Mondays are Mondays

So I wake up on time Monday, which is pretty good due to the lack of sleep with the baby. My schedule has also been thrown off with the 6 days off, work 2 days and 2 days off. But after getting ready with the usual routine I was actually a little early. I decided to wait for my mother in law to show up for a couple of different reasons. One reason is in case Andrew woke up early. Jen can't lift him for a couple weeks now so that's my mother in laws main job, lifting Andrew out of the crib. William was climbing over the side by 2 1/2, but Andrew isn't the mountain climber. The other reason to wait was because I have been having trouble with the garage door. When it gets real cold outside it tends to stop halfway up and close. Finally my mother in law shows up, and my early, actually on time, morning is now at least 5 minutes late (typical for me). So I head out the door and jump into the car. I turn the ignition and the car just does the slow rrrrrr, rrrrrr, rrrrrrr...nothing. Son of a Bi***. The car has been starting a little hard lately. It was hesitating a little bit before catching, but this was dead dead. I jump out and attempt to jump the car with the Jeep. The jumper cables JUST reach the terminals on both cars. I sit there for awhile and try a couple of times and nothing. Lucky for me Jen can't drive yet, William doesn't have school, and my mother in law has all the proper car seats in case she does need to go anywhere, so I take the jeep. I get to work 20 minutes late, so much for being on time. The rest of the day goes relatively well. I am actually pretty busy working on some marketing for a new website/magazine that we are launching.
I get home and decided to take out the battery to have it tested at an auto parts place not too far from my house. There is a bit of a scramble to get the tools together since they have been scattered over the house due to the numerous projects that I have done or are in process of doing. I haven't done work on my own car in years. Back in the day, I was always tinkering with stuff and wasn't too afraid to work on my car, but as I get a little older and the cars get a little more complicated I decided to leave the work to professionals. But a battery I can take care of myself. I get it out of the car, and take a break to eat dinner with the family. After dinner I take the battery over the Auto Zone. I walk into the store with the battery in my hands and just stand there until a guy tells me to place it on the counter. They have a few people in the store so I figure that it might take a while for them to get to my battery. Finally this old guy approaches me and asks if he can help me. I tell him that I need to get my battery tested and point toward the counter and ..... blank stare. I tell him again that I need to get my battery tested and point toward the counter and ... he asks where it is. Yeah its going to be that way. So finally he puts my battery into this tester thing and turns stuff on. I am standing there for a few minutes and finally the old guy tells me that the machine says "charge battery, test again". I ask the old guy what that means, and he says to me in a shitty tone "charge battery, test again". Does that mean the battery is no good? No it means charge battery, test again. Ok Numbnuts I am here because the battery is freakin dead!! How can I charge it if its dead. Finally another guy comes over and is helpful offering to charge the battery for me and help me out with it. He also offers to sell me a new battery, but why would I buy a new battery if it's not the battery, especially if I have to put money into an alternator or starter. I know that the life of this battery is definitely toward the end of it's life (factory installed), but until I hear it from the doctor I am not ready to replace it. Finally I decided to take the battery home, throw it back in the car, and try and jump it again. After a while of jumping it with the jeep I decided to use my battery charger rather than have the jeep run in the garage. My charger is at my mom's house since we used it alot with the corvette and prowler. My brother is at my mom's and runs it over to the house. Of course I press him into helping me move the desk in the Lightning McQueen room (pics coming) . After letting the battery charge for a while I finally get the car to turn over, but it's too late to run it back to the auto parts store for testing, so I just let it run for half an hour and turn it off. It actually started again. We will see what it does when I get home, and run it over for testing tonight.

Tire Nazi

The Jeep was in serious need for new tires. I had known that they were very bad tread for a couple of months now, but wasn't really sure of the fate of the Jeep. Jen and I have looked at and driven minivans the last couple of months, but weren't sure when to really make the move to the minivan nation. We know with three boys that we are definitely going to need one eventually, but weren't sure just when. I had placed the car carrier for Christopher in the back seat of the Jeep and it fit's pretty good with the addition of a different booster seat for William. It's a tight fit, but it will work for now. So Anyway... I was dragging my feet on replacing the tires on the Jeep since I didn't want to put the cost into the car if we were getting rid of it. With the revelation of the 3 seats working in the back seat and the few winter storms that we have had I decided to go ahead and get some. (Every time it snowed it really worried me for Jen to drive the Jeep). So I call around and find a common price for new tires to be $400 which I kinda figured. I considered putting used tires on the car, but wasn't too thrilled about that either, in case we decided to keep the car a little more. And again I was concerned about Jen driving in snow on even half tread. Anyhow (again) I decided to take the time off for baby time to get the tires replaced. I called around again and heard $400 from about everyone. I was talking to my mother-in-law about taking an afternoon during baby time off to replace tires. She then asks if I have called the "tire nazi". What???? She tells me of a business in Leo that sells tires at real good prices, but the guy is a very gruff person with no personality. You tell him what you want, he gives you a price, and then move to the side. So I called the "tire nazi" with my information, and I can tell you I was a bit intimidated calling him knowing all the stores that my in-laws and Jen have had with him over the years. But they all said the price was great. Here is the conversation in a nutshell:

