White Lightning Axiom: Redux

The TSD Test went off fairly well this weekend. The kids did well and I managed to bumble through my Black Belt test. Now, I'm a full fledged black belt practitioner. Next test, 2 years. Heh. One down side is that I may have broken a bone in my hand. Two days later and it's still swollen. I've considered going to the local ER ... but to what end?
In other news, the chickens are doing well in spite of this weekend's "end of days" rain storms. So much flooding, so cold. The cooler weather is doing ugly things to my squash/gourds but the corn and beans are loving it. The tomato plants are growing well, but the fruit is staying green since the night time temps are not peaking above 80 yet. Ugh.

Technorati Tags:Swimming | Karate | Children | Rain

Labels: Children, Rain, TSD, Weekend

Twit reposting has been offline for a bit. It may come back, it may not. Whatever. In the mean time, I'd like to let you all know that the TSD Tournament in AC this past Saturday went off pretty swimmingly. Ghengis got 3 third place awards, Attila got 3 fourth in Forms, Weapons and breaking. I got 2nd in Breaking, 3rd in Forms and 4th in weapons. Not too shabby, but we will improve.

Technorati Tags:TSD | Weekend | Karate | Children

Labels: Children, Karate, TSD, Weekend

BOYS BATHROOM DUTY AGAIN! Yep, another swim meet and another round in the boys locker room, spending my time naming the cockroaches ... and then stomping on them. Yeah, it was that entertaining. There were a few moments where I had the opportunity to tell the twerps to get out if they are not using the crapper. It's a locker room, not a playground! To make it worse, I left my thermos of coffee in the 'loner car of poor idling' so I was pretty much up the creek, without a paddle, and a full bore migraine waterfall raging. After I was finished with my stint in purgatory, we went to a pizza party for the swim team which was more of the same except the kids were not running about screaming in their birthday suits ... nope, they were mostly dressed. The only saving grace was that I was able to pour two pints of lager down my gullet at $5.50 in 90 seconds flat. Oh, did I ever need that to dull my finger-nail scraping on whiteboard nerves.

Speaking of nerves ... the SuperSaturn POS just cost me another $1K+ in repairs for the inspection. It needs new struts, 1 wheel, new front disks, trans bolt, re-attach bumper, a leak in radiator (which will be ignored) among a plethora of faults. We have 2 more years (give or take) on the Family Tank v2.0 then we can get a replacement car for me. The damn thing is draining my dry.

Technorati Tags:Swimming | Car | Children | Weekend

Labels: Car, Children, Swimming, Weekend

I was a mixed bag this weekend. Only a few exceptional events, but I'll mix them in with the rest of the tripe so you'll have to shake them out. You know, like searching through that box of cereal to find the toy inside or dredging through the peanut-butter to see if there are really 1.5 flies per jar. Nope, those are raisins ... of course. So, Friday the Cubs and I went to the Radio station for an hour and gobbled up pizza after wards. They had a good time storming and occupying the broadcast center, and even more so antagonizing the tour director. Of course, this just got my Twin Tyrants all ramped up for Dodge Ball Friday. Glad they can take out their frustrations on each-other without having them come back to me with complaints of 'he said/she said'. Nope, just unmitigated violence and revenge. Next day: nothing. Just slouched about the Manor but I did manage to fill the SuperSaturn POS with 10 gallons of NJ gasoline. I give the Mrs a set of 5gal canisters and she buys two weeks worth of fuel for me at 10-15 cents off per gallon while she tanks up. In exchange, I top off the fluids in the Family Tank v2.0 and toss in some fuel conditioner to boot. She completes me: I service her vehicle and light her fire; she gives me gas. Speaking of gas and fires .... this may be of interest to some of you (and it was for me since my obsessive compulsive ranting about gas prices). Sunday is the usual: Church, Sunday School, Bring in firewood, Prep meals for the week. The Mrs actually made the PB&J sandwiches for them this time ... and cut off ALL the crusts. Ghengis will not be pleased, he likes the crusts. Odd child. So all of Sunday was just in preperation for the work week. No big shocker there, except that the Tyrants had President's day off on Monday so I'd be sitting it out with them.

And along comes Monday, I cook, I clean, I entertain. Since is it a semi-national holiday, the swim-team practice is called off: School closed = no pool access. Fine. After my domestic duties conclude, we go through the regular 'swim at club/tsd at studio' routine. Everything is domestic bliss till some time after O'Dark-Thirty. Jake saunters into the master bedroom where the Mrs is settling into the mile-wide bed for a little shut-eye. He makes himself comfortable and then proceeds to produce about 200 metric liters of semi-digested, fully masticated vomit. How in the world!? He ate his dinner at 1500 hours and now he has issue? He must have been fermenting that batch of bile and 100 molar hydro-sulfuric acid for quite some time. So, the Mrs and I manage hose down and mop up ... he felt better but we needed some serious air-freshener to detoxify the master suite. The next morning, he was chipper as can be but I was still down a pillow. You know you are getting too soft when you need two pillows to sleep right.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Illness

Labels: Gas, Illness, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Weekend

Playing catch-up again here. It was quite a busy weekend and I did not get half of what I wanted done in the time that I had allotted to myself. The grand ball of delicate maneuvers started on Friday Night. After wrapping up the kids TSD class with the usual Battle Royall Dodge Ball Melee, I scuttled on back to the Haupertonian manor to prepare for the next week. Since I knew I would be occupied with peripheral tasks, I chose to make as much of the meals we would be consuming and bundle them up in nice little packages for each day. Provincial Chicken with Herbs and Garlic ... along with 6 bacon wrapped cheddar wursts. The Mrs loves bacon-baked chicken. I sprinkle a cup of rice along the bottom of the 18 inch skillet befor putting it in the oven for 90 minutes and the rice soaks up all the goodness. Yeah, I'm not supposed to be eating that sort of stuff, so that's why I canceled my Cardiologists Appointment. I also prepped 10 hard boiled eggs and started defrosting the lobster and little smokeys that the Tyrants like to snack on between activities. It's all a labor of love. The love of food is the most genuine love of all. That's a pithy quote that I cannot find an attribution for. Maybe I just made it up but I find it hard to believe that I am the initiator of something that ... Confucian. And, of course, there are a couple of other dishes ... mundane stuff like mac-n-cheese or spags-n-balls that I had to plow under. I tend to be happiest when I'm in the kitchen.

