So glad to be wrong

Yup. I was wrong. I'm the Mayor of Wrongville. Wongly McWronglingson. The Big Wrongowski. I'm pretty sure I could go on like this for hours. But then you'd probably stab yourself in the eye or something like that. I don't have insurance for that so lets move on...

Yesterday I wrote about a potential impending disaster. Last night was JAM's school's annual Chuck E. Cheese night. I was scared. Potentially. I was slightly hopeful but terrified out of my knickers all at the same time.

JAM rocked it like a champ last night!!!!!!

Sorry, I couldn't hold that in any longer. He was awesome in a chaotic and spastic environment. It was so much fun watching him run around with another little guy he knows from school. They went through tokens like they were candy and I was so happy to feed them more to keep them playing. My kid is amazing. I think we'll keep him for a little bit more.

Disney World it aint...

Today was going just fine. I was getting things done at work, I was feeling generally at peace with the universe and then I called Wifey to ask how JAM's school's Walk-to-School Day went. (Fine by the way, thanks for asking.) During that conversation my beautiful bride asked me if we were still on for tonight. Being the responsible and uber-organized person I am I immediately tried to recall what the heck we had on the agenda for the evening. Nope, I couldn't come up with it so I had to ask. So, how is my day going now?

The birds have stopped singing, let me put it that way. Now I'm feeling a certain amount of dread about tonight. Tonight will be a festival of roller-coaster emotions for my young boy, which means an even more heightened state of anxiety and alertness for Wifey and I as we try to help him navigate through what it means to be growing up and working within a structure of peers - not just running around with his hands up in the air screaming like a banshee from pure unadulterated, uninhibited excitement. Trust me, we've seen it. It isn't pretty. I wish I could do it at times but it isn't pretty and it doesn't work very often in polite society.

So what brings all this on? Tonight we go to Chuck E. Cheese for a PTA fundraiser. Perhaps you've heard of this wonderland of pizza, video games and kids-hopped-up-on-root-beer-whose-parent's-don't-pay-a-lick-of-attention-and-you-feel-like-the-only-one-with-expectations-that-actually-transfer-to-outside-of-the-home. Yuppers, looking forward to it. Maybe I'm just bitter that I can't fit in the climbing tubes or the ball pit? A therapist would have a field day with that one.

So, JAM is in the third grade so this is the third time we've dealt with this night. When he was in first grade we just said no, we weren't going to do it. If you know my wonderful little man, you know that right about 6ish is when his medication starts wearing off. Things have a way of going downhill in an instant once we reach the witching hour. If everything goes according to plan, meaning we stick to our normal routine, he is usually a great kid and knows exactly what is expected of him and we have no problems. Anymore. This was not always the case. But, being married to someone who (as Joanne from Rent would be very happy with) makes lists in her sleep, we have routines down pat. Everyone in our house knows exactly what to do and when to do it once dinner is done. A smooth, well-oiled machine is the ol' homestead come bath time. But once we stray from that routine it can go to hell in a hand basket in a blink of an eye. Kind of like last night when beautiful little Red exhibited her high pitched squeal for literally 45 minutes as we had to leave Wifey at the PTA meeting and dear old Dad got to take the three kids home for bath time. That was NOT GOOD. Breaking the routine = VERY BAD THINGS.

Digressing as usual. Back on topic....

So, we skipped the game night his first year as it was not a good time to stray from our schedule. We've learned that the hard way, and it has caused serious backlash even from family in the past, but we play the hand we're dealt as best we're able. We miss out on some things, but in the end it isn't worth the drop-down drag-outs that result.

On to year 2 - 2nd grade. I missed last year. Can't remember why but I can't say that I'm terribly disappointed. But, wonder of wonders, Wifey tells the story that all was well. That might just be her advancing age (Her memory hasn't been all that reliable in the first place, but now that she's getting up there in years it is just going faster and faster. Don't tell her I said that though okay? It'll be our little secret.) but she swears that last year went well. I'll have to trust her on this one. It does give me hope for tonight though. To prove that I'll refer you back to my opening statement in how tonight is offering me a certain amount of dread. Last year, or the year before, I would have said I was scared to death or maybe there was no way a herd of wild horses could drag me to that event but this year I'm feeling a bit warmer to the idea. I'll just have the police and EMT's on standby just in case.

We'll see how it goes. I'm going with a smile and a hopeful attitude. But if it all goes to hell I'm blaming Wifey.

Just this once....

I'm only going to make one post on this. Wifey is doing enough politiblogging (I wonder if anyone else has said that or if I just made that up? That would be cool huh?) for the both of us and she does it so much better than I could ever possibly hope to. But, this is my one. ONLY ONE.

Folks - everyone really needs to understand that this woman has a very real chance of being our President within the next few years (have you seen McCain's neck???) -

And this???

Scary as hell. But, is it any scarier than having Bush as President these last 4 years? I'll bet good ol' GW is extremely happy no one ever took video of him almost killing his brother in a drunk driving rage.

And, what post about Sarah Palin would be complete without letting John Stewart have his say?

And I'll leave you with this....

Real learning

JAM is one smart kid. I'm not one of those nutter fathers who was convinced his kid was bound for Yale while he was still in the womb. I have no pretentious notion that he will be the next Gates or Obama (hehehe). But, even though his school is trying to drill it out of him he still does love learning and I love that. Everyone who knows him knows he is a reading maniac. He went through the new Tiki Barber book in a day. I think he read it again the next day. You should have seen our friend Bin's face when she heard that. :) It was priceless.

