Merry Christmas

Just wanted to wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. It's been a crazy year to say the least, but with my family and friends by my side I've managed to survive.

The holiday's will be as nutty as ever with the my side of the family being tomorrow (Christmas Eve), our family and M's family on christmas day and then my dad's side on sunday. Doubtful we'll make it to have Christmas with my parent's neighbors (which my parent and until recently I have done since something like 1967 or something). And i have no idea if my mom's side is even entertaining the idea of getting together cause in the past few years we haven't been able to make the trek and it kinda interrupts when they head down to their condo in florida n stuff. or something like that. but anyways... it'll be busy enough for me.

So... I say to you 'Yay Baby Jesus!' and happy holidays. May your travels be safe and your food be good and plenty. Peace!

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

I need to find this on DVD somewhere. I checked redbox, but sadly they aren't stocking it. Looks like I might be able to get it from the Marysville library. I've placed my reserve on Anvil! The Story of Anvil!

The funniest (and saddest) part about all this, is that some of the older CDs are not going for good money (like $35). For example, their first major label release 'Strength of Steel' is going for that. I can officially say that I had this on CD (which in itself was rare). I believe I picked it up out of a bargin bin from Camelot Music in Piqua, OH. I have to say that I disliked it, so I remember trading it at a flea market in Columbus for a bootleg of Skid Row's 'Slave to the Grind' which had the now deleted track of 'Get the fu&# out' on it. I still have that cassette somewhere. But I have it on CD now as well. Which makes me wish that I still had that Anvil CD, which I am fairly certain is the only CD I've ever traded away. (I take that back, recently I've been selling off CDs, but at the time, 15 years ago, I really didn't get rid of anything.

I'm not sure what brought that on. I think it went something like this... was listening to some Iron Maiden, the Piece of Mind album... I was looking at the wiki for Iron Maiden... then looked at the wiki for McBrain which described his single pedal footwork... which noted a very specific song on the Flight 666 movie... which lead to youtube... which reminded me that the Anvil movie was also out there.

We said if you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin

One my my wife's friend told her 'bout this. Yeah... that's right. Amazon has nearly all of Mojo Nixon (and by nearly all, I mean 152 our of 155 songs) up for free for download. Rock on. Amazon got Mojo Nixon.

Dead Milkmen rule.



... We got into her car away we started rollin
I said how much you pay for this
Said nothin man it's stolen!

Punk rock girl
You look so wild
Punk rock girl
Let's have a child
We'll name her Minnie Pearl
Just you and me
Eat fudge banana swirl
Just you and me
We'll travel round the world
Just you and me
Punk rock girl

Chalk white apartment walls surfaces my every flaw...

What to say.... ?

I've been a bit grumpy, annoyed, etc lately. My wife can vouch for that. I'm sorry I've been such a pain in the ass lately.

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I've been listening to cassettes in the car since, well, the car only has a cassette player. Some of the more interesting side 1 / side 2 combinations have occurred this week:

Side 1: Kiss - Kiss
Side 2: Starship - No Protection

Side 1: Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time
Side 2: Kool and the Gang - Forever

Side 1: Kiss - Dynasty
Side 2: Stand By Me OST

I can't make that kind of shit up.

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I went through Burger King for lunch today... a Whopper Jr w/ everything and a medium onion thing. They quickly hand me my order and I pull off slowly... checking the bag... and them fuckers forgot the zesty sauce. That's the whole point of getting the O-things... that zesty sauce is so damn tasty. So I had to park my car and walk in to get my damn sauce. The whole point of the drive through is that I can DRIVE AWAY. Not park and walk. Grrrrrr

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It's all okay now, though. I ate my damn sandwich and my onion things with zesty sauce and it was tasty. My demeanor was also help by the fact that the next album on the ol' MP3 CD was red house painters - ocean beach. Nice and slow and mopey music. Helped bring me down of my frantic, pissed off mood. Plus helped smooth out the aggitated parts so that I just got kinda mopey... which is way better than the complete bastard I've been for the past 2 months or so. Cabezon is a great instrumental and Shadows I swear I've heard somewhere else before...either on a soundtrack or covered by Suddenly Tammy (which I checked, and it's not on either of the albums they released... so who knows.) I dunno. It's what I needed though. Something that has the same mood as my inner demeanor. Just mopey. Not Kool and the Gang, not Kiss, not Iron Maiden, not Testament, not certainly f'ing Starship.