Saturday was HORRENDOUS! We had four/five events set up. The first thing in the morning, we had to drag the Tumultuous Twins out of their warm and snuggly lairs so we could get some nutrition in their bellies and get off to the TSD Studio in time for their test. They had other ideas. In mortal combat, I did manage to stuff enough of their breakfast between their gritted teeth between crushing blows to my ribs and skull that they would be able to make it through the test without depleting their energy reserves. This, however, resulted in my total lack of time to feed my own gullet. They did well in the test, for the most part. Attila, for the first time, broke her board in the first kick, outperforming the rest of the red belt testers. This will put them on track for being Cho Dan Bo in May ... which will get them set up for being a Junior Black Belt at this time next year. But let us not count our chicks before they hatch. Right now, we will just need to learn their third weapon form (another staff form) and then get their previous forms cleaned up. Thinking about it ... just ... wow. They'll be seven which gives them a few years till they are out of the Manor. Now my test, good grief! To start off, I was not in my peak performance health. Then, my usual bent is to go all out which tends to leave me in an exhausted state nearly half way through my 'performance art'. The sparring is towards the end and I just SUCK OUT when I get to that point. I always have some fantastic ideas about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to 'Shock and Awe' my audience, but in the end I just stand there and throw single kicks or punches while getting pummeled by my opponent. (Insert long and depressed sigh here)

After I slithered out of the test as a slithering mass of pulsating pain, we stopped off for a bite of pizza with the rest of the available crew and celebrated our ability to put on a strong face in spite of the various wounds leaking precious body fluids. From there, it was on to a Swim Meet where, again, I had bathroom guard duty. It was steaming hot in there but I was required to stand fast and for good reason. The janitor had a peculiar predilection of creeping in the back door every so often and slum around in the bathroom stalls. Creepy. I did get to see their performance on the Mrs's laptop after she uploaded the video and pictures she took. That's her thing, I sit in the locker room and embrace the aroma of teen-age angst while she sits amongst throngs of semi-detached family members and chews through several packs of rechargeable batteries. Fair trade, I think.

Since this is Scout Week, we had a special mass at church for the cubs to attend. We all sat in the front row and periodically throughout the service, Father K would make mention of it. Really quite sweet actually. Both Attila and Ghengis were there in the front row along with the rest of the Horde. Since this was done at the 10am Family mass, I had to let the gals at the Sunday school go on without me. I hope they managed. After that, the Mrs took our little girl scout (Daisy, Brownie?) off to manage a cookie-pimping table at the local grocery store while I took my mini-me off to the movie theater. While Ghengis and I were slouching through a rather expensive matinee showing of 'Dog Hotel', the minions of cookie crook managed to offload 100 boxes of tasty diabetic failure. She has personally sold over 70 boxes now. At 3.50/box, they are doing a brisk business! We had a bit of time before the gals were done, so after the expensive movie, we took the Cybernetic Mammoths out and gave them a thorough scrub-down. They were beginning to get that particularly interesting smell that can only be described as "moldy sweat sock full of Doritos". Yeah ... they need to get out more but they are seriously 'indoor dogs'. Thor balks at any inclement weather outings. Big Sissy.

The rest of my time was allocated to showing Eldest Son how to do his next staff form and compelling him to keep on trying to ride his bike. He's getting a bit to big for it so I can see an Upgrade in the near future for him. He has the 'going straight really fast' down pat and the 'panicked emergency brake' ... the turning part is the stich right now. Other than that, the Mrs and I did a bunch of prep for the week. Clothes, swim gear, TSD props, lunches, etc... Same work, every week. Life is superb ... elegant ... and splendid (Ghengis's new word).

Crud, forgot to whine about gasoline prices. WTF! Why are they at nearly $2/g when the oil price is sticking to $40/bbl!? Damn crooks!

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Weekend | Scouts

Labels: Children, Gas, Karate, Scouts, Swimming, Weekend

Not much new to report. I did not get to do many of the chores I had hoped to get through this weekend. I spent way too much time using blasting caps to get the mountains of canine fertilizer off the frozen tundra of the back-50. There was all the usual stuff too. Outside of the mornings getting gobbled up by services and sunday-school, it seems that Sunday is all to short. So be it, I've got bigger eggs to fry right now.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Chores | Dogs

Labels: Chores, Dogs, Weekend

Here I am in the boys locker room, doing the 'Security Duty' for the Swim Meet. Basically, my primary task is supposed to be making sure that no kids get molested or harassed while they are here. Secondary is the prevention of vandalism or injury from horseplay. So, sergeant at arms is probably the best classification. I've pulled this honor for the last two meets, mostly because I'm one of the few who took the training. I needed it for the work I do with the children in Sunday School and Cub Scouts as well so I'm in high demand for this sort of thing. Most of the time I just sit here in the swampy heat waiting, watching, and giving stern looks of disapproval when one of the boys do regular boy-type stuff. No harm comes of it since it never goes to far. Story of my life: Sheepdog.

