Weezil Breezes

The Bear's Special Day

2009-01-31T21:16:00.000-08:00

The long anticipated day finally came. The Bear turned 8 on January 3rd, which made him eligible to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Depending on the day and minute the Bear either was looking forward to it, or apprehensive about it.

DramaMama and I talked to him a lot about why we get baptized, and worked with him not to be worried or scared. He has been concerned about having to go all the way under the water.

One of the most special things about it for me is that I was able to be the one to baptize and confirm him.

When we arrived at the Kimball East Stake Center where the baptism was held, we both went and got changed into the white clothes you see us wearing in the picture. The Bear was feeling anxious, so we said a prayer together in the changing room. His feelings came and went, but when we were talking to our Bishop, The Bishop could tell that the Bear was a little stressed, so he and I went into a room in the Stake offices where we gave him a comfort blessing to help be calm.

DramaMama brought an activity book about baptism that helped keep him distracted. As this was a stake baptismal service, there were several other children being baptized today as well, several of which the Bear knew from church and school. That helped him relax a bit. For those unfamiliar with our church, I offer a few explanations: Our congregations are referred to as "wards", and several of these wards comprise a stake. So there were children from I think 8 different wards there today.

We all met in the chapel and had a short program, then the children from one ward at a time were dismissed to the Baptismal font room. Sometimes this was only one child, others a couple of them. Our ward was last, so we remained in the chapel where a video was presented about the Saviour. As it began, an elderly man in a suit was shown walking into a building, then overlooking the land of Jerusalem. As he turned around and faced the camera, I was immediately overcome with emotion, and basically lost it for several minutes. Who was the elderly gentleman? He was our former Prophet who passed away about a year ago. See my blog entry about it here.

Finally it was our turn to go into the room for the baptism. There was one other child from our ward there with us, and since she was a girl, the Bishop had them go first. The cool thing about this one was that the person baptizing her joined the church only a few years ago, and has since progressed and received the appropriate Priesthood authority to perform this sacred ordinance.

When they were finished, I took the Bear through the side door that gave us access to the font. He immediately became scared again. I stepped down into the font, but he stayed at the top and was crying. I went back up (3 steps) and gave him a long hug. The Bishop was standing right behind him offering soothing and comforting words.

Then we descended the stairs together and he was fine. We had practised several times so he knew what was going to happen. We got our hands and everything situated, and then I baptized him. He did get a little tense under the water, but he was fine after that. He kept saying things like, "I did it!", "and are you so proud of me?" Yes we were so proud of him. We knew that it was scary for him, but he did it anyway. He was a good little trooper.

He also commented that the water was a little cold. It was warm when the font was filled, but by the time it was our turn, it had cooled off a bit.

Then we went and changed back into our nice clothes. We apparently were taking too long, because a couple different people were dispatched to tell us to get a move on.

Once we were ready, we went back out, and I was able to confirm him a member of the church. This consists of a group of priesthood holders surrounding the newly baptized person, laying hands on their head (I placed my right hand on his head, then all of the others placed their right hand atop mine. Our left hands rested on the right shoulder of the person to our left), and the priesthood holder acting as voice does three things: 1) confirms them a member of the church, 2) directs them to receive the Holy Ghost, and 3) Pronounces a blessing as directed by the Spirit of the Lord.

This for me was a very sacred privilege. This was the third baptism I have performed, and the second confirmation. The first baptism was on my mission and was a young man that we taught. The second was my son James 7 years ago. I was also privileged to confirm him.

One of the most amazing things in all this is that the pronounced blessing is not planned out. Of course in the days leading up to the event, it is proper to ponder on what might be said, and sometimes inspiration comes then that will guide your blessing. As I pronounced the Bear's blessing today, I had thought about it some, but did not have any prepared text to say. I let the words come through inspiration, and many of the words I said, I hadn't even thought about. I was able to tell him some very special things, and at times was overcome with emotion. My dad stood to my right, and when I was choked up, he gently squeezed my shoulder.

By the end of the confirmation, I had tears running down my face, and as the group broke apart, I saw that many people in the room did too. I must tell you that the Bear is one special little kid, and I am privileged to be his dad.

Afterwards, I had a private moment with my dad in which both of us were teared up. He told me he was proud of me. That meant a lot. I told him that I learned from the best. And I did. My dad has been a shining example to me his whole life. I want to be like my dad. I only hope that someday the Bear will be able to say the same about me. I feel I have a long way to go to earn that.

We all went over to dad's house and had lunch. It was a very special day for all of us.

Little Shop... Little Shop of... Whores?

2009-01-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

First off... I hate that word.

As you probably saw on DramaMama's blog, we got tickets through my work to go to Broadway Palm dinner theater to go see "The best little whorehouse in Texas". I was wary of it, but figured the free food would be worth whatever we had to endure.

Here is my review:

The food was good.

End of review.

Um... okay here's some more.

There were a couple funny moments, but most of it was distasteful, and parts (mainly due to the actors) were atrocious. We left at intermission along with many other people. The theater last night was sparsely attended to begin with, so I imagine the staff got to wish the janitor goodnight instead of the audience.

There was very little of value to the production and once again, Broadway Palm left us disappointed. We have enjoyed some fantastic productions there, but they seem to have this seedy underbelly that rears its head from time to time.

My rating of the show? LOWZEE! (Say that with a fake southern drawl).

I enjoyed the food and the company of my favorite girl. The ones on stage did not attract my attention.

Side note: Best Suns game in a long frickin' time! I recorded it and it way made up for the lack of entertainment at the theater. They whomped the Dallas Mavericks by 28 points!

Not Always a Curmudgeon

2008-12-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

Things you never expected to hear...

2008-12-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

"Jingle Bells... Jingle Bells... TAKE THAT!"
-- The Bear

The Ward Party and The Latest on My Article

2008-11-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last night we held our "Country Fair" party for our ward. We were in charge of it again, but this time DramaMama delegated a lot of the responsibilities to the different auxiliaries, and it was much easier.

Toward the end of setup before the party began, we had a minor trauma... we were about to fill the two 5 gallon jugs with ice water, when the water in the building turned off. A few phone calls, and some scrambling later, and once again the water came on and we were able to finish in plenty of time. The Bishop was outside working with the water shut-off, while on the cell phone to the Elder's Quorum President in the kitchen. Bishop fiddled with it until it came on.

Once we got going, the party pretty much ran itself. There was little maintenance needed other than keeping the food stocked. DrummerBoy and some of his friends provided the music for the evening, and they sounded fantastic. By the end of the night after having set up and taken down about 20 tables, and a hundred or so chairs, I felt like an old man. As part of the fair, we had displays for crafts, quilts, art, etc. I set up several of my drawings, a couple photos I took years ago, and the sheet music to 3 songs I wrote.

At one point, I stopped the Bishop and thanked him for helping get the water back on. As we were parting, he stopped me. "Brother Hanks, I got a call from Salt Lake."

"Uh-oh," I said, not knowing for sure where he was going with this.

He continued and told me that the call came from the editing department of the Ensign. He said the conversation went something like this:

"Do you know a Brother Hanks?"

"Yes I do."

"We just wanted to verify that he was in your ward, because we are preparing to publish his article in an upcoming issue."

...

Bishop said that it should be within 2 or 3 issues. When I received the original notification that they wanted to use my article, they said that there would need to be an editing process where they would edit my article, and sent it back to me for my revisions, etc until we came to an agreement of the final text. It does need an editing pass or two. Of all the things I have ever submitted, this one had the least polishing done to it. All in all it is pretty sound, but after re-reading it, I saw a few things I would change.

So there we are... it won't be long and I will finally be able to say that I have been published.

[UPDATE]
I received an email yesterday (12/3/08) with the edited copy, and a note stating that my article is slated for publication in the August 2009 issue.

I am going through the copy and doing some editing myself. I have until mid-January to get the revised version back to them.

A One Track Mind

2008-11-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

The other day, DramaMama told me that as part of her quest to make us self-sufficient, she would like a wheat grinder that runs both on electricity and manually.

The Bear, nearby, piped up: "A Wii grinder? What does it do?"

It Was Worth It

2008-11-05T20:24:00.001-08:00

This election was huge on several fronts. The presidential race of course was high on the list, but Arizona and California both had propositions on the ballot to protect the definition of marriage. (Arizona Prop 102 http://yesformarriage.com/ and California Prop 8).

I am happy to say that both passed. In Arizona, I was heavily involved in the mailing lists and phone lists for Prop 102, while in California, my oldest brother Keith who is a city councilman in Azusa worked hard on Prop 8. Here is a youtube video of him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH_AWZ8mCwI

Although I spent long hours working on this, and many of them uncompensated, I find that it was all worth it to see that this important issue got the attention it needed to get passed.

It does my heart good to see people stand up for what is right, not for what is popular.

Star Wars - The Bear's Perspective

2008-10-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

The other night we were watching Star Wars and then The Empire Strikes Back on cable. At one point, R2D2 was excited because Luke and Han Solo returned. R2D2 was hopping so that he shifted quickly from one side to the other. The Bear's take?

"Look! R2D2 has to go potty!"

The Cricket-Dile Hunter

2008-10-07T22:44:00.001-07:00

CRIKEY I HATE CRICKETS!

We have had several crickets in the house lately, and they of course crick at night when I am trying to sleep. The bad thing is when you try to locate where they are and you get too close to them, they stop so you can't spot them.

So anyway, we had one in our linen closet, and I finally managed to pinpoint the area he was in. I unloaded the crap that was on the floor under the lowest shelf where I thought it was. Couldn't see anything. Unloaded the bottom two shelves... Still nothing. So I put it all back figuring I scared it away.

I laid back down... CRICK CRICK CRICK. RAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! (That last bit was me)

I patiently listened and determined that the little booger was indeed on the floor of the closet. I finally spotted it on the underside of the shelf in the corner.

I don't bother with stuff like flyswatters or shoes in these situations. I go for the big guns.

THE DYSON!

FWOOP! the little sucker (I mean the cricket) disappeared into the vortex of death, and at last I could sleep.

Bed Time With The Bear

2008-09-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

One of the fun parts of being a parent is hearing the many cute and funny things your kids say. I am the one that takes the Bear to bed. We read a book, then he says his prayers, then I make his friends talk (Pooh Bear and Elmo are my specialties), then he goes to sleep.

The Bear does very well with his prayers. He is actually thinking about what he says, and it isn't the same thing every night. One of my favorite things that he has started doing recently is that he says, "Good night Heavenly Father, I love you."

It is very cute and very sweet, and it brings a big old smile to my Daddy face.

Do I Have Horns?

2008-09-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

I must, because I think I'm in hell.

For the past several months I have been eyeball deep and beyond at work compiling data and prepping political mailers, along with building several websites, and many other things. As the the Primary election approached, I soon became burned out on data. I needed a serious vacation.

The day of the Primary election, I let out a sigh if relief, because I figured the pressure was off, and that I would get a few weeks reprieve from political data.

Exhaled too soon.

I got no break at all from it. In fact, it got about ten times worse. I have been consistently working 12 to 14 hours a day, usually with no lunch. It is a constant barrage of "I need this right now!"

Over the last week or so, we have been working on the "Yes for Marriage" campaign (yesformarriage.com). We have been working on a huge mailing (500,000+ addresses), and I was responsible for laying the address info and voter data on the pieces. I got that going, then as I lay awake one of the nights, I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. It got so bad that I called my boss at 1:00 am and woke him up. We met at work, and discovered that there was indeed a problem. I had accidentally run a batch of 100,000 records through twice, which would have resulted in that many duplicate mailers going out. With that, we only lost about five hours production time.

After we had already printed 150,000 of the mailers, I had another awful realization. I had made and error combining names from same households together. (up to 2 people from one house on a mailer.) The result was that names from completely different counties were being put together on some of the mailers. I had this thought during the day, and we quickly did some figuring and found that a little more than 36,000 of the mailers were bad because of this. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

To my boss's credit on both of these, he remained very calm, and we worked through the problem. He did however point out that these mailers cost about a buck apiece, so that little oversight cost the company a little over $36,000. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

So together my boss and I figured out how to determine which mailiers were bad, and how to get them pulled out of the stacks before they mailed. (Luckily, I found this before any mailers went out).

So I fixed the problem, and started production over again, confident this time that I had covered my bases, and that the product I was generating was accurate. I got to think that for a whole day I think.

The woman in charge of our mailings came into my office and told me (as I heard it) that the barcode in the mail panel was wrong. I happened to have a Sharpie in my hand at the moment, and I threw it. It bounced off the edge of my desk and flew across the room. I sort of kind of yelled. "Don't you tell me there's another problem!"

Once we talked about it a bit, it turned out that my barcode was correct, but the city state and zipcode above it was not correct in some circumstances. AAAAUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

So, I went to the boss expecting a directive to fill out my own pink slip and kick my own butt out the door. The three of us got together and discussed the problem. It turned out it wasn't as widespread as I initially understood. The mail woman took a batch that had some of the non-compliant pieces to the post office, and they all made it throgh without being rejected. WHEW!

The next day I apologized to her for my outburst. All is well I thought.

FAT CHANCE!

Later she was back saying that another problem had surfaced with the city state and zipcode. The data I used for the barcode was run through a system that gives the most current zipcode. The city state and zipcode, came from year old data. The problem that surfaced was because of growing areas and zipcode splits. Pieces were showing a city and zipcode but the barcode referenced a different city and zipcode. (one city merged into another larger city, and therefore no longer existed).

I pulled the boss out of a meeting on that one. The question was: does the post office actually look at the city state and zipcode, or does their machine simply read the barcode? Once again, the post office trip became necessary. And once again, the pieces passed. WHEW!

We purchased a newer version of my production software that is server based that allows us to produce the pieces a lot faster. So I took the remaining 278,000 records on with that, fixed the mail panel problem, and finished the job.

Holy cow what a ride! I am so tired I can't stand myself.

The past two days have been spent catching up on all the work the got set aside to get this giganto mailing out. So needless to say, everyone needed their stuff done right then, and they kept letting me know that. I worked from 7am to past 7pm most days, and skipped lunch to get caught up.

Yesterday, I knew I had to leave at 5:00 because our neighbor was getting married at 6:00. I had a list of 7 or eight projects to get done in order to make that deadline. Of course nothing wanted to cooperate. I skipped lunch again, and plowed through. I knocked most of it out. A couple of the jobs got delayed because I didn't have everything I needed to finish them.

This whole run has been exhausting and incredibly stressful. I know that Monday and Tuesday will probably still be a bit nuts, but I think I may be on the down slope of my sleigh ride through Hades.

My Book Is Finished!

2008-09-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

WOO HOO!

I had to force myself to write the end, which is the hardest part of any story for me. I will admit that there is a ton of room for improvement on this whole thing, but that will come in the revisions.

I started out in March with a sort of vague idea of what it was about. I started writing, and doing a lot of research on the Navajo people and traditions, and soon found a lot of stuff in the early chapters that was flat out wrong.

I checked out a pile of books and searched the internet for everything I could find on Navajo culture, and in the process my story started writing itself. I would sit down to write, and not have any ideas what I was going to write about. The story was just there waiting for me to take down like dictation. The whole thing just came out. I read about some very interesting Navajo legends, and one of them became a main thread in the story.

I discovered on the next to the last chapter, that the book with the legend in it, misguided me a little, and I will have to go back through and change the order in which things happen some because of it.

The discrepancy came in the form of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo. They are all given a color. Even within my reference book, the colors for the north mountain and the east mountain were switched. One page said North was the white mountain, but on the facing page, it said that north is the black mountain. ARRGGHHGH! The legend used white as north which is what I used. The village was supposed to be at the foot of the white mountain, so it is getting shifted from the north to the east.

I took some liberties with this and invented some extensions to some of the Navajo legends. I figure if we can make fantasy with white people in it, why not with Navajo people in it? I think it is a good story, but I know the revisions will make it much better.

I have the whole dang deal on its own blog at: http://greatfatherofeagles.blogspot.com/ On the right column click on "March", then scoot clear to the bottom. The chapters are displayed in reverse order. Kind of a pain, but there you are.

DramaMama provided the design and music for my blog.

You Make the Call

2008-08-30T09:31:00.001-07:00

The Bears Surgery Day

2008-08-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

Today, the Bear finally had his surgery to lengthen the tendons at the back of his legs so he will be able to walk flat footed more easily.

We woke up about three minutes after we went to sleep. At least it felt like that. We had to get up at 4:00 to meet the 5:30 arrival time at St. Joseph's hospital.

