The Magic of Christmas

Since little kids don't quite grasp the concept of what Christmas is actually about, it's nice to have a symbol like Santa Claus that embodies the gift of our Savior.

There is nothing quite so magical as watching two little girls get giddy and squealy over seeing santa claus when they see him. Right now, our girls are watching "The Polar Express." What a fantastic movie. They get so excited and start dancing, clapping, squealing ... it's just adorable. "DADDY! LOOK! SANTA!"

Weef and I have a tradition of giving each other an ornament for our tree. I know exactly what I'm getting her next year. I can't wait!

Though there is something so bizarrely disturbing about seeing a CGI version of Steven Tyler belting out whatever song that is at the end of the movie. Just ... creepy. How funny.

A Beautiful Sight

Weef is sitting on the couch directly behind me playing Mario Kart Wii. She's doing really well, too. Here in a little bit, we're gonna race. She is now a worthy opponent. ;)

As we're sitting here, she's playing the Wii, I'm blogging, A Perfect Circle's "The Noose" comes on. What does she say? "Wow ... I really miss this song."

*sigh*

I picked a super winner. We may have our moments of frustration with life, each other, whatever ... it can't touch us long-term, though.

Yah. It's time to play. Later. :)

Chronic Suffering and Agony

So, as many--if not all--of you know, I suffer from chronic headaches. I've been getting debilitating headaches since I was 20. That's a long time to suffer with literally no explanation of why.

Well, now there's a why. I have arthritis in my neck. Specifically, on the second and third vertebrae. For years, I've been going to doctors, getting MRIs, CT scans and x-rays. They've always been focused on my head--not my neck. FInally, I went to a chiropractor last week. He showed me exactly where and why I've been getting these headaches.

So now that we know WHAT the problem is, there has to be a solution for treating it. If nothing else, at least find out if something can be done. Fortunately for me, I live really close to a world-class medical facility. I have an appointment scheduled for next Thursday for an initial consultation.

I'm so glad that I'm FINALLY making some progress headache thing! Consequently, I know that weef and the girls will be glad to have me "whole," as it were. I constantly feel broken--not 100%. And I *want* to be 100%. I want to let my daughters play on my back, or give them horsie rides and not worry about whether I'm going to require a muscle relaxant for a week straight after. I want to stay at work all day and not have to leave because "If I don't leave now, I won't make it home." I'm tired of having this problem, and I am SO excited to be on the road to recovery. It's beautiful.

Now THIS Is Excellent!

I called our old auto insurance broker company today. We've been paying a ridiculous amount for coverage. Granted, we had a $100 deductible, but that's proven to be a bust since we're safe drivers. I'd rather save more and go with another carrier than worry about the deductible.

So I called them. They told me they could save us almost $1400 a year in auto insurance with the EXACT same coverage. Only difference is we would have a $500 deductible instead of a $100, but considering we've never had an accident, and we're extremely cautious drivers (mostly), paying that much more on the chance we'd need to spend money on a deductible is kind of silly.

Then the agent asked me about home owner's insurance. They're going to save us another $203 by bundling auto with the home insurance. All told, we'll be saving about $1600 a year. I don't know about y'all, but that's pretty dang exciting news in our book!

We're dropping our cell phones since my company provides me with a cell phone, and we're picking up a new carrier for weef with a cheaper plan, so that'll save us a bundle.

All told, by the end of the day, I believe we're going to be saving over $2000 a year. That's good stuff, right there. We have stuff around the house that we're looking to sell as well.

It's amazing what this economic crunch can cause as far as thoughts and planning goes. I mean, honestly, the things we're looking at selling are things that are extraneous around the house that we just don't use, like the little TV and DVD player we barely use; the chair in the spare room that's just sitting there, unused; stuff. Things we don't need/want, or things we just don't use ... all going away.

In their place, we'll buy things that we know we'll use or need. Nice!

Tripping and Fumbling Down Memory Lane

Today was ... bizarre. In a single day, I've found more friends from a former life as a "back Easterner" than I thought possible. I've had Facebook conversations with friends I haven't spoken with in easily 13-14 years, all of which were as easily picked up as if we had spoken yesterday. It brought back SO many memories: Super Saturdays, YSA activities, college days ... it's been a blast. Still so many common interests, like our once-upon-a-time local football team (who just can't seem to get a break ...), local cuisine, etc. Yet here we all are, almost 20 years removed from our former lives, reconnecting on a new, modern level, and discussing current events like it's no big deal that we haven't spoken in eons.

That's the quality of people I grew up with.

If any of you from FB happen upon this blog, please ... leave a comment. Say hi! I'm so excited to have reconnected with all of you, even if it's only through here for now.

Blessings in Disguise

So, as you all know, we're mired in this quagmire of a battle between us and the bugs. I think we're winning, but it's really hard to tell, and we probably won't know for at least a week.

What amazes me is how much it's drawn us together as a family. Weef and I are constantly doing laundry, washing, conditioning and combing hair (except not mine; I'm baby-butt bald), bagging toys, boiling combs, vacuuming anywhere the girls sit for longer than 30 seconds, spraying down bedding, couches, chairs, etc ... it's a never-ending battle.

We're now starting day 6 of what I've termed "Hell Week", though I'm fairly certain that might have to be broadened to "Month." We'll see. Anyway, at the beginning of the day, like any other day, the girls come plodding downstairs and bemoan their hunger status. I get some food in their little bellies (eventually), then wait for Lori to wake up. At that point, we start planning out the day--who's going to do what and when. I've been on hair patrol the entire time: sifting through the girls' hair (all 3 of them), washing, using what I consider to be useless ointment to try to kill the bugs and eggs ... it just doesn't work. We've applied 4 treatments to each of the girls, none of which have worked worth a hill of beans. We did some online reading and found some home remedies that seem to be working better. If you apply white conditioner with extreme liberty to dry hair, it seems to suffocate the bugs and they come running to the "surface," allowing us to simply comb them out. This method does NOT kill the eggs, though. For that, you have to pour vinegar over the hair and let it sit. That loosens the eggs, then you can use a nit comb to pull out the eggs.

But I digress. My point of this blog is how well we've all bonded over this. The girls have been such troopers, especially girl 1. She is definitely ground zero for the infestation. She sits so patiently (most of the time) while we go through her hair for literally hours a day. She does whimper on occasion about how she wants to watch another show or something, or that we're pulling too hard on her hair, or scraping her poor little scalp with the comb, but overall, she's been a champ and a half.

Weef and I just laugh. Or cry. Or stare in horrific disbelief at the sheer magnitude of everything. But we shake it off and trudge along, trying to keep each others' spirits uplifted and bolstered.

Girl 2 ... what a ham. As long as she's awake, she'll find some way to entertain herself. She's been noticeably attention-starved a couple of times, at which point we'll take a small break to play with her and let her know that we're not intentionally ignoring her. For example, yesterday she was noticeably feisty and smacking weef's leg and smiling that impish grin that says, "Ha ha. You're looking at me. I'm getting attention." Weef was displeased, but completely understood. As I was already sitting at the computer, checking in on work to make sure I'm getting updates on what needs to be done, I said, "C'mere, you. Let's look at some pictures." She came bounding over with such joy and a smile to die for ... "YAY!!" She climbed up on my lap and I showed her pictures of our family. She pointed out everyone and everything--people, pets, toys ... it was so cute.

What I've had reinforced to me during this whole sad ordeal is just how much my family means to me. I'd be nothing without them. They are my world. Friends are definitely important, and work is necessary, but they can't ever take the place of my little family.

I love you, weef and girls!!

a funny spot to an otherwise unbearable weekend

we've had this dryer for ... what? 4 years or so? in the last few months, it's started not drying without being run through 2 or 3 cycles. now, granted, i've been off laundry patrol since weef's home all day. so she's been doing all the washing and drying.

so when this epidemic hit, i decided that it was absolutely time to look at getting a new dryer. hit up KSL, found a dryer for $30 in ogden WITH delivery from a second-hand store that is renowned for their maintenance and CS. called, still available, scheduled delivery for saturday afternoon. well, since weef was busy combing shariden's hair, i decided to do the laundry.

there were some things in the dryer that still weren't dry, so i restarted the dryer. 10 minutes later, they were all dry. we're talking damp towels, jeans, stuff like that.things that would normally take a LONG time to dry were done in a matter of minutes.

i forgot to mention that weef thought we should blow out the lint trap, so we tried that. i grabbed the shop vac, used the leaf blower part, and blew out whatever was caught in the exhaust and lint trap.

so then i re-ran the dryer, and everything worked great! "sweet! don't need the dryer!" i called the girl, said, "yah ... don't need it, but thanks!" she said that it was no problem, and please keep them in mind for any future appliance needs, which we absolutely will.

weef finished doing whatever it was she was doing. she came down and started doing laundry. next thing we know, her load of drying stuff wasn't dry at all. it wasn't even warm. "crap ..." so weef re-ran the load, i called the appliance people and asked if they could deliver it again. they said they could bring it sunday morning. under normal circumstances, i would have waited until monday, but this was dire.

i got sunday morning and weef was vacuuming the ENTIRE front room: under the couches, the couch bottom, sides, back, cushions inside and out ... everywhere. i, once again, was on laundry patrol

the load in the dryer was still damn, so i re-ran the dryer. again, 10 minutes later, everything was bone dry.

"umm ... lori?"

she came downstairs and i showed her the dry clothes.

"why is it when *i* dry the clothes, the dryer works, but when you use it, it doesn't?"

"i don't know. i always set it to the highest setting."

"really? on the dial, point to where you think the highest setting is."

she pointed dead center on the highest setting, but it was right when the dryer starts cooling down. The "fluff" time of the cycle. i laughed so hard that i shed tears.

needless to say, i called the appliance store again, rather embarrassed.

