Women’s Curling – the USA team’s Nicole Joraanstad.
I could watch her sweep for hours on end. She really puts her hips into it.
Blonde girl. Sweet bouncing hips.
Ummm….yeah.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Archive for category personal
We ended up getting 6 inches or so. Maybe 8. I haven’t been outside so I’m guessing based on my window observations. When I looked out the window I noticed that our sidewalk was cleared. It struck me as odd as I’d bet a large wager that no one else in the house would have gone out and shoveled. Then I noticed the sidewalk out along the street was cleared. Then I noticed our driveway was too. Then I noticed everybody’s was.
Turns out the guy across the street took his snowblower around and did the entuire cul-de-sac.
He needs punched in the nuts.
The snow is simply gorgeous. It was a very wet snow here and it’s sticking to everything. It’s ridiculously awesome. Like some kind of sugar-coated fairy tale land. Giggity.
Carrie wrote a nice little bit on embracing regret on her blog. (go read it, I’ll still be here)
Done? Good. Neat post, huh?
I have a slightly different view. Mostly it comes down to semantics, but it changes the perspective entirely. I have no regrets. Not by Carrie’s definition. I subscribe to the “play it safe” or “good enough” or “fear of the unknown” method of looking back. That is to say the choices I made and the things I did put me where I am now and made me who I am…and I’m pretty damn happy with both. Could it be better? Probably. Could it be worse? Surely.
But to really suggest that there’s nothing you’ve done or experienced in your life that you feel sorry about or wish would have been different, is just not likely.
Feel sorry about? Ehhhh…maaaaybe. Not sure about that.
Wish had been different? Nope. Not one.
Wonder how things would be different had a given event in the past gone differently? Absolutely. But I don’t wish they were different – not one – because changes in the past most likely put me in a different place now – for better or worse.
I attribute it this way: If there is something in my past that, if given the chance, I would apply the 20/20 hindsight I now have and go back and do differently because I didn’t like the outcome, then it’s classified as a regret. Simple as that.
And by that definition, I can honestly say I don’t. If it’s small enough to have not changed my life in any major way, there’s no reason to sweat it. If it’s big enough that it could have changed my life, I probably still wouldn’t change it for fear of how it changes everything. As corny and cliched as it is, it’s that those things didn’t play out in a way I thought best that made me who I am and put me where I am in life…and I have no complaints so far.
No regrets.
Curiousity. But not regret.
Plus, it was a good excuse to use a Metallica lyric as a post title…which I’m already starting to regret. Damn!
For me, the build-up to Christmas is a lot like a night out drinking. It’s a lot of fun and you get caught up in the moment, but the next morning you pay dearly for throwing your cares to the wind.
I approach doing Christmas like a frat boy approaches a night out.
“Oh yeah. What the hell, buy that too! No get the bigger one! It’s Christmas!!!”
There’s no doubt we had a hell of a Christmas around here, but now that it’s all over, I have Christmas remorse. When you’re using WWE tickets as simple stocking stuffers, you probably went too far – at least in my world.
The big items under the tree this year included an LCD TV, laptops (yes, plural), power tools, dvd players, and big-ticket toys like the huge Transformers Devastator figure that’s like 6 other normals sized figures that hook together to make one huge one that my son got.
It was fun. But now I’m looking at credit card statements and it’s less fun. I’m suffering a Christmas hangover.
The weather was all anti-Christmas too. We got snow leading up to the big day, just before Christmas Eve is got all warm and rained and the snow was gone just in time for the holiday. Then, as if on cue, it started snowing again yesterday and as I look out the window, it’s spitting snow right now and everything is a lovely white. Literally, the only days of the past week or so without snow on the ground were Christmas and the days sandwiching it.
We’re also quite militant about getting rid of Christmas. I don’t understand decorating on (or before if the lights I see on houses were any indication) Thanksgiving and leaving all that crap up into the new year. Seems weird to me to spend a tenth of your life with lights and garland and the usual crap strewn about your home. Over the years we seem to have settled into a nice pattern of getting a tree and putting up decorations the first weekend in December and taking it all away the weekend after Christmas. This year that meant a nice three-week window of festive joy. Exactly enough as far as I’m concerned. Things are back to normal and I like it.
And to top it all off we’ll be spending New Year’s eve at the hotel. Seems appropriate to ring in a new decade with my wife at work being as that’s exactly how we spent it 10 years ago ruinging in the new Millennium. Yeah, we spent the biggest New Year’s celebration in 1000 years with my wife as she worked. It was literally, the two of us and our daughter (this was before our son) and the hotel maintenance guy standing in an empty lobby watching the ball drop on TV.
No big deal though. Crap like that is usually overrated and sometimes (a lot of the time, really) that’s the price you pay for being the boss. But on the flip side it’s because she’s the boss that we can have Cristmases that include TVs, laptops and event tickets as stocking stuffers.
