It Goes On and On

So, hello internetians. Been awhile, huh? I must say, things have been happening, I just have been negligent in posting such happenings to the world. Some of it I can't speak of to much due to possible impending litigation, but I will say this: Some people deserved to be kicked right in the ear. Very hard in the ear. Moving on to less secrety topics. . .

Big T had his first Raingutter Regatta this past weekend, in the rain. The person checking in the boats remarked that he'd never seen a modified boat before. Which makes me more certain than ever that the people in this pack don't know how to properly utilize this newfangled contraption called the interwebs. We found T's design on a scout site and set out to make it, as he felt it looked, "cool". See below:

The other Wolf in his den helpfully hid his face from the image, 

but you can see the 'regular' boat in his hand.

It seemed that others had never thought to apply the 'catamaran' style to the boats that are handed out. Or it was against the rules that nobody told us about. But I'm thinking it's less the second one, because nobody but the Webelos that Big T destroyed in the races complained. And yes, I am den leader of a two scout den. We had three but one of them quit. Which really is fine, because he didn't really want to be there anyway.

Also, in the fun stuff land of information. I went to SF two weekends in a row, which is huge for me, because I really, really don't like going to the city. (Go TEXAS!!) But the first weekend we went for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and saw Randy Newman, Rosanne Cash, and my new fav band, The Avett Brothers. It was fun and horrible all at the same time. The music and the artists were great, but I felt like I was trudging through a homeless encampment most of the day. Way to many poser hippies there. Also a drunk, probably homeless guy wanted to fight me because he ran into the wagon I was pulling with our stuff in it, and I wouldn't give him a beer to apologize. Also, I didn't apologize anyway, if you don't see the giant red wagon with coolers and chairs in it, and you run into it? You deserve the little scrape on your ankle.

The second week was for Fleet Week, and this time we got to see the Blue Angels fly because the fog didn't come in and ruin everything. Of course, the kids could have not been less impressed by that, but I thought it was cool still. Everytime I saw them flying over the Golden Gate towards show center, I thought of 'The Rock' when they dropped the napalm on the island and blew up Alcatraz. Yes, I may have a bit of geek in me, but so what, that movie still kicks ass.

Anyway, things just keep on a-rollin' along. The web jobs are coming in a little more frequently now, so that's nice, always good to have a little extra cash. Even though not much of it is extra. These two kids are going through some clothes. At first I thought it was great to have their birthdays only 5 days apart, but now it's starting to hit me that they both run through their clothes at the same time due to their growth spurts being coordinated. And right now, they both need a lot of pants. Which for Big T isn't that big a deal. If they fit, he loves them. But Little E is 4, and she's a girl, and she's getting picky. I guess you gots to look good in preschool.

So that's it for now, I'll see you guys shortly after Halloween to show off the pics of Indiana Jones and Supergirl. Little E will be Supergirl.

The Perfect Space

Big T started school today, grade number two. He did great, no tears, no crazy nervous behavior. All went well. It was great. We also went to the Ports game for Scout night this past Friday and it was also great. Great being the word that I shall continue to use to describe how things were. Great.

Big T getting ready to spend the night at Banner Island Ballpark with his ever present Black Puppy. Black Puppy is the name of the dog. It's a great name, don't you think?

Our tent in the outfield. Big T picked the spot so he could watch the movie that was shown on the big screen while lying in his sleeping bag in the tent. It was a pretty great spot.

The shantytown the morning after. You'll notice some of the scouts just laid their bags on a tarp and slept under the stars. It was a beautiful night and didn't get too cold, which was great, so it probably wouldn't have been that bad without the tent.

It was a great night and the Ports destroyed the Jethawks 13-1. Unfortunately the high score and post-game fireworks meant that I didn't get the tent set up and Big T in there until almost midnight. So I didn't fall asleep until around 1am, then woke up at 6 and started driving home at 7. I've been tired since then. While we were at the game we took a little stroll around the park and Big T wanted to hit in the cages they have there. So while we were waiting in line, a foul ball landed almost exactly where our seats were. Big T's den leader, who was sitting in the row in front of us, was able to get his hand on it, but couldn't haul it in.

So all in all, if you ever get a chance to sleep out on a ball field, I'd highly recommend it. It's a great time.

