Father's Day weekend

It was father's day weekend. I am still getting used to the fact that I am actually a father. Yeah I know after 3 kids it should have sunk in, but after 40 years of making sure I did something for my father it's hard to get my mind around the fact that its my day too. Jen has to work all weekend so my plans are up in the air for the most part, but I have a few ideas. Saturday was a very lazy day. I didn't do much of anything except watch TV and play with the boys. I should have run them outside for awhile. After dinner I decided to make some cookies to munch on. I haven't made sugar cookies in a while so I pull out that recipe. As I am putting it together I forgot how much dough it made and how much of a mess went into making them. The boys like to watch me bake and have to be standing on the chair watching me the whole time. Usually they behave themselves, but Andrew was being a little crankier than usual. So I am finishing up and getting ready to put the cookies into the oven when Andrew throws an even bigger fit. I tell him to go into the front room and play. He leaves, but comes back a short time later crying and whining. Just as I am about to tell him to stop crying go play I notice his face. The skin all around his eyes are blistered and red. What the hell did he get into? I start to freak a little bit and give him some benydryl in case it was an allergic reaction to one of the cookie ingredients. I am trying to decide if this is a "take him to the hospital" kind of thing or a "wait and see what the medicine does" kind of thing. I decide to give the medicine a few moments and put a wash cloth on his face to help the blistering. I am thinking that he either rubbed some cinnamon or some nutmeg in his eyes that caused the reaction. I noticed that my eyes kind of burn after putting cinnamon in the mixer. I decide to get a second opinion and call Jen at work and freak her out. She is for taking him to the emergency room, but I am finally starting to calm down a little (and so is Andrew) and am going to see what the medicine and wash cloths will do. I call my mom to make sure she is available to watch the kids in case I do take him to the ER and she ends up coming over anyway. When she gets there, her opinion on ER too, but by the time she arrives his face is actually looking better. Andrew just sits in her lap and is looking better after half an hour or so. His one eye is still watering and bloodshot but it doesn't seem to bother him that much. The boys got to stay up late Saturday so they could watch Monsters Inc. on TV and it gave me a chance to keep an eye on Andrew. Everyone goes to bed pretty well and I can tell Andrew is feeling better with being a little more active during bed time. Still, it's a little freaky on why that happened.

Sunday is another 7:00am beginning to the day. Why don't our kids appreciate sleeping in on the weekends???? Andrew is looking almost normal with just some redness around his eye. We all get breakfast and then head for church. After church mom treats us to breakfast/lunch at the Cracker Barrel. They have real good food there, and the boys acted pretty good for the most part. Of course William has to go to the bathroom just as my food gets there so I get to eat a luke warm reuben, but it was still very good. The boys also did very well at Texas Roadhouse for grandpa's birthday dinner earlier in the week. Maybe there is hope for dining in restaurants after all. After lunch we take the boys back to my mom's house to drop them off for a little while. I know, nothing like celebrating father's day by getting rid of your kids. I thought about taking the boys to the Zoo or something else like that, but there has been a few projects around the house that have been bugging me, and they are easier to solve without the boys under foot. Jen leaves for work and I put on my work clothes. Things I did: mow the yard, wash the van, trim up the magnolia tree in front, trim up the lillac bush on the side and trim up the other bushes in the front yard. One of the bigger things that have bugged me is the tree roots that are above the ground in the back yard. They are definite lawn mower beaters. Taking them out involves axes and other heavy tools, that wouldn't go over too well with the boys around. After 5 hours of hard labor and a little bit of a sunburn I head back to mom's house to play with the boys and visit with her. So far Andrew hasn't had any more reactions to mom's dog, but that's because the usually lock up that dog when he is around. Maybe next time we visit we will see if he reacts to the dog again. We get home around 7:00pm just about the same time as Jen. Bath time and the boys off to bed. Jen and I just crash on the couch. Overall a good weekend. I am tired and the muscles are a little sore, but I alway feel better when I accomplish something.

Pizza Time

So I am sitting at home on Thursday night with the boys debating what to make for dinner. Jen didn't get a chance to get to the store earlier in the week so the pickings were a little slim. I figured that I would just load up the boys and run over a grab a pizza, but then I remembered that I had the Saturn and Jen had the van. Crap. If I would have been thinking I could have picked one up on the way home. So I am lamenting on what to make. I know the boys would be happy with chicken nugets or hot dogs, but I am not in the mood for the old stand-by's. I decide to splurge and have a pizza delivered. Now we haven't done that in quite some time since most places charge a delivery fee and that doesn't include the driver tip, so we usually just end up picking it up. I am not in a mac and cheese mood tonight so I order it up. It's good pizza and breadsticks. If I would have been thinking I could have gotten my order for $11 ($5.99 pick up special + bread sticks), but it ends up costing me $22. Oh well, it's better than mac and cheese again. Next time I plan ahead and pick it up on the way home.

"I want it all.... I want it all.....and I want it now...."

Yesterday morning I go downstairs on my way out the door to work. Of course the boys are awake and having breakfast with Jen. She is trying to turn on the TV for the boys but it just keeps making a clicking noise and the power light in the front blinks on and off. Crap. I smell an electronic burning around the back of the TV. Crap 2. I unplug the TV and wait for a couple seconds and try to turn in back on again since some electronics require a total power down to reset itself, but to no avail as it keeps clicking and stinking. So Jen has her project for the day. Calling around to see who will service the TV and how much it would cost for a service call. We can't just load up a 55" TV in the back of a car and run it over to the repair shop. The TV is probably 6 or 7 years old and has been through a few moves and in storage so it's not a huge surprise that it is having issues. On the way to work that commercial keeps running in my mind where the wife tells her husband to get a new TV and he goes crazy at Best Buy, and yeah I get a little excited. I start looking at new TV's with all their features and stuff. I could never afford to replace the 55" screen in the front room, but I figure that I would need at least 32" to do the previous TV justice. The prices are around $500 - $600 for something in the 30+" area, which is a bit pricy, but about half as much as I paid for the 55" ( it was a floor model) TV 6 years ago. There is a chance we could fix the old TV so I don't get my hopes up for a new one just yet. I get a call from Jen that has called around to a few service places. The one place says that it would be like $100 for a service call, but if he was there for over 40 minutes it would be another $170. And that's just the trip and diagnostic service, that doesn't include parts!!! Holy Crap I am going into the TV repair business. So I am thinking $270 for a service call not including parts is half the price of a new 32" flat screen plasma, so it's looking bad for the old TV. We decided to make a few more calls before deciding what to do. Jen calls Best Buy (where we bought the TV originally). As she is talking to them and looking up numbers and all the other crap that you go through the person at best buy sees that this particular model, because of it's age, requires you to call phillips directly for service. The person at Best Buy was very helpful to Jen and I have to give them kudos. So Jen calls Phillips and starts talking to their service guy who asks what the symptoms are and Jen tells him. He asks if we have unplugged it and plugged it back in again, where she says yes. But then he asks for how long. "uh, probably 30 seconds to a minute". The TV was still unplugged from the morning because I wasn't a big fan of the electronic burning smell causing a fire. He says to plug it back in again to see if it's still doing it, and Jen does whereupon it fires right up and everything is back to normal. I was right that it needed to be unplugged to reset itself, I just didn't do it long enough. Maybe I will start doing a total power down at night every once in a while to keep from fritzing (technical term) out again. So with just a few phone calls we saved ourselves hundreds of dollars and alot of hassle. Yeah I was kinda excited about getting a new TV, but I am still glad we can get some more life out of the old one. Maybe we can retire it to the basement when I get the remodel done.

