I will use these for every birthday

We celebrated my birthday a little late with my family on SUPERMOON Saturday. Not much to report really, but Jenn bought these candle for the cake. I want to use these for all the rest of my birthdays.

I hope the moon didn't ruin the night for any of you. It was cloudy here so we were safe. No werewolves or anything.

Birthday, Oscars, Dogs, etc.

Another month down in 2011. Sure, it's the shortest month, but at least it makes it seem like it will get warmer soon. It's March in the morning, it feels warmer just thinking about it.

So, Saturday was my birthday. I won't say how old I am now, but it is divisible by 7, if that helps. I had finished my week of midnights that morning, so I slept until 1:30-ish and got up to spend the day with the family in a daze while wearing sweatpants. It's the only way to spend your birthday, in my opinion.

I got some nice gifts; a pair of Bluetooth headphones, a few shirts for our Hawaii vacation in August and DVD's. What DVDs? Well, they were from out dog Quincy. So what else could the be but the TV show Quincy. See:

I used to watch this show all the time. For some reason I like some of the 70s crime shows. Then we had dinner from Wildfire. We ate in so I wouldn't have to shower. It truly was a perfect day.

Speaking of dogs, Jenn and I were wondering how we always end up with weird dogs. Our first dog was Cosmo, a golden retriever who thought he was human. Really, look at how he used to sit on the couch.

That is not normal. Also, he had this thing where he would introduce bones to one of his toys. Seriously. Whenever we brought a new bone home for him he'd take it from us, walk over to his favorite squeaky ball, whine, put it in from of the ball then make the ball squeak. For like two minutes. I am not exaggerating, if anything I am understating how long he would do this.This was real fun when he'd decide to do this in the middle of the night. It would scare the crap out of us sometimes. We would think he was trapped somewhere and we'd go downstairs and we'd find him bone laying in front of his ball.

So now we have two dogs. One of them, Quincy, also a golden retriever, likes to take his new bones outside. Nothing weird about that at all, if that's all he did. What he likes to do is bring them outside and just leave them out there then, about 2 weeks later, he'll bring them back in to chew. It's like he needs them to marinate or something.

He also has to be the last dog outside at night. He'll always go first, then we'll let Cruise out, then Quincy has to go back out. If you don't let him out he won't go to bed easily. My guess is he is checking to make sure Cruise isn't touching any of the bones he has marinating. Weirdo.

Cruise seems to be relatively normal, except for the fact that he was a dog rescued from the streets and is afraid of the rain. I would think he would be used to it.

I was going to talk about the Oscars, but what can I really say that a million other blogs and websites haven't already said? Except, whose idea was it to do the auto-tune thing? It's like your grandparents trying to be hip and giving you a Member's Only jacket 15 years after they were popular and they look even less hip than you thought they were. (Yes, that happened to me, but it was my dad).

Okay, I have to go look at some stuff for work.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

It's been a busy week so far. Yes, I know it is only Monday, but we had the big Chicago Bears game on Sunday, Jenn left for Toronto on Sunday, and, well, Jenn left for Toronto, so I'm all alone here. Okay, the kids are here, but they are the problem. I have to make sure they are fed, have their homework done, have a lunch for school and don't kill each other. That is a lot for one man to do. Women do that all the time, I know, but I'm a guy. That's just too much for me to think about. I need to reduce it by a third at least. That's why I decided I'm not going to feed the dogs at all while Jenn is gone. They can find something outside, I'm sure. Cruise is always chasing squirrels out there. Maybe now he'll actually try to catch one instead of his half-hearted attempts he makes now to show off to the other dogs in the neighborhood.

Here's an example of my ineptitude. Jenn reminded me to help our daughter with her math homework that was due today. No problem. I'll get to it after the football game. And, yes, we did get to it. I explained how to count the coins and how to find a way to make a certain amount of money in various coin combinations. I think she even got it. Her teacher, however, never got it. The homework that is. When I picked up the kids at school I asked them if they had any homework. My daughter said yes, that her teacher told her she could turn in her homework tomorrow even though it was due today. Huh? Somehow we did the homework but it never made it to the school. I thought I put it in her back back, but I guess I didn't. It is nowhere to be found. I even went through some of the garbage. I have no idea where it is. So now tomorrow I have to go and ask if we can get another sheet to do. I'm sure if I explain that Jenn is out of town she'll give me that look that women give to dads who are clueless and give me another one with no problems.

At least I remembered to give the kids dinner tonight.

What else? We had our son's ninth birthday party on Saturday. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to invite his class here. While it turned out well, and the kids had fun, we were both exhausted from it. Luckily, Jenn's parents and sister helped out. I don't know if we could have done it without them. It was also nice of all the parents to show up right on time to pick up the kids. I mean that, they were right on time. They all said they figured we'd be ready to have the kids out after three hours. Yes, we were. The kids were pretty well behaved, but they can only last so long inside a house before they go bonkers. It would have been nice if our son was born in the summer so all the kids could have gone in the yard to run around.

Did I mention it was a Mad Scientist Party? Yeah, here's me being an even bigger dork than normal in a blurry cellphone photo.

Did I also tell you I'm going to be Young Doc Brown in The Further Adventures of Marty McFly?

With that, I'm out.

The 40s

No, not the decade...well, I guess in a way that is what I mean. See, today I am officially "in my 40s." Yes, I'm 41 now. The problem is that it was much faster to get to 41 than 39. That can't be a good sign. Next thing I know I'll be posting that I hit 50. Maybe I will, there probably won't be blogs anymore. I'll just post my thoughts in your head, but only if you sign up for it and agree to the share your thoughts with me. Unless it's issued as a "beta" and we accidentally get to share thoughts with everybody for a short period until you get the option to opt out. (Huh?)

See, I'm already losing my my mind. Actually, I don't care too much about turning 41, though I am mildly disturbed by the commercials I've been hearing lately where some guy drops dead at 42 because he didn't get his heart checked. I know they want to scare us into doing it, but can they pick someone a little older? You know, to make me feel better.

So yes, I'm getting older. You should probably get off my lawn and turn down that loud music.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to send in an application to 60 minutes. Someone needs to replace Andy Rooney.

Look who turned 2!

It's Quincy's birthday today. Doesn't he look thrilled?

I think he's tired from all the activity. We took him to Chuck E Cheese's to play in the ball pit and be scared of the animatronic band. Sure, he's a dog, but he's worth it. Who cares if they called the police on us?

Actually, all we did was buy a bunch of toys and bones for the dogs. It seems unfair to buy stuff for Cruise, but how do you explain to a dog that he doesn't get anything because it's the other dog's birthday?

Right now Quincy is in one room chewing a bone while Cruise is in another room doing the same. I'm sure they'll be fighting over one bone soon enough. What they really like to do is wait for the other to stop chewing to get some water then steal the other's bone. They are like little kids.

Anyway, it's Quincy's day, so here are some pictures you may, or may not, have seen.

Happy Birthday Quincy!

The big 4-0(h, boy)

Well, it's official; I'm old. No longer can I pretend that college wasn't all that long ago, or that maybe the high school kids I see walking around won't think I'm an old man, or I still have enough time to get better at golf to join the PGA tour. (I still might have time for The Champions Tour). Time to put away the Rollerblades so I don't break a hip. I have to remember not to try the kid's skateboards when the get a little older. I can't expect to drink a lot of beer and not feel miserable for the next day or two.

Now is the time to update my iTunes library. I need to get rid of Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Queensryche and Swap in some Lawrence Welk and Glen Miller. Okay, maybe I'm going a little too far. They guys in the bands I listed are older than me, so I guess I'm fine there.

Do I feel any different? No, but when I was a kid I never thought I'd get here. Remember when you were in grade school, and how old all your teachers seemed? Most of them weren't 40 and they seemed old. Then you'd have one or two teachers that were in there 50's and they seemed ancient. Now, that is me. It's funny, many times when I go pick up the kids at school I feel like I'm too young to be there; too young to have kids in school. Then I look around and notice most of the parents are younger than me. Heck, the principal just had his birthday and he is only 20 years older than me. A principal should be at least 40 years older than me, or so it seems. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't feel old. That's a good thing, right?

I was thinking of old birthday memories the other day. I was telling my son how I had the chicken pox on (I think) my eight birthday. He asked me what I did for my birthday and he seemed disappointed that I just had the neighbor kids over for some pizza and watched some movies. I didn't tell them the movies were on a projector and screen. I didn't want to blow his mind with the ancient-ness of that technology.

My 16th was kind of interesting. My mom and step-dad were divorced, or in the process of getting divorced, so I wasn't really expecting anything. After school my friend, who was a grade behind me, asked if I could come over to help him with some math homework. So, being the good guy I was, I went to help him out. Then we went back to my house for dinner. (We had dinner at each other's house quite a bit). When I got there, about five other friends were there to surprise me. I really didn't expect it. I don't remember much else about the party, except that I got Journey Frontiers on cassette. I listened to that a lot back then.

My next big birthday was my 21st. Do we really want to talk about it? It's kind of blurry anyway. I remember going out with some friends to a bar (duh), cracking my head on a small table by the dart boards, having a shot called a Gorilla Fart, almost losing it after that shot, and going around to people's rooms asking for Pepto-Bismol. Somewhere in there I was recorded by my friends as they asked me where Jimmy Hoffa was buried, and while I played harmonica in the hallway at around 2am. Good times.

I think the last time I got together with friends was for my 30th. I think we all met at my house and went to the bar up the street to see a Rush tribute band. Speaking of which, I see they still play around here, though it doesn't seem anybody that was in the band when I saw them is still in the band.

Still, I think my 40th has been the best so far. Sure, I'm working today, but I got to go out to San Diego with Jenn and have a fun, relaxing time. That's the kind of thing us 40 year-olds need. Am I right? Another thing we need is this:

My daughter picked this out for me. She is either going to be in advertising, or be one of those ladies that has a ton of junk in there house. She can recite almost any commercial. Sigh, she is just like me. I feel sorry for her.

I think iTunes has been reading my post. Some songs it has chosen: Creeping Death, Rest in Piece, My Last Words, Among the Living. No, I'm not kidding.

Now, If you will excuse me, I need to go to Walgreen's to buy the reading glasses that are a requirement to be in the 40 and over club.

(Edit to add): I almost forgot, I wanted to say Happy Birthday to Maurissa. Jenn used to work with her and I think she still reads this.

Our Winter Vacation: Part one

I know, I know; I've been home a week and I haven't written about the trip to San Diego yet. Now I know I shouldn't schedule myself to go back to work the day after I get back from a trip. It's hard to get back on track! Anyway, if you have clicked over to my Flickr page, you may have noticed some pictures there. I'm going to post them here, as well as a few others.

The story really starts before we even left for the airport. As a bit of back story, I should mention that the door on Jenn's car is having locking problems. It's locks just fine, but it doesn't like to unlock so, at times, you can get locked in the car. Cool trick, huh? I had planned not to take her car to the airport for that reason, not to mention the truck is too small for our two carry-on bags.

So, as Jenn was taking a shower, I took my car to get my haircut. I couldn't look as messy as I did on our trip; it wouldn't be right. As I pulled into the parking space, I turned the car off and took the key out of the ignition...or so I had planned. The key would not come out. In the past few days before this event, I had noticed the key sticking in the ignition and planned to look into it after our trip. Actually, Jenn had trouble getting out of the ignition a few days before when she used my car to drop the kids off at school. I almost forgot about that.

Anyway, as I jiggled, wiggled, and jangled the key trying to get it out of the ignition, I was quickly losing my temper. I swore at the car for a few minutes and finally left to go back home; I certainly wasn't going to leave the car with key in the ignition. Not to mention the fact that you can't lock the doors with the key in the ignition. As I was driving home, I was getting more irritated because I realized that I needed to put the car in the garage while we were gone. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, our garage has about enough room for half of a car, thanks to all the junk in there.

I went into the house, slammed a few doors, told Jenn what I was happened, and went in the garage to throw some things around to make room for the car. After about 20 minutes I cleared a path for the car and pulled it into the garage. As I got out of the car, I realized something. Can you guess? Yep, the key came out of the ignition. I was actually a bit more pissed at first. Then I had a plan. Maybe the key was worn too much? Maybe the valet key we never used would work? Sure enough it does, and still has.

One quick funny thing. As we left the house, after saying good-bye to the kids, the dog, and Jenn's parents, we pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street. All was fine until I realized I put the old key in the ignition again. I drove up the street, out of view of the kids watching out the window, then turned the car off. Luckily, the key came out. I switched back and we continued on to the airport. Phew!

I'll skip ahead past some minor details, since I seem to be going a bit long. Also, this may be a multi-part post.

On the plane, Jenn and I were in the very last two rows, each in the middle seat of our respective rows. Fun! The guys I was sharing the row with were fine, except one guy had a major cold. He was sneezing and coughing nearly constantly. But I will say this, he was very respectful about it. When he sneezed he turned away to the window, and did the same as he blew his nose. You don't see that courtesy on airplanes anymore. I feel bad for the person in the window seat on the next leg, though.

We didn't get to see anything on the night we got to San Diego. We took a cab (50 bucks!) to the lodge, checked in, ordered up some room service, and went to bed. Oh, were both a little ticked off by one thing. Why does the USA Network not have a west coast feed? We were planning to watch Psych at 10:00pm local time. We figured that would be the correct time for it out on the coast. No, it wasn't. We were not happy.

Our first full day, Saturday, was a little on the drizzly side. We got up early, thanks to still being on Chicago time, and got ourselves some breakfast, then headed out to the course.

This show was actually taken from a balcony at the lodge. We weren't allowed to bring cameras on the course. (More on that later). Even though it started off mostly sunny, it did rain quite a bit. One thing I noticed out there; you can see the rain coming from so far away, it's hard to judge when you are going to get wet. Hint: earlier than you think.

Since it was so rainy, we didn't stay on the course long that day. We walked over to the hotel next door to get some lunch. We had to branch out a little bit. At first it was really sunny when we went into the restaurant, so I was thinking we were missing out, then the clouds showed up and it started pouring. I did get a few shots before that happened though.

The second shot was through a window, if you couldn't tell.

That night we went out to dinner at Jack's Ocean Room in downtown La Jolla. We took an eco- taxi, which was a Prius, however the guy was gunning it so much that I don't think the electric motor ever kicked in. We also got to see a large tree blocking the main road through town on the way to Jack's. It seems they really did have a lot of rain in the week leading up to our trip. They couldn't have kept up the record heat for one more week?

After dinner we walked around the area and went to Powell's Sweet Shoppe (notice the 'e', it lets you know it is old fashioned) to see what we could find for the kids. Let me tell you, if you want a wide selection of Pez dispensers, this is your place. I didn't get a picture of them, but I did get some pictures of two things I found interesting, and appropriate.

The first was Over the Hill energy drink. I though it was a good find since we were celebrating my 40th birthday. A little early mind you; I'm not there yet.

The other was bacon flavored toothpicks, because, well, this is the Internet; where bacon rules all.

That is all for now; I'm sure you are bored enough. Tomorrow; more pictures, and words. Exciting, I know.

Quincy at one year

We are celebrating another birthday in our household; Quincy is one year old today. This birthday is a little more low key; no bowling alley, family party or even cake. See, the youngest child always gets screwed. Believe me, I should know.

After our first dog, Cosmo, died we waited a while before we got another one. Most of the wait was because of me; I didn't want to jump into training a new dog with two young kids at home. I think I held out for about for about 5 months before I gave in and agreed to getting a new dog. Hey, at least I got us through the winter without having to train him outside!

So, Jenn did some research and found a breeder about 90 minutes away that had a litter of Golden Retrievers due soon. Long story short, we got this picture of the litter in our e-mail in January.


I have no idea which one is Quincy but, based on his personality now, I'm going to guess he is the one with his head on top of all the other dogs. Now, if there was a dog chewing up a toy doll in this picture, it would make it much easier to pick him out.

A short time later we went out the the breeder to choose which dog we wanted to take home a few weeks after that. Now look at these little guys. How do you choose?


I'm positive Quincy is the lighter dog in the middle with his tongue partially hanging out. He is a little darker now, but not a whole lot. Look how tiny he was back in March.



It's funny, his ears are still quite a bit darker than the rest of his body. Now, however, his one ear is about the size of his whole body back then. At least is seems that way.

The Easter Bunny brought the dog to the kids this year. This is Jenn bringing him in after we 'found' him out by front door after we conveniently had somewhere to go. Look at the size of his paws!


It didn't take long for him to make himself at home. Our daughter wasn't too fond of him the first day. She was used to our 11 year old golden who mostly lounged around the house. Quincy was a flying fur ball that wanted to chase everything; including her. She warmed up to him pretty quickly, though she still will say she misses Cosmo.

We knew we might have a problem with size on this dog. Everyone who saw him would remark on how huge his paws where; the vet, the groomer, our friends, and sister (in-law to me). All these people knew what they were talking about. This shot is two months later than the one above.


Here he is checking for crumbs at the kitchen table. He is not standing on anything at this point. This is when I started wondering if we should have named him Clifford.

He is kind of trained now. He listens most of the time, but he still likes to steal things and make us chase him. Maybe he is trying to tell us he needs more excitement in his life. I don't blame him, this winter has not been nice. It's been too cold to do much playing out there.

Today I took the kids to the pet store to buy Quincy a few things for his birthday. Daughter picked out a squeaky turtle and son a football. Here Quincy seems to be using the turtle as a pillow, but he is actually rolling around on it.


I guess you can say he likes his turtle.

For the parting shot I would like to show you how he let's us know he is ready to come in the house.


This is our kitchen window. The base of that wind is about chest high on me. I still can't believe that he can reach it. And let me tell you, when he does that in the dark it freaks me out. He looks like some kind of demon, ghost dog.

Thanks for reading. Happy birthday Quincy!

Cat...out of bag.

First of all, anyone that has come here looking for a picture of a cat, I'm sorry. That is not what I'm talking about here; besides, there is only one real source of cat photos anyway. But, feel free to read on anyway. There are no cats in this story, but that also means none are harmed during the telling of this story. (I don't want PETA after me or anything).

As I may have mentioned before, Jenn is taking me on a trip for my birthday next month. It's my 40th (ahhhhh!) this year so she wanted to do something special. She decided against a party and chose to take me somewhere. Isn't that nice?

About three or four weeks ago she let it slip that we are going somewhere. She wouldn't tell me where, just that it would probably be warmer than here. That didn't really narrow it down much. I knew it wasn't going to be Hawaii because we were only going for a few days. And it would be too expensive. I tried not to bug her too much, but it was hard. There were ways I could have looked up some of the information on the trip, but I was good and didn't. Until one day.

Actually, I didn't go looking for anything. (Really!) She opened her planner and a piece paper happened to flip open that had the flight information on it. She yelled for me to not look, but it was too late. I saw it. I didn't say anything though. She always tries to surprise me with gifts but somehow the surprises get ruined. I still enjoy the gifts, but usually something happens and I find out, or figure it out.

So, I played it cool for a couple of weeks; until just a couple of days ago. We were talking about a restaurant gift certificate we have and we were wondering if we could use it on out trip. Well, I let my guard down and just spit out, "Do they have restaurants in California?" In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, d'oh! So yeah, I know where we are going.

To be specific, we are going here to see this. Isn't that cool? Well, I suppose if you don't care about golf you wouldn't think it was cool. But it is for me. Isn't Jenn cool? She doesn't like golf and she is going to let me drag her around a golf course to watch a tournament. You can watch for me on TV. I'll be the only one waving a giant foam finger around. Or, the guy getting tackled by a caddie for waving said foam finger. Either way, I should be visible. Set your TiVos!

I have a question for you Californians; how do you say LaJolla? Please let me know. I don't want to look like a dork there. Or, like a bigger one. Thanks!

I guess you can say I'm looking forward to next month. Granted, I'm not looking forward to getting older but at least our trip is a few weeks before my actual birthday. I can enjoy my last few days of my 30's on a nice trip.

Now I have to go plan for something big for Jenn. She's younger than me so I have a little time. It has to be big. Any ideas?