me: I would like to get a price on new tires for my 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo
him: go ahead
me: I need a price on four p225 75r 16's
him: $280 complete
me: wow that sounds like a great price. I have a few more phone calls to make but I will get back to you.
him: (click)

There was a few more things that I wanted to ask him, but I was so intimidated that I just wanted to get off the phone. I kept hearing "NO TIRES FOR YOU!!" in my head ala Seinfeld. I call back a few minutes later and asked about an appointment to get it done where I was told they don't do appointments, just show up. So after picking up William from school I decided to take him with me as the muscle. We pull up to the building and walk into this absolute garbage dump of an office... or is it a showroom.... or is it a storage room. There is bits and pieces of cars everywhere. Even duck wallpaper on the one wall that must have been 100 years old. I wish I would have taken my camera with me since I can't really put into words how much of a dump it was. But hey I am paying $120 less then anyone else. So I am standing in the "showroom" and this guy comes slowly walking in the door. "For tires for $280?". Yep, here are the keys. William and I spend the next 10 minutes walking around the showroom trying not to touch anything. The whole time I am laughing to myself and saying this is a definite experience I will remember for a long time. While standing there the phone rings... well it doesn't ring, it "quacks" (novelty phone). He comes back in and we settle the bill. Believe it or not he has a charge machine. He sits there for a minute watching "Rachael Ray" while William and I try to entertain ourselves. I was curious to talk to him and ask about the business, but I decided not to. While in the "showroom" I see an old dirty dingy sign hanging in the corner. It's the kind you can change with letters, and I see that they list shocks as a service. I ask about shocks for the car and he says "let me see" and walks out the door. A minute later he is pulling the Jeep to the front of the the building and says "$300 for four shocks" (again a great price). William and I go outside and load into the Jeep. I look at the tires, and yeah they are off brand tires, but they have great tread, and worth it if we do end up trading in the jeep in a few months. The funny part of the story is that our friend Tracy went to him in the morning and paid $280 for tires for her car, and I head him quote another price while I was standing there at $280, so he must have quite the stack in the back. I think if I go back again I will just go across the street to subway and grab a sub next time... man that was fun.

We're Home

Monday night, we are finally home. Here is how the weekend went (as I can recall, I am a little tired). I last blogged Friday night after Christopher was born. Fortunately Tracy and the boys were available to spend the night with the boys. I spent a pretty restless night on the couch/bed with many interruptions during the night from the nurses. Saturday morning I woke up and headed home to relieve Tracy. I got home and took a shower and got the boys together to drop them off to Grandma and Grandpa C's house. I got back to the hospital around 1:00pm. The rest of the day was just watching TV and reteaching myself how to take care of a newborn including changing him. First poops of a newborn are a tar-like substance that looks weird. Christopher had a tough day with his circumcision ... ouch. Again I will say that Dupont hospital is the best place in town to have a kid. The staff is fantastic and the food is very good and affordable. And I love the snack room down the hall for a quick bite or can of pop. Saturday night we were able to have Tracy watch the boys again, but I had to wait for her to drop her boys off at her mom's house. So I got the boys to bed and straightened the house, and also got the last minute stuff together for bringing the baby home. By the time Tracy showed up and I got back to the hospital it was after midnight. I put together the couch/bed into a bed and crashed for the night. I actually got a pretty good night's sleep with only a few interruptions. Sunday morning I got up around 8:30. The in-laws picked up the boys on the way home from church and took them home for the day. It was another day of watching TV and baby stuff. We haven't had cable in quite a few years so it was nice to be able to watch it again. I still don't miss it and can deal with broadcast television. I will just be upgrading to an external antenna this year to help clean up the signal a little and prepare me for digital. Sunday night we were able to talk Jen into spending the night by herself. I took the boys home and put them to bed. More getting the house ready and finally got to bed after midnight. The boys slept in till 8:30. After getting them together and dropped off to Grandma's again I headed back up to the hospital. We decided to try and leave before 3:00pm and go home since Jen was doing so well. We ordered what they call a celebration meal that is a very nice dinner/lunch. I had the filet minion and Jen had the chicken cordon bleu. De-Lic-ious. After a bit of a wait we finally got to head out the door around 3:30. It's good to be finally home. Still have to get into a routine of feedings and other stuff. So far Christopher wants to be fed about every two hours so it's going to be a long night, or the beginning of alot of sleepless nights. I thought the one interruption a night was bad, now it's going to be multiple. The boys really like having the baby around and are being pretty helpful so far, we will see how long that lasts. A couple of days to help Jen adjust then I go back to work. Hopefully she can handle the baby and the two boys pretty well. Her mom is supposed to help, but she just got sick so it's going to be an interesting week.

