Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!! Plans for tonight include taking the boys to a party and doing a little trick or treating in another neighborhood. Some day I would like to stay home and see what it's like around our house, but there is always a party to go to. Probably a trip to my mom's house for pictures and possibly a trip to the in-laws so they can hear what the doorbell sounds like since this is the one time of year it actually get rung. And since they are in the middle of the country, the boys will be the only one ringing it.

We carved pumkins on Monday night. After I got done carving mine (pictured above) it reminded me of someone or something. What do you think?





It reminded me of Tim the Enchanter









Or the ghostbusters dog

Full Pumpkin Lineup

HAPPY FEET !!!!!!!

We tell Andrew that it is time for "Happy Feet" and he does a little dance around the area. Last night he threw in a new twist. When He would stop and we would say "yeah" and start to clap he now will take a bow. We didn't teach that to him, who knows where he got it.

MR Halloween party

By Saturday we were finally able to work out the logistics of actually going to MR's Halloween Party. My mom was out of town, Jen's parents were going to a party too, but lucky for us Jen's friend Tracy was available. Also Jen was able to rearrange and switch her work schedule to be able to make it. Her boss asked her why she needed Saturday off and Jen told her that she wanted to go to an adult party. Her boss says "ADULT" Party??? No, not that kind of Adult party, just one without kids. So anyway..... I had been looking for a week for a cheap costume. Costume's aren't required for MR's party, but it can be kind of fun to dress up. I just didn't want to spend more than $20 on a costume. Many trips to Walmart, Meijer, Halloween USA, and even some Internet shopping didn't even get close. The weekend before Halloween probably isn't the best time to get a deal on costumes, but I tried. I wasn't finding anything, but remembered that I had an old basketball uniform in the attic from the days when I played with the radio station. It was a pretty gaudy shiny turquoise outfit which was my backup costume idea. I got the uniform down and it still fit pretty well. The pants were a little snug, but I figured it would work. We decided to put Andrew down to sleep before we left and let Tracy put down William when he was good and tired. I gave both the boys baths and we put Andrew down. A few minutes later he started crying like he knew we were leaving. After about 10 minutes of crying it started to go into screaming which is not like him. The funny thing is that he did the same thing last Halloween to Tracy while we were at MR's party, but it was at 11:00pm and lasted an hour until we got home. Jen and I decided to go upstairs and calm him down before we left him with Tracy. We walk in the room to calm him down, and then "the cough" starts. Nooooooooo. Yep, he pukes spaghettioos all over the place. Crap. So we cleaned him up and his bedding. Jen rocked him to calm him down and he finally fell asleep after half an hour, but not without more struggle. So finally Andrew asleap, William set, Jen and Tracy start gabbing. Finally we get out the door around 9:00. We get to the party and see some new faces and a few familiar ones. Once again the food and drinks were fantastic. It was great to be able to visit with friends again, it has been too long and not often enough. MR did the whole Mentos/Diet Coke experiment and it actually worked out pretty well. MR got a neat little Margarita machine that could some in real handy during the year. The one bummer is that time went way to fast. Keith, Jeff, and wives left around 11:00ish and before I knew it the clock said 12:00 for us too. Time to get home. We got home to find Tracy the boys asleep on the couch. It was again a lot of fun and I am looking forward to MR's Christmas party. I also need to look around now for a good deal on a Halloween costume for next year. I am looking for the group picture of the party people to do have a little photoshop fun..

Venting

Yeah it's time for me to bitch again.....

Item #1: My freaking windows. We have two windows in our front room that are both screwed. The one window won't shut correctly and the other doesn't work for crap. So I decide that since it's almost fall and we won't be using it anymore, that THIS is the time to fix it. I decide that the window that is hard to close isn't really that big of a problem so I turn my attention to the one that doesn't work properly. From what I can see it has lost a couple screws on the bottom of the sash that keeps it from working properly, so I figure a couple screws and that would solve the problem. I got outside to see what kind of screws I need to reattach the bracket and I look on the bottom of the window to see Swiss cheese for wood. Son of a Biscuit!! All the wood on the bottom is falling apart and like a sponge. So my quick fix is probably now going to entail replacing the window since I am not sure if that could be fixed.

Item #2: My WTF of the day. Over the years I have had what I would say is a questionable stomach. Over the years of test and diets and stuff it has actually calmed down. The one thing that I found to help was a over the counter medicine called zantac 150 (I highly recommend MR!!) It is a pretty efficient acid reducer/stomach helper. I noticed a commercial for this medicine over the weekend that now it's coated in mint... MINT.... WTF?? How is this flavorless medicine that you swallow with a glass of water going to be helped by a mint flavor??? What a waste of money for the company that will no doubt increase the cost of this already pricey medicine. Only thing I can think of it that it will taste minty when you burp. Lucky for me I rarely need this stuff anymore but still..

