I’ve….been…..tagged…..

I don’t know what this means. A friend of mine wrote it in his blog. Apparently, he was “tagged” and answered some pre-determined questions in his blog. He then proceeded to tag two other folks, me being one of them. This sounds a whole lot like those emails that tell you to answer the questions and forward it to ten people or your babies will grow up to hate you and cancer will rot off your parts. I’ll play along this time.

Oh, and Eddie and Kyle….consider yourself tagged.

FIRSTS AND LASTS

First Memory: Eating a bar of Ivory soap after uttering some foul language to my mother who was not amused.

First Real Kiss: Gwenda S out at the ball fields in the summertime. She would kiss anyone….just kidding….not.

First Concert: I could give the band nerd answer and say “Beginner Band Concert. Yeah, I’ll stick with that. The real answer is even nerdier.

First Love: To CMA, my wife is my only love.

First Crush: Beth something in fifth grade. Man, I wish I coud remember her last name ’cause she was FINE.

First thing you think in the morning: Man, I have to take a leak!

First book you remember loving: The Indian in the Cupboard.

First pet: A cat named Beethoven. Great cat that played a mean Sonata.

First question you’ll ask in Heaven: So, what was the point of Oklahoma?

First thing you think of when you hear the word vacation: Hotel Pheromones.

First best friend: David Cunningham. He was a Jehovah’s Witness. I don’t know why that’s important, but it seems interesting.

Last time you dressed up: I dress up for my lady every night. (wink,wink)

Last CD you bought:Muse: Black Holes and Revelations Go to the media section of their website and listen to Knights of Cydonia.  If you’re now wowed, your name must be “Dawg”.

Last book you read: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. No, I’m not a hormonal teenage girl. It was a gift from a student.

Last time you cried: When my three-year-old daughter accidentaly rammed “the twins”.

Last movie you saw: Bourne Ultimatum which in my opinion is the best in the trilogy.

Last time you told someone you loved them: Wait……just now.

Last really funny thing you did: Probably playing dress up with my daughter. If people who knew me saw it…

Last Halloween costume: A Pirate for a social in college.

Last concert attended: I’ll go nerdy again and say…Parents Night at the end of band camp.

Absence makes the heart…

grow fonder? more appreciative?  As regular readers know, I have been away from home for about a week now. I finally got home and realized how much I missed my family. I did miss them all while I was gone, but when I actually made it home, it really hit me.

Our newborn looked so much older. My 3-year-old was using words she wasn’t using when I left. My wife was a little hotter (As if that was even possible). I felt like I had missed so much of their lives that I won’t get back.

Now before this gets all sappy, let me say that it is nice to spend some time away from home. Everybody needs that alone time, or time with other friends besides the fam. I really do believe that a person can just get burned out on family time if that’s all they ever get.

But coming back after an extended period away makes a person really appreciate what they have. I think it’s great marriage therapy. Spend a week away from your loved one, and watch the sparks fly when you get home. : )

Keep it Real On Camera

What is it about a camera that brings out the best in people?

I have noticed this lately as I have been carrying a camera around a lot more than usual in order to keep a work-related website updated with pics, vids, etc.   People working try so much harder when they are being recorded.  I’ve heard of businesses dropping cameras in the workplace to increase productivity and always thought it to be a bit of an intrusion.  I can definitely see how it works, though.

Keep in mind, I do teach teenagers all day.  But, still.  These kids try so much harder when they think they are being filmed.  As a bonus, they LOVE being filmed.

Adults are the complete opposite.  Pull out a video camera and watch the “over 30’s” run like the plague is chasing them.

I start acting weird too when a think a camera is watching.  The problem is, these days you can’t go anywhere without a camera watching your every move.  If you live in a reasonably sized town, there’s probably a pretty good record of you driving to work everyday from traffic cameras.  I know the camera in a hallway at work has caught me pulling a wedgie out on the way to lunch.  So I say, go ahead and pick that nose.  Scratch what you need to scratch.  Just keep it real on camera.

When it rains…

As you may have read earlier, I am currently away from home on a work-related trip. My wife decided not to stay home by herself with the new baby and our three-year-old, so she packed everyone up (including the dog) and went to her parent’s house.

Before I get going, allow me to backup for a bit. We just had her birthday ($), our anniversary ($), a new air conditioner ($), and a new grass trimmer ($). Now you have sufficient background info to muster up some sympathy for me.

Back to story…..

On the way to her parents’ house, with two kids and the dog, my wife notices an odd sound coming from the tires. Yes, flat. My wife has never changed a tire in her life (and probably never will) so she proceeds to call a wrecker ($) to come pick everybody up. The wrecker gladly arrives in about twenty minutes and tows everyone to the nearest NTB. (National Tire & Battery) They patch up the tire ($) and get ready to bring the car out of the garage, but the engine will not start. Luckily, she was at the right place to buy a new battery ($).

Not enough for you? Right after getting the battery, she noticed the gas tank was empty and had to fill ‘er up. ($). She would have had to buy gas anyway, but throw me a freakin’ bone!