Friday night was ok. Kids ate their lunch so they were entitled to 5 minutes in the hot tub provided they did their piano practice, finish their homework and eat all of their dinner (of course, busing their dishes afterwards as well). They fulfilled the requirements so they got some bubbly time. On the way to the pool, they get a treat in the POS Super Saturn of 6 little smokeys of the 'cheddar wurst' variety. They just love 'em. Gobble them down and we get going on our laps. Three laps each of breast stroke, back, crawl and butterfly. They get some pointers and then we play for the rest of the hour. It's can be a pretty good time, mostly. If either of them have had a rough day, it can be a real bear. From there, we have a 10 minute drive to TSD practice where they eat a hard boiled egg on the way. A little death-ninja training mixed in with a bazillion pushups/situps (they cheat horribly on these) will get them a bit tuckered out. On Mondays and Thursdays, they'll go from the karate studio to another 1.5 hours of swim practice where they mostly goof around. That's fine by me ... the Tyrants already got enough 'coaching' (read: drill-sergeant admonishment) for the day. The Ever Beautiful Mrs picks them up for that activity most of the time. If she has her own late-night engagements, I'll take over. Every other week is Girl scouts so she'll take Attila to that and I'll escort Genghis to the practice. On the way, they'll get either crab/lobster chunks (Jakers) or Mandarin orange slices (Alexis) and a packet of string cheese to tide them over. On the way home from that, it's a treat of a 100% fruit drink and a packet of sugar wafers. So riddle me this: why have they not gained a pound in
a year!? Must be the Asian influence.

The Grandparents made a trip down and occupied the Tyrant for a bit while the Mrs and I got some much-needed sleep this morning. Of course, since I failed to get my coffee at 0600, I started the day off with a good old withdrawal headache. Since then, I've been sucking down the brown elixir of alertness like it's going out of style. In between, Gramps and I worked on the pine-wood derby cars for the Tyrants and restocked the firewood brackets. I've got about 1 more month's worth of firewood stacked up next to the manor walls and 2 weeks inside the 'stove' room. I think we'll do ok for the rest of the winter. It's been colder than an Alaskan plumber's wrench in January around here of late. Gotta talk to Mr Gore about that ... Need some of that new-fangled global warming! Tomorrow, I've got to get the family to the 8am mass so I'll have time to do some brunch with them after I finish up with Sunday School. Weekends ... ever since we started the family some 6.5 years ago, my free time has been anything but! If I can slice out a few hours tomorrow, I'm going to try to clean some of the refuse out of the flower beds and put a few bulbs into the ground. It may be to cold though, I wish I had finished that nonsense in the Fall. If it's too onerous out there I'll just spend the time cleaning inside and prepping the meals for the week. That's a lot of sandwiches you know.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Swimming | Karate | Children

Labels: Children, Karate, Swimming, Weekend

I'm a touch late with this, but it was a rather busy weekend. First off, we celebrated (remotely) Amish Hero Dad's birthday. The Tyranical Twins of Turpitude sang an eerie and somewhat disturbing rendition of 'Happy Birthday' over the phone. The Adam's family apparently was spooked when they heard the audio and reported similar instances of reality creep as was seen in 'The Ring'. But that was on Sunday ... Let's rewind a few hours, eh? Saturday afternoon was my time to roast on the hot tarmac of the Naval Air Base when I was taking my Motorcycle Safety Training Class. First off, I've NEVER ridden a motorcycle before so the whole clutch-shift thing was a little bit of a reach for me. And no, I have only ever driven a standard transmission vehicle once ... poorly. So, from 1300 hours till 1930, I was out there with a screaming hot engine beneath me with a full modular helmet and jacket on ... in the sun, Ninety degrees, on a square mile of asphalt. Yes, I was somewhat damp by the end of the class. I am, however, rather surprised at my ability to keep the damn thing upright and running even though I tended to end up in 3rd or 4th gear instead of 1st. Neutral was an outstandingly rare find for me. The written test is this coming Wednesday and the Road (Rash) Test is the following Saturday. If I keep my wits about me and Sgt Myers has a sense of humor (NOT!), I'll have a slim possibility of getting a 'Positive Evaluation'. So long as I do not lay the bike down in a 100 meter landslide of metal, rubber and flesh I'm going to call it a success.

Sunday was a slow day. Finally. We were going to head off to Sesame Place after morning Mass, but a phone call in the afternoon on the previous day called for an abrupt change of plans. Instead, we spend a big chunk of the day at the Seliga's Cloister with their Germanic buddies drinking beer and eating things that would make my Cardiologist gasp in horror. It was for a good cause, you know. Around 1300 hours the sky opened up and it rained thunder, lightning and tree-snapping winds for an hour or two. What a mess. Light out nearly every intersection and trees down in between. That alone would have made Sesame Place an utter disaster but there was this to contend with as well. I do believe that on the ticket, there is some mention of one's health prohibiting access. I mean, jeeze! Oddly enough, we blame the Fireworks at the Seliga Cloister some 6 years ago for the Mrs going into labor.

Final notes: My Monday Pushup Plan of 12/12/9/7/110 went all too smoothly so I'm considering doubling the counts. You are supposed to rest 90 seconds between sets, but I just don't have that sort of time! We will try to do the 32/26/22/22/MAX this Wednesday and see how it pans out. If it works as well as I think it will, I'll be doing 200 perfect push-ups ... [read:hubris]. This week will hence forth be known as 'Testy Week'. I have the 2 motorcycle test, a medical test on the morning of the 31st (more on that later, but it involves sedation) and the TSD test on August 2nd. I'll be going for the second stripe on my Red Belt, the Tyrants will be getting their Red Belt and their Black Do-Boks ... easier to put through the laundry. On top of that, it's the end of the Development Sprint at work so there is a lot of pressure [read:CRUNCH] to wrap up efforts on the project. Anyone have any extra positive vibes available, please send them my way.

Closing note: The Mrs just tanked up at $3.65/g USD at the corner station. No additional drilling, no additional production. Just words and speeches caused oil futures to slide into the $120/b range and it seems to be in free-fall now. It's making it really tough to make the ROI on the motorcycle/scooter to work out.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weekend | Karate | Children | Motorcycle | Pushups

Labels: Children, Gas, Karate, Motorcycle, Pushups, Weekend

Okay , even as an experienced raconteur ... gotta make this quick. I have a bazillion hours of meetings to attend over the next week and a birthday party (week-long) to prep for. I'm going to be busier than a puppy with two peters! So, into the mix we go as I attempt to apprise you, my faithful digesters of Haupertonain lore. Late Friday, I attempted to be a good Samaritan when i saw a rather large (by today's measure) sedan (think it was a crown vic) stopped on the side of the road. It looked as if it were riding rather low and when I passed it by, I noticed that the driver side front tire was indeed deflated. I thought it would make for some good brownie points in purgatory if I would lend a helping hand. No luck. The rather capable and fit man inside was busy on his black-berry calling for help as the 'on-star' sqawked away and the GPS busily informed him that he needed to turn right in 200 feet. When queried as to his situation, he grinned and noted that his axle had dropped and no change of vulcanized steel-belted rubber would do any good. Merrily, I departed and left him to his electronics. My points will have to remain unredeemed for now.

