April 2

As always, visit me at http://www.thomnichols.com/
Oops, it looks like I totally forgot to update my blog last Monday. I guess that means that we’ll have a nice long one today. Let’s start with something that happened last week. I found out that I am not a very nice person. It happened at work. As an overnight security guard, we’re supposed to kick people off the property who are sleeping. The idea is to keep the transients away and make the buildings look more professional. On this particular night, one of the other guards called over the radio that he was kicking two teenagers off the property. I swung the camera around and watched him point out a place for them to go. They left and that should have been the end of it. The other guy did what I would have done and what he was supposed to do. He didn’t say anything about it later on and I pretty much forgot about the incident. When we were relieved at the end of our shift, instead of going downstairs to leave, he started walking across the plaza. I asked him where he was going and he said that he was going to go buy those kids breakfast. Then, it dawned on me that they were just kids and they were homeless. But, I know that I wouldn’t have even thought of helping them if I was the one that was kicking them off of the property. I would have just kicked them off and not thought about them. The rest of the week, I noticed a lot of little things that other people were doing for other people. In each case, I wouldn’t have thought of helping. I really need to reevaluate the way I live. I never considered myself a bad person, but I’m defiantly not a good person either.


Speaking of not being a good person, I’m not even a good dad or grandpa. It came to my attention over the weekend that next Sunday is Easter. Usually, I am on top of holidays especially Christmas and Easter. But, this year it just snuck up on me. I haven’t saved any money or bought any little toys or candy for Easter baskets. I don’t know what I’m going to do. The kids are a little big for baskets, but I would like to get them a present or something. I usually spoil my granddaughter. We were walking around in the store yesterday and she was showing me all of the stuff she wants the Easter Bunny to bring her. We found chocolate rabbits with big ears and a bunch of other candy. I think I’m going to have to float a bill until next payday so I can at least get her something. With the older kids, I’ll probably take them out to eat as a family. We haven’t had one of those in a while. I’m sure I’ll get them something small, but it will be small.

On the family home front, it looks like the kids have to wait for a whole month before they start working on the new baby. My daughter in-law had the birth control removed and they doctor told them to abstain from “practicing” for a whole month. They’ve both given up drinking and the occasional cigarettes so that there won’t be anything in their systems to cause any troubles and they’ve started taking vitamins and stuff the doctor recommended. So, it looks like it might be a late February or early March baby. Since Leap Year was this year, a Leap Year baby is off the table. That would have been kind of cool, a birthday every four years.

Spring break is finally over. My youngest had a hard time getting up for school today. In her defense, she worked until midnight the night before. I went to pick her up at about fifteen or twenty after so she didn’t get a chance to get a really good sleep. It took me about ten times to wake her up this morning.

My eldest daughter is still struggling with finding a job. She went to apply for a police academy program today. I didn’t get to see her to find out how it went, but I’m sure she did well.

Today was my Goddaughter’s son’s first birthday. I didn’t get to go to it because I was upstairs sleeping. But, my wife said that it went ok. She and her mom did all of the cooking. I would have liked to go, but Mondays are not a good day for me. I have to sleep in the afternoon so that I can be awake all night. Still, the party went off nicely. There were a lot of people and my wife made pot roast. She snuck me up a plate before the party and it was really good.

We went to my brother’s house this weekend. He had a new game called Werewolves. It was pretty fun. It takes a lot of people to play and it is different than most games. Everyone is selects a random card and it tells them if they are a villager or a werewolf. There are other characters but that would take too long to explain. Anyway, after everyone knows who they are, everyone has to close their eyes and pretend that they are asleep. The game mediator asks a bunch of questions. The main one is who the werewolves are and who they want to kill. When the mediator finds out everything, he pronounces it daytime and everyone wakes up. Whoever the werewolves choose to kill is dead and the villagers have to guess who the werewolves are. They villagers hang who they think it is and then go back to sleep. The game continues until the werewolves kill all the villagers of the villagers kill all the werewolves. There is more to it than that, but I’m not selling the game and don’t get a commission so that’s all I’m telling you about it. All you really need to know is it was pretty fun. It did get us together as a family even though my other brother didn’t show. We had cookies and fruit and hotdogs. It was nice.

My son sent a lot of shoes and clothing for us to give to my brother that didn’t show up. They’re hand-me-downs, but my son usually only buys nice clothes and designer shoes. He also takes care of his stuff, so they’re in really good shape. But, my brother’s kids missed out. I’ll probably drive them around in the back of my car for a month or so before I break down and go to his house and give them to him.

I received the corrections for the River of Magic today. There were a lot, but most of them were just quick fixes. I tend to forget some of the small words when I’m typing so I have to insert a lot of “in, to, of, the…” But there were some sentence structures and continuity discrepancies. I would have brought them in today to fix, but I have such a headache that I don’t think I’m going to do anything except this blog. I have been working on Gremlin Planet. I’m seven chapters in and it is coming along nicely. But, I have Sliders running around my head. So, I might throw down a few chapters of that when Gremlin Planet isn’t looking.

Well, it’s getting kind of late and I haven’t even mentioned baseball yet. So, here goes. Opening day is only days away, Woo Hoo!!!!!! In case you’re wondering, yes, I can’t wait. We did have an incident over the weekend. Our old ace pitcher Ubaldo was throwing to one of our star players Tulo when he hit him in the elbow with the ball. Both benches cleared as the teams started fighting. It was a mess. Ubaldo has always been a little wild, but he fires it off at 100+ miles an hour. Everyone was worried that Tulo wouldn’t be able to start on opening day. But, at the game today, one of the announcers said that he would. So, I only have to drudge through the rest of this week for the first game. I think we’ll have a really good year. Of what I saw today, we didn’t have a good game. But, it’s still spring training. One of the announcers asked our coach Tracy if he thought that spring training was going by too quickly. He said it was, but I think it’s dragging. It’s probably because they don’t televise enough of the games.

Ok, I’ve rambled on enough. I’ll try not to forget next week’s blog.

-Thom