Ok, since you can’t say it on my blog because I’m the one typing it, I’ll say it for you. Happy Birthday Thom!!! Yes, it’s my birthday. I purposefully didn’t update this week on Monday because I wanted to do it today. I am officially 46 years old. It’s funny, because all this year I thought I was already 46. But, my wife and my birthday pie (we had pie instead of a cake) told me today that I was actually 45 all year and I turned 46 today. So, either I’m losing my mind or I’m weird and trying to sound older than I actually am. Since losing my mind sounds pretty crappy, I’m going to go with me being a weirdo.
I had a pretty good birthday. My wife made me my favorite dinner of spaghetti. It was delicious. She made garlic bread to go with it and I am a huge bread eater so it topped the meal off very nicely. She got me a pillow as a present. It was what I wanted. When we went to Georgia a few months ago, my pillow was left behind in the motel. I don’t think I had a good night’s sleep since. It wasn’t a special pillow or anything. It was just big and comfy. I haven’t had a chance to try out my new one, but it looks big and it was definitely soft.
We were talking about birthdays with my granddaughter over the weekend. October and November are big birthday months for our family. And, when my wife asked my granddaughter how old grandpa was going to be, she said I had to be about sixty. Of course when I asked how old grandma was, she said that she was only twenty two. Anyway, for some reason the concept that I was sixty carried over to my birthday pie. When they were putting the numeric candles on it, my granddaughter was sure that the numbers were supposed to be in the 64 order instead of the 46. So, I’m going to have to start having un-birthdays so that I can go down in age instead of continually going up.
It’s football time. The Broncos played the Dolphins on Sunday. It was an incredibly boring game for the first three quarters. The Broncos had a bit of success running the ball, but that was almost all they tried doing. On the few pass attempts, it looked like Tebow was throwing to invisible players. The dolphins were also doing as well, but they kept accidentally scoring. So, with about seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter, we were down fifteen to zip. I have to tell you, I was considering changing the channel to the other game or playing on the computer or even mowing the lawn. But, I stuck it out and watched the last quarter hoping that they would at least put something up on the board. To my utter amazement, we ended up winning the game. Tebow decided that it was time to step up the action and he started throwing to our players and everything just started clicking together. We made a touchdown and then a successful onside kick. Then, we drove down the field and made another touchdown. Tebow himself ran in a two point conversion to tie the game. With seventeen seconds on the clock Miami decides to sit on the ball and go into overtime. They got the ball first and didn’t do anything with it. We got the ball and didn’t do anything with it. Then they got the ball and fumbled. We kicked a field goal and won the game. If all of the action was stretched out into the entire game, it would have been an exciting game. This Sunday, we’re taking on the Lions. They have lost their last two games, but they came out of the starting gate like gangbusters. They are going to be a tuff team to beat and I can hardly wait. It’s a two o’clock game and I have to work 6-2, so I have to get off work and rush home. Or, actually, I’ll rush over to my son’s house. He has the big TV and his birthday is on Halloween. So, we’re going to have a birthday dinner for him and watch the game at the same time.
The Texans have taken a 3-2 game lead over the Cardinals in baseball. Game six is tomorrow. I would like to see a game seven, but I would be ok if the Texans win it all tomorrow. I’m not really crazy about either team. But, Yorvit Torrealba, the catcher for the Texans, was a former Rockie and he was great. I was surprised when we traded him. I like our catcher now, but back then I thought the Rockies were crazy. The Cardinals have Holiday, who was also a Rockie, but I didn’t start watching them until after he was gone, so he doesn’t count. So, I guess we’ll see what happens.
We got a flat tire on our SUV today. I guess it has had a slow leak in it for a while. I didn’t notice it, but my wife told me that she has been complaining about it for a while. (I think she’s been complaining about it to someone else) so, we’re going to have to get new tires tomorrow. The tire went out tonight. It was ninety degrees yesterday, but it is snowing today. I think the tire knew what the weather was going to be like and it waited.
