hear "snap... sigh.. crap" in my future. Finally I decide to give it a little more ooomph since the new bulb is real tight and since I am outside in 30 degree weather it's loosing it's flexibility. So I close my eyes, say a little prayer, and give it a little more and "pop" it comes out and doesn't break.. whoo hoooo. After getting the assembly off ,the blub goes on very easy and then snaps right back to place. I put everything back together, throw in a little gas, and crank it up. With the help of electric start it starts very easy and runs pretty good. After getting that done I come inside to thaw out a little bit. Then Jen and I get ourselves ready to go out. Saturday night was my company Christmas party. The in-laws get over around 5:30pm with stories of very nasy roads. We head out and up to the Bridgewater Country Club in Auburn. It was a pretty nasty ride up to a very nice country club. Since this is my first Christmas party at this company I am not sure how things work, so Jen and I sit down at the table with a couple of tellers that I know. I was going to take Jen around and introduce her to some people, but we were already late because of the snow and I wasn't sure if they would do an introduction thing (which they didn't). So we just sat there and talked to the other people and had dinner. There were some very tasty appetisers as well as delicious entrees of almond crusted steak with garlic/butter potatos. After dinner they did a contest where you had to guess the employee from their baby pictures. I got 7 right just out of shear luck and guessing. After that the party was basicly over. I had the chance to introduce Jen to a few of my co-workers, but not as many as I could have. We headed for home and the roads were actually better beause they were more slush than ice.
Sunday Jen didn't work so I thought it would be another lazy day... I was wrong. I got up and went to 8:30 mass, home to have a quick breakfast, and then out the door again with Jen and the kids to 10:30 service at her church. We got a call Saturday from our friend Tracy telling us that her two boys were going to be baptised at 10:30. We showed up to a standing room only church due to the baptisms as well as a children's choir.Lately the boys have been doing pretty well in church as long as we have curious George fuit snacks, a bowl of cereal, and some water. Usually William has to go to the bathroom at least once during the service and of course Andrew has to go with us. Well today I took William to the bathroom without Andrew and he had a meltdown for Jen while I was gone. After the service we stuck around and talked to Tracy and the boys for a little bit. When we got home Jen worked on feeding the boys while I worked on dragging in the Christmas tree and decorations. Jen and I got the tree put together,but then had to work on trying to get a whole strand of lights to work. Then we had to work on getting the William and Andrew a bath for the family Chistmas card picture. So quick baths and then getting everyone dressed and out the door for a 3:50 appointment at Penny's which we actually made. The boys did very well exept we couldn't get Christopher to smile, and he actually had a nap! The photographer was having a problem with glare from my glasses so I had to tilt my head down to the point that I was looking at the floor, so I look funny in the pictures. Stay tuned to your mailboxes for a Christmas card coming soon (just ignore me). We got done there and headed home. I ran down to Pizza Hut to pick up one of those "Panormous" pizzas that was very tasty and a pretty good deal.
So here I sit with the boys (and Jen) asleap upstairs and I am looking at a Christmas tree with no lights or decoration (we just didn't have the time today). So far so good with the boys keeping away from the tree, but we will see how things go with decorations on it.

Turkey day 08

So we got an other early start on the day. Man I wish there was a way to have the boys sleep in on occasion. I would teach them to just go downstairs when they wake up, but I am not sure I want them just going downstairs when they want in the morning since they might think that 3:00am is 7:00am. So we get up and I give the kids bath time so they will smell good for all of the relatives. We get to the in-laws around noonish and help with the last minute stuff. The familiar smell of something burning wafted in the house. Once again my mother in law had burned the mashed potatoes a little bit. My brother in law commented that now it was truly thanksgiving since the potatoes are burnt. I told him that it would be Thanksgiving if her gravy didn't turn out, and sure enough it didn't. I don't know why my mother in law can't make gravy. Other people started showing up and the snacking commenced. My mom and Uncle Dave brought shrimp cocktail and champagne. Unlike most gatherings before I didn't have to spend my entire day chasing down the boys since they are older, but I did still have to keep an eye on Christopher to make sure he didn't get stepped on. The dinner was delicious and I was unfortunately stuffed after only one plate. For dessert I decided to make a Hoosier pie since most of the other desserts that they have I don't like. So Wednesday night I made everything from scratch including the crust and it turned out pretty good. After we ate I was looking for a corner to curl up and take a nap,but Christopher wouldn't go down for a nap and I couldn't rock him to sleep either. Jen was visiting with her relatives so I was trying to keep him happy the best that I could. Now that Christopher is on people food it's amazing what he will eat and what he doesn't like. He liked everything that day. We ended up feeding him some more, and he turned happy again. I still say there was a good fart in there somewhere for relief. So we loaded up the crew around 7:00pm or so and we headed home. After getting home we put all the boys to bed and I made cookies for Jen's carry in at work while she headed up to bed. Jen got up at 4:30am to get to work by 6:00am for her black Friday shift. I had to work on Friday so we ended up meeting up at the in laws for left overs Friday night.

I love a parade ??

