Happy New Year!

Well now, if you're not into photography you probably nodded off to sleep at about paragraph two. But that's what I felt like blogging about today so I'll make it up to you another time.

Ok, now that I've cleared that up I think my work here is done.

The last week of October is just sitting there, staring at me. Being all....blank and stuff.

I will be done with work at about 1pm on Thursday, October 23rd and I don't have to go back until Monday, November 3rd. I had to take some time off, because I can only carry five days into the next year. My department has no available days in November or December, so October had to be it.

So now I have this chunk of time marked off for a "vacation" but I just can't figure out what to do with it. I know what you're thinking; its a month away, don't worry about it. Well I know myself well enough to know that if I don't have something in mind ahead of time, I will spend nearly all of my time off trying to find something to do with my time off and drive my poor wife so crazy that she is ready to kick me out of the house. This happens when I have even a single day off, let alone over a week.

I don't like taking time off just to relax. Relaxing is not very relaxing to me, which is how I ended up with so much extra time this year anyway. I don't schedule any vacation time unless we're actually going somewhere or doing something.

The worst part is that Leslie will not be off so I have to find something to occupy myself. She is off on Friday, the 24th and she still has every Thursday off so I guess that's something. That Friday will mostly be spent helping out getting things ready for the annual pig roast. Look back in my blog to the last weekend in October for the last three years or so to read more about that.

There are a few things in my favor. I love October, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I've got to use that as a foundation and build on it.

I saw a commercial for a murder mystery train ride which really sparked my interest. We absolutely love murder mystery dinner theaters so this could be fun. I looked at the website and it looks like there is no meal inclusive to the show but that's not a big deal I guess. The train setting would be cool. Murder on the Orient Express immediately comes to mind. It's about an hour away and reasonably priced so that is a possibility. While looking that up I saw that there is also a wine train that tours the scenic Fall foliage of the Hocking Valley. Ok, they had me at wine.

I thought about trying to do a backyard horror movie marathon. I have access to a projector and I know you can rent giant inflatable screens. This sounds like a great idea until I started to work out the details. The fact that Bethany's window faces the back yard and that she goes to bed at or before 8pm really throws a wet blanket on that fire. Plus, October in Ohio is very unpredictable. It could be 80 degrees and sunny, or we could have a snow storm. Damon has on of those giant propane patio heaters so a little chill wouldn't be a problem but sleet and freezing rain might take some of the fun out of things.

I can't really take one of those home project vacations because Leslie will still be working and I have to be relatively quiet if I'm at home. Besides, I did one of those vacations last year; didn't have much fun.

So I am open to suggestions. Give me something to do.

Have you ever lost time? How about over eight months worth of time?

I don't know where this year has gone. I remember last Christmas and then everything until know seems like a big blur. I didn't mean to keep pushing my blog updates aside but it just happened. I keep thinking, "I'll do it tomorrow." It's amazing how many days it can take to get to tomorrow.

But here I am. I was going to celebrate with a big blog full of family photos, however that is a bit impossible at the moment. I was smart enough to begin backing up all of my photo archives on DVD last year case something happened. But just like my blog I haven't kept up with it this year so almost everything from 2008 now sits on a dead hard drive. I have made a couple attempts to retrieve the data with no success.

All my music, my entire itunes library, was also on that hard drive as well as our email address book, countless documents, and a whole bunch of stuff I probably just haven't thought of yet. But I'll get it back. I have ways of making it talk. I'll extract that information. I'll treat that little sucker like a mouthy Guantanamo Bay prisoner. It'll give up the goods.

If all else fails I can pay a data recovery company to do it but I'm trying to avoid that. There are a few more tricks I want to attempt first. Did you know that you can take a bad hard drive and place it in a freezer for a few hours and then, supposedly, you will have about forty minutes to get your files before it goes bad again? This is apparently not a myth but does, in fact, work. I haven't tried it yet but its next on my list.

You see, it went like this...

Our home computer is from 2003. It's a HP Pavillion a350n. This is a great computer and I was going to keep it until we purchased an Imac and left Windows behind for good. It's one of the first hyper-threading computers and its 2.8ghz chip, with the hyper-threading, is really on par with most of the dual core processors in the newest computers. It has a really nice graphics card with composite and s-video out, a built in memory card reader, two Firewire ports, and tons of USB 2.0 ports. Plus its built like a tank. It looks like some sort of giant futuristic toaster.

