Do Not Overtighten !!!

Over the weekend I was trying to get some projects done around the house.

Saturday was shot in the butt when I had to go into work from 6am to 11am. And of course Andrew had a tummy ache Saturday morning so he was crying and screaming for about two hours as Jenny tried and tried to rock him to sleep from 12am to 2am-ish. He finally rolls over, cracks a fart, and falls asleap. So about 3 hours of actual sleep before the alarm went off. I Came home from work and basically watched kids until she got home from work and then we just spent a quiet night home. I would have tried to get my work done Saturday night when she got home, but it is such a pain in the butt with William trying to "help" and I was just dog tired. That and I had to cut off all of the water in the house to repair the shower and didn't feel like doing that with the family there. I figured Sunday when Jen and the kids are over at the in-laws I can sneak away and get some stuff done. Of course I am so tired I fell asleep in the chair and I miss the end of the Notre Dame game...son of a b***ch. They were playing like crap and wasn't expecting them to win anyway, but I just miss one of the greatest comebacks of the year. I woke up just enough toward the end of the game to see what I thought was the score through sleepy eyes. I told Jen in the morning that I was dreaming, or I missed a great comeback. I missed a great comeback.

Sunday morning was William's turn to get up crying and screaming at 4 am. Now usually when he gets up in the middle of the night, I can put him back down in bed and he immediately goes to sleep, but something was bugging him. So about an hour of him fussing around, HE rolls over, cracks a fart, and goes to sleep. What is it with our kids and gas??? I am saying it was the bag of popcorn that he had in the afternoon. After that, the kids kinda sleep in and we get up and had breakfast. We head over to the in-laws around noon for the usual lunch/visit and hear about their vacation to colonial Williamsburg. So I sneak away around 4pm and head to my brother's house to return a miter saw that I "borrowed". So after two house of shooting the shit with my brother I head home to get my stuff done. I didn't realize that it was so late so I basically had about an hour to get two projects done before heading back to the in-laws to pick up Jen and the kids. So I kill the water in the house and replace a cartridge in the shower handle that should fix the leaking problem. I go down to the basement to turn the water back on to the house, and by the time I get back upstairs the shower is running, which is usually a good thing, but not when the knob is in the "off" position. I thought for a second that I had installed this cartridge upside down, but I didn't. I quickly fixed the problem and it worked fine after that. Next was replacing the ballcock in the toilet downstairs. Yeah I know.. I said "ballcock" (snicker) . When replacing this part you have to bolt the part in the bottom of the tank. It said in bold letters DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN. Excuse me? so you have to guess how tight to put on this bolt. Not tight enough to crack the tank, but tight enough so it doesn't leak all over the place. I just snugged it enough and just prayed it was enough. Shortly after replacing this part I headed out door to pick up the family, hoping and praying that I wouldn't come home to a toilet leaking all over the place and a shower erupting like a geyser. But so far so good, no leaks, but it's still nagging me enough that I want to tighten stuff a little bit more, but when I do that kind of stuff, that's when I get into trouble. Hopefully I will soon forget about it.

Blown Away

Monday we took Andrew back to Rileys to have his eye looked at again. Much to what we expected nothing has changed and we scheduled surgery for October 12th to try and correct his eye problem. Still sucks that this happened to him, but again it could have been alot worse.

The part of the trip that blew me away was a trip to the Casleton Mall in Indy. After some walking around, killing time before his appointment, we decided to grab something to eat. We had some chicken from chick-fil-a where Andrew experienced his first taste of fast food, and it loved it. After I ate I went into the bathroom to wash up after lunch. After washing my hands I noticed that they had the hand blowers and not paper towels. I hate these hand blowers since it takes forever to actually dry your hands and even after two cycles they are never dry and you always end up wiping the last bits of water off on your clothes. I know why they do it, and I don't really want to kill trees for my convenience, but it's just annoying. So I put my hands under the jet and it turns on automatically...the air came out so fast and so much that it actually scared me a little since I am not used to that from an air dryer. It was like putting your hand under an air chuck on an air compressor at 100 psi. After only 10 or 15 seconds under this power-jet my hands were totally dry. Wheeeeeee. Finally, someone gets how to make something like that actually works right.