Holiday Road

So that idea to have weekly blog posts has turned into a month since the last one. Pretty close, I say. The kids finished their swim lessons, and Big T has turned into quite a little fish. He's doing much better than I thought he would. Little E can also swim enough to get herself to the side of the pool if she falls in, which is the goal that I had set for them, but she doesn't have the form that her big brother does. She looks more like a poodle going along, all you can see is the top of her head and her face and it sort of bobs as she creates a typhoon just under the surface to keep herself going.

They were able to finish their lessons with enough skill that they got to swim around in Lake Tahoe and Donner a lot more than they would have otherwise. They also got to go on their first boat ride, which was a thrill for them, as that's the best part of our trips to Bass Pro Shops. Pretending to ride in the boats. Unfortunately, the hours that my brother had reserved the boat for were from 12-2 on Donner. You wouldn't think that it would rain in the end of July, but then, you haven't been on vacation with me either. I have this uncanny ability to pick days during the summer when it will rain, usually the only days during the summer when it rains. This particular trip, we picked the only 30 minutes it rained. It started just after 12 and the kids were in the boat and we had to cover them with their towels and put their goggles on, so they could see, and for 15 minutes we drove them around in the freezing, pelting rain until they'd had enough. We turned the boat back in and went back to the cabin my brothers girlfriends grandparents have, and 5 minutes after we got back there the sun came out and it was beautiful. So they missed their boat trip, but still had a good time.


We went to a Stockton Ports game not that long ago and Big T had the honor of receiving two baseballs. The first one, he just got for being adorable and a little boy with a glove at the game, as the pitching coach for the Modesto Nuts was walking his pitcher back to the dugout before the game, he took a ball out his back pocket and handed it to my son. So awesome, game hasn't started and he's already thrilled beyond words because he got a ball. Then later on in the game, while my wife was taking Little E on a walk around the park, The third baseman came over near us and caught a foul pop for the third out of the inning, looked over at Big T and gave him the ball. It's amazing really, I've been going to games for as long as I can remember and I've never got a ball. My 7-year-old son has now got 3. And 2 at one game. It's just crazy. We're heading back again next Friday for the Scout sleepover. He now attends games expecting to get a ball, I don't know what he'll do if he doesn't get one.

And last for this little post, I finished filming my starring role in the upcoming Brad Pitt film, "Moneyball". Well, more accurately, I finished filming my overnight role in the film. Okay, so really me and my cousin were unpaid extras in the stands during one of the sessions of filming the movie. But Brad Pitt was there with some of his kids, I don't know which ones. Jonah Hill was there and did a mini-routine that was pretty funny. The night we were there, 10:30 pm to 5:30 am, they were filming the scene where Scott Hatteberg hit a walk-off homer to win the 20th straight game from 2002. It was a lot of fun to see it re-enacted since I remember watching that game on TV. So now I can say I was there. According to the director, we will be CGIed so we fill the stadium. There were around 300 of us there, so in the movie I should show up 40-50 times. So make sure to go see the movie and watch for me. I'm the one in the white hat with a green bill. And the A's jacket. The other bonus for doing that is that I got free tickets to attend the A's game on my birthday, and got to see Cahill pitch his first career complete game shutout. It was a good one.

Car Trouble

We had ourselves a pretty big weekend. My mother-in-law turned 60, so I got to go hang out at my wife's sister's house. It wasn't so bad after a few Longboards. They set up the old Super8 projector and were watching old home movies, so that was awesome for me. The kids got to swim for a while in the doughboy in their backyard and play the Wii and watch Toy Story 2 and get ice cream cake, so it was a great party for them.

They have now completed one week of swim lessons and are going to be starting their second and final week of this session today. Big T may just be able to swim by Thursday, according to the teacher. Little E, probably not. But then, she's only 4 and this is her first time trying, so maybe a couple more lessons and she'll be okay. Just have to wait and see. It's frustrating for me, because I want them to be better faster, and I'll watch them in there with the teacher, and they're fooling around and being goofy, and I want them serious and focused because they're only getting 25 minutes sessions 8 times. Less than four hours of lessons to make them swim and they're not progressing at the pace that I'd like them to. I will say that Big T is much farther along than I thought he would be as he's dunking his head for a long time and really enjoys those diving rings that sit on the bottom of the pool. He loves trying to pick those up.

In other exciting news, Big T Finally lost his first tooth!! It took over seven years, but it finally happened. He was crazy excited about it and couldn't wait for the tooth fairy to come, and come the tooth fairy did. He was thrilled to find his tooth replaced by money this morning and the first thing he told me this morning was about this very magical and long awaited transformation.