Kayden had his Pooh Bear to keep him company.

DramaMama has more pictures and tells the story well.

I took along my "Man Bag" which contains all my writing gunk. You can see me in the pictures with my clipboard making notes for the end of my latest book writing project.

The Bear - Budding Palaeontologist

2008-08-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Last week the Bear was at Grammy's house for a little vacation before school starts. One day they were out on a walk when the Bear made a great discovery. He discovered "Dinosaur Bones".

"What kind of dinosaur is it?" I asked in that knowing parent voice.

"It's a Tyrannosaurus."

"WOW! That must be huge!"

"No it's a baby one."

"It's a baby T-Rex?"

"Yeah, and it leg is poking out so I call it Karate Dinosaur." A short pause. "When do I get to go to Karate class again?"

The Military Honor Night

2008-08-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Last night was the evening that DramaMama planned to honor servicemen from the past and present. This was inspired by a man from our ward (Brother Vincent) getting notice that he is going to be deployed to Afganistan. He will be leaving this Tuesday.

We have been gathering photos and stories from members of our ward, and I took 2 days and put together a video that showed the pictures and told their stories.

The night came off extremely well. DramaMama was stressed out of her mind worrying that it would be a failure, but as usual, she pulled off an amazing evening.

We had the old pictures set out on a table, and one of the men (Brother Boushley) brought some memorabilia from his days on a submarine. We had posters from the different branches of the military. My favorite had an aircraft carrier on it with the words "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of anyone that threatens it."

We had the Boy Scouts do a flag ceremony and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then a young girl, whose father served in the Navy, sang The Star Spangled Banner. Then we had the dinner which consisted of fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad, and rolls. After dinner, we had another musical number by three young girls. They sang God Bless the USA. Then we had a man from the ward who had served in the British armed forces speak about patriotism. THen we showed the video.

The video started out with a sign reading "The Brimhall Ward honors those who have served and are serving in the armed services."

Following that, we had this quote from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Then we went through the photos. The ending was rather poignant. Erica chose 3 songs: He's a Hero, Where Stars and Stripes and Eagles Fly, and American Soldier by Toby Keith. At the end, we had all of the pictures that Brother Vincent had given us. One of which was of him kneeling at a grave with his head bowed. It was a touching image. He also supplied a poster of a kneeling soldier with a message and a scripture. I made a transition between his picture and the poster. With the words of American Soldier over this, it was hard to hold back the emotion.

After the poster, the music faded out, and another sign appeared:

"Please join with us in a moment of silence to honor those who fought bravely and gave their lives to ensure our freedom." After that it ended with "Thank you from the members of the Brimhall Ward."

Once the lights came up, we could see that several people were wiping tears. Everyone stood up and applauded. Not for the video, but for those present who were in it. It was all very touching. Many people came up to me later, with looks on their faces that I had never seen before. They were truly grateful to be honored like that. They thanked me over and over for doing the video. Many people asked for a copy. I discovered that I made a couple errors, so I need to patch it up, then I will make copies for everyone. I will try to put up a link to it once we get it fixed up a bit. After it was over, several people in attendance let us know that they also had served. We didn't know. So after we get them in, fluff up some of the stories, add more pictures, etc.

It was rather sobering making the video, and seeing all of the people who served, some of whom died. We heard some neat stories. Brother Boushley told us that his sub had the distinction of firing the first guided missle launched from a sub. Another one was of a linguist who listened in on Russian conversations in Cuba, who accidentally pushed a wrong button and shutdown a major operation. It went clear back up to the Joint Chiefs. One man served in Patton's 3rd Army, another served as a personal aide to the Joint Chief of Staff of the Army.

My favorite of the stories though was of a group of 6 brothers that all served in World War 2. Before each of them left, their father laid his hands on their head and gave them a father's blessing. All 6 of the brothers returned home unharmed. I will admit that when DramaMama told me that one over the phone that it choked me up good.

It was a fantastic evening, and DramaMama did herself proud. Today at church, several people mentioned it. Good job honey.

Time is an Enigma - the James Saga

2008-08-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Once a year, my son James comes to visit for a month in the summer. All too soon, I find myself back in the airport with him watching him fly away back home.

This year was no exception. July simply vanished. Granted, we did manage more one-on-one time than previous years, but still...

I did some figuring the other day. The actual amount of time that I have had James with me is still less than 3 years, and he is now 14.

This time, he told us that he wished he could stay here with us for 6 months, then stay 6 months with his mom. I wish that too, but it is very unlikely that this will ever happen.

Over a month ago, I filled out paperwork to have this past week off of work so that all-told, I would be able to spend 9 days with him before he left. 2 weeks before my time off, I scheduled a day for the Bear's surgery. That was cancelled but I tool the day anyway to spend with James. Half-way through the day, I got a call from my boss asking why I wasn't at work. I told him that I put in for that day a month earlier. I asked if he was aware of my week off... no, he wasn't.

They held a meeting at work with the full sales team to see what projects were coming so they could figure out if I could have my days. That was on Monday, and they decided in there, that I could have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and then the next Monday and Tuesday. Well, okay... still 5 days, but not surround by weekends for the full 9.

It played out that I still ended up going in on Wednesday and Thursday. I managed Friday off, but had to go in for half the day on Monday. Tuesday they left me alone. So out of the original 9 days planned, I only got 4, and 2 of those were the weekend. I was/am pretty bugged about that. Also, the main reason they said I need to be there for Wednesday through Friday never happened.

Friday night, we went to Broadway Palm with him and the Bear, then very early Saturday, I drove him to the airport to see him off. I really hate that part. When he was 2 and I would leave him and fly away, I would often fight back emotion. Now watching him fly away, it isn't a whole lot easier. WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?

Money issues on this trip kiboshed several things I had planned to do. Our transmission on the van croaked on July 4th. It is finally fixed, and now we have to wait for payday before we can go get it. We did have a coupon for "Real Bowling" as the Bear calls it (Not Wii bowling). We only had to pay for shoes.

While James was here, I transcribed a few of the songs I wrote years ago. One of them was the song I wrote for his mom and played for her at our reception. Another was the one I wrote for DramaMama and played at OUR reception. He set about learning those and some other songs that I have played over the years. He is really quite talented. He drew a picture of the Bear as a baby that was pretty impressive.

Delta threw us a curve-ball on James' flight down here. Because he was under 15, they charged his mom $100. Southwest let him fly alone after he was 12. So to circumvent this stupid fee that we couldn't afford, we celebrated James' 15th birthday a bit early. I take full credit for the lie to Delta Airlines, I have already confessed to God, I have accepted my punishment of 40 lashes with a wet noodle. I figure since James has been travbelling alone on Southwest since he was 12, he didn't need a baby-sitter. The $100 fee would have been a big waste of money.

My Niece's Wedding, Golf and Goofiness

2008-07-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my niece got married. In the morning all the men went on a golf outing at the Royal Palms golf course here in Mesa. Each hole had its own competition, and we all had to toss $1 into the pot for each of them.

The first hole had a small pond or a really big puddle, whichever... so the first competition was biggest splash in the pond. The golf course donated the golf balls for that one. Now picture this... I stand atop the tee box (on a hill mind you) and take a mighty swing with my pitching wedge. The ball didn't so much fly as roll. It went down the hill and out of sight near the water's edge. It is questionable if it even got wet. I didn't win the competition.

After that we played the hole. If you recall my golf post for last year, I am no Bobcat Woods or whatever they call him. :) I teed off and.... holy crap! it was a good hit! My brother Ken who has always been a good golfer teed off and it was of course a good hit, right in the middle of the fairway. It turned out that even though mine was out in the rough, that it went farther. I then proceeded to make a nice chip shot followed by a good approach putt and a little shorty putt to par the hole. Astounding!

Then the second hole. Closest to the pin. I think mine landed in Australia.

Third hole was the longest tee shot. I figured that I had used up my good tee shot on the first hole, but I got up there, recalled my lessons at the hand of a pro, and swung. It felt good... and it looked good. In the distance, we could see the litlle white bag that held the $1 pot contributions. My ball was close to it. As we approached, it turned out that my ball had beat it by about a yard. Disbelief washed over me, as I claimed the prize for the longest drive.

Other competitions included shortest drive (won by my son James aka the Bug... about 5 feet.), longest putt, fewest strokes (my dad won that one), most strokes (James almost won that, but was beat out at the last minute). The last hole was designated as "Nick Wins". Nick was the groom. The rule was that the winner of the last hole takes all of the pots from the previous holes. The idea being that we gave Nick and Aubrey some money to play with on their honeymoon.

It was pretty hot even though we started a bit after 8:00 am. We had a good time though. My brother Mike and his family were here from Florida. I didn't know they were coming, so I was pleasantly surprised when he walked up and said hello at the golf course.

After golf, we went home and picked up the Bear, and the golf group went to IHOP and were treated to breakfast by my brother Ken, who is the bride's father. The Bear ordered the big huge pancake that has two strawberries for eyes, and banana slices that form a smile. James "cut it up" for him, but sort of massacred it. It looked like Freddy Krueger did it. :)

The wedding began at 6:30pm at a place called the Wright House. The wedding was outside, but in the shade and covered by big fans. The wedding commenced with the traditional walks up the aisle. Over the speakers came the song "Butterfly Kisses". As it got to the part about losing his baby tonight or whatever it says, that was when Ken was walking Aubrey. It got him, and his face crinkled up and went red. That of course got everyone else too.

The ceremony was very nice, and once photos were taken, the reception got underway. They had fabulous shake that was french vanilla flavored... auughhghhghgh french vanilla (Homer Simpson style). The wedding cake was not so traditional. It had a couple tiers as usual, then a few tiers of cupcakes.

As part of the reception, there was music playing, so we took advantage of it. Here are a couple shot of me and DramaMama cutting a rug:

"Will You Still Call Me Superman?"

And here are several other candid shots from the evening:

Me playing the part of Samson and bringing down the wedding place

Our part of the wedding cake.

Jamesie G

YEAH BAYBEE!

After the wedding, we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. We had an "un-birthday" for James. Here he is on the saddle while the whole place gave a big YEEHAW for him.

Tootin' Me Own Horn

2008-07-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

DramaMama and I are the chairpeople for our ward activities committee. In August we are going to have an evening to honor people in our ward that have served in the military. DramaMama asked me to design an invitation that we can hand out before our Sacrament Meeting. I grabbed a few photos dealing with the military and put together the invite. I think it turned out pretty good, so I thought I'd put it on here so all three of my readers could see it.

Beware the Soul-Sucking Fiends

2008-06-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, there has been very little of a smile upon my face. I haven't felt happy inside. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I don't really feel like smiling much. DramaMama says she feels a lot the same way.

I have a 9-day vacation coming up toward the end of July, and am very much looking forward to it. My son from Utah will be arriving here on Tuesday, and will be here for the entire month. The last week of his stay I am scheduling off from work to spend mostly with him.

I think a nice long break from work will do a lot for me. I don't think what I am feeling is so much burnout as lack of time for me. DramaMama is going through a bout with everyone sucking the life out of her, and not getting anything back from them. She has neighbors, family, children, and a husband that always turn to her, because she is the go to girl. It isn't fair in any way, shape or form, because she turns into a puddle of goo and feels horrible, yet people still are trying to boost their own energy with whatever she has left.

I think both of us are at a point where we need a break from everyone and everything just to have alone time, together and by ourselves to recharge our batteries. I have a similar problem as she does, but it comes from work mostly. Most days are comprised of people coming to me to do things. Usually they are things that nobody else knows how to do, so I get them. A lot of days are filled with interruptions which gets frustrating. Sometimes I just want to stand on my desk and yell "SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"

The Bear comes with soul-sucking vacuum attachments and knows how to use them. He is very high maintenance, and is a constant drain. He is a great kid, and we love him very much, but there are times when he is almost too much for us to deal with.

After a day of being soul-sucked at work, the last thing I want to hear is "Daddy, I want to go to the big park" or "Daddy come play Wii with me." I want to come home, crawl in a hole, and hide.
On the days where I feel like that, if I get about 45 minutes to an hour of me-time, I seem to do better. I know that sounds a bit heartless, but a lot of times it is true.

Oh... and I hurt my back again yesterday. GRRRRR.

Old Softy... I Mean Yeller

2008-06-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

The other day I saw that Old Yeller was coming on, so I recorded it so I could watch it with the Bear.

After work today, I had to drop by my dad's house to help move a TV into the house. It was in the back seat of his car, and was big, bulky, and heavy. I managed to wrestle it out, and get it on a little wheeled gizmo. We rolled it inside, and got it in place and hooked up. I knew I had done the deed though. My back was already hurting.

Once I got home and had dinner, I fired up Old Yeller. DramaMama had never seen it, but knew what happens. She noticed that as the movie started, I was a little misty eyed. Dern my hide! :) I think it is a great movie, but I knew what was going to happen, so it got me before my butt groove in the couch was even warm!.

At the moment it happens I choked it back. The Bear wasn't sad at all. His take on it? "I bet that makes him dead!"

As you can see on the bottom part of the picture, Arliss is riding on Old Yeller's back. The Bear said, "That was cool! he was riding the dog!"

Next week: Where the Red Fern Grows... *whimper*

A Guest Post From The Bear

2008-06-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Gas - a rant

2008-06-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is frickin' NUTS!

How can the price go up over a dollar in 2 months time? We all panicked with hurricane Katrina when gas went over $3.00. Now we sit and dream of those days.

I have been thinking about getting out my trusty bike and pedalling to work. That is until I went bike riding this evening with the Bear. We went about 3 blocks out and 3 blocks back. My legs were burning, the fellers were squarshed, I was huffing... I wont be riding my bike to work.

If this gets much worse, I don't know what we will do. We are being ripped off, and there isn't a whole fat lot we can do about it.

I would applaud goverment regulation of gas prices, that way the local stations couldn't gouge us just because they are greedy. If the feds started handing out fines for price gouging, I would think that prices would even out nicely. Granted the price of oil is rising, but the gas industry is using that as an excuse to force us over one of the barrels and ram the gas dispenser up our hoinky.

Uh.... Come Again?

2008-06-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

There are things in life that just don't make sense to my brain. We came across one of those this past week.

A couple months ago DramaMama had an alarm system installed in our house. We got the system free on a promotion, and all we pay is the monthly fee. Last week Drummer Boy accidently pushed the panic button on the remote to the alarm system. Soon the police were at our house checking it out to make sure that there really werent intruders.

A little bit after that we were notified that we weren't licensed to have a security system in our home.

HUH?

You have to have a LICENSE to protect your home and family with an alarm system? I don't know about you, but that is completely ludicrous to me.

So anyway, we have to fill out a form and send in $10 to become licensed to not die in a home invasion.

The Double Deception of the Tooth Fairy

2008-06-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

The Bear has had a wiggly fang for awhile, and it finally came out yesterday. I immediately recalled a bag in my desk drawer from dejunking the other day. The bag contained two dollarrs in quarters and a roll of Smarties. This was the gift from the Tooth Fairy for a previous AWOL tooth.

So being a frugal and practical fairy, I snealed the bag into my pocket, and waited for the Bear to go to sleep. When it was time for bed, I cleaned out my pockets to the dresser, and there was the bag.

So I trotted upstairs to fulfill my parental duties of deceiving my child. I knelt beside his bed, and started tugging on the bag with the tooth in it, and the Bear woke up... sort of. A lot of spastic jerking, and wondering where he was type of thing. So I told him I didn't mean to wake him up.

I was sort of busted at this point, so I started thinking fast. I said, "Hey, do you think the Tooth Fairy came yet?"

*Some indistinct mumbling*

"Let's check."

So I pulled out the bag with the tooth in it, then lifted up the bag with the money and candy. "Look, she did come!"

The Bear smiled, took the bag, rolled over and went to sleep.

The next morning, the Bear reported that the Tooth Fairy came while Daddy was watching the baseball game. LOL Makes sense though, I went to do the deed after I watched the game, and from his perspective, the Tooth Fairy had already come.

So the cheapo Tooth Fairy regifted the Bear his own money and candy, and did the switcheroo right there with him watching. And we wonder why our kids grow up thinking we're mental!

When Life Slaps You in the Face

2008-05-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

This morning I wasn't feeling too good, so at about 5:45am I camped out in the bathroom for awhile. After that I went upstairs with the intention of doing a little work before heading to my job. I got into my email and found one from my brother Ken which changed all that.

