she said, i said....

Lanie said... and I say....


1. minded :: high
2. laundry :: pile
3. it's coming this way! :: something wicked this way comes
4. pinball :: wizard
5. ear :: chronic otitis externa
6. it's good :: Bruce Almighty
7. shiny :: perty
8. Family Cirus :: old cartoons
9. web :: spider
10. musicals :: broadway strike

Now, you take my responses, list your immediate thoughts, and link back to me! Post a comment so I can find your blog!

Ah, the holidays.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and here I sit in a chair I purchased on Black Friday. I got a few other things (I can't list them all because they weren't all for me... ok, even if most were), but nothing Really Big (other than this chair) - I've discovered that unless you want something that's just a total steal in a Black Friday ad, you can safely get there an hour or two after opening, avoid the massive crowds and still get the vast majority of everything you went to get. I got 100% of what I wanted this morning, in fact. Now I just have to fill out the rebate forms.....

But I digress. Holidays are an odd time of year for me now, that's when it really sinks in how far I am from where I grew up. It never used to be a question of where we'd go for Thanksgiving; I'd just tag along with wherever my parents were at. Usually it was their house, occasionally it was at my brother's and I think we had it at our place once or twice, but all three "units" never lived more than an hour away from each other. Heck, once or twice we even all went out for Thanksgiving dinner, but we were still all together.

Now that we're in Florida, Beth's side of the family is around, but spread out over a lot of the state. There was some talk of having Thanksgiving down in Delray at one uncle's house, but that would have been around a 5 hour drive, and even though we were invited to stay overnight it still would have been more time driving than socializing, so we declined and started to make plans for a Thanksgiving with just the four of us. The next day, though, it was determined that a few others weren't going to be there wherever it was and it wound up being hosted at our house; that same uncle/aunt (who also has a house in Cocoa, so it wasn't that much further) and Beth's parents were here for Thanksgiving. And it was nice.

I do miss some of the 'regularity' in which I used to see my side of the family when we lived in Ohio... but having been in Florida for a year and a half now, I realize to some extent what it must have been like for Beth to not see her family for so long. We do see everyone every once in a while, but at the holidays you realize just how much you don't see them as well. Welcome to the modern world of quick, mass transportation and following the paycheck I suppose.

My other standing gripe about Florida; while I generally love Florida winters, December 25th just was no where near cold enough to feel like Christmas last year... and I don't know that it will again. I'm told I'll get used to it by some... others say they never do. I do love the rest of the Florida winters... but I miss the Ohio summer in comparison... ah well.

In the end, I suspect I'll stay at the job I have now; as messed up as some aspects of it are, it pays decently, they like me there and I feel very secure in my position and, frankly, what job isn't messed up in some aspects? I'll finish my Master's degree and job hunt again from there; unless the market in Ohio gets better I doubt I'll move back north at that time, but I may just look in that area to see what I find... who knows?

wheeeee!

I hate to use that subject line in some ways, because I'll feel bad when I re-use it later. Ah well. Such is life.

At any rate, It's been a bit since my last post and frankly, I should be doing homework but don't really feel like it. So why not post a blog? Even if there's not a ton to post about (well, perhaps there is, but, well, anyway), I can always borrow a meme from someone anyway, right? Or even blog about 'crazy words' like "meme" and such. But, in this case, I'll go with the former...


This one is fun... Cut & Paste into new document, Place an X by all the things you've done, or remove the X from the ones you have not, and send it to all your friends, including me. This is for your entire life!

(X) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
(X) Been to Florida
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
(X) Been on the opposite side of the country
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Played with a Tonka Truck
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang karaoke
(X) Paid for a meal with only coins
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone you care about
(X) Blown bubbles
( ) Made a bonfire on the beach
( ) Crashed a party
( ) Crashed a wedding
( ) Crashed a funeral,
( )Gone ice-skating

1. Any nicknames? yes
2. Mother's name? Karen
3. Favorite drink? I'm flexible so long as it involves caffeine
4. Any tattoos? yes
5 Body piercing? Body has enough holes already, thanks.
6. How much do you love your job? Eh, not so much. But I don't hate it either.
7. Favorite vacation spot? wherever it "feels like vacation"
8. Ever been to Africa? Nope
9. Ever eaten cookies for dinner? cookie dough at least, yeah.
10. Ever been on TV? yes
11. Ever steal any traffic signs? no
12. Ever been in a car accident? yes
13. Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? 4 now, 2 door most of my driving years though
14. Favorite pie? eh. hard to say, like a few but not a big pie guy
15. Favorite Number? 6
16. Favorite movie? who can really pick one favorite?
17. Favorite holiday? My Birthday. (Well, it SHOULD be a national holiday.)
18. Favorite dessert? So many, and so little time....
19. Favorite food? Whatever someone else cooks and doesn't charge me for.
20. Favorite day of the week? Today.
21. Favorite brand of body wash? Um, I'm a guy. I use soap.
22. Favorite toothpaste? whatever's minty and on sale
23. Favorite smell? Man, again, who can pick just one???
24. What do you do to relax? Not nearly enough. :(
25. Do you have a message to your friends reading this? Um, yeah. It's a list of odd things that I copied from Lanie's blog. In fact, you're reading it now.
26. How do you see yourself in 10 years? running my own business, working for myself!!!
27. Furthest place you will send this message? The Home Planet.
28. Who will respond the fastest? Will anyone?