My daughter called today to wish me happy birthday. She is about a month and a half away from coming home. She had her last PT test yesterday and passed with flying colors. She said that she is trying to get her application for college filled out while she is out there so as soon as the army lets her go she can start up. She’s also looking to set up interviews to start working as soon as she gets back. She is going to school for communications with the army, so I told her that she should try getting on with Century Link. It used to be Quest and I know a buddy that started on their help desk and is now a bigwig there. She could do the same thing. It would be better than getting a minimum wage job and trying to kill herself with hours while she is trying to study.
I’m still working on the River of Magic. It is coming along nicely now. I should be finished with it in about a month. That will put it at Mid November sometime. So, I’ll probably just go right to self publishing instead of sending out query letters and trying to get it published the right way. That way, I can hand them out as Christmas presents, because this year Christmas is going to be a little tight. We are still recovering from our trip out to Georgia. We have caught up for the most part, but we just can’t seem to get a little ahead like we were. But, it will come.
Speaking of my book, I’d better get started. I’m kind of feeling something easy tonight. So, I’m putting ELO, Chicago, Crystal Gale, and ABBA into the playlist tonight. (Yes, I like ABBA, deal with it.)
-Thom
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Oct 17
Not a whole lot happened this week.
No football game this week. It was the Bronco’s bye week. I did watch the Jets/Miami game tonight, or at least most of it. I didn’t get to see the ending because I had to come to work. But, if the Dolphins play against us as well as they played against the Jets, we have a very good chance of winning. Coach Fox announced that Tim Tebow was going to start next Sunday, so a win on his first full game would be a huge confidence boost. He will also have the chance to practice with the first string players for two weeks so, he doesn’t have an excuse not to be ready. I think their biggest challenge will be to not go in expecting to win because of Miami’s record.
My youngest daughter dropped out of JROTC. She put in three years of hard work into it. She didn’t get the battalion commander like her sister earned last year. In fact, they passed her up on other rank as well. So, she decided to hang it up for her senior year. She has so many other school and after school projects going on that she didn’t need the added headaches of JROTC.
My eldest daughter had a birthday on Friday. My wife was trying to see to the feasibility of sending her a cake. But, it was too much trouble and expensive. I tried to have her contact one of my daughter’s friends out there with her in Georgia. She could have sent her some money and have the friend buy a chocolate cake. Then, they could have put it in the middle of the squad bay, gather all of her friends around, snuck up on my daughter in the early morning, threw a pillowcase over her head, drug her out to the table with the cake, Whipped off the pillow case and sung her happy birthday. But, my wife didn’t like that idea. So, we went to Build-a-bear and made her a stuffed animal. It had a little voice recorder in it where we could all sing happy birthday and tell her that we loved her. We mailed it out on Wednesday, and as of the starting of the Jets/Miami game, she hadn’t received it yet. (Stupid post office)
We took my daughter’s boyfriend with us to the mall when we made her the bear. When he got in the car, everything seemed normal. About half way there, he and my youngest daughter were making jokes about him throwing up. We didn’t realize that he was really sick and really about to throw up. We made it to the parking lot before he Ralphed. He felt slightly better after that and made it into the store. After about five minutes, he could barely stand up. We really shouldn’t have taken him out. We left right away after we made the bears, and of course the traffic was so bad we could barely move. We really shouldn’t have taken him out. But, if we would have known he was that sick, we wouldn’t have.