Last night Ken and his wife Jean were driving down from Show Low to have dinner with their two daughters. Somewhere between there and Payson the roads were slushy. They had rain and sleet and snow and sleet off and on, in one spot they hit some ice and lost control, and ended up rolling twice.

My brother came out of it rather battered, but able to get out. They had to use the jaws of life to get Jean out. She didn't fare so well. They rolled in her direction, so she took the worst of it. We figure her right arm must have gotten pinned between her and the arm rest. She ended up with a compound fracture and inch or so below the elbow, both bones broken above the wrist with another piece broken off, and several cracks in her wrist and hand. On her left arm, the lobes of on of the humurous bone were sheared off. She had a chip broken out of her hip, and she smacked the back of her head pretty hard. She says she remembers the first roll, but that is all.

She had surgery this afternoon to put her right arm back together. The doctor said he wasn't even sure how they were going to do it because there were 7 sections of bone to put back together. There was a possibility that they would work on the other arm, but they said they would probably schedule a second surgery for that. We haven't heard how the surgery went yet.

DramaMama and I went over to the hospital around 10:30 and stayed for a couple hours. Ken was in pretty good spirits, and Jean was awake and talking to us.

Jean does stained glass with their own business, and had several pieces in the back of the Yukon. They got obliterated, and all of the windows in the vehicle were gone. You would think with all of that glass that they would have been sliced up, but neither of them got cut.

Apparently, they had just gotten car insurance re-instated. In fact, Ken said that about 20 minutes before the accident, their agent called and said they were covered again. Where they were, they had very limited cell service, so he called the agent and was able to say they rolled, Jean was hurt, and the call dropped. Once Ken got into Payson, after they life flighted Jean to Scottsdale, he was able to talk to the agent and get it all squared away.

THEN... Ken had to rent a car and drive for an hour and a half to get to the hospital where they took Jean. I personally think that would have sucked big time.

So all in all, they came out of it fairly well considering. The Yukon was destroyed, but it held is shape and protected them.

Oh... and it was Ken's birthday.

Honey-Dids

2008-05-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Its feels good to finally get some of those lagging projects done. The kind that your wife assigned you 6 months ago and never got around to.

Today I made a list of things to do, and have scratched off all but 2. I even did them before I scratched them off.

One of them made DramaMama both happy and annoyed at the same time. For a very long time we have had a network cable strung from my office, down the hall, down the stairs, behind a bookcase, turned right to hide under the couch sort of, then under DramaMama's desk where it plugged unto her computer. Easily seen it is, how this attractive solution to connectivity might not suit.

So anyway, for Mother's Day I planned to fix the original cable. I was going to put new connectors on it and remove the old cable then just let her discover that the cable was gone. I weren't feeling good, so instead I gave her the package of new connectors as one of her presents. The old cable used to work, then with a new configuration, it didn't, so I strung the one through the house and got it working. The part that annoyed DramaMama was that before I tried putting new connectors on the old one, I plugged it in, and... it worked. I could have switched it out several months ago with not much effort. *sheepish grin*

I also drained the fish tank of oh-so-wholesome-looking fishy poop water, cleaned the things from inside, dumped the highly poopified blue rocks from the bottom, and when the level of water was low enough, I took on the task of capturing Frick, the rogue algae eater, killer of goldfish. It took me 10 minutes to finally trap him in a net made for little goldfish. He is about 9 or 10 inches long.

So Frick was in the bucket finally. The Bear and I drove him to Pets, Inc. which seemed approriate as a subsidiary of Monsters, Inc... where we donated Frick. The annoying part about that was, that the guy that helped us reached right in the bucket, picked Frick up, and dropped him in the nearest tank. Frick didn't even flinch!

When I returned home I finished cleaning out the remaining cloud-o-poop water and rocks and disposed of those. It was all most gross and disgusting, but hey.... it was my job to keep the tank clean, so there you are.

We are also dejunking... where'd we get all this crap???? (other than fish poop I mean) We have a mountain of stuff for a garage sale now. In my younger years, I used to collect mugs from different places I visited. For a VERY long time they have been in boxes in a closet. So I think I am going to throw them into the garage sale.

All of proceeds from the garage sale will go to help finance Drummer Boy's Europe trip next summer. Hmmmm.... I clean out fish poop... he goes to Europe...

So anyway, a few of those honeydews became honeydids today. WOO HOO!

Happy Birthday Cheez!

2008-05-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

We love you! From Dramamama

Progress Report

2008-05-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

Several posts ago, I mentioned a new book I started. It is set in a Navajo village in the 1800s. I had the idea for this several years ago, and made a few notes. About a year ago, I remembered the idea, and tried to find the notes, but they weren't in any of my notebooks, cubbies for ideas, or old copy or anything. I assumed it was lost.

Not long before I started the book, I was cleaning in my office and found my old Franklin Planner with one cover missing. I thumbed through it just for fun, and in the middle in the lined pages were my story notes. I was so excited.

I read through them, and decided that then was as good as any time to dive into it. I have been steadily working on it ever since. This book is just flowing out of me, and most of the time, I have no idea what I am going to write... it just comes out. I love that.

On my Black and White ands Shades of Gray book, I had an idea what the story would be, and I had chunks of it written but with huge gaps. Another book I have in the works is really just a bunch of story blobs with not much continuity. This one is flowing start to finish. I have an idea where I am going with it, but for the most part it is telling me what needs to be in it. Very cool.

I have been doing a ton of research on the Navajo culture and have found it quite fascinating. I like to do research like this to be as historically and culturally accurate as I can. Even though most of what I learn doesn't make it into the books, I sure get a lot of substance to draw from.

I was a ways into it before I really got going on the research so there are several things that need to be fixed in the earliest chapters.

Right now I am in the middle of chapter 23, and it is getting to the good part. Young boy takes on the big bad nasty guy that killed his father.

My chapters are quite short at this point, but that is fine. That gives me room for fleshing out in revisions.

If you have any desire at all to read what I have, click on the link on the right side of my blog for "Great Father of Eagles." I'm going there now to post my latest.

AWWWW CRAP!

2008-04-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Suns lost...

Game 4 was the only time we really saw them on their game. They really should have won tonight, and game one as well.

There were just too many mistakes.

A Bit of a Sobering Day

2008-04-22T23:17:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, we saw on the news that 4 teens were involved in a very serious accident in which one was killed. He was 15, and his 16-year-old brother was driving. The one boy that wasn't ejected was the only one wearing a seat belt.

The next day, I found out that they are the sons of one of my co-workers.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/video/?bcpid=1155316042&bclid=1155212903&bctid=1509297819

The video is labelled Fatal Crash in Gilbert.

Today I attended the memorial with several people from work. Very sad.

------

There is another video on that page labeled Mesa Standoff. THis happened just down the street from us. It mentions Leisure World. This is a retirement community where my dad lives.

That day, they locked down the Bear's school. Somehow the kids learned that a bad guy with a gun was loose in the area. So naturally the Bear had a thrilling tale. According to him, the man with the gun shot him right in the back. He took the bullet out of his back and threw it at the bad guy. :) Later he came back to DramaMama and said he wasn't telling the truth... Oh REALLY?

Of what can I speak?

2008-04-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

I am a crappy poster!

We have had several noteworthy events go unblogged by the Weezil. DramaMama has covered them all beautifully though.

Bon Jovi was great. Mostly seeing the big grin on DramaMama's face. Knowing that we had "bad" seats behind the stage, I bought her some fancy opera glasses with which she could nonchalantly peruse Jon Bon Jovi's butt. After we were on the freeway on the way to the concert she realized that she left them home. Turns out we were so close to the real butt that we didn't need them anyway.

We saw Disney on Ice - Finding Nemo. I fell asleep while he was getting lost. The Bear loved it. The treats and doo-dads are so frickin' expensive that we decided to forego them this round, expecially seeing as the Bear already has the Finding Nemo crap from an earlier show.

I did feel bad for him though, because it seemed that all of the other kids were getting treats and got to wear the fish hats. He seemed to come away with no ill-will towards us.

The Suns won tonight. WOO HOO!

8th Anniversary and Time Off

2008-03-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhhh..... I have a big old cheezer on my face because... well... I'M NOT AT WORK! But more especially because this has been wonderful to spend time alone with DramaMama and no kids or bosses.

We started out Thursday by going to breakfast at Village Inn. I don't think I stopped grinning the whole time we were there. We took a jaunt through the dollar store where we got such exotic things as hand sanitizer and Bit-o-honey.

We then went to a movie. We saw "Vantage Point" which was very interesting and intense. We have been taking pictures of us doing whatever throughout the day.

From there we came home and had a nap. I thought I only slept for about 10 minutes, but when I looked at the clock more than an hour had passed.

I drove to work... WHAT??? Um.. it was pay day and I needed to get my check. In and out in less than 5 minutes. I took it to the bank then returned home to my cutie wife.

We have pretty much been playing this by ear, so what ever floats our boat is what we do. We decided to stay in for the evening.

We use the NetFlix service, and we had the last 2 "Bourne" movies waiting in our mailbox. We had watched the first movie Wednesday evening, so we watched the second one and ordered pizza.

From there we pretty much did our own thing. DramaMama was tired out, so she went and laid down. I watched the end ofthe Lakers and Jazz game hoping the the Jazz would beat the Lakers so the Suns could pull ahead of them in the rankings, but alas the Lakers won. PPLPPLLLTTTT!!!!!

We had a very nice day together. We never have had a lot of alone time like this. Over the past few years, we've had a few days here and there. When we were married we already had a family, so we didn't get the alone time then. This has been very nice. Have I ever mentioned that I love my cutie wife?? I do.

My Good News Part 2

2008-03-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today I found an envelope next to DramaMama's computer from the church. I picked it up, and asked if it was for my article.

She said that she thought it was a reimbursement check for things we bought for the ward party.

I looked closer and saw that it was from Salt Lake. Knowing that they wouldn't have sent the reimbursement form there for payment, I opened it and found a check made out to me from the church for $175 with the note "Ensign Article" on the stub.

WOO HOO!

There was no letter enclosed, so I don't know any particulars about when or what the next step will be, but as they have paid me for it, that means that it is going to be published. I am assuming probably soon.

WOO HOO #2!

In Memory of Bubba 3

2008-03-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well folks, it is official. The last of our goldfish "Bubba 3" has been killed and eaten by our algae eater "Frick". We have decided to save the lives of many future goldfish, by ridding ourselves first of Frick, then the fish tank.

I got a phone call at work from DramaMama telling me of Bubba's demise, and I could hear the heartbroken wails of the Bear in the background.

The fish tank was a nice ting, but DramaMama hates it, and too many fish have been murdered by Frick in it, so the time has come for it to go.

>>>Logging onto craigs list<<<

Oh, and if you are wondering why there is a label for "The Potty" under this post, well... you know.

What has become of Cheez?

2008-03-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

Good question.

I know that I have lost all 3 of my readers due to lack of diligence here in blogland, but I thought it time to write something anyway.

I started a new book recently, and am into the 8th chapter already. I am receiving good reviews so far from my writing group. They have said that of all my stuff they have read, they like this best.

So this makes 1 book with 2 revisions completed, another book about 2/3 way through first draft, the NanoWriMo book that never got far that is morphing into still another book I started, then this one.

Work has been nightmarish the last few days. Bad stuff followed by more bad stuff. We are still cleaning up the mess, and hopefully will get it wrapped up tomorrow.

We are enjoying American Idol. So far most of the ones I wanted to go away have done so.

I am also enjoying the Celebrity Apprentice.

GO SUNS!

Next week is our 8th anniversary. We already got our "present". Our 4 year old TV did a croaker, so DramaMama went on Craigs list and found a nice tv for us. We got a smoking deal on it. The Bear came down the stairs and notified DramaMama that "this TV is HUMOUNGOUS".

I am taking a couple days off at the end of our anniversary week, not the day of unfortunately. But that will give us 4 days.

If anyone reads this, please leave a comment. I don't get many anymore.

In True 'Bear' Form

2008-02-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, we haven't seen a good story from the Bear in awhile... Or a poop one for that matter, so here we go:

I help the Bear do his homework most evenings, and we were reviewing some of his spelling words. He is still learning to read, so I was having him read the words and spell them.

We came to the word 'puppy'. He has a special spot in his heart for puppies, and has wanted one for a long time.

When he figured out the word, his face lit up and he said "puppeeeeee" with a big smile on his face. Then he said, "I'll get a puppy if I pee and poop a lot."
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.
.
.
.
.
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Okay, a little explanation may be required. When he was younger, one of our potty training bribes was that he had to poop in the potty 10 times without soiling a diaper and we would discuss getting a puppy. Well, the weeks and months dragged on with little progress and the puppy topic fell by the wayside. The Bear has long since transitioned into "Big Boy Pants" and is potty trained. I just hope he doesn't decide to press us on the puppy issue, because the result will pretty much be that we traded in a pooping boy for a pooping dog. The benefit of the pooping boy is the the diaper caught it. With a dog, the carpet, the yard, etc gets it. Then the yard stinks to high heaven, and mom and dad have to take care of the dog because junior lost interest. Hmmmm seems like I remember what I did when I was a kid.

My good news

2008-02-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

You may recall a year ago my post about my long lost Bible: (http://cheezweezil.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html titled "A Long Lost Treasure")

Back then I got a couple comments, one from a member of my writing group, and another from my wifes' brother's wife. Both mentioned the possibility of a story, and one suggested a submission to a church periodical.

I let that stew for awhile, then I wrote it up in articvle form and submited it to The Ensign via their online submission process.

A few months passed and I figured thay passed it over.

Last Saturday we watched President Hinckley's funeral, then got aa nice surprise right after it.

Here is the email I sent out to family and friends about that experience:

***
Today was rather emotional mainly due to the funeral of President Hinckley. (For those of you who don't know who he his, see my blog: http://cheezweezil.blogspot.com).

Shortly after the funeral was over, I thumbed through today's mail and saw a letter from the Church's Magazine Department. I thought it was probably an invoice to renew our subscriptions, so I casually set it aside. Erica made the comment that maybe it was something to do with the article I submitted several months ago. So I opened it and read the following opening line:"Dear Author: We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been accepted for possible publication in the Ensign."

Thats as far as I got before I was overcome again. It was very welcome news, and it means a lot to me. I have put a lot of energy into writing over last few years, and it is great to see something coming of it.

I thought you all might like to share in my little bit of happy today.
***

They indicated that there will be an editing process that we will go through until we agree upon the final text. Then actual publication could be months or years depending on their editorial needs.

I am very excited about this, but the biggest reason may not be the one you think. The publishing credit will be very nice, but what I am most excited about is that people all over the world will have the chance to read my neat little story. People high up in our church will read it, my family will read it, my friends and people in our local church will read it.

This is all very cool.

A sad day

2008-01-28T19:08:00.001-08:00

Last night we received a call from DramaMama's parents informing us that President Gordon B. Hinckley, the Prophet had died.

We are deeply saddened by this, but know that he is with his dear wife, many of his colleagues who passed before him, and with his greatest friend the Saviour.

President Hinckley devoted his entire life to the service of the Lord, and was instrumental in many of the advancements made by the church throughout the years. He introduced multimedia to the churches offerings, he more than doubled the number of temples worldwide, and was beloved throughout the world, even by those not of our faith. He was a true man of God, and served the Lord and the church faithfully.

He always delivered wonderful talks, sprinkled appropriately with his special brand of humor. We will miss him greatly.

DramaMama's Surgery

2008-01-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to update you on Erica after her surgery this morning. For those of you who didn't know, she had a hysterectomy.

She has been in a bad way for a couple of months now, and the doctor thought that this would be the way to solve the problems.

She went in to surgery at 9am on Friday. The doc came and talked to us at 10:30am and said everything went great, no complications or problems.

While we (me and Erica's mom) were waiting, the hospital had two different Code Red alerts. That is always a confidence builder, when you aren't sure if the hospital is going to burn down before they finish the operation.

After meeting with the doc, we waited another two hours with no more news about recovery, or whether she had been moved to a room yet. We asked the desk, and they sent us up to room 704. She was still asleep when we got there, but began to stir and groan periodically soon after that. She has one of those pain button deals, so she was slamming on that.

Around 6:00pm they got her up and walking, and although she was understandably a bit shaky, she did fine. She is in good spirits.Thank you all for your prayers and concern for her through all of this, it is very much appreciated.

