Our visitor was back in the front yard again this morning. I guess the grass is especially tasty there or something. And even though there was more light, since I was using the sigma lens, he still came out a bit out of focus. It may be my hand just isn't steady enough to take a picture with that zoom lens at 1/60th of a sec. He didn't stick around long since he had taken off by the time I took the camera back inside and was leaving for work. And speaking of work, it was dead in the office today. Walking down the halls, you would see about three empty offices for every one that had someone in it. Everyone seems to have decided to take today and Monday off for an extra long break.
I went in a little earlier than normal so that I could leave early this afternoon. I got to watch the kids while Ginger went and attended an advanced stamping class (I'm not sure if advanced means spending even more money). I would show pictures of what she made, but you only get the feel for them if you see them in motion. It's hard to explain (maybe I'll shoot a 15 second video tomorrow). When I got home around five thirty everyone was just heading over to the pool. So after I changed I went over and swapped roles with Ginger so she could leave. We stayed at the pool for a while, and ended up coming home around seven. After the kids got a bath we all headed out to Wendy's for dinner and then it was home and into bed (by this time it was almost nine thirty). Quinn was on edge most of the day, every little thing was setting him off. We're hoping it's just because he's tired because I can't imagine getting through this coming long weekend with him acting like that.
Since everyone else is hopping on the old picture bandwagon (see Cheryl, John and Curt's posts for more details) Ginger figured we should put some up too. So she went through and picked out a batch of pictures. My problem has been getting them from picture form onto the computer. Our scanner isn't hooked up, so I tried just taking a picture of the pictures, but that didn't go so well. So I'll post some of the pictures over the next couple of days as I try and get the scanner operational again and get them onto the computer in a decent form. For now I'll go ahead and post one of the pictures of a picture though, sorry if it's a but on the fuzzy side. This was taken by Cheryl at UVA. I really like how it turned out, and I remember back in the day saying we could start our own drama series akin to 90210 or something and use this picture as the pitch for it.
I got to attend Clara's wedding last Saturday. Clara looked absolutely fabulous. As I mentioned previously, the reception was odd in that the dancing was interspersed throughout the night's festivities and throughout the meal. I actually drank several Madris pre-reception seating. I think it's the first time I've had anything significant to drink in over a year and a half. After the bride and groom got the first dance, they played another slow song and the band's lead singer (who for most of the wedding sounded a lot like the teacher in Peanuts) put out the call for the couples to come out to the dance floor. Since I was stag, I had to drag the only dance partner out that I could find willing to dance with me, Kenny. I think Clara found it amusing, but after a minute she basically told us to cut it out. I don't think she minded as much as she didn't want to upset her guests (check out the look on the guy in the background on the right, he does not look happy with us). After that we got our picture taken with the bride and groom and I continued the rest of the dance with the Missy (who before that was taking the pictures).
For your news from here on the home front today. Ginger was feeling a bit under the weather most of the day. All last night she was suffering from a migraine. Unfortunately the migraine medicine she took this morning had the side effect of making her feel ill. This meant the kids got to watch TV a bit more than they normally do during the day. Which if there was a day for that to happen, this was the time for it since it poured rain yet again today.
Meanwhile, I've gone from last week wondering what I was going to be doing at work to having so many things on my plate this week I can barely keep up. But I went ahead and left earlier than I had intended and picked up dinner so Ginger wouldn't have to cook.
* Holy crap, after I typed all this, it suddenly occurred to me that I hope people get the fact that's a quote from Princess Bride
We got the heat pump fixed today. When I called home Ginger told me that the AC dude had showed up and fixed the problem. And that the run capacitor had needed to be replaced. I made a joke about replacing the Flux Capacitor and needing 1.21 Gigawatts, but got nothing except silence (apparently movie reference jokes are only funny to the teller). Ginger informed me that the capacitor was replaced in about 20 minutes and the total cost was under $200. So that was better news than I was expecting.
If you want to see a couple of other takes on the recent reunion we had check out the takes from Curt and Cheryl. Cheryl's is an especially fun romp because it takes a trip down memory lane, complete with photos.
