Field Trip

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

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

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

Happy Birthday Andrew

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

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

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

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

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

mom story continued

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

Funny Funny Funny

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

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

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

Maybe it't time to hang out with the Protestants

Man it's been tough lately for my Catholic "Friends". I had to put the "friends" in quotes since they are people that I know pretty well, but wouldn't be in the core friends that I email every once in a while and try and get together with.


The first friend is Matt Kelty. Yeah he is the guy in the firestorm of the mayor's race. I met Matt at a "Christ Renews is Parish" retreat weekend at St. Judes. First he was with me as a member of the team and then when we hosted the weekend for other guys, so we hung out for about a year on and off. Matt is a great guy that knows his stuff and is very personable. For those of you who attended my wedding he did one of the reading during the mass. Not being a member of St. Jude's Church I had unfortunately fallen out of contact with Matt and all of the other guys in my group. I contacted him when I found out he was running for mayor and got a very nice response to my e-mail. The only thing that I worried about was that nice of a guy entering the world of politics, and I was pretty much right. He is getting grilled in the media pretty good right now, and I can't say for sure whether I believe it or not, but I think he did make a mistake with the campaign contributions and I think it's going to bite him in the butt in November, which is a shame since I think Matt would be a pretty good mayor even with his lack of experience. I still think he might have a chance at getting elected, but this is going to hang over him even if he does.

The second one gives me the heebie geebies. I have played volleyball for about 7 years now on Sunday night at St. Judes. (St. Judes again, maybe there is something in the holy water). I became good friends with most of the die hard group that played every week. There was about 6 of us that would get together outside of volleyball and play cards or have parties. Once again I fell out of contact with these people and stopped playing volleyball a couple years ago due to too much kids stuff to deal with on Sunday nights, and just being a lazy butt. One of the group was a girl named Michelle. She was a little strange, but a very nice person. She was a teacher and dealt alot with special needs kids, which you know takes a special kind of person. I thought I heard her name mentioned on the radio a few weeks ago, but figured that I heard wrong or someone else with the same name. I soon found out the story about what I heard. She took care of a special needs boy and was good friends with the family. I found out that she had molested the 15 year old brother of the special needs boy, and became pregnant with the 15 year olds' baby. WTF? This is the kind of thing you would read about in the paper happening in Kentucky or something. She had the baby a couple of months ago and the parent of the 15 year old found out. I haven't heard lately about charges against her or going to jail, but it's still haunting that I knew this person pretty well and that she would do something like that. I would be curious to reach out to her to make sure that she is alright, but this is one that it's probably better just to stay out of it and just pray for her and her baby. But how do you put your mind around something like that? Later I recalled that she went to the prom with the special needs boy which I thought was due to the fact that he was special needs and probably couldn't get a date, but now it makes me wonder.

Fun weekend

This weekend Jen didn't have to work at all so we decided to have some fun with the boys. Saturday we got the crew together and decided to go to the zoo, but on the way we decided to go to the Solomon Farm for a festival thing. The Solomon farm is an old farm on Dupont road. I believe that until recently it was a private farm, but I have heard this year they are open every Wednesday for a farmers market kind of thing. We decided to be adventurous and try it out. Overall it wasn't too bad of a thing. Pretty small event but there was a ton of people around. Mostly it was looking at old tractors and farm stuff with hayrides or should I say strawrides. There was a huge line for two food vendors. We spent the majority of the time at the petting tent. The boys got a chance to pet all of the animals that they read about and really seemed to enjoy that. After hanging out there for about an hour we headed for the zoo. St. Francis college was having an event so there was a huge crowd there. We basically hit the high points of the zoo. This is where I find out that William has developed a fear of public toilets. I guess he was scared by an automatic flush toilet last week and now he is paranoid. I knew he had to pee, but I couldn't get him to go a couple of times that I tried. (I finally had to force him on a toilet at the mall, hopefully that's the end of it) I took William to ride the horses and then both boys on the merry-g0-round. We were all able to ride the train also. For the boys it was there first time on the train, and for Jen and me it was the first time in ALOT of years. I remember the train being alot roomier back then, and I also remember it being a longer ride where you could actually see some of the animals. Now it's just a quick trip to the pond and back. It was cool, but nothing like I remembered. After the zoo and a quick trip to the mall we decided to go home and get dinner. As soon as we hit the door at home the boys wanted food, so much for planning something. So we put together a quick dinner of hotdogs and chips for the boys and Jen and I wondered what to do for dinner ourselves, which anymore is quite the ordeal. Run to the store and pick up something to eat? Eat fast food? Order something?...finally I had an idea. How about getting grandma to watch the kids while we go on a date? I could see immediately that Jen liked that idea. So a quick call to grandma Diane and we headed out the door only to meet the next decision... where to go? In our earlier discussions the name Texas Roadhouse came up a few times and I liked that since we hadn't been there in a while. We pull up to the restaurant to see people sitting outside which is nothing new for a Saturday night at 6:30pm in this town. We get inside and see a 60 -70 minute wait. Crap. But the hostess offers, "if you can find a seat at the bar you can get served right away" so we decide to give that a try, and sure enough there were a couple of seats at the bar I know it's not that romantic to sit at a bar and watch Notre Dame get creamed on a date, but neither is waiting an hour for a table when you are hungry. So we both had a nice meal and it wasn't too bad sitting there. After paying out bill and talking about what to do next they announce our names at the hostess table that our table is now ready. Oops forgot to take our name off the waiting list. We ended up the date at Menards looking at shelving for the basement.
Sunday we got up and headed to church. Church ends up usually being a feeding frenzy for both boys with us bringing cereal and water, but hey it keeps them contented for the most part. After church we went to Grandma and Grandpa's for lunch. After we had lunch, Jen and I headed out with Tom's truck while the grandparents watched the boys. We went home and looked at the furnace room and then headed over to Menards to buy shelving for the basement. We decided to buy this wood shelving system that is going to require a little more work on my end as well as my father in law cutting some plywood for me. After that home and bathtime for the boys. Overall a pretty fun weekend with only one hiccup of William waking up Sunday morning and not going back to sleep for a couple of hours. I tell you it's dangerous when Jen doesn't work on the weekend since we usually end up spending money, but at least it was fun.

Random Randomness

A couple things lately that have kinda bothered me a little bit and I thought I would vent a little bit.

The new Journal Gazette paper format - I finally got a chance this week to see the new smaller format from their new press. I am not a real big fan of it. I guess it's just a thing of where you get used to something for 40 years of your life and it's just strange and hard to get used to. Either that and I am an old fart that doesn't like change. I am sure I will get used to it eventually.