I added another gigabyte of memory last year. Then around Christmas time the original DVD writer drive died so I installed a Mad Dog multimedia drive which is awesome. A few weeks ago a power surge blew out the internal power supply (even though it was plugged into a surge protector). I couldn't find a reasonably priced power supply locally so I ordered one online. We survived about ten days with no computer but once the new one arrived I installed it and had us back up. About three days later the hard drive just died. I suspect the power surge had something to do with that as well but who knows.

So ordered a new hard drive and waited. Unfortunately our recovery discs for the computer were lost about the time we moved into the house so I had to obtain a new copy of Windows XP (because I hate, no, I loathe Vista) and once the new drive arrived it was like setting up a brand new computer. I have loaded all the drivers and set up a seperate user ID for myself, Leslie, and now Noah (who is very computer savvy for a five year old),

And here we are.

We weren't truly cut off from the internet of course because we now each have home offices in the house with our company computers but its not the same. I'll talk more about working from home in a bit.

We just had a hurricane in Ohio. No joke. I've never experienced such a thing. We've had high winds with storms before and of course there are always tornados around but this was totally different. It was a beautiful day, just a little breezy. Then it got blustery. A few hours later it was mass chaos and now, nearly a week later, its still not over.

Apparently Hurricane Ike hit Texas and then made a b-line straight for Ohio and Michigan. We had sustained winds of almost 60mph and gusts over 75. It ripped the crap out of everything, leaving hundreds of thousands of people around here with no electricity and massive damage. Trees were falling, roofing shingles were whizzing through the air like ninja weapons, and live electric wires were flapping around everywhere looking to zap someone. There is a really nice house that a young family built on a once heavily wooded piece of land that is directly across from our back yard, on the other side of the main road. Their outdoor shed got completely blown off its concrete foundation.

It was just wind. No rain, no thunder, no hail. Just really nasty, hot wind. You would think that wind blowing that hard would have some sort of cooling effect but not even close. As I was outside trying to secure everything that was about to take flight I was sweating like a hog. I felt like I was being blasted by a dryer exhaust vent.

I saw the siding from one side of our neighbors house get peeled off and blown away like it was attached with paperclips or something. Our lone casualty was our gorgeous weeping cherry tree...snapped in half like a twig. By some miracle, we did not lose electricity. We were the only subdision anywhere near us that had power by the end of the night. As of right now, there are still thousands with no power. At soccer practice a few nights ago several parents said they have had no electricity since the storm on Sunday.

Things are slowly getting back to normal around here, but that was a heck of a way to end the summer. At least it made it memorable because it was gone in the blink of an eye and we did absolutely nothing. No trips to the houseboat, no amusement parks, no vacations. I worked enormous amounts of overtime so really the only sunshine I saw was that which came through the window of my basement office. I took Noah fishing once at my uncles pond and decided to wear a tank top on a blazing hot day. That had a painful and very funny looking ending. That was a couple months ago and I still have a permanent pasty tank top on when I take off my shirt.

We made it to the Ohio State Fair which was a lot of fun for Noah but nothing out of the ordinary happened this year to remark about. I couldn't even find a good candidate for my annual creepy carnie award. It's like they gave them makeovers or something; most of them actually resembled members of the human race this year. I was totally bummed that the Nitro Ice Cream stand was missing from the fair this time. Wonder what happened.

Leslie and I did get to go see a Poison concert in July which totally rocked. It was Poison, Dokken, and Sebastian Bach. It felt like 1987 again, except for all the little kids in the crowd. I don't get that...there were ten year olds mingling with half naked chicks in hooker outfits. In front of us there was a mother-daughter pair and directly in front of them was a pair of hot blonde girls who kept making out with each other during the show. Great entertainment for me but I just wonder how that was explained to the daughter.

Honestly that was the best concert I've been to in years. Everyone sounded great, especially Dokken (although Don Dokken has not aged well and looks almost comical trying to do the rock star thing), and the boys in Poison really know how to put on a show. There was fire, explosions, fog machines, giant sparklers and everything else that made this kind of music great. I would totally catch them again the next time they play.

Noah started kindergarten at the end of August and loves it. He is excited to go every day and loves riding the bus. He is also in his second season of soccer which keeps us very busy but I have to say he doesn't really seem as into it this time around. At the last practice he stopped practicing and started looking for four leaf clovers in the middle of the field. He has expressed interest in both gymnastics and karate so we might look into those once this season is over. There is a really nice mixed martial arts gym pretty close to here that I wouldn't mind looking at myself. They have kids classes plus offer Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, boxing, and Krav Maga for adults along with some cardio kickboxing which I think Leslie might enjoy.

Bethany is walking now. She has about eight teeth and is finally growing some hair. I will get some recent pictures up soon. She is one hundred percent daddy's little princess.