One of the other things that my job entails is helping plan and put together staff to attend parades during the year. Now most of these parades are during the spring/summer, but after starting my job I noticed a couple of them on the schedule for last week. I didn't have any information about the parade in Auburn and limited info on the one in Garrett. I was trying to ask around the building to see if we had done this parade before or if we didn't, if it was worth doing it but no one could give me an answer. I was all ready to just skip this parade, but just as I was getting ready to cancel I received all of the information that I needed.. nuts.. So I decided to just make it as simple as possible. I figure I would grab mom's convert able, pop the top down, and have Penny (our pig mascot) ride in the back. I also decided to blow up some balloons to hand out along the parade and also to give us a little logo visibility since we were all in winter jackets. So the day of the parade it's snowing.. crap... I can't put the top down in a snow storm and I can't get the mascot costume wet. I am going to cancel, bu we had told them we would be there so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. I ran home to grab the car from my mom and headed back up to Auburn. Wouldn't you know it I get behind a guy going 45 miles per hour on Tonkel and get caught by a train coming into town. I have been getting caught by this train numerous times and also get stuck behind some yahoo going well below the speed limit, so I am starting to take 69 instead. Anywho, by the time I get back to town the snow has stopped and it's a clear night. I decide to have the mascot "suit up" and we headed over to the beginning of the parade with the top down. It was quite the show with our mascot in the back seat and me blowing up balloons from the truck. Of course the wind has picked up which made already close to freezing temperatures even colder. I was told when I got this job that I wouldn't have any problems getting volunteers for parades and events, but I would beg to differ. Besides myself and the mascot there was only 3 other people. I am thinking the other people are fair weather paraders. The plan was to have me drive the mascot and the other people pass out the balloons and some candy along the route. We take off and go down a couple of streets to almost no people. I am thinking that it was a mistake to do this parade, but then the number of people start to pick up. The parade is moving at a very fast pace. I thought that it would slow down a little, but it didn't so I ended up loosing the rest of the group as they stopped to pass out balloons and candy. I tried to slow down as much as I could but the group in front of me kept pulling away. We turned a corner to a huge crowd of people so it ended up being a very good PR move for us, but I will be better prepared next year. The last parade that I was in was high school so there is a definite learning curve.
The next one was in Garrett on Friday. Supposedly the branch manager had everything under control, but I thought I would head over and see if this parade was worth the $135 entry fee (it wasn't). I get over there and help the mascot "suit up" again and we walk over to a large horse trailer. They decorated the trailer with some decorations, but there needed to be alot more as well as more lights on it. I blew up more balloons to hang on the trailer, but that was about all I could do. We loaded up into the trailer and they hitched up some horses to pull the wagons. Again it was freakin cold. I should have learned from Auburn earlier in the week, but I was driving the car so it wasn't that bad. So we all load into the trailer with 7 people including the mascot and pull out along with 19 other trailers. You know the funny things about horses is that you can't control their speed that well, so we went fast we went slow, and we came to a dead stop numerous times for whatever reason. The trailers had to deal with cars cutting in and around the parade as people tried to get around it which was dangerous and a huge pain. People were scattered along the route. The trailer in front of us was throwing candy to the crowd so when the kids were searching for the candy in the dark they didn't see the mascot in our trailer at all. Of course it was dark in our trailer too and it was hard to see the mascot. Before we knew it we were on Main st. and past the "judging" stand. Then a right turn and the parade was over. Well it was almost over as we had to take the looooonnnnngggg cooooolllllldddd ride back to the starting point which seemed like it took forever. We got back and quickly dedecorated the float and loaded up. IF (and it's a huge if) we do this parade next year I will have to get involved in the decoration of the float or at least make sure there is enough lighting on it.
That should be it until spring for parades..I think they will be more fun then.

My impending divorce?

This is pretty funny. Thursday Jen comes home from work and goes to the cabinet below the sink and pulls out the windex. She starts spraying her hand with it and I finally have to ask what's going on. She tells me that her wedding ring has a damaged prong on it that needs to be repaired, and she heard that windex is better than butter or anything slippery to get rings off. She has never had the ring off and over the years of having kids and other weight gain she hasn't been able to, but she has started to lose a little bit the past couple of weeks. She windexed her finger and after a little bit of tugging and twisting it finally came off. She commented how weird it felt not having the ring on and was thinking of putting on another ring in it's place. I was kidding around and told her that I trusted her and that she didn't need to do that. The pain in the butt is that the ring had a lifetime warranty on it, but due to her lack of being able to get it off she couldn't keep up on the required "check-ups" so it is now void. I might run over to where we bought it and ask, you never know. I would take it over to my sister-in-law's jewelery store to ask for a free bee repair, but I figure it's probably not a good idea in the beginning of a divorce from my brother.
Anyhooo, Friday night my mom calls and Jen answers the phone. She tells Jen that she just got a few more details about Dave's divorce. Jen's ears perk up. "Huh? What? is there something that Dave hasn't told me?". My mom quickly corrects herself and says "no Dan's divorce". My mom has always (and will always) exchange Dan and my name on occasion. I find myself doing it with my kids too. Jen told me the story, and I said, "yeah I need to talk to you later.. :)... you aren't wearing my ring anymore soooooo"

Return of the tire nazi

So now that I am gainfully employed (things are going pretty good, thanks for asking) I can finally get a few things done that require money. The one thing that has been bugging me for at least a year now is the tires on the Saturn. The guys at the dealership have been bothering me at every oil change that it's time to get new tires, but couldn't quite afford it, and I didn't think the tread was that bad to warrant new tires. Finally at the last oil change I took a close look at the tires and yeah they were getting really bad. After getting my job I decided that there is no way that I wanted me or Jen to be driving in the winter on close to bald tires. But hey, they are only the original tires that came with the car 8 years ago. I figure that 92,000 miles is a pretty good lifespan for tires.I decided that it was time to go see the tire nazi again. In case you missed the first story about the tire nazi, you can read it here, or I can sum it up for you. Basically the tire nazi is a guy who owns a sh**hole of a tire place in Leo that sells tires dirt cheap. He is real gruff ala the soup nazi on Seinfeld. Leo isn't too far from Auburn so I decide to run over there during lunch on Tuesday. Along with the off brand stuff that he sells, he can also order brand name tires if you give him a day, so I decide to run over there and order the tires and then go back the next day for the installation. So I get there and enter the dump (I was kicking myself for forgetting my camera, crap) and just stand there at his desk waiting for his acknowledgment. Finally he looks up.
"What do you need?"
I need tires for that Saturn out there. I say
"Get the number" (in a ticked off tone)
Oh crap I forgot to bring the number in with me. So I run out and write down the tire number. I come back in and give him the tire number and ask for brand name tires. He tells me that it will be $280 for a set of four and the tires will be in in the morning. It would have been $220 for some off brand tires that he had out back. I thank him and take off back to work. The next day I run back over and again I go up to his desk waiting for him. "What do you need?" I tell him that I was there for the Firestone tires that he ordered yesterday. He asks me what the deal was. I say $280 for the tires. I am getting ready to hand over the keys like last time, but he then tells me to pull it around back. I pull it to the back and there are 4 high school /college kids start working on the car. I just stand there and watch them work on the car since I am not sure what else to do, and I don't feel like going back into the dump of a showroom. But hey it's a nice day outside. While I was standing there a guy pulls up that says he has a nail in his tire. I can tell it's his first time to the tire nazi since he is trying to be real friendly to this guy. The guy pulls back and parks it in the wrong place, which ticks off the tire nazi. "I didn't' want it there" he says. He looks at the guys tire and just reaches down and pulls a piece of metal out of the tread. It wasn't even a nail. So as the pep boys are putting my new tires on the tire nazi approaches me and says "$280". I motion to him that we have to go inside and start walking. He says "cash, check or charge" I tell him I need to charge it so we head in and pay the bill.
If it wasn't for the fantastic deals that I get on tires at this place I would never return to the place. It's not like I have to go there every year anyway. I figure the next time I would need to go would be for new tires for the mini-van in quite a few years.