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Heading off this weekend to two different events. The wife is having her ... 20 year reunion ( I had to think about it for a second there). It should be fun. It'll be nice to spend time with the wife without the kids. We desperately need some time like that. I'm sure that's part of my problem... not getting to spend much time with the wife that doesn't involve the kids playing / crying / whining / screaming / laughing in the background. On occasion, we get to catch an episode of thritysomething (which FINALLY came out on DVD to my wife's delight)... but sometimes even that is interrupted by one of the kids waking up, causing us to pause the show and sometimes even having to halt the episode altogether.

Anyway...

Number two on the agenda is my dad has a ceremony that we have to attend to. No bother mentioning what it is cause I barely understand what it is either. It involves being at the Dayton convention center and instructions like 'you'll just have to find us cause we're not sure where we'll be or how we'll be dressed or what time things will start'. Gee. Thanks. I just love going into things where nothing is set in concrete. Especially when I don't know where I'm going or what I'm looking for. NOT! If I'm lucky, my wife won't kill me by the end of the day. And after we pick up the kids, I'm sure I'll pass out in the van on the way back home... possibly with a migraine (though I have every intention of bringing along at least enough for two headaches).

Soon, we'll have the grandparents come up and we can spend an afternoon together and just do whatever or, maybe even better yet, nothing. Everything seems to cost money. Everything seems to come back to the kids. And sometimes that's fine. I love my kids to death and it's amazing to watch them grow and get personalities and all that. But I guess lately I sometimes just want to be able to spend time with my friend alone, without any of the other cares in our lives being in fore- or even background.

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Here's a Red House Painter song that that's called "Song for a Blue Guitar". It's not "Shadows" but similar in tone, in my opinion.


Here is Shadows:

home.

well... we're finally settled into the house (read: the sofa does not have plastic on it, the computer network is set up, one room is painted, the swing set is up, the cats are alive... but there are still 150 boxes that need unpacking)

i don't remember much from the past 4 days. here's what I remember.

Thursday - The wife took the kids down the Cinci to stay the night. This left me to pack the rest of the house which I thought would be easy peasy. Dad came into town to finish cleaning up the back lot. Finished packing the garage around 5:30pm. Dad and I ordered 'The Meats' pizza from Papa John's and watched a couple of episode of MASH. It's still a good show. I started packing the rest of the house. Again, I thought it would be easy peasy. I called no friends in for support for this reason. About 10:30pm I realized my mistake. I had to call it an evening at 2:30am. I still was not done packing.

Friday - Woke up around 7am or so. Continued packing crap. Tom showed up at noon as requested by me the night before (in a panic of course) Originally he was going to show up at 2:15ish to pick up the cats and take them back to his house until we were done with closing. Anyways, Tom showed up at noon to start tearing down the computers and get them packed into my car. Maryann showed up around 12:30pm-ish after leaving the kids with a set of grandparents. We packed up her van as fast as we could. The movers were showing up at 1pm. However, by 1:30, we STILL didn't have my car packed _and_ the movers weren't at the house yet. Closing for the soon-to-be-old house was at 3pm; new owners to take possession IMMEDIATELY after closing. Oh, and btw, I still didn't have my final 'numbers' for the closing of the new house (in other words, I still didn't know how much to make the check for, so obv I still needed to go to the bank). Maryann called the movers. They'd be there in 10 minutes which was accurate. At 2pm I FINALLY got my final number. By the time Tom and I finished loading the car, it was 2:15 and I was sweaty and prolly smelled like a homeless person. However, there was going to be no time to take a shower as I still had to make my way to the bank and then to the office up on 23 by 2:45.

(I'm gonna start chopping this story down from here on out as this post was left unedited for the past 3 days)
So I hopped in the car, drove to the bank. They handed me the check. It had my name misspelled. They give me another check. It's correct. Thanks. I then hope into the car, still gross and sweaty, and drive to the realty office. My agent is already there in the parking lot. I say 'Hi' and then whip off my t-shirt in front of her. She's like 70. I say 'Sorry, but I'm really sweaty and gross, and I'm pretty sure you've seen all this before.' I put on some deoderant and wait for my wife to arrive, which she did about 5 minutes later. We hope into the agent's car and drive to the title agency to get down with some paperwork. We meet the early-20-something girlfriend of the guy who is buying the house. Up to this point, we thought that the people who were buying the house were in their thirties and had two kids and the wife worked at OSU. We're still not sure where that information came from. Anyhoo... we get through both closings in about an hour and a half.