Working at home is going great. The adjustment period was longer than I had figured and for a couple weeks I was really unsure if I was going to love it like I thought I would. At first I missed the office environment and interactions but that quickly faded and I'm now happy just rolling out of bed, putting on my slippers and getting to work.

This is a good time to re-fire the old blog because its almost October and we all know that's my favorite time of year. Halloween, the grandest of all holidays, is right around the corner. We have the Circleville Pumpkin show, the annual pig roast, the trip to the pumpkin patch and all sort of other things coming up. I am off work the last eight days of October so I want to cram as much Halloween hoopla in as I can.

There simply has to be time to cram in a horror movie marathon.

I can't avoid the topic any longer....no Vegas this year. No vacation of any kind, much like 2007. At the beginning of the year I said something along the line of needing to take twice as many vacations in 2008 to make up for the lack of such vacations the previous year. Well, let's just say that in 2009 we have to pack in three years worth. I could happen, because I am not going to be able to use all of my time off this year and get to roll over an extra week on top of the extra week I was granted for ten years of service. So the time will be there, technically. Hopefully as we get into next year, prices will come down or at least stabilize a little bit. I stopped even looking a while ago but Vegas packages had gone up like 40 percent from the beginning of the year until around May.

Returning to Disney around Christmas 2009 is something I've been thinking about. Great time to go and both kids would be able to enjoy it. It's just a thought right now.

More later. And I'll get some pictures up, even if I haven't been able to recover the ones on the dead hard drive.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s not really a holiday I go all out for but I am wearing a green shirt and I promised Noah a Shamrock Shake.

We bought Noah a new bike for his birthday which is still a week away but I couldn’t wait (I’m horrible that way) so we went ahead and let him have it. We’ve been going around the neighborhood with me walking beside him but I’ve decided that it would be fun to ride bikes together so I’m looking to buy a bike, which I know very little about.  I’ve never owned a bike as an adult. My very first bike, when I was about Noah’s age, had a banana seat which would get ridiculed in any neighborhood in America. I upgraded to a BMX type bike and rode it until I was about twelve but after that I was done. I never owned a mountain bike or even a 10 speed.

I’m looking at mountain bikes at a few different places and I’m a little lost. There are bikes that cost 80 bucks and bikes that cost 500 bucks. They look about the same so I’m trying to figure out what exactly I should be looking for. Basically, I want a bike so I can take rides with my son around the neighborhood and possibly on some bike trails in a park. I have no Tour de France aspirations whatsoever so I would say my needs are pretty basic. As long as it moves from A to B and doesn’t have a seat that smacks the jewels around like dice in a Yahtzee cup that’s good enough for me. It’s hard to find good advice, though. I have a feeling that bike shops would be staffed with bike snobs who would try to convince me that I need to spend at least a grand to get a bicycle even worthy of sitting on. And the kid at the department store was probably stuffing burritos at Taco Bell until he got fired the week before so it’s not like he’d be much help.  I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon. If gas gets any more expensive I might be riding that sucker to work.

We have enrolled Noah in soccer and practices should start this week. We got a call from his coach yesterday and his first game will be on the fifth of April. His team is the Mighty Ducks. Leslie is taking him out today to get his shoes, shin guards, and a size 3 soccer ball. His first sport; I’m so excited! I told Leslie she is officially a soccer mom now, complete with the SUV.  I just hope he has a better experience with it than I did. I played two years of soccer when I was about 8 years old and we never won a game. We brought stink to a while new level.  We were so terrible that the first year our team was the Astros and the next year we changed it to The Wolves. I don’t know whether it was because wolves sounded a little fiercer or because we were hoping the other teams wouldn’t realize we were the same team they pulverized the year before.  I’ll never forget this one kid named Nick. He was the coach’s son, and every time a ball hit him or he fell down he would scream and writhe around in pain on the ground for about ten minutes. This happened four or five times each game and even more often in practice.  I’m not sure if it’s the same now but back then every time there was an injury on the field everyone had to stop and take a seat. So half of our game time was spent sitting on the grass watching his wimpy ass flop around like a wounded fish.

If you’ll look back on my blog to last summer I wrote several entries about my quest to become proficient at wakeboarding by the end of 2008. Well, it’s not long until it will be warm enough to take the boat out and I’m not quite ready physically.  I’ve still got some weight to lose.  I think the first big wakeboarding adventure will be Memorial Day weekend at Cumberland so between now and then I’ll try to double my efforts.