'Tis the Season for Credit Card Fraud

2007-12-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

As you may know, I run my own little e-commerce business on the side. A couple days ago, I got an order for an item from our night vision vendor. The price was $1900. WOO HOO!

I processed the order, with something nagging at me at the back of my mind. This was before I went to work.

Later at work, DramaMama called and said some guy was freaking out because his credit card got charged $1900 for something he didn't order. CRAP!

This set off a chain of events, involving the victim incessantly calling my house, and freaking DramaMama out. I kept trying to call him, but could never get through because he was calling my house. (Me at work with cell phone).

DramaMama contacted the vendor and killed the order, I contacted the credit card company and voided the transaction.

Then when I finally talked to the victim, he was very nice. In fact, he now wants me to look at his website to see if I can make it better for him.

Now here is where you need to pay attention. Was the credit card stolen? No. The victim has the card in his wallet. How did this happen? The victim had been in Costco a day or two before this, and purchased a cell phone. Apparently the person that helped him stole his credit card number. The victim told me that this was the only time recently that he had used that card.

How did we find out so fast that this was a fraudulent charge? By pure luck. The victim had gone to a store to buy supplies, and his card declined. He did some checking and found the fraudulent charge, and immediately called us.

We managed to clean up the mess, and I was able to supply information to allow them to at least track down the computer that was used. I am hoping that they can nail this guy.

One thing I have noticed in common about the few cases such as this that we have experienced in the time I have been in business: The people who have stolen the cards go out and try to buy really expensive stuff.

I should have paid attention to that nagging feeling. I have at times contacted the customer when the amount was large. This time I didn't. There is also a high probability that the phone number included in the order is the perpetrators, not the victims. So if you call it and ask, you are talking to the bad guy.

In this case the phone number belonged to the victim, and had I called it, all of this would have been avoided.

So, the moral of this story is: watch your credit card like a hawk when it is in someone else's hands. I saw a show on TV awhile ago that showed the store person take the card, then use their own cell phone to take a picture of it. I am wondering if that is what happened here.

Still Kicking

2007-11-26T20:43:00.000-08:00

I have been slightly more than lax in posting lately.

I have no news on the weight loss front. I have been stuck at the same spot for 4 weeks in a row. Admittedly, I haven't been trying as hard, and frankly I was surpised when I discovered I didn't gain any weight over my 5 day Thanksgiving weekend.

I relaxed a lot on my vacation. We visited DramaMama's parents. I entered in all the edits on my book clear to the end, finsihed reading a book, and even had time to write a bit on my second book. I enjoyed being out of the office. Nary a tie in sight the whole time.

I am proud of my honey, who inspite of the numerous nummies to be had, ate sensibly and by her guidelines and lost 4 lbs. during the weekend. Go honey!

Tomorrow night is The Band Awards night that DramaMama is in charge of. She designed some fantastic announcements, and today the award certificates. I conveniently work for a printing outfit, so we made some really good stuff for the banquet.

That will be another good one to have behind her back.

Biggest Loser Week 7

2007-11-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

This week the troupe in on the road, so we aren't having an official weigh in. This of course, is because I lost 75 lbs, and nobody wants to glory in my victory!

Okay, I didn't lose 75 lbs. But I know I lost something. I can see my face thinning out.

Our scale at home is, shall we say, CRAP! It weighs different everytime, and rarely in my favor.

So next Sunday, we will be back on track, and everybody will hopefully get a big woo hoo!

oh... and my dad is get married again. :)

The Biggest Loser - Week 6

2007-10-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well, little "trophy" has come my way once more. DramaMama was smokin' this week, and we felt that she was a shoe-in to win. But alas... I did.

As a group we have lost the equivelant of at least two of our kids. I have lost 20.5 lbs, and DramaMama has lost 16. She is looking really good. I can see a big difference in her, but not so much with myself.

My weigh in last week was a bit of a downer. I GAINED 3 pounds. I figured I would be even, but nope, I gained. I had a rough week being good though. I succumbed to brownies, a cookie, some french fries. I was so naughty, and the fat fairy punished me. As my dad now says (after dropping 125 lbs himself) "I am allergic to desserts, they make me break out in fat!"

I really wanted DramaMama to win, so even though I won, I was a bit bummed.

Dumb Things

2007-10-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

I seem to be prone to do dumb things. If a mishap occurs, and there is a chance that nothing or no one would be hurt by it, I completely miss that chance. It seems that my mishaps either break stuff, hurt somebody, or just mess stuff up.

Today my lovely wife called for help. She needed me to either hold the strainer, or pour the cooked noodles through the strainer so the water would go down the sink. I chose to pour.

I dumped away, and a significant quantity of recently boiling water cascaded down onto her tummy.

I feel terrible.

Twisted Wish

2007-10-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

I found a great game that given time might even compete with Wendy Wing's casting calls.

It is called "Twisted Wish".

Here's how it works:

1) I will start by stating a wish.
2) The first person to comment will "grant" my wish... in a twisted, mean, and (hopefully) funny way.
3) They will then state their wish.
4) The next person "grants" their wish and states their own, and on and on.

I borrowed this idea from a forum I frequent, and it is very entertaining.

Since I only have 3 readers (and I think one of them is me!), perhaps they could point people my way to join in the fun. The more the merrier!

I will do the first two so you get the idea.

LET'S PLAY TWISTED WISH!!!

My Wish:
I wish for peace between nations

(Now go read the comments)

Biggest Loser Week 3

2007-10-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm.... Week 1 seems to have been my shining moment. I think all of that was water weight, and now I am actually losing fat.

This week I lost 1.5 pounds. This brings me to a running total of 15 pounds and over all inch reduction of 5-1/2. I was hoping for more, but there you are.

I had a really crappy week. I think anger weighs 5 pounds.

My other neice won this time. I'm hoping that DramaMama gets the trophy one of these weeks. We have been eating very sensibly, and have reduced our caloric intake by a significant amount.
She is working very hard. She has boosted her mall walking to include stairs.

The Biggest Loser - Week 2

2007-09-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

Last week in our family weight loss contest, I creamed the competition by dropping 12 pounds. When I saw the number, I also dropped my jaw.

This week was quite a bit more reasonable. I lost 1.5 pounds. The Biggest Loser award went to my niece this time.

I thought I had lost more than that, because I have begun to notice changes. My face has thinned, as have my arms and legs. I did lose 1.5 inches over my various measurements, so that is something.

Odd Directions and A New Brand of Superhero

2007-09-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

This post has to do with funny things I heard this week:

1) "Sit down on your bum and be a lady!"

2) While playing a game with the Bear, he collected a protective shield for his player. "I'm SHIELDO THE KID!"

My New Direction In Life

2007-09-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

I have decided to sink all my money into a new career as a rapper.

From now on, I will be known as "Tone Def".

Gotta Love a Positive Attitude

2007-09-02T20:58:00.001-07:00

Today at church inbetween meetings, I had to run home to grab a couple things I had forgotten. When I returned and was walking back up to the building, the door opened and the nursery class (18 months to 3 years) came toodling out. They always have a rope with loops in it for the kids to hold on to. I imagine they were coming outside to get a little sun or something.

There is a man in the ward who today received the call to be a worker in that class. As we passed each other, he grinned and said, "Life is good, dude!"

AWWWW GEEEZZ!!!

2007-08-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Tagged again!

Okay here goes:

The rules:Post the rules before giving the facts. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves - People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules - At the end of the your blog you need to tag (hopefully) six people and list their names - Leave them a comment on their blog, telling them they have been tagged and not to forget to read your blog.

Here are my meaningless random acts of drivel:

1) When I was 7, it was time to go to Primary, (a church class for kids, that at that time was held on Wednesday evenings), and I didn't want to go. I defiantly told my mom that I would rather live in a pig pen than go to Primary. Guess where I spent Primary? In the closest thing we had to a pig pen. In our dog run that was conveniently decorated with poop at one end. I went to Primary after that.

2) I have always been a good speller. In high school, I took a 400 word spelling test and only missed three words. One word had a hypen, one was a capilization, and the other I simply left out a couple of letters.

3) I have always loved writing. I recall one of my earliest works in first grade. I described clouds as thick as peanut butter. Throughout the years, I wrote several goofy stories. I was in college before I really started taking it seriously. I took a couple of writing courses, which dramatically improved my writing skills. I also took a correspondence course from the Institute for Childrens Literature. I am currently querying my first novel "Black, White, and Shades of Gray". I also just submitted an article to "The Ensign" which is a church magazine. The article was about my Bible that I posted about a few months back.

4) I have also always enjoyed music. Either playing it or listening to it. Over the years I have played several different instruments. My first of course being piano. I took up trumpet in Jr. High, then added bass guitar in 9th grade. Later when I was 17 or 18, I started tinkering with guitar, and eventually took on classical guitar. The trumpet is now in the hands of some under-privileged kid in Tahiti, my ex-wifes brother hawked my bass amp at a pawn shop, the bass which never was used much after that, eventually found it's way to Deseret Industries. I still have my piano, keyboard and classical guitar, though none of them get nearly the attention they used to. I have also written several songs.

5) I spent most of my childhood with people calling me by my older brother's names. Even my grandma did it. Except in her case, I got all of them: "Keithy, Kenny, Mikey, DAVY!" One day I told my mom that I wanted to trade names with my brother Mike. I got called that frequently enough, that it would have made sense. She didn't go for it though. At least they had sense enough not to call my by my sister's names!

6) I don't drink, I dont smoke, what do I do?

7) I have my own side business where I sell lots of varied things on the internet. I program the websites in PHP, and even built my own shopping cart system. I have been a programmer since 1988 using a variety of languages. I started with BASIC, used Pascal in college, actually worked at a job using C, then took up Foxpro with version 1, which eventually was bought out by Microsoft. I currently use Visual Foxpro on pretty much a daily basis. On the web I use PHP, Javascript, MySQL, HTML. I have written some rather sophisticated online systems for clients at work.

8) I met my wife when I was 36. We each had a son, then together we had the Bear. Hers, Mine, and Ours. We live in Mesa, AZ, where we just broke the record for the most consecutive days of over 110 degree weather. It's hot! Dang Hot! Frickin' Hot! They finally fixed the AC at work though, so that makes working much more pleasant.

I'M NOT TAGGING ANYONE, SO THERE!

The Seer of Sesame Street

2007-08-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, the Bear gave a talk in Primary on Faith. He is still learning to read, so I was whispering in his ear and he would then repeat it out loud.

We were going along fine, with the Bear mimicking my every voice inflection, when we came to the line: "The prophet Alma taught..." I whispered that in his ear.

The Bear proceeded. "The prophet ELMO taught".

It took me a bit before I could continue.

Juror #9 by John Grisham... I mean Cheez

2007-08-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

Today was the day that I reported for jury duty. There were a couple hundred of us there crammed in a room. It was quite warm.

We went through orientation, which included a video, a brief bio, and stating whether or not we would be able to sit on the jury for a 10-day trial. Collective groan. Each name was called and we had to say Yes or No. They wouldn't let us count loss of wages as a valid reason to say no, so I said yes.

Once they were done with that, they gave us a half-hour break. Then they called out 40 people. I wasn't among them. Everyone else did a "whew-ha! Got out of that one!" thing, thinking that we had escaped the 10-day trial.

We were told that we could leave for now, but that we needed to report back at 1:15 to see if we would be needed for another trial.

Since the courthouse is relatively close to home, I went home and had lunch, and played some games with the Bear.

When I reported back, they immediately called out another group of 45 people, of which I was not one. Again, I thought I had escaped. Then they proceeded to call another group of 45. I was number 9. From that point on I was referred to by my new name of "Juror #9". Once the 45 had been called, we were informed that we were the potential jurors for the 10-day trial. CRAP!

We were escorted up to the courtroom, and placed in our numbered seats. I recognized the Defense Attorney, because he is in my ward, and is also my Home Teacher. (He visits monthly with his son, and leaves us a spiritual thought.) I figured that would be my key out.

Once they got going, the Judge (a woman) introduced the Prosecutor, and asked if anyone knew him. Nope. Then they introduced the Defense Attorney and asked the same question. I raised my hand. I had to explain that I knew him through church. My idiot switch turned on when she asked if it went any further beyond knowing him from church, like had we done anything together. I proceeded to tell her that we had been on a camping trip. I was thinking of the ward campout, but then I realized that he wasn't there. My brain was spinning, because I knew we had done something together.

Then I remembered that he was one of the guys I had been golfing with in my earlier post. He had given me a blank look, as if to say, "What are you talking about?" Then I corrected myself. Then she asked if there were anything else, like does he come over for dinner or anything? "No, Ma'am." I sat down, turned bright red, then did my best to shut up the rest of the time. Unfortunately, several more questions required a response from me. Things like:
"Do you know anyone that has a concealed gun permit?" Hand goes up. "Father-in-law."
"Do you know anyone who has every been convicted of a crime?" Hand goes up. "Brother-in-law."
"Do any of you know anyone in law enforcement?" Hand goes up. "Wifes Cousins".

I was eventually selected to be in the "trusted juror" pool from which the actual 14-member jury would be chosen. That meant that they felt we had the ability to be impartial. We had a 15 minute break, after which they pulled us in, called the numbers of 14 jurors and sent the rest home. I got to go home.

DramaMama was freaking out when I would call her on our breaks. She was so worried about what that would do to us financially, having to miss so many days of work. She was praying all day that I wouldn't get chosen. It worked.

It was a criminal trial for attempted murder. The plaintiff is permanently disabled from the incident. The defendant was black and had just turned 20. He looked rather scared and nervous. From the questions the Defense Attorney was posing to the jurors, I got the impression that they were going for a self-defense thing, saying perhaps that the plaintiff may have instigated the thing but lost the fight.

I imagine that the fact that I knew the Defense Attorney, and that my brother-in-law was convicted of an almost identical crime, was the reason I was eventually booted.

DramaMama was greatly relieved when I called to tell her that I had been bumped.

Since I know the defense attorney quite well, I think I'll ask him about it after it is all over to see what happened.

Writer Boy

2007-08-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Writing has been going very well lately. I have really been working over the early chapters of the book, and have added four chapters. What was once chapter 3, has grown into chapters 3 through 7.

Although I am not really done with editing and writing these chapters, I have posted chapters 1 through 10 on my book blog.

There is a huge difference compared to the first draft. I am filling in holes and making things make more sense. I am really enjoying this, and I know that this will all be worth it.

This revision has turned out to be what I have been referring to as "sweeping". I have been breaking up chapters in order to have only one scene per chapter. I have rewritten parts, added a lot of new writing, and chopped out junk that has been bugging me.

I think I am going to start querying in earnest when I have this revision done. I have big plans for the third revision that should also be a sweeper. Oh to have more time.

My Take on Harry Potter

2007-07-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows several days ago. It to me was an excellent book. Some things we had speculated were correct, but some were way off. Without offering any spoilers for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of reading it, I would say that the way J. K. Rowling developed this entire series was nothing short of amazing. There is so much depth and intricacy to it that it boggles the mind.

I have since revisited book 1 and have found several things in the first few chapters that she dealt with in this final book.

If I had the chance to meet her face to face, I would thank her for her dedication to this project, the lengths she went to in bringing her characters to be for her fans like real people. We feel we know them.

One aspect of her writing that I like is that she writes in cafes. I have done this several times, and I have to agree that it is a good place to write. I always find the table in the corner where I can face the outside window. That way, it sends a silent signal to others that I would prefer to not be bothered, while I can stare out the window as I ponder my story.

As I read this final book, I was grateful that it was so long. I was able to immerse myself in it for three nights in a row, while still seeing that there was a lot more to read. My responses to things going on in the book were frequently "Holy Crap!" as in "I wasn't expecting that!"

There were several lines in the book that made me laugh. One in particular had me chuckling for a good 5 minutes. "Accio Hagrid!"

Nothing of course will beat the line toward the end uttered by Mrs. Weasley. It was one that made you cheer "YES!"

I loved the book, and I have throughly enjoyed the entire Harry Potter series. The one thing I found a little disheartening though was comparing my own book to this one. There is so much more that I have to do to come anywhere close to the strength of book 7.

Blubbering Over Ham and Cheese - The Novel

2007-07-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever opened the fridge, pulled open the drawer that holds that ham and cheese, then become overcome with emotion? It just happened to me.

No, I wasn't euphoric over the fact that I was going to have a nice sandwich, and no, there wasn't a thousand dollar bill poking out of the cheese.

It had to do with my son, and our time together after work yesterday. I came home, and wrangled up some grub which consisted of DramaMama's fabulous Russian Shepherd's Pot Pie* and a couple ham and cheese sandwiches.