Back in the parking lot, I call Tom to tell him that we're done and ask if he needs any help getting the cats back in the carrier. There is a pause and he tells me to 'come on home' cause the movers are still packing. We get back to the house and sure enough they are still packing. Luckily, the new owners were planning on catching some dinner and then painting later that night. Anyways, the truck is pretty much full when we get there. I'm glad we didn't get the U Haul. Those guys packed that 26 ft truck (which is about 2 feet taller than a U Haul 26 footer), top to bottom, front to back. There is no way me and my peeps would have made it fit. No way, no how. It was funny to watch them pack the last 5 or 6 things. They would pick up the item, look at the truck, look at the item, look at the truck... repeat until someone points to a crevice of space in the truck. The only thing that I had to leave behind was the snow blower, and that fucker hasn't worked right for the past three years, so fuck it. I left it on the curb. Good luck to whoever picked it up.

So, at 5:15 the posse of 3 cars and 1 truck started rolling. I knew we were in trouble the minute we got to the 270 exit. You could see that it was backed up. Long story made short, it took about 45 minutes to get from the Sawmill exit to the 33/161 exit. All the while, I was praying that movers would cut me some slack seeing as how they are getting paid hourly. After finally getting to the exit ramp for 33 (which leads to Marysville), we see the problem and the cause for the back up. A school bus had broken down and all the kiddie-football-jocks were sitting in the grass. Everyone was rubbernecking to see what was going on. Once you got past the school bus, it was 55 miles and hour. I hate gawkers. Stupid people.

So, we finally get to Marysville around 6:30. The truck shows up about 15 - 30 minutes later. I think they may have had to stop for gas and maybe a bite to eat. Anyways, the clouds started looming overhead. And at 8pm, it started raining. But the movers kept moving, just like should. Just like the load in, the load out had them moving the big furniture wherever it needed to go and the boxes were placed in the garage. While they were doing that, Tom, Maryann and I were moving boxes out of the garage to wherever we thought they should go. Tom's wife, Amy, was also at the house and was watching her kiddos play in the kitchen (as everywhere else was sea of movement). The movers finished up around 9:30. I paid them and they (and Tom) went on their way. The plan was to start painting lil N's room, but we were both tired, so we opted for sleep. It was a bit odd sleeping in the new house and not having the kids around.

Saturday - My wife's family, my wife's family friends, and cousins of my wife's family friends showed up to help us get moved in. And they all did a great job. There was the debacle of painting N's room. They started putting the primer on but it kept pulling off the walls. We ended up having to switch the primer. So a job that probably should have taken only 6 - 8 hours, ended up taking 2 days.

I don't remember much of Saturday. It was all a big blur. I can recall doing the following: installing the washer and dryer, helping the cable guy get the cable hooked up, putting together the swingset, putting together the swingset, getting my computer and the wireless network hooked up, and putting together the trampoline. About 4 or so, I got a migraine and took a 'nap' for 3 hours which didn't get rid of all the headache, but after a second dose of Imitrex, it finally went away. We had White Castles for dinner in honor of her family friend's dad who loved White Castles (it was the anniversary of his passing).

Sunday - Well, it was a blur as well. I had poop issues all day. It sucked. Too much stress from the past week, I'm guessing. The friends finished up painting N's room. I think it was mostly a day of unpacking and whatnot.

And that's pretty much where we are at. Still unpacking boxes. I've gotten a couple of gates installed. I need to redo the one upstairs. It's fine closing, but when opening it back up, it's sticking. I just need to move the wall mounts up just a smidge and it'll all be okay. Maybe back a little too. Who knows. It'll be the one that gets used the most so I want to make sure it's done right.

Anyhoooooooooo.... we're moved in and we're happy. Yay!

bleh.....

So, I had a coupon that came with a McDouble or a large fry or something from McDonald's "Get a free med drink and med fries when you try the new third ponder angus burgers". Something was amiss already since they've had the angus burgers in Columbus for what seems at least a couple of years. So what's so new about it. I dunno. Maybe the whole bacon n cheese and de-lux and mushroom and swiss are new. *shrug*

Anyways, I thought I'd give them a shot for f'ing giggles sake. I got the bacon and cheese burger. Total? 3.99. Well, there's ONE reason I won't be buying it again. Four f'ing dollars for a hamburger at McDonald's? Whatever. Anyways, I got that and my free med fries and my med coke and headed back to work (which is only 3 minutes away) to eat it.