This weekend, the Mrs was heading up to Long Island, Bethpage, to visit some family and took Attila with her since, of the two, she can be the most manageable. She is the planner, that little one. Jake is more of an Implementation expert. Saturday, Ghengis and I pretty much just goofed off the entire day. Sure, I mowed the lawn, picked up dog poo (unfortunately, in that order), did some gardening, refilled the bird feeder with oil-seed, and generally took care of business inside when it was raining outside. He, being a little boy, watched transformer videos, played on the Wii (We only allow that console game, and no games that are sit-down) and asked for pizza or fries most of the time. Given his preference, we went out to the local 'Hole in the Wall' restaurant and bar to have nachos, fries, pizza, onion rings and deep fried cheese sticks. The pile of nacho had peppers in it with olives ... and I actually ate the olives. Those are one of my few disliked foods. Something odd is happening to my tastes.

Sunday was marginally more productive. The night before, I let him sleep on mommy's side of the bed, and at the weary hour of 0700, he slowly woke up, smiled and pointed out the open window where the sunlight was streaming in. Morning ... his favorite time of the day. Mostly, because his days hold so much promise of new activities and adventure. We are going to to our best to make sure that he can retain that joy for as long as possible. We watched his Transformer dvd in the morning until it was time to wash-up and head off to church. While there, we dropped off the recycling at the local parochial school (they get $$$ for it while I get charged for the local township charges a flat fee to take it from me [and probably toss it in with the regular garbage]) which lead to a detailed discussion on why we recycle and why trees are good. Right after church, we drove off to the Theater to watch wall-E. He was thirsty. We had gotten there just moments before the movie had started so I sat him down and was about to pay 55% for the 55 gallon drum of sugar suspended in water when I noted the line for rot-gut streamed all the way to Ohio. Lets see, leave him alone in a theater and trust he will not yell fire. Not on your life! He would have to wait till later when we stopped at Nifty-Fifty's. That, of course, did not turn out the way we had expected it. We both had hot dogs and malt-shakes. Difference is that on his last bite, he overstuffed his mouth, gagged and spewed a vile combination of digestive juices, chocolate shake and hot dog all over the place. I caught the first gallon or so, but the rest was spatter about, mostly on me. Mini-golf will have to wait till another day. We rushed home, took a bath and then he begrudgingly napped in the master suite mile-wide bed for a few hours. I had to stay there with him, of course. Not that I needed a nap or anything. Nope, not me. Not ... yawn .. meee... zzzzz.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Family | Children

Labels: Children, Family, Weekend

To start with, PT just busted me up something fierce This past Friday. I was in no mood to do anything after that so I was fortunate in that we had company down and the Tyrants were willing to pass up swimming and Dodge Ball Friday to go and harass our guests. While I did house chores, the rest of the horde went off to do a bit of bowling at the local Brunswick Zone. Better them than me, of course. I've been laying low from TSD for the last few days hoping the issue with my chest would resolve to a tolerable level of pain if I just let it be for a bit. Seems to have worked. I'm within operating tolerances now so as to be capable of working off that 1000lb of red meat I've yorked down since last Friday. And there is this, a short piece from the Mrs this past Friday:

Jake was too comfortable this morning and wasn't too happy with me waking him up this morning. He was complaining that his dream wasn't over yet. I asked him what he was dreaming about and he said with a smile on his face "Looney Tunes" so I asked which character and he replied "The one that shoots". I told him that when he goes to sleep tonight that he can finish his dream.

That's my boy! I'm hoping he would not pick Yosemite Sam or Elmer J Fudd though.

The actual weekend was fairly busy. It started out with a birthday party at Elmwood Zoo in the morning. You may have noted that I have had low expectations of the zoo, ever since I noted this in my previous literary attempts last year. The zoo is pretty much a set of pens that were put up and anything that happened to be in the area was made to be the population. Porcupines, fox, and such. Lots of listless goats, ponies are available for e-coli incubation. The rest of the day was of a much higher caliber. We took a little hike out to the hinterlands of Pennsyltucky ... somewhere near Centralia ... to a wondrous (but extraordinarily difficult to find) place called Knobles. It is essentially the hive for carnies. A bazillion little rides that you barter for entertainment by providing little slips of paper with notations of '20 cents' or '2 dollars'. So, you get into the park for free and only pay to go on the rides. Perfect for adults who, like the Mrs, retch at the thought of turning around too fast to look behind oneself. Provided you have some vertigo lovers in the group for the shorter children, it can be a rather entertaining outing for all. I was particularly interested in the 'Hot Dog' ride. Yes, the eateries scattered about the park who would lure in patrons with a zen for high fat and super-saturated sugar beverages were never more than three steps away. I do believe I managed to hit all of them except the 'Rib Station'. Yeah, not enough time or stomach capacity. Did I mention I gained a few pounds over the weekend? Oh, and it is perfectly fine if you bring your pets. I noted quite a few dogs of every shape and size, but not too many cats. Lots of NASCAR fans, and a significantly high ratio of skin to tattoo prevalence. After wandering about whilst I ruminated upon a bottomless bag of kettle-corn, we finally exhausted our booklet of 'ride-money' and implored our Tyrants to allow us to depart. It's a 2.5 hour trip out there and for some bizarre reason, it took nearly the same amount of time to get back! Arriving at the gateway to the Domain in which the Haupertonian Empire is geographically located, we, the party of hungry little ones and adults of exhausted extremes, decided to lunch upon the fare available at the local all night diner. Heart-burn city. I had some steak and eggs with a side of bacon and some pizza fries. A few more calories than I really needed at that time of the evening, but hey, it's a vacation and I'll pay my dues later ... right? Now, of course, I'm paying for my decision to kick the can down the road and it is a heavy price to pay. But I am vehement in my dedication to shed this obstinately persistent lardage. Really! Sunday, you know, the day of rest, I conducted myself to do absolutely nothing about this 'dedication' and attended a KOC event in KOP regarding my 4th Degree in the Knighthood. So, now I am a 'Sir Knight'. I can say no more other than there was A LOT of free beer and snacks. It was nearly for naught since I managed to pick up the sheet from last year's ceremony and drove to the wrong place. The Valley Forge Convention center was about 3 miles away from the event location this year and my 'double guess jeopardy swag' allocated an extra 15 minutes for such a mishap. I called the mrs and she gave me a general direction, the whole commute was finished before we disconnected. BIG THANX TO THE MRS on that save. The whole day was pretty much shot.