Work, Work, Work

I feel sorry for people that don’t like their jobs. It must be brutal getting up everyday and dragging yourself to a place that you can’t stand to be so that you can spend the largest chunk of your day dealing with people that drive you crazy. It’s a bleak picture, but I know there are folks out there that live like that.

Fortunately, I am not one of those people. Most of the time, I don’t even think of my job as “work”. I enjoy the people I’m around and I like what I do.

I also feel sorry for people that wake up every morning next to somebody that they can’t stand. After their miserable day at work, they take the long way home to delay the inevitable misery that will ensue once they walk through the door to greet the sickening person they woke up with that same morning. I’ll quickly say that this is definitely not me, either.

Why all this talk about work and partners? Today is what I would call my official end of summer vacation. I have worked a little bit through the summer, but this is the first day that I actually have dedicated my entire day’s existence to work. (And I will continue to dedicate every hour of every day for the next four days.)

To make matters worse, it was also my TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY. My poor wife deals with this every year. I’m always gone from home on her birthday and our anniversary. This was the first year I got to be home for her actual birthday. It was cool! I still missed the anniversary, though. Basically, I got up this morning, kissed my wife goodbye and said, “Happy Ten Years…see you on Monday!” We did do some celebrating prior to my leaving, and will do a longer trip after my work slows down a little (November).

So here’s to TEN YEARS of the best marriage a guy could ask for. (And a job that’s pretty good, too.)

More Cool TV

I do watch my fair share of television.  Thankfully, my TIVO allows me to do it at my leisure.  Here’s a quick rundown of stuff I’ve been watching this summer.

1) Hell’s Kitchen-This is my favorite reality show this summer.  It combines my interest in cooking with the release of watching others get their ass chewed off.  Gordon Ramsey is my HERO.  He flat out says what most of us think when we are around incompetence.  To add to the weekly joy, I’ve found two more of his shows on BBC America.  Kitchen Nightmares, where the famous chef tries to straighten out restaurants that are in danger of going out of business,  and Ramsay’s Kitchen which is a videography of him starting his first restaurant in London.

2) Man vs Wild-Read all the internet chatter you want about how “fake” the show is…Bear Grylls is the real deal.  Any man that will squeeze the juice of an elephant dung into his mouth for my personal entertainment, gets my respect.  His survival techniques are solid and he does put himself in precarious situations on purpose to show what one would do to survive.  Did I mention he drinks his own pee?  I like how they turned the audio up on him gulping it down.  Now that’s great television.

3) The Closer-This is a great summer crime drama with great characters and interesting stories lightly seasoned with just enough humor.  The stories this season have been especially creative.  One episode featured two murders being solved while the entire team was being trained in HAZMAT suits.

4) Monk-An obsessive-compulsive detective plagued with a plethora of phobias makes for entertaining television.  This is another show with great characters and smartly written scripts.  My favorite episode this season has been the Snoop-Dogg guest appearance called Mr. Monk and the Rapper.  (Spoiler Alert-If you haven’t seen the show yet but plan to, don’t watch the linked video.) Snoop even remixed the show’s theme song for this one episode.

5) Traveler– I cannot for the life of me figure out why this show was not renewed.  It was only five or six episodes, but they were intense!  In a nutshell, this show was about three college buddies, one of which might be a domestic terrorist.  What two of the guys thought was a harmless prank, turned out to be a museum bombing.  The third buddy is the one who framed them.  Sorry for the lame description, but the show is gone anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.  It’s not like I can talk you into watching it now.

6)Shaq’s Big Challenge– Shaquille O’Neal, NBA basketball star, tries using his star power to whip some overweight and uncooperative kids into shape.  He hopes to use his success as a model for a nationwide plan to solve our obesity problem.  The best part of this show so far has been its complete failure.  The kids are cheating.  The attempts to change the school lunch have failed miserably.  They revamped the menu, but kids were throwing the food away.  The school he was working with kicked Shaq and his team out at one point.  Great stuff.

7) Rescue Me–  I can’t say much because I’ve only actually watched one episode. (It was great!)  However, I can’t wait to watch the rest on TIVO.

What have you been watching this summer?

All at Once

I’ll hit with the double play this week.

1: My wife’s birthday is on July 29. (About two minutes from now.)

2: 10 year anniversary is on August 2.

Of course, my job as a good and loving husband is to devise meaningful gifts for both occasions. I’m open to ideas so if anybody has one, let me know. (On a fairly strict budget, of course.) Any guy who has had to buy a gift for his wife in commemoration of a major relationship event such as a 10 year reunion will surely understand that my stress level is high. If I don’t get this right, I will be reminded of my blunder from now until the day I start pushing up daisies. Conversely, I’m learning that the birthday gifts are not as important as they used to be. I think it’s because we are approaching the time when birthdays would rather be forgotten.