I'm not impressed. It was dry. And even with the bacon and chese, the hamburger was virtually tasteless. The only thing that provided some flavor was the purple onion strip (not a ring, but a single 'strip'). I get a better tasting (and more satisfying) meal by getting a dollar McDouble and a dollar fry.

Nice try to get get into the gourmet burger market, McDs, but you're going to have to try harder.

Now, if you'll excuse me... i need to chug down this medium coke to try to put some moisture back into my mouth after the angus burger dried it out. Well shoooooot. It's all gone. Good thing we have free pop here at work.

let the sun shine... let the sun shine in...

very quick note to give the latest in the house dept:

1) the electrician put the new panel in. it works. yay!

2) the radon peeps put in the thing. it doesn't look like much and now the house has a slight hum like someone left the fan on in a bathroom somewhere. there is a little gauge which shows that the radon fan is pulling out air. it was showing much movement, so i was growing concerned that the numbers were gonna be bad. got the results today... 0.8. yay! that's below 4.0... and MUCH below our previous number. so, all is good there.

3) talked briefly with the title peeps who are doing both closings. they still need something from the new lender (who probably just got the definitive profit numbers from the title company for selling my soon-to-be old house. i just wish they would get me my final number already. kinda hard to show up with a check if you don't know how much to make it for. it makes me more edgy since i know i am cutting the numbers a little closer than i would normally like, so if i have to do some last minute scramblin' (which I shouldn't have to do if all my numbers that _I_ worked out are close)... but you never know when people start adding in fees here and adjustments there and whatever. i'm sure it'll all be fine.

4) it's gonna be weird moving into a new house. i've been in this one for 10 years. at least 4 different bands have played in the basement (sucking in large amounts of radon, of course ;) ) it was my first house that i got as a bachelor and figured, at least for a little while, that i was just gonna grow old and alone in that house. of course, a few short years later i met my wonderful wife (who has proved that she's both a saint and wonder woman in the past 2 months) and then had two kids. i've watched spare room become, offices and offices become nursery and bedrooms and watch the old band stomping grounds go from a desolate room with drums to an office crammed with so much stuff that it wasn't possible to walk through. 10 years in that house. i've gone from all rooms in the house being one color to painting most of the rooms different colors. i've replaced siding, roofs, gutters, bathroom fixtures, kitchen fixtures, light switches, carpet, electric panels and more things than i care to remember at the moment. i've had fans installed and uninstalled and ceiling lights put in. 10 years. i was talking to a friend and it certainly doesn't feel like 10 years. i guess time flies by when your having fun. the old house is just about fun'ed out... but a new house will begin another chapter of fun for everyone.

Keep on truckin'...

Well... the electrician stopped in for about 4 hours today and replaced the panel. Joy o' joys! The other installer comes in on Wednesday to mitigate the slight radon problem in the basement. MORE FUN!!! I think they are stopping by the soon-to-be-old house to do the appraisal. Not sure when they are doing the appraisal on the new property. Hopefully soon. Once all the appraisals are out of the way and all the numbers come back the way they should, then... and only then... will I actually be breathing easier ... at least until I remember that we still have to sign off on all the mitigations that they have to do to the soon-to-be new place... which takes place I believe four days before the closing. Come to think of it, the new peeps have to do the same. And UHaul isn't calling until like 24 hours before to tell me WHERE to pick up my truck (since the one nearby doesn't handle the 26 footer that I want).

In other words, I'm gonna be a basket case until closing day.

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In other news, I hit two big milestone in the Music Counter project: 2000 hours and 30000 songs. Actually, I've been at 30000 songs for a while... but the 2000 hours I finished up today by listening to the soundtrack for the original Little Shop of Horrors. FEEEEED MEEEEEE!

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Yeah... I got nothing else. I need to get Ian his pile of stuff. I think I had stuff for Todd, but it might have been packed away. I still might go to the rekkid show if Todd still wants to (since I think Ian already said he wuz gonna be bizzy that day packin' up the shit (some of which I hopefully already have given to him).


Tt-t-t-t-t-t-t-that's all folks!

It's Official...

ramble mode: on

Our house is sold. Sold in 7 days. And we are buying a house in Marysville.