Even after all these years, I’m still often amazed (though not surprised) at the attitudes of most (not all) hourly employees that have worked for my wife. It’s simply been too many over the years for it to be a fluke or something. The sample size is wide and vast and the results are always the same. Most of these people go out of their way to do the bare minimum and take advantage of the system any chance they get. I’m also convinced this attitude is exactly why most of these people are stuck in basic, hourly positions. Of course, they never see it that way. They’re always the first to complain about never getting a break or getting screwed. They think they have a crappy attitude because life keeps shitting on them when the truth is life keeps shitting on them because they have a crappy attitude…and like I said you see it time and time again. They just don’t see it. They think the coworker who got the promotion was just lucky. They don’t see that that person went above and beyond – actually helped out, did what was needed and picked up the slack when others dropped the ball.
That might have been a little confusing so let me put it into context. Basically, there’s no night auditor to work New Year’s even at the hotel. The weekend girl who would normally do Fri-Sun was fired last week after simply no-showing. What made it worse was that my wife and the front desk manager went out of their way to save her job after she missed so many shifts that she was supposed to be fired but gave them a sob story about hard times and her kids and such. My wife put her ass on the line to her bosses and saved the girl’s job with a stipulation that she had to show up for 30 days to have points removed…blah blah blah. Of course, my wife has been around the block a few times and suspected the worst, however a combo of a big heart and lack of potential replacements led her to not fire this girl, so she worded things in a way that if the girl started dicking around after that 30 she could fire her.
Lo and behold on days 31 and 32 the girl never showed. She got fired.
The other lady who does Mon-Thur has been at the hotel for years – long before my wife took over. She’s solid and does the work, but refuses to go beyond what she has to. She works her four days – no more. She’s also very afraid to drive in bad weather and knows that she has X number of sick days each year and uses then anytime it snows or whatever. Even more coveniently, if it’s a bad year and she uses all those days, she always manages to make it in after that. That leaves my wife with a worker who’s less than ideal, but she has absolutely no legal ground to push her out the door.
Which is probably not a bad thing as the employee pool seems to get worse and worse. I know times are supposed to be tough, but finding employees around here still isn’t easy. My wife interviewed two people after she fired the first girl I mentioned and before Christmas. The first was interested in the Audit position, but refused to work weekends. Well, the position that needs filled is the Fri-Sun one. Guess you don’t need a job that badly then. The second listed that they were interested in any position and once they found out it was Night Audit (the night shift, basically 10pm – 6am) they suddenly weren’t interested in any position anymore.
There’s a reason the first girl doesn’t have a job and the second has been a night auditor with no advancement for nearly a decade (and that the two interviewees are jobless even) – they do nothing to get ahead. They’d also most likely (in my humble experience as the husband of the bosslady for so many years) be the first to complain about how they get screwed and how lucky people like my wife are.
They just don’t see it.
People like my wife get where they are because they deserve to be there. My wife is the type of person who would take that shitty overnight job if she needed work. She’s the type who went in and covered shift when the other idiots called off on holidays. She worked her way up and became the bosslady because she got it done, not because she did just what she had to…or less as the case may be. She’s still the first to run up to the third floor and start stripping beds if housekeeping is shoort staffed for the day…and what’s funnier (and sadly, typical) is the housekeeper reaction…which is usually, “You know how to clean a room!?” Like she never did a thing in her life other than sit behind a desk…or worse, like she does nothing but sit behind a desk. It’s those people – the ones who think that – that don’t get it and probably never will. They’re convinced life is screwing them and that those who get ahead are just lucky.
Whoa. Sorry for that rant. That just came out.
The point is, my family will be spending this New Year’s Eve alone with my wife as she works…and that’s ok. It’s because of quirky little things like that that have the ability to give ourselves Christmas hangovers.
Maybe that hangover isn’t so bad after all.
Time for a little more fatherly pride. My daughter brought an assignment home from reading class that had been graded and this was on the inside:
Turns out the teacher wants to keep it to show future classes what she expects when this specific assignment/project comes up each year. So that was pretty cool.
Even better was my daughter’s confession that she “just threw it together real quick the night before” it was due. Is it wrong that that half of the story makes me smile more than the first half?
I just want public record of the fact that today – December 2, 2009 – is the day the transition from little girl to total teenager has happened in our home.
Today in response to my making a joking comment about my daughter forgetting her band practice time sheet and signing it and handing it to her I was met with, “I know, daa-aaad!”
…and she said it in that tone of voice. (you have it in your head right now – and you’re spot on)
So I egged it on a little by questioning her lack of practice and got my first bit of real-world first-hand “teen logic” about how she needs this program for her computer that I’ve been dragging my feet on getting because she’s not sure if she’s hitting notes right and practicing wrong develops bad habits and wonk wonk wonk – essentially it was my fault she doesn’t practice enough. (not snotty about it, mind you, but definitely the twisted logic that we use with our parents at that age – and I’m sure it made perfect sense to her as she said it.)