Monday, I got things done on what is supposed to be an Armed Forces day of memorial. (Side note: Thanx to all the guys and gals out there from the Revolutionary war [in our back yard no less!] up through our deployments today) Changed the oil, filters and topped off the fluids in the POS Supersaturn SL1 ... Attila watched me and was AMAZED that Daddy could do mechanic work. Especially when I drove the car up on the ramp: "Daddy is so COOL!". I should have had the Mrs record that particular display of parental celebration, I may not hear anything like that when she gets to those nasty teen years. I did get the lawn mowed, some weeds pulled, the remaining mulch spread, grass seed planted and a bit of bamboo transplanted from the easement (where our municipal groundskeepers mowed it down) to more appropriate locations along the back-50 boundaries. Oh, and the Mrs returned the Wii that she had bought ... going to make an equitable exchange with Big Little Bro for his unused unit. I wonder if he would like a couple of Mammoth sized cyber-hounds in exchange.

Oh, and that recent dip in oil prices. Interesting, no? The price of oil goes down and what happens to gasoline prices? They go up. You think it may be that we still have a problem with speculators? W are burning less gasoline now (demand down) and oil supplies are going up so that whole semester in Macro Economics tells me that something is not quite right here.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weekend | Karate | Children | KOC | Knoebels | Bowling | Swimming

Labels: Bowling, Children, Knoebels, KOC, Swimming, TSD, Weekend

Late, late, late. So sorry. Really, cannot you just grasp the visceral experience of my sorry-ness just oozing from the screen? No? Sigh ... okay, yeah. So I've been preoccupied. Let's just skip all that perfidy and get down to the rub, eh? Last Friday, yes. Dodge Ball and swimming ... all good except that the pool heater had been broken all week and by the end of the run the pool temperature had dropped to something just short of freezing. This morning, the ambient air temperature was somewhere around 38F so you can imagine the blue-lip experience I was getting from all that semi-liquid wonderfulness. The kids did not mind one bit though. I cannot fathom how latitudinarian they seem to be about heat or the lack there of. Must be the Minnesota Blood I contributed to their genetic makeup. That, or the nano-bot fusion heaters running about their bodies. Either way, on top of the 'energy death' cold days, it's been raining consistenly all week so mowing the lawn had to be skipped. Fortunately, I scalped the pastoral expanse last week so I could skip this weekend without having to worry about looking for Doctor Livingston in the Darkest Heart of Africa the following week. I need to weed the Haupertonian Agricultural Sector too ... this extended cool period has really been a boon for the leafy greens and pea. Totally out of control! I've been eating salads freshly picked every night for the last week and I've got 10 bins all set up for this week (lunch, dinner). Delish! (no, I'm not stealing this from that faux personality who whores for Dunkin Donuts)

This Saturday, after a rocky start, we got going at 1000 hours for a favored destination ... Sesame Place! Nice and close, about one gallon of gasoline for a round trip. Of course, as noted, we have had a flood recently of a mostly semi-liquid slurry of liquid hydrogen and suspended dark-matter. It was concentrated in the water-based attractions and you KNOW that Attila required me to ride with her on the more vigorous rides. The ducky-ride, one of the favorites, was particularly chilly being the first thing we hit after Ghengis' required visit to the Super Grover Roller-Coaster: VaporTrail. The upside is that we never had to wait for more than 60 seconds to get on ANY wet ride attraction we were interested in. The dry rides took a bit more patience, but nothing out of the ordinary. Tea-cups, Blast-off and Flying Fish were the only lines. All in all, well worth the kidney I had to give up for the season passes. On the way to the Park, we noticed a new restaurant on Street Road just before we got onto the Freeway. It's called Ristorante Toscana 52. I thought we could stop off on the way back home (park closes at 1700 hours) for a quick bite to size the place up. Well, it was absurdly wonderful. A bit more pricey than Carrabas, but a culinary treat of surprising proportions. I think we were lucky to arrive so early since when leaving roughly 1.5 hours later, the lot was overflowing into the street and the waiting area was mobbed. Note to the wise, always arrive early. A brief tirade, but there is no reason to waste bits of your life waiting for food and service if you do not have to.

Sunday, it rained. Slacked about, folded some laundry and actually relaxed a bit. Bizarre, guilty feeling made the whole experience rather uncomfortable. My tendency towards pluripotency when it comes to activities is a hard predilection to rally against. I'm finding that imparting this trait upon my scion is a case of low hanging fruit ... if they are not doing something, they want to help me do something. I dread the day we let them start playing with the Wii. This should help us with the reward points for system usage.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Rain | Sesame Place

Labels: Children, Gas, Rain, Sesame Place, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Weather, Weekend

I had started this posting earlier, before I was Crushed by the oppressive boot of the universe. I have not a faintest whiff of umbrage that my 'out of scope' activities brought the hammer of the 'Great Economies of Spoon Deficit Spending' down upon my thick skull. I am not extremely parsimonious when it comes to regulating my daily endeavors and this is a long and lowed tale of such an incident.

