Happy New Year!

Well, the ball has almost dropped, for those of us in the Eastern Time Zone.....Emma and Michelle are very excited, and will probably make it to see in the new year, but I am fading fast. Although I was just shocked awake when Michelle pointed out how much my hairline has receded. There is something to start the new year on. So I got up, and went to go examine the offending folicles.

Holy Rogaine, when did this happen! For three year I used hair clippers, and kept my hair short. Then a few months ago I started growing it out and it seems that I am too late. I guess I will be shaving my head again. I always maintained that is what I would do if I started balding!

There is a old folktale that I am reminded of, I think I heard it in a movie or something. Maybe someone else will be able to remind me where, but there is an old turtle sunning on the banks of a river when a scorpion approaches. The scorpion introduces himself to the turtle who has retreated to the safety of the water. The scorpion begs the turtle for a ride to the far shore of the river. The turtle thinks and thinks, then decided to help the scorpion to the otherside, because the scorpion can not swim, so he wouldn't try anything in the middle of the river, because then neither one would make it to the other side. So the scorpion climbs on to the back of the turtle and they start across. But halfway across the river the scorpion does sting the turtle, and just before they both slip under the water forever the turtle asks the scorpion: "why?" The scorpion answers with a simple phrase, "It is my nature."

Happy New Year to everyone.

Oh, and I heard a little political comedy today, "The Capitol Steps". They were spoofing Bush, and it was wildly funny: "In uncertain times, we need uncertain leadership."

I forgot what Ryan opened in this package, but I am pretty sure that it was actually a present for him. 

Holly got a pair of binoculars for Christmas. 

A quicky picture of our new entertainment center. We got it in early December part of a Christmas present from Michelle's parents. But my gift to Michelle was the two chic lamps. Move over Martha Stewart, oh, not Martha...... 

That Doctor Who scarf again.....

I figure I should throw the link out there since I hinted at it earlier....

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3746/Scarf.html

Michelle crocheted a Doctor Who scarf for me. The pattern said it would have been 12 feet long, she shortened it to about 10 feet. It is actually the pattern of the longest running scarf that Tom Baker wore. They changed during his time on Doctor Who. 

Happy Holidays

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Today wasn't that bad, the kids loved their presents, we went kind of light on the giving this year, and it is a good thing, because they were barely able to handle the amount that we did get. Everything that they opened, they wanted to play with right then, so after some presents and their stockings they wouldn't have been able to handle much more. As it was we had to take a break in the middle, for some games, and crazy time.

Christmas falling on a weekend is certainly messing with my head this year. I keep thinking that today is Thursday or Friday. I'm all messed up on the days!

I still can't get over how little time off Michelle gets for holidays. Maybe it is because where she works employes a lot of lawyers, but I don't know. She got Friday off. That was it. I know, there are many people I know that have retail or customer service type jobs in which they are lucky just to get Christmas off. But Michelle has a nine to five, Monday through Friday job, it is in a different class, and for the days off to work out so incredibly insenstive, it is just a shock. Oh, and she gets off on January third, for New Years, that seems a little stupid to me. A paid holiday, yes, but a little late.

Why.....?

Why is it that when it is VERY windy outside, the water in the toilet bowl moves around? Not as much to call it waves, but definately reacting to something......

We put the tree up three weeks ago, and as you can see here, Ryan was a little nervous at first.....but Holly loved the tinsel! 

Blogging saves the day.

Well, I finally have a very interesting occurance to talk about. I thought about including all of the text of these letters, but I think it would take a lot of room, if anyone is interested in reading all of them, I can forward them to you.

A few days ago my Aunt forwarded a chain e-mail to most of the family members that have email accounts. It had to do with the ACLU supposedly not wanting Christian crosses to be displayed at public or private memorial sites or on grave stones. It also included a picture of a large field of grave stones that were all crosses.

In response, my brother wrote, what I took to be a well thought-out and researched reply to all the reciepients about how the photo was actually a WWII memorial in Europe, and how most of the ACLU's activities have been to allow everyone to be able to exercise their constitutional rights regardless of their religious or political backgrounds or agendas. (There are also sites on the internet which specialize in exposing hoax chain-letters and the like.)

So a couple days go by and all the sudden everyone in the family receives an e-mail from one of my "Uncles" (by marriage). He has always been a bit of a hot-head and doesn't share many of the views shared by most of the other family members, but he proceeds to blast my brother's e-mail and all "Left Wing Cry Baby Bed Wetting Radical Liberals". He proceeds to talk about how Kerry and Dean are forcing their will on government and society. About how the ACLU is eroding religious freedom and how his right to bare arms are being taken away by the left.

