Ok, this is starting to become a habit. It is Tuesday again instead of Monday. I was all ready to get this blog entry done yesterday, but the Broncos were playing Monday Night Football and after the game, I had to do real work. But, more of that later. Let’s start this off with my youngest daughter. She got her driver’s license yesterday. I think I was more worried about her getting it than I was about my other daughter. When my eldest daughter was preparing for her driver’s test, we let her drive much more often than we let my younger daughter. But, then we had two cars and gas was still high, but not as expensive as it has been this year. I don’t really know what happened, maybe the year just got away from me. But, we just didn’t have enough opportunity to let her drive. Over the last few months, however, we have been giving her a lot more chances. And, she was steadily getting better and better. Yesterday, when we went in for the test, I just had a bad feeling. Then, they finally called her name. I had brought a book to read while I was waiting, and I think I only managed to read two pages before the test was done. She was all happy, telling me that she passed. She said that she really just drove around the block. There was a school zone that they went through, but she said that she didn’t get over twenty miles an hour during any of the test so it didn’t matter. I wasted a bunch of worrying for nothing. Until we get another car, I don’t think she’s going to have as much opportunity as she would like to drive on her own. But, I can already see that I’m not going to be able to drive for quite some time unless I’m going to work.
The first Bronco game of the season was yesterday on Monday night. I was all amped for it. We were playing the Raiders, our main rivalry. The last time we played them, we lost 59-14. It was embarrassing. They beat us both games last year. It really sucked. I thought we were going to see some serious payback. I had to work, so I was only expecting to be able to see the first quarter. There is a radio at work where I would be able to listen to the rest of the game. It’s not ideal, but what was I gonna do. So, I started watching the pre-game, and the more I watched, the better I thought the Broncos were going to do. It took forever for the game to actually get started. It was on a weird channel that I never watch. I had everything ready to go. I had my feet up and the rest of the family in the other room. I was ready to go. It was supposed to start at 8:15, but it didn’t start until nearly 8:30. I was getting a little upset. For a minute I didn’t think I was going to get to see any of the game. Then, right as the kickoff was about to begin, the feed switched to the New England Patriots game. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I had the wrong channel. I quickly grabbed the remote and looked up the information on the channel I was on. It said it was the Bronco game. Frantically I looked for another channel that might be showing the game. I found ESPN. It said it was showing it. I flipped it over, and it was also the Patriots game. I was getting mad now. I flipped it back, and the Patriots were still on. Then, it suddenly switched to the correct game. I missed the kick off and we were lined up for the first play. We didn’t do very well on our first possession. We scored first with a field goal, but from where I sat, it looked like we blew a couple of opportunities. We lost the lead after that and never got it back. I did manage to watch the entire first quarter. Then, I had to go to work. I have never seen the streets of Denver so empty. I think I was the only person in town that wasn’t watching the game. The radio wasn’t the best way to listen to the game. The stadium was so loud that I couldn’t hear most of the commentary. Then, I had work stuff I had to do and missed the last quarter entirely. We ended up losing 23-20. Not the start I was looking for. I am defiantly not missing next week’s game.
To add insult to injury, the Rockies lost again today. We took two games from the Cubs over the weekend. I didn’t get to see either of them because they were day games and I had to work some overtime on Saturday. That meant that I slept through both games. We were doing pretty good today against Milwaukee. We put up a run in the fourth and we had a bunch of opportunities to get more runs. But, it just wasn’t to be. Prince Fielder homered in the sixth to tie us and then we took it into extra innings trying to pull out the win. We went eleven innings before they shut us down. We’re going to play them again tomorrow. It is just a two game series then we take on the Giants. We are officially 69-78. If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year, there is no way that we would be that many games under five hundred. We should be at least a dozen games over. We had a great team and started with a bang. I don’t know what happened this season. It just didn’t go our way. But, there is always next year. I’m sure we’ll have an entirely different pitching staff and some of the new guys they brought up look pretty good. We’ll see how it goes. We don’t have any chance to make the playoffs this year, but I’m still going to root for them.
Just thinking about the games is bringing me down. So, I’m going to put White Lion, Pink Floyd, and Guns and Roses into the playlist tonight for background music and I’m going to work on the River of Magic.
-Thom
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sep 6
It was very nice having a week to relax after the long trip to S. Carolina and Georgia. I did as little as humanly possible. So, I guess it is time to get back into the groove of things. It’s Tuesday instead of Monday. I’ve been putting weekly blog entries instead of daily entries because most of the time I’m just boring and don’t have anything to say. But, it was the Taste of Colorado the four day weekend that I didn’t get. So, I’m doing it today.
The Taste of Colorado is a nice little party they have downtown. They shut off a bunch of streets, even Broadway, the main thoroughfare through Denver, and they set up all kinds of booths where you can do pretty much anything legal. Everyone comes over to my building, a block away, to do all the illegal stuff. We were chasing people away all four days. You wouldn’t believe how many people will just whip it out and pee right in the middle of everything. Our building was painted in pee over the last few days. But, other than a lack of bathrooms, it is a fun event. I only went once, but my kids usually go. This year, I don’t think they did. But, it’s been one of those years.
We had a family reunion on my wife’s father’s side. That meant that there were a lot of people. Only half of them spoke English. And, I didn’t know most of them. That didn’t stop everyone from trying to talk to me. This one guy with a sunflower seed shell stuck to his chest acted like we were best friends. I was pretty sure I had never seen him before in my life. Last year, we had one of these. It was a potluck. We brought potato salad and the stuff no one ever brings like plates, napkins, forks, condiments, and stuff like that. One guy brought hamburgers. Out of the other seventy five people that attended, I think one of them brought something besides chips. This one was much more organized. Whoever organized it told everyone what to bring. So, there was food. They also told every family to bring a generic gift. There was supposed to be games and they were going to use the gifts as the prizes. Everyone did bring gifts, but no one wanted to play any of the games. So, they raffled off the prizes. They sold the tickets for a dollar each and the money was going to go to recovering costs of the party. My wife is usually pretty lucky and Saturday wasn’t the exception. She won about five times. After the first two wins, people tried to enforce a rule to only allow one win per family. But, they sold the tickets and didn’t want to give the money back for the tickets that didn’t win. So, my wife kept winning. Several people shouted out that the game was fixed, but what could anyone do. Overall, it wasn’t the best party. Most people paired off in groups of families and didn’t socialize with the other families. So, there probably won’t be one next year. At the end of the party, some girl got in a screaming match with her mother and grandmother. I’m glad she wasn’t my kid with a mouth like that. You would have thought that she was a sailor. But, if it was my kid, she wouldn’t have been shouting like that.
Good news. The Rockies won today. We played the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had beaten us the last six times in a row. It looked like they were going to do it again. We were down 3-1 when the eighth inning came up. We spanked out 7 runs putting us up 3-8 for the win. We play them again tomorrow. It would be nice to take the series from them.
The Broncos play their first game this Monday against the Raiders. That should be a great game. I am anxious to see how the boys are going to do. I think they will do better than people think. But, because I am a fan, I am bias. So, we’ll see.
I took my daughter out driving this weekend. We were just going to Subway and back to pick up lunch. She was and has been doing much better. But, she went over a curb on the way out of the parking garage. Instead of pulling off the curb and correcting herself on the road, her first reaction was to release the steering wheel and cover her eyes with her hands. Yes, I did shout. We were still rolling and I expressed rather loudly the problems taking her hands off the wheel could create. I really flustered her, but she recovered and drove the rest of the way home flawlessly. Earlier today, she drove to the school without incident also. She has her driver’s test on Monday. So we need to get some more work in. We did do a little parallel parking over the weekend and she is getting the hang of it. On her last attempt it only took her two tries to get in correctly.
My mom is going on vacation this Thursday. She is driving down to Arizona with my uncle. They are going to spend a few days down there and have some fun. Of course, I forgot to give her back the suitcase we borrowed and her camera. I’m going to have to do that before she leaves.
