Workin' Cheap

Today is the first day back at work for my wife since the whole gallbladder incident started. I don't remember exactly when she stopped going to work, but I believe it was in mid to early February. For those of you keeping score at home, that's about 8 weeks or so. Needless to say it was a big adjustment for all of us this morning, as the kids haven't had to wake up for really the last three or four weeks with any consistency. They weren't as sad as their mom, though, who longed to stay home with the kids again. It was a scenario that we all were getting used to, I go off to work, they stay home and do whatever it is they do when they stay home, which can include getting ears pierced without discussion. (Which is a story that may be coming soon.) But the good times had to come to an end and so today at 6 in the morning when my wife was supposed to get up, they did.

I'd love to be able to make enough money to allow her to stay home with the kids all day and be the stay-at-home mom. I'd love it even more if she'd make the money and allow me to stay home all day...but such dreams are what makes life worth living, yes? Maybe not. But as I was pondering how this may be possible, I realized that I have many jobs but not all of them pay well, I've got my regular job here at the school district, then the web work that I do for a few different people. Those pay well, but they're not consistent paychecks. I sometimes help my cousin with his videography work, but again, doesn't pay consistent. Then I'm managing my son's T-ball team, but that one's a volunteer job. And it actually can cost me money if I'm not careful. So for you few fans out there, if you know of a job that I can take where I can make boatloads of money for little effort, let me know. I'm interested. Until then, however, my wife has to keep that job that she hates. Sorry, babe.

Snow (Hey Oh)

We had a nice fun trip up to Big Trees on Monday. We drove up and stopped in Angel's Camp first, had lunch at the park there and let the kids run around and play. The real fun part about this park and the others at such elevations are that they are built so that if there's 2 feet of snow on the ground, you can still play there. The thing about that is, when there's no snow on the ground, there's a 3 foot drop off the bottom of the slides. E helped us measure that when she stood next to the bottom of the slide. She went down one without us there to catch her at the bottom and she literally flew off the bottom of the slide. It was very quick and she just floated down and landed on her butt. We were expecting crying, but nope, there wasn't any of that. It was a giddy evilish laugh and she took off to go do it again. We caught her the next time.

From there we went up to Big Trees to let her see snow for the first time. We had her in T's old snow pants and her big jacket, she was fine. Dry and warm. T was in khaki's and a nice jacket. He was fine for a while, then the pants got wet and it got less fun. Though he did enjoy chucking snowballs at his mom. And they both got a thrill out of me pulling them around on a saucer we borrowed from my dad that was made in the early 60's. It's made of steel. It's rugged. It's loud when T pulls it along the street. He even gave some snow a ride for a while, then he wanted to leave it with the other snow so it would be with it's family.



We promised them a stop at another park so we could get them out of the snow and took them to another park in Murphy's where there were tons of kids and they had a great time. There was a stream that they could toss rocks into, so we did that for about 20 minutes. Until their parents were tired of getting rocks for them to throw.


It was a good, long, fun day and another reason why it's great to live in the Bay Area, we can take a day trip to the snow, then come home where it's a comfortable 70 degrees. Ahhh, California. It's nice here.

Also, I know that the images are portrait set in landscape, but I don't know how to change that, if you do, let me know, as I'm kinda annoyed by it.

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A couple shots from his first Official Little League T-Ball Game.

The Baseball Kids

We finally had our first game yesterday and it went pretty well overall. The other teams coach didn't show up until about 5 minutes before game time. According to the parents in the dugout, he thought they were just having a practice at 5:30 and not a game. So he was at the other field. The rest of his team seemed to know that there was a game to be played as they all showed up. But the person who was supposed to be running the team didn't know there was a game. Sad, really.

We were the home team and as such started out in the field while Manager Who Didn't Know There Was A Game pitched to most of his team. This wouldn't have been so bad, but he was giving them all 5 pitches to hit instead of the 3 he was supposed to limit them to. This doesn't seem like a big difference, but remember these kids are on average 5 years old. It takes them a while to get set and ready to hit. Adding those two extra pitches to all the kids really slowed the game down. A lot.

Plus, it's really hard to keep 11 little kids attention focused on the batter. I knew that this would present problems, but I didn't expect a kid to be pouting out in the field with his hat off, sitting on his glove, picking out the grass. I asked him if he was ready for the ball, he said, "No." I asked if he wanted to play another position. He said, "No." I asked what he wanted to to. He said, "I want to go home." So that was nice.

Our first time through the lineup, I just had all the kids hit off the Tee as this would help speed the game up. We started at 5:30 and it had taken 20 minutes for the other team to go through their lineup one time. It took us about 7 minutes. Everybody gets to hit in the lineup, so if there's 11 kids there, 11 kids hit. It takes some time, and I had a coach who was trying to get the kids ready to go, but it wasn't that easy. Seems that little kids don't really want to pay attention. Which I kinda knew from practice, but still, this was finally game day!!!

The second time through our lineup I pitched to most of the kids, giving them three pitches to either hit the ball or if not, they got the Tee. So that moved things along a little quicker, but after two innings, it had been an hour and the sun was shining pretty hard into the kids eyes, so we called it there. Plus, it seemed that it would probably take another half hour to get through one more inning, and we had things to do.