The bigger gripe is our dinning adventure on Wednesday night. A while back I found out this neat little thing that ONE Pizza Hut offered. There was a small building behind their restaurant on E. State Street. In this little shop you could pull up, pay $5 for a large peperoni or sausage PRE-MADE pizza, maybe a couple bucks for bread sticks that is pre-made and ready to go. Last time it was maybe 3 minutes and I was heading home with my pizza. Wednesday I decided to do it again since we needed to eat for cheap and fast since it was near the boys' dinner time. I pull up to the little shop and locked... crap. I look over and their signs say that the $5 is available in the drive-through, crap. Since I was already out of my car and 20 feet away from the restaurant I decided to pop in a grab the pizza. Of course it was 5:30pm on a pizza buffet night in the restaurant so it was very busy. I finally get up to the counter after 5 min and give her my order of one pizza and two breadsticks (with 8 breadsticks being more than the large pizza, so much for cheap). I had to wait at least 10 minutes for them to make a pizza and heat my breadsticks. I almost asked why they did away with the CONVENIENT store across the parking lot but decided to get going since I am sure the kids were chewing the trim work at home. I am sure there was a thing about the "freshness" of the pizza or a labor cost thing. $5 is a good price for pizza hut pizza, but definitely not worth driving 10 min to E. State, waiting for the pizza, and then driving 10 min home to let it get cold. On the way home I noticed that Marcos and Papa Johns had $5 larges too and much closer to the house. I prefer Pizza Hut pizza of all of them, but lately I have had to stress the "for cheap" aspect. We will see the next time.

The third thing is when Jen and I were at her doctors appointment Wednesday. After her exam the nurse practitioner asked if we had any questions. I commented that I couldn't think of anything else that she had mentioned. The nurse says, "oh you mean complained about". No I meant "mentioned". I don't need a nurse to get me into trouble. I can do that all on my own thank you.

Picture Time

(Side view with baby head to the right)

Jen and I went to her first ultrasound for the new baby. We took William with us so he could see how there was a baby in mommy's tummy. Also so maybe he will stop crawling all over Jen like he does to me or at least understand why he can't crawl on mommy's tummy. Of course William was a little hesitant going into the exam room because usually if it is him and us, he usually ends up getting poked and prodded ending with a shot, but as soon as he realized that we weren't there because of him he loosened up a little bit. I think he enjoyed seeing the ultrasound being done and now when he sees the ultrasound pictures he will say "baby in mommy's tummy". Of course he still calls Andrew "Baby", but the will probably change now. Ultrasounds are very interesting in everything that they can see in the baby. They have a 3-D feature that she turned on, but the baby didn't look that defined just yet. With the first two boys we didn't want to find out the sex of the baby and be surprised, but we decided to go ahead and find out with this one. (of course we "decided" on the way into the exam room). aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnddddddddddd it going to be another boy. (Sorry mom, I tried to take a little off of it to give you that girl but just wasn't able.) I would have liked to have a little girl, but I now have "boy" experience and I wouldn't know how to handle "girl" stuff. So now the work begins on moving kids around and repainting rooms. And also the task of picking out a name, but at least now we know we only have to work on picking out a boys name rather than one of each.

(view from below)

The arrow pointing to his "boyness" was NOT put there by me in case you people were getting ready to yell at me. Maybe I should pixilate the image to make it family friendly. Of course I am not sure if you can actually tell what it is anyway.

We so need to get this for MR

I think we should all pitch in and buy this 6 foot inflatable homage to "A Christmas Story" for MR and his Halloween/Christmas Parties. (More Detail HERE) What better to celebrate both holidays than with 6 feet of "electric sex in the front window". I am sure the neighbors would LOVE to see this in the front yard from October through December.

I found this on a new website I came across "Things You Never Knew Existed". It's a pretty neat site with lotsa junk, but ALOT of it I already knew it existed or I have seen before. But still fun nonetheless.

The Mind Boggles.. which isn't saying much for me

So yesterday Jen and her parents took the boys down to Indy for a doctors appointment for Andrew and to visit relatives. So no kids or wife when I get home until at least 9:00pm, so I can do whatever I want. WHATEVER I WANT. The mind boggles. Usually when I get home from work there is kids to play with while Jen gets dinner ready while we talk about the day's events. If I want to try and get anything done, without "help", I have to wait until after bedtime which puts starting projects around 9:00 or 9:30 (or wait for the weekends) since the bedtime routine is taking longer and longer. YES I caved with putting William down to bed. I now will sit in the room until he goes to sleep, which luckily isn't very long. I stopped sitting in the room a while back, but it was at least an hour battle of him getting out of bed numerous times and sitting in the hallway with me going up and down the stairs constantly. So I figured me sitting there for 10 minutes beats the hell out of an hour of yelling at him, him crying and waking up the other one, threatening him and going up and down stairs. ANYWAY..... what to do? I figured one thing would be to grab something to eat, but where? I could go anywhere... Fast food? nah not that special of a thing. Sit down restaurant? nah I would feel kinda strange eating by myself. Go nostalgic and hit the Atz's for dinner at the counter? nah the kids might actually enjoy that. Run down to Coney Island? nah to far. I decide to decide later. The first thing that I did when I got home to the empty house was get some stuff done. I got the grass cut and put antifreeze in the jeep. Next I installed a light in the basement. For some reason the previous owner installed one light in the basement, but put a box in the ceiling for a second light on the other side of the room that was wired and ready for a light. The weird part is that they had the second light that matched the first one sitting on a shelf in the garage when we moved in, so I am not sure why they would take the time to install the electrical and box (including a cover) but not install the light, but I have stopped asking why a long time ago. Anyway the install went pretty fast and it actually works. While getting some light bulbs I found a replacement part for the freezer that Jen had bought months ago that I totally forgot about so that was also a project that I knocked out. After finishing that I decide that it's time to get something to eat. I decide to run to a few stores looking for a new light jacket and hopefully get inspired by the many restaurants in the area. My current light jacket has seem better days and bears the logo of the company I worked at 2 years ago. I hit Meijer, Walmart, and Target and no jacket and no food inspiration. All of the stores have little to no jacket selection at all or at least nothing that I would be caught dead in. So it's getting to be around 7:30 and figure it's time to eat. I am in the Target parking lot and think that I will just "bag the bell" and head for home, but then inspiration hits.... taco bell... Mexican.... food..... BANDITOS!!!!! I like their food and I can get it to go, so I run over there and order my usual... to go. I get home and stuff myself on chips, salsa and a Pollo Bandito and watch the usual crap on TV. I was close to putting in a movie, but I figure the family would be home soon. Around 9:30 the garage door opens and I go out to haul in two sleeping boys only to find two wide awake boys in the back of bumpa's car. I can tell it has been a long day for the grandparents. So we put the kids to bed, had a quick discussion of the days events, and fell asleep in front of the TV. It's kind of strange how I feel when no one is there when I get home or when the kids were at grandmas for the night. It just doesn't feel normal, and that's probably why I had such a hard time figuring out what to do. There is a freedom that I feel, but at the same time an emptiness for me. Whoa, did it just get deep in here?