Ginger took the kids to the library since there wasn't much else to do because of the rain. It's been raining here for the past couple of days. And it's just poured during some of the rainstorms (today's was one of those). In fact, our local rain run off basin seems to be having a bit of a problem draining the water in a timely fashion. It might be clogged again. There's a ton of junk floating in it and the water looks really nasty (can you say soil erosion).
Our kids slept late this morning. Curt and his family were still here from yesterday's mini reunion and their alarm clock (aka: Loren) got them up fairly early. Since they were up they decided to be really nice and go out to Panera's and bring back breakfast for all of us. Loren's really sweet and cute in addition to being a very well mannered and happy baby. And after this weekend I think I know why she's so happy, every now and then she likes to kick back a frosty one. You can tell from the picture she's had one too many already. *
Looking back, we got really lucky with the weather for having everyone up. It was threatening / calling for rain all day Saturday, but didn't rain until the evening. And it poured several times today. Originally we were going to have everyone stay over Saturday and Sunday. We had planned on going into DC to the zoo today, but that plan fell apart and almost everyone left yesterday. Turns out that was really for the best since it was raining off and on most of the day.
Curt's clan took off this morning (they had a lunch date with one of Cheryl's old roommates I believe) and right after they left we headed to church. Ginger had nursery duty again this morning. ** I did not get much accomplished today. I managed to get our new laptop connected to the wireless network, but that was about it as far as anything remotely resembling productivity went. The rest of the day was basically Quinn watching the NASCAR race and finishing off the Peanuts Gang puzzle with Catherine.
We did get some bad news today in that the community didn't have enough kids sign up for swimming lessons to make it worth their while to have the classes. This means we may have to spring for the private lessons if we want them to take swimming lessons since the next time they're offering the lessons is during the week we're not here.
* No baby was actually given alcohol in taking this picture, but it's pretty funny.
** Heh, I said "duty"
We had group get together today. Jen started the ball rolling a month or so ago on getting a bunch of us that used to hang out in college to get together for a picnic. We decided on the DC area as the location since that's somewhat central to everyone (and lucky us, it didn't require an excessive amount of traveling on our part). We decided on meeting at Burke Lake, thinking we could ride the train, play some mini golf, maybe play some frisbee golf and then use their facilities to grill out and have our picnic.
This plan didn't last very long. Combining the fact that it was suppose to rain today with the much harder to surmount issue that no one brought charcoal, we eventually decided the park would simply be a staging spot to gather people, ride the train and merry-go-round then head back to our house and grill out. For the most part I think it worked out pretty well. There was a minor planning problem of us cooking 28 hot dogs and 20 hamburgers. We ended up having a little bit of leftover. The kids seemed to enjoy playing with all the toys here. We even managed to get everyone together for a group photo (below) without too much hassle (other than lots of camera swaps on the tripod). After lunch we went over to one of the parks in our neighborhood and the little ones fell asleep in their strollers on the way there.
After we got back from that everyone went bowling (except me). I was kind of bummed I had to miss the kid's first excursion out to a bowling alley, but I had to attend the wedding of one of the people that work for me. I had already skipped the ceremony and I wanted to attend the reception (Clara has worked for me for around six years, so I wanted to go and see her on her big day). So while I went to that, everyone else got to go bowling and then come back for dinner at our place. The wedding was long, it was the first wedding I've been to where the dancing and stuff was intermixed with the dinner courses. It also ran a bit behind schedule. The reception started at six and I left at almost eleven (right after the cake!) and they still had the bouquet and the garter belt and the send off to do. And in the case you were wondering how the kids did at bowling, Catherine got a 79 (marking once with one spare) while Quinn got a 66 (no marks). To explain a bit more, Catherine wasn't having much fun (see picture below) until she got to start using the kid's ramp to bowl. She would put the ball up on the ramp and push it. Then it would go down the lane (with pretty decent speed) from the ramp. Meanwhile Quinn was doing a more traditional bowling style and literally throwing it down the lane (takes after his old man I guess since I can recall chucking a ball down the lane on more than one occasion).