We did get some nice “us” time this weekend. Nana came to watch both of the little ones while my wife and I went out. We shopped, saw two movies at the theater, ate out, and enjoyed some of the best grown-up conversation that we’ve had in a long time. It’s good to be married and it’s even better to be married to your best friend.

Amy got her own pair of Nike + shoes and accesories so Dawg’s wife better watch out!

We saw the following movies:

Transformers: LOVED IT. This movies was like everything I envisioned in my head as a kid, but on the screen and VERY realistic. Effects were awesome and the music was cool, but the acting was a little weak. That’s not why you go see a movie like this anyway.

I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry: My advice is wait for the DVD unless you enjoy being preached at. There were some very funny moments that are worth the cost of a rent, but too much of the time I felt like I was watching a Gay Rights propaganda film. I don’t care what the cause is, I don’t like to pay money to listen to a sermon. I can get that for free anytime. (My wife gives me free regular sermons and she can be very convincing.)

Perhaps the biggest news (tongue firmly in cheek) is that I bought a new THRONE. You can read all about it the model I chose by clicking on the link. I can’t wait to install it. I’ve been saving my last issue of Men’s Health for this very occasion.

Doctor Appointments

It’s hard for me to keep up with them all. My oldest daughter just got tubes put in her ears because she was having so many ear infections. They asked to do a follow up appointment after the surgery which we missed. Actually, my “reminder” ringer on the cell phone went off 15 minutes before the appointment was supposed to occur. The appointment was 30-40 minutes away. A colleague of mine has heard this ringer many times before major events at work. I usually set such reminders around 8 eight hours before such events, but I just didn’t this time. We had to reschedule the appointment for today. Tomorrow, my newborn daughter has her second appointment to make sure she still has ten fingers, I guess. Next week, my wife has a “post-delivery” appointment. I need to schedule my yearly physical which I have been putting off until I can get some of this summer weight off.

As you can see, we are very familiar with our doctors lately. Today, my oldest asked if she could take her new Cinderella doll to show her doctor. I’m sure this was the highlight of his day. She told all the nurses, and anyone else who would listen, about her new baby. It was cute, I hear. I stayed home with the newborn.

I am thankful that all these visits are just checkups. I know folks who have more visits than we do, and they’re not just checkups. It’s good to be healthy.

On a different note, I have been listening a lot to different webcasts. Some people refer to these as “pod”casts, but I refuse to give Apple naming rights to these wonders of the web. Most of the webcasts I’m familiar with are basically radio shows on the web. The cool thing about them to me is that you don’t have to tune in at a specific time to catch your favorite show. I just download WCs that I’m interested in and save them on my Zune for listening when I have nothing else to do. From time to time, I will update on what I have been listening to. Recently, I have been enjoying the Ramblecast with Jay and Jack. They are two guys in North Carolina who are mostly known for their Lost webcast about the TV Show. I listen to it too, but the Ramblecast is more fun to me. They talk about anything from movies to games and music to sports. Jack is actually Jay’s dad. In their last episode, they each picked their favorite ten TV theme songs of all time and played sections of each. Dawg won’t belive this, but THE WALTONS was not on either list. Shame. This one’s for you, dawg.

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What are your favorite TV theme songs of all time?

CNN + YouTube?

I don’t get this. In case some of you don’t keep up with current events, the big news today was that CNN was hosting a presidential debate and the questions would be asked by “regular folks” via YouTube. CNN has been billing this as the chance we’ve all been waiting for to ask the questions we want to ask of our Presidential Wanna-Be’s. WHAT? And who do you think gets to pick which questions of all the thousands submitted actually get asked? Maybe the YouTube users could vote on the questions! Forget about it.

CNN picked all the questions.

Sure, they may have been asked by someone besides the regular moderator, but CNN still filtered the questions they (and likely the participating parties) wanted asked.

This idea grew from frustration among voters that the debates are staged. Each participant gets a list of questions that are going to be asked so they have plenty of time to formulate the answer that will offend the fewest number of voters. I don’t know if the candidates got any info on the topics to be discussed before the debates, but I suspect they did not go in totally blind.

My solution? Why can’t the candidates just ask each other questions like they used to? Now THAT, I would watch. I want to see a REAL debate. Let ’em just go at it and see who comes out on top. Our President needs to be verbally nimble and witty. This format would be a true test of how bulletproof a candidate is.

Nobody would know what to expect, which is exactly why it will never happen.

Single Parent Shout Out

I thought we could all take a moment today to think about those single parents out there.  Especially the ones dealing with more than one child.  Most of the people that read this blog are probably happily married with at least one kid on the house.  It occurred to me today how hard this parenting thing would be if I was by myself.  My wife and I split duties, taking turns doing this or that.  What if you had to feed every bottle, change every diaper, discipline every infraction,  give every bath, and coddle every cry?  WOW!  Whenever I get tired of these necessary duties, I think of those that have it a LOT harder than me.

The thing is, I know there are thousands of single parents that do this everyday.  My hat’s off to you.

And if you have somebody to share the duties with….stop your bitchin’.  You got it easy.