Item #3: Dumbledore is Gay. Why the Fark did JK Rowling "out" Dumbledore. It makes no sense at all for her to "out" a FICTIONAL character after the story is done and it had absolutely no relevance in the story. Great, now all the muggles who looked up to that character now have to worry about their own sexuality, did they like the character because he was a father figure or did they just like the way he "swung his wand". In my mind he will never be gay, he will always be giving it to professor McGonagall right the in the grand hall when no one is around and nearly headless Nick watching. What's next Frodo and Sam with the old slap and tickle with Gollum? Yeah I am a little pissed about this.

Thanks for Reading... whew.. I feel better...

Useful Internet

I am in the process of working on my basement including the installation of shelving in the furnace room and the basic organization of crap down there. The ultimate goal is to clear out enough stuff and put in in the furnace room so I can start to work on the basement remodel. Which means DE-MO-LI-TION.... God I love Demo... I am going to do a subdued demo with controlled dismantling of the drywall and not the typical sledgehammer. I really want to just see what I am dealing with behind the walls and under the ceiling. I decided to clear one room so I could get into the walls, but that means clearing the room. In the process of clearing the crap I decided that would be a good time to sort stuff and either pitch crap, earmark for a garage sale, or throw it into the attic to worry about it another day. One of the bigger items in the room was a 27 inch TV that I bought 8 years ago. It was a really nice set that made it through Tartan's Glen and then Pine Valley. But during the last move something must have happened to it. I noticed that when we got to the new house that it wasn't working. When you turned the volume up it turned the set off and nothing I did could solve the problem. I figured something in the 5 months in the garage must have cause the problem. Well I just threw the TV in the basement when we moved in and decided to deal with it later. So, here it is later. I decide that anything that I pull out of the room MUST be dealt with at that time and no stacking it elsewhere. I pull the TV out of the room and have to decide whether to pitch it or if it's worth taking somewhere to get fixed. I decided to surf the net to see if I could find an owners manual or some other help. I figure taking it to a repair shop would be a minimum of $75, nope, scratch that idea. I found the owners manual on-line that I could buy for $15, nope, don't want to do that. But I did find a forum on-line with one of the questions stating the exact problem that I had. HOLY CRAP!! The forum suggested a TV reset using the factory commands that only insiders in the TV repair world would know about, and wouldn't you know it.. it worked. The Internet is actually useful and not for just looking at kitties. Yeah I know I am lucky to find the exact problem that I had on a forum, but it was still cool that I fixed it pushing 4 buttons and at no cost. My elation of solving the problem and thinking of enjoying the TV in the basement was tempered by the knowledge that in a couple years it will be useless due to it not having a digital tuner. sigh. I only hope that the little box that they sell for us "old school" UHFers do convert digital signal to analog will be somewhat affordable.

Geekfest II ????? maybe Geekfest 1.5

I came across this story about a new waterpark in Shipshewana. I was thinking that WHEN/IF the Q's come in town around the holidays of possibly heading up and doing geekfest II. It's no where near the quality of the Kalahari, but it's only about 65 miles away and would be easy to get to. It might be a pain in the butt getting some rooms around the holidays, but just wanted to throw that out there for you consideration. Of course we could always just do the Holidome for a day also for the Q's possible visit.

http://wanawaves.splashuniverse.com/

ps. The Kalahari is adding 93,000 square feet for next year by the way, let's plan ahead and start saving. Info HERE

Open for Business

More cool internet toys

A co-worker put me onto a website that looks like fun. The site is called Cafe Press. What you do is design something either a graphic, logos,text, or just a picture. Then you can take that file and place it on numerous items like t-shirts, mugs, magnets and other assorted mechandise. The cool part is that they do all of the work. It is a free site with no minimum orders with them taking care of shipping and stuff. You can either order the stuff you design at your cost or assign a profit to it to make a few bucks if other people order your stuff. You can either keep your site/store private for friends and family or make it public with a chance of making a few more bucks, but you have to think of a design that others would want. But even if they don't you aren't out anything since it's free. I am thinking about a design for Halloween but haven't found my inspiration, of course I don't think I have time before MR's party.

Here is the address of a store that I opened using an old logo design that I was playing with. I would need to tweek the design before I ordered anything, but it's mind boggling to think of the stuff you could do.

http://www.cafepress.com/hogansbeachbar

Yeah, Carrie.... I will get back to work....

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.