The heat pump didn't magically fix itself. I tried replacing the filter and swapping out the fuses and it still didn't work. Strangely, no one seemed to want to come out to our place on a Friday to fix it either. So we're waiting until Monday when the chaps that fixed it last year can come back out. I'm somewhat dreading how much that's going to end up costing me. Part of me is hoping it's the compressor again, since in theory that should still be under warranty.
So anyone have any ideas on why a heat pump would suddenly not be putting out much in the way of cold air? We have two unit multiple floor system, and the unit for the basement is cooling fine, but the upstairs isn't as cool as it used to be. I changed the filter in the system in the attic, and that didn't make a whole lot of difference. I wonder how complicated it is to clean the filter on the actual outdoor unit. Wish I didn't have an early meeting tomorrow so I could check it out. At this point I'm not even sure if this is really a problem with the heat pump or just because of the temperature got up to the 90s today (although even with the high temperature it should have been cooler upstairs, so it's probably the heat pump). Figures it would happen right before we're expecting company. I hear some like it hot, hope our visitors do. Could be worse, could be all floors having the problem and not just the upstairs I guess.
Went by Home Depot on the way home and got some stuff to finish off the cabling in the attic. I picked up a combination splitter / power amplifier. The signal that goes to guest room upstairs and the master bedroom both look a lot better on the upper channels now. I also borrowed a tone tracer from work for trying to find where the heck the cable outlets in the basement that I can't find the termination points go. I managed to find one location where it comes to the storage room (the cable was hidden behind the corkboard, I would have never found it without the tracer), but I never found a termination point. The cable simply comes into the storage room and then heads off to the other outlet that doesn't have a signal going to it. So I may need to splice the wire where it enters the storage room and pump the signal into the two spliced pieces. The problem will be there's a splitter already in the storage room that's a three way. I've determined that one of the three isn't in use, but if I splice the cable I'll need two more connections (and I only have the one extra). Either that or I'll have to add another splitter, which will reduce the signal even more. I didn't really want to have to buy yet another power amplifier, but we'll see I suppose. And since one of these new locations is where I eventually want to put the cable modem I need to signal to be pretty strong. If I do get another amplifier I'm going to have to make sure it allows the signal to pass back through in the other direction also. I've got one more place I want to look to see if I can find the terminated cable (if I can find the termination, then I can simply connect the one connection from the three way splitter that currently isn't being used and life will be good), but the spot where it might be looks like it is a royal pain to get to (and may require removing some walls in the storage room to get to where the cable actually is).
Switching subjects, I'm still amazed by how quickly the kids are growing. Quinn's just growing up so fast. Tonight is trash night, and he actually wanted to take the trash out. This was the first night that he did it all by himself. Sunday night he helped me pull the trash can out, but tonight he did it solo. *sniff* They just grow up so fast.
Time For Quinn To Earn His Keep
Quinn had a dentist appointment today. I asked him how it went and he said "Good". Which in and of itself I found odd since all of his dentist appointments in the past have been horrible when they have to take his X-Rays. So I asked Ginger about it, and apparently there were no X-Rays taken this time, which explains why he didn't mind the visit. Ginger also told me that he kept sneaking out during his appointment. See, there's a Nintendo 64 in the lobby and when left unattended Quinn would sneak out of his chair and head out to the lobby to start playing the Nintendo. Ginger said that they came out to the lobby three separate times looking for him. To which I was thinking, what are they doing that they're leaving him alone for that long and why isn't there someone keeping an eye on him in there? You might wonder why Ginger and Catherine weren't in the room with him. After the last couple of visits when the screaming started during the X-Rays the dentist basically wouldn't let us in the room anymore. They claim this is because they think our presence was making the situation worse, but I think it's because they didn't want us to see the them physically assaulting him and holding him down while forced the X-Ray stuff into his mouth (I still have nightmares in which I recall the screams I heard from the lobby, "The horror... The horror...").