On Thursday or Friday, I came home to find the computer not working. My wife was complaining about it, so I rebooted it. It started to come up fine, but then it stopped and the screen went blank. I rebooted it again and it stopped again at the same place. I should have investigated further, but I had just gotten off work and was hungry and sleepy. So, I decided that the operating system had a corrupt file. I went to sleep and when I woke up, I started reinstalling. I got about half way through the install when the monitor went blank again. (It wasn’t the operating system) It also wasn’t the monitor or the monitor cable, because both were working up until a specific point before everything went blank. I opened up the computer and pulled out the video card. Part of it was broken and dangling. I pulled out a video card from one of the other computers and stuck it in. I restarted the reinstall. When I finished, I tried to get onto the internet so I could download the critical updates. (I have an older version of XP) Well, I couldn’t get on the internet. This time I checked the cables and the modem and the router. I hooked up the computer directly to the modem, but still nothing. So, I looked at the hardware and found that the PCI bus and a few other components didn’t get their drivers loaded. I spent about a two days trying to download a network driver but couldn’t find one. So, my wife asks my son for the computer we gave him back. I plug it in and of course, a screen saying the system file is missing or corrupt. I put in the operating system disc and bring up the dos repair screen. I try to copy the file, but it won’t let me. So, I end up reinstalling on this computer. It takes forever because the format didn’t want to format. I ended up using the quick format. Then, as I was installing the updates, the explorer 8 wants to load. I let it load and let it reboot and then try to get back onto the internet. It connects but when I try to type in a location, it gives me an error. I end up having to back out the explorer 8 and I load the Google chrome. Now, my wife doesn’t like the Google Chrome and wants me to go back to explorer. I’m going to load explorer 7 tomorrow and see if it has any fits.
Texas and the Cardinals are going to the World Series. I said that I wasn’t going to watch it because none of my teams made it. But, I think I’m going to give it a go. It’s still baseball.
Well, that’s enough for now. I’m making all kinds of progress on the River of Magic. But, I’m going to do a Great Detective today. I’ve been slacking off on them over the past few weeks. And, my daughter called today saying that she only has seven more weeks to go before she comes back. I wanted to send her all of them before she came back. So, if I’m going to meet that goal, I need to get cracking on them. I will try to do two a week, and spend any other free time with the River of Magic.
Today, I’m putting in Night Ranger, Boston, and Joan Jett in the playlist for background music.
-Thom
No football game this week. It was the Bronco’s bye week. I did watch the Jets/Miami game tonight, or at least most of it. I didn’t get to see the ending because I had to come to work. But, if the Dolphins play against us as well as they played against the Jets, we have a very good chance of winning. Coach Fox announced that Tim Tebow was going to start next Sunday, so a win on his first full game would be a huge confidence boost. He will also have the chance to practice with the first string players for two weeks so, he doesn’t have an excuse not to be ready. I think their biggest challenge will be to not go in expecting to win because of Miami’s record.
My youngest daughter dropped out of JROTC. She put in three years of hard work into it. She didn’t get the battalion commander like her sister earned last year. In fact, they passed her up on other rank as well. So, she decided to hang it up for her senior year. She has so many other school and after school projects going on that she didn’t need the added headaches of JROTC.
My eldest daughter had a birthday on Friday. My wife was trying to see to the feasibility of sending her a cake. But, it was too much trouble and expensive. I tried to have her contact one of my daughter’s friends out there with her in Georgia. She could have sent her some money and have the friend buy a chocolate cake. Then, they could have put it in the middle of the squad bay, gather all of her friends around, snuck up on my daughter in the early morning, threw a pillowcase over her head, drug her out to the table with the cake, Whipped off the pillow case and sung her happy birthday. But, my wife didn’t like that idea. So, we went to Build-a-bear and made her a stuffed animal. It had a little voice recorder in it where we could all sing happy birthday and tell her that we loved her. We mailed it out on Wednesday, and as of the starting of the Jets/Miami game, she hadn’t received it yet. (Stupid post office)
We took my daughter’s boyfriend with us to the mall when we made her the bear. When he got in the car, everything seemed normal. About half way there, he and my youngest daughter were making jokes about him throwing up. We didn’t realize that he was really sick and really about to throw up. We made it to the parking lot before he Ralphed. He felt slightly better after that and made it into the store. After about five minutes, he could barely stand up. We really shouldn’t have taken him out. We left right away after we made the bears, and of course the traffic was so bad we could barely move. We really shouldn’t have taken him out. But, if we would have known he was that sick, we wouldn’t have.