Sigh....Yeah it's the little things that impress me.

Ye olde festival

Saturday we decided to take the kids to experience the jonny appleseed festival. Actually we just went because my mom was working a booth and asked us to stop by. Now amazingly I have never been to this festival in my life. Somehow I actually got out of going to this festival in my 7 years of working in radio, going everywhere from Farm focus in Van Wert to the flat rock creek fall festival in BFE. I have heard over the years that it is a pretty nice festival with good food and crafts for sale in tents. Now I am not a knick-knack or "country decor" kinda person, but Jenny is, or at least she was until we were married. But hey, Jen might like it and I know my mom would love to see the kids...

The festival is at the coliseum... kinda. The memorial coliseum is a huge indoor complex that can house concerts and other huge events including home and garden show and the like, but this festival is in the grassy area on the other side of the parking lot from the coliseum (close to the gravesite of Jonny Appleseed). They try to keep the event with a certain "period" feel with tents instead of booths, and all the vendors wearing "period" or close to "period" clothing. So the feel is that you are walking back in the the 1800's. So I knew that the festival was in the grassy area outside of the parking lot, what I found out is that the festival is spread out over a 4 square mile area, not in the flat area, but in a very hilly area with narrow passageways to different areas that hold anywhere from 6 to 30 tents. There are little areas of tents around these trees, and those trees. It was like a treasure hunt trying to find where the tent was my mom was working. We finally found a map at the information tent and after a few minutes of trying to figure out where we were we finally saw her tent. Trying to get there was a major pain in the ass, in a mass of humanity on narrow passageways, pushing a stoller, up and down hills in deep grass, sometimes carrying william in 80 degree weather... am I having fun yet? We get to the tent a few minutes after the time she was supposed to leave and of course she was gone. Damn. We found out later that she actually left alot earlier since she wasn't feeling that well. Maybe we should have told her we were coming, but we wanted to surprise her. So we tried to make the best of it walking around looking at the crafts and food tents trying to decide what to eat. We were going to buy food from mom's tent, but the line was too long. On another note, It just amazes me how stupid people are in walking around these festivals. It's bad enough trying to push a stroller through a crowd, but these idiots just stop in the middle of the crowd to look around, or they will walk backward looking at whatever and not paying attention to where they are going. I almost saw a fight right in front of me where this guy ran into anther guy because he wasn't paying attention. But hey we survived, we didn't buy anything crafty, but did end up spending almost $15 on crappy food that wasn't even filling. $2 popcorn, $4 funnel cake (they had funnel cake in the 1800's?) $5 bottle of root beer, $4 apple dumpling. Of course Jen and I got little to none of this food with the two human vacuum cleaners with us. Finally after 2 hours of walking around and fighting the crowd we decided to call it a day and made it back to the car. I seriously doubt that I will ever go back to this festival, or if I do it won't be until both kids can walk on their own the whole time. There were some cool parts to the festival. They had some neat reenactments, and a couple of drum and bugle corps bands that were fun to see and William seemed to enjoy that, so maybe, for the kids, I will go back again. There were some people from the "God squad" on the sidewalk giving away free bibles. I almost got one just to say I got something free from the festival.

Happy Anniversary

I just realized that this Saturday will be my one year anniversary for this blog. Man it's seems like I have been doing this a whole lot longer than one year. I know I am a relative newbie to blogs compared to monkeyjack and some others.

I have made 126 entries (127 counting this one) so far, and with pretty decent content. Some rambling and bitching, but overall entertaining I think.

How cool is that?

How cool is it that we can watch live TV from the space shuttle on the internet. The video is totally awesome. I have been watching them work on the international space station for the past couple of days. Not really watching, more like just having the window open and occasionally seeing what they are up to. It's just so cool to see live images. No longer do you have to count on network TV to cover what they are doing (when they feel like it), or see a 20 second blip on the news. Its nice to know that schools can have access to what they are doing whenever they want for educational purposes. The work they are doing is tedious so it's like watching paint dry or grass grow, but interesting non the less.

www.nasa.gov

Oh God that was funny!

A coworker just walked up to the copy machine and I came up behind him, going to another part of the building. I decided to stop and talk to him a minute, but he was standing in front of the copier with a puzzled look so I paused a minute and got real close behind him. I said, "what are you doing?" and scared the living crap out of him. He must have jumped at least a foot and probably gave himself whiplash turning his head. I laughed so hard I was almost on the floor. I am just lucky he didn't come out swinging or I would have really been on the floor. Lucky for me he found it just as humorous. I found out that he was actually trying to figure out a paper jam and trying to overhear a conversation from our boss in the next room, so he was distracted. I told him that's what he gets for eavesdropping.

Are they really worth 6%???

I am stuck proof reading Real Estate and Homes this week. We have to look over every page of this 400+ page book every other week to make sure have the correct pictures with the correct descriptions and look for typos. We used to retype all of the text on the pages, but we currently have this toy where we can just "flow" the text submitted by the realtor (from email or disc) into the ad. It's pretty bad but not uncommon to find a mistake that we typed in, but its amazing how bad the mistakes are that COME FROM THE REALTOR. I know they abbreviate stuff, but these mistakes are horrendous and could have been easily found if they would have just read it once before submitting it. I am not sure if the mistake comes from the realtor or from a secretary in the office, but dang. I am not sure if they don't care since they know we proof read it and they think we will find and correct their mistakes, but it just annoying that they couldn't take the 30 seconds to proof read their own crap. They are making all of the money from selling these houses!!! And of course the realtor will be the first one screaming for a refund if a mistake actually get published in the magazine. I would love to talk to these yahoos and give them the old G.I.G.O. discussion.

School Daze

William still has a speech delay. He talks a little bit where we can actually understand him, and we know he can understand us a little bit since when we ask him to do something he actually does it. We have been working on it for over a year now with speech therapy and other testing to see why he doesn't' speak. Doctors and specialists are almost certain that it isn't autism, just a speech delay. When he turned 3 years old he aged out of the free state sponsored program and then became the responsibility of the school system. After more meetings and testing (that Jen had to deal with for months) we finally decided to send him to two hours of school , 5 days a week. So far it's been just over a week and he still seems to like going and doesn't realize that it's school. I was so scared that when Jen dropped him off that there would be a meltdown (from both of them) or that he would wander off, or the million other things that a parent worries about when trusting your kid to the school system. Most parents don't have to deal with it at 3 years old with a child that doesn't speak, so terrified was an understatement. It's still a concern, but luckily it's a class with only 5 kids and at least two teachers so I feel a little better. Tonight we go to a "back to school night" so hopefully some more of my fears will be taken care of.

I feel lucky to have Jen since she has the "job" now of getting him to school every day (no way we are putting him on a bus) and arranging to pick him up with trying to fit in work every once in a while.

Bad Luck

My In-laws live on the north side of town. They actually almost live in Leo/Cedarville because they are so close. For some reason they get their haircuts from a barber/hair stylist on the south side of town. So basically they drive half an hour one way for their haircuts. They are loyal to their barber, I will have to give them that. I think that the barber moved to that end of town and that's why they drive all that way for a haircut. About a month ago they were getting their hair cut and decided to grab some lunch since they were on that end of town. They ended up going to Pizza Hut. Unfortunately an employee had hepatitis A which is highly contagious, so they both had to get shots to make sure they didn't catch the disease. Fortunately the tab for the shot was picked up by Pizza Hut. So, for something they have done every couple of months ends up getting them a possible contagious disease and shots. Bad Luck.