Baby Day !!!

Well here it is.. baby day. Morning started out pretty fast. I was actually getting a good night's sleep and could have slept in, but lucky for me I left the alarm on. We all woke up and got going. We dropped the boys off to Grandma and Grandpa around 8:30am. After a quick visit there we headed for the hospital. We were a little late getting here but we found out after we arrived that the surgury was moved to 11:30. Jen had a bit of a panic attack as she was getting ready but calmed down. The two hours before surgury goes really quick and before we knew it we were heading down to the operating room. We walked down still trying to decide a name for the little whipper snapper. Jen headed into the room and I sat out into the hallway. I walked into the room and lucky for me at it being baby #3 I kinda knew what to do. I sat down at the operating table with Jen and they got started. They have a little screen between Jen's head and the operating area, but like Andrew, the screen wasn't that high and I could basicly see everything. I am not a squemish kinda guy and I had seen it before so it didn't bother me. I actually watched almost everything. Everything went well in the operation and nothing that wasn't expected. They finally took the little tyke out at 12:07pm and he weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces and 20 and 3/4 inches. Newborns are really gooey so I let them clean him up. I saw with Jen while they tied her tubes and then put all of the "STUFF" (stomach, uterus ect) back in. After rolling out of the operating room we sat in recovery still kicking the names around. We finally decided to name him Christopher Daniel. My mom, Aunt Suzie, and brother were waiting in the room when we got back. As I am sitting here in the room at 11:00pm. Jen is doing very well. I think she is actully doing better than the last two times. Nurses here are fantastic, Food is very good. I can grab a snack down the hall any time of day. We currently have a nurse Cathy who is uber-cheery, just short of annoying, pretty funny. Unfortunatly this place doesn't have wifi or high speed internet so we will see how the dial up goes.

tick tick tick

I was asked if I was ready....

Am I?

Hard to say.

Friday is baby day and the mad rush is on. Trying to get stuff done, things cleaned, supplies bought, and just general crap done to get ready. It's a little overwhelming knowing that in a couple days we are going to have another baby in the house. The logistics of getting ready is what is overwhelming me. You know that I am a planner. I need to have stuff planned out well in advance and not having things planned is driving me a little nutty. Yeah I know when the baby is due and what we have to go through and all that stuff, but this time there is alot more factors that aren't planned yet. The biggest one is watching the boys. I know we are going to lean heavily on the in-laws this weekend to watch the boys since my mom is still out of commision. But there isn't a plan yet. Jen doesn't like staying in a hospital overnight by herself so I have been harping on her to arrange places for the boys to spend the night or other people to spend the night with her in the hospital, but it's not done yet. tick tick tick. Yeah I know it's my anal self talking. I will calm down. Everything will work out fine.

I finally got down the stuff from the attic last night and took everything apart so it could be cleaned. Little more reality hitting now. Yesterday was my mother in law's birthday so we all went out to Outback (restaurant decided at the last second, of course. must be a family thing) for a very nice dinner. The in-laws don't do presents and cards, they do dinner, which is fine for me, especially as I get older. This was our first attmept to take the boys to a sit down restaurant in almost 6 months. One, we don't go to sit down dinners that much anyway, and two since the last time we went it was a bit of a challenge with the boys. With William constantly wanting to go to the bathroom and Andrew wanting to get out of his high chair and "explore" we didn't see the need to try it again. But the boys were pretty much behaved as long as I was feeding Andrew pop and anything else he wanted on the table. William is fighting the cold that Andrew gave him to he was pretty subdued all night long. When we were leaving I got Andrew out of his high chair and proceeded to put my jacket on. He takes off and heads toward the door, but then we notice that he is going up to another couple at another booth (we thought to grab some food). But as I get to the table I notice that he is giving them hugs and saying goodbye (to total strangers). He did this to another table on the way out the door. It's a darn shame he is so shy (yeah right). We went back to the in-laws for some ice cream cake and visiting. We headed home around 9:30. After putting the boys to bed is when I climbed up to the attic to get the baby stuff down. Of course William (with andrews cold) wakes up 3 times during the morning and I just found out just threw up all over the house...