On Thursday or Friday, I came home to find the computer not working. My wife was complaining about it, so I rebooted it. It started to come up fine, but then it stopped and the screen went blank. I rebooted it again and it stopped again at the same place. I should have investigated further, but I had just gotten off work and was hungry and sleepy. So, I decided that the operating system had a corrupt file. I went to sleep and when I woke up, I started reinstalling. I got about half way through the install when the monitor went blank again. (It wasn’t the operating system) It also wasn’t the monitor or the monitor cable, because both were working up until a specific point before everything went blank. I opened up the computer and pulled out the video card. Part of it was broken and dangling. I pulled out a video card from one of the other computers and stuck it in. I restarted the reinstall. When I finished, I tried to get onto the internet so I could download the critical updates. (I have an older version of XP) Well, I couldn’t get on the internet. This time I checked the cables and the modem and the router. I hooked up the computer directly to the modem, but still nothing. So, I looked at the hardware and found that the PCI bus and a few other components didn’t get their drivers loaded. I spent about a two days trying to download a network driver but couldn’t find one. So, my wife asks my son for the computer we gave him back. I plug it in and of course, a screen saying the system file is missing or corrupt. I put in the operating system disc and bring up the dos repair screen. I try to copy the file, but it won’t let me. So, I end up reinstalling on this computer. It takes forever because the format didn’t want to format. I ended up using the quick format. Then, as I was installing the updates, the explorer 8 wants to load. I let it load and let it reboot and then try to get back onto the internet. It connects but when I try to type in a location, it gives me an error. I end up having to back out the explorer 8 and I load the Google chrome. Now, my wife doesn’t like the Google Chrome and wants me to go back to explorer. I’m going to load explorer 7 tomorrow and see if it has any fits.
Texas and the Cardinals are going to the World Series. I said that I wasn’t going to watch it because none of my teams made it. But, I think I’m going to give it a go. It’s still baseball.
Well, that’s enough for now. I’m making all kinds of progress on the River of Magic. But, I’m going to do a Great Detective today. I’ve been slacking off on them over the past few weeks. And, my daughter called today saying that she only has seven more weeks to go before she comes back. I wanted to send her all of them before she came back. So, if I’m going to meet that goal, I need to get cracking on them. I will try to do two a week, and spend any other free time with the River of Magic.
Today, I’m putting in Night Ranger, Boston, and Joan Jett in the playlist for background music.
-Thom
Monday, October 10, 2011
Oct 10
http://www.thomnichols.com/
Let’s get it started with football. My son and I went to the Bronco Charger game yesterday. It was great. We had seats that were twelve rows from the field. We were farther toward one of the goals than I would have liked, but I’m not complaining. We could still see everything. The stadium must have been sold out, because we were crammed in there like sardines. And, we had a stupid Charger fan right behind us. But it just made for a good game. We were down at the half when the coach put in Tim Tebow. The stadium went crazy. Orton is a good quarterback, but he wasn’t getting anything done. We had a defensive touchdown and a field goal, but our offense wasn’t able to do anything the entire first half. When Tebow came in, he scored a rushing touchdown and he threw for another. We had possession at the end and we got the ball all the way down to their thirty yard line. We spiked it with one second left on the clock. Tebow scrambled around and for a minute it looked like he was going to go down, but he got the throw off. It went into the end zone, but no one came up with it. We ended up losing by five points. 24-29. All of the previous times they allowed Tebow to play, they always had him run the ball. Sunday, they gave him an opportunity to throw and to hand it off. He didn’t do great, but he did better than Orton and he drove the ball down the field three times to score twice. We have a bye week coming up, so that gives us two weeks of practice with the first string players if they are going to start Tebow next game. I think they should. The marginal plays that he preformed yesterday could easily be attributed to the fact that he practices with the second stringers. At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t going to jump onto the Tebow bandwagon, but I think after a 1-4 start, we need to give him a chance. If nothing else, it will give him eleven and a half games of experience for next year. Unless Paton Manning or Tom Brady are traded to us, I don’t think there is any way that he won’t be starting next year. Finishing out the season