Anyway, I used to attend the dentist visits, but once we were banned from being in the room I didn't see a whole lot of point in leaving work and driving over there so I could hang out in the lobby. I think everything on this trip was good. And Quinn claims he didn't have any cavities, but I probably should follow up with Ginger to see what they really said. The good news is it seems like the tooth he hit really hard a couple of years ago is regaining some of it's color. I remember at one point they were really worried the nerves were dead and it was going to fall out prematurely (apparently even though you eventually lose your baby teeth, there was some issue with losing them too soon).
When I got home everyone was inside and Ginger was cooking dinner (steak tacos) and Catherine was helping. Quinn and I went outside to play for a bit and eventually Catherine came out to join us. Quinn played some baseball, soccer and
then 'hockey' while Catherine spent the entire time digging the in mulch making 'birthday cakes'. I could tell Quinn was pretty tired even when we were playing because little things were setting him off and had a couple of minor meltdowns for silly reasons. Unfortunately even though we tried to get him to bed a little earlier than usual, he as still awake when I checked in on him around 10.
We had some unexpected rain storms today. Which is good since it's been dry here for a while now and this will keep the yard from completely drying up and dying. I left work early so that Quinn could take me to see Cars. And can I just say $7 for a matinee? Even for kids? WTF? Movie prices are now completely insane. Ok, enough about the cost. The movie really does advance the animation side of things. There are literally scenes where you forget this is a CGI animated movie. There are some simply fantastic landscape shots. I wasn't overly thrilled with the story. When I started thinking about why, I think it's because most of the previous Pixar movies are buddy movies, whereas this one is simply a journey of one character's self discovery. That's not to say there aren't a host of entertaining supporting cast characters, some of which are brilliant. George Carlin's underused character comes to mind, although I didn't know it was Carlin until the credits and throughout the movie thought it had to be Tommy Chong. Speaking of, don't leave when the credits are rolling. While I wasn't wow'ed with the story as a whole, the credits had me laughing hysterically. And there's a scene all the way at the end, so stay in your seats. Overall a fun movie. Not the best Pixar movie I've ever seen, but still better than any other company's computer animated attempts (I'm looking at you Doogal).
So Ginger was quite busy today completely rearranging the house, cleaning and painting. Because of her we finally have the wall in the dining room painted. I included the shot of the room below. The flash really brings out the two tones, it's nowhere near that noticeable in the room under normal lighting conditions. So now it's one wall down, three to go.
Oh yea, and if you haven't been over to John's blog and seen some of his vacation pictures, you really owe it to yourself to go check them out. There's some really good stuff there.
Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there. And apologies to my Dad for waiting until 11:30 (PM) to call and say Happy Father's Day (and for waking him up in the process, opps).
Today was nice. Quinn decided to give me a Father's Day present of going to see the new movie Cars in the theater. This was evidently a popular gift since when we got to the theater around one, the next five shows were sold out already. So we bailed on that and I promised Quinn he could take me sometime this coming week.
Once we got home I believe everyone watched Cinderella (which is what Catherine was originally going to be doing while Quinn and I were at the movie). While they all watched that, I went about cutting cable wires in the attic to try and get cable in guest room. There's an antenna in the attic I believe from 20 years ago and there is cable that is distributed throughout the house via that. A lot of rooms have single and dual cable outlets, the duals are the newer outputs from when COX used two cable lines and the singles I believe are from the antenna. So I spliced into the newer cable, added a splitter and had the output go to where it was already going plus feed into where the antenna output was going. I think I need to add something to boost the signal though, because the cable in our bedroom which used to be really clear now has a ton of snow on it. And I need to get proper cable connectors also as the screw ones I have are to small for the dual cable wire that was running through the attic. The temperature here today was up in the low 90s, so you can imagine what the attic was like in the middle of the day (and if you can't imagine, just let me tell you, it was hot, like instant sweating kind of hot).