Little E also picked her first peapod off her plant yesterday morning. She was also very excited about this development and can't wait for more of them to be ready to pick and eat.

In other exciting, but not nearly as welcome news, my vans transmission started to crap out on us as we were leaving for the 'local' Bass Pro Shops in Manteca. It would slam so hard from first to second that it felt like we were being rear ended. Checked everything out later that night, (we went to Bass Pro still, just took the wife's car instead of my van)  and everything was working fine. Called my mechanic this morning and discovered that this kind of thing can happen and when you turn off the vehicle and then turn it back on, it resets the computer, which is what could be causing the problem due to not reading the engine correctly and shifting when it should. So he said it was cool to drive and if it started happening again, I can simply pull over, turn the van off, turn it back on and it should work again. Of course, I'll still have to take it in to get it checked out. Which is super because I just got the A/C fixed on Friday. So back it goes!! But at least it's now and not while we're gone on vacation.

And since you're wondering, Bass Pro was fun. The kids got to make a picture frame, hang out in the boats, got new fishing poles, the shooting gallery was free. All in all, an interesting Sunday.

Bullets

Well, well, well. So, three months have passed and such wondrous things have happened. I cannot possibly keep you up on all things Wally, but bullets are always fun, right? Plus this is good typing practice. So what has happened since we last communicated?

• Little League has come and gone. There are no scores kept at the level we were at, so as such, no places or record. But all in all it was a good season. The kids got a lot better as the season went along and there were no major problems with anyone. Next year, we'll be playing almost real baseball, the kids will pitch to each other and there's a hardball involved. Should be fun.
• Little E made it through her first year of preschool and loved it. She's all excited to be starting the 4-year-old class next year. She can identify most of her letters and is attempting to write her name. She does pretty good except for the 'y'. 
• Big T survived first grade and had a great time. He won't have to go to summer school and the teacher he had was wonderful. I got to go on his field trip this year to Smith Farms and played the gut bass up on stage with the kids. It was quite an experience.
• Our kitty Kooni disappeared the day before Easter and we haven't seen her since. It was a tough thing to try to explain to the kids as they've never had to deal with real loss before this. Little E seems fine, but Big T has had a few moments of sadness with it. 
• We got a new Kitty named Zumi just last week. She's awesome and the kids love her and are helping them get over the missing Koonster. But it's an adjustment for them.
• My awesomely old laptop died on me, just crapped out with no warning. We lost all our pics from late August through Aprilish. So the lesson there? Backup, backup, backup, backup. 
• I got a new laptop and my wife got one also, as I had been hogging it due to gaining some more business with the web development stuff. It's been nice to have that little bit of extra cash now and then.
• Some of that extra cash was used to buy a new DVD player as the old one died on us. They only last a year or so for us anymore before they're no good. I don't understand it, as I bought one over 10 years ago from Good Guys when I worked at Circuit City (remember those two stores?) and it still works great.
• We have had two birthdays and the kids are now 4 and 7. Little E is already looking forward to being 5, because then she gets to go to Kindergarten.
• Big T graduated from Tiger Cubs and is now a Wolf Scout. I have somehow become one of the pack leaders and got a little certificate at the graduation ceremony.
• I played Mare Island Golf Club for the first time. The front nine are the oldest nine holes west of the Mississippi. The back nine are much, much newer.
• The air conditioning is out on the van again. Well, not actually out, as it just won't blow out of the front vents. So that will be fun to fix.
• The kids will be starting swim lessons next week. So that's something that hopefully will go very well, as we're planning to visit Tahoe in a while and I would like them to be less reliant on me and floaties in the lake.
• I have planted tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and onions this year in my quasi-garden. I got the zucchini, onions and tomatoes from my uncle, he with the amazingly large garden with enough produce to go to farmers markets with. Also he makes the kick ass salsa. They're all growing pretty well, except that i can't seem to get any strawberries off the plant, I think the bugs are getting to them first.
• My cherry tree this year was awesome. I got a lot of great bings off of it. They were delicious and sweet and the birds didn't get all of them
• They did however, get all of the other cherry that grows on that tree, the Rainiers. Those babies didn't make it far enough along before the birds ate them all. This won't happen next year, however, because Zumi will be able to protect the tree.
• They have also become obsessed with two tv shows: Phineas and Ferb, which isn't that bad, and Hot Wheels Battle Force 5, which is horrible. 
• They are starting soccer today, so that's gonna be something. I'm not looking forward to this at all, as I think they're more than coordinated enough to just play real sports.
• Also, I hit a bird yesterday with my van. I was driving along at about 50ish or so. A bird, who has the ability to fly significantly higher than 3 feet off the ground, wasn't and I smacked it with the right headlight. I don't know if the bird died or not, but I didn't see it laying along the side of the road when I passed back by 30 minutes later. But it did crap all over my headlight when I hit it. So I literally scared the crap out of that bird.
• I have set a new goal to not leave this for another three months, maybe I'll shoot for weekly and see how that goes. Set realistic goals, right?