I just thought that it was funny that he, who voted for Bush, and for whom the Federal Assault Weapon Ban(outlawing production, not the sale, of automatic weapons) just expired, gets all hysterical about his rights diminishing and having increases in religious persecution. Regardless of the fact that he was extremely rude and insensitive in the face of a reasoned and well-thought out reply.

I think I am gonna write an e-mail too, gotta help out my brother.

Telephone, not the game either.

About a year ago I bought a really nice Plantronics hands-free telephone. One section clips to your belt or pocket, and the earpiece/microphone can either be worn with a headset (like headphones, just on one side) or with a really neat attachment that comfortable just wraps around the back of you ear. I bought it thinking of all the time I would be able to save doing chores or changing fetid diapers while being able to make all those necessary phone calls for the household.

Problem is, there aren't really many phone calls to make. I just walk around with this freaking thing on my head, and after 3 or 4 hours on my ear, it does begin to ache where it is hanging on. I used it a lot to start with, but I am the only one in the house that does use it, and there are only so many times in one day that I can call Michelle, or the WOKR-13 Weatherline!

I know, I know.....

...every entry in this thing doesn't need to be a complete dissertation. Some days, despite the best of intentions, I just don't feel as bright as I normally do. Tonight just happens to be one of those nights.

I usually think of three or four stories, or pictures that I want to include here, but then by the time I sit down to write them, they have evaporated like water off of a griddle.

Well, some cute pictures are coming.....

Websites for the masses.

Just wanted to let all the people who read this site (Kyle) know that Michelle's been blogging for over a year now, but just recently switched her site too: http://www.crochetsleuth.blogspot.com/

She has a bunch of buttons that she made or were made for her, on the right hand side, and the mouseover (there is a word for my spell check to sizzle on) text is pretty amusing.

And definitely check out this site: http://www.sorryeverybody.com/. She knew about this site since the day after election day, but didn't tell me! It is awesome, I could spend hours looking at it! Yes, I am a Democrat and since I live in New York State, which was solidly Democrat you can guess who I voted for.

Listening to a bit of Hooverphonic right now.....guess I better go to bed, Michelle is going to be off tomorrow so I will need my strength. We are probably going to try to brave the arctic temperatures (http://wokr13.tv/weather/default.aspx) 10 degrees! Do the grocery shopping and CVS runs. I knew it was coming, but the kids keep wanting to go outside and shovel the snow, then they don't want to come back in! Silly munchkins.

Michelle just saw the pictures of the kids in the tub, and mentioned that they look like they are twins, it is tough to believe that they are a year and two weeks apart. Sometimes I actually have trouble remembering how I spent my time before they came along........It was a different world back then.

I just love this picture. I can't get enough of it.....from last April, but it is great. 

We gave them a bath tonight.....they love their time in the tub. 

I never related to commercials before........

I was offline for last weekend, and I am just now getting the computer back to where it should be. Somehow, despite Norton Anti-virus, and a router, and not downloading anything from anyone that I don't know, I managed to get what I think was a computer virus.
After getting a few illegal operation errors on Friday night trying to shutdown Windows, I tried to boot up the computer Saturday morning, and it wouldn't even load windows. I got some error that said "Couldn't load user.exe. You must reinstall Windows."
That is a heck of a thing to see. At that point I wasn't sure whether this was an accident, a corrupted file, or a virus. I figured that I would just reinstall windows, no biggie. So I threw in my windows install disk and it starts on a scandisk, checking the existing windows file structure.....this is when the dirty diaper hit the fan. I kept getting notifications that windows was finding files that had file names that were too long, or that the files were no longer useable. Not just one or two files, but I pressed 'enter' 3245 times telling windows to try to fix the files before I decided that I just needed to reformat the drive, in the dire attempt to preserve a tiny, shred of my sanity.
Now, thank everything that I can, that I went through the hassle of installing a Dynamic Drive Overlay, so that I could partition my 160 gigs into 4 drives. This computer would only recoginize a maximum of 2 gigs, without the DDO. And I have pretty religiously been putting most programs on other then my boot drive. With the noteable exception of Quicken, which took me 90 minutes to reconstruct from my last backup, over a month ago.
I only had to format my boot drive.
But I was such an idiot when it came to my network card. I don't believe that I was so silly as to get the network cards mixed up between the two computers. I spent more time then I care to admit trying to force the drivers to work on the wrong network card. Once I realized what I did, it took me 30 seconds to reconfigure and get my computer back online. So much for being great under stressful situations.
It made me think, so many times, of that stupid AOL commercial that has been on recently, with all the different people saying how they want there computers to crash or get a virus. AOL's belabored point being that not everyone is as protected as they think.....but for the life of me, I can't think of anything else I could have done.