I went over to my brother’s house and we got to talking about my vacation. When we got around to talking about the kids, they asked about my son. He has bought a bunch of landscaping equipment, mowers, weed eaters, power washers, snow blowers, etc… He is starting his own landscaping business and has already had a few jobs. But, my brother is a district supervisor for Burger King. He has also been a supervisor for McDonalds and Carl’s Jr. He told me that he could make more money with the power washer than all of the other stuff if he signs on at fast food restaurants. They hire outside contractors to power wash their drive through lanes and all restaurants are required by law to power wash their hoods every three months. So, my son is going to look into that. He will need liability insurance. I asked about how much that would cost and was told that a million dollar liability policy would only be about five or six hundred dollars a year with experience. Since my son doesn’t have experience, it will probably cost a little more. But, he could make all kinds of money with those power washers.
My wife still hasn’t gone to get her front tooth fixed. We don’t have all of the money yet, so it might be about a month so that we can recover from the vacation before we can make up the rest of the money she needs. After she gets it fixed, she is going to go to bartending school. It is only two weeks long and it only costs a hundred and fifty bucks. She has wanted to be a bartender for a long time. I always thought that she was kidding, but she was serious. So, when I talked to a bartender that works out at the airport and he told me that he makes nineteen dollars an hour and he brings home about five hundred to eight hundred dollars every day in tips, I decided to encourage my wife to fulfill her dream. She’s going to do it after her tooth is fixed. She doesn’t feel comfortable interviewing with it chipped like it is now.
My daughter still hasn’t had a full week of school yet. They got off on Friday and didn’t go yesterday for the holiday. She only has a few classes a day because she is a senior, but she has to be there for several empty periods in the morning so that she can continue to do after school activities. She is an assistant on the soccer team. They went to Colorado Springs this weekend and came in third in the competition. I haven’t heard anything about homework, but she did a bunch of make-up work while we were down south.
Well, it’s getting late and this is turning out to be a long blog entry. So, I’m putting White Lion, Ratt, and Aerosmith into the playlist for background music and I’m going to get started on the River of Magic.
-Thom
The Taste of Colorado is a nice little party they have downtown. They shut off a bunch of streets, even Broadway, the main thoroughfare through Denver, and they set up all kinds of booths where you can do pretty much anything legal. Everyone comes over to my building, a block away, to do all the illegal stuff. We were chasing people away all four days. You wouldn’t believe how many people will just whip it out and pee right in the middle of everything. Our building was painted in pee over the last few days. But, other than a lack of bathrooms, it is a fun event. I only went once, but my kids usually go. This year, I don’t think they did. But, it’s been one of those years.
We had a family reunion on my wife’s father’s side. That meant that there were a lot of people. Only half of them spoke English. And, I didn’t know most of them. That didn’t stop everyone from trying to talk to me. This one guy with a sunflower seed shell stuck to his chest acted like we were best friends. I was pretty sure I had never seen him before in my life. Last year, we had one of these. It was a potluck. We brought potato salad and the stuff no one ever brings like plates, napkins, forks, condiments, and stuff like that. One guy brought hamburgers. Out of the other seventy five people that attended, I think one of them brought something besides chips. This one was much more organized. Whoever organized it told everyone what to bring. So, there was food. They also told every family to bring a generic gift. There was supposed to be games and they were going to use the gifts as the prizes. Everyone did bring gifts, but no one wanted to play any of the games. So, they raffled off the prizes. They sold the tickets for a dollar each and the money was going to go to recovering costs of the party. My wife is usually pretty lucky and Saturday wasn’t the exception. She won about five times. After the first two wins, people tried to enforce a rule to only allow one win per family. But, they sold the tickets and didn’t want to give the money back for the tickets that didn’t win. So, my wife kept winning. Several people shouted out that the game was fixed, but what could anyone do. Overall, it wasn’t the best party. Most people paired off in groups of families and didn’t socialize with the other families. So, there probably won’t be one next year. At the end of the party, some girl got in a screaming match with her mother and grandmother. I’m glad she wasn’t my kid with a mouth like that. You would have thought that she was a sailor. But, if it was my kid, she wouldn’t have been shouting like that.
Good news. The Rockies won today. We played the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had beaten us the last six times in a row. It looked like they were going to do it again. We were down 3-1 when the eighth inning came up. We spanked out 7 runs putting us up 3-8 for the win. We play them again tomorrow. It would be nice to take the series from them.
The Broncos play their first game this Monday against the Raiders. That should be a great game. I am anxious to see how the boys are going to do. I think they will do better than people think. But, because I am a fan, I am bias. So, we’ll see.
I took my daughter out driving this weekend. We were just going to Subway and back to pick up lunch. She was and has been doing much better. But, she went over a curb on the way out of the parking garage. Instead of pulling off the curb and correcting herself on the road, her first reaction was to release the steering wheel and cover her eyes with her hands. Yes, I did shout. We were still rolling and I expressed rather loudly the problems taking her hands off the wheel could create. I really flustered her, but she recovered and drove the rest of the way home flawlessly. Earlier today, she drove to the school without incident also. She has her driver’s test on Monday. So we need to get some more work in. We did do a little parallel parking over the weekend and she is getting the hang of it. On her last attempt it only took her two tries to get in correctly.
My mom is going on vacation this Thursday. She is driving down to Arizona with my uncle. They are going to spend a few days down there and have some fun. Of course, I forgot to give her back the suitcase we borrowed and her camera. I’m going to have to do that before she leaves.
I went over to my brother’s house and we got to talking about my vacation. When we got around to talking about the kids, they asked about my son. He has bought a bunch of landscaping equipment, mowers, weed eaters, power washers, snow blowers, etc… He is starting his own landscaping business and has already had a few jobs. But, my brother is a district supervisor for Burger King. He has also been a supervisor for McDonalds and Carl’s Jr. He told me that he could make more money with the power washer than all of the other stuff if he signs on at fast food restaurants. They hire outside contractors to power wash their drive through lanes and all restaurants are required by law to power wash their hoods every three months. So, my son is going to look into that. He will need liability insurance. I asked about how much that would cost and was told that a million dollar liability policy would only be about five or six hundred dollars a year with experience. Since my son doesn’t have experience, it will probably cost a little more. But, he could make all kinds of money with those power washers.
My wife still hasn’t gone to get her front tooth fixed. We don’t have all of the money yet, so it might be about a month so that we can recover from the vacation before we can make up the rest of the money she needs. After she gets it fixed, she is going to go to bartending school. It is only two weeks long and it only costs a hundred and fifty bucks. She has wanted to be a bartender for a long time. I always thought that she was kidding, but she was serious. So, when I talked to a bartender that works out at the airport and he told me that he makes nineteen dollars an hour and he brings home about five hundred to eight hundred dollars every day in tips, I decided to encourage my wife to fulfill her dream. She’s going to do it after her tooth is fixed. She doesn’t feel comfortable interviewing with it chipped like it is now.
My daughter still hasn’t had a full week of school yet. They got off on Friday and didn’t go yesterday for the holiday. She only has a few classes a day because she is a senior, but she has to be there for several empty periods in the morning so that she can continue to do after school activities. She is an assistant on the soccer team. They went to Colorado Springs this weekend and came in third in the competition. I haven’t heard anything about homework, but she did a bunch of make-up work while we were down south.
Well, it’s getting late and this is turning out to be a long blog entry. So, I’m putting White Lion, Ratt, and Aerosmith into the playlist for background music and I’m going to get started on the River of Magic.
-Thom
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Aug 28
Ok, I was going to do this blog entry yesterday, but I was just too sleepy. I didn’t sleep at work, but I didn’t do much of anything else. We got back from our South Carolina/Georgia trip yesterday. It was just over thirty hours going, but only twenty six coming back. We arrived back in Denver at noon. I got something to eat and unloaded the car, but took a nap after that. I wanted to sleep longer, but I guess I got used to the little cat naps in the car and only slept for about an hour or two. Then, I had to watch the Rockies game. We lost by four, but I’ll get to that later. Then, I had to go to work that night. It was a looooong night. It was a good thing nothing really happened, because I was fighting to stay awake during the last few hours.