Like I totally stepped out of body for the 45 seconds the whole conversation took and I could see the scene from above – a legit out of body experience! And I’m telling myself, “Holy shit! This is the moment. This is the first toe being dipped into the cold swimming pool. This is the beginning of the teen years coming on. At first it’s just a glimpse here and there. Then patterns develop. Then it’s more common than not. And before you know it – you have a fucking teenager.
It was truly a moment that made me both chuckle and feel a little sad at the same time.
I just want a written record of this moment. Definitely for posterity, but also so I can come back and read this a few years down the line when I can’t figure out why my kid seems to have gone totally nuts and does only things that makes me want to smack her upside the head.
I’m sitting here bored on a Monday night. The kids are sleeping and the wife is out of town for an overnight conference. It’s business as usual after a week of vacation in November. My wife took last week off because:
1. She has vacation time to use and we have no specific plans for anything anytime soon.
2. Her hotel is getting a full blown renovation (like $2 million+) that starts at the end of the month and runs through spring, so she kind of need to be there.
So the idea was to take one of her remaining weeks before the renovation and one after in the spring. Her anniversary is in June so she gets more weeks then – and we’re using immediately using one of those to go check out the Intimidator coasters. It all worked out. We had some stuff that needed done around here and everything fell into place.
We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday getting the leaves out of the yard. You may have seen the leaf density photo, but it does no justice to the sheer amount of leaves that our yard held. It was a solid three days of effort to clear 95% of the leaves. 95% is good enough for us, but we have a couple of hardcore neighbors still going out in the evening catching the last few leaves that trickle from trees or blow around in an effort to maintain a perfect score. I often feel like smacking them.
On top of that, on Monday I had a dentist appointment and for some reason she (my dentist) loaded me up with an obscene amount of novacaine – like to the point that I was so numb on the side of my face that I was slurring like a drunk. To make it even better she really crammed that needle deep into the gums at the back of my mouth. I was still a little sore the next day.
On Tuesday we went out and did a little shopping. In the evening we turned in my son’s football equipment.
Wednesday, we finally got to considering the basement on a serious level after the great flood of 2009. The flood sucked, don’t get me wrong, but the truth is, we wanted to eventually redo the basement anyway. This just forced our hand a little.
There’s a bunch of things we want to change down there, but the main thing was the bar and stuff that took up entirely too much space, was ugly and made no sense for a family who doesn’t throw swank drinking soirees in their basement. Well, ripping that shit out was WAY easier than I had anticipated and by Wednesday evening the bar, built-ins and back wall were reduced to a pile of rubble that was now sitting in the garage. I only broke two hammers in the process. Never bother with the cheap wooden-handled kind – I’ve had a couple for years and years now. After this past Wednesday, I don’t. It feels very manly to break a hammer. (insert stupid Tim Allen grunting here)
So yeah, a big chunk of the basement work we want to do is taken care of. We have some ideas and a “What the hell, why not?” attitude going forward and we’d like to do what we can by spring and then get carpet laid again. Basically the 80% of the total work that accounts for 30% of the total costs. That’s make it ‘ours’ and much more functional and liveable. We do the big expensive ‘vanity’ stuff (like complete and rearrange the half bath down there – down the road when we have more liquidity in our cashflow.
It was a good start that was easier than expected and has us excited about the possibilities down there.
On Thursday we finally got a guy out here to fix our garage door. The torsoin spring snapped about a month or so back and we’ve been unable to open the big door since then. It was an easy (and relatively cheap) fix and we felt kind of stupid for not pursuing it sooner. That evening we all decided to go see A Christmas Carol. I hadn’t seen a movie at the theater in 3D since I was a kid and wanted to check it out, plus the movie looked kinda cool – even if just for the rendering – and in typical “my wife is a CVB member, pillar of the hospitality community and general area service industry insider” we can do movies for free most of the time. This was one of those times. (seems like a sweet perk, but we’re really not movies-at-the-theater people – a couple a year at most)
Now people complain about amusement park prices on the various forums and I think it’s crazy. Shit costs money, simple as that. Apparently these people don’t see many movies because had we paid for tickets for the 7pm showing in 3D the total would have been $50 for two adults and two children. On top of that 4 drinks and a bucket of popcorn clocks in at right around $30. (I wanna say it was $32, but if I try to remember the prices and do the math I get $27 and change – so it’s somewhere in that range)
$80 to see a 90 minute movie with basic refreshments. That’s almost a dollar a minute for a family of four…and people are ponying that up. The amusement park price whiners need to shut the fuck up. Amusement parks are a great value.
So yeah, the movie was the 1000th rehash of the same old story. It was cute. I like that the 3D these days (and I’m assuming it’s tru e based on the previews we saw in 3D for several other movies) isn’t the gimmicky “coming at you” stuff that I always thought 3D was. This 3D went the other way and added depth to the scenes. Rather than the background at the screen with everything jutting out from there, it seemed like the foreground was at the screen and everything went back from there. Rather than being visually assaulted by the images, I found myself wanting to reach into the scene deeper to see even more. It’s come a long way and we all agreed that it really worked well and added to the movie. If this is 3D in the 21st century, I’m all for it.
