Oct 03

This once a week updating of my blog isn’t working very well. It’s been two weeks since I posted. I really meant to get it done on Monday last week, but one of the guys here at work needed to switch days with me. He had a friend from out of state come in. So, I worked his weekend shift and he worked my Monday and Tuesday shift. It really screwed up my whole week. The working seven days straight didn’t bother me at all. I’ve worked entire months without days off before. What threw everything off kilter was having two days off and then only three days on before getting two more days off. It wasn’t natural. But anyway, I slept most of the day on Monday last week and then, since I didn’t have to come to work, I didn’t feel like doing anything. But, we’re back on schedule today so here’s the update. A lot of stuff happened over the last two weeks, so it might be a long one. Let’s start off with baseball. Towards the end of the season, we went through a long stretch of bad luck. We lost every game in out last set of home games. It was like seven or nine games. It sucked. What made it even worse was that we were losing on the road too. On last Sunday, I watched the Bronco game instead of the Rockies and they picked that day to win 19-3 against the Braves. They set a team record for hits in a game. But, I missed it. We did close out the season with a win against the Giants, but it came off of a shut out the day before. Over all, we ended the season with a 73-89 record. It was a very disappointing season especially after such a great start. But, there is always next year. I am making plans (Saving money) to take a trip out to Arizona next season for spring training. We’re going to get this team to the World Series even if I have to drag it there. The Broncos haven’t had the stellar start we were looking for either. It is Coach Fox’s first year, so we can’t expect miracles right off the bat. The first three games were all within three points. We lost two and won one. Even though that’s not a winning record, they were very close games, I didn’t like it, but I could live with it. Yesterday, however, we played the Super Bowl champs from last year, the Green Bay Packers. They walked all over us. The score was 23-49. It was an embarrassment. Yes, they are one of the only two undefeated teams this year, but we should have been able to put on a better show. There is a huge movement by the fans trying to get Tim Tebow in as the starting quarterback. People have put up billboards and stuff. But, if they put him in too early, it could be just as disastrous as having a losing season. There have been several quarterbacks that have gone straight from college to the NFL, but those are rare cases. You can’t just expect him to be awesome no matter how much you want it. So, personally, I’m still fine with him easing into the position. The only thing I don’t like is that when they do put him in, they run him every time. If they’re not careful, they’re going to get him hurt. They need to let him get some experience passing it so he can work on his accuracy. My soldier girl was sick for several days last week. It was so bad that she had to go to the infirmary. They put her on bed rest for about three or four days. She ended up missing a test on TCP/IP that could have set her back into the class behind her. She is feeling much better now. She took the test and missed a passing grade by two points. She’ll have a chance to make it up and I’m sure she’ll do better. We picked up her contact lenses the other day, and we still haven’t sent them. I hope she hasn’t run out. I’m sure my wife will get them in the mail tomorrow. My wife went on a trip to Arizona over the weekend. Her mom flew down there to visit relatives. But, she doesn’t speak English that well and there wasn’t anyone that would be able to take her through the Arizona terminal to get her onto the correct plane to come back. So, my wife, her sister, and my father in-law drove down there to pick her up. They left on Friday evening at about six thirty and didn’t come back until Sunday night about nine thirty or ten. So, that meant that I was a bachelor for the weekend. I had plans to do a bunch of stuff, but ended up doing nothing. Since they took our car for the trip, they left us my father in-law’s truck. I took it to work on Friday night and brought it home on Saturday morning when I got off. The funny thing about the truck is that the gas gage doesn’t work. So, I had no idea how much gas was in it. And, it was very lucky that I got home on Saturday, because when my daughter woke me up to take her to get something to eat, the truck didn’t want to start. It was out of gas. So, that put a hamper on stuff I wanted to do. As it ended up, my granddaughter came over and spent the night. So, we had fun playing and watching football on Sunday. My daughter even cooked for us. She made hamburger helper on Saturday night and then omelets on Sunday morning. She even baked a cake. It was very good. My wife’s trip went very well. She did most of the driving and they spent an enjoyable day with relatives in Phoenix on Saturday. My daughter’s friend had her baby on Sunday. It was a little girl. My daughter wanted to go, but with the car situation, it wasn’t feasible. She also wanted to go to spend the night at a different friend’s house and attend a quinceanera. (Yeah, I can’t pronounce it either) She had a ride and everything, but ended up not going. For a while I thought I caught her doing something bad, like sneaking a boy over. She stayed downstairs while I was upstairs. On Friday when I was going to work, she called up and asked if I would bring her phone charger down as I was leaving. Well, I agreed and after getting ready, I headed downstairs. When I went inside the house, all of the lights were off. I stumbled my way through the kitchen and into the living room. My daughter was sitting up in a chair with all the lights and TV off. It seemed very strange to me at the moment. I asked her what was going on and she said that she wanted to sleep in the chair. I thought it was strange and went to work. After an hour or so, I started wondering if I might have interrupted something. She could have easily snuck a boy in and hid him when they heard me stumbling around at the door. So, I snuck in at six in the morning after I got off. She had moved a bed into the living room and was asleep alone. I’m sure she could have gotten rid of him before morning, but I choose to believe that she didn’t have anyone over. When I got to work today, there was a memo informing everyone that there is a mandatory meeting on Sunday at two o’clock. It specifically announced that the graveyard people must attend. Well, I have Bronco tickets for Sunday. The game starts at 2:15. My wife got them for me and my son as birthday presents. They are $95.00 tickets. I am not going to lose them to go to some stupid meeting. So, I left a message for the big boss. He’s not going to like it and I’m sure I’ll get a call tomorrow. He usually calls about mid morning a few hours after I have just fallen asleep. He can yell all he wants, but I’m not letting those tickets go to waste. I’ve been working on the River of Magic over the last few weeks. It’s been slow, and it is turning out different than the other books I’ve written, but it is going to be good. I’m going to continue with it this week and try to work on it more than one or two days. If I keep going as slow as I have been, it’ll take forever to finish. I have been thinking a little bit about Gremlin Planet. I might lay down a few pages of it if I get the chance. And, I need to make another Great Detective to send to my daughter. So, if I can get off of Farmville, I have plenty of stuff to keep myself occupied. I’m feeling kind of drugout today, so I’m going to put something upbeat in the playlist. I’m thinking Def Leopard, AC/DC, Twisted Sister, and Metallica. Speaking of Farmville, they introduced a new Lighthouse Cove about two or three weeks ago. There were ten levels of enhancing that you had to accomplish along with all of the other projects and stuff that had to be build finished. On the ten levels, you had to collect three different things and every level they wanted more and more of each. Towards the end, they wanted 45 and then 50 and then 60 of each thing. Overall, it was hundreds that you had to collect. I didn’t go crazy trying to get it finished. But, I did move along with it fairly quickly. When I got to the end of it of it this weekend, I felt pretty good. It was an accomplishment. So, as I was about to click on the last item they wanted, I assumed that there was going to be a really good prize at the end. They always give you something and this was a major thing they wanted us to finish. I thought the prize was going to be spectacular. To my utter disappointment, the prize was nothing. I did all that work for absolutely nothing. I am so disgusted at Farmville that I was seriously thinking of just not playing anymore. It has turned into more work than fun anyway. So, even as I am writing this blog, I am still debating with myself if I should continue or not. There are some fun things. I actually like collecting the animals and I have a bunch of them. So, I am leaning toward continuing, but I’m not going to stress over any of their stupid projects anymore. Well, this has become a three pager. I’m sure there is still a lot of stuff I’ve left out. If I can think of it, I’ll make another posting later on this week. But, if not, I’ll talk to all of you next Monday. -Thom