Conversely ...

Wherein last week we had a really great weekend, this weekend is shaping up to be one of the worst in history. And by "history," I mean since the dawn of time. Not just since weef and I got married; not just since we adopted girls 1 and 2. No no, reader. I mean since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden and forced to walk the untamed earth. That's right. My family and I are the recipients of THE WORST WEEKEND ever. Period.

Okay, okay ... I hyperbolize greatly. But it's probably true.

So, Friday morning, I checked movie times and prices for "Quantum of Solace." Found a good theater, checked the times, settled on the 8:05 PM show at the local theater, and called around to find a sitter. Some friends of ours agreed to a "date swap" night, where they watch our kids one night and we watch theirs the next night. Perfect! Called weef to tell her that we're going to dinner and a movie. She didn't pick up, and I didn't leave a message, but she called me back 5 minutes later. Earlier in the day, girl 1 had a doctor appointment for a routine physical. 4 shots in the leg for some booster shots = one grumpy little girl. Then came the chilling part.

Weef was holding girl 1 on her lap. She noticed something crawling in her hair. In fear, she showed the doctor, who said, "Yup. That's exactly what you think it is." Our poor little girl had an infestation of lice. And it was *bad*.

Now ... having never dealt with lice before, I thought, "well, comb them out, wash her up, and we'll send her over to our friends for our date night!!!" For those of you who have lived through this ordeal, you know the humor behind that statement. For those of you with the good fortune to have dodged this particular bullet, let me just say this: We discovered this Friday afternoon; it's Sunday morning, and we're nowhere near done with everything we need to do.

Just for us, we had to wash our hair with unconditioned shampoo, rinse, put in this foul smelling lotion that's supposed to kill ALL the bugs and eggs, leave it in for 10 minutes, rinse that out, towel dry our hair, then comb it for an hour or so--going inch by square inch over every part of our head: behind the ears, nape of the neck, and crown being the primary locations for lice to hide. It took us 4 hours JUST to comb girl one's hair. Girl 2 ... not nearly so bad. Maybe an hour. I just shaved my head down to about 1/16th inch. I do it pretty regularly anyway, so this wasn't a big ordeal for me.

Vacuuming every square inch of house with a shop vac--not a conventional vacuum cleaner, bagging all fuzzy and furry toys in air-tight bags, washing (no drying--dryer's dead) every stitch of clothing, changing bedsheets, pillow cases, spraying furniture, scrubbing ... more shampooing, lotioning, and combing. Even after two treatments of this supposed bug killing lotion, we *still* found live bugs in girl 1's hair. STILL!

We're not sleeping at all. Not well, anyway. We're too paranoid.

So here we are, under a self-imposed quarantine. No one comes in, no one goes out. Except the guy who's delivering our new/used dryer this morning. Ox in the mire, folks. Ox in the mire. Or as one friend put it, "bugs in the hair." Funny ... yet not.

Oh. Ha ha. Another friend skyped me during a small break and said, "Hey! You guys are now part of the Simpsons!"

"Oh ... yah? How's that?"

(long pause as he lets it build up)

"The Itchy and Scratchy Show!"

Again, funny ... but not a lot of funny.

So, yah. That's our weekend. How's everyone else's weekends going?!

Awesome Weekends Rule

This has been one of the best weekends in recent memory. Absolutely nothing grandiose about it; all we did yesterday was clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. "We" being weef and me. The girls sat around and watched movies all day. Not something I normally condone, but in order to accomplish what we wanted to do, it was a necessary evil. 'sides, it wasn't like we had them watching "The Matrix," or "Braveheart" ... they watched "Ice Age," "Cars," "Lady and the Tramp," and a couple of others.

The last few months have been frought with frustration and frenzied attempts to control tempers and tongues--especially on the weekends when everyone's home. It seems like, ever since the adoption, the adversary has been working quadruple time on us to try to tear us apart. I'm sorry to say that, on some small levels, I think he succeeded on a number of occasions. What can I say? We're not perfect. We do, however, try to put one foot forward instead of two feet backwards. In that, we're doing really well.

This weekend is what I consider the pinnacle of those attempts. The girls, weef and I seem to have come to some form of mutual understanding: the girls understand that we're in this for the long haul; we understand that they still harbor feelings of occasional doubt and fear that we attemt to allay with overdoses of hugs, kisses, and affection. Girl one--the one who remembers all the gory, sick, sordid details of the whole foster care ordeal--now smiles with regularity. Her eyes are bright, vibrant, and full of love. Girl two has literally no trace memory of what happened. We thank God every night that she doesn't. We also pray fervently that girl one will be relieved of her memories of her life before. I think we're there.

This weekend has been perfect. Headache and backache aside, I couldn't have asked for a better two days.

If At First You Don't Succeed ...

i'll say this about the gay community: they're persistent.

this is from KCRA's website:

"Matt Dorsey, a representative of the San Francisco city attorney's office, said City Attorney Dennis Herrera will file a legal challenge in the California Supreme Court if the measure wins."

sure. kind of like when i was a kid and i wanted a toy from the store. i used to kick, cry, scream and whine, thinking i'd eventually get my way.

my brother and i had a discussion about this. he said that he thought that, had the vote gone the other way, that the pro-8ers would have filed a petition too. i disagreed, and here's why:

most of the gay activists are ... what? young adults. 20s, 30s ... sure they have some in probably every age range, but my guess is that the overwhelming majority is going to fall in the 20s-30s.

i've noticed over the years that there's this pervading mentality of "entitlement"--"the world owes me" with the younger generation, and anything or anyone gets in their way be damned. "i am OWED this or that. GIVE ME WHAT I WANT."

now ...

that's not to say that the pro-8rs don't have their 20s-30s demographic that have the same mentality, but it just seems like, right now, it's "cool" or "hip" to be pro-gay marriage, and the majority of people who cling to that entitlement-ality are younger people. "gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme. " whereas the pro-8 side seems to have a much more balanced, spread-out demographic.

these are just my thoughts. i don't know if a demographics research would support my theories or not. just a hunch though ... i bet they would.

A Battle Lost, but 3 Battles Won

And really ... the "lost" battle is Obama winning the presidency, but after listening to his acceptance speech from Chicago, it's hard *not* to like him. What an incredible orator. If he can live up to his speech, I'll be impressed.

California, Arizona, and Florida all passed measures to add a line to their respective state constitution, defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. To me, this is SO much more important than the presidential election. It's 1:30 in the morning. I've stayed up specifically to keep tabs on those results in CA. I'm sufficiently sure that the prop has passed to where I can now go to bed.

THIS Is Infuriating

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4697796

How incredibly hypocritical. "Courage" Campaign. Really? How courageous is it singling out a single religion because they oppose your campaign to defeat traditional marriage? Know what? Sounds like the exact kind of fear-mongering gays hate in the first place.

Unbelievably hypcritical. I hope prop 8 passes. I care more about that prop passing than I do the presidential election.

Grah.

What a Super-Fantastic Day

It's election day, so I was already in a good mood right out of bed. Then I headed outside. WHAT a sweet morning! Rainy, dark, stormy ... "bruised and sullen storm clouds have the light of day obscured. Looming low and ominous, in twilight premature, thunderheads are rumbling in a distant overture."

It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.

Election Day! Make your voice HEARD!

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, it is time. I hope all of you will make your voice heard and be counted in the greatest democratic process ever. I don't care who you vote for--just vote. If you haven't educated yourself on the candidates, there's no time like the present.

This day like no other is what makes America great. Most countries have an Independence Day. Some countries have a voting process. But NO ONE has this country but us. WE decide. Well, okay ... the electoral college decides the presidency, but there are other items on every other ballot in the nation. In Utah, we're voting for State Governor, Senate seats, House seats, district court judges (of whom I can honestly say I am familiar with several on a very personal basis).

Take it to the polls, people. This is our day. I personally volunteer to watch anyone's kids so you can make it to your voting station.

Make it happen, folks. Make this the best country in the world for a reason: vote.

Mystery Color

Okay ... any time you blow your nose and you don't recognize the color, you know something is wrong.

That is all.

Absolutely no California Dreaming

First off, this link about San Francisco legalizing prositution:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27306120/

What an abhorrent (pardon the ironic pun) concept. This, in conjunction with the possible rejection of Proposition 8, is the specific reason why I would never want to live in California, yet feel somehow civically responsible TO move out there and combat these insidious evils. Yes, I said it--"insidious evils." You're welcome to think what you want about gay rights and same-sex marriage. My opinion is that it's wrong, and I make no apologies for it. I also believe that God put men and women on this planet to procreate and replenish the earth. Further, I also believe that the family--man, woman, and children--are the core units of society.

A dad and a mom bring a balance to a family. A mom and a mom (or dad and another dad) don't. They just do not.

I have friends that are HUGE proponents of homosexuality and gay marriages. That's fine. Their opinions are theirs, and I don't intend to try to change their minds. What I do intend to do is toot my pro-Prop 8 horn as loudly and as adamantly as I can.

But enough about the gay marriage rant and tirade
This new Prop K thing might just also become a personal vendetta for me.

So This Is What True Fear Feels Like

I'm at work today. Typical, yes; however, the conversation on our walk back from breakfast was anything but typical. A buddy of mine told me that a little girl in his neighborhood died of bacterial meningitis the other day. He also said that the same little girl had been playing in their house earlier that day, before she started feeling sick and flu-like. Her parents took her to the doctor. The next morning, she was gone.

He told me that as we were walking back from our campus cafeteria. I immediately called spouse and asked her to set up doctor appts for the girls and herself. Yah, maybe I'm being overly paranoid, and yah, maybe I'm jumping the gun. Maybe I'm not. Bacterial meningitis is *highly* contagious, and I work with a guy whose little boy is now in the hospital awaiting lab results because he was playing with the little girl who passed away. Call me what you want. I'll err on the side of caution and fight to keep my wife and kids alive. There's something like a 15% fatality rate amongst children, less for adults. There's no way I'm risking it. That's a greater than 1 in 7 fatality rate.