On Friday the kids had off and my daughter was sitting on a buttload of birthday money so she and my wife hit the Greene in the morning and then swung by for me and my son and we did the mall and some other stores in the afternoon.
On Saturday, my son had a birthday party to go to, so we dropped him off there and did some stuff around the house including cleaning out the garage a little since the door was functioning again. Once we get the bar remnants out of there, we can start pulling in for the winter. We haven’t really used the garage as a place for the cars yet because last winter we had just moved it and it was all full of crap. Over the summer we filled it with tools and bricks and dirt and junk from all the outside work we were doing and then as fall approached the door broke. We’re finally almost ready to use the garage as a garage. How sick is that?
On Sunday we vegged and watched the Steelers fucking lose. We kind of kept it lazy and watched football and the stupid shit that’s on TV on the weekends and finished our vacation with the latest episode of Californication that night.
That was the past week+ in a nutshell. I’m sure I forgot something, but I wanted to dump this onto the blog before it got too far removed and I didn’t feel like it. I have photos of much of what we did, but don’t feel like getting them on here right now.
Not too often I sit back and smile and just think I had a good day. That’s not to say things suck, but as I get older the little victories mean less and it takes more to light up that inner smile. Also, it seems like everytime in my life when I sat back and thought, “You know, things are good.” it was immediately followed by my world crumbling around me. So much so that I’ve become a little superstitious about actually acknowledging it. So let me just add the disclaimer that I’d like the external forces that control the universe (particularly my corner of it) to know that I’m not gloating as much as simply relaying the events of my day. (awkward smile)
Today I was reminded how much my kids kick ass. Like serious ass. Like your kid sucks compared to my kid sort of stuff.
Today was parent/teacher conferences and report cards.
My son generally does well with the exception of reading – where he’s not failing or behind, but he has to work to keep it up. But every year without doubt we’re told how he is an example of what a student should be – hard working, willing to help, polite, well manner and behaved – just a pleasure to be around. Last month was his third consectuive year for receiving the ‘citizenship award’ that the school gives. He’s only been in school three years – do the math. How can that not make you smile? Add to that the fact that he’s a hardcore middle linebacker that will rip your fucking head off and you can’t lose. We always joke that he’s like my wife and he is – in almost every way. Just read the adjectives I used to describe him and you have my wife…except I’m not sure she ever played middle linebacker, but she will rip your fucking head off.
The other half of the joke is that my daughter is just like me – and it’s true. A lovingly cynical, over-talented cutie with a scathing sense of humor that is both quick witted and silly at once.
My daughter excels without having to put forth much effort. She’s ridiculously bright and has been a straight A student for as long as I can remember. She always test at advanced levels and finally with this meeting there was recommendation of moving towards getting her in the honors program now that she’s in middle school. Plus, she’s the one who always got into the extracurricular stuff ranging from student council to land lab to origami to band to whatever else she’s done. To make matters even worse, she’s popular. Walk down the hall with her in a mostly empty school and you’ll still hear a dozen hellos from students and teachers alike before you get where you’re going – and tonight was no exception. The theme of our meetings about her have gone from “great student, a pleasure to have in class” to “we have to make sure we find ways to keep this girl challenged” – I don’t claim to know how much of things is nature vs nurture, but again, I can’t help but smile.
Just the kind of day that makes you sit back with a kind of bewildered smile and think, “Damn, we’re doing something right.”
Plus, I went for a haircut this afternoon and got one of the girls I like with no wait on a walk-in. That was pretty sweet too.
At this very moment 12 years ago I was at the hospital…mere hours away from officially taking a lifetime of responsibility for another tiny human.
Oddly enough, one of the things that sticks with me was that we had the TV on MTV and the only video I remember seeing that night was the Marilyn Manson video where he’s naked on the couch. What video was that?
Talk about time flying…
It really feels like we’re at a point in life where we’re just kind of settling in. Finally buying a house was big step in that general vibe. I was just looking back and since I moved out of my parent’s house (at 18), I’ve never lived at one address for longer than 35 months. That’s kind of crazy, I suppose – in 18 years, I’ve never lived in one place for as long as a three year span. It’s especially odd if you consider the first 18 years of my life where 15 of them (from 3 until I moved out) were spent in the same rural, small town home.
I’ve known my wife for half my life and been married for 13 years (last month) and our lives have been very migratory in many ways – always moving from area to area and always traveling for person reasons within that greater context. It’s just what we’ve done and it’s worked out greatly for us.
But in the past year – all of that seems to have changed. We sort of acknowledged that we’re in a pretty good place and that it looks like we can continue to advance our lives while staying put. We bit the bullet and bought the house last winter and decided to spend our resources not staying mobile, but rather establishing some minor roots. We generally have a 10-year plan at this point. Our youngest (my son) just turned 8, so in ten years we’ll have two adult children and be free to open up all the options again and see where (if anywhere) it takes us.