We put our house on the market on Monday. Tuesday we saw three houses with only one being marginally acceptible. I was a bit distraught by the end of the day thinking that we had no chance of finding a house for the right price. By Wednesday we had 3 showings. Another 2 on Friday. A second showing on Saturday as well as two offers. At the same time on Saturday, we went and saw 5 houses. A few were front runners... but one we both went ga-ga for. Headed back to the realtors office, accepted one of the offer on our house (with a slight modification to allow us some wiggle room since they wanted to close by the end of the month)... and put in a bid on the other house. Turns out it was owned by a relocation company. since there aren't alot of jobs going around, there aren't alot of people needing to be relocated and therefore, dumping of houses begins. it had been on the market since may with a slightly inflated price (aren't they all) and it had just dropped in price again. with our offer we dropped it even more. since a company owned it, there was no weekend negotiations... so we had to wait an agnonizing two days (sunday and monday) before they countered and we accepted the slightly higher price (but still well below their original discounted price). So now we're just trying to get all the loan paperwork taken care of which... i think we're about 95% done before it gets sent off into mortgage la-la land where they look at it and thumb their noses at you while you wait (mostly impatiently) and then they finally 'accept' your loan two days before closing. i'm hoping it goes better than that. anyhoo... if all goes well, we'll close both houses on the 28th. of course, the family buying our house wants to move in immediately after signing, so we'll have to have EVERYTHING packed up before heading closing. oh the joy we will have. but in the end, it's gonna fucking rock. :)

ramble mode: off

Great Weekend

This past weekend the Mrs. and I left the kiddos with the grandparents and we trekked up to Cleveland for a weekend together. We left at 7pm on Friday, stopped to eat at Quaker Steak and Lube for some wingz, fried pickles and ribs and got into Cleveland around 10:30pm. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza which was nice enough. Better than some hotels we've stayed at. The hvac unit in the room only blew cold air which was kind of a drag since it was rather chilly in the room when it was going but got stuffy if it wasn't going.

We got up on Saturday and ate at a lil Ma and Pa restaurant called Addy's at the suggestion of the hotel staff. They kindly took us there in the shuttle even though it was only two blocks away. I had some french toast and the wife had waffles. Both were tasty.

We then walked the two block back from Addy's and then another two blocks to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. It was crazy windy pretty much the entire weekend, so it was like walking in Florida when there is an approaching hurricane. I'd been to the RnRHoF before, but the wife hadn't. They had changed some stuff around. I picked up on a few new things that were pretty cool. My favorite thing was seeing some pictures drawn by a young James Handrix (that would be Jimi Hendrix to you). He was a big college football fan, so he draw pictures of players from UCLA, UofC, Oregon State, etc. He also draw a rather amusing pencil drawing that said "Obey Railroad Crossing Signals" and was complete with a car with a crunched up hood. There was also an exhibit there for The Boss (that would be Bruce Springsteen to you). It was cool seeing some of the notebooks with his lyrics written in them and some of his first guitars. After about 4 or 5 hours, we left.

That evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon. It was right across the street from Lola which is one of Chef Michal Simon's restaurants (he's well known on the Food Network). We would have went there, but the wife got a look at the menu but nothing really sounded good. Good thing we didn't eat there. The food at Saigon was wonderful. I got shrimp in 'special Vietnamese sauce'. It was spicy and tasty and had lots of onions in it. I wisely avoided most of those since I didn't want to stink us out of our hotel room during our little mini-vaca.

After dinner we walked to the Tower City Center. One of my friends had told me that there was 'nothing down there, kinda like the Columbus City Center'. However, there wasn't a single 'for rent' sign in the place, Several upscale stores, a full food court and lots of people. We went to the theater to watch Star Trek. The theater was, okay. It hadn't been improved in some years. A step above a dollar theater. Some of the arm rests had been ripped off and replaced with duct tape, some chair were non-sittable and had black garbage bags over them. I think the Center is in the process of upgrading lots of things. The theater obviously has a ways to go. No matter. The movie was great. I'm not even close to a Trek fan. I don't know if I've seen a single movie all the way through. But I enjoyed this movie nonetheless.