Bowling for work

Last weekend some of my coworkers were in a bowl a thon for Junior Achievement. Since it was a work related activity I decided to go up and take a few pictures. Jen had to work (of course) so I was thinking of taking the boys with me, but Andrew was in true cranky form so I decided to drop the boys off to grandma and grandma's on the way up to Auburn since it would only be for an hour or so. The plan was to run up there, take some pics, hang out and head back. I show up just as they are starting the second game. They tell me that they are one person short and to grab a pair of shoes. HUH? Let's see.... I haven't bowled in over 10 years I think. Yeah I know it's not that hard of a game and looking at the scores from the first game, it was obvious that they were there just for fun. So I grab some shoes and find a ball. It's a little awkward since they all know each other and I am still learning names, but they are hooting and holering and having a fun time so it wasn't that bad. That and I had the luxury of their names being projected on the wall for their scores which gave me a bit of a cheat to remembering their names. It was alot of fun bowling again. It took me a few frames to remember the best way for me to throw a ball and the best mechanics to use. I just kept thinking that I was lucky that I didn't bring the boys with me. We ended up having a blast. I bowled a respetable 147 which was the second best score of the two teams. I hope that this is how things work with this company. Lotsa people having fun and helping a cause. I know that there will be things for the credit union that I will be doing beyone the 8 - 5, like a couple of parades coming up in a few weeks. I am sure I will be blogging about that.

That was only a week ???

Man it's only been a week at work but it feels like a year. I didn't realize how tired I would be working a full week after being off work for a month and a half. I purposely tried to stay to a schedule so it wouldn't be too hard, but it was. Unfortunately they have pretty strict restrictions on computer access so no blogging at work :(. They also don't allow surfing. They expect people to actually work during the day. WTH? The setup that I have is a little screwy. They have thin clients at everyones desk on a network, but the graphic program that I have is on the drive of this thin client, but I can't print to my printer through that so I have to turn the file into a pdf and print off the network side of the computer, so alot of back and forth. It's going to get confusing. I am supposed to get a laptop so maybe I can streamline it a little more.The graphic program is Correl Draw 4 which is an old, basic graphic program that I am learning how to use. I really wish that I could have quark or photoshop, but the version of photoshop that I have isn't exactly legal so it probably wouldn't be a good idea to put that on the network. The printer is pretty bad too. Maybe next year I can talk them into getting a better graphic program and printer.
The people that I work with are fantastic. Very friendly and helpful. Like any new job there is alot of stress of learning people names, proper procedures, trying not to set off alarms. Earlier in the week I was really stressed, but by today I was calming down a little bit more. The drive up there is actually a little less distance but about the same amount of time as my last job. I have tried a couple of different ways to go up there, but they both seem like they take the same amount of time. Either I get tied up with traffic between 69 and downtown Auburn or I get behind some yahoo going 40 mph on Tonkel. But hey, I don't have to punch a clock so it's not that bad.
Today I got a chance to take a road trip with some of the other employees to visit the other branches of the Credit Union. As we were leaving the branch in New Haven the conversation turned to eating lunch. We thought about just heading back to the office and doing our own thing, but I noticed a sign for Garno's in the complex across the street. I commented to everyone else how fantastic the Garno's grinders were and we ended up running across the street for lunch. I haven't had a Garno's grinder in years and was a little worried that it wouldn't be the same, but it was. I also found out that they make that monster pizza that they used to make. I think she said it was 29 inches across. Back in the day working at WOWO we used to take one of those pizzas and some grinders to different businesses who won a fax in lunch contest. That was a fun promotion to do. After lunch we visited the Garrett branch and then headed up to Angola. While in Angola I talked the others into heading to the butcher shop to buy some of that relish for that dip. The one lady who drove knows EVERYONE in Auburn and the surrounding area. I am going to have to get used to small towns where everyone knows everyone else.
There is good news and bad news about workng there. The good news is that I get all of those bank holidays off, but to get paid for it you have to work the day before and after, so no 4 day weekends with taking one day off. I have to work the day after Thanksgiving this year. I can't imagine that it will be real busy, but it was nice to have a 4 day weekend. oh well...

Halloween 2008

I was making every attempt to calm down halloween this year. The past 2 years we have been taking the kids all over town visiting friends and family until all hours. Last year I decided to put a stop to that and just stay at home and simplify the holiday. It almost worked out.....