On our trip, the best thing we did was to buy a little portable DVD player. My granddaughter was so anxious to go see her auntie in the army that she didn’t go to sleep during the entire first day in the car. If it wasn’t for that DVD player to entertain her, I can just imagine how bad it would have gotten. She watched Wow Wow Wubbsy about five hundred times, but it kept her occupied. My youngest daughter and my oldest daughter’s boyfriend slept most of the time. How they did it, I can’t imagine. I tried to stretch out in the back back once, we have an SUV with three rows of seats, but it was so cramped there wasn’t any way to get comfortable. And, the car seat was in the middle row of seats so it was even worse. Anyway, around eight o’clock or so, my granddaughter turned off the DVD player and asked us if we could just go to grandma’s house because we were driving all day and weren’t getting anywhere. I tried to tell her that we were going to drive all night and she was going to have to sleep in the car, but she didn’t understand. She did end up sleeping all night, which was good. On the second day in the car, I promised her that we would stay at a motel that night. She had never been in a motel before, so I explained it as a little house. When we arrived, the only thing that concerned her was that the beds were in the living room. After picking up my eldest daughter and going to Georgia, we got new motel rooms, and my granddaughter liked them better. She was very excited to find that there was a kitchen in the new one.
We arrived in South Carolina at eight o’clock in the evening on Tuesday. We had planned on going to Ft Jackson first thing. On the internet, they said that we could pre-check-in so that there wouldn’t be any problems in the morning when all of the families are trying to get in. But, it was late and we were tired. We just wanted to get to the motel and relax. And, I was starving. I unloaded the car while my wife went out and got Arby’s. It was nice to get a shower and everything, but I crashed right after eating. When we woke up, it was about five thirty in the morning. We wanted to get to Ft. Jackson early to get good seats for family day. By seven, we were walking down to get the free continental breakfast. It was really good at the Quality Inn, but it was so hot, even at that early in the morning, that we were sweating by the time we reached the little breakfast room. We were only about five minutes from the fort, so it didn’t take us long to get there. What we should have done, was to enter the army base in the very right hand lane that was clearly labeled “Visitors”. But, there were a lot of cars in that lane and they were stopped as they were being signed in. So, we took the middle lane. At the gate, we were stopped so that we could show the guard our ID’s. We apologized as soon as we pulled up. I expected them to send us to that other line, but the guy just checked our ID’s and gave us a two day pass and waved us in. We saved about thirty minutes. It was very cool.
On base, we found our way to the field where they were going to have a small presentation before releasing the new soldiers into their families care. We were out of the car and walking toward the bleachers when someone saw the port-a-potties. No one wanted to use them and everyone seemed to suddenly needed to go. So, we climbed back into the car and got lost looking for the Burger King we passed. We thought we found my daughter’s barracks, but it was a Charlie company in a different battalion. When we returned, the field was beginning to fill up. We made our way to the bleachers again and there were a bunch of tents selling shirts and stuff. We bought a graduation DVD. Since graduation wasn’t until the next day, they will mail it to us. And, we bought some little necklace charms that said things like “Proud brother of a soldier” and “Proud cousin of a soldier” We planned on giving them out to some of the relatives that couldn’t come. I got a graduation coin and a Proud Army Dad coin. Then, we found our seats and got ready for the program. There were thousands of parents and visitors in the stands. It was like going to a baseball or football game. As the time crept up on us, I kept looking down the sides to see if they were marching up, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. Finally, out across the field, smoke grenades were set off outside of the tree line and all of the new soldiers started yelling and running out onto the field. They all formed up and my daughter’s company was right in front of us. We couldn’t tell one soldier from the other, but my daughter is a little on the short side, and we knew she was a squad leader, so we picked her out. The ceremony took too long, but they finally released them to us.
The soldiers couldn’t leave the base on family day, so we had to do things at Ft. Jackson. We started off by going to her barracks. We were able to go inside and see where she spent the last three months. I’ve never seen her bed so neat. Then, we went to the main PX to get something to eat. As it turned out, several thousand families and several thousand new soldiers also had that great idea. Squeezing into the building, we were lucky to get there relatively early and even managed to find seats to sit down and eat. Then, we went inside the store part of the PX because we wanted to take advantage of all that tax free shopping. The only thing I can say for it was that there weren’t any taxes. But, they jacked up the prices to make up for the taxes. We didn’t buy anything. We went to the base museum, the bowling alley, and the pizza hut. Everywhere we went, there were several thousand people that went with us. So, we spent most of the day at the lake park. The bugs were biting, but at least we weren’t pushing our way through people.
It sucked leaving her at the end of family day, but we knew that we would pick her up in the morning after graduation. The continental breakfast the next day was even better than the previous day. Kudos to Quality Inn. But, the breakfast must have been too good, because by the time anyone looked at their watch, it was already eight thirty and the graduation was at nine. Rushing, we jumped into the car and immediately went in the wrong direction on the highway. Turning around, we hurried even faster toward Ft. Jackson. When we got there, it turned out that everyone else lost track of the time. The line to get to the field where they were holding the graduation was like ten miles long. Not only that, everyone decided that their need to see the graduation was much greater than everyone else’s. People were cutting people off. They were fabricating driving lanes so that they could get one car ahead of where they were. It was chaos. We counted down the time as we crawled toward the field. When we finally made it, we were parked way in the back. We rushed toward the bleachers which were full. So, we went under them. We had a pretty good spot picked out where we could see all of the soldiers standing in formation. As it turned out, all we missed was them marching onto the field and people making speeches. Before they kicked us and about fifty other families out from under the bleachers, we were in time to see a captain fall backwards. When I was in the Marines, they constantly drilled into our heads to not lock our knees. What happens when you do is that the blood circulation slows down and you lose consciousness. Well, this captain was part of the color guard, so he was right out in front. It was like watching someone do the Nestea plunge into a swimming pool, only there wasn’t a pool. Since about three or four guys passed out during family day, they had people ready to run out and pull the guy to the back of the formation. We missed several others falling out, but it didn’t matter, my daughter didn’t pass out. When they kicked us out, we went to the side of the bleachers with everyone else and it was a good thing, because when the soldiers did their pass and review, they ended up at that side of the field and were released.
It was so hot in South Carolina that the first thing my daughter wanted after she graduated was to go take a shower and get out of that heavy uniform. She had to keep it on during family day. She said she was used to it, but my granddaughter wouldn’t let her put her down so my daughter carried her nearly the entire day. But, she had to check out before we could take her with us. That meant standing in a line for about an hour. To ensure that the soldiers knew that they hadn’t been released until they got their orders and signed out, several of the drill instructors ‘smoked’ (made them do pushups or any number of calisthenics) them while they were waiting in line. While I waited with her and the baby, my wife was out trying to fix the car. The air conditioner wasn’t working in the back. With it being as hot as it was and with us adding another body back there, it was going to be miserable going from South Carolina to Georgia without it. As it turned out, there is a switch next to the gear shift. We didn’t know what it did and never bothered to look it up. But, it turns off the air conditioner in the back. I was glad my wife figured it out, but why would anyone put a switch like that in a car? It doesn’t make any sense. If the owner didn’t want cool air back there he could just turn it off. Why does there need to be a kill switch up in the front?
Anyway, we went out to eat and took my daughter to a surplus store where she could buy some better boots. The ones she had were the ones they issued to her and they were kind of cheap. I am glad that my wife buys my clothes for me. I had no idea how much boots were cost. Before the trip, I decided I was going to get me a pair. I used to like the ones I had back in the corps. And, I do a lot of walking in my job and the shoes I get now seem to wear out very quickly. No shoe should give out before the shoelaces. Anyway, I was looking at the wrong number when we were at the PX. I thought that the boots were forty dollars. At that price I was being a little reluctant. I didn’t want to spend that much on shoes. When my wife showed me the real price, over a hundred dollars, I nearly dropped a load. There was no way that I was going to pay that much unless they were gold lined. When we got to the surplus store, my wife got me a pair. They were still over a hundred dollars, but they were less than on base. She told me that even the kid’s shoes were about that much and at least these would last me for a while. But, now that I have them, I have to admit that I’m glad she got them for me. They are much better than the ones I had way back when. They are Rocky’s. Don’t ask me what they are called. I’m surprised that I remember the brand name. Actually, I only remember the brand name because of the Rockies baseball team. Anyway, they have laces, and I tied them up. But, I never have to untie them. They also have a zipper that runs down the side, so I just have to unzip them to take them off. They are water proof and the treads are more like car tires. They add about three inches to my height. I might actually be able to look my brother straight in the chin now, the giant.