Though having said all of that, weef is at home with both girls, both of whom are bouncing off the walls, full of energy and vim. Both with deep, gutteral coughs, both with runny noses. Yet they have the energy of a nuclear weapon. And about as much destructive force ...

I'm so relieved that they're hyper. Yah, they're messing up the whole house, but they're active. They're not lethargic. They seem okay.

We're still going to double check.

Guilty Pleasures

So, is it so wrong to be so heavily into Metallica’s “Garage Inc.” disc 2? I can’t turn this thing off. Also, I’ve been seriously into “… And Justice” and “Master of Puppets” for about 2 weeks. I feel like I need to grow my hair out about 2 feet, dye it blonde, and start growling at everything.

Just for fun, I downloaded all the originals. Bands like Killing Joke, Holocaust, Budgie, Diamond Head, The Misfits. Well, okay … not ALL the originals—just whatever was on the original 5.98 EP.

Ironically, the girls really think it’s funny to listen to “Helpless.” They get all dancy and start jumping around. It’s kind of funny watching them and listening to that particular track. Not sure why.

Which brings me to my next thought … how good a parent am I if I’m letting my 2- year old and 4-year old girls listen to Metallica?

Things to work on, I suppose ...

To Lee

An individual by the name of Lee posted a comment on my last blog. I have one question: Did my brog make you raugh?

If you know the answer to this, we need to find a way to get together. My wife's sister and husband are back from Portland, and we always talk about finding you and doing a bbq.

Then again, if this isn't who I think it is, then you're probably scratching your head.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed my blog!

No Rest for the Unbelievably Weary

So, I have this cold. Not a mystery as to where I picked it up from ... girl one goes back to school, germs spread around like peanut butter on bread, and sure enough, I get it. The beauty is that I JUST had a flu shot on Wednesday. How ironic is that?

Of course, I'm not the only one who's sick. EVERYone seems to have a runny nose. I guess I'm just the hardest hit: weef's cleaning the kitchen, apparently feeling "fine"; girls one and two are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, tearing into every toy they own, with no regard for "the clean-up rule."

And now, my petri dish of a second daughter just crawled over, barking like a puppy, and demanded to give me a kiss--a puppy kiss. I'm simply never going to get better.

But you know what? I'd rather be as sick as a dog (pun intended) and know that my girls love me than be healthy and wondering. Not that I *do* wonder ... it's just nice to have that licking affirmation.

More Dayquil might help. So might a long, long nap. I'm sure I won't get the latter, so I'm going to go get some of the former

And Then There Were Three

Lori has an all-day "girls day out" activity planned with a bunch of friends. Shopping, lunch, and a matinee play at some comedy theater. They're not going to be back until late this evening. That means we get a daddy/daughter day! Not sure what we're going to do, but we're going to do something! SomethingS! LOTS of things.

"Like blog?"

Shut up. AFTER I blog. Smart alecks ... all of you. :)

Okay, so right now, they're playing with a measuring tape, measuring everything: each other; the dogs; the tv; their kitchen set; plates; cups; the couches; our wood-buring stove ... they're insatiable. The beauty is that they have NO idea what they're actually doing. They know the tape goes in and out of the tape measure, and it has numbers on it. But it's so cute.

I think we're going to go to McDougals for lunch. They'll have a kids meal between them (yes, they eat that lightly), then they'll play on the doohickey for a while, then we'll come home and they'll sleep. Before that, thought, I think we'll go shopping. They LOVE riding around in the car carts. You know ... the fun carts for kids that have little steering wheels in the front that do nothing other than spin freely? Yah. I could push them around our local store for hours (don't ask how I know) and they'll eat that up.

Dinner. What to do. Mac and cheese, I suppose, but that's so bland. Maybe I'll grill them some hot dogs. They do enjoy a well-grilled dog.

"It's time now. My time now. Give me my wings."

Vocabulary Lessons

So, today, I'm working from home. My wife volunteered at girl 1's school this morning, which left me with girl 2. Having much to do for work, I hunkered down in front of my monitor after I set up girl 2 with as much "Clifford the Big Red Dog" as she could handle. Apparently, it wasn't interesting enough. A few minutes later, she came bounding over to my (off-limits) area. "Daddy, I want see pictures!"

"Do you, now. And what do you want to see pictures of?"

"ME!"

I took a few seconds to soak this in and stifle a percolating laughter. After I got myself under control, I said, "Honey, can you say, 'narcissist'?"

"yessehseh"

"Okay, watch daddy. 'nar'..."

"Nawww ..."

"...cis..."

"sisssss"

"sist."

She said that one pretty well. So then we tried saying it altogether.

"Narcissist!"

"Nawsehseh!!!"

I couldn't keep it in any longer. The laughter bubbled over, and girl two just giggled and giggled.

"Sweetie, daddy loves you."

"Yessehseh!!"

"Yes, sweetie. Still want to see some of your pictures?"

"YAH!!!!"

"Okay."

That lasted all of 4 seconds before she decided to go check out Clifford again.

What a doll.

Fear and Panic in the Air

So, this morning, I've been working on this bug-reporting process document. Earlier, I met with one of our our project managers so he and I could go over the steps and verify them as accurate. I drafted up a document and sent it out for review.

A couple of hours went by. I've been working on some other projects, catching up on email ... regular work stuff. All of a sudden, I got a skype message from my team lead. "Hey, could you come in here?" He was in one of the conference rooms.

I don't have a logical explanation for it, but my immediate reaction was one of sheer fretting and dread. I honestly expected to go in there and face some kind of consequence for something I wasn't even aware that I had done. I felt like the proverbial lamb being led to slaughter. Not helping things is the fact that the conference room is glass all around, allowing me to see straight to my lead for about the last 25-30 feet. On the table with him was a pink sheet.

Come to find out, all the worry and panic was for naught; he only wanted to go over the draft I had sent him, the comments for which were mostly complimentary. The rest were comments phrased like, "Here's where I can see this being improved. What do you think?"

I guess it's just conditioning. In my last job, I very rarely ever heard anything of a positive nature from anyone--management, team members, peers ... anything that was discussed was always of a negative nature. Having been on the inside and now able to look in from the outside, it's an incredibly un-positive environment. Granted, I had one lead who went out of his way to be complimentary, but I sometimes wonder how much of that was genuine and how much of it was smoke being blown where smoke doesn't belong.

So now I'm in this great, positive environment, where there's an atmosphere of total open communication and unity. I guess I'm still not used to it. At my old place, it seemed like it was "every man for himself," as it were. On all levels: internal, external, contractors, government ... there just wasn't the feeling of one-ness, even though everyone's goal was to "support the war fighter."

I guess it's still gonna take some time to get used to being complimented for my work. It's definitely a good feeling, and I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually ... it'd just be nice to get to that feeling without the preceding fear and panic as to why I'm being called into an impromptu, one-on-one meeting.

The Legacy of Happiness

On Monday, I took the new highway for the first time, both to work and home. It didn't really shave anything off the morning commute, but the ride home took less than 40 minutes. That's a full half hour off my afternoon commute! My gas mileage is already thanking me. No standing on the highway, no bumper-to-bumper traffic ... nothing buy smooth sailing. It's great.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Hell Hath No Fury ...

When you're told that your child's school starts on 2 September, and you buy her new clothes that she may only wear when school starts, and you buy her pencils, crayons, glue, paper, and all the other accoutrement that come with going to pre-school, and you get her dressed and ready to go, AND you get to the school and try walking her to class, AND THEN you find out that--no--school doesn't start until the 4th, be prepared for the fall-out.

Such was the predicament for my sweet wife today. We've been telling girl 1 for weeks that today was the day she'd get to go back to school and see her old friends. Today was a gargantuan disappointment, and she let weef know just how disappointed she was. I can summarize in 3 words: it wasn't pretty.

Girl 1 likes to learn. She studies bugs and plays with them like they're regular toys. This presents a problem when they're playing in the back yard; we have a known problem with black widows that no amount of spraying or bug bombing seems to quell. So basically, we told her that spiders are OFF-LIMITS. She may play with box elder bugs, potato bugs, ants, or pretty much anything else she finds in the back yard EXCEPT SPIDERS. To her credit, she's done remarkably well. Anyway, so she has this penchant and passion for learning. Telling her that school was going to have to wait 2 more days was the equivalent of telling the female population between 9 and 22 in early 60s England that the Beatles wouldn't be performing tonight--they'd be performing on Thursday night.

Woman scorned? Try a 4-year old. Yikes.

Home Projects 101

It's a simple matter of life, I guess, or maybe some derivation of Murphy's Law: If you plan on doing a home remodeling project--even if it *is* spur of the moment--everything and anything will come up to keep you from completing it in the time you've alloted. Such is the case with our "weekend warrior" attempt to have our bedroom shed its wallpaper (read: multiple layers of wallpaper) and painted by Monday evening. As it stands, we *might* be able to pull this off, but it's going to be a challenge.

Yesterday, I spent a good chunk of the day peeling, spraying and scraping off all the wallpaper. Between the paper and the carpet chunks being used as baseboards, that filled a 55-gallon garbage bag to the point of spilling over the top. Today being Sunday, we're taking a break from the week in general to relax, spend time at church and with family, and basically just rest. Hooray for Sundays! Tomorrow, though ... I'm throwing myself into the fray at 6 am. I bought two gallons of hearty Kilz, which should be enough to prime the whole room--ceiling and walls. A coat of primer dries in about an hour, so then we'll apply a second coat. After that, it's off to Home Depot to select a lovely shade of puce. Or mauve. Or whatever it is that weef wants. I believe her current color of choice comes from "the plum family." Once again, my dreams of having an all black room seem to have been utterly shot. Oh well.