Fire, Fire, Fire

So last week I decided that it was time for a party. The weather is getting nicer and we don't see our friends enough. It was all started in a conversation that I had with Lori of the fun time we had when they would have a "fire pit" at her house. SoI figured it was time to get the usual cast of characters together but also invite some other friends that we haven't seen in quite a while. I figure that we can play cards and get the Wii out and also I can initiate the fire pit that I got for Christmas and get rid of the twigs and stuff that have accumulated in the back yard for the past year. So Jen and I go into typical planning mode with conversation about the menu and other stuff. I tore apart the front room and cleaned the carpet for the event as well. We decided to just do a snack kind of thing to make it quick and simple. Even though I sent out an email invite to everyone that I have an email for, we still ended up calling some people Saturday at the last minute since we just kept forgetting. We had a pretty decent crowd with at least 3 couples not making it due to being out of town on that night. It started out pretty slow (which the usually do) but it gave us a chance to catch up with a friend of ours who we hadn't seen in years. For the menu we had Carries chocolate chip cookies, layer dip, shrimp cracker spread, chips and dip, and the required carmel corn. We also bought a case of beer and the makings for margarittas since you never really know what people would want to drink. Even though in this day and age with all of our friends being older and having kids they usually stick to pop. We made the party kid friendly since we have kids and alot of or friends do too. The kids seemed to have a blast outside on the playset and all played well together without any major incidents or injuries. Since Keith has a Wii also we had him bring over his games to play. He brought over guitar hero. This is my first chance to actually play this game on the Wii. It's a pretty fun game and I can see how people really enjoy it, but I am more into the racing and shoot em up kind of thing. So the adults are trying guitar hero out and trying to get through one song when the kids realize that we are playing games and now THEY want to play games, so yeah we lost control of the Wii shortly after that. So I am walking around and talking to people and being the good host and realize that it is getting pretty dark outside. I wasn't sure about starting the fire since everyone seemed to be happy playing the Wii and talking. I was going to start a card game on the kitchen table, but it was being used for a conversation area so I just put the cards in the middle of the table and if a card game broke out, so be it. But I finally decided to start the fire up. I had been putting in limbs, twigs, and leaves in this above ground fire pit all year and decided that if I could at least get rid of that it would give me more room for the next couple of weeks. I had filled the fire pit almost up to the top with stuff and didn't think it would be that big of a fire, but after finally getting it started it turned into a HUGE ass fire with flames at least 7 feet high (oops). My brother in law Jim said that my father in law would be proud for the amount of flame. Lucky for me I had it situated the fire pit so nothing was near and I had planned ahead and had a garden hose handy, just in case.


The children in the background look closer than they actually were so don't worry. So the flames finally calmed down and I was standing out there drinking a beer and tending to the fire. I had a garbage can of other twigs that I had collected last year so I had some extra ammo in case we wanted to hang out a little longer. Nothing like a roaring fire when it's 80 degrees outside. People drifted in and out of the house and the party started breaking up after a while. But Keith and I kept watch over the fire and worked on solving the world's problems. At one point Andrew picked up my empty beer and tried to hand it to me. I told him it was empty and to put it down. He instead took the beer into the house and told Jenny "empty". All I heard was laughter from the house for a while and Jen yelling at me since she thought I sent him on a mission for more beer. That was just a bonus that happened. A little while later we sent Keith's son Charlie and Jarod on a mission for more beer. It's great having kids. A while later (and a few more beers later) Keith and I still hadn't solved the worlds problems, but we were running out of stuff to burn and beer. I counted 9 soldiers from the battlefield that I bought back into the house between the two of us. Man I haven't done that in ages. So it's after midnight when everyone decided to call it a night. Keith gave up his keys so don't worry about that, and I was home so I didn't have to worry about that either. So we put the kids to bed and did a quick clean up and put anything perishable away and fell asleap downstairs. I woke up around 5:00am and went to bed whereupon Christopher wakes up at 6:00am and then for good at 7:00am. Wow that's early. I am tired and have a little bit of a hangover, but I get ready and go to church. The rest of the Sunday was playing with the kids and trying to catch a nap when I could. Overall I think everyone had a good time. Those event are fun to do, and maybe we can do it again in a while.

Wunderbar

Man it's been busy at work. I am getting behind on my blogging.

Let's start with last week. Wednesday I took the day off work so I could go down to Germanfest with the family. My mom likes being there for opening day of Germanfest and always invites the kids down for a little music and food. I decided to take the day off the join them. The day didn't start out that promising with an icky looking morning and the threat of storms in the area, but it cleared up as it came closer to head out. We headed out almost on time and I was trying to get down there before the big downtown lunch crowd descended upon the tent. It took me forever to find a parking space downtown. I usually pay the $4 and park right next to the tent, but that lot was full. I could have paid the $5 at the gas house since you get that back with a food purchase, but I wasn't planning on eating at the gas house in the near future. So I drove around a little bit and all of my usual hidden gems were gone, but then I decided to try the meters by freiman square and there was a ton of them. Lucky for me I threw a little change into my pocket on the way out the door so had enough for an hour and a half. I figured that I could find change and come back if we were still there or borrow some change from my mom. I set the alarm on my cell phone to remind me. Even if I did forget, the $5 parking ticket would still be the same as paying for parking. So we pack up the crew and start walking to the tent. For some reason Andrew is in a real foul mood. He insists on being carried, which is fine, but man he is getting heavy. So we get to the tent and meet up with mom and her friends and have a nice lunch. It's still great food every year and again one of the festivals that I don't mind going to. Mom and I got a pitcher of beer but I only had a few and I think mom gave away the majority of the rest since she is still in recovery mode from her back surgery and doesn't need a bunch of beer, (but it was cheaper than buying by the glass). Andrew is still real touchy, but the boys run around a little bit fingering up the cars and trying to get to the rides outside the tent. As we are walking around I run into a bunch of people that I know from my old radio days, Captain Chris, Chris and Lisa Underwood, and Kent Horman. I hadn't talked to them in years. So after a while we decided to call it a day and head for home and put the cranky boys to bed. We go outside the gates to where the rides are to look around and the boys want to ride the stuff,but it was getting late and the rides didn't seem to be worth the couple bucks apiece to ride. We get back to the van and no ticket (yeah). We had talked about trying to hit the zoo after the festival, but with the boys being cranky and the weather still being a little iffy we decided just to go home chill.


Here is video of the boys, hopefully you can hear a little of the umpaa paaa music in the background

Lights Out !!

So we are sitting around the house on Friday night and getting ready to put the boys to bed and in the distance we hear the rumbles of thunder. This goes on for a while with the thunder getting louder, but there isn't any rain. I am thinking, Great, now the boys are going be freaked out by thunder all night long. Then the lights flicker. Then all the power goes out in the house. Then back on for a second and then out again, then back on again for a second and then out again for good. Crap. I always try to have a plan in place for such occasions, but usually the power comes back on in minutes. So I grab the big flash light that the boys have been playing with a little bit and sure enough it's dead. Then Jen grabs for her flashlight that is plugged into an outlet. I knew that it was dead too and had told her months ago it was fubared, but she claims that I never told her that. I only pointed to the wind up flashlights twice at Walmart, but I think she thought I was just looking for a new toy to play with. So I grab the old reliable mini mag-lite that I use for my night golf because I tend to keep that one away from the boys. It's not much, but it works. It is dark in the house but still dusk-ish so not pitch black dark yet. So I am trying to find batteries for the big light or try and think of a toy that I can grab batteries from, or maybe a toy that lights up. My little Shoq Box radio is still running, but getting low on battery. After that dies I grab the wind up/solar battery from the garage. As I am trying to get this stuff together Andrew is insistent on being the keeper of the flashlight. I don't think he was scared of the dark, he just wanted to play with the flashlight. So he is screaming because he doesn't have the flash light, I am trying to find stuff, and it is getting real dark in the house. At this point I look outside and see that the people across the street have power ! WTH. But I see that the people behind us don't have power and see flashlights in their windows too so it's just out little area. At least it's not just our house. The boys weren't as freaked out about not having power as I thought they would be. William was having fun pointing out all the stuff that wasn't on anymore, which was everything.