The kicker to the story is that they brought home leftovers that my brother in-law ended up eating, so he had to get a shot too, and he wasn't even there. Bad luck in a box.

Reality Check

I had one of those experiences this weekend that stops you dead in your tracks.....

I got a call from an old friend Saturday night. He told me that he had just heard that our class was having a class reunion in about half an hour, and that he just heard about it himself. Quick math on my part and figured 20 years, what?, Huh? no way!! 20 YEAR reunion. I actually paused and thought, "nooooo, it can't be that long", but yes it was. I was just going along in my life, happy as a clam, then WHAM... REALITY. Damn I am old.

I guess being in the phone book makes it real hard to get ahold of me or know what my address is. Not that I would have went anyway, but it would have been nice to have that option. I can imagine who was actually at this event over the weekend. The same click that hung out together in high school so I didn't really miss anything. I went to the 10 year reunion and we actually voted (as a class) never to have another reunion. Obviously someone didn't get the memo.

Monkeyjack works in the martix

A few days ago Scott posted a couple pictures of Keith on his blog and indicated that they worked in the matrix. Of course you know I couldn't leave those pictures alone...

Hope you are feeling better Keith!!! Love the leather !!!

Jeff's Move

Man what a day!! The morning started out with me trying my hardest to get to Jeff's apartment by 9:00am. But with kid wragling in the morning the family and I didn't actually make it there till almost 9:30. I was real worried that I was holding up the move and had people waiting for me, but when I pulled up I didn't see anybody. Then Jeff and MR came out of the apartment. Now I have been to Jeff's apartment once but that was about a year ago and I was thinking, "it's only a two bedroom apartment, how much stuff could there be?". I found out that he and Paula were able to get alot of stuff into that apartment. So the three of us proceeded to load up the truck, up and down a flight of stairs. Hello leg muscles. The funny thing is that the truck was getting real full but the apartment was still full of stuff, so the apartment was winning. I tried to stack stuff as high as possible, but I didn't want to break or scratch anything. About halfway through loading the truck I said that we would need two trips for all the stuff, so we decided how to best use the space available in the truck for the first load. Finally a couple more people showed up toward the end of the first load which was good since we were getting real tired and sweating so much that our shirts were pretty much drenched due to the heat and humidity.

The next part comes the washer and dryer cluster f***k. I will let Jeff tell the story about that, but pretty much in a nutshell. The delivery company delivered Jeff's new washer and dryer to the apartment by mistake and REFUSED to take it to their house which was less than a mile away. He kept saying that he couldn't go to another location, and that he had a schedule to keep. And my response was "you could have been there by now rather than arguing with Jeff". This guy was a toal asshole. I was real close to getting into it with this dick, but hey, it's not my washer and dryer so I figured that it was best to let Jeff take care of it. Found out later that it was the delivery company's mistake and not Jeff's, so they got their delivery fee returned along with another $50 from Sears. So if you buy from Sears, pick it up yourself.

The unload at the house went alot faster (like they do). There was alot of activity at the house when we showed up. People painting rooms, doing electrical work, replacing door locks, unloading pick up trucks, and kids running all over the place. I was thinking "where were all these hands for the loading?", but everyone actually had a job already so I was thankful to get help unloading. After a quick bite to eat we got the truck unloaded and headed back to the apartment for load #2. That load went alot faster with a few more hands as well as not as much stuff. It started to rain when we were leaving for the house, but it actually felt pretty good. Unload #2 went fast again with lots of hands to help. I was soaking wet with sweat and real tired so after load #2 I took the truck back and met with Jen and the kids for home. I felt kinda bad not staying around to see if I could help with other stuff, but I was pretty much spent, and there was already a bunch of people in the house. I am sure I would only get in the way. Another shower and then the comfy chair for the rest of the day.