So that's what's on the docket for tomorrow. We probably could have primed and at least painted A coat yesterday if things hadn't come up during the course of the day, but they did. Typical ... life throws things at us every day that side-track us from things. Sometimes these things are important--like helping a friend pick up a new mattress set or your wife having to pick up her consignment shop item. I don't necessarily think that picking up the hutch or moving the mattress was necessarily "mission critical" for either of them, but they wanted/needed these things done yesterday, or they would have had to wait a week or two more. Why not just get them out of the way?

Searching the Void for Content-ment

I come before you, battered and bruised--a fallen warrior of the blogosphere battle. Try as I might, I come up empty-handed when it comes to finding something blog-worthy about which to write. This is not from a lack of effort; I have earnestly sought and striven to slay the writer's block beast, all to no avail.

Though I might have come up with something that weef and I have been discussing, but that's an entire post unto itself.

In fact ... stay tuned. There might just be another post today.

RSS confusion

okay, so i have rss feed subscriptions to all y'all's blogs, right? for the last 3+ weeks, i haven't gotten a single update. i figured, "must be a moratorium on blogging for the summer so everyone can maximize their outdoor time." silly me, since one of you lives in phoenix and one of you lives in kanab ... why would you *want* to be outside?!

anyway, so i think i projected my outdoor longings on to everyone else. i haven't bothered checking actual blogs to see if anything's been written. imagine my surprise when most of you have something like 10 new posts!

anyway, i declare an end to the non-existent summertime moratorium! that's my right and privlege as a moron, right? :)

let the blogging continue! at least on my end ... since y'all have been blogging anyway. :)

Calendar Confusion

Okay, so ... it's 7:12 am. Normally, at this point, there are 5 or 6 people in the office. Right now, I'm the only one. It's kind of weird. I've been here since 10 after 6, and yah, generally no one's in until roughly 6:30-7, but this is just bizarre. I actually had to look at the calendar to make sure it wasn't Saturday because that's the only explanation I could come up with as to why no one's here.

Has that ever happened to any of you? Wondering if it's not actually the weekend because no one else is around?

Gotta say, though ... it's pretty nice. I can work uninterrupted, and I can watch Scrubs while working on my projects. Pretty sweet.

Happy X-Files Movie day!

Fretting and Worried

I have two very major concerns right now. There is a very distinct and definite correlation connecting them. They are:

1. Girl 1's vocal cords;
2. My ear drums.

There is a perk to all of the screaming, though ... I'm guessing that she's going to drop like a stone from sheer lack of energy. All of it has been concentrated on ruining my hearing.

*sigh*

Memories

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Missed My Calling in Life

So, lately, I've been into taking macro pictures of bugs. My parents in law's backyard is a great source. I've gotten good pictures of wasps, some kind of bee, ants, and dragonflies. This, obviously, is a dragon fly. Pretty cool, eh? Yah ... I took that. I was sitting on in-laws' steps in the terrace, and I saw this little guy. Pretty nice.

This guy was just hanging out on a shrub on the side of the house, but there were plenty in the terrace, too. I just couldn't get them to sit still. "Cheese" doesn't exactly fly with grasshoppers. Didn't know that, did ya?

Pretty sweet wasp, eh? I'm wondering if I had some pollen on my lens that he was scoping out; he was staring pretty intently at the camera at one point--the point where I *didn't* have my finger on the shutter release. Figure that.

Weef thinks this is a Box Elder bug, but I'm not convinced it is, though I'm not sure what it is. Check out the eyes. Creepy! They're totally red. As girl 1 likes to say, "EEEEEWWW!"

No lie: I said, "Dragonfly, LAND ON ME!" 4 seconds later, it did. Ask my in-laws. It was amazing ... it just flew right up and *plop*--there he was. Right on my shorts. What's a guy to do but start snapping close-ups.

Same little guy, just a close-up of his head. If you click on the image, you can see the details in the eyes. It's amazing. Unfortunatly, he was dead by the time we went to the fireworks later that night. My theory is that he was stung by a wasp over in the shrubs on the south side of the house, since that's where he flew from.

Still Alive

Just thought y'all would want to know. A lack of blogging does not indicate a lack of life. Actually, if anything, it probably indicates an over-abundance of life and all of its surprises.

Everyone have a pleasant, wonderful night. Or morning. Whenever you read this. :)

This Blog Is for the Weef

RSS feed time, baby!

My weef's the best.
Better than the rest.
She bakes great cakes
and shakes and quakes
to music that doesn't suck.

I know suck doesn't rhyme with "best" or "rest," but I don't care. :)

Weef is also great because she's smart. She has a masters degree. I just have a boring old bachelor's degree. Which, really, isn't even applicable since I'm not a bachelor. Weird how that works.

One of weef's other great qualities is that she's smoking hot. :)

But her best quality above all is how patient she is with me. I'm the luckiest guy in the WORLD! I know I don't deserve you, sweetie, but I'm so glad you tolerate my crap.

I hate talking about budgets, but I'll do it for you cuz Ah luhv ewe.

Weef Is Blogging!

http://silly-girl13.blogspot.com/

Isn't she great! I love it! Everyone go read her stuff. It's great.

What a Wonderful Weekend

Yesterday was frickin' awesome. So, okay ... back story: I met these two awesome friends in college. This was back in 1994. We did a lot of hanging out, road trips, etc. So then we all went our separate ways in 1995. Well, I did, anyway; they got married and lived in Idaho. A few months later, I moved out to Utah. They volunteered to come down and pick me up for Thanksgiving of 1995. That's a mighty feat, considering they lived about 2.5 hours north. But that's the kind of people they are. :)

Anyway, we had a lovely Thanksgiving together, along with some other friends from the previous college year. Next thing I knew, they moved to California. I think it was a couple of years after that Thanksgiving, but still ...

So they've been in California ever since. They come back to Idaho for visits every so often, but we've never been able to get together. That changed yesterday.

It was lovely. We caught up on their lives, met their awesome kids, had a great bbq and talked for 4 or 5 hours. The kids busied themselves with stuff like "Cars," "The Incredibles," and the like. We talked about our kids, their kids, our lives, their lives ... it was really cool. AND we're going to go out to California to visit them. Not sure when, but we are! Hopefully in December, but if not, certainly next late spring or early summer. Weef's work schedule somewhat erratic due to the nature of her career, but it does allow for some time off in large chunks at various times throughout the year.

Thanks for stopping by and gracing us with your presence. It was fantastic. And we're DEFINITELY coming out there. :)

Very Odd ...

Girl 1 just informed me that she is going to "screw drive" my hair. She really means she wants to comb it, but I told her that I don't have enough hair for her to comb. Then she dropped that line ... "Fine, I'll screwdrive it."

Where she picked that up is beyond me. She doesn't watch Franklin, or Thomas, or anything that has to do with tools like that. She does like to watch Mickey's Club House, and they use the "mouseketool" thingy, but I don't think they'd recommend using a screwdriver for combing hair. If I find out that they do, I'm going to write the show's producer and give him a piece of my mind.

Meanwhile, I'm going to have my hair "screwdrived." Or "screwdriven" ... hmm. I wonder what the proper term for that would be.

UPDATE: I found out why she needs to "screwdrive" my hair: it's dirty. And broken.

4-year olds. Gotta love 'em.

Musings of a 4-Year Old

The other day, girl 1 told me that she likes eating her food. "Why is that, sweetie?"

"Because then I can be big JUST LIKE YOU!"

Weef and I have a very firm policy about not telling the girls they can't do something, as in "No no ... you can't get water from the fridge. Mommy or daddy will do that FOR you." We always try to encourage them to "reach for the stars," as it were.

However ...

There are some things in life you just don't want to see your kids "attain." Reaching the lofty goal of "being as big as daddy" is definitely one of them. Maybe the size of mommy, who is between 1/2 to 1/3 the size of daddy ... that's a good goal. Weighing in at roughly the size of a small manatee ... not so desirable.

Mundane Post #4.

I am in charge of releasing a weekly newsletter. It contains varius information from all our departments under the engineering group. It also contains a bunch of crap that I throw in, like "word of the day," "quote of the day," "useless trivia that, if you already know, you probably shouldn't be working here" ... stuff like that.

This week's trivia information: the standard atomic weight of iron is 55.847 g/mol.

See? if you already knew that, you probably ought to be creating the next break-through glow-in-the-dark compound to kick that zinc sulfide's butt.

Mundane Post #3

I really wanted to go to Costa Vida for lunch today. In my opinion, they make THE BEST nachos. Hands down.

So I did. As expected, they are delicious. Cheesy, sweet porky, sour creamy, guacamoly, black beany, and mango salsy. SOOO yummy.

Mundane Post #2

As promised ...

Here's a well-buried English trick: take any word that isn't a noun. Say, "once," for example. Add -ity to the end of it, and now you have a noun.

Used in a sentence: "The onceity of the situation was rather surprising, given the frequency of the combination of events."

Other word of the day: Bendy. ex. "LEDs on a printed circuit board should not be bendy."

Mundane post #1

Today is one of those days where I feel like posting trivial stuff. Like ...

Y'all know those little brown pieces of dried-up toast in Gardetto's snacks? Yah. Those rule.

That is all. For now. Expect more mundanity throughout the day.That's right ... "mundanity."

And I Thought Jr. High Was Bad ...

This is officially stupid. The "reading level" ... not my actual blog.

What is it going to take to achieve a higher reading level? Waxing verbosely eloquent with the implementation of such lexical polemics as to render one unable to read this blog without the use of a thesaurus?

Die, criticsrant. Die.