So reading back over this, maybe i didn't need to keep updating as much, but I swear more happened, just don't remember it all now. 

Till next week, maybe.

Eye of the Tiger

I thought that I should update those who don't already know. Little E's eye is better and my wife's car is back in the shop today. Little E had another adventure the night that I last posted as she went into the emergency room due to the eye that was poked swelling up quite a bit. This worried us enough to call the advice nurse who told us to get her into the ER. So a four and a half hour trip later, she came home feeling a little better with a bottle of Tylenol with Codine, but still swollen and with instructions to get an appointment for the next day, which was Friday.

So Friday she got an appointment at 10 in the a.m. and I took another day off work to take her. Her eye seemed to be getting better and while we were getting ready to leave for the doctors I got her to open it. I'd given her some of the Tylenol earlier that morning and she must have felt well enough to finally give it a shot. That was a half-hour before her appointment. We got to the doctor and now that she could see again she was pointing out all sorts of things to me in the waiting room. Like the color of the chairs (red and green) the pictures of flowers on the wall, and the really big belly on the lady just a few seats down. I think the actual quote was, "Daddy, we're sitting on red chairs, that lady is sitting on a green chair, and she has a really big belly." I don't think the really big belly lady heard her because she didn't move, of course she did have a really big belly and it may have been to much for her to swing her head around.

The doctor said that it was probably just swollen because she had been rubbing her eye. So Little E got herself an eye patch. An eye patch to keep her from rubbing her eye. It was like when they give dogs those cones around their necks so they won't scratch or bite their stitches. Same thing. She spent the rest of that day actually watching movies and resting. And the next day she was almost completely better and now she's fine.

My wife's car was fixed from it's major problem and now has a minor problem that may or may not be related to the first problem, it's in the shop right now, and I'm waiting to hear what's wrong.


In other good news, (actual good news) Big T was offered and accepted the role of reader of the Little League Pledge on opening day for the league. He read it along with a little girl from another team and did great. I didn't know how he would do with something like that. But he was fine in front of the big crowd. I was one very proud papa, I tell you what.

Ay Carumba

So Little E was just recovering from her parachuteless skydive off the jungle gym when I went and poked her in eye with an umbrella. That's what the nurse put in the computer, 'Dad hit her in the eye with an umbrella.' Before you get all bothered about abuse and such, let me set the scene for you.

Yesterday morning about 6:45 in the a.m., it was raining pretty hard. It was one of my wife's parents days to watch the kids. I've been driving my mom's car instead of my van because my wife's car is in the shop because of a blown head gasket. So anyhoo, I've got my boy in the house and have come back out to get Little E out of the car. She says that she wants me to use the umbrella so she doesn't get as wet. So I pop it open and have it resting over us using the roof of the car and the open door to hold it. I get her out of her seat and am turning her around, so she's facing away from me, when the umbrella starts to fall. My former cat-like reflexes grab for the umbrella, but because my hands are trying to hold on to my daughter, my arm goes out and hits the umbrella in the middle of the handle and flings it upward toward her head. It hits her in the eye with one of the metal prongs (which seems like a very major design flaw) and she starts crying because it hurts.