Lucky for me I have a wife who has a candle obsession/compulsion/fetish so in no time we had candles all over the house. We give both the boys their own little candle as a nightlight and they go so sleep pretty fast. We are trying to decide what to do next. Its not bad enough to warrent packing the kids up and heading to a grandparents house, it's actually very nice outside, but I notice that it's started to rain hard. No power mean no sump pump (NO I haven't installed the battery back up yet), but I have a backup plan for just such an occasion. We have a dc/ac converter and the plan is to plug in one of the cars and run an extension cord down to the basement to power the sump pump. I checked a couple times and there isn't any water running on to the sump which is due to the fact that the ground is dry and it might take a while for water to reach the basement. But I want to get ready so I take the flashlight into the garage getting the extension cord to get everything set up. As I am grabbing the cord the power comes back on.

It was only an hour, but still an hour of a lot of scrambling. Just showed me how I wasn't really prepared, so probably a trip to the store to get a few things to throw into a box for just such an occasion and keep it away from the boys. It was actually kind of nice just sitting around with the candles and just listening to the radio.

That was NOT three days off

A three day weekend occurred and I missed it. Actually it wasn't that bad, but is sure seemed short. I really didn't get as much done as I should have, but a few small things. Jen had to work Saturday and Sunday so I spent much of those days playing with the boys. Usually I can get stuff done with William and Andrew helping me, but when I watch Christopher, I don't like to be too far away. Usually I wait until his naps to get stuff done. Saturday we were up pretty early due to the children alarm clock. After I got out and fertilized the lawn, Jen left for work and the boys and I had a lazy morning. When Christopher went down for a nap I saw the opportunity to get some stuff done. I grabbed some tools and headed for the back yard to do some weeding with the two boys. I would weed a little bit, go over and push Andrew on the swing, weed some more, push Andrew, etc... After a while of this I was tired, and Christopher woke up. Then I took the boys for a walk to see if I could wear them out a little bit. We had a nice walk and headed down to the community park that we have in the addition so the boys could play on the playground equipment. After that we headed back and I fed the crew dinner. Jen arrived home a little bit later and we just visited and put the boys down to bed. The bed time process is finally getting a little easier in our house. Christopher goes down very easy, William is pretty easy and doesn't require me to sit in the hallway anymore. Andrew is the pistol. He will usually get out of bed at least 2 or 3 times and go into the hallway, but I can sit in my chair and just snap my fingers and tell him to go back to bed and he does.
Sunday we all got up and went to church. After church Jen headed off to work and I took the boys over to my mom's house after feeding them lunch. My mom had talked about getting together to watch the race, but I wasn't sure what time it started, and also I didn't know that she actually made it a party with snacks and everything which was very good. So we just hung around mom's place and the boys played with my brother and uncle while I tried to watch the race. Unfortunatly Andrew started a coughing fit which ended with him puking all over my mom's house. (so much for those circus peanuts and m&m's). I couldn't tell if his coughing was due to the cold that he is currently fighting or if he is alergic to mom's new dog. It seems like everytime he comes in contact with that dog he ended up having some sort of reaction. It might just be a coincidence, but we are probably going to get him tested. For some reason he doesn't have a problem with mom's other dogs. I would hate for my mom to have to get rid of her new dog, but I am not sure I want to have to drug Andrew every time he goes over there either, we will see. We went home and met up with Jen coming home from work (sucks to be in retail sometimes).
Monday we woke up to rain and gray skies. We didn't really have a plan for the day, but seeing the weather ruled out going to the lake for the day. I just didn't want to take the chance (or spend the gas) to up to the lake for a few hours to sit in a camper either. We broke out the newly repaired (aka. rigged up) waffle maker. Yeah I fixed it with a couple bolts and washers. I was about to cut the box recipe in half since the boys already had breakfast, but decided to make the whole batch since they freeze, and I am glad that I did. Even after two bowls of cereal, the boys were more than happy to help me eat some waffles. After a couple rounds of "I don't know, what do you want to do today?" between Jen and I we decided to go over to the zoo for a little bit. We figure if it did rain that it wouldn't matter since we had the season pass and we wouldn't be out anything. It ended up being a real nice day after all. We walked around the zoo, ran into the Kannings, and had fun. I took the boys on the zoo train ride, and then both of them on the horse ride. It was Andrews FIRST time to ride the horse. Technically he isn't old enough to ride the horses since you have to be 3 years old to ride, but he is tall enough. He really enjoyed it. (will post pics later). After closing the zoo down we headed home and had Reuben sandwiches for dinner (a little treat for memorial day). We put the boys to bed and broke out the laptop. We had fallen way behind on our "Bones" and "House" watching. Good thing they have their old episodes on-line. We sat huddled around the laptop and watched 3 episodes until after midnight. I need to find a cable to plug that thing into the TV.

Spicy

One of the perks that we have here at work is a popcorn maker. It's one of those big ones like you would see at a movie theater. Actually it was at my former place of business, but I called up the new manager when I got here and he offered to sell it to me. For some reason since I am the one who arranged the purchase of the popcorn maker, it also makes me the popcorn maker. So a couple times a week I will head back to the break room and make a batch if it's out or if it's a couple days old (people here have a real issue with two day old popcorn). The ironic part is that I don't eat the popcorn due to my stomach issues. Anyway over the years I have always said that it might be cool to get some flavored seasonings for the popcorn, but since I am not the one purchasing the popcorn and supplies I just forgot it. I noticed that we were almost out of the popcorn seasoning the other day and decided to search for popcorn seasonings. I found a couple of places on-line, but didn't think it was that good of a deal and didn't want to pay for shipping and handling. I found one company that sold the seasonings at Walmart so I stopped by and bought a couple little (2.5 oz) canisters of seasoning. After doing that I remembered that there used to be a place off main street that sold seasonings. I stopped by the place, but it was closed up, but after looking on the net I saw that they were at a new location. Yesterday I decided to stop by the place and see what they had. According to mapquest it was just South of Lake on Coliseum blvd. I drove by and nothing. I drove by again and nothing. After giving up I was in the turn lane and noticed that the little shop that was part of a gas station had it's doors open and I could see plastic containers through the window. Sure enough this was the place. No signage at all and part of a gas station, but the place was amazing. I love cooking shows on TV but they usually use a spice in the recipe that I have never heard of. This would be the place to go to find that spice. They had all kinds of spices, rubs, oils and bbq sauce (the words "ass destroyer" were on alot of them). The place is pretty big, but poorly organized with no labels on boxes or prices on anything. I picked up a container of popcorn seasoning and a mix that supposedly, when put together, will be the same as Coney Island sauce downtown. We will see how that compares to my sauce. The one nice part is that it makes smaller batches of sauce and at less time. Stay tuned.

http://www.americanspice.com/

If you are looking for the place, it's in the gas station that is just South of the Cap n' Cork / Oley's pizza place on Coliseum. It also has a pretty good web page which is where I am thinking a majority of there income comes from.

So far no one has commented about the seasonings near the popcorn maker so I think all that messing around was for nothing. oh well, I found a new place if I ever need Galangal Root Cut/Sifted

let's see if I can sqeeze a little more

Already in the throws of pinching every possible penny I am trying to find new ways to squeeze a little bit more out of that penny. First of all, I have slowed down. On my 50 mile trek to work everyday it's all highway at 70 miles per hour, but being that it's 469 and not that traveled I have backed down to a max of 65 miles per hour in an attempt to get a little more mpg out of the Saturn. If it were a busier highway or one lane I wouldn't, but I don't mind being passed. Unfortunately I can't really tell if it's working since the car doesn't have a little electronic thing that tells me my average gas mileage. I can't afford to fill it up all the way (how sad with only a 10 gallon tank) so I can't do the odometer/math thing either. But I know it's still around if not over 30 miles a gallon for that great little 7 year old car. Yeah we are going to drive the wheels off of that thing. One thing that might help is getting new tires on it too (time to call the tire Nazi).

The other is finding deals around town. I recalled a couple years ago a guy I worked with a guy who would stop by the Nickel's bakery thrift store and get bread. On my weekly driving to do some deliveries I pass by one of these bakery stores. I stopped in there a few months back and got hot dog buns for Christopher's baptism. I decided to stop by this week and see how much a loaf of bread was. I had paid $1.37 at Wal-mart the night before, so imagine my surprise when I purchased 4 loaves of bread for $1.77. Lucky for us we have the big freezer and this stuff freezes pretty well.

I figure if I can find a few more of these little deals I can help in the overall budget. Of course we don't deny ourselves the occasional carry out from a local restaurant or a purchase for the house or kids, but hopefully it will help a little bit.

Revoke my Geek Card

Scott sent me this cartoon the other day. He said it was too funny and geek not to send, but I didn't get it. Sadly it took some explaining from Jen to understand it. My wife is more geek than I am. Sigh....

Movie Review

Sunday Jen and I pawned off the kids and went and saw the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Lesbian. I will preface this review with the statement that I didn't really care for the first narnia movie. I didn't like the story, and I was looking to hard for an overtly religious message in the movie. I wasn't even really that impressed with the scenery. I liked that second movie a little better (yeah still not a glowing review). The story still left much to be desired and this time the religious message was pretty much in my face. I didn't get why the one kid was in such a hurry to get into a fight and get everyone killed, the narnians were pretty happy in their thousands of acres of woods for centuries. Then when Prince Lesbian all of a sudden gets the hots for one of the princesses. It's almost like they forgot to build it up and then all of a sudden said, "oh yeah, give her the googly eyes" halfway through the movie. This might have been a case where the books might have been better than the movie adaptation, either that or I just don't get it. Either way, might be worth the matene', but not full price. It's currently #1, but it won't be there for long with Indiana Jones coming out this week.

I have high hopes for the Indiana Jones movie, but hope it still maintains the magic after 20 years. Of course some of the critics panned the movie in Cannes which is pretty typical for those hacks, but Harrison Ford had the best quote for those snobs. He said:

"I'm not afraid at all. I expect to have the whip turned on me," Ford told reporters after the screening. "It's not unusual for something that is popular to be disdained by some people, and I fully expect it.

But, he said: "I work for the people who pay to get in. They are my customers, and my focus is on providing the best experience I can for those people."

Little something for the Movie Critics

Christopher & Crew

Just some pictures and video for the out of towners

zzzzzz... huh......crap

So I am snoozing away this morning actually enjoying a good nights sleep. I got to bed pretty early, no visitors at 2:00am, and Andrew actually sleeping pretty sound. (I think Andrews ear infections finally cleared up since he has been sleeping in). Then all of a sudden I hear a electronic jingling sound in my subconscious. Huh? What? and go back to sleep. Then I hear it again. My phone (of course downstairs) has just received a text message. I was thinking who would text message me at 5:30am? I start to curse Jeff since he is the only one that has texted me, but then think that he would never do that at this hour. Of course after receiving the text the phone proceeds to jingle every couple of minutes... crap. So I trudge downstairs and look at my phone and sure at shit it's a spam text about perskription medicaution (their spelling not mine). Son of a B****. I want to throttle the SOB's who do this crap and string them up by their nads. So after venting, I trudge back upstairs and back to bed to have the radio come on soon afterwards. There might be hope for this weekend....

Mudder's Day..

When me prayers were poorly said
Who tucked me in me widdle bed
And spanked me till me arse was wed

Me Mudder

Who took me from me cozy cot
And put me on the ice cold pot
And made me pee if I could not

Me Mudder

And when the morning light would come
And in me crib me dribbled some
Who wiped me tiny widdle bum

Me Mudder

Who would me hair so neatly part
And hug me gently to her heart
Who sometimes squeezed me till me fart

Me Mudder

Who looked at me with eyebrows knit
And nearly have a king size fit
When in me Sunday pants me s***

Me Mudder

When at night her bed did squeak
Me raised me head to have a peak
Who yelled at me to go to sleep

Me Fadder!

Mother's day weekend kinda started Friday night. On the way home I stopped to pick up a pizza. Papa Murphy's was running a special on a Taco pizza. Now usually we are just the typical pepperoni kinda family, but occasionally we will splurge and Jen will get one with all the "junk" on it (aka supreme in the Pizza Hut parlance). This was actually very delicious as specialty pizzas go. Yet another pizza from Papa Murphy's that has impressed me. The other being the stuffed crust 7 meat one. Saturday I got up and took the Saturn to get the oil changed and a transmition leak looked at. I was able to get the oil changed, tires rotated, and transmition leak fixed for a little over $100. It probably helped that I wasn't dealing with the one service manager that beats you up with preventative maintenance until you agree to it. (The only thing I don't like about getting the car serviced there). Besides that I like the free pop and cookies and WiFi. After getting done at Saturn I ran the Jeep registration to Odaniels so they could get the paperwork finished on transferring plates and other stuff. I pull up so see every sales guy hanging outside the door. How is it that every time I stopped by I had to fight to get any attention from my sales guy? It was a nice day and people were staying home and getting stuff done around their house. I got home and soon after Jen took off to work. I asked Jen what she wanted to do for Mother's Day and she couldn't make up her mind, so that left Sunday up in the air. The boys and I just hung out around the house. I was thinking of trying to get outside, but it clouded over and started to get pretty chilly so I decided against it since I don't want to take Christopher outside too much just yet. The boys did pretty good and went to bed half way decent as well. Jen didn't get home until midnight so I knew it would take her a while to wind down. Andrew woke me up Sunday morning around 7:00am so I took him downstairs to get him breakfast and to let mommy get some more sleep. Around 9:00 we started getting everyone around and ready for church. After church we talked to mom and came up with a quasi-plan for the day. We took the boys home and fed them lunch, then we went over to mom's for a visit. We hung out there for a little while, and then Jen and I took off for a nice lunch. Nothing like celebrating mother's day than getting rid of the kids for a while. We lunched at Triangle Park which we were hoping would be done with the after church crowd by the time we got there. No such luck as we were waiting with 20 of our closest friends. But surprisingly we were seated very quick since we indicated "first available". I think people still have a stigma about being seated in the bar area since it used to be a place people could smoke. Jen got her usual (stuff shrimp), but I got something a little different. It was a baked chicken breast over fetuchini alfredo topped with crab meat and a holendase sauce. It was good, but if the holendase sauce had a little more flavor it would have been perfect. As we are sitting there half the crowd gets up a leaves. We were just a little early to miss the Sunday buffet people. Of course as we are leaving there are people waiting for seats by the front door even though the bar area was still less than half full. I like the dinning room too, but there isn't anything wrong with the bar area. Oh well. After that we picked up Christopher's pictures at the mall and headed back to mom's house. We loaded up the kids for Grandma #2 house while my mom was about the head over to Dan's house. We picked up a ice cream cake on the way to Grandma's house and spent the rest of the day visiting and playing with them. Uncle Jim had just bought a new playstation 3 so we started to play with that. I tell you the graphics of the Wii blew me away and then seeing ps3 was even better. We started playing a driving game that William tried out and was actually pretty good at. Of course playing the PS3 with a 57 inch plasma two feet in front of you helps the effect quite a bit. So home pretty late and put the boys to bed..