Rose Colored Glasses and Pump Pleasures

I'm not one to believe that the world is all buttered popcorn and jelly bellies, but when life is this good, you have to step back and recognize the good things that have been afforded you in the relatively recent past.

These are are in chronological order.

1. The "new" job. As my team lead put it a while ago, "You've only been here two months, but you're already old hat." This place just doesn't get old.

2. Adopting the girls. No lie: i teared up when the judge asked me point blank if I "do willingly of my own free will and choice accept these two girls as my own, and take upon [me] the responsibility of their parent." It was all I could to do squeak out an audible "yes" for the court's record, but I did ... after several seconds of lump-in-the-throat inability to speak.

3. Temple sealing. For as great as legally adopting the girls was, it didn't hold a candle to walking out of the temple, knowing that these two beautiful girls are now sealed to us for time and all eternity. That is one amazing concept.

4. New car. Yep. That's right. 2006 Honda Civic. Deep, deep blue. Gorgeous vehicle. Definitely a step up from my raggedy truck. I even went so far as to "trick it out" by putting blue LED lights in the dome and map lights. It's pretty slick.

5. Gas mileage. So, fueleconomy.gov said that the '06 civics could expect to get 36 mph on the highway. It's a rather well-accepted notion that the findings posted on that website are conservative in their estimates, meaning that we *could* expect anywhere between 36-40. I would have been happy with that range.

So far, on the first tank, we drove approximately 326 miles. Just for kicks, I tanked up today at lunch. Had I accepted the initial "click-off" of the pump, I would have pumped around 5.9 gallons. At 326 miles, that equates to approximately 55 mpg. I, however, did not accept the initial click, and proceeded to pump an additional 1.1 gallons ... to the point where the tank was almost spilling over the gas tank cap. 7 gallons at 326 equates to approximately 46.5 mpg.

Life is good. In fact, it's *really* good. I hope all (five) of my readers' lives are as good for them, in whatever aspect.

Confluence of Confusion

So last night, the 4 of us were driving back from visiting my brother and his family. As we're driving, wife says, "Hey, I think we just passed that one person you used to be friends with."

"What ...? Where?"

"Back there. Doesn't she drive blah blah blah car?"

"Yah."

"We definitely just passed her."

I have gone to great lengths to eliminate this person from my life. This came after several weeks of trying to figure out why she stabbed me in the back the way she did, and trying to fix our friendship. At this point, I can no longer afford to care or worry about it. If I were as cold-hearted as she can be, I could have let this slide back at the beginning of April when everything happened. The problem is that I *did* care. A lot. It made me sick to think that someone thought I was dumping on them, but it made me more sick to know that, in the end, our friendship was really just a big sham. A ruse. And I was the unwitting participant in one of the truly large practical jokes--our supposed friendship.

So there we were, on the highway. I really, really didn't want to see this person, so I sped up a bit and got over into our exit lane. Sure enough, though, guess who pulled in right next to us at the light. My wife being the sweetie she is wanted to wave and say hi, but I pointed out that, knowing how she's treated us lately, she'd call the cops and try to get some kind of restraining order issued.

I'm sort of a masochist, I guess. I can tell myself until every last brain cell is dead (which, at this point, would only be about 5 or 6) that I don't want to do something, and I'll do it anyway just because I'm a moron. So weef said that she was sitting right next to us, and of course, I had to look. Sure enough, there she was. I'm not sure if she had someone in the car with her or if she was just singing along to the radio, but she looked like she was talking or singing. Or whatever. She looked happy.

Then, all of the sudden, I realized that I was happy *for* her *being* happy. The last month we worked together, she always had her door shut, she rarely came out, and when she did, she always looked consternated and pissed off. I know her job sucked royally at that point, and I know that she had a really, really rough patch of it a few months ago, but beyond that, I don't know what her job entails or how things turned out because she so wholly and completely cut us out of her life. Like I said, I can't afford to worry about it at this point, but regardless, she looked happy last night. Maybe that's an indication that she's back to her "happy place."

I can't flush 4 years of friendship down the toilet. That's not me. I can't tell myself that someone who I thought was such a good friend no longer matters. If she's happy, then I'm happy for her.

Guilty Pleasures

So, I was in our old bathroom, doing what bathrooms are designed to allow. Afterwards, I stuck around and poked through our cabinets, seeing what missing treasures we'd forgotten are still stuck in the now un-used bathroom (we moved ourselves downstairs and gave the girls our room about 6 months or so ago). Amongst the half-used tubes of toothpaste and deoderant sticks was a nearly-full bottle of vicks vapo-steam concentrate. Ideally speaking and assuming a spouse doesn't become highly agitated by the use of a vaporizor laden with this elixer, one would pour some of the concentrate into a humidifier and allow the steam to loosen your chest and clear your sinus passages. However, no such assumption can be made on my part anymore due to weef's adamant and vehement non-concurrence of use.

That does NOT mean that I can't unscrew the lid and take a nice, long, healthy sniff straight from the bottle. I know that sounds completely addict-like. Don't care. I *love* the smell of vicks vapo-ANYthing. Once upon a time, I could buy these little tubes that look like chapstick, but no no--it was a portable Vicks vapo-stick. One quick snort of this stuff, and my eyes would water, nose would drain, throat would clear, lungs would magically expunge all loose phlegm ... it was wonderful. All for a couple of whiffs.

Ahhh ... the good old days.

This stuff rules. Hands down.

It Is Official!

The adoption is finalized, and we have been sealed for time and all eternity to girls 1 and 2. They are ours and we are theirs forever. What a beautiful concept.

Monday and Tuesday were extremely emotional days for us. On one hand, we were elated to have everything finished through the state, and we were overjoyed at the new beginning we have with going with the girls to the temple.

However ...

Along with the elation came strong feelings of doubt and worry. Can we do this? SHOULD we do this? HOW are we going to to this? I mean, yah--we've had them in the house for over 8 months, and I'm pretty sure I speak for both my wife and myself, but we simply have no clue what we're doing. I know, I know ... "Yah, there's no user manual with these kinds of things. You get to learn it all on the fly!" My philosophy is that there are some things that should not be learned on the fly. How to tuck and roll off a bike as you're careening down a hill is okay. Learning to point your toes as you fall out the back end of a disintegrating plane at 10,000 feet over a large body of water is okay too. Parenting, however, is not something you want to just "fling" yourself into. There *needs* to be a manual.

But it's impossible. I just look at our two girls and recognize immediately the futility of trying to write such a manual. These two have some striking personality similarities, but they also have some very distinct differences. Girl 1 is manipulative and is constantly trying to get her way. Girl 2 also wants to get her way, but she doesn't try to finagle the system like girl 1 does. Girl 1 is excellent at figuring out things for herself. Girl 2 gives up rather easily. Now ... there are about 16 months age difference between the two, but I don't believe that all of the differences are age related. Some, maybe ... most are just personality differences.

Which brings me back to my original point of not writing a user manual. Honestly, the appendices would far outweigh the actual text.

Crooked Dealership

I'm not one to typically trash an establishment of any kind, but when the lying is this blatant, I need to vent.

Last night, my wife and I went car shopping. We went to one dealership first. The salesman was nice enough. Not a lot of glad-handing or innane babble ... just some general ideas of what's on the lot and asked us some need-to-know questions to get us to the cars we were interested in. We ended up test-driving a nice 2005 Toyota Corolla. Lovely car.

Not wanting to rush into the first car we test drive, we told the salesman that we'd need to test drive some other vehicles, and that we would definitely let him know what the scoop is--one way or the other. He was that nice. So we went across the street, and immediately tumbled down all 7 levels and across the river Styx to the 3rd inner ring of car salesman hell.

This kid comes bumbling over to us, and I already didn't like him. He just had this air of arrogance and stupidity about him that irked me from the get-go. "OHhhh ... so you're looking for a car, eh? WHat kind?"

"Well, our budget is XX.XX. What do you have for that or under?"

"Hmmm ... not a lot. But we have this fabulous (insert whatever make and model here) for about YY.YY!! How about we get you behind the wheel and take a test drive?! HUH? HUH!?!?!?"

At that point, we should have turned around and left. We didn't. We did, however, test drive a lovely 2006 Honda Civic. I'm convinced that that will be our next car, but not from that place.

The Civic didn't have a sticker price on it. Or chalk price. Or paint price. No price whatsoever. Now, I told Jr. what our budget was. After he tried showing us these other pricey cars, I reminded him of what our budget is. "Oh, alright. Let's take a look at this Civic." So we did. Drove it, loved it. Still no idea what the price is. "Find out what the price is and TELL ME."

"Okay, but let me ask you this. If I can make the numbers work, would I be able to earn your business today?"

"Ummmm ... what?"

"If I can get the numbers to work for you, would I be able to earn your business today?"

What a stupid question. "Of course. Why wouldn't I buy it if the numbers work for us?"

So we go in. Instead of crunching numbers, he hands us a credit application.

"Hey. What does this have to do with the price of the car?"

"Oh, well ... nothing, but while I'm figuring out what I can do for you, let's start filling out the application. Just in case!"

Wow. I really wanted to take this kid and tie him to a barbed wire fence and throw tomatoes at him. I didn't though. Know why? Cuz at my core, I'm actually quite nice. :)

He comes back. "Okay, so, like we discussed (which we never did), you might need to consider a bump. You said you would (no I didn't). Right now, I can get you into this car for (double what we told Jr. our budget is)."

"I hate to point this out to you, but that's not a bump. That's a sink hole. And I'm not jumping in."

"Well, I told you what the range would be; you knew that ..."

"Look. you told me nothing about the price of that car. I asked you repeatedly if you had found out anything about it, and you always said 'no.' The car is our of our range, and I'm not buying it. Period."

"but you said if I could make the numbers work, I could earn your business."