Why do they keep tempting me like this????????

Introducing the newest ipod. It's the ipod touch or as I call it the itouch. It's basically the iphone without the phone part (thus without the extra $60 a month charge) It's either 8 or 16 gig of music, video, and pictures starting at $300. Also the itouch includes a wifi interface that can pick up wifi and display true websites. All the features of the iphone are on the itouch including using your fingers to scroll through covers of albums and pinching the screen to zoom in and out. Such a cool toy. Also improved was the ipod nono that now includes a video screen for the same price as the old one.

Would I like to have one?..... hell yeah

Do I need one?....................nope

Can I afford it?..................hell no

I look at the practicality of having one of those things and it really doesn't make sense. Nowadays the only time I spend listening to my music is the 45 minutes it takes me to cut the grass and my old tapeplayer walkman comes in real handy for that time, including my old Rush "show of hands" cassette tape. I can't even imagine when I would use the video or picture features unless I had alot of time to sit around or go places, and with 2.5 kids that aint happening. Much like the shoqbox mp3 player that I bought, I hardly ever use it, but at only $30 I could justify that purchase. So another toy to look at and drool over, I wonder where the technology will be at when my kids are teenagers.

More info: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

The Legend.....

I can say that it was my extreme pleasure that I knew and worked with a Legend, Bob Sievers. Bob passed away last monday at 90 years old. In my 7 years of working at WOWO I didn't get the chance to work with Bob every day, but I did have quite a few times of working with him when he would visit the station or attend an event. One such event is when WOWO was doing a remote at an airshow at Bear Field. Bob loved planes so he was attending the show and stopped by the Sunshine Studio to say hello. Bob was asked to be the DJ while (the late) Gary Noe took a cordless microphone up in a plane. At the time I was only the guy who drove the Sunshine Studio and worked the buttons so I was never on the air, but while I was telling Bob what was going on he put a mic in front of me and he and I ended up doing a play by play withBob with Gary up in the plane. So I can say I was on-air with Bob. I had other opportunities to visit with Bob and talk to him when he attended numerous Penny Pitch events. Every time Bob talked, everyone around would listen to every word because it was usually something very interesting. When the studios were still downtown (203 W. Wayne) I always knew that Bob had been to visit Chris Underwood overnights or Chris Roberts early in the morning because there would be a small paper bag with one Power's hamburger in it on the break room table. Of course by the time we got to the office the bag was almost translucent due to the amount of grease in one of those burgers.
I was greatly saddened by the loss of Bob. I had a chance to meet up with him and Ron Gregory in the past year for lunch a few times but could never work out the time off which I now regret. I attended the late viewing for Bob and was able to visit with some other former WOWO employees and we had a very good time telling our stories about Bob. I probably will never go back into radio ever again, but it's nice knowing that I had a chance to work with a Legend and at a time when radio was about fun and family and not the money grubbing machine it is now. I hope that the local PBS station continues to run the radio specials with Bob and the other legends every once in a while, since it definitely puts a smile on my face.

RIP MR. WOWO

Mosquito (Labor) Day weekend

Overall a good mixture of Labor and relaxation for this 3 day weekend.

Saturday: After a stellar 3 hours of sleep (see previous story) I woke up Saturday wide awake, yeah right. Jen had to work so I pretty much just hung out with the boys and played and watched TV. After putting Andrew down for his nap I decided to make some Cookies and brownies for the Clymer family fish fry on Sunday. I attempted Carrie's cookie recipe for a second time with the proper ingredients and proportions and they turned out much better. Of the three dozen cookies I took up Sunday, none of them made it back. And once again everyone was surprised that I baked them. Yes I have some skills. The Brownies were from a recipe that I found on-line that looked very simple to assemble. The recipe was from a store called Jungle Jim's in Cleveland (yes Carrie I know you have been there) that looks very interesting and I might have to go visit if I ever get down that way or if I can talk them into selling Kalik. I was real careful with the brownie recipe and tried to follow it to the letter. It looked good going into the pan, and it said on the recipe in very bold letters DO NOT OVER BAKE. So with a cook time of 25-30 minutes, I of course throw it in for 30. I was used to putting the cookies in for longer than the suggested time. Well I pull it out after 30 minutes and there is a 6 inch bulge in the middle of the brownies. It looked like something you would see on the Beverly Hillbillies. After cooling down the bulge went down a little bit and I cut the brownies up and they tasted like crap. Yep I overcooked them, but hey at least I have the cookies for tomorrow. This was also the start of the mosquito onslaught of the weekend. William left the door to the garage open a minute and let in a ton of mosquito's. This was only the start of many run in's with mosquitoes all weekend.

Sunday we got the crew together and headed up for the Clymer family fish fry at the in-laws camper. We tried to leave early, but ended up waiting for Jen's friend Tracy and her boys to follow us up. We finally got up there around noon and spent the day visiting and eating. My father in law and his brother take their positions in the back of the camp area and start up there skillets and spend the next hour or so cooking all the fish they spent the past year catching. Usually there is a group to batter and season the fish so all Tom and Ken have to do is cook them. They try alot of different spices and flavorings on the fish which make for a delicious choices in the fish. Again there was a ton of food and it was all very good. I took William and Tracy's boys fishing off the dock for a little bit and every one of them ended up catching one very small fish apiece after drowning alot of worms. Nothing like hooks flying past your head as 3 kids try to cast their lines on the same dock at different times. After feeding the fish we all went down swimming. We ended up swimming for a couple of hours. I was staying close to William since he is usually afraid of the water, but for some reason wasn't Sunday. Andrew of course is the daredevil and went straight for the 10 foot slide in the water. We got back to the camper and started the feast. No, not us eating, but BEING eaten by mosquitoes. We grabbed a quick bite (so to speak) and loaded the boys up and took off for home.

Monday Jen had to work again and mom was having a party at her house in the afternoon to celebrate Dan being home for good. I dropped the boys off at Grandma's early in the afternoon to get some stuff done around the house. It's so much easier to get grass cut and the family room steam cleaned without help. I headed back to mom's around 4:00 and spent the rest of the day visiting with mom and chasing down kids. Around 5:00 Dan,Rhonda,Alta, and Lynn show up and the pandelerium starts :)... Mom is trying to put together the food, Alta is trying to help her, Dan is trying to put together Pina Coladas (home-made) all at the same time in the kitchen, it was kinda crazy. I just stayed out of the way sipping my beer (Sam Adams.. very tasty). Oh and also in the middle of the pandelium in the Kitchen the handle on the microwave mysteriously broke so Uncle Dave was trying to fix it at the same time :). The food was very good and we had a good time visiting with everyone. All of the activity had to stay inside due to the mosquitoes outside. Andrew went outside for a few minutes and was covered with bites. Around 8:00 they boys were getting real cranky so I headed for home to get them a bath and then in bed.