But the kids seemed to have a good time, and I got a much better idea of how these games are going to go. We have another game on Thursday, and hopefully the other teams coach will have a much better idea of what's going on and we can get these kids three at-bats instead of just two. Though this morning, T was very excitedly telling my mom that he got TWO hits, so I guess that's good with him, and if he gets THREE?!?! What in the world could be better than that?

There's a Hole in My Bucket

We bought a fountain with a small waterfall about two years ago. It's been kept in pristine condition over the past two years because we've never taken it out of the box. This majestic piece of fake rock has been taking up space for too long and I finally got the uncontrollable urge to put it up in a nice little corner of our backyard.

This great idea was coming along very nicely, I made a little hill, dug a little hole, T helped and E was having a great time getting dirt all over. Then it came time to place the basin into the ground. This presented a sudden problem because the basin wasn't any sort of formed plastic. What they gave me is nothing more than a glorified garbage bag. This would normally not matter, but the thing about plastic bags is it's hard to make them keep their form once dirt comes a-piling in around it. So keeping the bag to hold it's form whilst putting in dirt around the sides proved to be to difficult a task for me. Plus it was getting late and I tend to give up on some things easily once I get hungry. And I was hungry.

Yesterday I got a brilliant idea which I hope to try out come tomorrow night, or maybe this weekend sometime. I bought a 2 gallon bucket from ACE Hardware and plan to place the bag inside that and then bury the bucket. I may cut out the bottom, I haven't decided yet. I feel this is a great idea, but will be sure to let you know how it all goes...I know you can't wait to hear.

Also, T-ball is going alright. I only have a few idiot parents, but one that really stands head and shoulders above the rest. It's an idiot who continuously reminds people that his dad is VP of the league. This guy yesterday, ten minutes before practice started, had my team doing a relay drill meant to help middle infielders get a quicker relay from the outfield to the infield. It consists of a line of kids, which he had standing about 7 feet apart, taking a ball, turning and throwing it to the next kid in line, that kid catching it, turning and throwing it to the next kid, and so on. There are a few problems with this drill for T-ballers. One, they're five, they can't really catch the ball. Two, they're in T-ball, there are not going to be any balls hit so deep into the outfield, that there will be a need for a relay throw to any base. Three, they're five, there is no purpose for this drill for kids who have a hard time throwing the ball and catching the ball. So this dad, who isn't a coach, had my kids doing a drill before practice while I wasn't there. Then couldn't explain why it was a good idea when I asked him. Hopefully, he'll stick to his own team, which is also practicing on the same fields at the same times. It's a rough setup for me.

The kids are fun though, it's mostly my job to make sure they're all looking where they're supposed to be and not getting hit by flying bats and balls. Also, I have a kid on my team who looks exactly like Ralphie from 'A Christmas Story'.

Knock Yourself Out

So, to lighten what has been a fairly dire mood around the ol' blog lately, I'm going another direction today and hoping for some more upbeat fun-style times.

In order to do that, I'll tell a little story. I've been responding on a tv critics blog for the local paper here for a while now. I've been interviewed by him a few times for different articles about fun things like The Simpsons movie, I've written recaps for Heroes, and also been interviewed for American Idol. It's this last show that's gotten me into the newest little piece of my amateur television reviewing life.

I got an email about a month ago asking if I wanted to be a part of a story that they were working on that would review the show for the blog. I said I'd do it, 'cause it sounded easyish and fun. Then last Thursday, I went for my first ever photo shoot. I wasn't expecting this to be quite as big as it is becoming. I learned that except for me, the other people that are doing this 'fan judging' applied to do it. They sent in little letters explaining why they would be awesome judges, how much they love the show, things like that.

I was probably the most awkward model ever, and I don't want to be called a model, so we'll go with 'person who was getting picture taken.' And to make it more exciting, the photographer was telling me things like, "You're happy! You loved that song!", and "That song was so bad, you are disgusted!" I think that there should have been fans blowing my hair and techno music playing. I ended up taking pictures of me with thumbs up, two thumbs up (for very excited), even with my fingers in my ears. It's gonna be a interesting little article for that one. Then, to make my day more awkward, they wanted to take video of me...for a newspaper...that will be online. So I did. On the way upstairs, I was getting mini-interviewed and they found out that my least fav judge on Idol is Randy Jackson, because let's be honest, he sucks. Then they had me tell the localized online newspaper world who I am and why I'd be a good judge. Then they got me to do a very embarrassing impression of Randy Jackson on camera. I don't know what came over me, but for those of you who know me well, you know how I can get sometimes. After my little tirade, the writer said to me, "I knew there was a reason we picked you for this."

When more of this becomes available, you'll know about it. But for now, just imagine this skinny little white boy throwing out his gang signs yelling "Dawg!" and "Yo!" and other nonsensical words in an impression of a fat goofy black dude. Yeah...that's the visual you wanted...good luck sleeping tonight!

In The Park

E learned a new word last night, kinda...We were taking the kids to the park and she was ever so excited about it and kept yelling out 'Park! Park! Park!', except she wasn't pronouncing it quite that way. She was substituting the 'K' sound for the letter 'p' and also for the letter 'r'. Now, thankfully, she's only almost 2 and didn't know what she was talking about, because if she was yelling that out at the age of anything above 7? There'd be groundings happening. And also room doors being locked, keys being thrown away, and other great overprotective dad stuff.

But we did end up making it to the park. She almost said it right towards the end of the night.