"And you could have ... IF the price were IN OUR BUDGET. Remember that figure I gave you when we came on the lot and have been constantly reminding you of what our budget is? That IS WHAT IT IS."

"Well, what if I could keep the montly payment under, say, $250?"

"I don't care what the montly payment is. I'm interested in THE BUDGET."

"So, if you have a $XXXX car and your payment is $500, you're okay with that?"

"Yes, because it's about the budget--not the monthly payment. We'll have the car paid for within a matter of months--not years. You have no early pay-off penalties, so it doesn't make sense for me to draw out the payments over 3, 4 or even 5 years if I can pay it off in 5-6 months, now does it?"

"Well, I showed you what we have in your budget. Those are the cars we have."

"Yah. And you also showed us a bunch of cars that weren't in our budget, and basically wasted our time."

No lie--all told we were there for 3 hours. My wife and I left feeling dirty, clogged and royally pissed off. We decided that we didn't care of that Civic dropped to $50; we're not buying a single thing from that dealership.

Ironically, I came home and did some Kelly Blue Book number crunching of my own. According to their site, the dealership was over-selling the car by about $7000. No lie. I'm sorely tempted to print off this report, march over to the dealership, call out the sales manager, and throw that in his face. But I won't. Cuz I'm a nice guy. Just don't piss me off. :)

No More Doing the Dew

Or Coke. Or Pepsi. Or Dr. Pepper. Or 7-Up, Sprite, Root Beer . . . if it's carbonated and drinkable, I will not imbibe. Unless it's sparkling cider.

"Wow. Why the oh-so-dramatic change, there, Hoss?"

Let me tell you.

I am extremely susceptible to kidney infections. So much so that a 2-day "binge" of test-driving the new Mt. Dew flavors was enough to cause a renal revolt on a corporeal level. My body pretty much shut down entirely: Muscles ached of their own accord; my stomach insisted upon performing flips worthy of Barnum & Bailey's travelling freak show; temperature spiked to 102.

Through all of this, and being the corporate flunky that I am, I decided to trudge in to work on Monday. That was a huge mistake. I work a little under 40 miles from my house. The commute down sucked pretty badly. The next few hours are basically a blur. If the men's room had frequent flyer miles, I would have been a medallion member by 9 am. Finally, sitting at my desk at 9:45 and propping myself up on both hands and elbows, and after having no less than 3 people telling me that I was actually whiter than my shirt (not too far a stretch; it was a rather tan color), I decided that it was time to go. Ideally speaking, "go" would have meant "to heaven," but apparently Heavenly Father has other plans for me. Probably a good thing, since we're adopting the girls on MONDAY! Another blog post for another day, though.

Like I said, I live about 40 miles from work. It should come as no surprise that, in order for me to get home, I had to drive that same 40 miles to get back to the house. The problem was my body was already in shut-down mode. I haven't had that much trouble staying awake since our last high council speaker. OH! Where's a rim shot when you need one?

Anyway, got home, said hi to weef and the girls, and collapsed into bed. 4 hours of sleep later, I got up, had a drink of water,

10:30 pm

Yah . . . sometimes getting kids to bed sucks.

Anyway, yah. now I'm all sore again. Gotta sleep. Short story long, I shouldn't have drunk that Mt. Dew, yet I did, and now . . . I am where I am.

Moses of the Highway

Bizarro.

So, this morning, as a break from my routine of leaving at 6:15 to be to work at 7, I had breakfast at Rancheritos with some friends at 6:30. It was lovely. Caught up a bit with how they're doing, found out some interesting information about the goings-on at the old job, and then we all had to take off. It was about 6:45 when I actually hit the highway.

Anticipating the brake-tapping and general non-speedy highway conditions, I threw on some good, awake-y music on my ipod. Generally, I'll make it through 10-12 songs that are around 5 minutes each. Today, I made it through 7. I was here at 7:20--20 minutes later than normal. That's a small price to pay for having breakfast with friends. :)

The odd thing was the traffic flow pattern: there was so little traffic that, at one point, there was about a block between me and the next car in front and behind me. I had the whole highway to myself for a quarter mile. It was lovely. There was the occasional straggler that lagged behind the mass in front of me, or the lead foot who had to zip ahead of me to the next clump of cars, but for the most part, it was me and a whole lot of blacktop.

It has to be Friday. :)

The Day that Almost Got Away

"It's calms like these that normally indcate the shizac-storm to end all is about to hit. It's for that reason that days like these are so great . . . and so absolutely terrifying."

That was from yesterday's blog.

Today, I got an email from a friend from my previous employer. Suffice it to say that I wasn't prepared for the contents. Instantly, I was in a funk, and all these self-disparaging feelings immediately boiled to the surface. I know this person didn't intend for that to happen, and certainly nothing that caused these feelings of self-doubt and confusion were brought on by anything this friend said or did. Nevertheless, the feelings were there. I felt like I wanted to crawl under a rock and burrow into the dirt just to hide from the past.

And then they were gone. In one fell swoop, the feelings were gone. I remembered something I was told way back in February from Someone infinitely more capable of knowing the true story of *every*thing.

I'll admit--it was a close call this morning. I could feel the day slipping away and I was becoming rather depressed. Then I remembered what I felt way back in February . . . and I just stopped caring. Not in a "daily affirmation" kind of way, but I am a great guy. I'm nice, I'm friendly, I'm fun, and I'm worth being friends with. If someone doesn't feel that way, I can't do anything about it. In no way am I going to let that place or person drag me down any more than I have already allowed. I'm happy where I am, and that's good enough for me.

There Are Just Some Days that Are Just That Excellent

Today, it's raining, it's chilly, and it's frickin' lovely. Today just has one of "those" feelings to it. The grab-a-bowl-of-popcorn-and-a-good-movie feelings--the kind of day where you just stare out the window and know that everything in the world, or maybe just your world, is okay.

It's calms like these that normally indcate the shizac-storm to end all is about to hit. It's for that reason that days like these are so great . . . and so absolutely terrifying.

But for right now, the day is great. I'm busy with work (clearly . . .), we're getting ready for the adoption finalization, the Redwings could lock up Lord Stanley's cup tonight, and yah.

I guess there are some days where you're just really grateful for little things--like weather, or good sleep, or knowing that you're doing a good job at your new job, or that you have a loving family and good friends, or that you have a pint of ben and jerry's waiting for you at home, or that you have a ton of good music to listen to while working, or . . . well, anything that puts a smile on your face. Right now, that smile is born of an internal feeling of okay-ness. In a few minutes, it could be from the little walk i'm going to take to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. after that, it might be the walk to the next building over to grab some lunch.

Little things make for great feelings. Sometimes, when you stop and think about it, those "little" things aren't so little. Not if they can induce a big smile.

On a Much More Positive Note

My new toy:



Indeed, that is 160GB of ipodery. Weef is inheriting my "old" 80gb ipod. She's sad. Okay, not really.

This is Ridiculous . . .

I find that *highly* offensive.

Epiphany

This company frickin’ rocks. They know how to treat their employees. With Tybrin, I realized the other day that I had been coasting for the last few years, just collecting a paycheck. I’d go to work with a fake smile, and I’d come home with a less fake smile. If I were the slightest bit tired, I’d be grumpy, pissy and generally unpleasant. That was with Tybrin. Sunday night/Monday morning, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, and was up until 11 pm Monday night. Monday, of course, was Memorial Day—traditionally a bbq day with Lori’s family. Ralph and Barbara had made no announcement or invite for their place, so we called them to find out what was going on. “Oh, ummmm . . . pretty much nothing.”

“Well why don’t you guys come down to our place for a bbq?”

So they came, as did Rob and Mel and their two boys. Mind you, I had been up since 1:30 am. I did all the grilling, all the cooking, most of the cleaning, and a lot of the watching of our two girls. Granted, later in the day, Rob and I watched “Ice Age: The Meltdown”, but still—most of the day was busy.

But I wasn’t grumpy. I wasn’t pissy. I was pleasant, fun, and . . . dare I say it—giddy! I was actually excited to be awake and with everyone . . . even in my sleep-deprived state. I talked to Lori about what the reasons could be, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: for the first time in about 4 years, I actually enjoy—and I mean *really* enjoy—going to work. My company appreciates me. Everyone here is on the same page. We’re all fighting to get a good, quality product out the door. I don’t have to battle other contractors (read: other contracts, SEIC!) or programs to get a good product out the door. I can come to work, do my job, KNOW that I’m going to get the support I need from everyone . . . and it feels *foreign* to me.

Don’t get me wrong—everyone I worked with directly in my company was good to work with. I always had the SME support I needed. Our hardware team was great to work with. Our SST group was outstanding. Admin, our government reps . . . all great. CM, my team, IT . . . all really nice. It was when we had to wander outside of our group to accomplish anything where the head-butting would begin, and it would never end. You would think that, with such an end-game as supporting war fighter pilots, everyone would be on the same page. Nope. Hidden or not-so-hidden agendas permeated every aspect of our day-to-day activities. “Who’s watching us now? Who’s talking crap about us behind out back now?”

Granted, maybe it’s the newness of everything down here, but there is a completely different feeling down here. And it’s good. REALLY good.

What Else Can You Do at 2 in the Morning?

So, here I am . . . awake at 2 am. Actually, now it's 2:50, but I've been up since about 2. What am I supposed to do? Yah, I'm a little groggy, but I'm literally incapable of falling back asleep. I'd toss and turn until I finally give in and get up anyway; might as well do something productive while I'm awake, right?

But what to do? I mean, I can't go upstairs and clean; I'd wake up the girls. I can't vacuum down here; I'd wake up Lori. So what's something nice and quiet that I can do and feel productive?