I get her into the house and look at her eye and don't see any blood or discoloration so I think that maybe it just hit her near the eye and she'll be fine in a bit. I get my hugs and hi-fives and head out the door to go to work. About 10, I get a call from my wife who is heading over to her parents because her mom is freaking out because she can't get Little E to stop crying. I get a call 20 minutes later telling me to come and get Little E because she's just sobbing non-stop. I go get her and bring her home at around 11:15 a.m. My wife gets her a doctors appointment at 2:50 that afternoon. When we get home, she says that she wants to watch Toy Story 2, but what she really wants is to listen to it because she won't open her eyes. She falls asleep a bit after the movie starts and stays down for a good hour and a half. Once she wakes up she has a snack and lays back down and sleeps for another hour or so. In between all this whenever she has to pee, I have to carry her to the bathroom because she won't open her eyes to see where she's going.

We get to the doctors and she's not thrilled to be there, but the doctor gives her an eyedrop that numbs her eye for a while so she opens it up and the doctor sees a small scratch on her cornea. She should be better hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Overall, she's not feeling well because she's had a nasty head cold for the past few days to go along with this new injury. But I'm hopeful that she'll be fine again soon.

On a lighter note, part of my job is to type up reviews that librarians write up for books that they read. I just got another doozy and thought that I'd share it with you.

I don't know how well you can see this as I've discovered that I'm not a great photographer with my phone, but the librarian has misspelled 'intelligent'.And people wonder why our kids don't get a good education.

Free Falling

Well electronical friends, it seems like these gaps are becoming more and more common, yes? And yet, things are happening. This past weekend was birthday weekend, with my little brother coming down from Petaluma to the family get together/birthday party for him. My dad made ribs and potato and macaroni salad, and it was a great food day. It's always nice to have the family get together, and my aunt and uncle came down from Lower Lake and I got my uncle the dimensions for the area of my upcoming garden and he let me know that he has two kinds of squash, zuchinni, bell peppers, beans, three types of tomatoes and onions ready to come down in a couple weeks. So that means that me and the fam will make a pilgrimage up there to get the plants and set up with the materials that I'll need for irrigation and weed control. It also means that I should probably start building that raised planter. Soon.

Sunday was spent over at a friends house, whose daughter was celebrating her 8th birthday. Our kids are pretty close in age, so they enjoy playing with each other. They also have a play structure deal, like the ones from Costco. The kids love playing on that thing, there's swings, and a slide and a couple ladders. I'm not sure exactly what happened, as I was inside talking to people, and my wife was talking to someone else outside so she didn't see it right away, either. But I poked my head out the door just in time to see my little 3 year old girl helicopter spin off the top of the ladder and fall face first onto the safety mat seven feet below. She landed in a belly-flop manner and you could definately hear the thud. It seemed to happen in slow motion, and Thank God she landed on the mat and not another foot away where the cement patio was. I picked her up and she was trying to cry, but having a hard time, as the wind was knocked out of her. Once she caught her breath back, she cried for a while, and my wife took her from me, because I guess I wasn't doing a good enough job soothing her. I found them a few minutes later in the bathroom, with my wife cleaning my daughters face off. My son was pretty freaked out about this, as he suddenly became very shy and didn't want to leave my side.

Soon after this episode it was time for the kids to decorate their cupcakes, and she did this with her big brother and all was fine. She ate her hot dog, and about 15 minutes later was asking if she could go play on the playground again. So we let her, just disallowing her up the ladder she fell off of. So either the memory was gone, or she just didn't care. My kids are pretty tough. I say that, because the only other explanation is that they don't learn. And I'm pretty sure they learn.

It Takes Time

Well my electronic friends, it has been a while hasn't it. There have been some happenings, but to avoid a long windyish post, I'll condense.

My cell phone broke about two weeks ago. It's a slider phone, and it stopped sliding, then it started sliding again but the screen went out. So I've had a phone in my pocket that was nothing but a phone, no texting, no caller id, no confirming that I hit the right keys to dial a certain number. It would have been more upsetting, but we were eligible to upgrade our phones a couple days ago, so I just willed myself through the past 12 days with a semi-functional phone. We went to see Lady and the Tramp at the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in SF on Monday, which was the same day we were able to upgrade. It was a lot of fun to see the movie on a slightly larger screen with the kids and both sets of parents. There was a little girl there who was probably about 9 sitting behind us and she had to ask her dad a few times, who the characters were. Which I found amusing because my little 3 year old whispered to me at one point in the movie, "Here come those cats, Daddy. They're not nice." and then we were treated to "We Are Siamese" so that was fun. The day in SF ended and we drove home to get our new phones.