Am I ready for another one?

Yeah. Bring it on !!

He's Back!!

For those of you that have lost hope or thought he was dead..... monkeyjack has posted on his blog. AND IT IS REAL GOOD. Man it's never boring around that house. Hopefully it will be the begining of his return.

I am just surprised he remembered his password.

HOLY CRAP !!!!!

Just over a week and we will have a baby in the house!! Dealing with the holidays and all that hub bub that fact kind of got lost on me, which is probably a good thing since I didn't obsess about it. But now I am in panic mode (kinda). I need to find and clean all of the stuff for the baby's arrival. I think the bassinet and car carrier are up in the attic. Of course they are pretty well buried since I wasn't really expecting to use them again, but now I will get that down and cleaned up. I continued painting William's room for the great kid move of '08. I am glad that I got advice from the guy at Home Depot and he talked me into tinted primer. There is no way that red would have gone on with two coats without it. I should finish up William's bedroom tonight or Saturday at the latest. Need to get the Christmas tree down and other stuff organized for baby-time. Jen is worried about getting the baby's "going home" outfit. You think by the third time we would have all the stuff we need and be ready for this. It's not like we didn't just do this 2 years ago. So, it's going to be a busy weekend and week. At least with Jen having a C-section we can plan for some of this stuff and not have to worry about it 24 hours a day for weeks before and after her due date. Yeah I know her recovery really sucks from the c-section, but there is something to be said for knowing when to get ready. Say a little prayer for Jen next Friday at 11:00 if you are of that persuasion.

Jen's Chrismas Present

Every year for Christmas I try and get Jen at least one neat or unique gift for fun. Last year it was the Lord of the Rings autographed poster. This years gift was a total fluke. Jen has been getting into talk radio lately. Some of our dinner conversations might include something Shawn Hannity or Glenn Beck said during their radio shows. Usually she catches portions of the programs taking William to school or going to work.
Here is where the fluke happened. A friend of mine, Gina, had started an account on Facebook and sent me an invite to start one as well. I wasn't going to since the myspace thing is pretty much a waste of time as well, but I decided to give it a try and see what the hub bub is. After setting up my account there is a thing where you can go to a Fort Wayne area group and it lists all of the stuff going on in the area and lets people post events. One of the things that I saw was a post from a kid trying to arrange a protest at a Glenn Beck book signing event. That's where I learned that Glenn was going to be at the Border's store in Fort Wayne on the Saturday after Thanksgiving signing his new book. If it wasn't for that anarchist trying to drum up trouble I would have never known about it since I don't listen to his show. The signing isn't on his website, but I call the store and confirm that he is going to be there and they also suggest buying the book beforehand and showing up at least an hour before the doors open. So I run out to the store and buy the book and set my alarm for 5:30am. The book signing is at 8:00am but I figure I had better get there at least by 6:00am since I struck out at Target on the Friday after thanksgiving due to getting to the store a little too late. I am trying to load the car with warm clothes since I know I will be outside for at least an hour or so and it's around 34 degrees outside, but I don't want Jen to see all the warm clothes that I am getting together in case she might figure something out. So I head out the door before 6:00. (I got smart and parked the car outside so I wouldn't wake up the Quinmores). As I arrive I see the line already out the front door and stretching halfway down the side of the building. I get out fully prepared with hats, gloves, turtleneck, sweatshirts, and a walkman to entertain myself. I actually have a nice conversation with the couple in front of me for a while. Also, I am lucky since the line at the side of the building also provides a wind break so it's not as brutal as the poor suckers in the front of the building. So I am sitting there listening to the radio and watching the line get longer and longer until it starts going out into the parking lot and almost to the Bob Evans. About 7:00 the line started to move. As I entered the store I was assigned a colored bracelet that essentially saved my place in line so I didn't have to stay in it, but most people still stayed in the line even after being told numerous times they didn't have to be. I wandered around the store for a little bit and then got in line myself just to make sure to have a spot, since he was only signing for an hour. Unfortunately no personalized autographs. Just his name and then next.We were all shown which page to open the book to and then we handed the book to one of three people who handed the book to each other before Glenn got it. The person before me stopped and said something to him which put me in a kind of awkward position of not knowing where to stand or what to do since they were trying to rush everyone through the line, but Glenn saw me and made sure to shake my hand and with me a Merry Christmas. I did the same with him and headed out the door.