We took a day off in Georgia. We had to have my daughter there by noon the next day. So, naturally we were late. We got there with plenty of time. But, everywhere we took her, they told us it was the wrong place and sent us somewhere else. Fort Gordon is a huge place and we saw nearly all of it looking for the right place to take her. As it turned out, we were supposed to take her to the movie theater so she could get processed into her new battalion. (Why didn’t we guess?) There was a girl there from boot camp, so at least she knew someone. We followed her as they took her to get checked in. They said that after check in, they were going to give her a weekend pass so we could have her for another day before we left. As she filled out paperwork and they inspected her stuff, I started talking to another dad doing the same thing I was doing. I told him that the first thing my daughter wanted when she got out of boot camp was McDonalds. He said that the first thing his daughter wanted was a pack of cigarettes. The drill instructors at Ft. Jackson wouldn’t let the recruits have any type of tobacco products while they were in boot camp. They were there for three months. You would think that she would have broken her habit while she was there. But, the dad gave her a pack. And, the mom smuggled a pack into her stuff after she was inspected. (Parents of the year)
Since the new motel had a kitchen, we decided to give our checking account a break and make sandwiches and stuff that day. We would go swimming and play cards and have an indoor day. It worked out pretty good, but my daughter wanted to do something with me. She said that she probably wouldn’t have joined if I hadn’t talked to her about how it was when I was in the Marine Corps. So, she wanted to get a father daughter tattoo. Tattoos are her thing. She has few of them, a butterfly on her back, her mom’s name on her ankle, and so on. I have a tattoo of an eagle and a snake on my right arm. I got it about thirty years ago when I had just gotten out of boot camp. I never intended to get another one, but she asked. So, we went and picked out one that has two dolphins, a father one and a daughter one. I got it on my left shoulder and she got it on her other ankle. They look pretty good.
It was rough spending time with her and then having to drop her off. But, Sunday came pretty quickly. She didn’t have to be back until two o’clock, but we had to get on the road. We decided to go a different route on the way back. It looked shorter on the map, and it was. On the way down, we went the southern route on highway 20. The only reason was we wanted to go through some different states and we didn’t want to go through stupid Kansas. But, I had to work that evening and no one wanted to be in the car any longer than necessary. We did cut several hours off of the drive. But, we’re going to need to get a new gas card. The one we have, we have had for a long time. We used to use it going back and forth from Denver to New Jersey. Before, we could stop at all of the BP gas stations. There are a lot of them on highway 70. But, sometime over the years, the card changed or was bought out or something. Now, it was only good a Valero or Diamond Shamrock. There are quite a few of them here in Denver, so we weren’t concerned. Out on the road, there were a few Valeros, but that was only in Colorado and New Mexico. By the time we hit Oklahoma and Texas, we were using a Target Visa. It was a good thing we had it, because we put nearly the entire trip on it gas-wise. I put about a hundred on my debit card until I realized that I wasn’t going to have any money left if I kept up using it. So, kudos to Target on this trip too.
The baby was very disappointed that she didn’t get to see any bears on the trip. The only animals she saw were cows, horses, and one deer. But, she said that the cows were very beautiful even if they don’t go to their houses at night. They stay out way too late. On the way back, I think we were in Missouri, I found a radio station that was playing an Angels Rangers game. I was able to listen to the last three innings and the sports baseball league recap before it went out. I had bought a MP3 player before we left so that I would have something to listen to on the overnight driving. It turned out to be cheap and difficult to use. So, I burned about ten CDs to listen to. I tested some of them out in the car before we left. But, that was only on short trips to work and the store. As it turns out our CD player is about as good as the MP3 player. It plays one CD all the way through and you might be able to listen to one or two songs on the second CD before it goes out. So, I mostly only had the radio to listen to. Actually, I listened to a bunch of static while trying to find stations all night. But, the game was interesting. The Rangers won and during the recap, I learned that the Rockies beat the Dodgers that night. The announcer said that they avoided the sweep by beating them. I haven’t actually looked, but the Rockies are still in a slump. I believe we are twelve or thirteen games back. This season sucked. I did manage to watch part of yesterday’s and today’s game against the Diamondbacks. We lost both of them too.
Well, this is now a five page blog entry. That’s what I get for going on vacation. It’s one o’clock in the morning, but I’m going to put this down as Tuesday. I’m putting Billy Joel, Tesla, and Bon Jovi in the playlist for background music and I think I’m going to get started on the River of Magic. I am much more awake than yesterday so I should be able to get back into the groove.
-Thom
On our trip, the best thing we did was to buy a little portable DVD player. My granddaughter was so anxious to go see her auntie in the army that she didn’t go to sleep during the entire first day in the car. If it wasn’t for that DVD player to entertain her, I can just imagine how bad it would have gotten. She watched Wow Wow Wubbsy about five hundred times, but it kept her occupied. My youngest daughter and my oldest daughter’s boyfriend slept most of the time. How they did it, I can’t imagine. I tried to stretch out in the back back once, we have an SUV with three rows of seats, but it was so cramped there wasn’t any way to get comfortable. And, the car seat was in the middle row of seats so it was even worse. Anyway, around eight o’clock or so, my granddaughter turned off the DVD player and asked us if we could just go to grandma’s house because we were driving all day and weren’t getting anywhere. I tried to tell her that we were going to drive all night and she was going to have to sleep in the car, but she didn’t understand. She did end up sleeping all night, which was good. On the second day in the car, I promised her that we would stay at a motel that night. She had never been in a motel before, so I explained it as a little house. When we arrived, the only thing that concerned her was that the beds were in the living room. After picking up my eldest daughter and going to Georgia, we got new motel rooms, and my granddaughter liked them better. She was very excited to find that there was a kitchen in the new one.
We arrived in South Carolina at eight o’clock in the evening on Tuesday. We had planned on going to Ft Jackson first thing. On the internet, they said that we could pre-check-in so that there wouldn’t be any problems in the morning when all of the families are trying to get in. But, it was late and we were tired. We just wanted to get to the motel and relax. And, I was starving. I unloaded the car while my wife went out and got Arby’s. It was nice to get a shower and everything, but I crashed right after eating. When we woke up, it was about five thirty in the morning. We wanted to get to Ft. Jackson early to get good seats for family day. By seven, we were walking down to get the free continental breakfast. It was really good at the Quality Inn, but it was so hot, even at that early in the morning, that we were sweating by the time we reached the little breakfast room. We were only about five minutes from the fort, so it didn’t take us long to get there. What we should have done, was to enter the army base in the very right hand lane that was clearly labeled “Visitors”. But, there were a lot of cars in that lane and they were stopped as they were being signed in. So, we took the middle lane. At the gate, we were stopped so that we could show the guard our ID’s. We apologized as soon as we pulled up. I expected them to send us to that other line, but the guy just checked our ID’s and gave us a two day pass and waved us in. We saved about thirty minutes. It was very cool.
On base, we found our way to the field where they were going to have a small presentation before releasing the new soldiers into their families care. We were out of the car and walking toward the bleachers when someone saw the port-a-potties. No one wanted to use them and everyone seemed to suddenly needed to go. So, we climbed back into the car and got lost looking for the Burger King we passed. We thought we found my daughter’s barracks, but it was a Charlie company in a different battalion. When we returned, the field was beginning to fill up. We made our way to the bleachers again and there were a bunch of tents selling shirts and stuff. We bought a graduation DVD. Since graduation wasn’t until the next day, they will mail it to us. And, we bought some little necklace charms that said things like “Proud brother of a soldier” and “Proud cousin of a soldier” We planned on giving them out to some of the relatives that couldn’t come. I got a graduation coin and a Proud Army Dad coin. Then, we found our seats and got ready for the program. There were thousands of parents and visitors in the stands. It was like going to a baseball or football game. As the time crept up on us, I kept looking down the sides to see if they were marching up, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. Finally, out across the field, smoke grenades were set off outside of the tree line and all of the new soldiers started yelling and running out onto the field. They all formed up and my daughter’s company was right in front of us. We couldn’t tell one soldier from the other, but my daughter is a little on the short side, and we knew she was a squad leader, so we picked her out. The ceremony took too long, but they finally released them to us.
The soldiers couldn’t leave the base on family day, so we had to do things at Ft. Jackson. We started off by going to her barracks. We were able to go inside and see where she spent the last three months. I’ve never seen her bed so neat. Then, we went to the main PX to get something to eat. As it turned out, several thousand families and several thousand new soldiers also had that great idea. Squeezing into the building, we were lucky to get there relatively early and even managed to find seats to sit down and eat. Then, we went inside the store part of the PX because we wanted to take advantage of all that tax free shopping. The only thing I can say for it was that there weren’t any taxes. But, they jacked up the prices to make up for the taxes. We didn’t buy anything. We went to the base museum, the bowling alley, and the pizza hut. Everywhere we went, there were several thousand people that went with us. So, we spent most of the day at the lake park. The bugs were biting, but at least we weren’t pushing our way through people.
It sucked leaving her at the end of family day, but we knew that we would pick her up in the morning after graduation. The continental breakfast the next day was even better than the previous day. Kudos to Quality Inn. But, the breakfast must have been too good, because by the time anyone looked at their watch, it was already eight thirty and the graduation was at nine. Rushing, we jumped into the car and immediately went in the wrong direction on the highway. Turning around, we hurried even faster toward Ft. Jackson. When we got there, it turned out that everyone else lost track of the time. The line to get to the field where they were holding the graduation was like ten miles long. Not only that, everyone decided that their need to see the graduation was much greater than everyone else’s. People were cutting people off. They were fabricating driving lanes so that they could get one car ahead of where they were. It was chaos. We counted down the time as we crawled toward the field. When we finally made it, we were parked way in the back. We rushed toward the bleachers which were full. So, we went under them. We had a pretty good spot picked out where we could see all of the soldiers standing in formation. As it turned out, all we missed was them marching onto the field and people making speeches. Before they kicked us and about fifty other families out from under the bleachers, we were in time to see a captain fall backwards. When I was in the Marines, they constantly drilled into our heads to not lock our knees. What happens when you do is that the blood circulation slows down and you lose consciousness. Well, this captain was part of the color guard, so he was right out in front. It was like watching someone do the Nestea plunge into a swimming pool, only there wasn’t a pool. Since about three or four guys passed out during family day, they had people ready to run out and pull the guy to the back of the formation. We missed several others falling out, but it didn’t matter, my daughter didn’t pass out. When they kicked us out, we went to the side of the bleachers with everyone else and it was a good thing, because when the soldiers did their pass and review, they ended up at that side of the field and were released.
It was so hot in South Carolina that the first thing my daughter wanted after she graduated was to go take a shower and get out of that heavy uniform. She had to keep it on during family day. She said she was used to it, but my granddaughter wouldn’t let her put her down so my daughter carried her nearly the entire day. But, she had to check out before we could take her with us. That meant standing in a line for about an hour. To ensure that the soldiers knew that they hadn’t been released until they got their orders and signed out, several of the drill instructors ‘smoked’ (made them do pushups or any number of calisthenics) them while they were waiting in line. While I waited with her and the baby, my wife was out trying to fix the car. The air conditioner wasn’t working in the back. With it being as hot as it was and with us adding another body back there, it was going to be miserable going from South Carolina to Georgia without it. As it turned out, there is a switch next to the gear shift. We didn’t know what it did and never bothered to look it up. But, it turns off the air conditioner in the back. I was glad my wife figured it out, but why would anyone put a switch like that in a car? It doesn’t make any sense. If the owner didn’t want cool air back there he could just turn it off. Why does there need to be a kill switch up in the front?
Anyway, we went out to eat and took my daughter to a surplus store where she could buy some better boots. The ones she had were the ones they issued to her and they were kind of cheap. I am glad that my wife buys my clothes for me. I had no idea how much boots were cost. Before the trip, I decided I was going to get me a pair. I used to like the ones I had back in the corps. And, I do a lot of walking in my job and the shoes I get now seem to wear out very quickly. No shoe should give out before the shoelaces. Anyway, I was looking at the wrong number when we were at the PX. I thought that the boots were forty dollars. At that price I was being a little reluctant. I didn’t want to spend that much on shoes. When my wife showed me the real price, over a hundred dollars, I nearly dropped a load. There was no way that I was going to pay that much unless they were gold lined. When we got to the surplus store, my wife got me a pair. They were still over a hundred dollars, but they were less than on base. She told me that even the kid’s shoes were about that much and at least these would last me for a while. But, now that I have them, I have to admit that I’m glad she got them for me. They are much better than the ones I had way back when. They are Rocky’s. Don’t ask me what they are called. I’m surprised that I remember the brand name. Actually, I only remember the brand name because of the Rockies baseball team. Anyway, they have laces, and I tied them up. But, I never have to untie them. They also have a zipper that runs down the side, so I just have to unzip them to take them off. They are water proof and the treads are more like car tires. They add about three inches to my height. I might actually be able to look my brother straight in the chin now, the giant.
We took a day off in Georgia. We had to have my daughter there by noon the next day. So, naturally we were late. We got there with plenty of time. But, everywhere we took her, they told us it was the wrong place and sent us somewhere else. Fort Gordon is a huge place and we saw nearly all of it looking for the right place to take her. As it turned out, we were supposed to take her to the movie theater so she could get processed into her new battalion. (Why didn’t we guess?) There was a girl there from boot camp, so at least she knew someone. We followed her as they took her to get checked in. They said that after check in, they were going to give her a weekend pass so we could have her for another day before we left. As she filled out paperwork and they inspected her stuff, I started talking to another dad doing the same thing I was doing. I told him that the first thing my daughter wanted when she got out of boot camp was McDonalds. He said that the first thing his daughter wanted was a pack of cigarettes. The drill instructors at Ft. Jackson wouldn’t let the recruits have any type of tobacco products while they were in boot camp. They were there for three months. You would think that she would have broken her habit while she was there. But, the dad gave her a pack. And, the mom smuggled a pack into her stuff after she was inspected. (Parents of the year)
Since the new motel had a kitchen, we decided to give our checking account a break and make sandwiches and stuff that day. We would go swimming and play cards and have an indoor day. It worked out pretty good, but my daughter wanted to do something with me. She said that she probably wouldn’t have joined if I hadn’t talked to her about how it was when I was in the Marine Corps. So, she wanted to get a father daughter tattoo. Tattoos are her thing. She has few of them, a butterfly on her back, her mom’s name on her ankle, and so on. I have a tattoo of an eagle and a snake on my right arm. I got it about thirty years ago when I had just gotten out of boot camp. I never intended to get another one, but she asked. So, we went and picked out one that has two dolphins, a father one and a daughter one. I got it on my left shoulder and she got it on her other ankle. They look pretty good.
It was rough spending time with her and then having to drop her off. But, Sunday came pretty quickly. She didn’t have to be back until two o’clock, but we had to get on the road. We decided to go a different route on the way back. It looked shorter on the map, and it was. On the way down, we went the southern route on highway 20. The only reason was we wanted to go through some different states and we didn’t want to go through stupid Kansas. But, I had to work that evening and no one wanted to be in the car any longer than necessary. We did cut several hours off of the drive. But, we’re going to need to get a new gas card. The one we have, we have had for a long time. We used to use it going back and forth from Denver to New Jersey. Before, we could stop at all of the BP gas stations. There are a lot of them on highway 70. But, sometime over the years, the card changed or was bought out or something. Now, it was only good a Valero or Diamond Shamrock. There are quite a few of them here in Denver, so we weren’t concerned. Out on the road, there were a few Valeros, but that was only in Colorado and New Mexico. By the time we hit Oklahoma and Texas, we were using a Target Visa. It was a good thing we had it, because we put nearly the entire trip on it gas-wise. I put about a hundred on my debit card until I realized that I wasn’t going to have any money left if I kept up using it. So, kudos to Target on this trip too.
The baby was very disappointed that she didn’t get to see any bears on the trip. The only animals she saw were cows, horses, and one deer. But, she said that the cows were very beautiful even if they don’t go to their houses at night. They stay out way too late. On the way back, I think we were in Missouri, I found a radio station that was playing an Angels Rangers game. I was able to listen to the last three innings and the sports baseball league recap before it went out. I had bought a MP3 player before we left so that I would have something to listen to on the overnight driving. It turned out to be cheap and difficult to use. So, I burned about ten CDs to listen to. I tested some of them out in the car before we left. But, that was only on short trips to work and the store. As it turns out our CD player is about as good as the MP3 player. It plays one CD all the way through and you might be able to listen to one or two songs on the second CD before it goes out. So, I mostly only had the radio to listen to. Actually, I listened to a bunch of static while trying to find stations all night. But, the game was interesting. The Rangers won and during the recap, I learned that the Rockies beat the Dodgers that night. The announcer said that they avoided the sweep by beating them. I haven’t actually looked, but the Rockies are still in a slump. I believe we are twelve or thirteen games back. This season sucked. I did manage to watch part of yesterday’s and today’s game against the Diamondbacks. We lost both of them too.
Well, this is now a five page blog entry. That’s what I get for going on vacation. It’s one o’clock in the morning, but I’m going to put this down as Tuesday. I’m putting Billy Joel, Tesla, and Bon Jovi in the playlist for background music and I think I’m going to get started on the River of Magic. I am much more awake than yesterday so I should be able to get back into the groove.
-Thom
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Aug 16
We’re less than a week until our trip to South Carolina. I can’t believe it went so quickly. It will be great to see my daughter again. She sent us her first military picture. I’ll attach it to the blog if I can. Actually, she sent it to us yesterday, but since I didn’t post a blog entry, I’ll just pretend it was today. She looks good. But, she looks smaller. It’s probably the picture. It looks like we might have another person coming with us on the trip. My niece might be tagging along. That will help also with my granddaughter. She’ll have someone to play with in the car while we’re driving. We bought a portable DVD player and we’re taking a bunch of cartoon movies for them, but I’m sure she’ll get bored of them pretty quickly. We’ll be in the car for more than 24 hours. My stretch of the driving will be easier, because it will be at night. I’m sure that she’ll be asleep for most of it. We also bought a couple of MP3 players. They were cheap and it turned out that we got what we paid for. They work and everything, but they’re difficult. So, I went out and bought some blank CDs. (I would rather listen to them through the car radio anyway) So, I’ve spent the last two days burning music CDs. That’s another good thing about me driving at night. I can listen to my music without everyone complaining that they don’t like it. (I’ll still complain about theirs though) My wife started making some music CDs, but she got frustrated after a little while and decided that she would just listen to the radio along the way. We’ve driven long distances before. (Colorado to New Jersey and back about a thousand times) So, she knows that the stations will go in and out. But, it will help the time go quicker as she searches for new ones along the route.
There are under forty games left in the season and it doesn’t look like we’re going to make the playoffs unless we hit a major hot streak. We lost today, but won yesterday against the Marlins. I’m still going to root for them and watch them, but it’s a good thing that football season has started. (Actually, I think that is what I said when football season ended last year and baseball started up.) I am expecting the Broncos to do much better this year than last year. In fact, I might get to go see a game this year. My wife can get two tickets to a game through her company. There are only four available, and she signs her name up as soon as they announce that they are going to get them. It’s a good deal, buy one and get one free. They’re about seventy dollar tickets, so it ends up about thirty five each. We got them last year, and I took my nephew. Last time, we were pretty close to the field, right to the left of the Bronco’s tunnel next to the end zone. If we can get them, I’ll probably take my youngest brother. I don’t remember how we got the tickets last time, but I took my other brother to see the Vikings play. So, it’s my youngest brother’s turn.
Speaking of younger people, School starts the day after tomorrow for my youngest daughter. She will be a senior this year. I can’t believe that all of my kids are that old already. My wife took her out driving today. She takes the test for her driver’s license the beginning of next month. She drove all over and was almost perfect. The only thing my wife had to complain about was that she came up to a four way stop and stopped too far back. When it was her turn to go, it probably looked to the other drivers that she was moving up to the line to stop again. But, since it was the car directly across from her and her turn to go, no one on the side road even tried to go. That’s not something major, so I’m giving her an A+ on driving today. She is getting better and better each time out. I still would like to see her parallel park more and about a week ago, she was pulling out of a parking spot and started turning the wheel as she was backing up before she cleared the other cars. So, I think I would like to see her park and un-park several more times.
It has literally been months since I’ve worked on any of the books except for the Great Detective sequel. I’ve kept up with that one only because I’ve been sending the short stories off to my daughter in the army. I’ve made the hidden message inside it something to do with her. But, I am going to break that trend today. I am not going to do anything tonight except work on the River of magic and post this blog. So, I’m putting in Telsa, Ratt, and the Eagles in the playlist tonight for background listening and I’m getting started.
-Thom
There are under forty games left in the season and it doesn’t look like we’re going to make the playoffs unless we hit a major hot streak. We lost today, but won yesterday against the Marlins. I’m still going to root for them and watch them, but it’s a good thing that football season has started. (Actually, I think that is what I said when football season ended last year and baseball started up.) I am expecting the Broncos to do much better this year than last year. In fact, I might get to go see a game this year. My wife can get two tickets to a game through her company. There are only four available, and she signs her name up as soon as they announce that they are going to get them. It’s a good deal, buy one and get one free. They’re about seventy dollar tickets, so it ends up about thirty five each. We got them last year, and I took my nephew. Last time, we were pretty close to the field, right to the left of the Bronco’s tunnel next to the end zone. If we can get them, I’ll probably take my youngest brother. I don’t remember how we got the tickets last time, but I took my other brother to see the Vikings play. So, it’s my youngest brother’s turn.
Speaking of younger people, School starts the day after tomorrow for my youngest daughter. She will be a senior this year. I can’t believe that all of my kids are that old already. My wife took her out driving today. She takes the test for her driver’s license the beginning of next month. She drove all over and was almost perfect. The only thing my wife had to complain about was that she came up to a four way stop and stopped too far back. When it was her turn to go, it probably looked to the other drivers that she was moving up to the line to stop again. But, since it was the car directly across from her and her turn to go, no one on the side road even tried to go. That’s not something major, so I’m giving her an A+ on driving today. She is getting better and better each time out. I still would like to see her parallel park more and about a week ago, she was pulling out of a parking spot and started turning the wheel as she was backing up before she cleared the other cars. So, I think I would like to see her park and un-park several more times.
It has literally been months since I’ve worked on any of the books except for the Great Detective sequel. I’ve kept up with that one only because I’ve been sending the short stories off to my daughter in the army. I’ve made the hidden message inside it something to do with her. But, I am going to break that trend today. I am not going to do anything tonight except work on the River of magic and post this blog. So, I’m putting in Telsa, Ratt, and the Eagles in the playlist tonight for background listening and I’m getting started.
-Thom
Monday, August 8, 2011
Aug 8
We went to the Rockies game on Saturday. It was an awesome game. We destroyed the Nationals 15-7. It was a hitting explosion. We took my daughter and my granddaughter and we had the best seats I’ve ever enjoyed. We were four rows up from the field parallel to first base. We could have reached out and touched the players. It was also free hat day for the first 10,000 people so we got there early. It was a pretty great day. The Rocks split the series with the Nationals 2-2 and with tonight’s win over Cincinnati, it puts us 54-62 for the season. We’ve still got a ways to go, but we’re chugging along.
We had a lazy day on Sunday. We really didn’t do anything except clean up the place a little. We did try a new Chinese place. The food was spicier than I prefer but at least it was more expensive. We’ll probably not go back. We did get some free dumplings, but they were nasty. No one ate them and we ended up throwing them out. While we were at the Chinese place, I made my youngest daughter cry. I wasn’t trying to be mean or unfair, and I’m sure she’ll understand when she gets older. But, she wants to drive the car without either me or my wife in it with her. She is seventeen, but she doesn’t have her license yet. A year ago, when my eldest daughter was in a similar situation, we did let her drive. Which at the time, I really wasn’t comfortable with. And, my son who is now nearly twenty two still doesn’t have a driver’s license and he drives. I haven’t liked that for years, but he has a daughter and their own apartment and needs to get everyone to and from work and things. His girlfriend is going to get her license very soon and she does most of the driving, but I’m still worried. In my youngest daughter’s case, I don’t want to let her drive alone because, (even though I have let her drive more often of late) she hasn’t had as much experience behind the wheel as her older sister had at the time. That is also my fault, because gas prices has jumped big time this past year and has only started dropping down towards the end of the summer vacation. That’s not the best excuse, but it has been harder to get her opportunities to drive than it was for my eldest daughter for some reason. Then, there was the accident. Right before my eldest daughter went off to boot camp, she hit a cyclist while exiting an alley. It isn’t fair for me to penalize my younger daughter for what happened to my elder daughter. But, I don’t want to risk her getting hurt or hurting someone and then on top of it add the trouble of not being a legal driver. She doesn’t understand my situation, and when I try to explain it, it just makes it worse because I’m not being consistent. But, I’m going to err on the side of safety. She has an appointment to get her license on September the 12th after we return from our trip to S. Carolina. It’s only a month away and I’ll continue to give her every opportunity to continue practicing. She does pretty well, but there are things that she needs to work on.
We got our oil changed and our tires rotated for the trip today. It was only forty bucks and it took about an hour. We took it to the place we bought the car. And, I have to tell you that the service in the repair and service shop was much better than the service while buying the vehicle. I was kind of leery about going back because of the mess they put us through, but we had a coupon. Luckily, we were satisfied and we even told my son about it so that he can get his done.
My eldest daughter called this weekend. I was last, so I only got to talk to her for a few seconds before she had to go. She said that she is still ok. She finished her eight mile hike on my youngest daughter’s birthday. She told my wife that she got all kinds of blisters on her feet and she had to go to the infirmary to get them looked at. But, they cleaned her up and bandaged up. She has a PT final on Friday. I hope they are better before then. She has passed the practice PT tests and I don’t want her to fail because of her feet. It’s a week between, so she should be ok. Then, after that, she has the ten mile hike with full pack. That’s going to be the killer, but after that, she’s done. All they will be doing is practicing their graduation march. I’m going to write her today and check out the web site to see if they have posted any new pictures. The person that is putting up the pics seems to favor two of the five companies. It is probably a scheduling thing, because I think the webmaster is doing it in their spare time. But, it would be nice to get to see a picture of her. The only one we have is her behind a guy puking after the gas chamber. I told her the last time she called to jump in front of the camera more often.
Well, I better get this posted and get started. I’m going to write my daughter today and get another Great Detective out to her. So, I’ll start up on the River of Magic or Gremlin Planet tomorrow because there won’t be time today. I’m putting some Ozzy, Twisted Sister, Dio, and Dokken in the playlist tonight for background music.
-Thom
We had a lazy day on Sunday. We really didn’t do anything except clean up the place a little. We did try a new Chinese place. The food was spicier than I prefer but at least it was more expensive. We’ll probably not go back. We did get some free dumplings, but they were nasty. No one ate them and we ended up throwing them out. While we were at the Chinese place, I made my youngest daughter cry. I wasn’t trying to be mean or unfair, and I’m sure she’ll understand when she gets older. But, she wants to drive the car without either me or my wife in it with her. She is seventeen, but she doesn’t have her license yet. A year ago, when my eldest daughter was in a similar situation, we did let her drive. Which at the time, I really wasn’t comfortable with. And, my son who is now nearly twenty two still doesn’t have a driver’s license and he drives. I haven’t liked that for years, but he has a daughter and their own apartment and needs to get everyone to and from work and things. His girlfriend is going to get her license very soon and she does most of the driving, but I’m still worried. In my youngest daughter’s case, I don’t want to let her drive alone because, (even though I have let her drive more often of late) she hasn’t had as much experience behind the wheel as her older sister had at the time. That is also my fault, because gas prices has jumped big time this past year and has only started dropping down towards the end of the summer vacation. That’s not the best excuse, but it has been harder to get her opportunities to drive than it was for my eldest daughter for some reason. Then, there was the accident. Right before my eldest daughter went off to boot camp, she hit a cyclist while exiting an alley. It isn’t fair for me to penalize my younger daughter for what happened to my elder daughter. But, I don’t want to risk her getting hurt or hurting someone and then on top of it add the trouble of not being a legal driver. She doesn’t understand my situation, and when I try to explain it, it just makes it worse because I’m not being consistent. But, I’m going to err on the side of safety. She has an appointment to get her license on September the 12th after we return from our trip to S. Carolina. It’s only a month away and I’ll continue to give her every opportunity to continue practicing. She does pretty well, but there are things that she needs to work on.
We got our oil changed and our tires rotated for the trip today. It was only forty bucks and it took about an hour. We took it to the place we bought the car. And, I have to tell you that the service in the repair and service shop was much better than the service while buying the vehicle. I was kind of leery about going back because of the mess they put us through, but we had a coupon. Luckily, we were satisfied and we even told my son about it so that he can get his done.
My eldest daughter called this weekend. I was last, so I only got to talk to her for a few seconds before she had to go. She said that she is still ok. She finished her eight mile hike on my youngest daughter’s birthday. She told my wife that she got all kinds of blisters on her feet and she had to go to the infirmary to get them looked at. But, they cleaned her up and bandaged up. She has a PT final on Friday. I hope they are better before then. She has passed the practice PT tests and I don’t want her to fail because of her feet. It’s a week between, so she should be ok. Then, after that, she has the ten mile hike with full pack. That’s going to be the killer, but after that, she’s done. All they will be doing is practicing their graduation march. I’m going to write her today and check out the web site to see if they have posted any new pictures. The person that is putting up the pics seems to favor two of the five companies. It is probably a scheduling thing, because I think the webmaster is doing it in their spare time. But, it would be nice to get to see a picture of her. The only one we have is her behind a guy puking after the gas chamber. I told her the last time she called to jump in front of the camera more often.
Well, I better get this posted and get started. I’m going to write my daughter today and get another Great Detective out to her. So, I’ll start up on the River of Magic or Gremlin Planet tomorrow because there won’t be time today. I’m putting some Ozzy, Twisted Sister, Dio, and Dokken in the playlist tonight for background music.
-Thom
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Aug 4
Happy Birthday!!!
It’s my youngest daughter’s birthday today. She is officially 17 years old. We were supposed to have a surprise barbeque for her. We had told her that we were going to take her out to eat because she wanted to celebrate her birthday with her sister when she gets out of boot camp. We were sneaky for about ten minutes. I don’t know who told her, but she started talking about it yesterday and even asked if some of her friends could come over for it. Even thought it wasn’t a surprise, it was still fun. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, polish sausage, potato salad and pretty much everything you could think of except onions. I’m the only one that likes them so they are usually forgotten. (I don’t see how you can eat a hamburger without onions)
One of my nephews also had a cake. His birthday is right around the same time as mine, and they used to always have their birthday parties together. This year, we figured his parents were going to have a party on the weekend, so we were going to have my daughter’s birthday on the actual day. But, the nephew’s parents weren’t going to throw him a party this year so they just piggybacked onto ours.
My wife kept trying to get all of my daughter’s friends to eat more and more burgers and dogs, but they all had to go to a soccer game afterwards. Even though it would have been pretty funny to see them all blowing chunks out on the field, they refrained from eating too much. After the party, my wife drove them and my daughter to the game. My granddaughter wanted to stay, but her parents took her home too.
Without any kids, I was able to sit back and watch nearly the whole Rockies game today. It was great. They broke their losing streak with a win against the Nationals. It was the first of four games. We’re still ten games out of first, but we have to start our comeback somewhere and here seems like a good place to start. Plus, we should get Carlos Gonzales back on Saturday. That will be a big boost to our lineup.
I was dog tired yesterday, so I didn’t do anything. I’ll try to work on something tonight, but I’m really leaning towards being lazy. We’ll see how it goes. I’m putting ELO, Queen, and the Doors in the playlist tonight for background music.