So overall it was a pretty good mixture of getting some stuff done but having some time to relax a little bit. Of course the fact that I am finally getting to write about this on Friday tells you the kind of week that I came back to at work, but hey at least it's a short week.

Night Golf III

Friday: Night Golf III - I showed up to Lakeside around 8:00. There wasn't much of a crowd there yet which kinda surprised me, but I thought maybe I was just a bit early. I was talking to my mom and the organizers of the golf and found out that the number of people was going to be down this year (5 foursomes) due to moving the outing from last Friday (due to rain) to this Friday (Labor day weekend). My cousin Marc was the only friend that was available to play this year, so we ended up getting paired with two other guys who weren't part of a team. The one guy was the organizer of the outing who was a dentist and named Phil, so we spent the night calling him Dr. Phil. I grabbed a plate and headed for the food (after grabbing a beer). This year was supposed to be catered food from Ceruti's so I figured it would be very tasty, but it ended up being pretty bland. There was Salisbury steak, chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes with ham that had not flavor at all. But hey the night isn't about the food, it's just there to soak up the beer. They had some soft rolls that were delicious so I ate quite a few of those. I was surprised to see the sun going down in the middle of eating and it was totally dark by 9:00. I don't remember it being that dark last year. The weather was perfect with cool temperatures in the low 60's with a heavy kind of dewy night. So after taking a bath in bug spray we headed out to the course. The front 9 was still a little rough from all of the rain the past week so we ended up playing the back 9 which is new for me. The front 9 is totally different from the back since the fairways are wide open and there are par 5's and 3's. The back 9 is alot more narrow with tight fairways and a creek going along most of the holes. Almost all of them are par 4's. Stepping up to the first tee, it was again fun to see what kind of game you are going to play with the glowing little ball. All 4 of us put the ball straight on the fairway. Barry had one of those big drivers, and when he hit the ball you would hear this ear piercing "Clink" whenever he drove the ball. The nature of the glowing balls is that they don't fly as far or as accurate as regular balls which is probably good. You have to trust the yardage on the course. If the little steak says you are 100 yards out then you probably are. Depth perception of where you see the flag is never true. Overall I hit pretty well all night. I put a few in the trees, but lucky for me the glowing balls were easy to find. Another member of our team actually hit the glowstick out of the ball on one drive. We found the ball but had to replace the glowstick a few holes later. About halfway through the round we got to an area that was pretty open and we could see the moon rising up. It had been total pitch black dark then this huge full moon came up. The last half of the round was pretty lit on the course..the course not me. I borrowed my mom's pull cart so I wouldn't have to carry my bag, but it was a pain to keep track of my beer, so I will have to figure something out for next year where I can use the pull cart and mount the can coosie on the cart somewhere. We played a pretty quick round and didn't have to wait for the group in front of us or get pressure from behind which is a relaxing way to play. We got back to the clubhouse and the brought the food out again and I just had some more rolls. I found out halfway through the round that Dr. Phil wasn't actually writing down the score on the card, but just trying to remember how many over or under par we were. He thought we pared every hole but I thought we were one under par (thinking about it later I think he was right). We ended up tying for first place, but actually placed second with a backup scoring system. I got my little prize and headed for home around 12:30am which isn't too bad. But the story doesn't end there. As soon as I get home and in bed Andrew wakes up and does his 3 hour "I'm awake" thing so I didn't get to bed until around 4:00 or so. Of course William comes strolling into the bedroom at 7:30 wide awake. Sigh. But again it was a total blast on the course and I will be playing every year that I am able to do it. I usually put away some Christmas money specifically to play in this outing. I keep telling my friends and some year they will be enlightened like my friend Gina and cousin Marc.

Billy....do you like Gladiator Movies ???

Why is it that I am only posting stuff that happens on the weekend anymore? Could be because that's only when stuff goes on rather than the same ol same ol of go home, eat, play with kids, go to bed.
Friday night. The night of the big night time golf outing for the Kiwanis. The weather looked really good all afternoon then all of a sudden some storms popped up around 3:00pm. I kept an eye on them all afternoon and they got bigger and bigger. I was hoping that they would either blow through quickly or slip up north of us. I was already preparing myself for a soggy round. By the time I got home from work it was not looking good at all, but there was a slight window of it clearing up in time. My plan was to show up at 8:00pm and decided whether to just have something to eat or if I was going to attempt to play golf. My mom called around 5:30 and said that she wasn't even going to bother going out there, but I told her my plan. A few minutes later she called me and informed me that they were going to postpone the outing until next Friday. Probably a good idea. So I made the one phone call to Marc to let him know that it was postponed since he is the only one that was going to play with me. So now I have to get geared up for this Friday and hopefully talk a few more people into playing. Friday night I ended up mopping the furnace room up cleaning the concrete of some of the dirt and mud from the flood and the water heater replacement. All in an attempt to begin the furnace room remodel very soon.
Saturday I didn't really know what to do. Jen didn't have to work all weekend so it meant I could get some projects done around the house or we could take the boys to have some fun. I decided to try and get a few things done around the house. I pulled the Saturn out to wash and wax it, but the clouds kind of put that project on hold. While I was waiting for the clouds to make up their mind I edged the driveway and curb, then planted 3 plants that Jen had gotten from the mall, and a few other little things outside. By then the clouds cleared so I was able to wash and wax the car. Just before I finished we decided to hit church that night so we could do whatever on Sunday. After putting the kids to bed Saturday night I put in the movie "300". All I can say is that it is a very interesting movie. I can't say it was really good or really bad, just interesting. Very violent, but not really. The blood was flying everywhere, but you never saw it on the ground or on anything else. I don't know if it's just me, but knowing the the narrator of the movie was the goofy Monk from "VanHelsing" was a bit disconcerting. All I know is the the women of that time must have been REALLY COLD all of the time. Let's just say they could cut glass.
Sunday we decided to run up to the lake and go swimming. We got up there and found out that the water was real cold due to all the rain that they got up there, so we decided not to chance it. We hung out and visited, with the boys playing in the camper most of the day. We came back into town pretty early, and I was able to get the yard mowed, and the last of the gutter guards installed on the second story. Mental note to self: next time make sure I have on the tennis shoes with good tread when standing on the second story, and make sure I don't drop any more stuff off the roof. It sucks climbing down all the way to retrieve stuff.

The whirrrrring placenta

Yeah I know I am going to get yelled at for posting this, but it's just too damn funny.

Jen went to the doctor's today for a "baby" check. Jen tells me that the doctor couldn't pick up the heart beat with his stethoscope and all he could hear was the whirring (as she calls it) of the placenta. Huh? Bwaaaa haaaa haaaa. I didn't know that placenta's whirrrred. What exactly would that sound like? Would it be like a 4th of July firework, or something more like a gay guy dancing (woooooooooooo) Oh God that was funny, either that or I really need to get some sleep tonight. Of course she was talking about hearing the blood flow around the placenta.