The next morning we ate at the hotel, which was stupid of me. We should have just walked back down to Addy's. Would have been better and cheaper. After breakfast we went and toured the "A Christmas Story" house. It was pretty interesting to be standing in front of it. There was a little museum in a house across the street which held some artifacts from the movie, like Randy's snow suit, the hat and goggles from that weird kid in Higby's (btw... which we also saw on our way to the Tower City Center), and some other stuff. We toured that whlie waiting for the tour to begin.. which was just us. :P Of course, most of the movie wasn't filmed in the house. That was done in the studio, but many other parts of the movie were, really, now that I think about it. Basically the scenes inside the house were filmed at a studio. The rest was done in Cleveland. The Black Bart scene, the BB scene, when the leg lamp arrive, when he was trying to position the leg in the front window... those were all done at the Cleveland house. I enjoyed it for what it was. And I'm glad it was only $7.50 to get in.

And then we came home.

It was nice to get away. We were both pretty close to our wits end before this weekend. I've been working long hours at the office for about a month straight and wtching kids 24/7 tends to wear one out as well. So our little trip helped recharge the batteries.

I love my wife. She is a wonderful wife and mother.

Thoughts: I really do think I am rebelling against the diet thing. And that's half the problem... I keep calling it a diet... and that's not what I am trying to do here. It's about eating BETTER. That means watching what you eat (I watch it as it goes into my mouth and into my belly.... GET IN MY BELLY!!!). That means watching how MUCH you eat. Maybe I'm subconsciously living up to the adage of 'if there's something worth doing, then it's worth doing a lot'. Eating is good and therefore I eat a lot. Not always often (though I do that too), but just in sheer quantity. I have so many food issues it's not even funny.

Stress eating: Wind me up and watch me eat. It takes my mind off of whatever is bugging me.

'Principal' eating: I bought it therefore I must eat it, otherwise it's wasted money... and I hate wasting money.

The quantity over quality aspect: everything I do, I tend to do to excess in the quantity volume. That's how I ended up with like 6000 45 RPM records. That's how I ended up with nearly 1000 CDs. That's how I ended up with 20 rolls of tape. The list goes on and on. I'm

I like food: I watch Andrew Zimmern on Bizarre Foods. I watch Anthony Bourdain: No Boundaries. I watch Iron Chef. I watch the Food Challenges. I watch competitive eating and follow the IFOCE website. I make a point of actually watching the July 4th Nathan's hot dog eating contest. You can see how this ends up tying in with the quantity over quality.

I have serious food issues. I admit it. But I'm gonna try my best to get back to a reasonable weight. My dad has put on weight over the years and now he's borderline diabetic, probably has blood pressure issues and probably other medical issues I don't even know about. I don't want myself to get into that position. Granted, I'm kinda there already, but I need to try to get away from that is what I'm saying. I can't get there by eating a Cinnabon for breakfast, frozen meal and a raspberry filled long john for lunch, an entire bowl of Dan Dan Noodles from Pei Wei and then a bowl of chips and salsa at 9pm. That's what I ate yesterday. And I'm not working out at all. I can't to where I want to be living that type of lifestyle. It just doesn't work that way.

Maybe the answer for me is the eating smaller meals more often. Or not. I dunno. But I need to figure it out. I used to say I that I was 'fat and happy'. Well, guess what? Read everything above. 'Fat and happy' is a big fat lie.

happy daddy

With the help of Tom, I got the swing set put together this weekend.
Lil N loves it!



Action shot!



Me and Tom, happy about completing the project.



It's done!



Happy daughter = Happy daddy!

26000??!!??!

I just finished up yet another MP3 CD and that put me over the 26000 mark.

To date, I have listened to 26093 songs for 1643 hours, 32 minutes and 5 seconds.

Dang.

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In other news, I got to go through all the parts for the swing set and it all appears to be in order.

I also want to say that weather.com, Jym and all the other meteorologists are snake oil salesmen. ALL WEEK LONG Saturday was supposed to be raining and T-storms with a 70% chance of precipitation. Do you know what we got on Saturday? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I could have put the swingset together and it would have been peachy.

However, I'm glad that the forecast was as it was because this gave me time to ready the instructions carefully on the playset as well as take inventory. Everything is in good order, so hopefully next weekend will be sunny (or at least not rainy) and Tom and I can get that sucker together.

early

I wish my children would stop getting up so early. Lil N got up at 5:15am this morning. The wife has had it bad for the past month, so I got up. No getting that kid back to bed, so we turned on the TV and watched some Jack's Big Music Show. But of course, once that was over she started calling for mommy 'cause I guess I'm chopped liver. After 15 minutes of whining, the wife caved and had to come out to keep the peace. *sigh*

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In other news, the swingset is on it's way. Walmart gave me a tracking number, but I was having trouble using it to find out where my shipment was. But I found ANOTHER website owned by the parent company, so now I know that it's sitting in Fairfield, OH. I bet it will be here by Wednesday. I actually hope so. That would mean that I could put it together on Saturday as long as it is nice out.