This morning very early, I drove my son to the airport for him to return to his home in Utah. This concluded his once a year-30 day visit. These visits seem to last a wink, and it always seems so unfair when he has to go back. We were both a bit misty when he was leaving.

I recently made a change in my "happy pill" medication, and the transition has been a little scary and unpleasant. As I came down from the one that was only sort of working, it soon became evident why I wasn't feeling good. I had an unbelievable amount of pent up stress and and emotion that the medication basically had put a lid on and sealed it tight. As the effects of the not-so-happy happy pills wore off, I began feeling what I can only describe as rage. For those familiar with the Harry Potter movies, think of the moving picture wanted poster of Sirius Black. When he looks forward and screams... That's what I felt like. I wanted to scream, hit, break, cuss, yell, throw, and basically explode. To DramaMama, it was both scary and comical.

I released some of that by acting on it in a relatively harmless way. We were both in our room and I was telling her how I was feeling. There was an empty box on the floor, and I used it as an outlet. First I punched it, and put my hand through it, then I punched and punched, then ripped it to pieces. That's where DramaMama thought it was comical, watching me rip up a box. She got a raspberry for that one. I am happy to report that none of this aggression was taken out on anyone or anything but that poor hapless box. I have been a bit grouchy through this though.

I am still waiting for the new meds to take hold. In the meantime, I have been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride of emotions. That rampage happened before church. I was still pretty hot through the main service. We go through a 3 hour block which consists of 3 meetings. That day I was to teach a lesson during the 3rd meeting, and I was nowhere near the right frame of mind or spiritual deportment to do so.

The second meeting was Sunday School, and I just couldn't go in there. I sat on the couch in the lobby. I brought along something to "center" me, which was my MP3 player. I don't bring things like that to church... this was a one-shot deal, because I knew I had to get a grip before my lesson. I put on my New Age genre songs, reviewed my lesson, and soon came down from the rage. I felt like there was a ceiling inside my head blocking the spirit, and I prayed and asked for help. Between the music David Lanz and Suzanne Ciani, and reviewing the material of my lesson, the spirit was finally able to break through. The result was a release of pent up emotion. I was sitting there, and half the ward walked by and said hello. I was doing my best to hold it all in so I wasn't bawling in the lobby.

My lesson was for Priesthood Meeting, and one of the people that came and talked to me was the Elder's Quorum President. He asked about my upcoming lesson, and I said I was ready. He could tell there was something wrong, and asked if I was alright to which I replied I wasn't.

That of course made it even harder to hold in. He had his little baby boy there with him, so I took him and held him for a few minutes, and made faces and stuff to make him laugh which was also to help me cheer up. The EQP offered to take the lesson for me, but I was determined to do it myself, and not wimp out on it. I turned him down.

By the time the third meeting was to begin, I had managed to center myself, and headed off to the opening exercises. (A prayer, announcements and a hymn). Then I did my lesson which was on integrity. We talked about a lot of the little things in life that eat away at our integrity. I used examples of Peter, who told those who wanted to kill him "We should obey God rather than men." We talked of Daniel who rather than pray to a thing, defied the king's edict and openly prayed to God. We talked of Shadrac, Meshac and Abednego, who similarly refused to worship an idol, and told the king in no uncertain terms that they would not do it. They were tossed into a furnace that had been stoked to seven times its normal temperature, and it was so hot that those stoking the fire died. Both Daniel and the those three men were saved by divine providence. The Lord shut the mouths of the lions, and personally stood with Shadrac, Meshac and Abednego in the fiery furnace from which they were delivered without harm. The lesson was one of the best I have ever given, because there was a lot of participation from the group.

I am still up and down and am really looking forward to the newer meds getting properly built up. I have noticed a difference in how my head feels though. Before it always felt like my head was full of cotton, and I just couldn't deal with stuff because I always felt like nothing else could fit in my head. Now that has diminished, and I find myself getting into things that have been dormant for a long long time. I started playing the piano again, I have done more writing, I find it easier to do stuff like take out the trash, laundry, dishes, etc. I feel that there is a ways to go still, and possibly an increase in the dosage, but on the whole I think the trend is good.

Believe it or not, I see the rage/meltdown yo-yo thing as a positive. What I feel like, is that instead of helping me deal with these things, the old meds were merely masking their effects, and I was not releasing anything. With that out of my system, it finally unlocked the cage and let out a "Freddy Kruger breaks the Hoover Dam" kind of thing.

I took the day off from work yesterday to spend the last day with James before he had to leave. We played games, went to see a movie, and just spent time together which was very nice.

DramaMama and the other two boys are visiting DramaMama's parents in New Mexico for a couple days, so now I am home alone again. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I was intending to do a little writing this evening on my book, but it appears I have spent that time writing this post... oh well. I did at least upload the stuff I wrote at lunch today.

* What the...??? Her creation was described as a combination of Chicken Kiev, Shepherd's Pie and Chicken Pot Pie... I gave it the name above

The Bear on a Hog

2007-07-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

I think the "cheezer" on the Bear says it all.

He called me at work to tell me he rode a Harley, and he was brave.

DramaMama went for a ride on it too.

The Harry Experience

2007-07-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.... Most satisfying.

We all loved the movie. It of course had several spots which did not follow the book exactly, but I didn't care. This is by far the best of the series. I didn't want it to end even though it was 2 hours and 18 minutes long, we arrived an hour early, and didn't get home until after 2:30 am.

I walked out of there with a cheezy grin on my face. I will definitely go back several times and see it again.

I'm a little tired this morning, but it was worth it. WOO HOO!

The Bear made it through just fine.

HARRY POTTER!!!!

2007-07-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

Our whole family is going to the Midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! Including the Bear who is so excited, he can't stand himself.

The other day DramaMama came home with the video game for this book and he nearly cried he was so happy.

We are all going to have naps before we go. The Bear is already in bed so he can get a few hours in before we wake him up to go.

Our local movie house will be playing the movie in nine different theaters, and when we ordered our tickets two had already sold out.

We plan to head over there at 11:00. We figure if we have to wait in line, so be it. Everyone is excited to go, even though it is so late.

I will post my reactions tomorrow after my nap.

WOO HOO! HARRY POTTER!

It won't be long until book seven is out. We are all looking forward to that as well.

RICTASEMPRA!!!!

The Tales of Black Eye Pete

2007-07-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we had a family reunion with DramaMama's clan.

Some of her cousins and I have somewhat kindred spirits as we enjoy a good "ARRRRRRRR".

They were in charge of the reunion this time, so we had a pirate theme. I of course felt right at home.

We were at a privately owned pond in the middle of Show Low Arizona. It was a neat place. We were greeted at the entrance gate (One you have to get out of your car, unhook the bailing wire, and swing open to let the car in, then close again) by the property owner. He instructed us that we have to be sure to close the gate again, because the Sheriff called him earlier to tell him his horses were all over the highway. Once we pulled into the place we found the cousins watching, as you might have guessed, Pirates of the Carribean.

It was late by the time we arrived, so we headed off to bed. In the morning, we had a big group breakfast, then set about family reunion type activities. There was a good sized pond there complete with a rowboat, kayaks, and other floaty things.

We all got hosed down with sun screen. It was decidedly cooler there than in Mesa, but make no mistake, it was hot. Drummer Boy spent quite a lot of time in the water. We found out later how good of a job he did on his sunscreen application. He got everywhere he could reach, which obviously excluded his back. He got deep-fried, roasted, and baked. I have a nice red face, but am okay other than that. The Bear burned his legs a bit.

I took the Bug (he is visiting for the month) and the Bear out on the row boat and rowed to the far end of the pond and back. I discovered that I had rubbed up a sizeable blister on the inside of my right thumb. There is an oval about 3/4 of an inch long and about 1/4 inch wide. It is all red and cracky right now.

The Bug and the Bear spent a lot of time together either on or in the water. The Bear had a permanent life jacket on Saturday, even at dinner. All three boys had a great time.

This is the Bear with his "Treasure Map" which was actually the brackets for the horseshoe tournament.

Saturday evening, we had the traditional program of skits followed by homemade ice cream. I was talking to one of the cousins, and we jumped into pirate-speak mode. I threw out my best pirate line, and then he informed me that his brother who was supposed to emcee the program had hurt his back, and then asked if I would fill in.

Since I am a good pirate, I agreed. Last time I did this, I had a lot of advanced warnings, and had a lot of jokes ready. This time, I had to scramble to get something together. There was enough pirate stuff around that I was able to get into "costume". Once I was ready, I was told I looked like a "Dead Head". I donned the name "Black Eye Pete" and took the mic.

So I started off in fine voice, with nobody getting or laughing at my jokes. I dumped half of them, and my bits that I had worked up fell through.

I talked the Bear into coming up and telling a couple pirate jokes. I made one of them up, the other came courtesy of drummer boy.

Here they are for your enjoyment:

This is the one I made up:

"Where do Pirates put their banana peels?"

"In the GAAAAAARRRRRbage"

Coming from the Bear it got a good laugh.

This is the other one:

A pirate walked into an ice cream parlor. He had a wooden leg, A hook hand, and a patch on his eye. The shop owner asked, "How did you lose your leg?"

"ARRRR, I lost it in battle!"

"How did you lose your hand?"

"It were bitten off by a shark."

"How did you lose your eye?"

"A bird pooped in it."

"And that blinded you?

"No... it were the first day with me hook!"

***

We returned on Sunday after a very enjoyable weekend with family and the sun.

Here's his royal fatness losing horribly at horseshoes

Quintuple Bogey on a Four Man Scramble

2007-06-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

Apache Wells Golf Course in Mesa Arizona reports a wave of apparent vandalism to their beautifully maintained course. Evenly spaced divots sprouted up throughout the course, varying in size from 3 wood to pitching wedge size.

Suspected in this defacing of the tee boxes, fairways, and several out of bounds areas was a brazen band of men from a local church. The leader of the gang, one 'Tater Salad', aka CheezWeezil was proported to have practically dug a trench from the tee box to the green of the 16th hole.

Early review of security camera footage shows Mr. Weezil and three of his cronies repeatedly swinging wildly with a variety of clubs, and only occasionally making contact with a golf ball.

While the method of their rampage resembled very slightly a game of four man scramble, the distances travelled by golf balls was not consistent with tournament-caliber play.

It is reported that at one point, the local Golf Pro faced the hoodlums, and stated in no uncertain terms that their behaviour was not proper for his golf course.

The get away vehicle, though not anything flashy, served its purpose. The four drove into a crowd of similar vehicles, parked and blended in with other patrons of the course.

So anyway...

Saturday morning, several men from our church went golfing and played a round robin tournament. I was in a group of four, and was the only one that had any experience to speak of. I hadn't played for a couple years, and the combination of novice and rust was nothing short of a royal crap-fest.

We stunk bad, but we had a good time. Some of the highlights of the day included being told of by the golf pro for being so slow, and letting an older gentleman who was on foot play through. We were in carts, and figured we would be pushing him from behind, but we never saw him again. Several occupants of the houses surrounding the course got early morning wake up calls from our group. We got some pretty good resonance out of some them.

It's pretty sad when you tee off and the ball disappears. NOBODY saw where it went. 1 shot, 1 lost ball. It didn't bode well for the day.

Usually golfers yell "fore" when they are about to kill a fellow golfer. Within our own group, we didn't give each other time to duck, or ourselves time to yell. Had it not been for the golf cart, I would have gotten beaned. It isn't often that a golf ball goes backwards when hit.

There were lots of birds on the course, and we used them as spotters. We knew the general direction the ball went, but the birds flying away from it let us know where it ended up. We tried hard to get a birdie, but they were too darn fast.

Is It Psoriasis Or Jock Itch?

2007-06-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

This falls under the category of "HONEY! What the crap???!??!?!?"

This morning I could hear DramaMama and the Bear whispering something about the Bear wearing a hat in to show me.

"That's not a hat," the Bear said.

"Just wear it in there, it will be funny."

I prepared myself to do the obligatory "isn't that hilarious" parent laugh, when in traipsed the Bear... wearing an athletic supporter on his head!

The Bear: The Cause and the Cure

2007-05-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Sing it with me:

STRESS STRESS STRESS STRESS
STRESS STRESS STRESS STRESS
STRESSITY STRESS!

The Bear and I went shopping for DramaMama's Mothers Day presents. Our purchases turned out to be very fitting.

What did I get her? A neck massaging pillow that she loves.

What did the Bear get her? A squishy stress ball.

When he gave it to his mommy, and she had tried it out, he said, "Now are all your matters gone?"

The Emperbears New Do

2007-05-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Today was Daddy Water Day at the Bear's school, so I took a couple hours off from work, donned a swim suit, and spent some quality time with my little guy.

When the kids were unleashed, there were about 8 small plastic pools filled with water, one was well stocked with water balloons. As you might guess, that pool was the most popular.

Soon balloons were flying and popping all over the place. The Bear was good at hitting my sandals, but all of the body shots bounced and blew on the ground. The water inside the balloons was rather warm, nearing hot. They had apparently stewed in the pool under the nice Arizona sun for a bit.

A hose made it into the fray, a squirt gun or two, then... SHAVING CREAM! I don't know whose idea that was but holy crap was it a hit. Kids were soon covered in white blobs. It was a lot like a silly string war, but with foam.

I got my hands on a can, and set to work creating a new look for my Bear. Before long he was sporting what I have come to call the "Barbasol Pompadour". It was hilarious, but I unfortunately didn't have a camera.

After that his teacher tried to ambush me with shaving cream, but she came out second best on that deal.

We got hosed off, did some bubbles, and had an otter pop. Then the Bear and I went to the basketball court and played around for awhile.

All-in-all, we had a very enjoyable time, just me and my Bear.

My Encouraging Note From Australia

2007-05-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

After a seemingly long wait, I received my response from Penguin Boks in Australia today. Although they passed on my book, their suggestions and comments were both welcome. Here is their response in its entirety:

****
This is a well written story with a strong plot and lots of appeal. There is some vivid description and observation and it brings alive an important part of America's history. It is plot-driven, rather than character-driven, and sometimes the story could benefit from more variation in pace and tone. The resolution feels a little rushed and convenient. Patrick's father's treatment of him is so callous that at times it is hard to believe. He has lost his family why does he risk losing the only son he has left? Some more context to the characters' motivations may be helpful. The treatment of the slaves is a very sensitive subject and it is handled with care and thought here, although at times it could have been more emotionally charged. The author of this work shows promise, and although this particular story is a little too specific for Penguin Australia to take on, I would encourage the author to rework and submit to American publishers.
****

Not to shabby for a first rejection, eh? The thing that is most encouraging about this for me is that the version they read was my first revision. I am going to take their suggestions to heart and encorporate them into my current revision. I am about 1/3 of the way through.

Can I get a WOO HOO for the Cheez?

Cheezan of the Apes

2007-04-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

I preface this with the status of DramaMama's and my head conditions:

DramaMama: Her migraine has lasted for over a week.

Me: Steady on for about a month I have had a comin' and going' tension headache. I find my self clenching my teeth so hard its a wonder I dont break a tooth.

Today, on advice from her mother, DramaMama tried a new combo of medicines that would knock out her headache. She took Anacin with Advil Cold & Sinus, and Kaplow! it took it out just like her mom said it would. WOO HOO! She was so happy not to have a headache at last.

Meanwhile, I have taken to chewing gum to try to take pressure off my teeth. I'm not quite sure what my deal is, but a few days ago, I missed a couple of days of my happy pills and I felt like I was in a rage. Everything was annoying, and I wanted to throw, smash, yell, scream and be all-around unpleasant. I finally got more of my meds and they calmed me down a bit. I am happy to report that I did none of the above other than a bit of screaming which I will detail below.

I watched Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan the other night, and Tarzan made a great yelling sound. RRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! So I tried it out, and boy did I like it. I kept doing it, and the Bear said, "Be quiet, I can't hear my show!"

I found out years ago while playing county rec volleyball that a good primal yell did wonders for getting me back in the game and focused. It's noisy and draws attention to you, but try it sometime when your bejeebers are being frustrated out of you... You might just like it.

RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

This Easter Please Remember:

2007-04-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

He Is Not Here

He Is Risen!

OOPS!

2007-04-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend we have my 13-year old son (the Bug) visiting from Utah, so I took Friday off to be able to spend more time with him.