Everything is fine, but for the second time the doctor couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat with his little stethoscope, so she had to use an ultrasound machine to pick it up. Unlike the last time, she had to wait 10 minutes for a ultrasound machine to become available which of course adds to the worry time the she has to deal with. The baby's heart rate is around 160, so a very strong heartbeat.

Doghouse... party of one.....comming.......

Meltdown

On the way home from church on Sunday, Jen said that she had to stop at the store to buy a few things for a "carry-in" at work that night. I decided to stop at the Kroger store on the way home since it is right on the way home. I should have known better since the last time we stopped at Kroger on the way home from church I ended up taking off the side view mirror of the car next to me and costing me a couple hundred bucks, but hey, I thought that was a fluke. There was two options, One stay in the car with the kids and let Jen run in and get her stuff or Two take the whole crew in. Since I was thinking about grabbing something for lunch we decided to take the whole crew in, that and the boys can get real cranky just sitting in the car. We head into the store and immediately William sees one of the race car shopping carts. Whoever came up with that idea I hope they burn in hell, or at least live an eternity of kids screaming at them because they want to ride in them. We decided to just grab a little tote since we were only getting a few things. William was a little disappointed, but seemed happy enough carrying the tote around. Andrew was in rare form and started to run all over the place, so I picked him up to wrangle him. A little while later the meltdown started..... William didn't want to carry the tote anymore, then he wanted me to carry him too. I tried to explain to him that we were almost done, but that wasn't good enough. So the crying begins. And then the always famous kid "flop" in the middle of the isle. Already having a short fuse since William woke us up at 5:00am I decided to take him out of the store. Yeah I will admit I was a bit furious at him, and of course embarrassed that my little "angle" would do this in a store. Already crying and trying to wriggle out of my arms we pass the race car cart and the meltdown turns into Chernobyl. The way he is screaming I would not have been surprised if someone thought I was beating the kid or abducting him against his will. I get him to the car and into his seat and the meltdown continues. He gets out of the seat and tries to get out of the truck. I start the threat of taking things away if he doesn't behave which is the latest tool of the arsenal, even to the point of no movies for the day (the big gun). Finally though the tears he tells me he has to pee. Crap. So I have to take him back into the store and to the bathroom, through the gauntlet of racecar carts and people staring, but luckily he has calmed down a little. So back in to go to the bathroom and back out to the car just as Jen is leaving too. We get home and I Think Jen is genuinely concerned that I might beat the boy since I am fuming. But after some time, and a nap for all of us, I felt a little better.

New Rule: No shopping at Kroger after church anymore.

Cookie Review

I decided to try Carrie's mom's world famous chocolate chip recipe out for a spin. We had a bag of chips in the pantry that we haven't dug into yet. We usually end up breaking into them and snacking on handful. I of course put a small bowl in the freezer for a little while. I love frozen chocolate. Anyway I am glad I didn't break into the chips early since I didn't realize that it took the entire bag of chocolate chips in the recipe. Overall I will have to say they are very tasty cookies. I had a opps moment and accidentally put in a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon of vanilla, but I don't think that effected the taste that much. I made the cookies with regular crisco, but if I had to do it over again (and I think I will) I will use the butter flavored crisco next time. There is just the slightest hint of an aftertaste of something after eating them, but that could be the vanilla opps coming into play. My cook time for the cookies was more like 16-18 minutes rather than 10-12 for golden brown cookies. Carrie's assembly instructions were a little vague so I was kinda guessing at some stuff, but I think I might grab the phone when she is talking to Jen to clarify some of the assembly.

In case you want to take them for a spin: http://caquincy.blogspot.com/2007/07/moms-chocolate-chip-cookies-short.html

Old cell phones never die... they just become playthings

I recharged my old cellphone the other day to get the phone numbers out of the phonebook since the sim card wouldn't transfer (even though they are both samsung phones). My plan for the old cell phone, along with a couple other ones, was to donated them to charity. They are mostly used at women's shelters since the 911 feature still works even on inactive cellphones. But due to my children's fascination with phones and electronics it has now become another toy. The one feature that they constantly want me to do is set the ring tone on the phone to a cat meowing. This is hilarious. The weird part is occasionally they change the ring tone and hit the old ring that I had for two years. Whenever I hear the old ring, my ear perk up and I think that I actually have a call. It's weird how a cell phone ring can provoke a response even though it's not my official ring tone anymore. The battery is now dead again, and now the decision on to recharge the battery to let them play with it or do the more noble thing and donate it to someone who might actually need it for an emergency. I think it will disappear tonight and into the bag of other cell phones to go to charity.

My mini-vacation

I decided to take a mini-vacation. Jen and I couldn't put the time or money together for a real vacation so I figured a 4 day weekend would be as close as I was going to get for a while. I was pretty beat too. I had been out on the floor for the past two weeks (including a Saturday) so I was pretty worn out. It was a pretty good break since the 4 days seemed like a week. So let's get started:

Wednesday night: met the in laws at Red Lobster for dinner to celebrate the numerous birthdays and anniversaries in the past month or two. The boys did very well at dinner and almost made it to the end before fussing. Andrew was fascinated by the many fish statues surrounding him and had to point and say "FISH!!!!!" at every one of them until food finally arrived. EVERYONE in Red Lobster knew where the fish statues were sitting around our table since Andrew pointed them all out numerous times. Williams fascination was with the lobster tank by the front door. He said he had to go to the bathroom, but it was a ruse to go see the lobsters. Good food once again.

Thursday: We get the crew up and going and head out the door to go visit Monkeyjack and family at his in-laws lake cottage for the day. We had a real good time swimming and taking a ride around the lake in the pontoon. I even got William to kinda jump off the dock to me in the water which is a huge step. Andrew (fearless) had fun in his inflatable ring and I think would have jumped off the dock too. Man I miss our lake cottage, but I don't envy the work and money that has to go into it year round for a few weeks of enjoyment. There was quite a house full of people and kids for the day including some teenage girls that Andrew hit on the entire time (he is such a charmer). Hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch and beef bbq for dinner supplied by Scott and the girlfriend du jour (kidding Scott). When the 3 teenage boys showed up at the cottage with one wearing a white wig and bandanna and the other "smoking" a fake cigarette I figured that was a good time to get out of there. Actually we were already heading out the door, but that was just funny to see. We stopped at Tom's doughnuts and bought enough doughnuts to last us the entire weekend.