The "Kid Conundrum"

Anyone who knows me well knows I make a point to spend what time I can with my kids when I can. I'd be the house husband (OK, is "stay at home dad" a better term these days?) if I could, but the fact I currently have more earning power dictates that I'm the one "bringing home the bacon." I have wound up on some work shifts where I didn't see the kids much during the week and really didn't like that, so lately I've had done what I can with decent success. And I'm happy to say that the kids still enjoy spending time with me when they can; sure, they aren't always playing with me when I'm home, but they do seem to like to when they can. In a normal world, this would make me pretty darned happy.

Of course, those of you that do know me well know I'm also going back to school for a Master's in IT. Yeah, I'm doing it part time so I can have more time with the family, but I still wind up with the odd class (like the one I'm taking now) that just takes more out of me than others. There's a lot of reading for class, and the class is focusing on an aspect of IT I've never really done anything with or cared much about (software engineering), so it's a lot of new material. On top of that, in reading the prof's expectations for the class it's pretty clear he's expecting more out of us than the average prof might. I have a lot of extra research to do as well.

What the heck do these two things have to do with each other? Well, I need to leave for work sometime between 7 and 7:15 to get there on time, which for me means I need to be up around 6. (Jillian gets up for school at 6:30, and I like to be showered and dressed so I can help her get ready if she needs it before I have to go.) Now, I'm not a morning person. Getting up any earlier than that is hardly feasible, so there's not much time for me to study much at night.

The kids are usually in bed sometime between 8 and 9 in the evening. Theoretically, I do have a little bit of time to get stuff done for class in that window, but getting up at 6 I try to be in bed by 10-10:30. (In recent years I've come to understand why it's called "beauty sleep"; life can get really ugly if I don't get enough sleep.) Therefore, I try not to have any caffeine after work, or at the latest not after dinner, and by the time 8:30 rolls around I'm really not at my best usually.

So, at some point on this schedule I need to try to get work done with the kids being up and awake. This is where their affection for me becomes a liability.... Xavi in particular doesn't understand that I need to work when I'm at home sometimes. Jillian will often forget, and even days that Xavi seems to understand it won't be that long before he comes rushing in excited about something. I am, at best, less than productive when trying to get stuff done when they're up.

I am looking at two possible options at work schedule wise.... with that Saturday rotation they've started, I could just volunteer to be "the Saturday guy" and have Mondays off work, so I'd have at least one week day with Jillian at school and where hopefully Xavi would be more distracted... but, fact of the matter is if he's here, he's here and is still a liability. There has been some talk of the benefit of having me go to a 10am-7pm type shift at work too, which would make the commute easier and allow me to stay up later in the evenings, but at the expense of time with the kids. (I'd see Xavi in the morning still before work, but I'd just see Jillian a lot less.) Hence the conundrum. Do I go with what would be best to get the school work done (as well give more time with Beth without the kids, as well as time to get other things done I want to such as more certs and such) or do I keep the time with the kids and continue trying to scrape together study time?

The 10a-7pm schedule may be put on me temporarily for the duration of a project anyway, perhaps I'll just try it out and see how it works. If I get enough done in the evenings, perhaps I can reserve more time to catch up with Jillian on the weekends. Perhaps I'm sweating it too much; some parents don't even get that much of a chance to spend time with their kids. Still.... I'm not just 'some parent', I like to think.

*sigh*

Furry alarm clock

Last week, they started a Saturday rotation at work; every fourth week, one of us has to come in Saturday morning and, in exchange, we get to take that many hours off during the week. What a bargain! (I actually thought I was being pretty slick, stacked up extra hours during the week and when I'm done today, I'll be at 40 hours so I don't have to go in on Tuesday. [Work week there is Wednesday to Tuesday.] However, I remembered last night there's a benefits presentation Tuesday.... yeah, I was smart. d'oh.) Today's my first Saturday in the rotation.

Anyrate, I had the alarm set this morning for half an hour later, since on Saturday I can get there actually about 45 minutes later than I normally do. (I was/am debating a stop for donuts en route to work, hence the extra 15 just in case... heh.) However, about 10 minutes before it usually goes off, this furry black alarm clock jumped up on the bed and made darn sure I was awake; I think she woke up Bethie too, actually.

Now, this morning I'm not TOO upset, even if I did get up almost an hour earlier than I intended to. I'm not happy about the principle of the matter, however, and frankly if she gets me up tomorrow morning at just before 6 I'll be quite upset with her. Or I'll try to be; it's hard to be too upset with a cat that just wants love and affection, especially when she's scared enough of Xavi's love and affection that she really doesn't come out when he's out and about in the day.

Anyone know how to teach a cat to tell time? Well, actually, she got the normal time right, I guess it's the days of the week we need to go over with her.... heh.

Happy Birthday!

OK, so it's more of a sad birthday. My Sullyboy would have turned seven today. Seven years old.

I wonder how his curly hair would look these days? Would he still be blond, or would his hair have darkened as mine did and his big sister's did?

How much might he have recovered?

If he hadn't gotten sick, what would life be like now?

I can't help but wonder if he might not still be here if he hasn't been in the hospice overnight like he was that week. I know some are of the opinion that he needed to be alone to let go... I wonder if he let go because he was alone. Odds are strongly against his still being here now with the problems he had, but just the same.... *sigh*

I miss my Sullyboy. Happy birthday, Little Munch. I'll always love you!

Time for a bookworm de-worming?

Got it from Beth who got it from Lanie who probably got it from a complete stranger. Hrm. That almost sounds bad. Anyrate... Copy it and . . .

Bold those you’ve read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your To Be Read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (sad since I was given a copy years ago)
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers