Yesterday I took the day off. Tried my hand at a new “dish”. I fried the country fried steak alright, but I SUCK AT THE GRAVY PART. What I got was something that looked like it was about 30 weight oil. Just as black. I think next time I’ll cop out and buy some stuff in a can or bottle. My Salsa turned out to be pretty good, not too flaming hot, but a creeper kind of hot. You don’t notice the heat until around 4 or 5 chips and the next thing you know, you washing said chips down with beer after beer.
Wasn’t too bad of a day at work today except for the ‘latest contractor’ that is working on the next wizbang web application to save the planet for some department somewhere that figured that we in the I.S. department couldn’t accomplish what they wanted(even though the never asked) so they’re gonna pay someone probably 3 times what I make to write this thing for them and let them install it on the servers I have to babysit. Then when they’re finished, and well paid, they’re out of here and I will be stuck learning how to support this thing that I didn’t write and I didn’t get
Today, I’ve worked my job for 18 years. To some, it may sound like a long time. To others, it may not. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long to me. I guess that’s a good thing. There were times throughout the 18 years that seemed like centuries. Lately, the times have seemed more fleeting. I’m glad that I’ve been kept around for the 18 years. I’ve been through two sets of layoffs. Those are not fun.(even if it’s not you getting layed off) For some reason when it’s time to “cut costs”, they get rid of folks but they want you to do what the folks they got rid of did. Some morale booster. This morning, I woke up about 5:30 a.m. and decided since it was my 18th anniversary, I’d promptly take a vacation day.
So far, so good. I took the opportunity to take my daughter to school. Jack(see photo upper right, he’s the white one) went with us. He loves to ride. Carbon(the brindle, upper right) was busy soiling the yard so he missed the departure. It was nice to take a bit of a break from the normal routine. I don’t know what it is, but getting up to take your daughter to school somehow doesn’t seem as dreary as getting up to go to work. By the time I got home from taking her to school, my son was at his bus stop. I hollered at him through the truck window and asked him if he wanted a ride, he declined. Must be one of those “cool” things that 7-8th graders go through.
I piddled around for a little while, kissed the wife goodbye on her way to school. Offered to have lunch with her but she declined, something about only having only 30 minutes for lunch. I don’t know ’bout you, but that’s plenty of time for a “nooner” for me. Maybe next time… It didn’t take long to get a little bored after everyone left for their day. I decided to make some salsa and try to see if I can come up with a decent copy of mamma’s Country Fried Steak & Gravy. Wish me luck, the salsa’s a breeze, done that several times, the CFS is gonna be a little more challenging I think. I made the mistake of going to the grocery store when I was hungry… Only wanted to get the cubed steak, and some flour. Wound up buying all the fixin’s for the salsa, the flour, the cubed steak, and what the hell, some sea perch for good measure. Lucky I got outta there under $50.00. Oh, a bag of Lay’s chips too. And a case of beer. I’ve already had my days allotment of coffee this morning. Drank damned near the whole pot before anybody stirred.
Well, I’m off to play chef. I’ll let you know how it turns out… Maybe.
My son got a PS2 for Christmas. I know, we’re a few years behind in getting the latest game box. Believe me, he’s reminded me about that more then once since it came out. He got several pretty cool games. He likes the football games. I like the driving games and the “Army Games”. I kept seeing commercials for this game called SOCOM II. Being the inept game shopper that I am, I mosied on over to Meijers and promptly found a game called SOCOM. Didn’t notice that the II wasn’t on the package, but I took it and brought it home and started playing it.
After some initial “getting used to it”, we went through the first three levels pretty easily. I really enjoy completing the missions because you get to see a little mini-movie about the end of the mission. The fourth level of that game you’re supposed to rescue two hostages, a Senator and his wife I believe. There are two two-man squads in your team. Alpha team is Kahuna(me) and Boomer(damned good translator!), Bravo team is Spectre and Jester. Don’t pick on me, I didn’t make the names up. Anyway, getting through the first few parts of that level is pretty cake. Once you do that you’re supposed to enter an old temple, clear it out, and rescue the Senator’s wife. On a good day, I can usually accomplish that task(took me a month of Sundays to get that far). You get around to a little like uhhh gazebo for lack of a better term. She’s in there with two guards. If you’re lucky, when you round the corner one or both of them will be on the steps tap tap tap 1 down tap tap tap 2 down, you go on in and “restrain her”, why I don’t know. Once that’s done you can tell her to follow you outside. Well, even though the extract point is clear when you go into the gazebo, and your team is on the stairs of the gazebo, the extraction point is full of baddies when you finally bring her out so you’ve got a mess to clean up before calling in for support(extraction). That’s all pretty cool, you call for extraction, a chopper flies in and shoots the crap out of everything. Man is that gun loud. Once she’s safe, you go on through the temple to locate the Senator and try to get him out. From that point on, I’ve been point blank shot in the back, sniped from the top of the temple and suffered many other forms of termination. I’ve actually made it far enough to see the Senator, but by the time I work my way down to where he is, one of the baddies usually pops a cap in me and I’m toast. CRAP!!!!!!! Not again!!!!! Just … DAMN! That PS2 controller with the vibrating things inside of it just mockingly shakes. When placed on the coffee table in disgust at getting wacked yet again, it makes a horrible vibration on wood noise. Just makes me want to chuck it all through the window. Does anybody have any good clues for getting through that level? If you do I sure could use them.
Yesterday was another typically dreary day in Ohio. It started out with a combination of snow and rain which finally quit and yielded to just a bleary windy grey day.
We finally sold our 94 Plymouth Voyager yesterday. A fellow came by last Sunday and asked me all sorts of questions about it. I told him everything I knew about what ailed it. He said his tax return was coming back and he’d bring his wife back the next Saturday and if she liked it, he’d pay cash for it. I sat around yesterday wondering if he actually would be back or he’d just blend back in and let it go.
He showed up around 1 o’clock with his wife and their baby. He and I chatted while she drove the van around the block. It was the Sunday of the Daytona 500 when he first showed up. We ended our first conversation about the van just prior to the start of the race. This visit, he asked me what I thought about the race, I said “It was fine with me”, and I asked him how he liked it. He said it was great until lap 7 (Mark Martin’s engine blew and he’s a Mark Martin fan). Well there’s always next year I told him.
She came back shortly and he was asking her how she liked the van and various questions about what she thought about it. It made me feel kind of awkward. I’ve been in situations similar to that when my wife and I have been considering a purchase and she’s wanting to probe me for every thing I feel about whether or not to make the purchase in front of the salesman. Drives me nuts. Sometimes there are things you’d like to say about the purchase to your wife or partner that you just don’t want to say in front of the seller. I told them to go ahead and take the van to lunch or out for a drive and give it a little more time to check it out and talk it over in private. They came back around 2:30 and paid cash for it. I’m glad they like it and I’m glad the bought it. I hope they get as much joy and use out of it as my family has. They’re a young family with small children and I ‘m sure the extra space and convenience of a couple of big doors will shorten their “load up” time. It’s got 184k miles on it. We took good care of it. I hope it doesn’t end up like Mark Martin’s car did last Sunday on lap 7 of the Daytona 500.
I’m married, I have two children. 13 and 15. The boy is the youngest, the girl is the oldest. They’re different(as if you didn’t know). Both of them have had been blessed with the opportunity to do whatever they wanted to do as far as after school activities go. One is more decisive then the other, and more determined to pursue the decision(read stubborn and determined). The other is more “cost conscience”. The one that worries about money ALWAYS takes that in to account before even voicing an interest. Sometimes, I don’t know what the interest is, or what costs are involved. As far as I can remember, I haven’t turned either one down on the basis of “cost” for something they’ve wanted to pursue. However, my better half has. What that means is I’m taken completely out of the loop. I don’t know that someone was told “we can’t afford it”. I.dont.know.about.it.
She’s never been to Cooperstown, but we did send her on a trip to Hawaii. She took surfing lessons while there and seemed to get the hang of that. She played one year of softball, but decided it wasn’t her “bag”. She’s been on a drill team. She’s run cross country track, played soccer, played basketball and has taken hip-hop dance classes. She’s been a little league Cheerleader, she’s been a middle school Cheerleader(Uniforms and cheerleading camps aren’t free either). She didn’t make the Freshman cheerleading squad this year. I was told that it was because of her lack of tumbling skills. She’s seeing a tumbling instructor now, once a week.
The 13 year old plays traveling baseball in the summer, has for the last 3 or 4 years. That’s not cheap. In the last 4 years of traveling baseball he’s been to Cooperstown Dreams Park two of those last four years. Once as an 11 year old on a 12 year old team, and then the following year as a 12 year old on a 12 year old team. It costs money/sweat/work to make it happen. He’s always enjoyed baseball. He has also played football, pee-wee and middle school, and basketball in middle school. He thinks he wants to golf next year instead of playing football. Not a choice I’d make, but it’s not mine to make. He golfs left handed. I golf right handed. I can’t pass on my clubs to him whilst I “upgrade”;(. To golf, he needs new clubs. He has outgrown his junior set. The first set he got he worked most of the early summer washing cars, or whatever odd jobs he could do to get 1/2 the money for the set of clubs he wanted. I told him, that’s all he needed, I’d pay the other half. He got his half and then some and picked a nicer set. He’s outgrown them now.
I mentioned to my wife that he said he wanted to golf next year, and that he would need a new set of golf clubs if he was going to do so. Big Mistake. I was told that there was no way he was getting new clubs. I asked why? Then I was told because about 1k$ is spent each year for him to play traveling baseball and there’s a girl down the hall who doesn’t get crap. Then I was told that the weekly tumbling classes weren’t enough and that it should be made into 2 classes per week. I said, go ahead. It’s a terrifying $20.00 per class. I figured an additional 20 per week wasn’t gonna kill us. Heck the way I see things, that’s a couple cases of beer less, or a few packs of cigs less. No big deal.
I’m at a bit of a loss. Being a man, I know what boys like to do, but not always what girls like or want to do. If nobody tells me that someone wants or needs something, and I don’t see it myself, how am I to know? Should everything given to your children be view as a competition, or a tit-for-tat distribution of money and efforts for them? Why does it seem that there’s a “score” being kept? Shouldn’t the children be given whatever they need to do the things they want to regardless of who’s had what in the past? That’s what I think, now if I could just convince another person in the family of that.
