I’ve been meaning to put this in somewhere, and I probably will have a “Disclaimer” page somewhere.  I’m random.  Very random.  Sometimes I may have well thought out topics with appropriate supporting documentation, but mostly it will be random thoughts and unstructured paragraphs.  I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to Amber L, my college English 101 and 102 teacher.  Yes, I liked her so much the first time that I made sure to get her for the other required English class.  Sorry, but my writing skills have gone downhill a bit.  You’re a mother now, you know how your brain gets fuzzy so easily…I’m sure you understand.

Speaking of English (told you I was random).  I’d like to point out that I took a total of four English classes in college.  I got an “A” in all of them.  Hell, I think I’ll put up the story of the birth of our kids!  I wrote one about Nutty’s birth as an assignment for English 101 (touch on this in a second) and thought it was a great idea so I did one for Monkey’s birth too.  I really need to do one for Tank’s soon before I’ve forgotten the little details.

So, back to that assignment one.  Amber was awesome.  Yes, it was weird that my English teacher was only 4-5 months older than I was.  So, she buckled down and went to college and busted out her Masters.  I played, worked, played, and played some more.  Then realized I needed a degree.  Went back to college and got this assignment in English 101.  So, I wrote the paper about Nutty’s birth and turned it in.  Then, during a Student/Teacher conference, I brought Nutty with me.  Once I saw her tear up even talking about the paper, and then how she interacted with Nutty (not only at the conference, but also one time when I brought him to her house to turn in my final)…yeah, I knew she couldn’t stick with the “I’m never having kids” BS she had been telling us.  Fast forward a few years and Amber and Jared have a beautiful baby girl.  Glad she didn’t stick with the kidless thing…she is and will be a great mom.  Hell, she got a bunch of punk kids to do homework in college!

So, the moral of the story….I’m random.  Don’t expect proper: grammar, punctuation, sentance structure, thoughts, or spelling.  Odd thing is that I have a spell check for this, but it doesn’t like “nd” in anything, even if it is in the middle of a word, and a few other things like that.

Later tater

Today started off just wrong.  First thing I remember about today…well, first thing I remember was going to bed at 0130, but that’s besides the point.  I woke up around 0715 this morning to Kim telling me not to roll backwards as I was about to because Tank was laying there.  WHOA!  Three kids and that’s the first time that’s ever happened!  Regardless, the little man was unharmed and gave me a quick kick as if to say, “What the hell is wrong with you, Dad?”

I don’t know how much longer it was, but Kim told me at one point that I’d have to take the older two kids to the dentist today.  She had planned on taking all three, and if they were good they’d head over to her friends house for some swimming.  I planned on sleeping in, getting up, grabbing a cold Dew and hitting the Xbox.  Yeah, not so much.  Her throat is sore again.  Only been a few weeks since the last flair up she had.  It took forever for the right tonsil to clear up, and not so strangely, it has flared up again.  Only on the right side.  Wonder if it ever went fully away.

So, 0900 rolls around, and I look at the clock after waking up and then jumping out of bed.  The kids’ appointments were at 1000!  So I get dressed, brush the teeth, and run a brush through my chin hair (it gets bed head too dontcha know).  Slap on a pair of socks and shoes (odd for me this time of year) and head downstairs.  Sure enough, Kim is on the couch in her robe, and the older two kids are dressed.  Apparently, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to get to the dentist.  Good thing I didn’t know this or I probably would have gone back to sleep for “10 minutes” and woken up around 0945.  So I come in and jump on my laptop for a little Mafia Wars action.  Facebook, MySpace, and iPhone all have Mafia Wars on there (look me up if you’d like to join me)…I’m addicted to it.

Kids have shoes on, brushed their teeth, and are heading to the car.  Aaaaaaand we’re off….”Like a herd of turtles!” (as the saying in our house goes).  Now, you should know that I am dreading this.  Nutty doesn’t like the dentist, and Monkey usually plays off of her big brother’s fears.  This could be really bad.  But apparently, the kids I brought from home were exchanged with clones upon walking into the dentist’s office.  Not only does Nutty finally break the 40 pound barrier (42.5 pounds, thank you!) but he doesn’t yell at me when I leave the room where he is in the chair.  See, they tricked me.  They put Nutty in the chair first, leaving me and Monkey to sit in the observation chairs.  But…big BUT…after about 2 minutes, someone else comes to get Monkey.  Yes, she is going to a different room.  Ok…I can handle this.

I head off with Monkey since she has 1/2 the dentist visit experience Nutty has.  Thought she could use the support more.  So I am sitting there holding her hand while the hygienist polishes her teeth.  Strawberry toothpaste in case you were wondering.  Then came the water dispenser thing.  Crap.  She freaked last time.  This time…nothing.  She was diggin it!  Ok, cool.  Oh shit.  The spit sucker…or as they call it, “The sucky straw”.  She freaks out!  Left hand over her mouth, right hand squeezing the hell out of mine with her fingernails digging into my skin (mental note, trim kids’ fingernails TODAY!).  Then the hygienist gets idea and sets it down.  She gets back to polishing.  About 2 minutes later, out came the water again.  And then…what the hell is this lady doing?  She’s pulling the spit sucker back out!  Hey!! Lady!! Didn’t you see what happened 2 minutes ago?!?!?!  Then, she gets really bold.  She touches Monkey’s fingers with it.  She starts giggling.  Apparently, it is ok now.  Glad this lady is better with kids than I am.  I wouldn’t have attempted it again so soon, but it worked.