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When the last wind storm hit about a month ago, it flipped over my grill and busted up the plastic table that I've had since I moved into the house 9 years ago. So, the other day we went out and bought a table and chairs from Old Time Pottery. While it was made in China, I was actually quite impressed with the quality of the paint job on it. I'll have to post some pics of it soon.

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On Sunday, I finally got outside to rake the rest of the leaves that had been sitting out there since last fall. It took a while, but now it's done. Thank goodness. It's been driving me nuts all winter.

Just A Gigolo... not really

Okay, I must be an idiot because I had no idea that the David Lee Roth song "Just a Gigolo" was a cover. I'm listening to a recording of 'Just a Gigolo' by Ben Bernie and His Orchestra from

1931!!!

How did I not know this. I'm usually pretty good about putting someone in their place when they say 'Song X by Artist Y is awesome. How do they write such a good song?' to which I would usually inform them that they are an imbecile and that it was originally done by so-and-so.

Man, I knew that DLR didn't WRITE this one... but I didn't know it was a song from the 1930s. This throws me for a serious loop at the moment.

Early March update

Well, things are starting to feel better after surgery. Some of my stitches came out a little bit early, so that's the most annoying thing at the moment.

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I signed up for a couple of the digital to analog TV converter box coupons from the government. I got them a while back and went to WalMart and picked one up. I finally had a chance the other day to hook that sucker up. It was pretty cool, especially the part where you get channel and show info. The odd side is that with my current cable setup, I only get 2 PBS channels. When I was trying out the converter box, I found out that there are 3 PBS channels current. WTF Time Warner? Toggling the close captions on this converter box is a pain in the arse. There are like 7 channels that CC can be on. The other dorky thing about my magnavox convert box is that there are NO controls on the box itself. Hope I never lose the remote.

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I got my taxes done the other day. I'm getting much more back than I thought, so that's good. We should be able to put away a good hunk of it and still get a few things done like...

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Getting a swingset for the lil' one. Seems that Walmart has this cheap, yet cool swingset for $300.
check it out here

$300 is awesome. I was gong to build one myself originally. After I found this one, I looked up the prices on the various braces and swings and whatnot. The braces alone (that would be like 6 pieces of metal) could have cost me nearly $75 alone. Geeez. And the slides cost anywhere between $89 and $150. Ooof.

Most of the reviews are the playset are very positive. Some people claim that the wood is a bit soft and that sometimes the boards split and complained that they had to drill out some of the holes. I'm thinking the splitting is going to happen no matter what kinda wood you use. I really wanted to get a wooden swingset so I could add on in the future if I felt like it. Also... if something breaks on a wood swingset you can fix it. I'm actually getting kind of excited about putting it together.... well, except for the 8 to 10 hours that most people say it takes to put it together with two people.

Tom??? Where are you Tom????? ;-)

late Feb update

Just a few notes...

I'm a bit nervous about tomorrow's surgery. I'm not ure why. I know what all is entailed. I'm sure I'll be fine. If I'm not, I'll be callin' up my peeps for moral support or whatever.

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The Kroger Marketplace near me had the Coby 1GB Clip player for 4.99 again, so I picked one up for the wifey. She loves it! Now, here's the kicker... I went the following week... and in the same freakin' bin... they upped the price back up to 14.99. Kroger's is so stupid. Actually, more stupid is something else. Right across from the in-store jewelry store, is this little 'island' that houses the 'expensive' perfume. In this cabinet, they have these 512 _MB_ Coby players for... $39.99. It's been that price for so long that the price tag is faded to nearly nothing. They always have fairly nice stuff over in their reduced bin. They should put these (and half of the other 'electronic gadgets' that they have in this display in there.

BTW, I'm digging my Coby. I don't get to use it much, but when I have, it's been cool. Though, I did find out that the coby does not like folders. WTF is up with that? *shrug* Oh well, the main reason I got something like that it because I usually like to shuffle anyways. So cram all those files in there and away we go!!!

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I'm hoping a get a nice tax return, esp with having a new kiddo. The savings account could use some padding. At the moment, the 'experts' are saying one should have 8 months worth of salary available. It used to be 6 months. I know how much I make and that is not a small amount of scratch. If I could get 2 months worth in there, that would make me feel at least a little bit better.