I took him and the Bear to IHOP for breakfast. Part of my order was some pancakes, which I shared with the Bear. I prepped them for him and myself and we both began eating. After a couple bites, I determined that the pancakes didn't taste very good.

I ate some of my other items, and happened to look at the syrup pitcher.

"ON NO! Bear give me those pancakes!"

On the side of the syrup pitcher was a warning reading, "Careful Hot Coffee".

Come to think of it, the syrup was quite runny, and it absorbed readily into the pancakes. DOH!

So the waitress got us another stack, and we were good to go. This time with proper syrup. The Bear has already been bouncing of the walls lately, a shot of coffee in the morning was the last thing we needed.

Revision 2 is Under Way!

2007-04-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Revision 1 of my middle grade novel Black, White, and Shades of Gray is currently in the hands of Penguin Books Australia being considered. I have heard a smattering of comments from over there that the first person who read it (Our Australian exchange student Sam's mum) really really liked it. I found the second "really" to be encouraging. :)

The last I heard, my novel had been passed up to the associate publisher of children's literature there, and that once she was finished with it, it would be going to a senior editor.

I decided that while I am waiting for their yea or nay, that I would press on with my next planned revision. I hadn't wanted to begin the querying process until after revision2 was completed, but this opportunity presented itself, and I had to act on it.

My main goal in this revision is to polish and expand. I have written a program that counts the number of words as well as flags -ly and -ing words for me. I put this to good use last night and discovered that although I preach against overuse of -ly and -ing words, I had quite a lot to deal with.

My program also showed me a big imbalance in chapter lengths. I have some chapters over 2100 words, where others are just over 300.

Shortly before handing my manuscript to Sam to take home, I had broken up a couple chapters with the intention of expanding those areas. That accounts for some of the shorter chapters. So anyway, my task is to clean up the adverbs and gerunds, and flesh out the short chapters.

WOO HOO!

The Great Cracker Barrel Robbery

2007-03-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Bear and I saddled up the Breeze and headed Southeast to Tucson to meet up with The Blogging Boss, and his son Catman. It was because of this blog that we even knew each other.

The Boss was in the area visiting his parents, so we made plans to meet in Tucson to have lunch and talk a bit.

The Bear slept most of the hour and a half drive, so he was loaded to the eyeballs with energy once we got to the meeting place which was The Cracker Barrel.

Once we were seated, the Bear kicked in the afterburners and was bouncing of the walls. I was very embarrassed having to try and rope him in while maintaining conversation with the Boss. He, thankfully, was very patient with both of us, and got his talking in during the all-to-brief moments of still and quiet.

We had a very nice visit despite the entertainment and mayhem that the Bear provided. I did get him to tell the knock-knock joke though, :) The Boss and I discussed a variety of things from work to programming to writing. Catman showed me a few of the things he has been working on, one of which can be seen by clicking on his link above. He has done some pretty cool things.

So, you are probably wondering about the title of this post...

The Boss was kind enough to pay for our meals because we had driven so far to see them. I thought that was very nice of him. While he was paying the tab, I was fielding "Can I have Candy?" type questions from the Bear as we perused the gift shop. I told him that he already had treats in the car.

We all went outside to take a few pictures, and although I had seen what the Bear was sucking on, it didn't register for several minutes. I realized he was sucking on a push-pop. I asked The Boss if he had bought that for him, but he hadn't. I obviously knew I hadn't, so the Bear had managed to nab some candy, and make it outside undetected.

When we were done with photos, I took the Bear back inside and got the attention of the store manager. We played the roles of stern parent and concerned business owner to send home the message that we don't take things we didn't pay for. After that, I went to the counter and paid for the push-pop. I of course had no cash on me, so I had to use my card for 59 cents. :)

We sent the Boss and Catman home with a jar of DramaMama's homemade salsa and a gift for their home.

Another Milestone in Weezildom

2007-03-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

The Bear has discovered knock-knock jokes... Sort of.

Bear: "Knock knock."

Me: "Who's there?"

Bear: "Boo Hoo. My sock is on the table. Is that funny?"

I taught him the proper joke, and sent him down to try it out on Drummer Boy and his girlfriend.

He came back in a few minutes pleased as punch at his successful delivery of a knock knock joke.

Of course the sock on the table bit was kind of funny.

Addendum: I just realized that March 4 was my blog's 2 year birthday, although I didn't really begin blogging in earnest until September

Cheez Amidst DramaMama's Photo Shoot

2007-03-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

There I was, innocently holding the stuff that was on the chair so DramaMama could take a picture for her "after" collection, when I discovered I was suddenly the subject.

The Charlie Brown School of Interior Decorating

2007-03-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

As you know, we have been renovating the interior of our home, and have made great strides. Take a jaunt over to DramaMama's blog for some before and after images. While you are there, pay particular attention to the very long white sheer drapes in our front room. These are the topic of this post.

The other day when I came home from work, DramaMama had hung our "new" curtains in the lower window there. She informed me that the white drapes would be going.

"But I like the white drapes."

"Take a look at the white drapes," she said and lifted up the bottom of one of them, and stuck her hand through a big circular hole. "You can ask the Bear about that."

"What did you do Mr. Bear?"

"I cutted the curtains with my scissors."

"Why did you do that?"

"I thought it was paper."

At that point, I had to concede that the nice white drapes were going. DramaMama pointed out that he got both sets.

When she found what he had done, she called him on it. Of course, he played innocent, but obviously knew he was busted. DramaMama said he had to go take a nap, and he went without a fuss.

But now, we have very classy and fancy curtains, and the room looks even better than before. Today, I officially downed the tall white drapes, painted the spots where the hooks were, then took DramaMama to lunch and a movie.

By the way, we are celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary on Sunday, so I took Thursday and today off of work. We have had a wonderful time doing things together. We have both needed a break for a long time. We sent the boys to Grandma's.

The Dejunk Kerplunk

2007-03-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

As all 2 of my avid readers already know, we have recently been redoing the inside of our home. This meant moving out a ton of stuff into the garage, and a temporary storage pod in our driveway.

When we began to see the vastness of our crap-pile, we decided to list several pieces of furniture on a website called craigslist.com. It has worked very well, and we have sold several items. Mind you at bargain basement discount sell off prices.

Today our latest customer came buy to purchase DramaMama's Baker's Rack. Drama help her load it in the car, and headed back toward the house where somehow she managed to fall. The lady helped her up, and she was hurting, but able to walk. She called me at work to tell me, and I could tell she was in discomfort.

She drove to Drummer Boy's school and picked him up, but by the time they got home, her left knee had swollen, and was becoming very painful. She walked with difficulty into the house, but barely made it past the door before she couldnt stand to put any weight on it anymore.

Drummer Boy got our handy dandy crutches, and she managed to get situated on the couch. She called me again and told me that I had to come home and get her to urgent care, because there was something very wrong with her knee.

I took off, and was soon able to see the damage. She has a huge lump on one side, three large patches of deep bruises, and a red spot.

We somehow managed to get her into the car, then took the Bear over to a lady from church, and headed to urgent care. There was one close, so we tried there. Just after DramaMama had struggled from the car, a nurse came out to tell us their x-ray machine was not functioning.

We then went to the one were I was checked over for pneumonia. They were great over there, and got us in and out in 3 hours. DramaMama was in serious pain. They determined that her ligaments were all okay, and took x-rays which revealed no breaks or anything. They think that she severely bruised herself. They were concerned that she might have broken her kneecap as that took the brunt of her fall.

We got a prescription to Happyland, and instruction to ice it down. So now she is on bed-rest on Dr. Cheez's orders.

DramaMama is pretty tough my friends. Although some tears were shed due to the shear pain of it all, she was very brave, and handled all of this like a real trooper.

Arizona Woodpeckers

2007-02-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the sound of a woodpecker hammering rapidly on a tree. We are blessed at our home to have one that likes to peck at the stucco in the back of our house.

That aside, I would like to discuss one that I see (well, hear at first) as I walk the Bear to his bus stop.

Here's how it plays out:

Bear and Daddy walking along talking about things important to a kid.

TATTTATTAATTAATTATTATATTATT

"What is that noise Daddy?"

"It's a Woodpecker."

"What's a Wordpicker?"

"Wood... Pecker... They are birds that make a hole in trees with their beak and eat the bugs inside."

"Oh."

All well and good, but as daddy continues to walk and hear the tell-tale sounds of a bug-attack in progress, he spots the woodpecker...

ON TOP OF THE PLASTIC CASING OF A STREET LIGHT!

Okay, retarded woodpecker, or perhaps one of the new hipper kind that goes for classier substances than plain old wood.

So I had my laugh.

Over the next week, I saw the same thing two or three more times. I don't get it... and apparently neither does the woodpecker. I imagine that he is getting rather hungry.

A Long Lost Treasure

2007-02-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

Sunday, as I sat between meetings, a friend of mine stepped up to me and mentioned that my scriptures were in the lost and found. I quickly looked to my side, and saw that my lovely new scriptures that I had received as a Christmas present from DramaMama were right where they should be.

I tried to think about any other of my scripture sets that could possibly be there. My previous set I knew was sitting in a basket to the side of our poofy chair in our front room.

I was stymied. My friend asked what my middle initial was, and I told him it was "R".

"Yeah, that's what it said. I'll go get it for you."

He returned a moment later and handed me an old Bible with a black zipper cover that I immediatley recognized.

The meeting began at that moment, so I mouthed "Wow!" to him. Right there on the front was my name in gold letters. I struggled with the old zipper and was finally able to get it opened. It fell open to the first page, where I recognized my father's handwriting in a note he had written to me over thirty years before.

I was holding the Bible that my parents gave me for my 12th birthday.

I was completely flabbergasted and bewildered as to how this book could have found its way to where it was. When I last saw this book, I lived in Utah, and I would have been 19.

I left on my mission then with my scriptures I had used in Seminary. I have no recollection of donating my old Bible to the church. DramaMama suggested that perhaps while I was on my mission that my parents might have done it.

Inside the front cover, a woman had written her name, address, and phone, and a note "This book belongs to:".

I looked again at the gold letters on the front, and could see that an attempt had been made to scribble my name out.

Now considering that I lived in Utah, and that it was most likely donated to the Ward library there, I found that the odds of my old Bible finding its way to Arizona, to my very church building, and accidentally being left behind, and brought to the lost and found there, are staggering.

I am considering calling the woman whose name is in the front to see if I can get some info on its journey here. I would gladly buy her a brand new set to replace this. I really don't want to let it go again.

I flipped through it and saw all the scriptures I had marked, several notes I had written in margins and in the lined pages in the middle. The handwriting style was decidedly teenage boy.

I found it interesting that the black zipper cover was still on it after all this time. I would have thought the woman would have disposed of that right away.

So, 30 years later, I once again received the gift of my very first Bible.

My Day Among the Brians

2007-02-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

We bought a new car Thursday evening to replace DramaMama's smashed one.

We got a 2000 Ford Windstar LX, and got a pretty good deal on it. It is white with black trim. The picture here is what we have, but is someone else's.

Our salesman was named Brian. There is a minor problem with the sliding doors that they are going to fix. The maintenance department guy that will call us to make the appointment is named Brian. We were escorted back to the Finance department to finalize the sale, and were introduced to... Brian. Once we had that squared away, we contacted our insurance agent to get the new vehicle on our insurance. Take a guess at what his name is...

When Life Gives You a Swirly...

2007-02-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

AAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

IF credit_card_person = "Left Company"
dave_takes_over_transaction_duty = TRUE;

software_used_by_former_credit_card_person_is_now_obsolete = TRUE;

Do Purchase_New_Software with "$500";

Call_Tech_Support_with "Need Bank Info for New Software";

Tech_support_based_in_India = TRUE;
Tech_support_cannot_help = TRUE;

Call_Bank_With "Need Bank Info for New Software";

New_Software_Not_Supported_With_Your_Merchant_Account = TRUE;

Wasted_five_hundred_bucks = TRUE;

do_cuss_and_swear_dance();

Call_GoDaddy_for_New_Merchant_account();

It_will_take_72_hours = TRUE;

New_Software_wont_work_here_either = TRUE;

say_SHEEPDIP_real_loud();

Follow_suggestion_of_DramaMama_to_use_Paypal();

Login_to_paypal();

Account_inactive_must_delete_and_sign_Up_for_new_account = TRUE;

Click_on_close_account();

Cannot_close_because_there_are_funds_in_account = TRUE;

call_paypal_and_wait_on_hold_for_45_minutes();

do Follow_tech_support_direction_to_login_to_paypal with "I CAN'T IT WON'T LET ME!";

Response = Await_Direction_From_Tech_Support();

if Response == "Did you login into your Paypal account?"
do_cuss_and_swear_dance();
remind_tech_support("I CAN'T IT WON'T LET ME!");

Submit_Forgot_Password_Form();

Receive_email();

Click_link_to_Change_password();

link_failed = TRUE;

Paste_Link_Directly_In_Browser();

success = TRUE;

Input_Answer_For("Question 1: Mother's Maiden Name);
Input_Answer_For("Question 2: Pet's Name);

Tell_Tech_Support("I DONT HAVE A PET!");

Follow_dumb_Tech_Support_Direction_to_type_in_anything();

Tech_support_based_in_India = TRUE;
Tech_support_cannot_help = TRUE;

response = Try_setting_up_new_paypal_account_using_personal_email_address();

if response = "Account already exists"
say("COOL!");
login_into_forgotten_account();
success=TRUE;
response2 = Add_Business_Bank_account();

if response2 = "Bank account already associated with different paypal account"
do_cuss_and_swear_dance();
reponse3 = Add_Personal_Account()
if response3 = "Bank account already associated with different paypal account"

repeat_cuss_and_swear_dance();

recall_that_dad_setup_a_paypal_account();
Login_into_dads_account();
success=true;

Prepare_code_to_process_dozens_of_cards_for_backlogged_orders();
Run_code();
success=true;

result = Enter_credit_card_info_for_first_order();

if result = "Enter in 3 digit Security code"
do_cuss_and_swear_dance();
Yell("AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!");
endif
endif
endif
endif

Wait_until_GoDaddy_account_becomes_active();

Buy_different_new_software();

endif

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I Have My Insurance Agent on Speed Dial!

2007-02-07T19:56:00.000-08:00

No Joe... say it ain't so!

What could be worse than one munched car?

Type in dumb answer here: __________.

Our nice little Bonneville has become the latest victim of the Weezil clan driving school of maniacs.

To top the day off another of our goldfish died.

All involved in the accident were okay. DramaMama was, shall we say, most unhappy with the kid that pulled in front of her. Even less jolly about the cop who ticketed... HER! The Bear said it was scary.

This makes our third car in as many years to get munched. My accident was nearly three years ago, and falls off the records in April.

Clinton has now been in two auto accidents in less than a week. This time his girlfriend was with him.

I am trying to keep a positive outlook about all of this. DramaMama has a sore back, and the girlfriend bit her lip, but that is about the extent of it. Everbody walked away from it. I was at work, so I called my dad, and he went out there to help them. My sister and her husband also showed up.

My sister just came by and handed us a wad of money to cover the rental car we have parked out front.

DramaMama is online looking for a new car... because, well... WE DONT HAVE ANY MORE!

I Throw Myself on the Mercy of the Court!

2007-02-06T17:42:00.000-08:00

The Weezil in court? Yep.

What most heinous offense pray tell did yon Cheezer commit?

Um...

I procrastinated.

WHAT?!???!? You don't have to go to court for procrastination!

Well, that all depends on what it is that you procrastinated, and for how long.

You see, it all comes down to the not-getting-around-to-it factor. I had just as much time as every one else, yet I chose to ignore the problem... that is until it came back and bit me on the butt.

As you well know, every year you have to register your car. Not a big deal. Well this year... um... make that LAST year... I was required to pass the emissions test (THE CAR, not ME! Sheesh) which is always a pain, so I kept putting it off. Then 30 days became 90, 90 became a whole heckuvalot more.

REEEEEEEERRRRRRR! BLINKY BLINKY BLINKY BLINK (That's the cop pulling me over)

"Why are you driving with plates that expired in MAY?"

So I got a ticket, and I went on my way, telling myself it was my own dumb fault.

I took the car for emissions testing, and of course it failed. A cylinder 1 misfire. So once I got paid, I took the car in for repair. It cost $400.

The next day (see the previous post) BLAM!!!

Somewhere in all of the mayhem, I misplaced the citation. I remembered that the officer had mentioned that the court date was on January 31. So I called the Mesa Police department to find out what time and where I was supposed to go. They had no record of my ticket. Hmmmm. Try DPS (Dept of Public Safety) they said.