It had been a fairly dull weekend up till Sunday. There was the usual Swimming/Karate with the Tyrants. The dictate so far is that one would suffer the pain of mortal punishment should we miss Friday Dodgeball at TSD. It was a nice class actually. Jake did as he promised this evening and tried quite hard to be a good little tyrant for daddy. The opportunity to peg his sister with a ball after her harassment in the pool may have been the impetus for that though. Since it was raining all day, I was in no hurry to get home and lounge about. It was laundry day and I had a few loads to take care of. Instead, I cooked 4 fillets of Tilapia and we had a bit of broccoli soup with a side of carrots ... and they finished it up within an hour this time. Gotta love Fish Fridays.

Saturday morning was an early one. Both the Mrs and I had appointments and the Major Medical Complex where I spend way too much time in the emergency room. We both had blood tests but her's was in the Northern most branch of the complex on the 100th floor or something. Mine was in the Lab in the Polar opposite so I hauled the tyrants off, dodging the various organ transport droids and skulking vampires (called Hematologists?) along the way. I had to wait amongst the unwashed masses while the Mrs was fortunate to have her own private sitting room and a bevy of attendants. Harumph. By the time I get called to the blood-letting chamber, the Mrs has finished her procedure and was sitting along with the reset of us in 'stowage class'. Of course, my own fluid divestment went quickly.

With that behind up, we rocketed off to Staten Island for a day-long co-ed baby shower. I'll not deride your sensibilities with the mental torpor inducing details. Long story short, we got home shortly before midnight after much merry-making and child scolding. Sunday morning was the usual with a good measure of lawn-mowing and general yard-work chores tossed in for good measure. I was busily spreading 80lb bags of garden soil about the back-50 to reseed areas exfoliated by the cybernetic hounds and their Agent Orange urine when it hit. That little tingling in the frontal lobe and the small visual disturbances ... like little fairies of light prancing about reality, only visible through a gossamer veil of exhaustion. I had not my wits about me or I would have realized the indicators of my eventual downfall. Flash-forward to the next morning, I was paralyzed with nausea and existence rending storms of grinding suffering. All other ailments were thrust aside as this new fresh brand of hell intruded upon my blissfully perfect life. The next two days were a marathon session of gulping pills and retching till I was finally able to cast off the worst of the symptoms late Tuesday afternoon.

Returning to work, I found myself challenged with piles of work. Added to this was the back-log of personal activities (doctor's visit?) that I needed to deal with. Apropos to the topic, my Talkative and Extraordinarily Friendly Physician had my blood results and noted some anomalies: Cholesterol was just a hair above 200, Triglycerides were through the roof and the HDL/LDL was skewed due to low HDL readings. Peculiar because of my diet and the amount of exercise I get. She referred me to a lipid specialist because of the oddities but we both agreed that since my diet is within standard operating parameters and physical acumen for exercise was above par, no drugs would be useful at this time. Looking down at the site where the last gallon of blood was siphoned off, the buick sized bruise invokes feelings of apprehension should this vaunted expert require yet another sample.

Oh, gasoline ... yes. It's at $3.77USD/g right now. I'm considering the alternatives.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weekend | Karate | Children | NYC | Migraine

Labels: Children, Gas, Migraine, NYC, Tang So Doo, Weekend

I'm completely spent from the load of disparate chores and events I pursued over the past few days. Friday night's halcyon hours of light supping and TiVo viewing were all too soon replaced with Saturday morning's scurrying and panicked preparation for the dreaded TSD test. The Twins were necessarily kept calm so as to not arouse Attila's Stage Fright nor Ghengis's penchant for light-speed hyperactivity and subsequent flubbing of forms. As things would have it, they did just fine and were rewarded handsomely for their efforts by the Mrs. Transformers (Brawl) for Ghengis and anatomically correct dolls for Attila to promptly strip and waterboard. Now, I also passed my test but I was not feeling all too well. The night before, I had that particularly uncomfortable itch in the back of my throat that was the portend to a cold. Indeed, the following morning my nasal passages had been blockaded by the Snot Revolution and my uvula was a bright red beacon of swollen rage. Yeah, I had a bit of a rough go of it, but I managed to drag through and then we went off to the default pizza party after the last of the 1000 pushups had all but become a distant memory.

The pizza party was fine and we had a relaxed time ... well, in between admonishing the Twins for not eating enough. Right from there, we departed to the Family Friend Seliga's home for a First Communion Party that lasted well into the evening hours. Mostly, it was because of the Flyers game. (WOOT! Great Game!) Just as the last drops of perseverance were being squeezed from my once bottomless reservoir, the mrs got a call from one of her co-workers who ... carries a support beeper. Apparently, one of their servers went down and the first round of beepers did not respond. So, we were stuck for a bit while the Mrs 'dialed in' to survey the battle field. Not too long though, she just commanded her minions to storm the server room and commit an IPL on the offending machine. Like HAL 9000 singing his final rendition, it went down into that long dark night and we were off. Back to the manor to put the Tyrants right to bed. They had been going full tilt all day long and were now in the process of turning the humidity directly into energy via fusion process. I could not keep up since my genetic blueprint did not include such wondrous organs. Durned Retro-virus, all picky about what pluripotent cells it will work with. Sheesh.