-Thom
It’s my youngest daughter’s birthday today. She is officially 17 years old. We were supposed to have a surprise barbeque for her. We had told her that we were going to take her out to eat because she wanted to celebrate her birthday with her sister when she gets out of boot camp. We were sneaky for about ten minutes. I don’t know who told her, but she started talking about it yesterday and even asked if some of her friends could come over for it. Even thought it wasn’t a surprise, it was still fun. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, polish sausage, potato salad and pretty much everything you could think of except onions. I’m the only one that likes them so they are usually forgotten. (I don’t see how you can eat a hamburger without onions)
One of my nephews also had a cake. His birthday is right around the same time as mine, and they used to always have their birthday parties together. This year, we figured his parents were going to have a party on the weekend, so we were going to have my daughter’s birthday on the actual day. But, the nephew’s parents weren’t going to throw him a party this year so they just piggybacked onto ours.
My wife kept trying to get all of my daughter’s friends to eat more and more burgers and dogs, but they all had to go to a soccer game afterwards. Even though it would have been pretty funny to see them all blowing chunks out on the field, they refrained from eating too much. After the party, my wife drove them and my daughter to the game. My granddaughter wanted to stay, but her parents took her home too.
Without any kids, I was able to sit back and watch nearly the whole Rockies game today. It was great. They broke their losing streak with a win against the Nationals. It was the first of four games. We’re still ten games out of first, but we have to start our comeback somewhere and here seems like a good place to start. Plus, we should get Carlos Gonzales back on Saturday. That will be a big boost to our lineup.
I was dog tired yesterday, so I didn’t do anything. I’ll try to work on something tonight, but I’m really leaning towards being lazy. We’ll see how it goes. I’m putting ELO, Queen, and the Doors in the playlist tonight for background music.
-Thom
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Aug 2
I meant to put a new blog entry yesterday, but work got in the way. Today it is raining and it should be much slower.
At least yesterday’s game was close. We were winning all the way into the ninth inning before we lost. Today’s game was like we weren’t even there. The score ended up to be 5-0. Cook got hurt and was taken out in the 4th inning. The guy that replaced him did much better, but still gave up two home runs. All I can say is at least football season is coming up. The Broncos are playing the Cowboys on Thursday the 11th in their first preseason game. It will be very interesting to see what the new coach has done with the team. Because of all the money stuff that was going on, I have stayed away from all the rumors and trades and stuff. In fact, I hadn’t even gone to the website until today.
We had a mini family reunion on Sunday. One of my nieces set it up and we all met at Chuck E Cheese. It was fun. Everyone came except for my youngest brother. But, that was understandable. Chuck E Cheese can get expensive and he has five kids. It would have been twice as much for him as it was for us and we spent more than we had planned. I managed to get a picture of me and my granddaughter, but she was more interested in playing the new games. Usually I try to get pics of everyone, but I was slacking off this time. We got there early and for a while we were the only people in the whole building. My granddaughter wanted to play with the only other little girl, my nephew’s daughter, but she was zipping around everywhere and my granddaughter’s little shy approach just couldn’t keep up.
I went to see Cowboys & Aliens. It was a really good movie. The aliens were done really well and the action was great. The storyline worked and Harrison Ford was mean. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he was a mean good guy. I didn’t see it in 3D so I don’t know if the effects were worth the extra money, but the regular version was defiantly worth a trip to the theater.
My daughter called this weekend and today. She sounded really good. She is excited about having nearly completed boot camp. She has a week of field training again, and one more PT test which shouldn’t be any problem. The last big thing is the ten mile hump with full pack and gear. That’s always a killer, but I’m confident she’ll manage ok. I wasn’t with my wife when she called today, but my wife told me she offered to help pay for our trip out there. We’re not going to take any money from her. She’ll need all that when she gets to Georgia and starts making friends. She has never had any real free time away from the family. When she gets out there, it will be just like a regular 9-5 job. She’ll have evenings and weekends off. She’ll need some money to go out and explore and do stuff. But, it was nice of her to offer.
We got a new shower nozzle in the bathroom. I didn’t realize how much I didn’t like the old one until I took a shower today. It was nice. The water came out in a steady flow in an even array. I almost didn’t want to get out. It’s too bad I had to go to work, or I might still be in there.
The trampoline came down today and a little basketball hoop went up. It was a great treat for the kids when it was up, but it just took up too much of the yard. We’ll put it up again probably next summer, but the novelty had already worn off and no one was really playing on it lately. But, that might have been because of the heat. It is still very hot outside. I’m sure it is worse for my daughter in boot camp. I can go inside if I want to. She has to be out in it doing army stuff until the drill instructors tell her she can go in.
I updated the website. It is www.thomnichols.com in case anyone wants to check it out. I received some more pictures from my daughter’s boyfriend and I’ve scanned them in and put them up so everyone can see them. Soon, I’ll put up a page of the graphic novel so everyone can see what it will look like. The pics that are up there right now are just character pics. I’m going to add a profile for them but for now, it is just the images.
Well, that about does it for today. I’m going to put in Night Ranger, April Wine, and Kick Axe in the playlist for background music. I’m going to write my daughter a letter today and some other stuff, so I probably won’t work on any of the books until tomorrow.
-Thom
At least yesterday’s game was close. We were winning all the way into the ninth inning before we lost. Today’s game was like we weren’t even there. The score ended up to be 5-0. Cook got hurt and was taken out in the 4th inning. The guy that replaced him did much better, but still gave up two home runs. All I can say is at least football season is coming up. The Broncos are playing the Cowboys on Thursday the 11th in their first preseason game. It will be very interesting to see what the new coach has done with the team. Because of all the money stuff that was going on, I have stayed away from all the rumors and trades and stuff. In fact, I hadn’t even gone to the website until today.
We had a mini family reunion on Sunday. One of my nieces set it up and we all met at Chuck E Cheese. It was fun. Everyone came except for my youngest brother. But, that was understandable. Chuck E Cheese can get expensive and he has five kids. It would have been twice as much for him as it was for us and we spent more than we had planned. I managed to get a picture of me and my granddaughter, but she was more interested in playing the new games. Usually I try to get pics of everyone, but I was slacking off this time. We got there early and for a while we were the only people in the whole building. My granddaughter wanted to play with the only other little girl, my nephew’s daughter, but she was zipping around everywhere and my granddaughter’s little shy approach just couldn’t keep up.
I went to see Cowboys & Aliens. It was a really good movie. The aliens were done really well and the action was great. The storyline worked and Harrison Ford was mean. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he was a mean good guy. I didn’t see it in 3D so I don’t know if the effects were worth the extra money, but the regular version was defiantly worth a trip to the theater.
My daughter called this weekend and today. She sounded really good. She is excited about having nearly completed boot camp. She has a week of field training again, and one more PT test which shouldn’t be any problem. The last big thing is the ten mile hump with full pack and gear. That’s always a killer, but I’m confident she’ll manage ok. I wasn’t with my wife when she called today, but my wife told me she offered to help pay for our trip out there. We’re not going to take any money from her. She’ll need all that when she gets to Georgia and starts making friends. She has never had any real free time away from the family. When she gets out there, it will be just like a regular 9-5 job. She’ll have evenings and weekends off. She’ll need some money to go out and explore and do stuff. But, it was nice of her to offer.
We got a new shower nozzle in the bathroom. I didn’t realize how much I didn’t like the old one until I took a shower today. It was nice. The water came out in a steady flow in an even array. I almost didn’t want to get out. It’s too bad I had to go to work, or I might still be in there.
The trampoline came down today and a little basketball hoop went up. It was a great treat for the kids when it was up, but it just took up too much of the yard. We’ll put it up again probably next summer, but the novelty had already worn off and no one was really playing on it lately. But, that might have been because of the heat. It is still very hot outside. I’m sure it is worse for my daughter in boot camp. I can go inside if I want to. She has to be out in it doing army stuff until the drill instructors tell her she can go in.
I updated the website. It is www.thomnichols.com in case anyone wants to check it out. I received some more pictures from my daughter’s boyfriend and I’ve scanned them in and put them up so everyone can see them. Soon, I’ll put up a page of the graphic novel so everyone can see what it will look like. The pics that are up there right now are just character pics. I’m going to add a profile for them but for now, it is just the images.
Well, that about does it for today. I’m going to put in Night Ranger, April Wine, and Kick Axe in the playlist for background music. I’m going to write my daughter a letter today and some other stuff, so I probably won’t work on any of the books until tomorrow.
-Thom
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