Everyone took a late nap. The late nap lasted longer for everyone than we had thought. Quinn and I played outside for a bit once he eventually got up, but it was still pretty hot even around 8. Everything was running longer than we thought and we still hadn't eaten dinner by 8:30. This was because Ginger was fixing a new item for dinner for me (pot-stickers) and they were taking longer than anticipated. So when it got to be 8:30 and it was going to be another hour before dinner was ready, we decided to head out to Red Robin for dinner. The place was empty (I assume because basketball finals were on). Once we finished dinner it was back home and putting the kids in bed. Catherine was so tired she slipped and hit her chin on her dresser. And Quinn was still awake around 11:30, so he'll be in a really good mood tomorrow.
And now for something completely different. I threw together the following video really quick. It's not that great (nothing like the ones Ginger does). It's the Fitz Clan playing mini golf when we were at the beach. And you can hear me getting frustrated trying to maintain some form of order between the two kids and trying to film at the same time. I put this together to test out Google's new instant video uploader. For videos that are under 100 Meg, you can upload a video and have it be available instantly (how cool is that). Now it will still have to go through the verification process, so it won't be searchable (or downloadable) until it's verified. But you can instantly see it and embed it. If you can see the following video, then it worked pretty good. Enjoy!
Beach Mini Golf
Ginger and the kids were suppose to be back tonight, but Ginger had a migraine and didn't feel like making the drive, so she's spending one more night in Richmond and coming back tomorrow. What to do since I have one more night of swinging single life? Watch TV and movies! * I've been burning through watching stuff recently. I've watched Spirited Away, Punisher, The Sopranos (All of Season One), The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, The Chronicles of Riddick and finally tonight I went through Disc 1 of Season Two of 24. Oh yeah, and I've been keeping up with the Daily Show and The Colbert Report also.
Spirited Away was pretty weak. The story is just odd and is more for kids than anything else. It was never able to make me care about what happened to the main character. Rating: "Not worth it".
Punisher was just okay. The movie couldn't decide what it was, which bothered me more than anything. Is it a dark and grim tale of tragedy? A comedy? A tale of revenge? The movie couldn't seem to pick a theme and stick to it trying to be everything and thereby never really succeeding at anything. And the ending was so over the top that I just didn't care anymore at that point. Rating: "Just okay. Glad I rented it, but having seen it now wouldn't stop to watch it if it was on TV".
The Sopranos was different. Mainly picked this up to see what all the fuss was about. Everyone keeps going on about how good it is, so I decided to check it out. Either it's really easy to do completely illegal stuff and never get caught, or this show takes a lot of liberties. The story is interesting, but convoluted at times. But the base of operations is in a strip club, so that boosted the appeal of the series right there all by itself. Rating: "Intrigued enough to continue watching and start renting season two".
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury and The Chronicles of Riddick. Dark Fury is an animated adventure of Riddick that takes place almost immediately after Pitch Black. So if you haven't watched Pitch Black, grab that before watching these. I will say I remember I saw Pitch Black in the theater thinking it was going to be complete crap, and then liked it a lot more than I thought I would (lowered expectations when going to a movie can be a good thing). The animation of Dark Fury is... trendy is about the only word I can use to describe it. Parts are very well done, other parts have people with necks that are longer than their heads are tall. It's a very modern animation style, sort of a blending of anime and traditional realistic animation. It doesn't always work. The has bits that serve as set up to the live action film The Chronicles of Riddick. The problem being without having seen that, the references mean nothing. So it's almost better to watch the live action one then the animated. To be honest, skip the animated one. You won't miss anything. The live action The Chronicles of Riddick was an entertaining jaunt. Lots of cool special effects and Riddick kills people. Riddick in this is your typical "Tough guy" / "Badass" / "Larger than life" protagonist (hard to call him a 'hero', but he is the main character). The story is just crazy and all over the place. And for the better part of the movie the plot gets completely hijacked onto a prison planet. The fight scenes are for the most part well choreographed and even though the story gets derailed, the ending is atypical (however, it is highly predictable). Animated show rating: "Skip it". Live action rating: "Entertaining continuation of the Riddick story, good popcorn action flick".
Since I haven't watched the whole second season of 24, I'll reserve my review of that until I've finished it all.
Been forgetting to put up the pictures of the hydrangeas as they're blooming. So here's some shots to rectify that situation.