Friday: My cousin Marc invited me to play 18 holes at riverbend as part of a coupon that he got in a fundraiser. Originally I was just planning on taking half a day to play golf, but figured that since I took Thursday off it would be silly to go to work for half a day Friday. I haven't played Riverbend in years, but the last thing I remember is that I lost ALOT of balls and that it was a crappy course and got bit up by mosquitoes, so I came fully prepared. The last time I played last month I totally stunk up the course so I was preparing myself for a long day. Surprisingly I hit the ball pretty well and the condition of the course was fantastic. It was 10 times better than the last course I played (gray goose in decatur). The fairways were like carpet, the greens were well maintained and there wasn't alot of spotty grass in the area. The cost even without a coupon is very reasonable and you can play in your tank top if you want so the course is pretty laid back. After all was said I finished with a score JUST under the century mark. It didn't feel like I played that bad, but it took awhile for my putter to get with the program. Overall I had alot of fun and enjoyed the day. I only lost 3 balls which must be a record. After that I went shopping and bought a new cell phone and then we headed over to grandmas for sloppy joes to welcome her home from Florida.

Saturday: Jen had to work so I decided to take the boys to the Muddy River Run car show at the fairgrounds. The boys love cars so I figured that they might enjoy some street rods and stuff. We took grandma with us too since Aunt Suzie was going to be there with one of her cars. One of the things that I feared was that the cars would be too loud for William to handle and wouldn't you know it just as we walk into the fairgrounds, two huge drag racers drive by rumbling with open exhaust pipes. Of course compounding the problem is that they have music blaring throughout the fairgrounds, so William spent most of the day with his hands over his ears. Andrew just rode in the stroller and seemed to enjoy it. We walked thought the fairgrounds and looked at all the cars. We got back to the tent where Aunt Suzie was, and the boys looked like they were getting a little sun so I decided to use some sunscreen on them. Wouldn't you know it, I got a little in Andrew's eye and it started to burn. And of course he uses his arm to wipe his eyes that is full of sunscreen too. So he starts to scream and cry and I try everything I can to flush his eyes, but to no avail. So we head home after only an hour and a half. I gave him a quick bath and some motrin and that seemed to help. The rest of the day watching the DVD du jour "lilo and stitch". A few more pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveandjj_ii

Sunday: Jen had to work again. So after church in the morning the boys and I just hung out around the house. Jen and I did head out to the movie after she got home. Mom brought over her new puppy for the boys to play with while Jen and I snuck out, grabbed dinner at Culvers and saw the new Harry Potter movie. Pretty good movie, but for the love of God never go with someone who just read the books since she compares the two (kidding dear and I know you're the same Carrie). We got home around 10:00pm and William was still up after giving grandma a hard time going to bed. Andrew goes to bed very easy but William doesn't make it easy, and especially for grandma. I blame myself for not giving grandma the proper "to bed" instructions to try and help the process.

And that's it. 4 days that seemed like at week.

I think my work has fleas

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, but we have had a few huge jobs come in that I have been helping on out on the floor. A 33,000 piece phone book with a 12,000 real estate book thrown in the middle. So yeah I have been busy. But as I was helping out on the floor, it felt like I got bit by something. Then an hour later I felt it again. I was commenting to a co-worker about this and he said that he was being bit as well. Another comment to another co-worker later in the day confirmed that she was bitten numerous times on her legs. So, my work has fleas. (or some form of small biting animal). I guess I will have to grab some of Cinder's collars to put around my legs

Dumbass

Ok am I alone in this?

One of the most hashed over trivia questions in the world is "what was the first video shown on MTV" and of course the answer is "Video killed the radio star" by the BUGGLES. The DJ on the radio just said it was "Video killed the radio star" by the BUGLES (like the cornchip)

I didn't even know they sang...... dumbass

three checks and two half checks

Another project weekend around the homestead. Saturday my father in law came over and we installed a light below the stairs so we could see better back in the corner and also to give us more light in working on the water heater. I didn't realize that the light was something that he was planning on since he first saw our house and has had the material for it for a couple of years now. (check). He left to go to a lake party. I crawled up on the roof of the second story to finish my gutter guard project. I knew I was going to be a few pieces short but wasn't really sure how many (half check). Again the ladder wouldn't reach from the back deck either so up on the roof hanging over the edge. While installing the guards I got into an argument with a wasp, and what do you know, the wasp won. Little bastard bit me on the finger. Nothing like warding off a wasp attack on a roof two stories up. But hey I did get a chance to clean the skylight for our bathroom while I was up there. (kinda check). A little later my brother in law came over and we finally got the cabinets installed in the laundry room (huge check). They actually look pretty good. Now its up to Jen to fill them with crap. After finishing the cabinets, we attempted to cut down the stump in the front yard. I decided there was no way of pulling it out like originally planning and now I am thinking stump cutter. Unfortunately about halfway through the stump we found out that we had dulled the blade on the chainsaw and the other two in the case were dull too. So we only got half way done (half check).
Sunday was water heater day. Jen packed the kids up and headed for grandma and grandpas to spend the day while we worked on the water heater. My father in law had changed his mind a couple of times on how he wanted to replace the water heater, but finally decided to use flex hoses and compression fitting (in case you were wondering). Of course that means taking back a bag and a half of other stuff we bought working on plan "a". I had to make one more trip to Menards to get a small part that was missing on one of the valves. When I got to Menards there was a huge line and I found out that their computers were down. Crap. I was close to leaving and driving to the Menards on the other side of town when I decided to cut to the front of the line and ask real quick if I could do an exchange for the exact same valve. The girl behind the counter told me a could if it was exactly the same thing. SCORE!! I felt kinda bad leaving the store passing all the other people still waiting in line, and I almost said something to them, but I didn't want to be a jerk. By the time I got back Tom had almost finished the majority of the install. I had to make numerous trips upstairs to relieve the pressure on the system and then back up to bleed the air out of the system. We had a problem of water leaking from the connections so more trips up and down the stairs, over and over and over. I must have went up and down at least 20 times. But finally finished and so far no leaks and the water is real hot (CHECK!!!!!!!!!). After we finished we headed back to the in laws for dinner. I think I am done with some of the bigger projects around the house. I think it's time to enjoy the summer before it's gone.

Harry Potter Widower Diary

Another "what happened" weekend

Friday - I got to play in a golf outing at Gray Goose in Decatur with my boss from work, all expenses paid whooo hoooo!! It was a beautiful day outside. How did I play? uhhh yeah....It was a beautiful day outside. Man I played like total crap. Even though it's a Florida scramble and I don't play that often I count on contributing to the score more often, or at least give the team a few options. Two years ago when I played in this outing I was the designated driver since I could get off the tee box pretty good. I had more flubbed shots then I have ever had in my life. I had a number of really nice shots, but the flubs won. I think I was trying too hard, but when I had a few beers at the turn I started to calm down a little bit and not really care. We ended up tying for 3rd place in our flight with a 63 and I brought home a few giveaways for the kids to play with. Overall it was better than working for the day. Friday night I was thinking of running out to the store to get the new Harry Potter book for Jen at midnight, but I chose sleep instead. That and she wouldn't be able to start reading until she got home from work Sat. afternoon.