Oh, No.

Well, it is Friday evening and I am ninety percent certain that I am coming down with a cold or the flu. We will see if I get a fever and/or aches and pains to diagnose for certain. I tried to get some down time (a quick nap) while Holly and Ryan were watching Zoom (the only watch PBS or the Wiggles). When I got up from that I felt as if I got hit by a truck. Taking a nap around then isn't to out of the ordinary, these past few weeks.....so its not like I messed myself up from that.

Come to think of it, my forehead feels pretty warm....Oh, boy. And I am entirely not interested in eating dinner. This is going to be interesting.

Deer or Humans?

I was thinking a few days ago. Stand back or you may get burned. This may not even be an original thought but one i fet like posting regardless.
I have no problem with people who hunt, I think they serve a very valuable service: culling populations so the food scarcity of winter doesn't cause starvation, a much more painful and suffing way to die. I also think that there are large number if intellegent people who hunt. A couple examples: my dad used to hunt and my sister-in-law's husband is someone that I have tremendous respect for. But every year there are a number of deaths from hunters shooting each other.

http://www1.cnn.com/2004/US/11/22/hunters.killed/
http://www.outdoorsdirectory.com/magazine/accident.htm
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/news/news/010423b.htm
ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/7/1/62.pdf

I was just wondering if the hunting season is a way of culling the deer populations, or whether it is away of culling the human population?
But actually just searching for the above articles.....I thought of a flaw in my reasoning.....the stupid people are the ones doing the shooting, not the ones getting dead. Unless they are hunting-related suicides, then there really is no point in my whole rant.

Breakfast and Hair Dryers.

Well, I never thought that I would have something to write this early (I have been up for a couple hours, but come on, it is early).

Let me just preface, Ryan feels a compulsive need to mimic or imitate almost everything that Holly does, good or bad. Most of the time this is a good thing, because Holly is very well behaved most of the time. This morning, however, we ran into a interesting and frankly maddening situation.

Holly and Ryan and I were eating breakfast. Simple and yummy, cereal: Corn Chex and Marshmellows and Stars. Holly must have been a little distracted, she is still a little congested and stuffy, but right as Michelle was leaving Holly accidentally spilled her bowl. All the sudden I hear "Help, Daddy, milk!" She had spilled about half of her remaining milk and cereal and then somehow managed to right the bowl saving what was left. I ran in from handing Michelle her coffee, and grabbed a couple of dish towels and started mopping up. Now if this was it I would have to say it wouldn't be interesting enough for me to write about it here, but......

Ryan dumped out the entire contents of his full bowl of milk and cereal onto the dining room table! He saw what happened to Holly, and didn't realize that it was an accident and wanted to do the same thing as she did. I wish I had the presence of mind to grab the camera and take a couple of pictures, but needless to say, I was not thinking of it as particularly amusing until some time a little later.

The other funny thing that happened was after everyone had gotten dressed, and the furnace was running, Holly was sitting near one of the heat registers and felt the hot air blowing on her. She then leaned down and said that it felt just like a hair dryer on her head. Cute.

The last funny thing that I will get to this morning (besides the fact that they are both sitting on my lap, watching me type) when Holly got up this morning she was telling us about how the "ABC's on her clock keep changing." Because it was first thing in the morning it took us a few seconds to realize that she was talking about the LED numbers on her clock, and that she sees and processes that the numbers are changing over time. It struck me as a little advanced for a 3 year old.

Well, that it for now, I hope the rest of the day is a little more calm.....

From the summer. Can you tell they love noodles and sauce! 

An old picture, from the summer, but definately captures the spirit of Ryan! 

News!

To anyone (my family) who has tried to post a comment, but have had the website tell you that you have to have an existing blog at this site in order to post a comment, I have now disabled that feature, and anyone can leave a post now.

Holly told Michelle the chore that I did today: "Sweeping the sky." She came up with that description after seeing me dusting the cobwebs in our house. Kind of funny the way that kids translate things to their frame of reference.