Jeff and Paula's new home is a real nice place with a huge backyard. (you will have to ask him about the crop circle). I think they will enjoy this place for many years to come.

ENJOY HOME OWNERSHIP JEFF AND PAULA!!!

Night Golf II

Friday night was the second time I played in the Kiwaniis Night Time Golf Outing. This year I asked everyone I knew who played golf or knew what a golf ball looked like to play with me. Last year when I played I really didn't press anyone else to play with me since if it wasn't fun, I didn't want to be blamed, but I had a blast last year. This year's list was growing to around 6 to 8 people to play, but unfortunately it quickly died down to only 4 due to illness and other commitments that came up. My mom and I headed out to Lakeside golf course around 7:00pm. We got ourselves organized and grabbed some food. This year they kept it pretty simple with hotdogs, burgers, and brats with sides of beans and potatoes. The potatoes were simply delicious where they were kinda in between sliced and mashed with this fantastic cheese flavor. I had seconds and then thirds after we were done playing. Before we teed off they had a 50/50 drawing for cash. Now I usually don't enter these contests since I never win, but what the heck it's for charity and I had $5 burning a hole in my pocket. Of course I missed the winning number by only 2, but then realized that my cousin Marc had bought the next 5 tickets in the roll, so I ran inside and told him to look at his tickets and sure enough he had the correct number. He ended up winning $78 in the drawing. Lucky bugger. My friend Gina showed up a little later and we took upon the challenge of trying to find her a pull cart to rent at the golf course, but there weren't any available. I still find it hard to believe that at 7:30pm at night that all the rental pull carts were still on the course, but there was another night time golf outing going on at the same time on the par 3 course, so maybe. So we ended up throwing some of her clubs in mom's bag (already on a cart) and she played with some of my clubs on the course.

So with full tummy's.. OUT TO THE COURSE.

We started on #1 hole which is good since we didn't have to walk far to our first hole to tee off (shotgun start all over the course). Since the advent of daylight savings I wasn't sure if it would be dark enough on the first couple of holes to see the lighted golf, but it was just perfect time of the day to just see them. Gina and Marc hit their drives pretty safe on the left side of the fairway and then it became my time to hit. First hit of the year for me sad to say, no practice, no bucket of balls beforehand. I hit the ball very well and then noticed the ball start to curve for a nasty slice heading for the ONLY FREAKING WATER ON THE COURSE. 3...2...1.... spashdown. Son of a biscuit. So I was close to the clubhouse and decided to grab another ball before heading down the fairway. I had to pay $8 for another ball and glowstick. Of course my luck I actually ended up finding my ball on the edge of the water after already "activating" the new glowing ball. It took me a couple of holes to get warmed up, but I finally started hitting the ball pretty well. All of the team had good shots and bad shots.

You never really know what the weather will be out on the course, but it ended up being a very humid and warm night. Unlucky for mom and Gina who wore long pants and long sleeved shirts who were very hot the whole round. They were expecting a mosquito attack on the course, but I think all night only one mosquito buzzed my head. It took around 3 holes for the beer cart to find us, but lucky for us they were never far from us after that. I could have really used some water instead of beer for the heat, but the beer was just as tasty. I was a little concerned since we seemed to play alot faster than the group in front of us, so we had to pause a couple times to make sure we didn't hit our balls into the group in front of us. They were really hard to see. Toward the end of the round we were all getting pretty tired and had a few drinks in us, so we started hooping and hollering whenever we hit a halfway decent shot. That was fun.

We finished playing and went back inside the clubhouse to wait for everyone else on the course to come back in so we could count up all the scores and see who "won". It was already after midnight when we headed for the clubhouse. I don't remember it being that late, but that might be due to a later tee time due to daylight savings. As we waited for the rest of the groups to come in we ended up having leftover hamburgers and potatoes. Overall results for the night is that our group came in 2 over par and in second place in the mixed groups (missed by one stroke) and we ended up winning some door prizes. Everyone in our group had a real fun time and I think I can count on them comming out next year for sure, and hopefully get some more friend out there too. I finally got home at 1:00am not looking forward to getting up the next morning to move Jeff (yawn). That's the next story.....