I called DPS, and they also had no record of the ticket. I doubted it was the girl scouts that gave me the stupid thing!

Next, I called the mesa city court to find out the time and place. They had no record of it. They suggested that I call the Justice court and see if it was there. So I called them, and they knew nothing about it.

I tried MPD and DPS again, same result. I tried the court again just to see. nothing. I gave up. I figured if nobody knew about it, it must have been lost in processing somewhere. I mentioned my troubles to a co-worker who suggested I call DPS on more time and ask them if I were to be pulled over by a DPS officer, at which court would need to appear? They asked where I was cited, and they gave me a phone number for the JUSTICE court. Different number than the one I called though. At last, I found someone that knew something. "9:00"

I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that if I had decided to give up, I would have had a bench warrant on my butt.

Anyway, I showed up at about 8:40 and got in line. Apparently there were lots of Mesa procrastinators that day. Finally it was my turn at the check in counter. I told the girl I had lost my ticket. She went and looked up my file.

"Do you have your registration?"

"That's the problem."

"$105 please."

I paid her. I had heard the clerks tell others to go into the courtroom, so off I trotted. I sat on the front row where I could hear the judge talking to the other wanted fugitives. It was very interesting to hear all the odd troubles people had gotten themselves into.

There were a couple of them busted for drug paraphenalia, a bunch for DUI, a couple WOMEN for unlawful entry and intimidation, several underage kids driving and/or drinking, a couple ex-cons, and a guy that falsified his car insurance.

Wouldn't it have been interesting if one of the ex-cons had sat by me?

"What are you in for?"

"Um... I procrastinated."

So anyway, I patiently waited my turn, not nervous, because I knew I was in the wrong. By the way, I knew the judge, but he didn't know me. My company did a lot of work for his campaign, including data for mailings and his website, both of which I did. So anyway, they kept calling people up, and more, and I waited, and waited... the numbers were dwindling... 5, 4, 3, 2... They called the other guy.

When they were done with him:

"What's your name?"

"Juan Tabo, wanted mexican drug lord."

he he he just kidding. I told him my name, and he said that they didnt have a file for me. GREAT!

I had just sat there for three hours!

The judge when on a trek to discover my wayward file. 15 minutes later he came back and said it was all resolved. GRRRRRR!

I still showed him my plethora of evidence as to why I was not able to register the vehicle. (Remember the BLAM????)

I then proceeded to ask about the citiation my son had gotten after the BLAM for the expired plates. The judge said that since it was in a Mesa neighborhood, it was under the jurisdiction of the Mesa City Court, and they couldn't do anything about tossing it out.

So on Feb 27, I get to appear with my son at that court and hope that they will be nice.

I finally got done with the old dead car today. I had the impound lot tow it to a salvage yard.

I should find out shortly whether I will be approved for a loan to get the Caddy.

Crash, Boom, Bang, Pow!

2007-01-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my morning. I was casually dejunking my house when I received a phone call from our frantic teenage new driver.

"I just hit a car!" >>hyperventilation noises<< "Are You okay?" >>More hyperventilation noises<< "Calm down. Where are you?" "I'm on Diamond, I mean Delta... no Diamond." >>hyperventilation noises<< "Calm down, are you okay?" DramaMama picked up the other phone. "What happened? Were you in an accident?" "Yes!" I got myself together (I was in my jammies) and took off. Knowing that his girlfriend lived on Delta, which by the way is only a couple blocks from our house, I hustled over there but saw nothing. I then came 1 block closer to our house to Diamond where I found them. It was a lot worse than I had imagined. My butt-ugly turquoise/green Chrysler POS... I mean LHS was inside another car's trunk. When I say inside, I mean just that. The front left corner of my car was within an inch of the bottom of the rear window. 2/3 of the front of my car was in contact with the other one. The first picture you see was snapped just as the tow truck yanked our car out. I missed the shot by about a second. My car's green life blood was draining everywhere. There were busted pieces of tail and headlights all over. Both of our airbags deployed, but from the look of our son's forehead, he headbutted the steering wheel before his blew in his face. He had a nasty goose-egg that was bleeding slightly. This next picture shows the damage to the front end of my car: As usual, the photo doesn't do it justice.

This next shot is the other car once my car had been extracted:

This came pretty close do doing it justice. The thing was pretty roughed up.

You wanna hear the real crappy news?

Less than a week ago, I made my final payment for my car. I don't even have the title yet.

Wanna hear even more crappy news?

Just yesterday, I paid nearly $400 for work done so the beast would pass the emissions test.

To add insult to injury, my registration expired a significant amount of time ago for which I received a ticket earlier this month. I had taken it in for emissions testing, but it failed. This is why I had the work done. So as the the officer was taking down the details, I told him about that, and produced the repair papers to show them that I was telling the truth.

No dice. I received a second citation for the expired plates.

Now... here's more crappy news:

Clinton was driving to an audition which he missed. My plan was that as soon as he got home, I was going to take the car back in for the emissions and then get it registered. Missed it by that much.

Now... My wife hasn't brought this up yet, but yesterday while I was at work, she called and suggested that I go get the emissions taken care of on my lunch. "Naw," I said. "I'll do it Saturday." If I had done as she said, my car would have been registered, and I wouldn't have gotten that second citation. So now I have 2 court dates. Gotta love that.

One thing though. I'm not going to miss that car. I have regretted buying it for pretty much as long as I have owned it. I traded in a beautiful Chevy Tahoe for it. Dumb stupid and not smart. The Tahoe would have flattened that car! :)

I Fell Off the Planet

2007-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, if anyone is still trying to read my blog. I apologize for my lack of attention to this.

As you may have read on DramaMama's blog, we have had an exchange student from Australia with us for the past 12 days. He is flying home tonight. We thoroughly enjoyed his visit, and are very sad to see him go. The Bear was so excited to have a new friend to play with even though he is 15.

Sam hails from Melbourne, and works with his mother at Penguin Books. I thought that this had to be more than a mere coincidence. As I type, my first book is in Sam's bag flying to Australia to be read and considered. I am keeping my fingers, toes, and eyeballs crossed. I wanted to have more Revisions in my belt before submitting the book, but this window of opportunity was very small, so I took it.

If anything, Sam said that at least they will write out about 6 pages of suggestions, critique or whatever. He said that they have done this several times for friends and family. I would love to have the 6 page thing. The nice thing about this is, that they will take a little more care in reading it, because we hosted Sam while he was here.

I am cautiously optimistic, but will not be to surprised if they say no. I plan to keep working on it. I know it has a lot of room for polishing.

So, there you are.

2006 on a Ritz - Our Christmas Letter

2007-01-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

This year the letter duty has fallen to me. Our normal pattern is to comfortably wait until after Christmas then send an email. So please note that this was at least typed before Christmas this year. Whether or not you are reading it before Christmas is another thing. This has been an interesting year with several milestones and a few kidney stones. I suppose we’ll start out with me as I am the one writing this:

Dave
I am still working as a programmer/web designer/printing setup guy/database guru/video guy/audio guy/a lotta other stuff guy. I have had my hands in many varied projects which has forced/allowed me to expand my skill-base and knowledge of my industry.

My business is still running under Dad’s capable hands. He has really earned his dollar this year. I developed our own shopping cart system which will allow us to customize the heck out of it. This not only saves us money, but gives us a lot more flexibility with our promotions.

I have been writing a lot, focusing my time on two different books. One of them has been completed in first draft, and is currently undergoing a rather sweeping revision. I have had a few test readers, all of which loved it. I have a goal to finish this draft in the coming month, then do another revision to smooth it out and expand it further. As it sits now, it tells the complete story, but it is about half as long as it should be to hold its own as a novel. My second book, which I think is even better, is around 2/3 of the way done in first draft.

I have been sick for the bulk of the last 3 months. I started out with a very nasty case of Bronchitis which left me with a dry hacky cough. I went back to the doctor for that, and was told that it was just part of the recovery. Two months went by with nightly coughing fits. I finally went back in and had a chest x-ray done, and was told I have pneumonia. They also said that I have an enlarged heart. I am still waiting for my doctor to hook me up with the cardiologist.

Erica
Erica has been the queen of everything this year. She started her own scrapbooking business which works a lot like a tupperware party, but more fun. She invites the women-folk from my family, and a few others sprinkled in. Erica demonstrates the latest nifty gee-whizzies, everyone oohs and ahhhs, and then buys stuff.

Several people have come to her in a panic, wanting to do a scrapbook for Christmas, but feeling overwhelmed. Erica stepped right in and either helped them, or did the work herself.

The ward has made good use of her as well. She has been working very hard in the Relief Society in the Enrichment committee until she was released recently. This demanded a lot of her time and energy. She is also a weekly episode for the nursery and sharing time crowds. In sharing time she is “Sister Spotlight”. She dons an apron with colored spots on it, takes a flashlight, and does a spotlight on one of the kids. She is a hit. She also is the singing lady for the nursery kids. She has immortalized the “Slippery Fish” song.

I know that she is overwhelmed most of the time with her many activities and pressures. I want all of you to know that she is a wonderful wife and mother who we all love very much, even though our housekeeping skills don’t show it. She puts up with a lot and gives of herself almost to her bounds. She is a friend to everyone, and everyone loves her.

Clinton
Clinton has been banging on the drums about 80% of the year. He has been in Marching band, Concert Band, Drumline, district band, and several other things. He is very impressive, and is a standout in his various groups.

He turned 16 this year which means the onset of many things. He earned his drivers license, went on his first date, and started high school. As always, he gets excellent grades. He took the PSAT and his results showed that if this had been the SAT, he would have scored 1600 on it. A quick Google on colleges/universities that would accept him with that mark showed that he could pretty much name his school.

He and I have enjoyed trying our own mini versions of some of the Mythbusters tests. I am happy to say that much fun was had with no injuries.

James
James began Jr. High this year and has also taken up the drums. This makes the third instrument he has attempted. He has taken piano lessons for several years, and has been learning guitar.

We enjoyed a month in the summer and short visit for Thanksgiving with him this year. We plan to see him after Christmas as well.

James will turn 13 in February. He is a great kid, and we miss him very much. Kayden talks about “Jamesie” all the time, and even sleeps on his bed.

Kayden
Kayden started Elementary school this year. So if you are keeping track, we had a child start high school, one start Jr. High, and one start elementary school. Kayden is a fun-loving boy who loves everyone, and they love him back.

This year some progress has been made on his conditions, but still no diagnoses. He has been wearing leg braces for quite awhile. We call them his “legs”. These help keep his foot flat to the ground and prevent him from walking on his toes. He also underwent surgery recently for a muscle biopsy that will hopefully shed some light on the problems. He just had a botox injection each of his calf muscles with the intent of paralyzing the muscle that makes him walk on his toes.

As always, he is a little computer buff, always wanting to play a game with me. His “Moo” can be heard throughout the day as he plays various games.

Kayden is a sweet little guy, and we love him to pieces. He won’t eat anything though. It is a battle every evening to get him to eat. If he had his druthers, he’d have a gallon of root beer and candy.

We got to be bell ringers for the Salvation Army a few weeks ago, so I put Kayden on my shoulders doing our version of Bob Cratchet and Tiny Tim. We also let him stand by the pail by himself ringing the bell. He got lots of smiles and donations.

Overall things have seemed hectic, but we are all alive, and we even smile sometimes.

We hope that you had a wonderful Christmas, and take some time to reflect on the things that matter most. It isn’t about the presents, it isn’t about the decorations. It is about a baby born in less than ideal conditions that grew to change the world and eternity for all of us. God bless us every one.

Dave (CheezWeezil), Erica (DramaMama), Clinton(The Large Drummer Boy), James (The Bug/Smaller Drummer Boy), and Kayden (The Bear).

Barf Fest 2006

2006-12-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

COUGH COUGH HWAAAUUUGGHGHHHHHHHH!!! SSHLLLLOOORRPRPPPPP!! UUUUUGGGHHHH!!!!! SCHLOOOORRRRPPPPP!!!!!! HACK HACKKKK SCHLOOORRPPPP!!!!!!

This was the fine sound that woke us up at 12:30 this morning. The Bear had come down a short while earlier and was sleeping on the floor to the side of our bed.

"Did you just throw up?"

"Yes." GWAAAUUGHGHHHH!!!! SCCHLOOORRRRPPPPP!!!!!!

"Aim for the blanket!!!!"

Okay, that was pretty graphic, but welcome to our world. The blankets and several towels went into the laundry, the pillow went into a garbage bag and out to the trash. DramaMama cleaned up the excess that made it into the carpet. Daddy got a new pillow and blankets, and a bowl. The Bear got hosed down and changed out of his split-pea soup covered clothes.

Awwww, back to sleep. I wish. I lay awake for 2 hours, because I have this real annoying thing that if I wake up in the night, I have a hard time getting back to sleep.

So about 2 hours passed. COUGH COUGH HWWUUUUAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!

"AW CRAP!!!"

This time I was able to get him into the bathroom in front of the potty. I returned to the scene of the barfing to clean up when he started up again in the bathroom. When I got back to where I could see him, I expected to see him hunched over the potty gutting it into the can. Not our Bear. He was standing up arched back, projectile vomiting into the bathroom.

I made the mistake of hollering, which drew his attention mid-spew, which in turn altered the course of the pea soup. SCHLLLOOOORRPPPPPPP!!!!

It reminded me of some horror movie I saw a clip from.

We finally got him on his knees and hocking like a proper sick child. Drama took bathroom cleaning duty, while I cleaned up the blankets and set them into the washer. The first load was done, so it went into the dryer. I prepared yet another nest for our sick little bear.

Awwww to sleep, perchance to... GWAAAUUUUGHHHHHHHH!!!!!

This time, I got him in the bathroom and in proper chucking position before the flood gates opened. One successful barf-a-rama later, and it was back to bed.

Shortly before I left for work he went at it again, but made it to the bathroom in time.

I'll spare the details of the big orange chunks in it that looked like hunks of cheddar. Oh wait, that was a detail. DOH!

Draggin' me Waggin

2006-12-17T12:41:00.000-08:00

By way of an update of sorts, not a lot of progress has been made as to the more serious of my ailments. I think I have kicked the pnuemonia, but still have coughing fits at night. The urgent care doc told me that an enlarged heart makes you cough.

People always told me I had a big heart, but I thought they meant I was a nice, generous kinda guy.

I still am not feeling 100%, but I am better than I was. I still get pooped easily, and I think it is aggravating my dear wifey. We attended our annual breakfast with Santa yesterday, and I ran out of gas about half way through. I missed her family Christmas party because I wasn't feeling well, and pretty much slept from when we got home from breakfast until after 1:00 in the afternoon. I would have slept longer but the phone woke me up. I seriously crashed. DramaMama hasn't said much to me since.

So anyway, I made her dinner last night, and have been cleaning a bit today. We have family coming over for our Christmas party in 2 hours. We all need a vacation. We all need some alone time to feed our souls as it where.

I need to have a nap before the party so I don't be the Grinch again this year.

Sickies-R-Us

2006-12-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I was feelin' so bad, asked my family doctor 'bout what I had,
I said, "Doctor, Doctor, Mister M.D., can you tell me, what's ailing me?"

He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah"
All you need, all you really need: good druggin'...

If you happened upon DramaMama's post before arriving here, you already know the bulk of what I have to say today.

Both the Bear and I have been diagnosed with Pneumonia. This explains this hacky cough I've had for long time, feeling cruddy most of the time, and lately, a serious lack of energy.

Saturday, DramaMama and I volunteered at the Christmas Tree lot that is raising funds for the high school band program. That went okay, but my back was hurting by the time we left. Upon arriving home, I went out to work in the yard. I ripped out an old shambles of a trellis with vines, and got down on the ground to remove the roots of the vine. I was having trouble breathing when I would lean forward. I managed to get that done.

I then went to the other side of the house and started digging out the root system of a nasty sucker tree thing that sprouted in the place our apple tree used to be. By the time I had the bulk of those roots out I was feeling really dizzy and had to lean against the house for a little while. I was gasping going into the house with a swimmy head. I went and laid down.

That evening, the Bear had a high fever, and DramaMama took him to urgent care. She came home with the diagnosis of pnuemonia, with an asterisk suggesting the possibilty of a condition that I believe is unique to this area called "valley fever" which is a fungal thing. DramaMama took to the internet and read up on it. She told me that its symptoms sounded very much like what has been going on with me. The fever is contracted from the soil here, and since we have been doing extensive yard work lately, that seemed plausible.