On NPR the other day I heard this news story about this potential new technology for table saws called "Sawstop". It was pretty incredible. I guess 40,000 people a year, in the US, go to the hospital every year due to injuries received from tablesaws, 3000 of that number are amputations. So these two guys, a patent attorney and an engineer designed and patented "Sawstop". By having the blade of the tablesaw connected to a mild powersource, a small device in the saw can tell if it scratches a person's flesh. Then within .03 seconds it fires a spring loaded aluminum bar through the blade and it drops down below the table's surface. It was amazing, but perhaps more amazing is the refusal of any tool manufacture to have any interest in licensing the technology for use on their brands. Black & Decker, Ryobi, Delta, and many others refuse on the basis of liability to use the technology.

Am I the only one that find something wrong with this????? Probably not, that why there was the story on NPR, but it was incredible.

But check out www.npr.org for the story, you can listen to the story, and actually see a video clip of a demonstration on a jolly-time hot dog, which supposedly has the same electrical conductivity as a human finger. Ick.

Well, this weekend was much more quiet than (then or than, I can tell which) last weekend. No major appliances decided they have had enough. Although I struggled for 4 hours to try and get a new game to work on my computer, but it finally won out after I decided it was more stubborn then I was. Damn "vxd Asp4wave" blue screen error. I updated so many drivers that my computer could drive a limo!

We managed to set up the Christmas tree and did a few errands. I guess we tired them out, maybe when we went and forced them to meet Santa Claus on Saturday! Holly and Ryan just both asked to go in to take a morning nap. I can't think of the last time they took two naps, but today looks to be one of those days. I'll post a few pictures after this entry.

Ryan loves to take tinsel off of the tree, that is so fun! (very sarcastic tone!)

Sesame Street rules! 

Ho, Ho, Ho! 

Such good little munchkins! Too cute for their own good. 

FDA investigates blogging as Class 1 Substance.

I never knew that blogging like this could be so fun (the word: "addictive" springs to mind)....I think I need to try to limit myself to only posting once or twice a day. I don't want it to be to much of a chore for people to stay current with this blog.

Wow, the kids like to do chores. Right now Ryan is dusting the living room. They ask several times a day to pick from the chore jar. Since they are not one-hundred percent self-sufficient most of the chore gets performed my Michelle or me. They are learning and doing more every day, it truly is amazing. Michelle and I make little lists of all the funny things that Holly, Ryan and Emma say and do. I will be able to share some of those items on this site.

This past weekend there was so many things that went on it was bananas. We have been working on painting one of the walls in our living room, and then I started coming down with this cold. We had a family (Grandma, Papa, Rick were all there too) bowling event after Emma's league on Saturday morning. This weekend we did all the painting, but in moving stuff away from the wall, our TV got set down too hard and broke. Then we brought it to be serviced on Sunday, we got home to the smell of burning plastic and no heat. Our furnace "rolled out" and I guess flames and heat was coming out the pilot light opening and scorched and burned the wiring in the front of the furnace. From what the service guy said we are luck that it didn't catch the wiring on fire. We would have come home to empty, smoking lot. Then Monday morning, one of our coffee makers broke.

It has been quite a week. I guess they say bad things happen in threes so I think that should be it for a while, unless we are due for 6 or 9, or something.

Rare holding hands! 

Ryan is determined to get inside the camera! 

Emma made a bunch of "Action Pictures". 

Here we go!

I have finally overcome the inertia that has prevented me from starting what could arguably be the funniest, most tired blog that there is. It is kinda strange that I happen to make this decision the day after I was up half the night. I seem to have a cold that is concentrated in my chest. Just can't shake this cough and I missed a lot of sleep last night because of it. I eventually overdosed on cough syrup and Chloraseptic, the taste that is the opposite of bliss, and managed to get a few hours of sleep. I feel sorry for Michelle, because I kept her up too. I thought it was kinda funny that when BOTH children finally start sleeping through the night, something else occurs to prevent me from catching up on my rest too.

Well, I have lots of pictures of the family, and plenty of ideas for what I can write on the site that I better get started. Just in case you don't know, or have been away for a while, I am married to Michelle, and am the father of Holly and Ryan. Michelle's daughter, Emma, lives with us about half the time.

Once I get everything squared away with image hosting (I think it is called photobucket) I'll get some recent and funny pictures posted on here.

This is only the beginning.