Saturday - The usual 8:00am wake up with the boys. We all just hung out at the house. For our Anniversary I bought Jen a Jack Skellington Picture that was pretty cool and hung it over the bed. It actually looks pretty good there and we might leave it. Jen got home at 1:00 and went into immediate "Harry Potter" mode where she was on the couch reading her book and oblivious to everyone and everything. I took William for his haircut at 3:00. Overall he did pretty good, but started crying and fidgeting halfway through. When we got home we packed up the boys and all their stuff and went to Grandma's house. This is our first experiment of letting the boys spend the night with grandma. Jen and I left the kids at grandma's (I don't think they even cared that we left). Then the big question was "what do we do without kids?". It was our Anniversary, but we hadn't really planned anything. Options were Cinema grille to see harry potter, just go and see harry potter, or do a nice dinner. We finally ended up going to Triangle Park for a nice dinner. After a nice dinner it was 8:00pm and again it was "what next?" There was no reason to go home since we didn't have to put kids to bed and I didn't feel like going home yet. I knew that Jen wanted to get back to her book so that was also a consideration. I decided that we should drop in on the Cramers for a surprise visit and wouldn't you know it they weren't home. Neither was Tracy. Crap. So I finally lamented and we went home. Man we are getting to be old fuddy duddies. Jen went into "Harry Potter" mode and I worked on cleaning up the basement from the flood a couple of days ago.

Sunday - Without children crawling all over me, I had the chance to sleep in, but not the ability. I can only lay down for so long before my back starts to hurt. I woke up at 8:00 but was able to sleep on and off for another hour. Jen got ready for work and I got ready to pick up the kids. My father-in-law calls me about working on the water heater. A little bonus from the basement flood is that I noticed that everything else had dried up besides the area around the water heater. Then I noticed water leaking from the heater. Son of a B****. So after picking the kids up at grandma's (it went relatively well) I took the kids over to the other Grandma's for the day so Tom and I could work on water heater replacement. First stop was Lowes to pick up the water heater and some supplies. Second stop was to Menards (for more supplies) after getting the heater home and seeing that we will have to adjust the gas/water pipes to get it to work since this new heater isn't exactly like the 16 year old one in the basement (go figure). After all this running around it's already 5:00pm and we figure that we better not start now since we still would have hours of work to do, so we decide to put everything back to the way it was (thank God we didn't tear out the old one like I wanted to do early on).....The third stop was to Menards again for more supplies since we broke a valve that allows water into the water heater. Hopefully the heater will hold out until next weekend. So back to the in-laws to pick up the car and head back home to try and air the house out to get the smell of stinky carpet out of the house. We put the kids to bed and Jen went back to "Harry" mode. She finished the book a little after midnight.

The Red Barchetta

One of Rush's biggest hits was a song titled the "Red Barchetta"off the "Moving Pictures" album back in the 80's. Neil Peart wrote the song based on a story that he read in Road & Track that was called "A nice morning drive" written by Richard Foster back in 1972. I just read on Neil's website that he had attempted to contact Mr. Foster for years but was unable to do so. Neil gave Mr. Foster credit in the lyrics sheets of the album. It wasn't until 1996 that Mr. Foster googled himself and found the notation on the lyric sheet. The following stories are very interesting dealing with how they finally got together and went for a ride in the hills of West Virginia.

Neil's Story

http://neilpeart.net/news/index.html

Richard's Story of the Encounter

http://www.bmwbmw.org/bmwforums/viewtopic.php?t=8693

The Original Story from Road & Track

http://home.comcast.net/~r-and-n-foster/R-n-T_article.pdf

Small world huh....

Tonights Forcast: Partly darn with a chance of WTF!!

So last night Jen and I head for bed around 11:00. We notice the sky flashing with lightning and hear a few low rumbles of thunder. As we were watching "King of the Hill" and drifting off to sleep we notice the lightning get brighter and more often and the thunder getting louder. The boys have slept through thunderstorms before so I wasn't that concerned that it would bother them, but then a few lightning strikes came real close to the house and the thunder was pretty loud.....It first started with Andrew waking up crying, darn, but I looked in at William and he was sawing logs, cool. So we decided we might as well take Andrew into our bedroom since the chance of getting him back down to sleep would be pretty slim until the storm passed. Just our luck a few rumbles later William wakes up crying and screaming, sh**. So we are all sitting on our bed watching the local TV doing stories on the storm and keeping the boys entertained. We got hit pretty hard with rain and wind. The umbrella on the back deck blew out of the table so I ran downstairs and stuck my nose outside just far enough to collapse the umbrella so it wouldn't fly away and got soaked. After watching Letterman and the beginning of Ferguson at 1:00am I decide that the storm has pretty much passed and the thunder wasn't as loud. I put William to bed relatively easy and he falls asleep after 5 or 10 minutes. Andrew is another story. Jen has to deal with him and he is AWAKE and wired for some reason so he immediately goes into full bore crying and screaming (which William stays asleep for thank God). So Jen is in Andrews room trying to calm him down and I hear the sump pump in the basement running and running and running. I decide that I better go down and check it out since I don't really trust that sump pump. (the damn thing ran during the drought conditions of last week for some reason). As I hit the basement floor off the stairs I feel -squish- (Son of a B****) and then I get to the door of the furnace room and -squish- (F***). I open the door to see sump pit overflowing with about 1/4 inch of water in the furnace room. Thank God the sump was working, but there was too much water coming too fast for it to handle it. For what I can see most of the water is contained in this room with a few spots in the carpet getting wet and along the walls of the furnace room. I quickly start pulling things out of the room. Lucky for me there wasn't anything in the room in cardboard except the box for the battery backup that I have yet to install. (just became a priority). Good thing that I didn't get around to my project of putting a bunch of stuff under the stairs like I was planning. After getting all of the stuff to the dry area of the basement I start taking buckets of water from the sump pit upstairs and dumping it in the shower drain. I am not sure I was doing any good, but I didn't know what else to do. It seemed that after an hour the water level in the pit was getting lower. I notice more flashes of lightning and go upstairs to see if I can find a radar on the TV. Nope. I guess they check-out at midnight at the local stations. Lucky for me the second storm never hit. About 2:30 the sump was able to catch up to the water coming in and I felt safe enough to go upstairs to bed. I layed there until after 3:00 listening for it to go on and then turn off since I was still paranoid, but exhaustion got the better part of me and I fell asleep. Waking up at 7:00 was fun this morning, but I made it. Now just the sound of fans downstairs trying to dry up the carpet. Overall I would have been really FUBAR'd if the sump went totally out and nothing got damaged so I was petty fortunate.