About this time in walks Nutty.  Not a peep from him in the other room the entire time.  Polished, also used the spit sucker for the first time, and he even allowed them to floss.  Wow.  Monkey was now in the process of getting her teeth flossed.   So, both kids went through the process with minimal fuss.  Holy crap.  Then the hygentist mentions that we have never had x-rays done of Monkey’s teeth.  Well, she likes having her picture taken.  Ok, lets give it a go.  Again, no argument from her.  Seriously?  Where are my kids?  These aren’t my kids!  My kids would fight you if you tried to do something they didn’t want to.

All in all, a very productive, uneventful trip to the dentist.  So proud.

So Kim asked me to check her email for her today.  She was awaiting a couple of reply emails on things for Tank.  So I jump on her computer and pull up Yahoo! and…holy crap…another death???

Billy Mays.  The OxyClean guy, 1/2 of Pitchmen, the man who could sell damn near anything.  Gone, at 50 years old.  I just caught an episode of Pitchmen this morning, about 20 minutes before I read the article that he had died.  I’m still a bit shocked.

So far there have been four well known people that have died in the last 5 days.  Ed McMahon on Tuesday, then he got overshadowed when Farrah Fawcett died.  Thursday morning I kept seeing the running ticker that she had passed away.  Then Thursday afternoon Kim read someone else’s status on Facebook that said Michael Jackson had died.  I thought, no way…maybe they misread something because it was Farrah Fawcett that died.  Wow, Michael Jackson did die.  Now today, Billy Mays.  My condolences to everyone that has lost someone special in their lives.

Not much new going on around here.  Same old weekend routine.   We did find out Kim is going to have her gallbladder removed on July 20th.  That changed the calendar a little.

We had planned to go visit Kim’s parents the second week of July, but not anymore.  Kim has a pre-surgery appointment the middle of the time we planned to go visit.  Well, we just had to postpone it.  The one benefit of Kim’s job (and my lack of one) is that we can travel pretty easily.  Stop the mail, put out food for the cats, and we’re off.

Nutty is still going in tee ball.  Thankfully, it is almost over.  He gets very bored during the games.  I think he may have inherited my short attention span.  He has a hard time hitting off a tee for some reason.  We find it odd since he can hit the ball if you throw it to him.  At this point we are debating about signing him up for next year.  The problem is that next year is “Coach Pitch” and the year after that is “Player Pitch”.  I’d like him to play the coach pitch first, just to get used to it.  We’ll see what happens.

Monkey is just plugging away.  Nothing is really new with her.  She’ll have another follow up eye appointment before too long…hopefully surgery won’t be necessary.

Tank is just eating, sleeping, pooping, and GROWING!  While holding him trying to get him to nap my arm will fall asleep.  He is doing exactly what we expect him to.

Yeah, nothing else going on with me.  There is the potential for some more work for me from last year’s client, but haven’t gotten anymore details on that.  Sorry, just boring today.

I don’t go to movies on opening night.  Too crowded, and I just don’t care to see a movie that badly.  Last night, I made an exception.  Got a call from my buddy ‘Puma last week.  Said he was buying some tickets for Transformers 2 (sorry, it is just easier than typing the whole name)…then he threw the icing on it.  I-Max.  Yup, I saw Transformers 2 on a screen that, during some sequences, showed Optimus Prime in “life size”.

The movie started at 12:01 (actually I don’t they got it going until 12:04).  No previews, no other crap before hand…it just started the movie.  I won’t tell you any spoilers, or anything like that.  You have to go see it.  Nutty is hounding me for details.  Sorry bud, not happen…other than it was awesome, and there were parts I was laughing so hard I started crying.  Yeah…the Twins are awesome.  You’ll know what I mean.

I got home around 3 am…updated my status on Facebook, then shut down the laptop for the night.  I was awake until almost 5am.  I really wish Kim could have gone with me, but we had no sitter.  I will get her to the theater soon to see it.

Happy Father’s Day to all the Daddies out there!

I really need to set myself a time when I update this daily.  Not that all that much has happened in the last few days, but just so I can post my (usually) random thoughts here.

So yesterday morning brought Kim downstairs in pain.  Like last time she had worked the night before, and had eaten a salad from the cafeteria.  After a couple minutes we hopped in the car to head to the ER.  Thankfully she was feeling better about 5 minutes after leaving the house.  We still drove down to the hospital just in case, but she didn’t need it.  Her surgical consult is on Wednesday…we should find out when that dang gallbladder is coming out.

Today is Father’s Day, and I couldn’t have asked for a better day.  I was home with my kids, and now my wife will be home with us tonight.  Got my gift a couple days ago since Kim was supposed to work tonight…ok, so I also threw in the fact that Kim got her Mother’s Day present early.  Got some new kitchen knives for me to use and abuse.  Loving them.

I’ll have to put more on here later…watching Ocean’s 11 and getting ready to play Halo soon.