That was kinda freaky..

Yesterday I was checking my email and it I see that someone has emailed my facebook account. I hardly ever go on there so it's good that my email gets alerted. Anyway the email is from Jim Hall who is wondering if I was the Dave Hogan that went to St. Charles School. I notice the name is one that I remember from grade school. In almost 25 years since leaving grade school this is the second time that I have actually came across someone from grade school. Or at least one that I recognize. The other was a girl who I worked with at the radio station and ended up taking her job when she left. Kinda freaky blast from the past and I email him back. Then today, I am in line at the bank and a guy comes walking up to me. I look at him and he looks familiar and he says to me, "aren't you Dave Hogan? I am John Klingenburger" another grade school classmate. I must look kinda similar than I looked 25 years ago. We sit there and chew the fat a little bit. Come to find out that he just had a new baby back in Feb and his two other children are about the same age as my kids. We both got a late start on life and we both have the white hair to prove it. I tell him about my email from Jim and he says that Jim is his kids soccer coach and that Jim's parents live in the same cul-de-sac as him. He also says that on the other part of the cul-de-sac lives another guy we went to grade school with. That was so strange...

Minivan Madness

Yes we are the proud owners of a 2007 Chrysler Town and Country, but it was quite the journey to get there. Where to begin.... It began with the birth of Christoper and seeing how the car seats in the back of the Jeep weren't going to work out that much. So the search began with me looking at car lots on-line and a few visits to some different dealerships over the past 6 months or so. One of the lots that we stopped at was Odaniels. We get the jeep serviced there and my mom has bought two Sebrings and her Prowler from them. I talked to one sales guy and he seemed real genuine and not like a typical used car sales weasel, so whenever I would go back to the lot I would ask for him. We were still looking at our finances and seeing what we could afford to do for the longest time, and seeing if we could put a little away for a down payment, but with medical bills coming in from Christopher's birth, that wasn't an option. We noticed that Odaniel's had a sale going on with a few program cars that were pretty affordable. Yeah they didn't have the DVD and the automatic doors on them, but they were 2007 and had low miles and also had the stow and go that Jen likes. We were finally ready to get serious about buying one after seeing the the jeep sitting at 99,500 miles and hearing from a couple different people that if it does reach 100,000 miles that it will effect the trade in a lot. We we get my mom to watch the kids on Monday and head over to Odaniels. I didn't see anything on the website, but they are getting new stuff in all the time and I wasn't sure how updated their site was. We get to the lot and find out that they are closed for the night, but there is one sales guy who stuck around late doing something. We talk to him and find out that the 2007 vans with low miles for the good price were all gone. Crap. "But" he says they are expecting a few more on a truck in the morning. We tell him we are going to stop by the next day. On the way home we decided to stop by another lot that also has 2007 program minivans on their lot, but they don't look to be in that good of shape and the sales guy gave me the heebeejeebies (typical used car sales guy), but it was good to know that if we couldn't work out a deal at Odaniels that there was an option across the street. So anyway Tuesday night after work I stop by Odaniels and talk to my sales guy Mark. I had told him what time I was going to be there, but for some reason he started talking to this other guy right before I got there. So he is trying to deal with both of us at the same time. He shows me the 3 vans "right off the truck" and they aren't too bad. The two that are the better price are both silver so we don't have to worry about trying to decide what color is better. The only difference is one had a power driver's seat, satellite radio, and different cloth interior, but is also had 5000 more miles that the other one. I tell him I like the one with the stain resistant interior and the 23000 miles. I don' t really need a power seat and satellite radio. He puts that one on the fast track for clean-up so when we come back it will be good to go.
back to work on the deal, but looking at our schedule it would have been next week that both of us would have been Wednesday neither he nor I are available to look at the van so I figure sure as shit it will be sold then. But last night we were able to enlist my mom again to watch the kids. We show up to the lot to talk to Mark, again with a time I am going to be there, and again he is dealing with someone else. Yeah we were a little late getting there but still. He pulls up the van and is starting to put on the plates for a test drive. I am pointing out to Jen some of the features when I noticed the wrong interior.... wrong silver van. So he pulls up the other one and we take it out for a test drive. Pretty nice van with a pretty good ride in the middle and back seats (I was hopping around the different seats). We get back to the lot ready to sit down and crunch some numbers but he is still dealing with the other family. This is when I notice that it is already 8:00pm. One, they close at 8:00pm and two, Christoper likes to eat about now. We are considering comingavailable. But the other family gets finished pretty quick so we sit down to see what we can do. The one thing that Mark tells me is that he gave me the wrong price for the van, but since he told me the price that he would honor that and take the bite on his commission. Sales guy B.S. or honest sales guy? I am thinking honest sales guy. (yeah he is that good). So we are giving him information and the sales manager takes the jeep out for a look over and test drive. I am thinking that since we get all of our service at Odaniels that they have pulled the service records and know some of the laundry list of problems with the jeep, but they didn't. The only thing he really notices is when you stop the front end shudders, which I attributed to bad shocks. Yeah I know about other problems with the jeep, but I am not about to volunteer that information. We still owed a couple grand on the jeep and they gave us about $4,200 for the trade in which I thought was a pretty good deal (and close to the book value). I was going to dicker with him, but knowing the work they would have to put into it and the wrong price problem he had I didn't beat him up too much. So an hour of sign this, enter that in the computer, sign this, sign this, sign this it's now 9:00 and we are both getting pretty tired. Both Jen and I are dealing with Sinus issues and our heads are spinning. So finally he hands us off to the financing lady who is also stuck there late because of us. We were already approved from our bank at 4.75 %, but they were able to find another place that got us 4.4%. We could have gotten even lower rate, but making it a 66 month loan rather than a 60 got us the higher rate, but a lower monthly payment. Of course they tried to sell us extended warranties, rust proofing, gift certificates, and all kinds of other add-ons and we just said "pass". The van is still under factory warranty for another 10,000 miles so that is pretty good and I really trust the Chrysler product. Both Jen and I ask a million questions because we want to make sure everything is correct, but also because we are both very tired and want to make sure that we don't sign anything we don't want to. Jen recalls a deal that her parents had done late at night with a car lot where things did not turn out well at all, so she is hesitant. I might have to ask her parents about that sometime. Overall we made out very well and are paying just $11 more a month than we were currently paying for the Jeep which is one thing that I wanted to do. Actually I was trying to make the payment lower, but that $11 more a month I will take. So we are escorted out the door by the finance lady and we head back across the lot. Mark is already transferring our license plate and we start to unload the jeep into the van. Both Jen and I kept double,triple,quadruple checking the jeep to make sure we got everything out of it. It's kind of like when we leave a hotel room we have to check the drawers (even if we didn't use them) 10 times. There was a tear shed in memory of the jeep, but I won't say if it was Jen or I. I think the thing that I will miss the most is the four wheel drive in the winter. So we get home at 10:00 to pandelerium.. Christopher was crying because he was WAAAYYY overdue for a feeding. I almost told mom to give him some out of the fridge but it's so hard to say that because she didn't know how close we were to being home. I have a hard time heating up the "white gold" if I know Jen is near. The one thing that we find out is the van is longer than the jeep. The front end is almost touching the freezer that just allows for the garage door to close. Looks like we are either going to swap car parking in the garage or I have to reorganize stuff and move the freezer. The boys go crazy when I show them the new van and they want to play in it, but I tell them it's bedtime and take them upstairs after profusely thanking my mom for being so late and her having to deal with fussy boys. After putting the boys to bed Jen is getting some stuff ready for the next day and realizes that she can't find her purse. We tear apart the new van, and the house and can't find it. I tell her that it is probably sitting in Mark's office or the finance lady's office, but there is always a chance that she left it in the van after the test drive and someone took it, or that we left it on the parking lot when we were transferring crap from the jeep. Along with credit cards is alot of cash from the garage sale that we were going to deposit on the way to the car lot but the bank was closed. Also, Jen's work keys that cost hundreds of dollars to replace. So Jen is freaked. I am too,but there isn't much we can do about it now, we will just have to wait for the morning. Jen crashes on the couch at11:30 but of course wakes up at 2:00 and is up for hours. She even goes online to our bank to make sure that no one has withdrawn any money. Lucky for us it was in the finance lady's office. I am going to pick it up today. Whew............ So we are one step closer to paying a visit to the Q's this summer, but I hear they might be heading this way too... stay tuned