would get him some salt under his fingernails and if he can bring us back from the deficit that we were in yesterday, I’m sure he can win us a few games to build up his confidence. We’re playing Miami in two weeks. They are 0 and 4 and then we have the lions. They are still undefeated so that will be his big test. It’s getting exciting. I got us a couple of beers to enjoy the game with. I’m not a big drinker anymore. In fact, it has been a few years since I’ve had a drink. My son finished his before I was even halfway through mine. So, he bought a round. I was already feeling it with the first one, by the second one, I was having a great time. We ordered one more and I had to nurse it until the end of the game. We didn’t park in the stadium parking lot. If we would have, I am sure that we would still be stuck in the traffic trying to get out. So, my wife dropped us off a few blocks from the game and we walked. When my wife came to pick us up after the game, she was expecting me to drive and was already in the passenger’s seat. There was no way that I was driving. I wasn’t falling down or anything, but I wasn’t going to spoil the day by getting into a wreck. It was nice taking in a game with my son. We’ve never really had a chance to do much together. I was always working when he was growing up and now he has a family of his own. I hope we make the time to have more days like that. While we were at the game, my wife took the girls out to see the Lion King movie in 3D. My granddaughter has been dying to see it. But, when she heard that I was taking her dad to the game and not her, she was very offended. I was supposed to take her to stuff. She wasn’t happy. But, the Lion King put her in a better mood. The girls went to the stores afterwards and had a good time. My eldest daughter in the army had a four day weekend this week. It was her first time being able to go off of the base and wear civilian clothing. She and a bunch of her friends were planning a lot of stuff. But, I don’t know what she actually did because she didn’t call us. Usually she calls almost every evening. But, I’m sure she was just having a lot of fun. She call us the Thursday night after she was released to liberty. She was at McDonalds. There is a Burger King on the base, but she is a McDonalds’ girl. My brother in-law’s daughter died this week. It was drug and gang related. She didn’t live with them. It was a daughter from his first marriage. They buried her this morning. I guess I have seen her before, but I had never spoken to her and didn’t know her. My youngest daughter was friends with her and she was my Goddaughter’s stepsister. So, it has been a rough few days. My wife’s boss has been getting in trouble quite a bit lately. It started with him trying to take all of the overtime and not sharing it around with the other employees. Today, however, he was reprimanded because of some weekend activities. The first was a door was left open in a huge law firm. But, the second was directly his fault. One of the duties of the security guards at my wife’s building is to sell stamps. Yes, I know, that isn’t the first place I would go if I needed stamps, but I guess they have been doing it for years. It was originally set up so that only the daytime people, 2 people, had access to the stamps and the money. When the new boss took over, he decided that everyone should have access to it. I mean, you never know when someone is going to need a stamp at three in the morning. For some strange reason, eighty dollars worth of stamps and money turned up missing. Who would have thunk it? So, in the next few days we’ll see what the repercussions are. I’ll keep everyone informed. Well, I guess I better get started. I’m on Chapter 7 of the River of Magic. It is coming along very nicely now. Chapter 5 and 6 were much longer than I intended. They could have been separated into two chapters each, but that wouldn’t have fit. So, Chapter 7 is going to be shorter but it will still get everything in it that needs to be there. I’m putting the internet radio on today. I don’t have time to go through and set up a playlist. I actually have a new project that my boss expects me to get done. Man, don’t you hate it when you are trying to goof off at work and your job gets in the way? -Thom
Let’s get it started with football. My son and I went to the Bronco Charger game yesterday. It was great. We had seats that were twelve rows from the field. We were farther toward one of the goals than I would have liked, but I’m not complaining. We could still see everything. The stadium must have been sold out, because we were crammed in there like sardines. And, we had a stupid Charger fan right behind us. But it just made for a good game. We were down at the half when the coach put in Tim Tebow. The stadium went crazy. Orton is a good quarterback, but he wasn’t getting anything done. We had a defensive touchdown and a field goal, but our offense wasn’t able to do anything the entire first half. When Tebow came in, he scored a rushing touchdown and he threw for another. We had possession at the end and we got the ball all the way down to their thirty yard line. We spiked it with one second left on the clock. Tebow scrambled around and for a minute it looked like he was going to go down, but he got the throw off. It went into the end zone, but no one came up with it. We ended up losing by five points. 