We discovered upon arriving at the former establishment of my employ, that in order to get any of the phones with full keyboards, which is what we wanted, we had to now have $20 in data/messaging on our plan. We went back and forth on this for a long time, during which the kids were bored out of their skulls, until finally deciding to bend over and let AT&T shove their newly inflated plans up the exit only chute on our backsides. I have to admit, I enjoy playing with the features, and the ability to watch TV on the phone is fun, although the quality sucks, but it's growing on me. We'll see how much fun this all is when that bill comes with the extra $30 tagged onto it. I'm gonna guess not as much fun as the playing.

Meanwhile, the first practice for the new baseball season is coming in a little less than three hours. I'm really excited about getting back into the world of baseball again. I miss it a lot during those dark months of football. But we should be able to have a good season, limit the injuries and such. I have 12 players, only one of whom is a girl. They usually try to put at least two girls on each team, so they don't have to hang out with the icky boys, I guess. But this year the second girl's parents decided not to let her play because there weren't enough females to require a softball team at the 7-8 year old age range.

And lastly, we found out that Big T does have grown up teeth hanging out behind those baby chompers of his. He has yet to have so much as a loose tooth, but we've received X-Ray confirmation that all is well in the gums of our boy and that we can expect loose teeth to come forthwith.

And Lost has been awesome this year. I'll see you real soon!

The Job

There was a small scare recently with regards to my wife's job. A little one with mine also, but happily both seem to have worked out fine. First mine, because the story is shorter.

The school district has two positions with my job title, and the other person has decided that the time has come, after over 30 years, for her to retire. So her job is being eliminated after June, which is the end of the fiscal year. The only reason this could affect me is if she changes her mind on retirement, which would then push her to my job since she has seniority, but there are hopes for me to have my job reclassified in order to account for all the web development that I do for the district.

My wife's job is going to be eliminated, however, there is a new position being created that will oversee two other people putting her into a supervisory position. There is no pay raise at this point, but she'll be pushed into a new bracket. Right now she's actually being paid above what her position is capped at. She will be working some nights and weekends now, but this will allow her to spend more time with the kids on school days and take them and pick them up occasionally. Which is very exciting for the kids who are almost always shuttled to and from their schools by our parents. Except for the very special occasions where either my wife or myself will pick them up. So what started as stressful news ended up being happy news. Nothing will be official until around the 23rd of next month and as I understand it, the actual job won't change until the 7th of March. So we'll see how things go until then.

In other news, baseball is starting up again. I should get my team on Tuesday, which is the season premiere event of Lost. I gave an interview to the local paper about the new season about a week ago. I talked to the reporter for about 20 minutes, and out of that 20 minute conversation, one line made it into the article. It's kind of disappointing, but I've known the reporter for a while now and have had my fun being in the paper a few times now. And since I don't actually subscribe to the paper, I really shouldn't complain at all.

And just to document this, Little E is still determined that we will be getting a dog soon. We'd love to get a dog, but if it was up to her, one would come home with me today. I think she still wants to name it Sam Lightswitch. Which I guess could work as a girl dog name also.

Finger

Post number 200. And to mark the occasion. Some photos of the marks on my finger. These are up by request, so a couple warnings. One, these are blurry, they were taken with my phone, and it's not great at close-ups. Two, they could be disturbing if you're really, really, really squeamish. So here they are. Four images of my finger injury.

Taken the night of the injury in poor lighting, but I was lightheaded and woozy and didn't take the time to go to a more well lit area. I had stopped the bleeding at this point.

48 hours after getting my stitches in. This is the first time I removed the bandage that was put on at the hospital. You can see the stitches fairly well here.

Took this one in the hospital just before getting the stitches out. You can really see the improvement in the finger here. I was told just three days prior to this by another doctor, so seven days after getting them put in,  "Wow, you're healing really well, it looks great. Come back in three days to have those taken out."

Later that night. My finger, stitch free.

So I hope you enjoyed this little scrapbook journey. And if you didn't, not my fault. I didn't do this for your enjoyment. I really didn't.

But to end on a high note, here's the boy with his winning car, and all the loot he got at the derby. Three ribbons, trophy, and a medal. Not bad for his first time.

On The Mend

Well, my hand is healing pretty well, I'm typing a bit better with a few more fingers, the car is no longer in need of cutting, and the first paint job has been applied. Things are moving along fairly smoothly. The cutting of the car was done by my dad, as my wife and my mom both are trying to keep me away from sharp things for a while. I think my dad's in on it too. Even though I learned how to injure myself with common objects from him.