I feel safe.....

Last week PBS was running a special on an aircraft carrier. A real interesting behind the scenes look of what goes on during deployment. I find these types of shows very interesting and used to watch these shows on "Discovery" all day long back when we had cable. It's things you never really think about like how they get rid of trash, how to feed a couple thousand people every day, and stuff like how they handle religious services while on board. Along with a very interesting behind the scenes look there were a couple of disturbing things too. The people they decided to interview for the documentary were scary. Almost every one of them were from broken families, their mom's were crack whores, the service was their only choice, they didn't want to be there.. Yeah I know it's only a few of a crew of thousands, but they chose these people to follow in almost every episode. It actually turned into a little soap opera with these people which I found annoying. In the interviews with the crew members (or at least the ones that they aired) almost all of them didn't want to be there and didn't agree with why we were there. I could have used a little less soap opera/anti war propaganda and a little more information, but still it was an interesting series.

Busy weekend

Saturday was a lazy day for me and the boys. Jen had to work so we just hung out around the house for the day. It was real windy and a little cold so I decided to stay inside and try and get a few small projects done around the house. The boys love it when I get out my tools since they know I am on my way to fix something and they can "help". Of course they "helped" me out of a tape measurer. I am sure it's in a toys box some place. The plan was to do a few things outside when Jen got home, but she ended up working later than planned so that didn't work out. A curious thing happened when Jen was at work. Jen received a text message from someone claiming to be an old friend and gave a few clues to who they were. Jen deleted the one message figuring it was spam which held part of the clue. Only a select few (and you know who you are) have my cell number. So I figure if it was someone we actually knew they would call or text again, and if it's spam then not answering it might end it there, but it's still curious. I saw that Jeff called later on in the afternoon and thought it might have been him since he is the only one who texts me, but his call was due to his brother-in-law's sewage filled basement.
Sunday started pretty early with the boys up by 7:00, and I got up and went to church. Then I came back and picked up the family and we headed downtown for another church service and a confirmation. We were able to sit with my father and mother in law toward the back of the church. There were 4 teenage girls sitting in front of my father in law and they were not dressed appropriately for church and they TEXTED and talked all during the service. They also had a little kid in front of them that they were playing with which the mother did nothing to take care of that. I think they were all related. I asked my father in law how he kept from saying something to them and he said it wasn't easy. Very few things get my father in law going, but that is one of them. I knew if I found it inappropriate that he must have been going nuts. TWO HOURS later we finally left the church and headed for a reception at the families house. The boys and I hung out outside while Jen and Christopher were inside being passed around. (Christopher not Jen). The boys really liked the sandbox in the backyard and played in that for hours. We might just have to get one of those. Their current playset has an area for a sandbox, but the view is blocked by the rockwall and I think I prefer to have something we can see and that we can cover in case of rain. The food was very good at the reception. They borrowed the hot dog steamer and got numerous comments on it. I was even surprised to see that they had chilled up some beer! That really surprised me, but when I tasted it there was a funky taste so I don't know how long it had been around. After a couple hours of eating and playing we decided to get going. I got a call from a friend putting on a benefit concert on the lake north of columbia city and decided to pop up there with the family to check it out and to return her computer that I fixed. It was a nice drive up there. We pulled up to the restaurant/tavern/bar/dive and was able to park among the motorcycles. The outside looked just like an old cottage that had been converted. We walked around to the back where the bands were playing, of course still in our church clothes and waaayyy over dressed for this crowd. There was a tent with the bands at the bottom of this large hill with about 20 people crowding the small deck off the back of the bar. The bands started playing and it was too loud for the boys to handle. They both covered their ears and were never far from me. I wanted to go into the bar and check out how the inside looked, but I don't think the boys would have let me. It's always good to know where a good restaurant is for a weekend drive, much like Clay's restaurant or the retreat on lake George. After a little bit the boys were getting used to the music and they had found a moon walk and were really enjoying that. Around 5:00 we thought we better head for home since Christopher was due to eat and there wasn't a good place to feed him around there. Of course half way home Christopher wakes up and wants to eat.. NOW. So we got home as quick as possible. After that the boys played some more and Jen and I just sat on the couch exhausted and wanting to fall asleep. The boys went down pretty well with Christopher being the problem child for the night. He either had too much gas or was over tired from the day so that took a while. There was nothing on TV so we put in a movie that I think I saw 10 minutes of before falling asleep. Nothing like waking up to go to bed and remembering that I have to make lunch for the next day. So I finally get to bed and William comes in the room around 4:00am crying for whatever reason. It took about an hour of numerous trips down to his room for various reasons until he finally fell asleep. Of course then the garbage truck comes at 6:00am and he comes in the room. We just let him sleep with us and he crashed until after I got out of the shower. It was a busy weekend, but I am trying to get the boys to experience new things. It seems like they, like us, get into a routine and we need to break them out of that as much as possible so they aren't afraid to try new things.

Too Cool

A last weekend I was helping out at the March of Dimes charity walk. I noticed that one of the guys that I knew was sporting a new iphone on his belt. I had to try it out. He let me play with it for a little bit and I have to say it's the coolest gadget I have ever seen or played with. I wasn't sure if it would live up to all the hype and do all the stuff that it does on the commercials, but it sure did about everything with the short time I had to play with it. If I had the means, I would definitely own one of these things, but I don't think that is going to happen in my lifetime. Maybe some day I will get an itouch since I don't really need the phone feature. Now where are those lottery tickets?

That Stinks

Our garage sale was last Friday and Saturday. Friday was a good day where we got rid of alot of the bigger things. Saturday was pretty bad and we ended up closing it a bit early. Jen and my mother in law are in charge of the sale and they have their own little system down that seems to work out pretty well. Lucky for them they were able to get rid of two of the three boys at my mom's house on Friday to give them a little more of a break. The weather was alright, but it sure would have been nicer if it would have been warmer. The sad part of the garage sale was that someone actually shoplifted from the garage sale. Would that be shoplifting or garagelifting? There are all kinds of people that go to garage sales and unfortunately there are some weirdos. It's sad that they stole from a garage sale, but it's even sadder that they stole a bottle of perfume. Couldn't quite afford that 50 cent price tag? Just sad.