The first hiccup came on a phone call late in the morning. With my new job I have to wait 90 days until I get medical insurance. The paperwork that I got stated that the 90 days started at the begining of the month. No problem, I thought, start the first of November and I would have insurance starting in February. We still have some coverage provided by my last employer, but after this month we either have to find some other insurance or rob a bank to pay for COBRA. Lucky for me the HR girl at the new job was looking out for me and informed me that the 90 days started on the First day of the month as in Nov 1st rather than just the first couple of days. Since my first official day was going to be Monday Nov 3rd that would mess up my ability for insurance for another month. She told me to come in and fill out paperwork for a couple of hours so they could credit me for the 31st being my first day.Again lucky for me Jen didn't have to go into work until the afternoon so we were able to arrange for grandma C to come over and watch the kids. So rush around and get ready to head up there. I was planning on staying a couple of hours but with all the stuff I was going over and reading and signing I ended up staying until 5:00. So I rush home to find out that my mom has taken over the kid watching duty. She was planning on being there anyway to help me with halloweeners. So I walk in the door and freak out. I am trying to do too many thing at one time for some reason. Feed the kids, answer the door, dress the kids up, put a cd player with scary music in the window, etc, etc etc. So finally I get the kids dressed up and we head out to go trick or treating. There are a ton of kids walking down the road. I know there aren't this many kids in the neighborhood so they must be getting bussed in. The boys did really well even though I had to keep reminding William to say thank you. Andrew was quite the socializer and he was striking up conversations with everyone. I had to carry Christopher since I had a brain fart and left the strollers in the back of the van that Jen took to work. We just went down the street a few houses and back again. The boys actually had more fun sitting on the front porch with grandma and handing out candy. It was a great night to be sitting on the front porch, probably around 61 degrees. The kids who came out early were the younger ones who were really having fun and dressed up really nice, the later it got the older the kids became and the ruder the little bastards became. When you get a trick or treater teenager talking on a cell phone it's time to call it a night. One girl actually came up and asked "how much can I have?" We said "one piece" and she proceeded to grab a whole handful. I stopped her and almost went out the the street to have a word with her mother to teach this little so and so some freaking manners. Mom finally called it a night after a bunch of these little crumb crunchers all came up (not in costume) asking how much they could have.

Again with my brain being mush I forgot to take the van with me to work so I could bring the boys to the mall to see Jen, so after we got back from trick or treating I took off and ran to the mall to grab the van, came home and grabbed the kids, and then back to the mall again. After visiting with Jen for a while we headed for home and I got the kids to bed at a pretty decent time. Halloween was a little better this year, but there was still alot of running around again. I think I will get it better planned out for next year. I worried about running out of candy after seeing the all the kids on the street, but we actually had a little left over.

Thanks

You can't see me right now, but I am doing my "I just got a job" dance. Trust me it's not a pretty site :)

I am now the marketing director of dekalb financial credit union. They have branches in Auburn, Garrett, Angola, and New Haven. I have a mixture of feelings right now. First is the "new job" feeling with meeting everyone and trying to get settled and second is the feeling of relief of being employed.

Of course it's funny that I get a job offer and then have to go pee in a cup for the drug screen. That's a new one for me.

I just wanted to pass along thanks to everyone who has sent good thoughts as well as their prayers for me and the family.

You are next mdh!!!

awww nuts..

No Halloween party this year at MR's.. darn it. I made it a point to take my scrubs from Christopher's birth in January home to make sure that I would have a costume in October. Seriously, I was planning that far in advance.... I can understand him opting out of the party since the attendance had been waning the past couple of years and you never know who is available to show up with all the kids and stuff. I still have the Christmas extravaganza to look forward to this year. Whoo hooo.

This year I am sticking to my word and we are staying home for Halloween and not taking the kids all over to different locations like the past couple of years. Jen has to work so I might load up the boys and trick or treat at the Disney store. Stay tuned for stories, pictures and hopefully some video.

Life Goes On

Saturday Jen tells me that the garage door won't go up. Now this is a problem that usually happens when it is bitterly cold outside. Even though it was very cold it wan't cold enough to cause this problem. I go in the garage and see that one of the springs for the garage door is broken in half. Son of a ....I thought that I just had those springs replaced a few years ago but upon further review I think I was thinking of the house on Traders Crossing. I spent the rest of the weekend manually raising and lowering the garage without the aid of the springs and holy crap that garage door is heavy. I did some calling around on Monday and got a few quotes from different companies in the area. Anywhere from $160 to $200 of money that we don't have to replace the springs. I called the one company this morning to make sure they took credit cards since that's the only way this thing is getting fixed. A little over an hour and a half later they had a van out here to repair the springs. The guy they sent wasn't overly friendly or talkative until Andrew started talking to him and then he got more friendly. While he was replacing the springs he told me that the top sprocket (spaceley's sprockets?) on the garage door was getting ready to break. Crap (again). He said it would be around $50 to replace the sprocket. I asked him if it was something that I could do to try and save a little money. The repair guy told me that I could try it, but if I messed it up that there would be another $80 service fee on top of the $50 for him to come back out again. Uhhhh no I don't feel that lucky. I watched him replace that sprocket and all I can say is thank God that I had him do it. He had to just about tear apart the whole garage door opener from the bottom up. He commented to me about other people who have tried to replace the part themselves and the things that need to be adjusted that they don't know about and parts that need to be transfered and etc etc. Yeah it was worth the extra $50. The garage door works great now and I think that the repair has actually quieted it down a little bit as well. It still vibrates in William's room pretty good, but its a little better.

There was another incident with Jen that I am not sure I am allowed to comment about. All I can say is that it's good to have insurance.......

Happy Breakfast

This is the way my mornings usually start off. Usually I am up by 7:00am due to Andrew and William, and grab my shower. For some reason they both have been sleeping in the past 3 days (Thank the Lord) so I had to actually set my alarm. Don't get me wrong, they still come into the bedroom in the middle of the night. It used to be just William at 3:00 or 4:00 am, but now Andrew has joined in and will come into the bedroom too for unknown reasons. Most times it just carry them back to bed, plop them in, cover them up, and walk away. So even though I still can't get a solid 8 hours of sleep it felt good to sleep in a little bit this weekend. I bring William and Andrew downstairs and give them their juice and cereal and they will sit in front of TV and watch the PBS lineup in the morning. Then the next half hour we tell William to get dressed for school about every five minutes. Finally we have to turn the TV off for the proper motivation. William gets dropped off at 8:00am to Our Lady of Good Hope and then I come home for a little breakfast. If Christopher isn't awake when I get home I usually will wake him up around 9:00 and bring him downstairs. He usually munches on Cherios while I go through my lineup of online job sites. He gives me input on the ones that I should apply for and usually just sits there and is happy as a clam.

I can't believe that it has actualy been about a month and a half of being unemployed. It doesn't seem that long. I serously didn't think it would take this long to get another job. I don't know if it is arrogance to say that or just that I didn't have a clue how bad it was out there. I should hear about the job in Auburn by Wednesday at the latest, here's hoping.