How about organize the computer desk? Since Saturday, I've been on this MASSIVE kick to organize everything over here. For those of you (read: Happy Mom) who have seen this embarrassment of a desk, it's humiliating. There's stuff scattered everywhere, thigns within the girls' reach that I don't want them messing with . . . so it's been an organizational weekend. That includes taking the entire bookshelf worth of CDs that I have and organizing them into back-up discs, appz discs, drivers discs, and games discs. Those are being put on 50-count cakebox spindles. That alone entails verifying usability/feasibility of the discs. Some of these back-up discs have incredibly archaic executables, like a Win95 bootable floppy app that goes,of course, on a floppy. A) Who still uses floppies? Other than my old SME buddies back in the MP world. :) Curse you, Solaris 2.5.1. But other than that, pretty much no one uses floppies.

But you get my point: there is some massive overhauling to be done. WHy not use the quiet time between now and when the girls wake up to keep organizing and cleaning?

And, of course, blogging about the organizing. :)

The Milk Fairy Cometh

Due to an unforeseen oversight on my and weef's part, we were milk-less this morning when the girls woke up at the sad, pathetic time of 6:08. Hearing them bump around in their room, I quickly flew up the stairs and told them that it was too early to be up. Per their norm, they both whined in unison, "Daddy, I want miiiiiiiiiilk." Girl 1, who's quickly learning that we insist on being polite, hesitantly added a half-hearted "please" to the end of her string of wailing. I told them that we don't have any milk, and that they could have some water.

The cacophany that ensued could have, and probably should have, awakened the dead. Ironically, we live about half a mile from a cemetary. I actually thought that we'd be the victims of a zombie attack within 20 minutes (cuz, you know . . . zombies don't really walk all that fast . . . they more or less drag their feet wherever it is they're going). Thankfully, and maybe it's just because it's Saturday, they never showed up. Hey, zombies probably like sleeping in on Saturdays too, right?

But I digress.

So I offered to give them water in their sippy cups. No dice. Much whining. Girl 1 kept on about the milk. I flung open the refrigerator door and asked her to point out the milk. "Hmmmm . . . we don't have any, daddy!"

"That's right. Now walk your little bum back to your room and crawl back in bed. I will give you some water, but we have no milk."

As is so often the case with my rantings, it's too late to make a long story short, but to summarize the next little bit, I got them back in bed, ran to the store, grabbed some cereal and a couple gallons of milk that *might* last us through tomorrow, and a block of cheese. Ran home, quietly opened the door, and listened for the tell-tale signs that they were both out of bed. To my amazement, they were both stone silent. "Hmm! Must've gone back to sleep."

**INTERJECTION**

Girl 1 has a favorite song right now: Hysteria by Muse. It's hilarious. She even knows when to bang her head. I'm in awe. So, right now, both girls are upstairs eating their cereal. Girl 1 must be done; she's bellowing at the top of her lungs, "I WANT IT NOW! I WANT IT NOW!! GIVE ME YOUR SOUL!!!" Granted, there's more to the song than that, but that's what she knows right now. It's so adorable.

**END INTERJECTION**

So I came down stairs, started setting up my new phone with some better ringers, when I heard then start bumping around again. Conceding the fact that they are simply not going back to bed, I went upstairs and got them some breakfast--some kind of flake and granola cereal.

Now . . . remember, I went to the store and bought some milk. Both girls knew that we didn't have any milk before I sent them back to bed. When I reached in the fridge to pull out one of the gallons I had just bought, both girls looked at each other and screamed, "MIIIIIIIILK!!!" I don't think they were quite that excited at Christmas. It was seriously hilarious. All grinning and clapping, squealing with joy at the site of a gallon of milk sitting on the counter. I wish I had the video camera rolling when they went off; it was that priceless.

Anyway, ha ha.

and the winds keep on blowing!

so last thursday, my new company gave me a cell phone. not just any cell phone; this is a t-mobile dash. slick little pda-style phone. it does all the regular phone stuff, plus it syncs with my work and home emails, it has wireless and bluetooth, it syncs with any files i need/want, it can access office 2003 or 2007 files, it has windows mobile 6. in short, this thing is slick. and they GAVE it to me. unlimited minutes and data tranfer, 250 text messages (big deal . . . i never text anyway).

then yesterday happened. to summarize, we are vehicle-less for about another day while my wife's car is worked on. for those of you familiar with my truck, it is no more. it's permanently parked where it is, and i'm not planning on moving it unless someone comes and tows it away. we'll donate it to charity for the tax write-off, and that'll be that. because of being mobile-ly dysfunctional, weef's folks said we could borrow one of extraneous cars. another problem: weef has to go in to work to finish up all her reports. the girl who normally watches our girls can't do it today, and apparently neither can anyone else, so i'm going down to work, picking up my laptop, and coming home to work on the stuff here. nice, eh? i'm rather happy about that. when i called my team lead last night, he said that it was fine--it happens on occasion.

so, let's see where this company stands so far:
- $17k more a year
- free snacks and drinks
- free phone
- work at home when necessary
- casual dress environment

the only question left to ask is: why didn't i move down here before!?

When Those Winds of Change Blow . . .

It's like the Santa Anas . . . taking the cold chill out of the air and replacing it with warm, balmy wonderfulness.

Take, for example, my new company. Today, I'm wearing a hockey jersey and jeans. Yesterday, I wore shorts and a t-shirt (stupid, since it was kind of cold, but just because I could . . .). The company provides snacks and drinks of all kinds—from Rockstar to Mt. Dew. Office hours are basically from 7 am to 6 or so pm, but you can take your laptop home with you and work on what you need there too, if you have other pressing matters, like a doctor visit. Everything here is run on a wireless network. For meetings, we drag our laptops with us. We check email, send files back and forth, we have SKYPE installed for instant messaging . . . I don’t know. Maybe it’s the environment in which I worked for 4+ years—isolated, locked down, button-up shirt and slacks, no cell phones, cameras, video devices, pdas, wireless ANYthing . . . the contrast between there and here is so stark.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand the reasons for the lock-down in my old position. The level of security in that building was high. But here . . . it’s just different.

I do miss my old friends though. That's the biggest down side to working here: no one I've known for half a decade. I'll give it some time though. I've only been here . . . what? 7 full days? All in good time.

Humor at its Best (sort of)

Funny moment the other night: Weef and I were watching “The Holiday”—a movie that’s been on our watch-list for a while, but we hadn’t had the time to sit down and watch. Saturday night, we remedied that.

One of the characters was a real gung-ho cleaner . . . keeping her house all tidy and organized. Weef was watching this and taking note. At one point, she said, “Ya know, I wish I were a neat freak.” Without skipping a beat, I replied with a smile, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think you’re a really neat freak.”

My right shoulder and arm still sport the results of the ensuing beating.

I's been taggified!

A: Attached or Single: attached
B: Best Friend: WEEF!
C: Cake or Pie: What about pie cake? You know . . . something with a crust, but all cakey and icingy.
D: Day of Choice: Saturday. It's a special day.
E: Essential Item: ipod
F: Favorite Color: blue
G: Greatest Accomplishment: getting married.
H: Hometown: Good question. I moved to Utah from Buffalo NY (GO SABRES!), but I spent a lot of time in southern Ohio before moving there, so . . .
I: Indulgences: Right now, pudding.
J: January or July: yah, not so sure on either.
---Where did K go? Did .
L: Life is Incomplete Without: weef
M: Marriage Date: May 11, 2000. Best day EVER!
N: Number of Siblings: 1 brother, 2 brothers in law, and 3 sisters in law
O: Oranges or Apples: Oranges
P: Phobias or Fears: failing
Q: Quotes: "Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'would an idiot do that?' And if they would, I do *not* do that thing." DKS
R: Reason to Smile: WEEF!
S: Season: Fall. Halloween. 'nuff said.
T: Tag Four Friends: By "friends," I'm assuming this means other bloggers. I tag all y'all that actually read this pathetic global offering.
U: Unknown Fact about Me: I was almost born in Japan.
V: Very Favorite Store: Best Buy, followed closely by Gray Whale, but EARLY Gray Whale.
W: Worst Habit: They're all equally bad.
X: X-ray or Ultrasound: I would have to with x-ray, based upon gender and chromosomes.
Y: Your Favorite Food: right . . . like i have a "favorite." how about a favorite food group: red meat.
Z: Zodiac: Aquarius.

King of My Domain!

There's something extremely satisfying about troubleshooting your sprinkler system and fixing it yourself. Everything is up and running with the exception of one zone in the back that doesn't even sound like it's coming on (read: good news--no busted pipes!), so I'll have to take a look at that later. Right now, I'm just excited to have the sprinklers up and running. Happy happy joy joy!

What To Do, What To Do . . .

Well, it's official. I'm officially "unemployed". My last day was last Friday, and my new job doesn't start until 5 May. I have off THE ENTIRE WEEK. HA!

Ironically, here's a list of things I'd like to do this week:

- Weed (by "things to do" and "weed", I mean pull the weeds in the front yard--not smoke . . . just so we're clear)
- Check sprinkler system
- Mow
- Paint
- Patch holes and paint
- Test-run drive to work
- Doctor (again--same issue)

I'm pretty sure I'll get to all of them . . . it's just a matter of when. There'll be other things that come up too, but for now, that's the list.

I'm so stoked. This is going to be an awesome week, and then I start my awesome new job. I'm already excited for it. A whole new adventure is just a week away. That's pretty cool.

Out the Door

Well, this is the good news I was talking about last time. See, I applied for a new position with this other company a couple of weeks ago. I spoke with the recruiter last week, and he said that an offer package is on its way. Meanwhile, a verbal offer was proposed, salary and benefits were discussed, and after the discussion, the recruiter asked if that sounded acceptable. I said, "Yes sir, it indeed does!"