While we were cleaning up I found another little bottle of perfume. (yeah we had alot of perfume that we got rid of). Just for the heck of it I decided to spritz myself. This is where I lean that it's probably a good idea to smell it first or at least look at the name on the bottle. I ended up spraying Celine Dion perfume on myself and man it stunk. Jen even commented when she came back out to the garage that something smelled funny. I almost told her I farted since I would feel less embarrassed than telling her I spritz Celine.

Now the decision of what to do with the money that we made from the garage sale. We have too many things that we could spend it on. Time for a list.

Ultimate Geek

Fabled Optimus Maximus Keyboard has Arrived

Yep. Time to take a second mortgage on your home or break into your kid's college fund. With the singing of angels and a ray of sunlight parting the clouds, the fabled Optimus Maximus Keyboard has descended from Russia design studio Art Lebedev like an orgasm of geekiness. As you should know by now this amazing keyboard features a tiny screen on each key... that's 113 screens in all. What can you do with these tiny screens you ask? Well each key can change it's image dynamically depending on what you doing. Hold down SHIFT and all keys go uppercase. Run Photoshop and you can set it so each hotkey has an image representing it's function. Set a key to monitor your CPU usage or display what iTunes track you are currently playing. You can make a key into a tiny clock with moving hands and play animated gif files or even quicktime movies. Of course all this futuristic technology is going to cost you a pretty penny... but we figure you'll just expense the Optimus and tout it's "incredible increased efficiency when using PowerPoint hotkeys" in your expense report summary.

See the website Here

This is too freakin cool. but at $ 1,600 it's only for the ubergeek

Flashback

Dan just posted this picture on his myspace account. This has to be 1985 or 86. It's amazing how blond my hair is and how thin we were back then. It's also amazing that I wore shorts that small. Dan was a member of the 27th lancers drum and bugle corps out of Boston by way of Akron Ohio. I was sporting the Northrop Drum Line jacket from back in the day.

Dan also has posted the song "what I like about barnyard animals" on his myspace too if you wanted to hear a better version that the one on my blog.

no...seriously

Just had a bit of an odd experience. Jen and I were talking last night and she brought up how we need to get some change money for the garage sale this weekend. I had a mileage expense check and was running around today so I told her that I would stop by and get some change. I almost forgot, but at the last minute I ran into the bank. I tell the friendly teller that I want to cash my check and I want it all in ones. As she was counting them out, all of a sudden, I got kind of embarrassed, since I started thinking that she is thinking "what strip club is he heading too?". Oh crap, do I say something? What does she care?Why do I care? Who is she to judge me? I decide to not say anything and just let it go, but then I have to get a roll of quarters too. Now she is thinking I am heading to a strip club and I am a cheap bastard. So as she is handing me the quarters I let the comment slip "yep, it's garage sale time". Whew I feel better, but I know she really didn't care. She actually tells me of new interest rates on auto loans which will work out well since we are looking for a minivan, and it's always good to have the ammo to the sales weasels. A friend of mine once worked at a bank right next to Stewies strip club, and she would tell me how the strippers would come in after their shifts and either deposit their money or get larger bills for the singles. EWWWW GROSSSSS. Dollar bills are just naturally carriers of bacteria and germs, but dollar bills from a strip club, you know where they have been......

Let's get rid of crap

This sunday is our association's garage sale. This is a good opportunity to get rid of stuff that just clutters the house. And is also motivates me to take a good look at the stuff I have and decide if I really need it. I find myself being alot less attached to things than when I was younger. Yes I was a pack rat as a kid and I have the neon calculator watch to prove it still. Fortunately for me the garage sale falls on Jen's to do list. She and her mom usually work on organizing and working the sale since they have alot of experience. My job is to lug boxes up stairs from the basement or down from the attic (NOW WITH STAIRS!!!!) and to clean the garage. Most years it's just tables filled with little stuff, but this year we have some bigger items including a couch with a pull out bed (Sorry Mary, you might loose your bed when you come to visit) and some end tables that have glass inserts that probably isn't a good idea with three boys around. I was close to getting rid of the sectional couch from the basement, but I figured I need some furnitire for the "sea shanty" basement when I get it remodeled. More about the "sea shanty" basement later. We also are finding this garage sale a good way of purging some of the boys toys. I don't want to deny Christopher the opportunity to play with these toys, but I am sure that there will be enough around when he gets older. We set aside 5 big boxes of toys a few months ago and the boys have no idea that anything is missing. The big fun comes when they see it on the table during the garage sale and rediscover them. I wish I had a little more time to pull up more rock from the backyard since the garage sale is where I got rid of most of it last year. Like past years the garage sale happens on the same day on when I help out the March of Dimes "March for babies" walk so I can't be there on Saturday to help. Probably a good thing since I would have an opinion about stuff and my mother in law hates that :). The big battle will come after the garage sale. I told Jen that whatever didn't sell would be going to goodwill since I am tired of lugging the same boxes full of crap up and down to the attic (even though I now have stairs). If we sell enough stuff and get it down to a couple boxes I might be willing to put them upstairs again. But like every year it amazes me on what people will buy at a garage sale. One person's crap is another person's treasure. This year I am actually going to put a few items I pulled out last year and try e-bay out. I know I have threatened that before, but this time I mean it. Just start out with one item and go from there.

Shake Shake Shake

So this morning we hear a door knob/ door rattling in the hallway. Now usually there is a couple reasons for that sound. Either Andrew was awake and was getting up to early to wake his brother, OR William was up and going in to wake up Andrew, OR that damn cat was pawing at a door hoping to wake us up so we would feed her. Both Jen and I shot out of bed to solve the problem, or shoot the cat. Jen opened Chirstopher's door but Andrews door was still rattling. She opened his door, but he was snoozing in his bed. Weird. She went downstairs to see if she could find out what that sound was. I thought it might have been the cat downstairs pawing the pocket door in the bathroom, but I knew that sound and it was something upstairs. I was a bit freaked, but more tired. Jen and I started talking about what the sound was and most definitions came back to being the cat somewhere in the house. I conjectured that it might have been a earthquake. We have had them before. So we are laying there trying to get back to sleep and the radio comes on scaring the crap out of both of us. So we are listening to the radio and sure enough there was an earthquake this morning down in Southern Indiana/Illinois. Jen and I layed there talking, and the boys woke up shortly after that, so you know we are up for the day. The good part about that is that I actually had enough time to get up, shower, and have breakfast. Usually I don't get breakfast since I sleep till the last possible moment. It's nice to have a relaxing morning with breakfast. I would love to do it every day, but I just can't get up in the morning. So you can either say it was an earthquake, or it was mother natures tribute to Charlton Heston (see above poster)

Trip down memory lane

My brother has been in many bands over the years since high school. One of the earliest was in a band called "Suspended Animation". There have been a couple reincarnations of this band with a few key members over the years, but nothing ever long term. The lineup of the band were some real talented musicians. The actual genre or format of what type of music they played back then was a bit up in the air. They weren't mainstream, and I guess were a bit techno or industial, or who really knows. I am sure he will fill me in. Anyway along with trying to find their "sound" they recorded a couple of songs that I would call novelty songs. Just fun stuff to play that was kinda weird. Anyway, back in 1987 they submitted one of their songs to WXKE for a contest to be on an album called "Fort Wayne Rocks Vol 2" and they actually made it on the album. Well after years of wanting to get a hold of that album so I could make an mp3 out of the song I finally was able to get the album from Dan. I rigged up an old stereo with a turntable (and 8 track) that hadn't been played in 15 years with a cassette deck that hadn't been played in 10 years. I turned on the turntable and nothing happened. But I gave the old turntable a little nudge and it started spinning right round baby like a record player... oh wait.. nevermind. Anyway I was able to get the record to record to a casette and I brought that in to work to convert to mp3. I placed the mp3 onto a movie track so I could post it here. I might try and make an actual video for the song if I get a chance to mess around with it later. I "dropped the needle" on the rest of the late 80's album and it was defiantly an 80's feel to the entire thing. Hard to believe it was 21 years ago when this album came out. So here it is, "What I like about Barnyard Animals" by Suspended Animation from the Fort Wayne Rocks Vol 2 album:

Drop me an email if you would like the mp3 !!