So once I returned from church, she shooed me off to urgent care. I thought about taking my book to work on while I waited, but she said that they didn't have to wait. I should have taken my book. Once I was signed in, I asked what the wait would be. The lady told me an hour and a half in and out. HA! I was still working on my nap at that point. I also read the bulk of the most recent Reader's Digest.

It was over 2 hours before I got into a room, but they got to me relatively quickly after that. My doctor was a black woman who was very nice, but looked to be one of those that you wouldn't want to have mad at you. I told her why I was there, and she immediately told me that they cannot diagnose Valley Fever at urgent care, and that I would have to go to my primary care physician. Crap! there's another blown co-pay!

She listened to my lungs and said they sounded tight. She ordered a breathing treatment and a chest x-ray.

So they hooked me up with a unit that looked like a sci-fi smoking machine. Then they took me in for the chest x-ray. They got front and side views. The technician asked me if my wife and son were in recently. I told her they had come in the night before. "You look just like him."

So anyway, the doc came in and listened to my lungs again. Do you smoke? No. Hmmm.

She went away and came back a little while later with another doctor. She listened to my lungs. Do you smoke? No. They went away.

The first doc came back and asked to look at my feet. "Are your feet swollen?"

"No, but sometimes when I come home from work my legs are. You can see the dent where my sock was."

"You're sure you don't smoke?"

"Only secondhand smoke."

She eventually told me that the x-ray showed that I have pnuemonia, and also an enlarged heart.

"What causes that?"

"Lot's of things, but I am thinking it might be a viral infection causing it."

She indicated that this could add to my coughing.

I got another breathing treatment, and they loaded me up with prescriptions, blood work orders, and copies of my x-rays, and sent me packing.

I went right to the pharmacy, and waited while they filled my prescriptions. I got an inhaler, anti-biotics, and cough medicine. That took about a half hour or so.

All in all the trip to the doc was about 5 hours. I was pooped when I got back and crashed on the couch.

DramaMama hit the internet and told me about the enlarged heart condition. It basically means that the heart needed to strengthen in order to get the proper blood flow. This leads to fine things like congestive heart failure, which my dad has.

So now I get to go get vampired, and go to the primary care doc tomorrow to have her review the x-rays.

All I wanted was a nice relaxing weekend. HA! I'm pooped.

Why Teenage Boys Make Lousy Babysitters

2006-12-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Ding Dong

2006-12-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

Today, DramaMama, the Bear and I were bell ringers for the Salvation Army at a local Wal-Mart.

It was kind of fun actuall, even though the Bear kept cloking me in the head with the bell. (He was sitting on my shoulders.)

We had a sort of Christmas Carol theme going. The Bear was on my shoulders wearing his leg braces playing the part of Tiny Tim, while I wore my t-Shirt that reads "I've got your 'Bah Humbug' Right Here!"

At one point, we put the apron on the Bear, and set him out there ringing the bell by himself. We were of course only feet away. He got a lot of smiles and donations.

Tomorrow, DramaMama and I will be working a Christmas Tree lot as a fundraiser for our band boosters.

Drawing With the Bear

2006-11-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

Anything I do with the Bear sets me up for a really good laugh. This kid is a never ending fountain of funny.

This evening before bed, we were "drawing". I would make the outline of a head and eyes, and the Bear would do the rest. When he got to the ears, he stuck a finger in one of his own.

"There's a hole there." So he drew a hole on the paper ear.

"There's another little hole down there." So he drew a second hole.

"Then there's the crap." He started scribbling inside the ear. "There's always crap in there."

Cookies and Cheez and the Bear, oh MY!

2006-11-25T22:04:00.000-08:00

Every year, my family has "Cookie Train" day, where all of us gather at my dad's house and make exotic creations from cookies, candy, and icing (acts as the glue).

The first picture here, is actually from Thanksgiving day. Behind me there were three people with guitars, only one of which could really play.

I was plinking around on the piano, when my sister and her camera approached. Being the odd-duck I am, I quickly spotted a kleenex laying on the piano. I rolled it up and stuck it in my mouth.

Notice the Jesus statue on top of the piano. A close look will reveal that it is missing the right hand. Well, that happens on moves. Even closer observation will reveal a mysterious blue hat on Jesus's head. "Why is Jesus wearing a blue hat?" I asked. The explanation was that the broken off hand was wrapped up in blue tape and stuck to his head. I thought that was an odd place to stick it, but there you are.

So, anyway, on to cookie trains. The Bear and I decided to work together on his project. He helped for about the duration of this next photo.

I decided to be innovative this year, and made a snowman out of marshmallows, and a North Pole sign. Part of the fun of the cookie train build is all of the creative things people come up with. Another is eating all of the building materials that didn't get used. Needless to say, I ate a crapload of crap, which is why I look like a wide-body jet.

By the way, if you are trying to figure out what my shirt says, I'll tell you.

"Church Basketball... the brawl that begins with prayer." Having played in many a church basketball game, this shirt spoke truth to my soul, and I had to own it. ;)

Some of the funny things that emerged from this year's event were a melted snowman, and a gingerbread man strapped to railroad tracks in front of the oncoming cookie train while the gingerbread wife looked on. That one also had a pooping snowman (round white candy). Quite lovely.

The Bear and his cousins played the entire duration, and had a good old time. At one point they were in the back yard making "Magic Potions". These turned out to be red plastic cups with water from the bathroom mixed with dirt, rocks, and grass from Dad's yard. I overheard a discussion about whose potion had the most rocks in it. Gotta love kids.

The Bear was so excited that his cousins were driving down from Utah to be with us for Thanksgiving. Here he is with one of them.

Next we visit the same two really getting into their work.

Happy Holidays from the Sewer Treatment Plant

2006-11-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

Last evening, DramaMama and I were watching a show in our room when the Bear came in.

"Daddy will you get me some of your favorite drink of egganog?"

"Ask Clinton if he will get some for you."

"No, he might say it's poop!"

A Day in the Life of a Bear

2006-11-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

Today was a big long day for the Mama Bear and the Little Bear. Yesterday, the Bear lost his first tooth, and awoke to find two dollars in quarters and three rolls of Smarties under his pillow.

He had to get up at 4:30 this morning in order to go to the hospital for an operation. He had a muscle biopsy taken that will hopefully reveal the source of his troubles.

He called me at work to tell me that he was big for the shot and didn't cry. They took him into surgery at around 8:30am. They made an incision about an inch long, and took two samples of muscle tissue from deep inside.

It will take a few weeks to get the results, but we will keep you all posted. After the operation, I got another call. This time from a very sad little Bear. Through his tears he told me that his leg hurts. DramaMama told me that they had just given him a shot for the pain. Within a few minutes, the Bear was dangling his legs off the side of his bed playing his GameBoy.

Daddy was a little stressed in the morning, even though I kept getting reassuring impressions that everything would be fine. There was an Elton John song stuck in my head with very troubling lyrics for the situation: "You're a butterfly, and butterflies have wings to fly. Fly away, fly away, bye bye." Daddy got choked up looking at the Bear's picture and said, "Please don't fly away."

I hurried home and found the Bear encamped on the couch. He got up to show me his leg. I was expecting his leg to be heavily bandaged, but they had used surgical glue to stick it all together.

The Bear has been surprisingly active, and this hasn't slowed him down much. Daddy plays elevator to get him up and down the stairs.

We appreciate those of you who offered your prayers and support in the Bear's behalf. He is a special little guy and means the world to us.

I am Troubled

2006-11-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

Today something happened that made me want to kick myself around town for a few hours. The Bear and I went to Wal-Mart today, and passed a couple of older women, one of whom was using a walking cane in each hand, and seemed to be having difficulty walking.

I was thinking that maybe I should help her, and then get her into one of the electric cart deals. I didn't and moved past her.

I was half way between the front door and the entrance doors into the store when I heard "Oh my God!"

I turned to see the woman with the canes face down on the ground, blood all over her hands, face, and the ground. She was struggling to get up, but a young man jumped in and took control of the situation and got her seated in a chair. A young woman jumped in as well, caring for the other woman who was rather distraught. She was hugging her and comforting her.

I hollered to one of the employees to call for paramedics. I tried to get in closer to help too, but there were a lot of people, and the Wal-Mart crew was shooing people away.

A fire truck pulled up a few minutes later, and they took care of her. She was able to walk after they were done patching up the rather ugly wound on her forehead.

I felt horrible. I could have helped her before this happened, and could probably have prevented it from happening.

How hard really would it have been for me to take a couple minutes out of my life to make sure a struggling elderly woman made it safely into Wal-Mart?

I felt the need to applaud the young man and the young woman who didn't think twice about helping her.

So the moral of this story is: If you see an opportunity to help somebody... FRICKIN' DO IT!

Really lame party games

2006-11-10T19:15:00.000-08:00

Last evening, I played baby-sitter at the church while the women-folk had a craft evening hosted by DramaMama. One of the kids was a girl the Bear's age and she wanted to play games. This was fine except that there were only 3 kids in the room.

"Let's play 'Duck Duck, Goose'"

So they sat down on little squares of carpet and set to playing. The goose went around the "circle" tapping imaginary heads and saying duck with each one. Then one of the actual participants would get tagged as the goose and a very odd chase would ensue. They would run around the circle, neither one really fleeing, and the other not really pursuing. Then the other would try it. That got old quick with only 2 choices for the goose.

Next came hide and seek. Please recall with me that we were at the church. Not a whole lot of hiding places in the 10 x 20 room we had been confined to. We opened the side door to the very small classroom (8 x 10) to the side. Nothing but a small table and a couple of chairs in there.

So anyway, the aforementioned girl counted to 40 while the others ran into the small room to hide. I peeked while the count was going on. What I saw was most amusing. The Bear and the younger sister of the one counting were "hiding" using the 2 chairs. Both of them had their heads beneath a chair, and the rest of them was protruding out into the room in plain sight.

Dating Advice From the Bear

2006-11-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

Last night, DramaMama and I took some time for ourselves... um... well as best as we could. I worked late and arrived home just before 6:00. I opened the door, and DramaMama called out that she wasn't ready yet and don't peek. I waited for about 10 minutes before I was allowed out of the front room into the kitchen/dining area.

I walked in to see candles, romantic music playing via satellite and Sirius, crystal filled with an enchanting orange colored drink*, food from Carraba's... and the Bear at 12:00. We shared our intimate candlelight dinner with the Bear.

"When is it noodles?"

"After we finish the calamari and soup."

"When are you going to be done with your soup?"

And so the evening continued.

"Are you having a date?"

"Yes, we are."

"Then dance."

"Huh?"

"You're s'post to dance on dates."

"Oh..."

"So Daddy, go dance with Momma. You can dance around the kitchen, but be careful not to bonk into stuff."

After the Bear had his noodles, it was declared: "IT DANCIN' TIME!" So Sirius provided some upbeat dancing tunes and the three of us danced about like loons. DramaMama and I attempted a nice slow dance, but with a side car. I held the Bear in one arm, and DramaMama in the other. It was all so romantical, complete with "EEEEWWWWWW" whenever I kissed DramaMama.

It was a lovely evening, and DramaMama and I got to spend some much needed time together, even though we were both feeling a little puny.

Wise Words From a Five-Year-Old

2006-11-01T18:27:00.000-08:00

"I'm the boss of my brain!"
- The Bear

Mischief and Mayhem at the Weezil Compound

2006-10-29T20:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight we hosted our family Halloween party. It was a great success with such fun things as the bubbling witch cauldron of root beer to the stick-to-the-wall gooey things that are now stuck to our ceiling, courtesy of DrummerBoy.

Among our activities was the Mummy Wrap game where the kids had to wrap their daddy in toilet paper like a mummy. We have photos, but they aren't downloaded yet. It was fun, but the TP kept breaking.

We had an excess of dry ice, so as you can imagine that all the boys in the house, fresh from a great episode of Mythbusters, set to trying the 2-liter bottle dry ice blooey. Three unsuccessful attempts were made before the dry ice ran out. We decided that the dry ice had lost its punch because it had been sitting out most of the evening. A short drive to the grocery store replenished the supply and mayhem ensued.

With DrummerBoy as the point-man and me as the giddy chaperone, we proceeded to do the thing up right. We recalled how Jamie from Mythbusters had carefully cut his dry ice into long strips, we set out to duplicate this. I sawed out several pieces and loaded the baby up. After about 20 minutes with no big bang, I was getting annoyed. There was plenty of fuel this time.

We gathered in one of the first attempts and discovered that the bottle was rock hard from the pressure. Since it hadn't blown on its own, we decided to give it a little help. One big toss into the sky onto asphalt later and the bottle kersploded. We both ran inside giggling like school girls.

"Did you leave it out there?" I said.

"It was gone... I found the label though."

"Go see if you can find any pieces from it."

A minute or so later he came back in. "I think it went in the neighbor's yard. She was pretty mad."

I came up here to do this post, and was about to the second paragraph went I heard a BOOM. I charged downstairs to hear DrummerBoy and DramaMama laughing heartily. The way it sounded, I thought it had gone off in the house.

This time he used a bottled water bottle. We found the wrapper from that too. So far no sirens.

I was originally going to blog about "Whistles for kids at parties are the Devil", but this won out.

By the way, the last bottle we tried is so bloated and hard that it is going to be a dandy when it hits the pavement. We are saving it for tomorrow so the neighbor that got the first one doesn't get too mad. We'll wake her up with it. Tee Hee.

Trunk-or-Treat

2006-10-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

This evening we attended the annual "Trunk-or-Treat". What's that you ask? In our church, to help promote safe Halloween candy gathering, a night is set aside where all the families gather in the parking lot of the church with decorated car trunks. The cars are parked side by side to make "trunk-or-treating" move quickly. Our car was themed after Hitchcock's "The Birds"... It had bird crap all over it. They also have a few games and dinner.

DramaMama made the "Ghost Chili" from the recipe on Domestic Goddess's blog. It is most excellent.

As tonight was also Drummer Boy's first official date (Homecoming), DramaMama was the one in charge of decorating him in his tux, and getting the "before" shots. She missed most of the Trunk-or-Treat, but did arrive in time to chat with several friends.

I was in charge of the Bear and his friend from school. The Bear was Batman, and his friend was Spider Man. They met up with another friend of the Bear's who was Superman. DramaMama got a picture of the three of them. It may show up here (or on her blog) later.

The first order of business was the dinner which consisted of about 20 selections of chili, and 3 or 4 selections of cornbread. I of course had the ghost chili. I was helping the boys get their food, and carrying their treat buckets. I wasn't paying attention to the level of my own bowl, and accidentally "ghosted" Spiderman's mask and gloves which were in his purple pumpkin candy bucket.

The Bear had a bucket that was Elmo's head. So Batman is gathering candy in an Elmo bucket. Interesting. "Elmo loves the caped crusader!"

With all of the political stuff going on, I was called into work today. I have a great t-shirt for such occasions. It reads: "Let me drop everything and work on your problem." I am so tired, both physically and mentally. This shirt expresses my feelings perfectly. I decided that it would serve well as my costume for this evening as well. I went as an over-worked computer guy.

One of the activities there was a dunk tank. The Bear really enjoyed that. He even hit the target and dunked the guy.

So, even though this has been a horrendous week on pretty much all fronts, I had an enjoyable time this evening.

Muchas Politicos

2006-10-24T18:58:00.000-07:00

Since hardly anyone laughed at my joke, I will regale you with tales from work. I covered the illness thing pretty well there. Lately, due to the upcoming election, our company has been uber-swamped with work for political candidates.

You know those annoying signs that get stuck all over the whole dern town? We do that.

You know those annoying political mailings you get every day for two months from various candidates trying to slurp up your vote? We do that.

You know those annoying phone calls you get asking you questions about the election and who you are going to vote for? We do that.

You know the web sites listed on the annoying signs (ie ErnestTBoogerheadForArizona.com)? We do that too. We have a local channel here that presents a show for the Mesa city government. I pause there occasionally, because I know pretty much everyone on the panel. I built the Mayor's website, the vice-mayor's website, numerous city councilmen websites, and one for the janitor to sell glow-in-the dark yo-yos.

I have a huge hand in the mailings and the phone lists. We are working statewide this election, so there is an abominable amount of data to organize. My brain is usually fried by end of day. But it is all worth it to make sure you get your share of political mailings and phone calls.

Vote for Ernest!