Lake Cumberland, unfortunately, is still just a shadow of its former self. The water level is down about 40 feet while the Army Corps of Engineers makes repairs to the dam. The shoreline looks a lot different now and many of the secluded coves and fingers are not there. It’s still one of the largest lakes in the country, but I can’t wait until they raise the water back up again

The time is upon us again. Only a month away from the Fitness Expo. I no longer even know what to call it. The Arnold Classic, Arnold Classic Weekend, The Arnold Sports Festival….it has so many names now. I just call it the Fitness Expo and everyone (at least around Buckeye City) seems to know what I mean. Mr. Schwarzennegger has hosted his event here for the last two decades so it’s a part of our lives.  Continuing the tradition started just last year, the Expo is again partnering with the Ultimate Fighting Championship and UFC 82 will be broadcast live on pay per view Saturday March first from our very own Nationwide Arena. Last year’s even set a record for the largest crowd ever for a mixed martial arts even held in North America.

Last year a little procrastination on my part allowed the UFC to be sold out before I could get tickets. This year I have a different problem. The seats I really want are about four hundred dollars each. I would pay it without hesitation however I need to buy two and my companion is not quite the huge fan I am. Leslie, bless her, really tries to get into it and enjoys watching mixed martial arts from time to time as a casual fan. She knows some of the fighters and I have tried to educate her on the names of various submissions, strikes, and grappling maneuevers. I’m not sure if its sinking in but when I tell her to watch for a Kimura she nods at me like she knows what I’m talking about. Still, I don’t see her getting anywhere near four Benjamins worth of enjoyment out of it.

I could pay for the cheap seats which are only about fifty bucks each but then I have to stop and ask myself its really worth dealing with the crowd and a terrible view when I could just watch it on pay per view at home and see everything, or just down the road at BW3 on the big screen.

I’m not entirely decided yet but I don’t think going to the live event is likely. I’ve got some other things in mind, though. Joe Rogan, whom most people probably know as the host of the show Fear Factor, is  a commentator for the UFC as well as being a stand up comedian and he’s playing the Columbus Funny Bone the weekend of the expo (with the exception of Saturday when he’ll be broadcasting from UFC 82).  Joe is the real deal. He’s been with the UFC for a long time and he knows his stuff. I’ve also heard that his standup routine is hysterical. I see Leslie enjoying that a lot more and there should be a good crowd of folks from the expo at the show I would think. Plus, the Funny Bone makes this drink called a Rubber Chicken which I know she likes….a lot.

If we hit the expo all day Friday February 29 and then went home and rested up then got a sitter for the night we could do dinner and the comedy club and call it a night. Sounds like a good plan to me. Everyone wins

We’ll soon be a week into 2008 and still need about three more months to finish out 2007. I’m a little behind. My poor blog has seen little attention lately, and it seems like I’ve lost touch with some of my blog friends. I’ll rectify that right away, I promise. I hope none of you have felt neglected. Remember, its not you…its me.

Resolutions for 2008? I haven’t really thought about it. I’m not a big believer in New Years resolutions because for most people I’m sure history would show that they tend to fizzle out pretty quickly. I’m all about setting goals and making change but as far as actually launching a gameplan on the first day of the year I’m not really into it. Sure it makes progress easy to track but I’d rather start when I’m good and ready.

Back around last September I already wrote about one goal for 2008 which was to become a competent wakeboarder. This was sort of an all inclusive goal because it would require me to get back into excellent shape and drop some of this extra weight my wife put on me by getting pregnant. I pretty easily dropped a total of around 25 pounds only to have December hand 10 of it right back to me. Not my fault. Cadbury candy covered chocolate holiday eggs need to be banned because they obviously contain some sort of addictive chemical. And then Wendy’s had to go and bring back the Double Cheddar Jalapeno melt for December. The pinnacle of man’s burger making technology.

So I’m not exactly back where I started from but I have to get back to business. Only a few months until its warm enough to hit the water. Speaking of which, I read recently that when you wipe out wakeboarding your body can slam into the water with 3000 pounds of force. That’s a lot . The last time I did anything with 3000 pounds of force was after a buddy bet me I couldn’t eat 25 WhiteCastles. That wasn’t much fun.

The list of things I want to accomplish in 2008 is actually just as long as 2007 or any other year. Whether I will get to them or not is the real question. Normally it comes down to a matter of time rather than motivation or any other factor. Maybe my real resolution for the new year should have been to stop overestimating what I can get done.

This weekend Leslie’s parents are moving into a house they rented while they continue to try to sell their house in Vero Beach. The new house is less than five minutes from us. The brings huge babysitting possibilities. Not that we would ever abuse that, but it would be nice to go out for a nice dinner every now and then by ourselves. There is this rather obscure holiday coming up that happens on February 14 every year