There should be a video of Christopher helping me find a job here, but Blogger is having video problems. I draw the line at 5 times trying to download a video before I give up. I might try later on again.....

Taking a Break

Don't get me wrong. I like being home with the kids and being Mr. Mom, but now I understand when Jen goes through and why she needs to have a job to get her out of the house (besides the extra money). Saturday I got an invite to get out of the house from some friends who were going to play golf. I debated about spending the money to play 9 holes on a chilly morning, but decided that I could use the break and get out of the house.The original plan was to tee off early so we could do other stuff with the rest of the day, but it was still hovering around the mid to lower 40's at 8:00am so we decided to try for 10:30. I drive all the way out to Eel River in Churubuso to meet my friend Wendy, Gina, and Gina's boyfriend Tom. I get to the couse and it's not busy at all which is fortunate since everyone in the group has only played a few times this year and Tom hasn't touched a club in a couple of years. I decided to be a little bit adventurous and use a set of clubs that I bought 7 years ago and had never played with. They were a set of used Hogan's that included the Hogan bag for $100. I tried to justify the purchase by telling Jen that I bought them for her in case she wanted to start playing golf. Needless to say I don't think the game interests her. Anyway we step up to tee of on number #1 in an almost empty course and as we are warming up two foursomes drive up to the tee. Crap, so much for a lazy day of golf. We all duff it off the first tee and struggle to play the first hole. We notice a couple of times, while searching for our scattered shots that the foursomes are waiting for us in the fairway. As we are heading to the number #2 tee we take a wrong turn and end up on the #11 tee, but we also notice that there is no one playing the back 9 at all. We decide to play the back 9 to get out of the way of the other golfers. Number #11 and 12 run right next to #2 and 3. After getting off the #12 tee we notice that the people behind us on the front 9 have now passed us so we hopped back on the front 9 to finish. Lucky for us it wasn't that crowded that we could do this but also that Wendy and Gina know the pro really well so he wouldn't get too mad at us. The scenery on the course was fantastic with the trees changing color. I kicked myself for not bringing the camera. The weather turned out to be fantastic too with the sun being real warm with just a little cool breeze. How did I play you might ask? Did I mention the scenery was fantastic? I played like crap. I was pulling everying to the left for some reason. I don't know if it was lack of practice or the different set of clubs effecting my swing. I blame both. As we were finishing the front 9 people started catching up to us again so we just picked up at #8 and called it a day. Of course on #8 is where I unleashed a huge drive that was straight and far. I got a few good shots in. We headed back to Gina's so I could look at her computer. I was just over last week and "fixed" it, but now I think it is really fubared. It was a freebee computer that I got to work, but I think the hard drive finally gave up the ghost. There might be one more chance to play golf this year if I can talk my brother into buying while he is home this week :)

On the job front I had a second interview yesterday (Wed) for a job in Auburn. This interview went so much better than the first. My sinuses weren't driving me nuts so I was more like myself and on my game. The people are real nice to talk to and I think it will be more like a family that a coporate gig. They will let me know the first of next week either way. Besides that nothing on the horizon, just lotsa resume's and emails going out.

Little did I know what a freak I was

When I was helping out at the charity event a few weeks ago, one of Jen's cousins had to cut down a gift certificate to fit inside a frame. I told her to be sure not to chew her tounge. She looked at me with a "WTF" look. I said you know the thing where when using sissors that you chew your tounge or open and close your mouth. She said she had never heard of it. When relaying the story to Jen I get the same "WTH" look. I thought it was a common thing that everyone did or had at least heard about... obviosly not. Now I notice that when I am feeding Christopher that I will open my mouth, like that will help him open his. I think I will do a little research to see how much of a freak that I am or if I have some kind of mental condition. (no comments from the peanut gallary)


** Image is of the characters from Freakie's Cereal, if you go that far back. I still have a collection of these plastic pieces that might be heading to e-bay

Carley Hoffman Benefit II

Last Saturday was the Carley Hoffman Benefit which is the 4 year old daughter of one of Jen's cousins. She is fighting stage 4 Neuroblastoma of her spine. I hadn't volunteered for anything on the day of the event since I wasn't sure if Jen had to work or not. Also my mother in law had told me that my father in law had volunteered me for some stuff. I called him Friday night to find out that he hadn't signed me up for anything, so I just decided to show up in the morning to help with set up and do whatever I could. I showed up to a madhouse of people so I just kind of stayed out of the way waiting for direction for whatever needed to be done. The bake sale was HUGE with all sorts of stuff to buy. They let everyone set their own price so it was quite a range from $3 for 3 (1/2 inch by 1/2 inch) small cubes of fudge to $4 for a whole apple pie. There was some deals to be found, and everything went half price in the afternoon. There were a ton of auction items to bid on (almost too many). There was a couple things that I would have loved to bid on if I would have had any money. The 3 foot Repalla fishing lure would have looked fantastic in my sea shanty basement. I started off slow just folding T-shirtsand moving tables,but when they started toward the stage to set up the sound equipment I felt a little more at home. They had three auction items near the stage (a cd player, a vcr/dvd combo, and an xm satellite system) that they felt the need to pull out of the boxes and plug in. I didn't understand why, but just did as I was told. I helped set up the sound system and talked to the guy who brought the equipment. When he found out I was an old radio guy we talked about old equipment and stuff that he used to have and just general sound geek talk. My father in law also runs a sound system at his church so with all of us we had the sound up in no time. After that I headed outside to help set up the kids area. They had a couple of moon walks and some other kids games to keep the kiddies entertained. I noticed that they had an old cotton candy machine too. I had used one of those many years ago at a radio promotion, so when they found out that I had some experience with the machine they dubbed me cotton candy man. I spent the next 5 hours outside making cotton candy. Don't get me wrong it was a fantastic day, but dang it was hot out on that parking lot all day. After a while Jen showed up with the boys. William had a blast in the moon walks, but Andrew was extremely cranky (we found out later he has an ear infection) so we spent most of the time carrying him around. We tried to get him into a moon walk but he wasn't too keen on that idea. Around 5:00 the crowd had really died down and there wasn't any kids ouside so I thought it would be a good time to take the family home. I felt bad that I wan't able to donate any money to the cause, but felt that I was doing my part in volunteering. Jen did end up buying some stuff at the bake sale so we did contribute a little bit. The event went well into the night with a live band and some other stuff to make money. Overall they made $21,000 for the family to help pay some of their bills. It's probably no where near what they will need when everything is finished, but at least it will help out a bit.