I will post the other song "Big Jake the Trouser Snake" if Dan can ever find it. By the way he is now in anther band called Big Daddy Caddy that hopefully will start playing around in the area. They are a mainstream, pop, kinda band. I will post any info that I get about the band later.

The busy weekends have begun

With the warmer weather comes more stuff to do. This weekend was no exception. Friday night was kind of a throw together kind of thing. The excitement for the night was coming inches from getting into a head on wreck. Driving home in a rainstorm I get to a intersection where the lights are out, so I treat it as a 4 way stop and so does everyone else except one guy who I just barely see at the last second when I was in the middle of the intersection. We will call him Dick. Dick was on his phone and blew through the intersection at 50 miles an hour. I get home at about the same time that Jen and the boys get back from grandma's since they were waiting the rain out a little bit too. Jen starts to throw together a home made pizza, but I stop her since it will take at least an hour and a half to throw it together and decided to run over to papa murphy's. I take the boys with me and they do pretty good, of course greeting everyone as they come into the store to get there pizza. We get home and eat drink and were merry.

Saturday I go out in the morning and get a haircut and drop by mom's house to drop something off. When I get home my father and brother in law are there to help me install my attic stairs. We start working on it and of course the boys have to come out with us to "help". They spend most of the time playing in the cars. Of course it's a cold damp day unlike last weekend or this weekend. So we get it installed and pull down the stairs to cut them to length so they will meet the floor. While taking some measurements, they decide to see how much they will have to cut off. They fully extent the ladder and... crap... too short. They don't touch the ground. My father in law bought the wrong stairs. So they leave to run to Menard's to buy the right stairs. They get back about an hour later and we proceed to tear out the old stair and install the new stairs. Lucky for us we had knew what to do, by installing the "practice" stairs. So the second install went pretty fast. I still have to do some touch up like cutting down the shims and reinstalling the trim, but that's going to wait for this weekend. Jen had to go to work, so I just spend the rest of the day playing with the boys and other general inside stuff.

Sunday we got up and went to church. Dropped the kids off at grandma's so Jen and I could have a "date" at Olive Garden. We did a little van shopping afterwards and saw a few van's that looked kind of promising. Now we just have to crunch some numbers. After that we headed back to pick up the kids. Back home and a pretty quiet night, but a very busy weekend.

Bad news, good news.. turned into bad news

What the heck? I just found out that the outback steakhouse on Clinton just closed. Showed up with a truck one night and loaded it up. Jen said one of the waiters came into Disney and just told her they just showed up and told them they were closed. The official word from Outback was that the one restaurant still in town is ample enough to service the town. The unofficial word is that it wasn't making enough money. How could that be? Good luck getting into the place at almost any time.. especially during the weekends. AND they aren't even open all day long. How can a restaurant not tied to a mall, with lines out the door, only open for part of the day not be making enough money? It makes you want to scratch your head the same way when they closed both Uno's restaurants a couple of months ago. I can hear the rumblings of people blaming the smoking ordinance, but I seriously doubt that was the reason. There is still another Outback on the south side of town, but I seriously doubt we will ever go there. It's a nice place, but you have to drive half way to Columbia City to get to the restaurant... and you can see the stupid place from the highway!

In other what the heck restaurant news. Don Pablos closed too. Yeah I hadn't been there in years, but it was a real nice place for Mexican food.

Anyway, Sunday Jen and I decided to get away from the kids for a bit and have a "date". We dropped the kids off to grandma's, but we took Christopher with us since he was being a bit fussy and mom is still recovering from her back surgery. We end up at Olive Garden which is one of Jen's favorite places. I like the place, but have a hard time deciding what to get to eat. Most places I have one or two favorite dishes, or something I know I like. Yeah I am an old fuddy duddy like that. But this time I decided to expand my horizons a bit. I saw a plate on the "specials" menu that looked pretty good called Fontana Chicken. So I order it whereupon the waitress tells me that it's her favorite, and it's also the last day they will offer it because it was only there for a limited time. I get the meal and it is delicious. Whoo hooo I have a favorite, oh wait, no I don't. The only hope is that they might make it a "regular" item on the menu.

I blame Carrie

I like my waffle maker. We haven't had it that long. Was it a wedding present? I can't remember. Reading Carrie's post about how their last trip to our house inspired her to buy (or make John buy) a waffle maker. Reading her post make me get the taste for waffles last weekend. So I inspired her and she inspired me right back. We I got the waffle maker out and cranked it up on Saturday morning for two specific reasons. One was because it sounded good, and the other was because we didn't have anything else in the house for breakfast. Another good part of waffle/pancake fixings is that if you have at least one egg, a little milk, and some oil you can have a heck of a breakfast. So I am sitting in the kitchen making waffles as fast as the boys can eat them when all of a sudden I see a plastic piece sitting next to the waffle maker. I didn't think much of it since with the boys around I usually find all kinds of things sitting on the kitchen counter, but this one looks familiar. So I lift the top half of the waffle maker and try to get the waffle out and the lid drops all the way back and off. Crap. Nothing like wrestling with a hot piece of metal... carefully. I devise that this piece of plastic that is sitting next to the waffle maker is a plastic piece that sits in the hinge and holds the lid on. Then I remember where I saw the similiar plastic piece. It was a couple months ago when I had the waffle maker out back then. I try and put the pastic piece back in, but I can see that it is broken and not going back in. Lucky for me I was on the last waffle so it didn't matter that much. Later I decided to pop on-line and look for a replacement part. I figure I would rather just replace the two pieces of plastic then throw away a perfectly good waffle maker that we really hadn't used that much. I look and look and look and can't find anything for a faberware waffle maker at all. Finally I go to the faberware website and they don't even list a waffle maker as one of the things that they sell. Not a good sign. So I emailed the company and after a couple days I finally got a response. They gave me a number for the parts department. Cool. Maybe I can get away with just some replacement cost. I figure the shipping will be at least twice what the parts price is. So I call the parts department and sit on hold for a couple minutes, finally a guy comes on the phone and gives the schpeel "thank you for calling, this call it monitored, blah blah blah". Then he asks for my name, no problem, then he asks for my phone number, huh? huh ok, then he asks for my address, What? I refuse and ask why he needs my address to look for a part. He tells me that he needs the address in case they need to send me a part. I say how about we see if you have the part first. So I tell him my part number, he looks it up, and he says "oh is it a little plastic part that holds the hinge together?". I say yep. He says they don't sell that part any more. I might do a little more searching on-line. The parent company might no longer sell it,but if if was that much of a problem piece someone else might still carry it. Crap. So now I am looking around the house to see if I can rig something together. Yeah I know a new one is $25-$30, but it seems like such a waste. I think I might run over to lowes and see if they can fix me up.... Dang-it Carrie