Sunday was a mess. I ended up sicker than ever and still had things to do. Now that Sunday School is over, I can assist with other endavours ... such as assisting with the KOC program to collect donations for Mentally Disabled Children. At the 0700 mass. I did the early mass since most of the older crew cannot make it at that hour and get all set up. I also helped out with the beginning of the 0830, which was greatly appreciated. When all you manage is a buck or two from each parishioner, it takes a bit of smooth talking and flattery to fill that bucket! I was their eye candy and I could also open the heavy metal doors! Heh ... and I wonder where my son get's it from. After the third collection, I stopped off at the local grocery store to buy the Mrs some roses and the Tyrants some donuts. I also had to pick up some salves and medical potions for myself. Gha, I'm such a wreck. Arriving home, the Twins were in the guest room in their jammies, watching the TiVo and the Mrs was blissfully snoozing away in the Master Suite. Who am I to buck the system? I shed my Sunday Finest (work day clothing with a nice sweatshirt) and slipped in between the sheets. Nice! Hours later, I was up again, puttering about the Haupertonian Lands and mowing the lawn while the Twins re-enacted the 100 year's war in the sand-pit. Not too bad of a Sunday, but I did not get the cooking done for the week and did laundry instead. Just 6 loads, but still, it had to be tended to. As for the rest of the day, I spent the twilight hours trying to be and erudite consumer of blog postings that I had been neglecting since Friday. Too much though. Monday morning, I got up a bit late and arrived at work at 0635. I'll need to do better next day (not!) but since the ENTIRE DAY was either preparing for meetings or attending 6 hours of meetings, I missed very little.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Illness | Karate | Children | KOC

Labels: Chores, Church, Illness, KOC, Tang So Doo, Weekend

Well, that weekend went FAST! I got a bit of the mulching done on Saturday before the In-Laws (Mrs MDMHVONPA's Pregnant Cousin and her Husband) arrived. Good thing, I stunk like a barn animal. The two Appointments I had scheduled for the morning were a mixed bag. The AC guy did manage to show up before 1400 hours ... good thing. Cost me 110$ for a recharge for R22 though. At least the manor will be sufficiently chilled this summer should we need it. Yeah, who am I kidding, it's going to be roasting by the end of next month. Then there was the sprinkler guy. He just did not show up. I called and got the answering service who would be happy to relay a message. No thanx. I called this morning and was told that the service guys just did not work on weekends. Hrmmm, then why did we have an appointment scheduled. No matter. I surveyed the situation on Saturday and went down into the meter hole to turn on the system myself. It worked just fine after I managed to get the ball-joint open. All this with a maelstrom of main roiling under my left side ribs. Not sure where it came from, but it has been bugging me for a week and just finally subsided. Perhaps I should not block all those flying round-house kicks with my body. Finally, with the confluence of events this weekend, I attended an early Mass sans Sunday School and stopped off at the local St Judes shop to pick up some gifts for a 1st communion celebration we will be attending this next Saturday. Same day as the TSD test no less. I'll have little time to dicker around with my water barrels as I had hoped and there is still a mount of mulch in the Mile Long Drive that I need to deal with. I may have to take some time off to catch up on all this. I still need to pick up several diverters, spigots, overflow valves and, of course, the actual barrels themselves. With all the rain of late, the Car Wash has not had any surplus to had off. I'll have to ask next weekend in my 'spare time'.

Oh, yes. Speaking of the car-wash, their gasoline is now $3.60USD/g. I heard there is going to be a trucker convoy from NYC to DC today. I hope they can get some attention over the primaries about this.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Karate | Children | Plumbing | Gardening | Plumbing | Family

Labels: AC, Family, Gardening, Gas, Water, Weekend

So, now that the weekend is over, I must walk the chimera of work through the week till I am free again to loll in fields of grasses and sweet alyssum with my children and wife. Gosh, I do detest Mondays. Sunday went as it usually does. It was the last day of Sunday School so we all said our tear sodden good-byes before skipping off home. Next year, the Tyrants will be too old to attend and they'll begin their journey through 1st grade. Time is starting to speed up now. Grams, Jake and I spent the rest of the day putting mulch down on the garden beds. Jakers was extremely interested int scaling the mountain of triple ground mulch and planting his shovel so as to declare 'I claim this peak in the Name of the Haupertonian Empire!'. That, and he was the tallest person on the driveway too. As the day ground on, Amish Dad and I managed to reduce the pile by half, covering the flower beds in the back and half of one in the front before darkened clouds provided a portent of a violent spring shower. It never did rain very hard, but it was sufficient excuse for us to abandon our efforts and sit down for a hearty late afternoon/early evening meal. It was a good weekend, hopefully I'll be able to finish the work by this next weekend.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Gardening | Sunday School | Children

Labels: Children, Gardening, Sunday School, Weekend

I got nothing done this weekend. NOTHING! I barely left the Manor. I feel like such a slug. I did manage to get my posterior out of the sack on Sunday and taught the youngsters their lessons. I was taking the 11 4year olds for a few weeks since the regular teacher is out with a broken ankle. There is a set of quints in the class and they are prone ostentation as a matter of gaining some attention. If one ate a bug, the other ate an horse, the next a whale and the last ate the moon. They are fun to have about, but they can be a bit of a challenge to calm down when they get rolling. The rest of the class is fairly easy to work with. I just recycle the lessons learned from the Tyrants (with minor navigational modifications). I do not have to worry much about their combative habits since these younglings seem mostly benign. We shall see how they do next week with the chicks hatching that weekend ... should be enlightening.

Poker night went ok. I got trounced as expected. I suppose if I were really into it I would do more prep (like figure out how to play more seriously) but I'm just there for the comradery. Oh, and beer of course. Oddly enough, I watched a 007 flick the next night ... Casino Royale. Go figure. He is a bit more lucky than I, and my opponents do not bleed from the eyes when they are bluffing.

Technorati Tags:Poker | Weekend | Church | Children | Laggard

Labels: Children, Church, Laggard, Poker, Weekend

Friday friday friday ... what else is there to add. TSD was good last night - I was senior belt and there were no Black Belts to be found prodding me along to greater depths of dysfunction. So, I did actually feel a bit better after, but the following day was a 'movement reduction exercise'. Rough time getting out of bed and getting motivated to do anything other than plodding along in front of the CRT. Well, not really. Who used Cathode Ray Tubes anymore ... it's all LCD. No matter ... tonight is poker night with the team so I should be sufficiently motivated to get some yard work done this weekend ... perhaps even plant all those flowers and mow the lawn while I'm at it. I have a litany of other things to do ... get the AC checked, Tux Rental, etc ... Oh, and I'll be taking the 3/4yr old Sunday School class this weekend since the regular teacher broke her ankle. No rest for me after-all, eh?