I’m not sure where I was heading with this. Lately I have a feeling of ’settling in’ – not really slowing down, but changing focus. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it’s different and that’s why I’m noticing it. Seems like a good time in life to get our ducks in a row, lay low and wait for the signal that it’s time to sping forth into whatever it may be that needs sprung into.
It’s the kind of thing that is necessary, but not exciting…and I think my little blog reflects that.
Last week we zipped down to West Palm for Rebecca & Jeph’s wedding. We ended up flying out of Columbus and into Ft. Lauderdale because of stupid-low fares and direct flights – always a good combo…even with the short drives before and after the flights. The flight down was sweet – a half empty plane, a pilot who got us there early and the on-board XM tuned to Hair Nation. Made for a pleasant evening flight. We grabbed a shuttle and got our rental car. Got saddled with a Ford Focus – huge trunk but otherwise one of the worst cars I’ve ever driven. I forgot how crazy the highways in South Florida can be. I have to admit to liking the speed involved. My 85 seems conservative at 10pm on I-95 heading between Lauderdale and West Palm. (You’re in West Plam Beach, baby! Squak!)
We got to the hotel and met up and said a few hellos before going back to our room and deciding we were hungry. The only things open and close were a Wendy’s drive-thru, IHOP and Denny’s. We opted for Denny’s and were the only ones in the place with the exception of our 75 year-old waitress (not a guess, she told us at one point), the cook and a dishwasher/busboy. Standard Denny’s fare. Back to the room and we crashed after a long Wednesday.
On Thursday we were up bright and early. With so many places we’d be stopping by due to various wedding activities each goody bag had directions included, but I don’t like directions unless I do them myself. My years of traveling by car have honed my instinct for going the right way to an uncanny degree and my almost-supernatural ability to print directions from Google and visualize (and remember) the map and directions make me a pretty efficient traveler. I know it’s a total throwback in the day of low-cost GPS everywhere you go, but even on the cheap, I wouldn’t use it enough to justify the cost. The few times I have needed it, I’ve used the verizon Navigator thingy on my phone…and in all these years still haven’t even come close to paying for a cheap GPS unit – let alone a decent one.
With that said, I decided to live and die by the VZ Navigator app. It’d only be about $10 and it just might make our time in Florida a little more interesting. We wanted to start by swinging by their (Rebecca & Jeff’s) new house so I punched in the address and soon the phone lady (as I referred to the GPS voice the entire trip) was leading the way. She got us there problem free. But that’s when we realized they lived in a gated community and hadn’t yet informed the folks manning the gate that they’d be having guests over the course of the next few days. We were denied and couldn’t get ahold of anyone to tell the bitch at the gate to let us in, so we decided to blow some time elsewhere. I asked the phone lady where we might find a nearby mall and she led us right to the Mall at Wellington Green where we blew a little bit of time and finally got in touch with the soon-to-be-weds and got access to the community.
After a little while at their new house – which was pretty nice, but the whole gated community, subdivision thing done Florida-style really wasn’t my thing…at all – we headed back to the hotel and picked up a bag of clothes and stuff and headed to my brother-in-law’s where my kids would be spending the night. The phone lady got us to their home in Boynton Beach flawlessly and after a short visit we zipped back to the hotel and changed. It was back to Rebecca & Jeph’s for the bridal shower. Yes, I was invited being as I’ve always been one of the girls and because of my mad camera skillz. I hung with the ladies and turned on the charm (I’m quite a charmer) and the evening flew by as the ladies did the stupid things ladies at a bridal shower do and I hung back taking photos and sampling all the sweet eats…multiple times. After the crowd dispersed, the house was left with a mix of good friends both male and female. After calling it a night we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed ourselves by deciding to indulge and each take one of the double beds for the night. Yeah, we’re crazy like that. Not sure if we’re just old, been married to long or our relationship is just that damn healthy (hint: it’s the latter), but it was really nice to stretch out diagonally, get the comfy leg position going and just sleep in an overly air conditioned room.
We had to be up bright and early on Friday to retrieve the kids (it was a workday afterall) and decide that since we were getting up we might as well make the most of our day before meeting the group again for a pre-wedding barbeque at the house. I definitely wanted to swing by Boomers and Uncle Bernie’s and snag some photos (it’s all about the benjamins) since we hadn’t been there in 5 years. Actually the last time were were in the area was for another wedding in 2004 – my wife’s brother’s wedding. Yes, the same brother (and wife) who took the kids for the evening. Back in 2004 we toyed with the idea of making our triumphant return to South Beach but never did. (when my then future-wife and I first met we took off to Miami together after only knowing each other a few months and actually lived on South Beach back when it was first making a comback as a hot spot) So this time we figured we’d probably have no reason to ever come back so we might as well go do the nostalgia thing while we had the chance.
Phone lady got me to South Beach and once we got off I-95 I immediately flashed back and knew my way around like we had never left. I got us down near the convention center (our apartment was across the street) and we both proclaimed at the same time, “The Hand!”
The Hand (see last entry) is actually a Holocaust Memorial, but we always called it The Hand because it’s a big fucking hand statue. Back when I was a kid with nothing better to do but hang out and waste time on South Beach with no money or car or food or anything, I would hang out at the hand. What can I say? I mean no disrespect to those who suffered or to their memories – it is what it is. (or what it was)
There was this little pathway that was practically hidden that followed a stinky canal right from the hand to 20th street next to the convention center (right across the street from our place) so we parked right down the street from the hand and popped a few quarters in the meter. I had a total nostalgia moment – kind of like one of those old, good memories coming to life before your very eyes. I was very pleased to be visiting the hand again. My kids were like, “WTF is this?” but I smiled a little on the outside and a whole lot on the inside.
We took the path in the unbearable heat… I’ve forgotten to mention the heat up to this point. For the record it’s unbearably hot in South Florida in August around the clock, 24/7, all the time and everywhere. Florida sucks, it smells, it’s scummy, it’s weird and people beg you for money at every intersection. Florida should go away.
Anyway, we took the path to the old apartment and found the building boarded up and fenced off (complete with razor wire). It was bittersweet. The place was pretty nasty 15 years ago and I can only imagine what time had done to it, but it was ugly. My hopes of walking into the ‘courtyard’ area and to the back of the building on the left and up the stairs to apartment 12A were dashed. Still I smiled a little more inside and I know my wife did too. I risked life and limb and raised my camer over the razor wire and snapped a quick pic and we decided we needed to get the fuck out of the heat. We went back to the car and did a little tour of the area seeing what had changed and what was still the same.
After our trip down memory lane, Phone Lady took us north to Boomers where the arcade had people, but the rides outside were a ghost town. I paid $14 and change for myself and the kids to take a spin on the Hurricane. Still great airtime, but it was a lot rougher than I remember it being in 2004. I wanted to take pics and I did, but nothing great when rides are just sitting there empty. A few kids did happen to ride the Hurricane right when I was standing there along the road ready to leave so I got 3 quick shots.
We zipped over to the Swap Shop and Uncle Bernie’s with no intentions to do anything but grab some quick photos and get the hell out. The place was WAY nastier than I remember and the crowd was suspect at best. Not a soul to be found in the park, but I took some shots of the empty rides and we got the fuck out of Dodge.
We got back to the hotel and were beat after our early morning and long day in the sun. But it was time for quick showers, wardrobe changes and off to the BBQ. Again a good time with good food, but we slipped out early and crashed hard back at the hotel.
On Saturday our plan was to spend the late morning/early afternoon at the brother-in-law’s for a lunch date of sorts before swing back and getting ready for the wedding (again, I was asked to play unofficial photographer) and we wanted to show up early. Phone lady got us to the venue without a hitch (Thank you, Phone Lady.) and we made our way through the manned gate (what is with all the gated things?) with no problem.
Again I spent time with the girls as they prepared for the ceremony. I took exclusive, behind-the-scenes photos. The wedding was nice and the reception was banging (for lack of a better, more accurately descrptive term) and a good time was had by all.
Sorry for the lack of detail, but it was a wedding. You know what happens and even if you’re curious, I lack the skills to give a play-by-play of two people exchanging vows. The couple was disgustingly attractive and our little Rebecca (we’ve known her almost 13 years – since she was 19 – and you may have seen me refer to her place in our lives as my second wife and our third child in previous blog posts) is officially all grown up. *sniff*
We were up bright and early on Sunday as our flight left around 11am and we had to pack, drive, ditch the car, check in, etc. The flight was full of idiots, but the pilot did the trip in record time getting us to the gate almost a full 30 minutes ahead of schedule. AirTran is cool like that. I dozen on and off with the sounds of channel 41 – Hair Nation in my head and we were on the ground and back home before I knew it. The temperature in Ohio during the afternoon was approximately 25 degrees cooler than the ‘real feel’ temperature in West Plam at 3am the night before…did I mention that Florida blows?
For the record, the GPS thing won me over, but I still don’t see the need beyond the occasional use on the phone. I generally know where I’m going…even when I don’t.
Things begin to get back to normal around here today. My wife took last week off and with her birthday falling towards the end of last week, we ended up with a 10-day ‘vacation’ span. This is the first time in ages that the family has had extended time off and hasn’t made traveling to parks a major focus. The biggest change in life during something like that is the lack of online time. Normally I spend a decent portion of time online doing all kinds of things ranging from managing life to wasting time. Getting away from that is nice and, as I posted a little while back, makes the online world seem so alien and silly. It always takes a couple of days to acclimate and everything online to feel ‘right’ again.
We had the kind of vacation where it feels like you got shit done, but did nothing at the same time. I like that feeling. We spent 4 days back home visiting family, enjoying my niece’s 1st birthday party and stopping by Kennywood. Back at home we did more stuff around the house (still haven’t got back to my brick wall yet though, but absolutely HAVE to soon), took care of various little errands (paying this year’s car insurance, starting on school clothes, and stuff like that, stopped by Kings Island for a day, etc.
Even more damning for the unofficial end of summer looming just around the corner is that tonight is the first night of football practice for my son. We picked up his equipment this weekend and stopped by Dick’s to buy cleats, Under Armor and a cup and stuff. Little guy’s ready to go again this year. Last year he didn’t miss a single game, practice or activity the entire season (I believe living up to commitments you make and it felt good to not have to crap out on anything), but already this year we’ll be missing 3 practices and the first official game in August for a wedding. Also have a milestone birthday bash for my wife’s uncle that’s kind of a “better not miss” thing in September that we’re still trying to figure out how to handle to not miss a game and there’s both CoasterBuzz events in late September that I’d rather not miss again, but can’t keep missing football games either. I’ll wait until I see this year’s schedule and make some hard decisions.
If the idea of football isn’t enough to make you start thinking past summer, then knowing school starts less than a month from now and we still need to score supplies, clothes and stuff certainly makes you think this way. My daughter starts middle school this year and is going to miss orientation and stuff due to aforementioned wedding as well, so we need to find a time to get her over to the school to grab her schedule and take a look around before school starts. We’ll be returning from the wedding the day before school starts (which is the elementary school’s meet & greet, so my little guy lucked out).
Now that the kids are getting older and taking on responsibilities of their own we keep finding it harder and harder to make time for things like weddings and birthday parties and people coming from out of town to visit and whatever else you get asked to do in life. So much so that I’ve proclaimed to the rest of the family that after we get through this fall, it’s time to just start being more selfish for lack of a better term. At some point we just have to start saying, “Sorry, we can’t make it we have shit to do.” It always feels like we go out of our way to do that when others involved don’t and our lives are just getting to the point where we can’t always do it anymore either. I feel bad that my daughter is going to miss thwe orientation and seeing all her friends a few days before school start and comparing schedules and finding her classes and stuff. Sure, it’s no big deal, she’s not a moron and we’ll get the important info in time, but there’s something about being there for the experience. Same with my son and his football games. You want him to be there to be a part of the team experience all the wins and losses and the ride of the whole season. It kills me that we’re agreeing to commit to some degree and have to crap out once or twice.
At any rate, I enjoyed being off the grid for a week or so, but now at the end of July I find myself feeling like fall is looming and I need to get shit in line.
Mentioned over at Jeff’s blog today that I dig Betty White. Which, in turn, reminded me of this:
The sad part is I didn’t just do that. I had that lying around, so to speak.
This week started with a new PC. My old one was ancient. I originally built it in August of 2001 and did some minor upgrades in 2004 when RCT3 came out. To call it dated would be an understatement. It’s funny how you just get used to the way things are because it never really bothered me. I just noticed it seemed to be taking longer and longer to process photos and figured it was time to upgrade. I wanted to build something top-of-the-line with an i7 processor, but decided to just get a Dell-built Quad Core at less than 1/2 the cost. If I end up using it even two years it was worth it. Already amused by how fast Photoshop processes for me now. Who knows how much time I’ve wasted/lost over the past few years. I suck.
But I do have a sweet 22″ widesreen monitor that, when set to 1920×1080 as I have it, offers a whole buttload of screen real estate. Much more than my meager self is used to. I’ve spent much of the odd hours of this week loading programs and transferring files.
Then came some more photo requests. This past winter was slow as hell, but the spring has made up for it. Oddly enough, a couple of the photos were on film so I had to do some scanning. I never did really good scans the first time around and I have a ton of film I shot from 2000-2003. I keep thinking I need to just pay to have some quality scans done, but I never get around to actually doing it.
Then the nice weather came and the reality of being a homeowner hit when I suddenly realized our yard looks like shit and everyone else’s looks like they brought pros in to finely manicure the grounds. I’ll be honest with y’all here – I don’t even own a lawn mower yet…or a rake…or a shovel…or anything. So we decided that this weekend will be spent buying crap to keep up with the yard. I’m so not amused. I used to be more outdoorsy and I still have a lot of the liking to work with my hands thing in me from childhood (my parents weren’t and aren’t afraid to get out and get dirty and I used to have it in me too).
I’ve also come to note that of the 6 houses on the cul-de-sac that we are easily the youngest…by a good margin. I’ve also noticed that I’m not nearly as friendly as the others. I’ll smile, wave, say hello, share a few words about the weather, whatever…but I don’t need a friend. I’m not coming over for tea. I’m not helping you build shit. I’m not fawning over your shitty dog. I’m not sitting on the deck and talking all evening over a beer. I’ll be a friendly face that lives on your street. I won’t be your friend.
It sounds shitty, but it’s how I feel. Fuck you, I write the rules.
That’s how my week has gone.
Just saw this over at Tyler’s blog:
“No problem douche”
This was the response from Mark Meadows at MVM Data, mark@mvmdata.com, when I contacted www.shawneeshuttle.com to remove a photo of mine they used in a commercial setting and without attribution.