You are freaking kidding me

Every once in a while I wish I was a police officer. Not necessarily because I would actually want that job, but more for people always doing stupid things in front of me. Since a real cop never actually is around I would love to be able to pull people over. This is my story:

I am going home yesterday and I get off I-469 and try to turn left onto Maplecrest Rd. I have to stop at the offramp and wait to cross the lanes of traffic. Some times I sit there for a few seconds and sometimes its a few minutes since I have to try and cross 4 lanes of traffic going 50 mph (at least) going both ways. So I am waiting and finally see my opportunity, but then this punk on a crotch rocket comes flying up the road to my right. And he is really giving it some gas and winding it out. This is one of those times when I wish I were a cop to nail this yahoo. But then I look to my left and see a plain white Chevrolet Impala. Could it be? Could it be? YES IT'S A COP!!! JUSTICE I SAY. SOMETIMES WE WIN!! This cop in the unmarked police car quickly slows down in front of me and I am thinking that he is going to do a quick U-turn and nail that little s.o.b. NO, cop does an illegal left turn onto the 469 on-ramp, ignoring the motorcycle. WTMFH? I actually threw my hands up and yelled at the cop, but to no avail. I just had to shake my head. I know he probably has other stuff to do then nail kids on crotch rockets, or he wasn't on duty, but I was so expecting to see some read and blue lights. Sigh

A little something for MR

USB BBQ

I thought with MR's job and his love of Steak that he could possibly use this at work. And there is video of it working.. kinda

"This is one hell of a mod. Using 30 USB ports spread out over five USB PCI cards, this barbeque was created. The PC is still functional, too. Enjoy cooking a 1 ounce steak on that tiny grill—and no, I don't have a damn clue what they are trying to cook in the picture and video. It looks like a piece of bacon, but who the hell BBQs bacon like that? Hit the jump for the video. – Travis Hudson

Click this link to see the Video

Memories

Every once in a while you come upon a smell or sound that reminds you of your childhood. A couple days ago William got out some play-doh. Now I haven't really had a chance to play with, or be around play-doh for quite a number of years, but as soon as I opened the little plastic jar, the smell of the play-doh brought back alot of memories. The smell was exactly as I remember it 30 years ago as well as the texture of the doh. The same texture that stuff had from years ago was kinda comforting (in a mental health sort of way). In these days of everyone trying to "improve" stuff, it's good to know that some things are just the same way they were ... and there isn't anything wrong with that.

We came.....We Saw..... We kicked it's ASS !!!!

(Title from Ghostbusters)

Another marathon session from myself and my father-in-law has finally finished the monster swingset/playset. Overcast skies made the forecast for Saturday look bad, but we decided to go for it. We started working on it around 11:00am or so dragging out the tools and stuff that we would need. I still had to make many trips to the garage to grab the pieces and parts as we needed them which sucked, but it was better than getting everything out there and then having it rain on us. Yes I know "who cares if the pieces get wet, it's a freaking outdoor swingset!!". But I liked to keep that parts separated so we didn't have to worry about using the wrong pieces.

I gave my father-in-law an option a couple times during the day to stop working, but he got into the "lets finish it" mindset, which was fine with me. Jenny unfortunately had to work during the day so our "hardware separator" was unavailable for the day (which made the day longer), but my mother-in-law was able to watch the kids during the day which was nice. Finally as it was getting dark (around 8:30pm) we put in the last screws and bolts. The clean-up was quick where we just threw everything into the wheel barrow and threw it into the garage.

Jenny and her mom had ordered Riverbend Pizza. So with muscles aching, and a cold beer in my hand, I ate my pizza. The next day it felt good to look outside and see the completed project. I would never have thought that it would have turned out so well. I hope that my boys get years of enjoyment out of it.