* I suppose I could do the stuff on the "Honey Do" list, but where's the fun in that?
Talked to Ginger. Kids got haircuts today. And they also went to the mall that has an outdoor fountain area that kids can run through (which they did). I hear tomorrow they're going to get up early and go watch doughnuts being made ("Time to make the doughnuts"). They're going to the Krispy Kreme place since that's one of the few doughnuts places where they don't have the possibility of peanut contamination. Then Ginger surprised me by telling me they might be coming home tomorrow. Which is good because I've missed having Ginger and the little buggers around. It's bad though in that I thought they were coming back on Saturday, so there was this "Honey Do" list of things Ginger wanted me to do that I was planning on putting off until tomorrow.
I had this one other issue I wanted to blog about, but didn't do it yet because I didn't want to turn this into a political blog. I held off until after Tuesday (which was the day to vote in the VA democratic primaries, right?). Some background first, there's this guy trying to run for Senate here called Jim Webb. He was apparently "Born Fighting". Not exactly sure what that means. Do you think that's literal? Did he punch his way out when he was born or something? Anyway, here's the deal, I don't know anything about the guy. It could be he's a great choice for Senate, then again, maybe not. Like I said, I don't know. But he was telephone bombing my house.
Back on Sunday John "Can't Win In Ohio" Kerry called me. It obviously wasn't him personally, but a recorded message (there's strike one against the campaign already in my book). Kerry wanted to tell me about Jim Webb. About how Jim Webb would make a difference. About how Jim Webb would fight George Bush (Really? How? Fisticuffs?). About how he normally doesn't like to take sides in democratic elections, but really felt that Jim Webb would be an instrument of change in the Senate and how Jim Webb could beat George Allen. And that Jim Webb had opposed the war in IRAQ, and Jim Webb would continue to do so. That we needed the leadership of Jim Webb. That Jim Webb could make a difference. That I should cast my vote for Jim Webb. And Jim Webb Jim Webb Jim Webb Jim Webb. Here's the thing. This was like a 2 plus minute phone message. And afterwards, I realized I still don't know jack about this guy other than he somehow opposed the IRAQ war. The only thing I'm absolutely positive of now is I do know the guy's name, Jim Webb. Kerry must have said the dude's name in every single sentence of the message, sometimes more than once in a sentence. I guess it worked, since I now know the name "Jim Webb". But at the same time, I found the method of driving home the name obnoxious as all get out. Although it kind of boggles my mind about why you would want John Kerry out there stumping for you, especially here in Virginia.
So Monday after I get home from work. I get another phone call. This time it's from a previously recorded message from Leslie Byrne. Lesile's message pretty much mimics Kerry's in that it's all about saying Jim Webb's name every sentence and not so much about telling me anything useful about the guy. This goes on for about the same amount of time. And I can even make out how it's practically the same message, with some stuff rearranged and other parts slightly reworded.
Then Tuesday morning rolls around, and guess who calls and wakes me up. None other than a recorded message from the man, Jim Webb himself. Again, the message didn't tell me anything about what he stands for. And yet he let's me know he'll be there fighting for me. Gee Whiz Mr Webb, don't you think you should ask what it is I want before you start promising to fight for it?
The whole ordeal annoyed the crap out of me. I get the impression this guy is running solely on the "Iraq was a mistake" ticket. Yea, we get that. I think even the folks on the right at this point realize the way IRAQ was handled was a mistake. However, I personally don't feel a candidate's position on that one issue is something that's going to sway my vote one way or the other. So before the final elections come around Mr Webb, let's hear you talk about some real issues versus just getting your name brand out there.
For years now Marvel comics has been really frustrated that Spider-Man in the comic books is married to Mary Jane. It really bothers them because they feel it 'ages' the character too much. They seem to think there's this wealth of Spider-Man stories they could tell if he was single that simply can't be told with him married. Of course, they realize they can't just get rid of the marriage, because divorce simply isn't an option. And they acknowledge that if they were to kill off Mary Jane then Peter Parker is a widower and in their mind that makes him seem even older. What they really want are for stories to go back to the original core idea of the character. About the teenage Joe Everyman with powers but has the 'Parker' luck where nothing good can happen. The reason they say the marriage is bad is because (and I'm paraphrasing here) no matter how bad his day is, he still gets to come home to his super-model wife Mary Jane.