That’s so much bullshit. I’d drive to that dude’s house and punch him in the mouth. I hate the way the net has spawned this “everything is for the taking” mentality.
Two pieces of advice for all of you photo-taking types out there:
1. Register your photos with the US Copyright Office.
It’s easy to do electronically these days and depending on the nature of willful infringement, the payout to you as a photographer is anywhere from $750 to $150,000 plus fees per photo.
2. Put a copyright watermark on your photos.
If you find the need and/or effort to register your photos to be too much, at least put a copyright mark on them. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal for someone to remove your “copyright management information” from your photos to disguise infringement from unauthorized use.
Even if you haven’t formally and legally registered your photo with the US government, the DMCA still allows for fines starting at $2500 and runnng up to $25,000 if you can prove removal or alteration of the copyright mark/info on the photo for unauthorized use.
Don’t let people just take the things you work hard to create. Whether you expect full professional licensing fees or nothing more than a simple acknowledgement, it’s still fucked up when someone takes what isn’t theirs.
Scary that unprofessional assholes like the one Tyler had to deal with are able to make a living in this world. Maybe if that guy created anything worth stealing, he’d understand.
So here’s the story.
Last night (Thursday) a little after 11pm we get a call from the girl who’s going to be keeping our kids (and our house) for the weekend. Appaprently earlier in the evening her father had a stroke or heart attack or some fucked up shit and collapsed. She apologized, briefly explained she had to head out (she’s from the Cleveland area) to be with her family.
Our flight to FL was schedule to depart Friday at 12:51pm. Give the 30 minute drive and need to arrive early at the slow-ass Dayton airport and we needed to be out of here at 11am at the latest. So we’re talking 12 hours notice.
On top of this she’s one of my wife’s managers at work and was kind of going to be the go-to person for her this weekend if anything needed done.
It was too late to call around and talk to anyone and now my wife had to be at the hotel in the morning to figure out coverage for the weekend.
Long story short – we don’t know very many people around here well enough to leave our kids for the weekend. It’s a short list and it’s a hell of a thing to ask someone with 4 hours notice if they can take your kids for the weekend.
No one was able to in the morning but we had an ‘after work’ offer. So we started looking into changing flights. Let’s just say the Dayton-anywhere in Florida thing is awfully fucking popular right now. No surprise though as the kids are in the middle of spring break in our school district.
AirTran is pretty cool about switching up flights at nominal fees, but you do have to pay the different in available fares. Most flights are sold out and what’s left only has the highest fares or business class available. We tried a bunch of different airports in South Florida and anything that would get us there by wedding time, but the costs are just outrageous.
I love you lots, Jeff and Diana, but we were looking at a total final cost of almost $600 each to fly down in time. It just wasn’t going to happen. I see have rental car and hotel booking that weren’t canceled within the allowable time frame to avaoid a change to deal with too.
For future reference, if any family members of friends of ours want to die or toy with death, please do it on your own time and not ours?
I’m not trying to make light of the situation and I do hope the girl’s father is ok (we still haven’t heard anything), but I’m royally jacked…and then on top of that I feel like an ass for telling Jeff and Diana we’d be there and not delivering. Shit like that pisses me off.
No party on a boat for me this time. Shit luck doesn’t come my way often, but when a situation plays out in my world, it’s usually fuckered up and huge.
Sigh. Sorry, guys. :(
Is the idea of a formal dining room passe?
Here’s the deal. We have no need for a formal dining room. None. I hate the idea of a room with a formal dining setup just sitting there being wasted space.
Ideally, we’d like to do a huge expensive kitchen renovation and suck up the formal dining room into a new larger, bad-ass kitchen. But that costs a lot of money and isn’t something we’ll be jumping on any time soon.
In the meantime we’ve decided to incorporate it as part of the front room/office and make it a sitting area thus creating one large office/sitting room thingy on the left side of the house. It should be a pretty nice area.
So yeah, that’s where we stand. Some people I talk to can’t fathom the idea of not having a formal dining area and others seem to understand our approach completely.
No formal dining room for us though – we’re leading the way into the 2nd decade of the 21st century and beyond.
I dreamed that I bought a pickup truck last night. It was blue.
Even weirder is that I bought it at the volunteer fire department building in the small town I grew up in – I didn’t actually dream about buying it, I just knew that I had bought it there in my dream.
…
Man, I really enjoyed driving that pickup truck.
After I picked the kids up from school, I stopped to get gas. I was getting the ‘low fuel’ warning from the HHR.
As I was pumping gas, I was trying to think of the last time I put gas in the HHR. I couldn’t remember; it’s been forever. So when I got home, I fired up Quicken and realized this is the first time I put gas in it in 2009!
I guess one of the benefits of living so close to everything is that we barely use gas.
Just for the record, including this fill-up today the total gasoline cost for the household (both vehicles) in 2009 has been $53.55.