Que?

When we took the boys to see Wall-E we saw a preview for Beverley Hills Chihuahua. It looked like a bad/cute movie. Well the boys went nuts when they saw the preview, then they started seeing the ads on TV for the movie. I can see they they were excited about the chee chee wha wah movie (as they pronounce it). Well last week my mom treated the family to the movie. We got the extra bonus of seeing it at the Cinema Grill which means dinner and a show. Mom had never been to the Cinema Grill before so this would be her first experience. I wasn't too worried about a crowd being there since it was a Wednesday afternoon at 4:00. I think it was us and one other family. We got settled in and ordered our food. The boys got chicken strips and fries but were so mesmerised by the movie that they barely ate anything. My mom and I both got a small pizza and pitcher of beer, but we were both still hungry after eating this pretty tasty but non filling pizza. I think we should have got a sandwich like Jen. Anyway the movie was a typical cute/dumb/entertaining for children kind of movie. I don't recommend it without kids, unlike some other Disney movies that can be entertaining for adults too, this is not. (I think the beer helped) There is some humor aimed at older people, but not too much. I think mom enjoyed the experience of the Cinema Grill and will probably go again some time, just not for a meal. Next on the agenda of movies is Madagascar 2 which begins in a couple of weeks.

Carley Hoffman Benefit

Here is the info for those of you who did not get my email about the Carley Hoffman Benefit for this weekend. Carley is the 4 year old daughter of one of Jen's cousins. On July 23rd 2008, 3 year old Carley was diagnosed with high risk, stage four Neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is a childhood disease in which malignant (cancer) cells form in the nerve tissue of the adrenal gland, neck, chest, or spinal cord, causing tumors to form. In Carley's case, the cancer appears to have started in her spinal cord.

On October 11th, 2008, at the American Legion Post 296 in Fort Wayne, a benefit event will be taking place, with all proceeds going directly to Carley's family.

1st Annual Carley Hoffman Benefit

October 11, 2008

11:00 am - 11:30 pm

American Legion Post 296

130 West Tillman RoadFort Wayne, IN

Cost: $15 per person or $20 per couple (children 12 and under are covered by an adult admission)

Family Fun Time will be from 11 am - 6 pm.

Adult activities will run from 6 pm until closing.

There will be:Food (while it lasts) - pulled pork sandwiches, cole slaw, baked beans, potato saladFun for Kids - moonwalks, face painting, caricature artist (11-2), magician (1-1:30), games with prizes, cotton candy, balloon artistSilent Auction - begins at 11 am, ends at 10:30 pm. Need not be present at end of auction. See Silent Auction page for more details.Baked Goods SaleT-Shirts (available for pre-sale - see right)Music 8:00 pm until 12:00 - Chris Worth CompanyCash BarTip BoardsAll proceeds will go directly to Carley's family for medical and travel expenses.

For more details click here: http://carleyhoffmanbenefit.info/Home_Page.html

If you can't make the event but would still like to make a donation, details can be found on the website as well.

FINALLY !!!

I have been waiting on word about that job I interviewed for over 3 weeks ago. The company is run by a board of directors and the hiring for the position was done by a committee that met pretty infrequently, so I kind of understood the delay, but I thought for sure if they put someone through a 3 and a half hour interview they at least call them either way. I expected an answer the week following the interview... nothing. I emailed the person who contacted me.. nothing. Finally while I was getting ready for an interview last Friday I came across a cell phone number. I called yesterday and left a message. FINALLY this morning I get an e-mail saying that they were hiring someone else. The typical non-specific blow off email that I am getting used to getting. You know, even though I think this job would have been a perfect fit for me, I don't think that I would want to work for someone who was that inconsiderate and unprofessional. I thought about following up with the person to try and find out where I was lacking in skills/experience but decided it would be futile. At least I can move on. I am hoping to hear about that other job either Monday or Tuesday of next week. I was planning on doing a follow up thank you email to the president of the company but I can't find the business card. crap.

Happy Birthday Andrew

Friday was Andrews official 3rd birthday. Wow, 3 years old already. We had him just before moving into this house but it just doesn't seem like we have been here that long. Andrew is such a different personality than William. We got used to William being a relatively quiet kid who didn't get into much of anything.... then along came Andrew, just the opposite. Reminded me alot of the personality differences between my brother and I growing up. All I can say is that I wore the white hat while Dan wore the Black hat. I don't know how my parents didn't ship him off to military school when he was 14. Chistopher is probably going to be a 3rd different personality in the house as well, but he tends to be pretty quiet and well behaved for right now. I look at my boys and it reminds me alot of my 3 cousins in North Carolina with the different personalities.

Anyway back to Andrew, we decided to have his party on Saturday. Jen had to work all weekend, but we could have the party and be done before she had to work. And like I have said before I have found out with kids birthday parties that people show up, eat and leave. They don't tend to hang out for hours like other parties. We kept the party simple (and economical) by cranking up the hot dog steamer and some quick snacks. Jen brought out a couple of cake pans earlier in the week and let Amdrew choose the character on the cake. He Chose Bob the buider again. We just invited mostly family for the party. I would have loved to invite the whole cast of characters and catch up with everyone, but we just weren't able to do that. Hopefully soon. We took things a little out of the usual sequence and openend present first, since the boys were staring at the pile of presents on the table. The hot dog steamer did its usual good job and I still had a couple of containers of coney sauce in the freezer. yum. After cake and ice cream it was quick clean up and Jen headed off to work. (someone has to) The toy carnage is spread out all over the floor of the fornt room and even Christopher is getting his mouth around most of them.

oh wait, Andrew wants to type a little something for this entry:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa7777bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb5oooooooooo qqqqqqqqqqmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzddddddddttttttttttthhhhll

oh man I might have started something there. Usally the computer is a hands off thing. At least the laptop is, the tower upstairs I have desinated at the kids computer. Oh well, it's probably good to start him early.