And acceptable it is! $17k more a year, 12,500 stock-option shares, great environment . . . I'm stoked.

I had felt that I've needed a larger change for several months. After the debacle in February, I though that maybe it was time to move on, but moving over here and working with a really close friend made everything okay. Yah, it was still difficult to deal with, but I survived.

Let's just say that is no longer "okay" and leave it at that.

But I'm SO stoked! We've been praying for an "out" for weeks. This one literally fell in my lap. It's a wonderful, great opportunity to clear my head and make a new start. I couldn't possibly be happier.

The Early Bird Can HAVE the Worm

It figures. On my one scheduled day off, girl 2 gets up early. I was comfortably coccooned in my warm bed, right on the verge of falling back to sleep, when I heard it--that faint, sucking of air sound that is so distinct as the precursor to a 2-year old yawn. Following that were the little whimpers of discontent about being alone on the stairs. So I got up, took her back upstairs, and put her back in bed. All the while, she was wailing and sobbing, "NO!! I WANT MOMMY!"

"Well, sweetie, mommy's still asleep. Daddy would be too. Your sister is asleep . . . heck, honey--the SUN is still asleep. Do you really want to be up right now? It's dark outside." She went right back down.

I, by way of comparison, am stuck awake, semi-alert, and somewhat conscious. It's an unpleasant sensation--teetering on the edge of sleep, but being yanked back from the brink JUST as I'm about to step over that edge and fall into wonderful slumber.

No. I'm very much awake.

Oh well. There's a lot to do today anyway, especially given some pending news that I'm waiting to become official before I make any grandiose announcement. Stay tuned for some exciting updates about our little corner of the world!

What a Wonderful World

Louis Armstrong got it right. I look at these 3 and think how lucky I am right now. Wonderful family, great friends, a house, good job . . . it's a good day to be me right now.

And it's warm today! I might actually get to mow my lawn tonight. That'd be sweet. And I might get to edge the curbing in the front. That'd be even more nice. Weeding, cleaning up outside . . . and I'm off Friday. Wow! I'm pretty excited.

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Good times.

Good Weekends Rule

So yesterday was a great day. I finally got to mow the front yard and edge the driveway, sidewalk edges, and the curb. It took about 3.5 hours, most of which was spent bending over and edging or shop-vacuuming up the dirt. It looks better than it did, but it's not the best edger. I'll take it though.

So the yard looks better. Now I just need to throw down some grass seed to fill in the bare spots.

Later, we had some friends over for pizza and games. Their girls and ours stayed downstairs and destroyed pretty much everything (actually, I'm pretty sure that was just our girls; theirs are older and not so destructive, and they pick up after themselves). I don't know how popcorn can get inside an entertainment center without opening the cabinet doors (short of teleporting, but . . . ), but it did. Under, in, on, above, mixed in with, ground into, and any other prepositional phrases that might be appropriate. Carpet, couches, coffee table, blankets, stuffed animals, flowers . . . yah. Everywhere. Hoover to the rescue! :) We cleaned it up in a matter of minutes, so it was more comical than anything . . . after the fact.

Anyway, the adults stayed upstairs for chatting and games. We played this card game called "Arne". It was pretty sweet. It's sort of like Uno, except the point is to collect cards/points. We sat around and talked about foster care, adoption, family life, work life . . . it was nice to sit around and talk.

Then there's today. We were planning on having chicken thighs in the crockpot, but then weef's sister called and invited us over to their place for dinner. We had this incredible roast with potatoes, corn, and brownies for dessert. My brother in law is a chef. That should pretty much sum up the meal. :)

Good times. Weef and I drove around this evening looking at houses for sale. We found a pretty nice one, but it only has 3 bedrooms. How do you only have 3 bedrooms in a house that's over 3300 square feet? Our house now is 2200, and we have 4, with the potential for 6. not the biggest rooms, mind you, but still--nice rooms.

What is around the corner? It's always such a mystery. We could move to Salt Lake, or we could stay put. I might get another job, or I might keep my job here. Weef might work next year, she might not. Who knows where we'll be or what we'll be doing in a month, 6 months, a week . . . a year . . . we just don't know.

And, really . . . it doesn't matter. Right now, I'm happy with the way things are as whole. There are things that I wish were different, but those things are out of my control. There are things in my control that I *can* change--things about me. And yah--there are definitely things I'd like to change about myself . . . but who doesn't have a laundry list like that? :)

Good weekend, though. Really good.

For the Record

Bran Buds do not add to the yogurt-eating experience. Actually, they detract heavily.

That is all.

The Beauty of Babies

So, I went to some friends' house after work. They're also doing foster care, but they have a crazy house: 2 babys under 9 months, a 5 year old, and a 7 year old. I don't envy them.

Anyway, like I said, 2 babies. I held the 9-month old for a good 10 minutes. There's something so perfect and pure about babies. They don't know how to hate; they love unconditionally (or whoever has their bottle). They're very good at letting you know when something's wrong, but they're also really good at letting you know when they're content.

This little butter ball sat on my lap and just bounced away on my knee for a while, then he started getting jealous of the 4 month old who was being fed. He started crying for a bottle, so I rocked him back and forth for a bit until he calmed down. I let him suck on my fingers (probably not the smartest way to go; he looked like he was battling a pretty bad bacterial sickness, based on the color of the snot that kept dripping out of his little, red nose), and he seemed to be okay with that.

Of course, as soon as the bottle was ready, I had to go. But it was a nice break from the last several days.

I've always appreciated my wife for the unconditional love she constantly heaps upon me. I'm not sure I've ever gone through a more difficult time when I've needed their support more than I have the last week.

Thanksgiving in April

So, depending on your point of view, I'm either 4+ months late or 7+ months early. I'd like to think that I'm just that much ahead of the curve, but I know myself. :) For the sake of argument, though, I'm going to say that I'm well ahead of schedule.

Now to my point: I've been too pessimistic lately. Here, for your reading enjoyment, I will provide a list of things for which I'm grateful. Some will be very serious, some will be very silly. You can decided which are which.

And away we go!

- Weef
- Girls 1 and 2
- Family
- Friends
- Gamecube
- Intelligence (and please . . . no "short bus" jokes)
- wireless devices: keyboards, mice, pdas, etc
- Music (way too many bands to name individually)
- Our truck. I don't know why . . . I really like driving it.
- Gum
- Good co-workers
- Movies
- Our keyboard at home. "Electric piano" is more accurate, but it has so many sounds that it's incredible.
- Cell phones
- GPS
- Geocaching (and the fact that girls 1 and 2 *love* "treasure hunting")
- The atonement
- Understanding of who I really am and what my real potential is--not just here, but forever
- Cheese . . . gjetost cheese, specifically.
- Rain
- 4GB USB Drives
- Macaroni and cheese
- Pasta in general

Well, that's it for right now. More later.

Irony

I have a new definition of irony--one that I never thought I would encounter, yet find myself smack in the thick of the most ridiculous and bitter battle.

So, irony: discovering that a supposed best friend thinks that you need anger management. This discovery is happened upon by the fact that this person is screaming at you in your office, and then in front of the entire office. When you call a couple of days later to discuss the issue, this friend continues yelling at you, then procedes to hang up on you. THEN as you call back later and ask your friend not to hang up on you, this person then tells you, "dude . . . LET IT GO." Because, you know . . . I'm the one clinging to the anger and rage.

Irony. Gotta love it.

I'm reminded of the once-bitter Tool, who, on their second-to-latest release, produced the following gem:


Saturn comes back around to show you everything
Let's you choose what you will not see and then
Drags you down like a stone or lifts you up again
Spits you out like a child, light and innocent.

Saturn comes back around. Lifts you up like a child or
Drags you down like a stone
To consume you till you choose to let this go.

Give away the stone.
Let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and fated anchor.
Give away the stone.
Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold.
Let go.

Yah. That song takes on a whole new meaning for me this weekend. For your blogging pleasure, it will now reside as the #1 track on here until further notice.

Music for the Masses

I've posted a few of my favorite songs--some old-school stuff with a bit of neo-faves.

The first track--Hysteria by Muse--is what girl 1 calls "I Want It Now". Refer to previous post for related details. :) This song is a blast to drive to. No road trip is complete without it.

Tom Sawyer. If you don't know at least who Rush is, then . . . wow. This is one of the all-time classic "air drumming on steering wheel" songs.

Hooverphonic is a recent acquisition. For me, anyway. Geike Arneart's voice is as pure as it gets.

Tool. Need I say more?

This is one of the quirkiest songs BNL have ever done. I love it.

I'll add more later. Maybe.

no joy in the land of agony and sorrow

Wow. That actually looks like a gothic song title.

Sore throat. Can't talk. I'm pretty sure my office mates are going to love that . . . one in particular. Lucky little poops.

It's like I've reverted back to the good old pre-pubescent years. My favorite time of life.

The thing that really sucks about it is that I can't sing along in the truck as I'm going to work. Granted it's a 1.1 mile drive, so there's not a lot of singing going on anyway, but it's still always fun. And no one can criticize how crappy I sound. Oh well. Next week, I guess.

I should have seen this coming. Yesterday, while I was taking a shower, I tried singing a song that was in my head. It was difficult staying on key, my voice kept cracking, yet I had to try to force it. That should have been a tell-tale sign right there, yet it went unheeded.

You have to understand . . . when I'm "singing along" to something, it's not just singing along: I *am* Matt Bellamy, or Geoff Tate, or James Labrie, or Layne Staley (RIP) . . . I totally get into it. Ask any of the people who have seen me in traffic. I've sung to complete strangers sitting next to me at a red light. Put on a whole show for them. One couple even applauded (though I think that was because the light turned green and they were finally able to drive off).

So yah. Sore throat. "And there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Doesn't mean I can't air drum the crap out of my steering wheel though. :)