So now that I've set up the story. Did anyone see the news today about Spider-Man outing himself? No, it wasn't that kind of out'ing (although that would be one way to end the marriage, no?). Instead he's out'ed himself as being a superhero and revealed his identity to the world. That's right. Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Ok, wait, it's a comic book, so by definition it's an imaginary story. So let's change that to "Not an imaginary story within the confines of the Marvel Universe!" The story has been in a couple of pieces of mainstream media. It's on Yahoo and the NY Post. Strangely enough it's not in the press as much as the previous "New Buxom Lipstick Lesbian Batwoman" was a couple weeks ago (hot lesbian chicks evidently get better media play than superpowered nerd reveals identity). Still, it seems like a big change, no? Also seems like it's taking the character even further away from that 'core' essence they keep saying they want to get back to. Now, do you think this change will last? I'm willing to bet good money this doesn't stick. Mark my words, in a year, maybe two at the most, there will be a "reality changing event" where everything reverts and no one knows Spidey's ID. Or some telepath will erase the knowledge from everyone's mind. Or someone will go back in time and change events so it never happened. Maybe Bobby will just step out of the shower. All I know is, this won't last. And dollars to doughnuts when it's undone, the marriage will somehow get erased also. You heard it here first.
Oh yea, one last thing (if anyone is still reading at this point). Thanks to Ken and Lid for having me over for dinner last night. Once the dogs started to warm up to me (translation, were no longer actively trying to kill me), it was a lot of fun. Plus I got to play dominos for the first time. Fun stuff.
Ok, this one was all me, so don't blame Ginger for this. It's pretty crucial to hear the sound I think, otherwise the 'movie' (if you can even call it that) really loses something. Hope you folks find it at least somewhat amusing.
I talked to Ginger tonight and learned that she and Grammy took the kids to see Pixar's (Disney's?) new movie "Cars". This was the kid's first view a movie in a theater experience. Quinn evidently loved the movie. Not really surprising considering his love of NASCAR. Catherine on the other hand evidently kept wanting to leave because it was too loud.
So after I put up the pictures of the bushes out front I noticed that Ginger had made one of the pictures her background image on her computer. Evidently hydrangea are some of her favorites. I'm fairly positive she has probably mentioned this multiple times in the past and I've just never effectively retained the information. Anyway, after we got home from church I decided to try and take a few more pictures of them because of that. And to be honest, I'll probably be snapping more throughout the week. So rather than just get some side shots like I did before, I decided to break out a ladder so I could get shots from above.
At some point I left the ladder unattended for maybe 30 seconds. When I returned, Quinn had already climbed up and Catherine was trying to climb the other side. Eventually I got 
them to stop trying to climb it at the same time and take turns. Quinn then had this idea that he would take the racquet from the swingball set up and hit balls while he was up there. He actually did a pretty good job of hitting them. I kept worrying I would throw a 'wild pitch' and he would lunge and fall off trying to get it, but luckily that never happened.
Once I finally able to get the kids off the ladder long for long enough, I put it away. Then Quinn decided we were going to play 'tennis' with one of his tee balls. And he did pretty good at that too. Even so, I don't think we ever had a rally longer than 4 hits.
While I was out playing with the kids, Ginger was inside packing up all their stuff for their trip to Grammy and Pop pop's for the week. You know, basically being the responsible parent (of the two of us, she's much more qualified at being the responsible one). They took off for Richmond around at close to four. I heard later from Ginger that Catherine got a little car sick on the ride down and tossed her cookies about halfway there. When Ginger was telling me about it I made the mistake of asking what did she eat that would have made her sick, to which Ginger answered "I can tell you exactly what she ate" and quickly realized that was the wrong question to ask. The good news is that according to Ginger Catherine was completely fine after that.