Happy birthday Andrew!!!

Darn you Carrie ... or is it thanks?

So I go up to my interview on Friday not feeling that good. My sinuses are really doing a number on me so I am not 100%. Just before leaving I notice that my cell phone was dead. "great". not like I will actually need it though. I was striving to get up there early, but made it just in time. I fill out an application for the job, but get to the area where I have to list my references. oh crud, those phone numbers are on my cell phone that is at home and dead. My head is spinning so much that I can't think of any other people or phone numbers at all. I end up just leaving that part blank and hoping that it won't come up. After filling out the application I sit down with the president of the company for my interview. Not an outwardly friendly guy, but not too stoggy. Not long into the interview he asks the question that is the worst interview question in the world. "What is your biggest weakness?" This is just a bad question since no one would ever answer it honestly without making themselves look bad. Carrie Q (of the Q collective) recently asked her blog readers for the best response to this question. http://caquincy.blogspot.com/2008/09/help-ideas-for-interviews.html
A couple of the responses to the question "what is your biggest weakness", were humerous and included the responses "chocolate" and "kryptonite". As soon as he asked the question, my mind started to swirl (or continue to swirl with my sinuses). Would he appreciate the humerous answer? After what seemed like an eternity I decided against the humous answer and opted for some made up B.S. I think he would have appreciated the humor, but we will see how funny this guy is if I get the job. I need to work on putting together questions to ask the employer. The Friday interview was scheduled for 3 hours but only took an hour and a half. I am not sure if I should try and fill as much of that time with inane questions, but the president covered every question that I had going in there.

Of the 50 resume's he recieved he is only interviewing 10 of them and I am one. After finishing the interviews he goes on vacation this week, so I won't know anything until the middle of October. Jen is getting alot of hours at Disney and working her butt off right now, which is fortunate for us, but unfortunate for her since she isn't used to that type of work schedule.

Yeah that 3 hour interview that I did 3 weeks ago? They still haven't told me if I did or did not get the job. I know they have not filled the position yet. I emailed her a little over a week ago to see the status, but didn't get a response. I came across her cell phone and might just give her a call. At first I was understanding that the didn't get back to me, but now I am starting to get a little ticked. Interview someone for 3 hours and not bother to let them know what happened is just not right.

I am not only the president of the company.. I am a member

So the latest project to work on in my time off is replacing all of the light fixtures on the outside of the house. Originally I was just looking to replace the yard light in the front since the top was hanging on by a thread and I had cut the wires quite a few times. So it hasn't worked for most of the time we have been in this house. My plan was just to replace the yard light head and re-wire the fixture. Yes the other lights on the house were made of this quasi-brass looking stuff that was real tarnished and looked like crap, but my idea was the most economical. Jen was looking for an exact match for the other lights, but do they really need to match, being 40 feet from the house and under a tree??? I was informed that they did.. by the boss. Well we had been looking around for a yard light over the past year, but none of them were what Jen wanted. Who knows were these lights came from or if they make them any more. My mom was over the other day and commented about the lights as well. Then she offered to help us get some new lights for the outside. Not only a new yard light but new lights for the entire front of the house (so they would match). So Monday mom heads out with Jen to go shopping (always dangerous). I have an opinion about the stuff that we buy for the house, but I figure that my taste is similar to my mom's to they will pick something good out. They come home with 4 new house lights and a new yard light. I figured that the only colors that would look good on our house (with the current paint colors) would be either brass or white to match the trim. They ended up buy white fixtures that I wasn't too sure about, but after putting them up, look real good. The new lights are a different open-bottom concept that put them a little lower than the current lights. On either side of our garage are two bushes that grow up to a point. They usually block the garage lights when they grow so I have hacked them back once already. I decide to hack them back again so you can see the lights. I get out the saw and cut the bush down about halfway, then proceed to trim the outer branches to try and make them even. So I am working on making them even and cut the wrong limb leaving a gaping hole right in the front of the bush. Son of a..... There is no way to fix that problem without making both the bushes look stupid, so I do the next best thing. I grab a piece of the freshly cut bush and put in the hole. Now I can say that my bush has a toupee. I know that the "toupee" will die eventually, but maybe I can cover it with webbing for Halloween and corn stalks for the fall. Either that or I am going to start taking pieces from the identical bushes in the backyard until it grows in again. Is there bush Rogain? The house light install doesn't come without it's little problems (like most of my projects do). The bolts that came with the kit to install the lights on the brackets were too long, and the bolts from the old lights were too short. After looking through my bolt collection I decide to hacksaw the long bolts to make them work. After getting over that little problem the installation of the other lights went pretty quick with only a few distractions including the boys "helping" me and a short rain shower (don't want to work on electrical during a thunderstorm). The lights look really good and match the house perfectly.
The next project the next day was the yard light. This would require quite a bit more work since it included laying new wire to the post. Also I had to replace the post since the new fixture was white and wouldn't go with the black post. I offered to just paint the post to save a little time and money, but was out voted by the womenfolk. First things first, I go out and rip the old head off of the yard light (God that felt good). I have been wanting to do that for years. Then I pull the post out of the ground with the wiring. Somebody actually got a clue and put a conduit under the sidewalk for the yard light which made it easy to go under the walk. The new pole was probably 9 feet tall which means I would have to dig deeper than the old pole, I decided to take this opportunity to move the pole away from the tree right next to it. I call the "keeper of the tools" (my father-in-law) to get a post hole digger, since he owns every tool known to man and to see if he has enough wire to do the job. I get over there to find out that he doesn't have a post hole digger or enough wire. Nuts, there goes my back. So a quick trip to Menards for wire and some connectors and head for home. I start digging my new hole. I get down to what I think is pretty deep, put in the pole, and see that I am at least a good 2 feet away from where I need to be. So I am pounding away at this Indiana clay a little at at time with a cracked spade and not going very far. Pretty tired and sore I go into the garage to see if I can find a pole or something to help break up the clay. There in the garbage can of tools is an old ice fishing auger that I saved from the auction at the lake cottage for whatever reason. hmmmmm. I wonder if it would work on dirt. I know it looked a bit silly using an ice fishing auger on dirt but it worked fantastic. I was able to cut down another couple of feet in a few minutes. I put in the post and leveled it up, then ran the wire up to the house. I connected the wires together with some waterproof connectors so hopefully it will be able to keep the connections from shorting out like it has done in the past. I button everything up and hit the switch and it works great. As I am putting away the boxes I find that the post came with an electronic eye to turn the light on and off, but I kept tripping the breaker so I will have to look up the instructions for connecting those. Overall it was about 3 hours to install the yard light with all of the little problems and again with the boys "helping" me. Thank God that Christoper took a good nap.
Not sure what the next project is going to be. On the job front I never did hear back from that interview two weeks ago even though I know they have not filled the position. I have a job interview on Friday, but besides that there isn't anything that even looks close to something that I would want to do. We will see.