So my fun present to Jen was an autographed Glenn Beck book which she has already read. Hopefully I can "luck" into stuff like this for future Christmas'.

By the way, I never saw any protesters......

Happy New year

Happy New Year.. It's Wednesday but feels like Monday. These last two weeks have put my body schedule into a tizzy. Off two days, work half a day, off two and a half days, work 2 days, off 2 days, work half a day, off a day and a half and now work 4 days. uggghhh. But here it is 2008.

Monday was a quiet half day at work. After work I decided to hit the store for a few things to eat. With the holidays and Jen's work schedule she hadn't been able to get to the store for a couple of weeks so the cupboard was looking bare. Primarily I was looking for the makings for Reuben sandwiches (new tradition of mine) and a few things to snack on for New Years Eve for in front of the TV. Of course, Jen find out that I am going to head to the store adds to the list. Mostly staple items like eggs, milk, bread and cheesy poofs (kids love them). Now I thought the store would be a little crazy like it was on Christmas eve, but I wasn't in a real hurry to get home anyway since grandma was watching the kids. Then I start hearing the forecast for snow for New Years Eve and new years day and think Son of a B**ch. Now not only are you going to have the nuts like me stocking up on snacks and beer for the night, but now all the people who hear the word "snow" and have to buy half the freekin store. And of course they are predicting 3 to 9 inches of snow. I was ready to say that was a load of BS until I remembered they were kinda right on the last snowstorm. So there I am in Meijer on new years eve afternoon with 200 (at least) of my close personal friends. I grabbed the cart and got all of the stuff on my list including the LAST, badly dented, but not leaking can of sauerkraut. So my cart has stuff in it, but of course too much to go through the 12 items or less isle, but not by much. Every isle in the store was at least 4 deep with almost every lane open. Most people had carts loaded over the top with tons of food like they were planning on being snowed in for weeks. And then there are people like me with a small cartload stuck in the middle of it all. But I figured no matter where I would go it would be crazy, so I just picked a line and just waited my turn. It was long but not that bad, but I will no be doing that again. If we need stuff like that then I head to the store at midnight like I used to do when I was single. I got home unpacked and played with the kids.

Jen actually got off work early so we decided to head over to Jeff and Paula's for there get together. We showed up at the same time as MR and headed toward the buffet. William and Brock played together really well and were having fun. Andrew found the Christmas decoration that blew the little snowflakes in the dome and had a blast pushing that button. I got a chance to see the baby's new bedroom as well as Jeff's banister project (snicker). Around 8:00 Andrew started getting real cranky. He really wanted some pop, but we are really trying to limit the amount of pop that he gets, especially the caffeine. But he went into full tilt screaming about that. It's so hard to know how to handle him right now since William didn't do this stuff at Andrew's age. I am not sure when to discipline him so he doesn't walk all over us as parents and how much of it is him just being a 2 year old and he will grow out of. I just know that I can't let him cry out these fits since he ends up puking all over the place when he gets really worked up, and I am sure the Jeff and Paula really wouldn't want that in their house. So after trying to deal with him for a little bit we decided to head home. We wanted to get home before "amateur hour" (as Jen calls it) started with all the drunks on the road. We get home and put the boys to bed. William had a little nap in the car so he takes real long to go down. Finally I get downstairs at 10:00 and Jen is asleep in the couch. I get out my Corona and make some bagel bites to snack on. I throw Pirates of the Caribbean in and start watching that. I think at about 5 minutes before midnight I fell asleep in the chair and woke up 5 minutes after midnight. Crap. Oh well it's just a big lit ball. So I watch a little more of the movie and fall asleep again (man I am getting old). Finally trudged upstairs at 1:30 and the boys are awake at 7:30. New years day Jen went to work and the boys and I just hung out at home.

Oh and that 3 to 9 inches of snow ended up being maybe 2 inches. Stupid weathermen.

But on a good note. I finally got the snow blower to work!!!! All it took was some fresh gas and it fired right up last night. At least if we do get another big snow fall,or when we do, I will be ready since it really beats the hell out of shoveling..