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Work has been nutty as always. We had that layoff a month ago which halved my department, which also halved my team. So, we've been working on the current build of the product for the past TWO MONTHS. I'm getting a bit burnt out on it. At least the end is nearing, I can see the light... in June. :(

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I had some other witty comments, but I for the life of me can't remember what they are. Feel free to comment on... anything.

Early Feb updates

Just some random notes and thoughts

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Finally finished up the second DVD of Prog Rock MP3s. Luckily, the best was the last of that I had to listen to. Symphony X. I dig 'em. Nice orchestral / shredding prog metal. Michael Romeo is awesome. I've update the Music Counter. With the last DVD of MP3s I surpassed the 25,000 song barrier. I'm just shy of the 1600 hr mark as well.

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The wife and I (and the kids) went to church last Sunday. It was nice. We'll likely go again. We've been (sort of) looking for a church nearby that we could go to and feel comfortable. We tried the Westerville United Methodist but parking there was attrocious and we just never felt comfortable there. The Indian Run Methodist Church in Dublin is very nice. The traditional service (which I prefer) is pretty much like what I grew up with. I was concerned with feeling confortable there since, well... c'mon... it's Dublin. I was concerned about it being all hoity-toity and people overly dressed up to show off their latest duds (I've been to churches that were that way), but to my delight people dressed... normal. Some in suits and ties, but also a fair amount of people in just normal clothes, which I think is good.

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We had Sloppy Joes last night for the first time in several years. It was TAAASSSTTYY! Me loves me some Sloppy Joes. Easy to make and oohhhhhh so good.

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Lil N is talking alot more these days. She's so darn cute especially when she'll just walk up to me and say "Daddy, what doing?" Hee hee hee. Too damn cute.

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Our street is a giant sheet of ice. There was so much snow on the street that when it got all warm and SHOULD have melted it all, it instead got all mushy and then turned into what is now a shiny sheet of ice. It sucks. I look forward to the warmer weather next week. (It is next week, right?)

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I'm on Facebook. It's so weird. It confuses me 85% of the time. ... And that's all I have to say about that.

what's new... january 2009 edition

Hmm... what's new.

I got the Juliana Hatfield memoir "When I Grow Up" for Christmas. I read it. It was cool. Basically it was part of a diary about her last tour and part history and recollections. So ther would be one chapter talking about a specific day on the tour. And the next would be about something in the past or her general view on something. Then lather, rinse, repeat. I feel bad for her. She has basically for the longest time not been able to enjoy herself, or her musical abilities, or anything else for that matter with out being depressed or self-conscious to a debilitating level. The end of the book is nice enough. Hopefully she can find some clarity and will continue to be at least a little bit happier.

Work has been crazy beyond words. Some long hours. Been having pains in my right shoulder. I'm sure it's just stress. The wife said if I keel over that she's brining me back to life, then killing me, then bringing me back to life, then killing me. Times that by like 5 and you can imagine how the actual conversation went. I have no want to die either, so um... yeah. Work might be nutty, but I still wanna see the kids grow up for crying out loud.

I'm on Facebook now for no apparent reason. I friended Todd and my wife and that was it. There are like 3 people from my HS who are on there but I didn't befriend any of them. Oddly, there were like 4 or 5 others under my HS who I had no idea who they were, pictures or not. I don't even think they went to my HS in general. I pretty much knew everyone 4 years ahead and 4 years behind and I did not know these people. And trying to find classmates when you went to THE Ohio State University for a specific year is a joke. I graduated in the summer and had something like 4500 people in my graduating class. That doesn't even count for the other 3 quarters where people can graduate, though the size of those classes is usually much smaller.

The wife and I put together a 'to do' list last weekend. There are still alot of things I need to do. One thing is to get organized to sell all sorts of crap on ebay. Daddy wants a new faucet for the kitchen so I better get on it. My one Glenn Miller boxset could go for some crazy number based on the price people are asking on Amazon for their and for one completed auction on ebay that I saw a while back. It'd be nice to have a nice hunk of change on just one sale. (heh ... I just found out that amazon now has the boxset for digital download for like 40 bucks. Oh well, sometime people still want the physical cds even though it can be much more expensive.)

Um... I miss y'all out there in internet land. I haven't forgotten ya. Sometimes, there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day or days in the week (or month).

later!