Birthday weekend

Yeah Saturday was my birthday. 40 years old. Shit. Everyone around me is telling me its not a big deal, but the majority of them are under 40 so come and see me in a few years :)

Friday: It started last year where I would bring my hot dog steamer and a batch of my coney sauce and treat the staff here at work to coney dog Friday, so I did it again this year. It was a pretty good time and the coneys turned out real good too. Yum. Some of the other staff people brought some chips and pop so I didn't have to eat the entire cost of the lunch like last year. Friday night Jen and I were going to go out to the Cinema Grille and see Harry Potter since she had to work Saturday night (my birthday). About 1 in the afternoon I she called and informed me that she had to go into work since another manager couldn't make it in so that shot those plans in the butt. Welcome to the world of retail management. So I went home and the boys and I just hung out.

Saturday: After waking up and heading downstairs. Jen presented me with some birthday gifts. A new remote control for the TV, a bag of circus peanuts (I LOVE THEM), and a boccie ball set (will go well next to the cornhole game next time at Jeff's). She also got me a polo shirt that I think was supposed to be a father's day gift but left in the back of the car. After Jen left for work my mom called and she came over and we ended up ordering pizza and drinking a few beers and visiting.

Sunday: We woke up and headed for church. After we got home we weren't really sure what we were up to for the day. We had talked about doing the cinema grille thing that day or just grabbing a nice lunch. We decided to grab a nice lunch and do the Harry Potter thing next weekend. We called around for babysitters but weren't able to find one on such short notice. Yeah I know we should have planned the day out better and arranged stuff but I didn't feel like doing that. So we ended up taking the kids with us to Lunch at Outback Steakhouse. Last time we were there Andrew was in a bassinet so that makes it over a year ago. Overall the boys did pretty good. Andrew got bored and started fussing about halfway through lunch and William had to make 3 trips to the bathroom. After lunch we took the boys home and put Andrew down for a nap. I took off and bought a new golf glove and headed to the golf range to hit a bucket of balls. I get to play in a golf outing on Friday so I needed to hit a bucket to make sure I didn't embarrass myself like in my last round a month ago. I get to the driving range and throw my new glove into my bag. I have the whole range to myself. I first head to the grassy area on the left side of the range since I like to hit off the grass rather than the mats since it gives a better response to what I would do on the course. I see the grassy area on the left is pretty rough and real spotty so I head to the grassy area on the right side of the range. Now this is at least a 500 yard walk so it's a pretty good stretch of the legs. I find the grassy area on the right in the same sad shape so decide to hit from the mats and walk halfway back to the pro shop to a mat, whereupon I find that I have lost my new golf glove. Crap. Did I leave it in the car? So walk back to the car and no glove, back to the grassy area on the left and no glove and walk all the way back to the grassy area on the right and there it is. So I have already walked a couple miles in finding a place to hit and then in search of my glove. I know the girl working the pro shop was wondering what the hell I was doing. I hit the entire huge bucket and overall hit them pretty good and straight with a couple of total flubs. I can tell it had been a while since my left forearm was getting tight. I went home and hung out with the family for the rest of the night.

There is a mental state in the idea of being 40 years old, kinda like a halfway point. From now on birthdays with zeros at the end are getting bigger and bigger. It's like you try to throw on the brakes but to no avail. To me age on a calendar is just a way of counting days, I think of my age is just the way I feel, and so far I fell pretty good.

It must be in the Water

For those of you who don't know yet, Jenny is pregnant again
(for the last time, even if I have to cut it off)

Damn my fertile loins (and my inability to read a calendar) !!!!

She is due January 17th about a month earlier than Jeff and Paula. Congratuations to them too !!

I will never get another good night's sleep again........

4th of July

Nothing much planned for the 4th of July... then BANG!! My dad calls Tuesday night saying that he is coming up for a visit. Cool. Originally he was planning on a trip to Arizona for the week but a little medical condition came up that kept him from flying, but was cleared for a car ride so he came up with my step mom and their dog. Another bonus was that my brother was in town so he could visit with both of us. It was alot of fun. We had a good visit and had a chance to pig out on some good snacks. One of the things that dad can't get down in Alabama is Win Schulers cheese and he is addicted to it, so we put a hurtin' on it while he was here. He was going to load up a cooler on the way home too. The boys both got new remote contol cars which were alot of fun and hopefully will be for a while until they destroy them. I don't know why but Andrew just loves stepping on top of his car. For the 4th of July we just stayed home and visited with everyone. I did buy some of the so called "legal" fireworks that just sparkled and stuff, but even those seemed to scare the boys a little bit so we sure won't be going down to the huge display for a while. Thursday we had a cookout at the house with everyone. Dad went to Sam's to pick up some supplies for the grilling and bought some of Sam's hamburger patties. Geez they were huge!! at least 3/4 of an inch to an inch thick of meat. I cooked them real slow to make sure they cooked all the way through. They were very tasty, but man that was alot of meat. Friday we did a visit to the zoo and had a good time, but it was so warm we basically just hit the high points of the zoo and still took us two hours. Friday night we grubbed from food from Riverbend Pizza and visited some more. They hit the road early Saturday morning, so Saturday and Sunday were just vegetating in front of the TV and trying to get a few more projects done. I am happy to report that the cabinets are done and just have to be assembled and installed and that will give me back a huge portion of my garage.

Yippie Ky Ay Mother F(bang)

***This was last weekend not this weekend***

Another whirlwind of a weekend started with a phone call from Keith. He was getting together some guys to see Live Free or Die Hard, the latest movie in the Die Hard series of movies. It was a midnight showing at Carmike. I was willing to go but I wasn't sure if my body was or not. I just worked a pretty hard day and midnight is past my bedtime, but I decided to give it a shot. Sure as Sh** I fell asleap on the chair, but luckily woke up in just enough time to leave the house to make the theater on time. I was actually the first one there then Scott and Keith pulled in not too soon afterward. By the time we were walking up to the box office I think I was finally awake again since I was definatly in a huge fog when I woke up. I enjoyed the movie. It was the typical, crash cars, blow sh** up and see how much of a beating Bruce Willis can take. It had quite of few times where I questioned the logic and physics of what they were doing, but quickly corrected myself thinking, "this isn't an intellectual movie... it's one where they blow sh** up!!". Overall a fun guy movie, but I think Jen would have enjoyed it too. After the show we hung out in the parking lot discussing the movie a little bit and life in general. It would have been nice to grab a beer and hang out for a while but it was already close to 3:00am and not too much is open at that time. I got home at 3:00am and it was at least half an hour to 45 minutes to wind down from blowing sh** up. Of course kids wake up proptly at 8:00am.... whew it going to be a long day.

Saturday we decided to take William to see the new Pixar movie Ratatootieee, Ratagooeee, Ratatatataaa, oh hell the cartoon with the mouse. Overall it was a pretty entertaining movie. It didn't blow me away like "Cars" did but I was entertained by the movie. William seemed to enjoy it too and took only one restroom break in the middle. I guess we can rate his movies by potty breaks.