I am a cheap Date

We have pretty much cut every possible non-needed expense during my unemployment. I have even given up (sniff) ... beer. (I am accepting beer donations at this time). So we aren't doing much of anyting these days. We are going to make a trip to the Zoo later this week since we had purchased a membership earlier this year so it would be essentally free. The other thing that we thought of is going to the dollar theatre at Georgetown. I think we can absorb the $1.75 per person for at least one night. We were hoping to see Indiana Jones or something else, but we found out that the third installment of the Mummy was playing. We love the mummy movies just for the adventure aspect of it and not necessarlily for the story, since they are usually pretty thin. So we call my mom over to watch the kids for a while so we can catch the movie. As we are leaving I decide to take my mom's convertable and pop the top down. I miss having a convertable and forgot how much fun they were. So we get to the theater a little late, but we figure they will have a few previews before the show and I don't believe that theater would be that crowded for a movie that had been out for over a month. I give the girl working the box office my $4 for the $3.50 admission and she gives me back a 50 cent piece. ahh the 50 cent piece, just about as usless as a penny since they aren't part of the usual change that you carry. I wonder what poor store I can stick this coin with in the future, since most places don't even have a slot in their registers for this coin. Maybe I will just throw it in the collection plate on Sunday. We go into a darkened theater and wait for our eyes to adjust and for a bright scene on the screen to see where a seat is open. We settle down in our seat just as the movie starts. Whew, good timing. Needless to say it has been years since I have been in an old theater like this that didn't have stadium seating, but the floors were just as sticky. It was wierd sitting in an old theater with everying being at a same level. The padding in all of the seats were long gone and I had a spring poking my butt the whole time, but hey you can't beat the price. The movie itself was pretty good. No it wasn't academy award winning, but it stayed pretty true to the "mummy' genre and was good-stupid and entertaining. After the movie we put the top down again for a chilly ride home with it being in the mid to lower 60's. One the way home we stopped by Burger King to grab something to eat. We had a gift card that covered most of the meal, but still a little over $9 for a fish sandwich, double wopper and two small fries is a little bit pricey. I decide this is a good time to unburdon myself of the 50 cent piece so I give it to the kid working the drive thru. He looks and the coin and just stares at it. Then he turns it over I think trying to look for a denomination on the coin. Finally I say, "it's a 50 cent piece". "oh, ok" I didn't think it was that unique of a coin. I told Jen the next time I was going to bring along some Susan B Anthony's, a saqagauia, or an old dollar coin and really mess them up. (I still have a $2 in my wallet for emergencies)We get home and eat our burger king and the boys help us eat our fries. Overall a pretty affordable night. We will have to do that again is they get some good movies in the theater...

TV full circle

Back in the teenage days I seem to remember a whole lotta TV shows that I just had to watch. Shows like Knight Rider, BJ and the Bear, the Fall Guy, Simon and Simon, the Dukes of Hazard and the A Team just to name a few. Of course none of these shows were very.. how to say it.. "intellectual". They didn't require alot of thought of what was going to happen next since it was pretty much the same formula every week. With Knight Rider it was more about the car and what it could do. With BJ and the Bear it was more about semi's (I loved semi's), a couple of hot blondes (it was close to puberty), and a freakin' monkey!!! Who couldn't love that. It's the same with the Dukes of Hazard with the car and Daisy Duke. With the A team it was about blowin stuff up and shooting things. I loved these shows as a kid. When I heard they were remaking Knight Rider I groaned a little bit since I remembered it now as being pretty stupid, but my curiosity was also perked at the same time. I missed the made for TV movie they made last month, but I heard that they were making a weekly series that started last week. Wednesday came around and I tuned it in. I thought I would see if the boys might enjoy it since there are cars running around which the boys love. Needless to say the boys were glued in front of the TV for the hour. They thought the car was very cool (and so did I), but the story line was pretty inane. I am sure the boys weren't really paying attention to that anyway. I have no idea who the actors are in the show and I am not sure if I would have started watching the show if I didn't have 3 boys to pass along the Knight Rider legacy. The next day William was trying to find a DVD the cabinet. I asked what he was looking for and he told me he was looking for the car DVD. So I pulled out the Disney "Cars" DVD, but he just looked at me and said, "no, the black car". I try to explain to him that we do not have a DVD of the show, whereupon he tells me that the "store has it" and wants me to go get it. This is the fun of trying to explain a weekly TV show to a 5 year old since everything they watch anymore is in the DVD format. So I am sure that we will be planted in front of the TV on Wednesday (much to Jen's chagrin) to watch this weeks episode of Knight Rider. I have heard rumors of a remake of the A-team somewhere either on TV or in the movies. They had already remade Dukes of Hazard, and I have heard that it was pretty good, but I didn't have a chance to watch it. It makes me wonder if they will remake BJ and the Bear. Probably not. It's good to see that TV is finally getting a clue and getting away from "reality" TV and back to Sit Coms and some other shows that even though they are pretty stupid, they are at least entertaining.