We had a plan. Honest we did. The plan was Ginger was going to go get her hair cut this morning. Then she would come back home and we would go to the Fairfax Fair. That was the plan anyway. The plan started to fall apart soon after Ginger got home. The kids were exhausted. They both got up a lot earlier than they should have this morning and were in desperate need of sleep. So after some lunch, we had them take a nap. Quinn napped for maybe half an hour at most. So he was back up and still pretty tired. At some point around this time we trashed the idea of going to the Fair. The kids were too tired and we didn't really feel like dealing with the crowds. So once Catherine got up we decided we should do something for the kids. So we went to Burke Lake Park and let the kids play a round of mini golf. They really seemed to enjoy mini golf when were down at the beach, so we figured this would be a good outside activity.
It took us almost 8 holes to get Quinn to start holding the club correctly. He kept imitating the way Catherine was holding her club, which let's just say isn't the regulation approved method to hold a golf club. I mean aside from holding her hands in the wrong position, and having her thumb on the wrong side, she was holding the club itself backwards. And even holding her club like that, Catherine was the most consistent player of all of us. Her 'second' shot was always almost perfect. I say this because after her first hit, she would pick her ball up and walk over and set it right next to the hole. She did this on every hole until the last 4 where she just decided she didn't want to play anymore.
Quinn on the other hand played all the way through each hole. And eventually he did start holding his club somewhat correctly, but he was still having some problems with the finesse required when you got close to the cup. I didn't add up the scores, but I would be shocked if Quinn's score wasn't somewhere around 130 or 140 (shhhh, don't tell him that's not good, he thinks the higher your score the better you did).
We got the kids some food on the way home. And after we eventually got them into bed, Ginger and I went out for dinner. We don't get to go out much except for when Nana is up to watch the kids for us while we take off. We went to a chinese place over in Oakton and the meal was really good.
So we ended up trying out a new park near our house Thursday night. Didn't really get any good pictures though, so I didn't have anything worthwhile to post (not that I'm implying stuff that makes it onto here is worthy of being posted, I mean really, who's to say what's worthy of being posted). Both kids went nuts by climbing up on top of the equipment. Like the bars you're suppose to hang from and traverse, they would climb up and go across the top.
Ginger has been looking for stuff to do with the kids during the day since they're out of school. So today she decided to take them to the Petting Zoo. Actually, that makes it sound very spur of the moment. She had been planning all week on taking them today, so it's not like this was out of the blue. Gretchen also went and brought along Autumn and I think Tyler was there even though I didn't see him in any of the pictures.
Since I wasn't there, Ginger was our resident photographer and was using the older Canon Powershot G2. So there aren't a lot of good pictures. I blame that on the camera and not Ginger, the Powershot is terrible. It takes almost a full second for it focus before it will actually take a picture. I remember getting so frustrated with that camera after missing so many good shots. Actually, expanding that line of thinking I believe any digital camera that doesn't take an instant picture is terrible (which is one of the reasons I love my Nikon, push the button, take a picture, no waiting). So I have no idea what was going on between Catherine and Quinn in this picture, but I look at it and I just think of Quinn saying something like "Sure, twist my arm" and then Catherine does it.
See what happens when your ride is pimped?
Catherine and Autumn feed some ducks
Hey good lookin', we'll be back to pick you up later! *
I am cuteness personified
As for me, I got to see the kids for a bit when I got home, but Nana is up this weekend, so both kids just want to play with her and not their Dad (*sniff* *sniff*). Anyway, got a couple of plant shots of some bushes out front that are just starting to bloom.
* Mr Microphone not included
Our visitor was back in the front yard again this morning. I guess the grass is especially tasty there or something. And even though there was more light, since I was using the sigma lens, he still came out a bit out of focus. It may be my hand just isn't steady enough to take a picture with that zoom lens at 1/60th of a sec. He didn't stick around long since he had taken off by the time I took the camera back inside and was leaving for work. And speaking of work, it was dead in the office today. Walking down the halls, you would see about three empty offices for every one that had someone in it. Everyone seems to have decided to take today and Monday off for an extra long break.