We are on a bit of a time crunch now with the car as we're supposed to take it to somebody's house this Friday to have it weighed, measured and impounded until the race on Saturday. I figure that if he doesn't win something, then I must be a fairly big failure, since I've literally put my sweat and blood into this little block of wood.

In Stitches

Well, I made it over 30 years without a broken bone or stitches. The broken bone streak is still intact, but, the stitches streak ended last night.

I was working on my sons Pinewood Derby car with a wood chisel. I was almost done with it when it slipped through the back of the car and through a couple inches of my hand. It started bleeding pretty good, and because my daughter was playing in the back of my van in the garage at the time I cut myself, I ran into the house yelling for my wife to go get her. My wife came in and followed the trail of blood to the bathroom where I was pretty near passing out and asked if I still had my finger, so apparently, there was a lot of blood, because my wife doesn't freak out that easily. So I got a towel on it and was able to stop the bleeding after a couple minutes. My wife called the advice nurse and after talking to me, they gave me an appointment at the minor injury clinic at Kaiser. I cut myself around 6 or so, and the appointment for us was at 7. My wife called her parents, who were over by our house trying to escape the Texans currently holding her house hostage, and they agreed to come watch the kids so I could be driven to the hospital. There was nobody at the minor injury clinic when we got there so we got right in and they put some numbing stuff on my hand and took my blood pressure on the arm without the gash and sent me in to see the doctor in the same room I had just recently taken my son to for his foot. I was far less anxious this time even though it was my own hand that was going to get that shot of Lydocane and stitches.

Now,since you can't see my hand and I don't think you want to see the picture I took with my phone, I'll describe it's location. If you were to lay your left hand on it's palm, and then notice where your index fingers knuckle is, the knuckle closest to your hand, the cut runs from near the palm most of the way up to the knuckle, and about a half inch deep, according to the doctor. But also according to the doctor, I was lucky enough not to sever any tendons or nerves and I still have full motion of my finger. I also have four stitches holding it together now. It was going to be three, but in conversation with the doctor, he asked me what my lucky number was. I said 14. I don't know if that really my 'lucky' number but it's a favorite of mine. He said that made my lucky number 5, because 1 + 4 = 5. H sait that there wouldn't be that many stitches. He said that three might be enough, but since 4 was his lucky number, that's how many I got.

I didn't get a pic of the stitches right after he put them in, but I wish I would have, since I have to leave the bandage on until tomorrow night. But I'll take a pic when I change the dressing and hopefully it's not getting infected right now. It does hurt now, but it's kind of a burning sensation with some bruisish aching with it. I can't type really well because I can only really use one hand to do it. Otherwise, thankfully, I'm fine. I hear I'm going to get a scar from this. It will be a lasting, loving reminder of my sons first Pinewood Derby, which is  much better trophy than anything he could win at the race next weekend.

Explanation

So it's a day or so later than I said it would be, but it's been busy lately. Seriously, it has been. Not just making excuses. This past week I was off from work was great. We went somewhere everyday, and since my darling wife had to work during the week, most of these trips were just me and the kids. We saw Princess and the Frog last Sunday, went to Pump It Up on Monday with my wife's brother-in-law and his kids, golfing Tuesday and Wednesday, where I spent money to have Little E hit range balls off into the distance with her brand new pink putter. Thursday took us to Chuck E Cheese, we went bowling and Big T bowled a 99, which is his new high score, and then we went up to Big Trees with my parents, which is where those pics came from.

My parents brought their dog, Tule, up with them, and she'd never been to the snow before. She's only 8 months old, though. One of the greatest things I discovered about her is shown in one of those pictures, where I'd make snowballs and toss them to her and she'd leap into the air to catch them. She also pulled the kids around on their sleds, Iditarod style. And that face that Little E's making? That's her Evil Queen face. She also used it at Pump It Up when she became Queen of the Mountain after fending off a boy with a pugil stick. She raised her hands and slowly turned to see if anyone else would dare try to remove her from her perch. No one else did.

And my wife's sister and brother-in-law and their adopted twin sons are still living with her parents. This is two months now. And as Thumper said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." So I guess that's all I have to say about that.

No Explanation

Today some fun pics of our day at Big Trees in the snow. Tomorrow (hopefully) some explanations and a little report on what we did over our Christmas Vacation.