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Karate | Children | Church | Poker | Injury

Labels: Children, Church, Injury, Karate, Poker, Weekend

Gotta make this quick ... busy day today. A lot of huff-n-puff all about nothing. The Mrs had to escort Gung-Gung off to NYC ... just to make sure he made it and all. While she was up there, she took the opportunity to hang out and visit family and such. Much easier to do when you don't have 3 sniveling little complainers along for the ride. So, while she was making her rounds, I held down the fort and held off the circling invaders with the Tyrants by my side. Mostly, we spent our time outdoors tending to the garden. All sorts of planting and spring prep had to be done. Beans are in the ground along with peas, carrots, beets, onions, spinach, lettuce, soy-beans ... and asparagus! In the end, both myself and the Twin Tyrants of exhaustion got our vitamin D for the week and had a fairly good time of it. Later on Sunday, before the Mrs returned, the parental units called and had a little conversation with the kids. At one point, Attila Alexis chimed in and noted that the Cybernetic Hounds were 'fighting'. Really, rough-housing as dogs do. To her though, all the barking and snarling was a big dust-up. She tried to convey this to the grandparents by saying: "Dogs were fighting but they were better behaved than us.". Heh, indeed. Of course, I don't let my children poop in the yard. Although, Jake my become interested in pee-ing outdoors.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Children

Labels: Children, Weekend

I'm lazy today ... quite the slug. I've been on support phone duty since last Thursday (Wednesday, actually - but that's a different story) and although the few calls I've gotten were resolved quite quickly - I'm still feeling the 'halo effect' of stress and angst. To ease my rattled nerves and frayed sense of well being, I went out with 20 of my fellow co-workers on Friday night after TSD practice and ... played poker till late in the night. Not your common Poker night mind you. We all chipped in 30 or so bucks to buy in and only one person smoked. So, no cigars, no scotch (beer though) and no darkened room with icy stares and slackened faces. What can you expect from a bunch of software geeks!? Indeed, we had a good night and I ended up drinking far more than the 30$ I gave to the pot. Of course, that did not stop me from out-bluffing my opponents on multiple occasions (purging 3 of them) till somone sneaked out a 4 of a kind when I had 2 kings up and three fives down. So be it.

Saturday was the day of the babysitter. The Mrs, Tyrants and I went over to a family friend's house who's wife was in the hospital for a series of operations to remove cancer tumors (and her esophagus) to watch over their twin 2 year olds. They were extraordinarily calm compared to our parcels of precocious paradigm poppers. We hauled along a chow-wagon of prepared food as well that I spent a good deal of time prepping. Needless to say, their fridge is packed but Beef Stroganoff will most likely only be eaten by guests, care takers and the children. She is on a soft-food diet and he is allergic to some of the ingredients. For some reason, the Saintly Mrs and I were exhausted at the end of the day.

Then, Sunday, the day of rest and worship. Heh ... being the purveyor of wickedness, there was no rest for me. Sunday School went well. We played 'statue' and talked about Minnesota. The little ones were fascinated about the idea that a snow drift could cover an entire house and that it could snow for more than 5 days in a row. We talked about change and hope and why we should look forward to change as much as we look forward to spring because it bring life anew. Etc, etc, etc. As a bonus, we talked about setting up little green-houses. I had the Mrs pick up 8 one liter bottles of lemonade which I will empty and we will put some green bean seeds in there since spring is coming. Hopefully, the seeds will germinate. I have the soil and such, I just need to drink EIGHT LITERS OF FLUID before next Sunday. They call me Saint MDMH ... patron saint of public toilets and leaky bladders.

Other notes: I chopped wood and restocked the brackets in the manor. The Mrs was home on Friday and will be home all day Monday ... so there goes all the firewood! Fortunately, I managed to get all this done before it started to rain and really get messy in the Back-50. For some damn reason, there was a NIN song in my head the whole time, PISSING ME OFF. Why I remembered this particular song at that time and could not purge it for over an hour makes me think that the Tyrants were developing psionic powers and were testing them out. I'll have to monitor this more closely. My neck now hurts on OTHER side so I'm fairly certain this is some sort of Scanners manifestation with the twins. At least I hope I get to be Michael Ironside. Cool name.

Technorati Tags:Poker | Injury | Karate | Children | Wood | Weekend | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Injury, Karate, Poker, Weekend, Wood

Not an entirely eventful weekend. Really, things slowed down a bit. Jake is feeling a bit under the weather ... some new variant on the local Super-Cold bug that is making its rounds. I'm certain I'll get a taste of it before it rotates out of this region ... or after it mutates. Some ersatz masterpiece of misery with an oceanic volume of mucus/snot. This, of course, did not stop him and his wonder twin from participating in the Friday Night Ninja Dodge Ball of Death competition. Typical menagerie of younglings were in attendance ... a target rich environment.

Saturday was fine. The grandparents arrived in the mid-morning hours much to the delight of the Tyrants. Gave the Mrs and I some time to take naps between loads of laundry while the unwitting Amish Dad and Super Mom stepped in as surrogate targets. Football, 'transformer shoot-em-up' and board-game/puzzles seemed to fill all the waking hours that were not utilized by snuggling. Indeed, it was crushing to see Jake in tears as he complained that he wanted Gramps back on Sunday Night. I tried to explain to him how lucky he was to have his Grandpa all to himself while I had to share mine with 100 other cousins (no lie!) ... to no avail. Best buddies, and Gramps can throw a decent pass with the foot-ball to boot.

Oh, and gas around here is now at $2.90USD/gal. I might be buying a new (formerly enjoyed) car sooner than I expect. I typically use about 5gal/week but I think the time is getting close to retire the POS. Probably at the end of this year.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Karate | Children | Blogging | Weekend

Labels: Blogging, Children, Gas, Karate, Weekend