So, why the blatant outpouring of pride? First, as I mentioned, the school system is trying their hardest to kill his love of learning with hours and hours of drill and kill. Gotta pass that test. HE'S IN 3RD GRADE FORCHRISTSAKE!!!! Let them enjoy learning for a little while longer! [Does anyone know of a school for kids who aren't in danger of failing and can read on or above grade level and even love math who don't need to be drilled into the ground to ensure they pass the damn test?] Even through all this my kid still loves to learn. If something is new, and exciting, but still learning, he'll eat it up. God I love that.

Second, my kid not only loves learning but he loves doing it with him mom and I. He will go anywhere, watch anything, read anything, with this bright light in his eyes. We've been to the zoo, the butterfly garden, the Smithsonian, the National Book Festival, real life practical learning opportunities. He loved them all. Today I found an article on the TechLearning site telling us about this cool add-on to Google Earth that shows over 12,000 objects that are orbiting Earth. You've got to check this out - it was very cool once JAM's wanna-be-geek dad figured out how to use it. :) So, here we were, it was 8pm on a school night, and we were spending our "special time" learning all about orbit, satellites, trajectory, USSTRATCOM, software like Google Earth.... I'm not sure if I made this obvious enough..... HE WAS LEARNING WHILE HAVING A GREAT TIME DOING IT!!! I really wish his school would learn how to do that. Having him sit next to me with an amazing smile on his face as we turned on and off individual orbital trajectories and set the Earth spinning. It was beautiful. He was beautiful.

End of an Era

I'm sitting on my couch tonight watching the end of an era. I take a lot of heat from my friends for being a Yankee fan. Well, let's be honest. I take a ton of crap from those losers. They are bitter and sad old people. SO THERE! hehehe


But, back to the message. I'm sitting here, next to a largely uninterested but nicely sympathetic Wifey, watching the last home game and really wondering why I didn't have the foresight to think of getting tickets for this game way back in February when they went on sale. All I was thinking of (dreaming about) was getting tickets for the All-Star Game. Yup, that didn't happen either. Dangit.


But, as I watch history in the making, I am just in awe of all the tributes and history they are sharing during the game. JAM got to stay up through the first inning so he got a taste of the night. It was great pointing out all the heroes, Reggie, Yogi, Whitey, too many to count. I don't care whether you are a Yankee fan or not, this was a great night.

All 3

Wifey stole my names for the kids. She's rude like that. But, in her defense, she did use all of her free-bon-bon-eating time at home to take some pretty funny pictures of these kooky kids to use on her blog. So, I figured if she can steal my names for them then I can steal her pictures. All's fair in blogs and war. Something like that...

Without further a-doo...

Here's the amazing JAM



And this is beautiful Red



And this little wonder is Pudge

A ceiling, an honest to God ceiling.

She's never hit the lottery. She's never won big at the casinos. Lets face it, we're lucky if we get the smallest prize on the scratchers we buy once every two years or so. So, given this spectacular track record of winning in our family, for Wifey yesterday must have been like winning the grand prize.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, you may recall my documentation of the great bathroom renovation. You may even recall how way back in February I spoke about my wife's herculean ability to live without certain creature comforts while our home was a war zone. One of the things that was lacking, and was still lurking when I declared the project "complete," was the absence of a ceiling in our dining room. Well, that is no longer the case. Thanks to an amazing friend, and parent of said friend, we now have an honest to God ceiling in our dining room. Thanks to Drew and Rob (a.k.a. Paco) for coming over last night to assist with the install of the big pieces.

In the interest of full disclosure, the ceiling is by no means done. All of the Sheetrock is up but the mudding and taping still need to be done. If you have any personal knowledge about such endeavors you might know that the mudding and taping is often the most difficult part, and it is certainly the most difficult to make look really nice for those of us who consider ourselves just skilled enough to get ourselves into trouble. It takes time to do right, lots and lots of practice. If you have this skill there is often very little you have to do afterward, such as sanding all the little bumps off. If you are like me, and you need to Spackle the hell out of everything the sanding becomes much more extensive and creates a MUCH larger mess. When you sand off joint compound (Spackle) it creates a very fine dust that goes absolutely everywhere. When I was redoing my bathrooms this was not an issue. I put up a sheet of plastic, turned on the air cleaner and wore a mask and I could sand away all of my mistakes. The dining room is quite another matter. If I do this part, it will be the biggest mess ever. This is exactly the reason I haven't jumped on this part of the project earlier. I knew this finishing work would hang over my head and I don't feel up to the task. So, I'll be contacting the contractor that fixed up Drew's house nice and purty after the whole tree-through-the-roof incident and hopefully he will be able to do what I can't with much less mess and in a timely fashion. It will definitely be worth the $200.

Just as an aside, I thought it might be funny to investigate this a little bit... I started the project on February 22, 2007. That was when I first took the ceiling down in the dining room.

Some pictures from last February:

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And now some pictures from last night... There is Drew and Paco, then the horrible mess, then the finished product. Yes, the finished product at 11:30 at night, but it is "finished" nonetheless.

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So, just to see how ridiculously long it took me to get this dang ceiling put up (again, scared of the mess of the sanding but now that Wifey is agreeing to let a pro do it, it was time to git 'er dun) I plugged that date into a web site I found, Time and Date.com, and found the following info:

Duration calculation results

From and including: Thursday, February 22, 2007
To and including: Monday, September 8, 2008

It is 565 days from the start date to the end date, end date included

Or 1 year, 6 months, 18 days including the end date

Alternative time units 565 days can be converted to one of these units:

• 48,816,000 seconds
• 813,600 minutes
• 13,560 hours
• 80 weeks (rounded down)