Anybody wanna buy a rock???

As noted in my blog before, I am in the process of some pretty big landscaping projects including the removal of a couple tons of flagstone rocks. The pile of rocks is getting bigger and bigger with only being about halfway done. Now I have plenty of offers from friends to help me get rid of these stones (for free of course) to their own houses and projects, but I decided to see if I could make a little money for mulch and other projects. Now I know that these stones aren't cheap and that people pay big money for landscaping projects, so I figure some landscaping company would be more than happy to get these stones off my hands. Cha-ching!!

So far I have called 5 landscaping companies and no one will buy these stones or know of anywhere that will. This one place actually recommended that I take them to the landfill to get rid of them (yeah right). I guess that I didn't realize that once these stones were in the ground that they aren't good anymore.. they're freaking stone!!!!! I am still trying to figure out why someone wouldn't buy the stone because they are "used". I can see they wouldn't want to bother if I only had a couple stones or a small pile, but these piles are a couple ton at least (so far). I have found out that these rocks sell for .20 - .25 cents per pound. I would be happy for .10 a pound if they came and picked them up (I don't deliver a ton of rock). I have one more message into a landscape company that might be interested, but if not, then a sign goes on the pile in the front of my house or in the peddlers post. Used Rock : Driven only on Sunday : Stored outside : Etc, etc. So far my neighborhood has proven to be a hotbed of getting rid of stuff including an old frige that lasted a week, and a dishwasher that lasted an hour, (of corse they were free). I think the rocks are next.

Yes I am Crabby

The poison ivy has made me a little edgy and crabby the past couple of days since it is continuing to spread and nothing was keeping it in check. I decided to go to the doctor for some real stuff.

I have had this before... numerous times, so I know what cures it. I call the doctor's office and try to get an appointment just for a shot of Cortisone and a prescription for some topical medicine. I tell the nurse how bad it is and she tells me that I should probably see the doctor. Damn #1, there's a wasted hour even with a specific appointment. My doctor has 5 rooms in his practice so he is always behind in time. I get to the doctors and have to fill out paperwork since I hadn't been there in 9 months, and then finally called back. They take my height and weight at the office before going into room #5. Now I have weighed myself at home and actually have been loosing some weight due to the manual labor of cutting sod and working on landscaping so I am wondering if I have lost anymore from the last time. She says how much I weigh (none of your business) and I say, "excuse me... there is no way". This is where I find out that our scale at home is off at least 10 lbs, and not in my favor. Damn #2. So I am depressed a little bit. The wait for the doctor was relatively short I think due to the fact that I was the last appointment of the day and he wanted to get outta there. So he looks me over and says, "yep, that's a bad case of poison ivy" (No Sh*t Sherlock, what was your first clue) so he prescribes some medicine and I talk him into letting me get the topical cream as well. I just spent about an hour there for something that I could have done in 5 minutes with a nurse's aide. So I head out of there and head for the pharmacy, keeping in mind that Jenny's boss asked her to come back into work for a little bit that night so I am trying to get home as soon as possible. The pharmacy is not that busy for 6:30pm at night. I drop off my prescriptions and wander Walgreens. I actually like to wander Walgreens to see all of the cool stuff, toys for the kids, seasonal decorations, and of course the Halloween Candy (shudder). They told me it would be around 10 to 15 minutes which isn't too bad. So after a little wandering I decide to sit down next to the checkout counter and wait. Finally, after a while, they start calling names for prescriptions that are ready to be picked up, which starts forming a very long line with only one person checking people out. My name gets called and I get in line. Of course my luck, everyone in front of me has some sort of freaking problem. One guy pulls up his SHOPPING CART full of stuff to pick up a prescription. WTF? Damn #3. How sad is it that you do your weekly shopping in the Walgreens waiting for your prescription. I am sorry, but if you have that much crap go up to the regular checkout that doesn't have a line of people waiting. This is alot like the reason I don't go into gas stations (or so called "convienence" stores) anymore (I pay at the pump) I will get stuck behind the one yahoo buying lottery tickets and has to hand pick every one separately, and scratch them off right there too!! I don't mind buying one or two items with prescription, but please. Anyway the next person in line has a few items as well, but it isn't a shopping cart full so I figure it will go relatively fast. NO, she swears the the Disney kite that she has is on sale for $1.49 instead of the $1.99 so the person has to call for a price check which of course no one answers. Damn #4. I almost offered her .50 cents to leave. So after a few minutes the clerk takes the 40' walk to the toy isle and sees that it is on sale. Now the next person in line goes into this speech about how his insurance is different, but his wife is on the account but hers is alright, etc. etc. etc. Damn #5. Why the heck didn't he solve this problem when he dropped off his prescription to the girl at the unbusy counter????? Next lady in line goes to pay for her prescription, but doesn't want the generic, so they have to try and find all the paperwork again and see if they have non-generic. Damn #6. Finally I get up to the counter, give them my name, pay for it and leave. I almost said to everyone else in line "see how freaking easy that is??"

Finally I rush home after being at the pharmacy for over an hour only to find out that Jenny's boss changed his mind and decided not to have her come in after all, so I didn't need to rush. Damn #7. Jenny could have told me that an hour before but my phone's battery died. Damn #8.

BUT, I have my medicine and I am feeling better and a little less crabby... Believe it or not.

Manual Labor S**ks

I took this weekend to beat up on myself and see how much my body could actually take. I think I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

Saturday I got a sense if determination and decided that I was going to work on my Sod cutting project for the swingset/playground. I got an early start in the day and thought that I would get as much done this weekend as possible so we could start assembly of the monster swingset next weekend. Much to my surprise I was able to get all of the sod cut up and reassembled to different parts of the yard on Saturday. Much in my favor was that it never got much above 75 degrees all day so it was easier to work outside than in the 90+ degree stuff that I had done a few weekends ago. Yeah I looked like a goof in my ratty shorts and no shirt with a headband on (sweat was getting in my eyes and on my glasses) but I got the job done. Jenny worked Saturday night so I spent the rest of the day resting and playing with kids.

Sunday we decided to start on the swingset which was extremely slow starting. All of the lumber is in the garage (sorted out) so I had to carry pieces to the back yard. I would get all of the lumber needed for a step or two in the instructions. Making the going slow was the fact then Jenny had to take care of Andrew and I found myself stopping numerous times because William was "helping" me or he wanted something. He also got bit by a wasp and was crying and screaming for a while until he finally calmed down. His hand swelled up a little bit (poor kid)Finally my mom showed up to watch the kids and Jenny helped me by sorting the hardware. She would have the hardware that I needed for the step I was working on ready to go which made things go a ton faster. We moved along pretty good and by the time we decided to stop for the night it was almost 7:00pm and we had put a good 10 hours into the project for the day. I think we are on step 22 of 96. It actually kinda looks like a swingset, but there are more days of hardwork ahead, and I am not half as sore as I thought I would be. Either I am getting used to the hard labor or the stuff Sunday wasn't so hard, just long (so to speak)

The most annoying part of the weekend is that I got freakin' poison Ivy. Now when I get poison Ivy I don't just get a little itchy spot, it gets in my blood and spreads all over the place and takes forever to get rid of. I usually go to the doctor for some cortisone, but lately the over the counter stuff has worked pretty good if I get on it soon enough. So I am spreading cream all over my arms trying to knock it down. The strange part is that I have no idea where I got the poison Ivy from since I wasn't in any woods or anything. I am thinking that one of my tools (rake or shovel) has poison Ivy on it, so I will be getting out everything that I came in contact with in the past week and scrubbing it down. Dang it..