24-29. All of the previous times they allowed Tebow to play, they always had him run the ball. Sunday, they gave him an opportunity to throw and to hand it off. He didn’t do great, but he did better than Orton and he drove the ball down the field three times to score twice. We have a bye week coming up, so that gives us two weeks of practice with the first string players if they are going to start Tebow next game. I think they should. The marginal plays that he preformed yesterday could easily be attributed to the fact that he practices with the second stringers. At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t going to jump onto the Tebow bandwagon, but I think after a 1-4 start, we need to give him a chance. If nothing else, it will give him eleven and a half games of experience for next year. Unless Paton Manning or Tom Brady are traded to us, I don’t think there is any way that he won’t be starting next year. Finishing out the season would get him some salt under his fingernails and if he can bring us back from the deficit that we were in yesterday, I’m sure he can win us a few games to build up his confidence. We’re playing Miami in two weeks. They are 0 and 4 and then we have the lions. They are still undefeated so that will be his big test. It’s getting exciting. I got us a couple of beers to enjoy the game with. I’m not a big drinker anymore. In fact, it has been a few years since I’ve had a drink. My son finished his before I was even halfway through mine. So, he bought a round. I was already feeling it with the first one, by the second one, I was having a great time. We ordered one more and I had to nurse it until the end of the game. We didn’t park in the stadium parking lot. If we would have, I am sure that we would still be stuck in the traffic trying to get out. So, my wife dropped us off a few blocks from the game and we walked. When my wife came to pick us up after the game, she was expecting me to drive and was already in the passenger’s seat. There was no way that I was driving. I wasn’t falling down or anything, but I wasn’t going to spoil the day by getting into a wreck. It was nice taking in a game with my son. We’ve never really had a chance to do much together. I was always working when he was growing up and now he has a family of his own. I hope we make the time to have more days like that. While we were at the game, my wife took the girls out to see the Lion King movie in 3D. My granddaughter has been dying to see it. But, when she heard that I was taking her dad to the game and not her, she was very offended. I was supposed to take her to stuff. She wasn’t happy. But, the Lion King put her in a better mood. The girls went to the stores afterwards and had a good time. My eldest daughter in the army had a four day weekend this week. It was her first time being able to go off of the base and wear civilian clothing. She and a bunch of her friends were planning a lot of stuff. But, I don’t know what she actually did because she didn’t call us. Usually she calls almost every evening. But, I’m sure she was just having a lot of fun. She call us the Thursday night after she was released to liberty. She was at McDonalds. There is a Burger King on the base, but she is a McDonalds’ girl. My brother in-law’s daughter died this week. It was drug and gang related. She didn’t live with them. It was a daughter from his first marriage. They buried her this morning. I guess I have seen her before, but I had never spoken to her and didn’t know her. My youngest daughter was friends with her and she was my Goddaughter’s stepsister. So, it has been a rough few days. My wife’s boss has been getting in trouble quite a bit lately. It started with him trying to take all of the overtime and not sharing it around with the other employees. Today, however, he was reprimanded because of some weekend activities. The first was a door was left open in a huge law firm. But, the second was directly his fault. One of the duties of the security guards at my wife’s building is to sell stamps. Yes, I know, that isn’t the first place I would go if I needed stamps, but I guess they have been doing it for years. It was originally set up so that only the daytime people, 2 people, had access to the stamps and the money. When the new boss took over, he decided that everyone should have access to it. I mean, you never know when someone is going to need a stamp at three in the morning. For some strange reason, eighty dollars worth of stamps and money turned up missing. Who would have thunk it? So, in the next few days we’ll see what the repercussions are. I’ll keep everyone informed. Well, I guess I better get started. I’m on Chapter 7 of the River of Magic. It is coming along very nicely now. Chapter 5 and 6 were much longer than I intended. They could have been separated into two chapters each, but that wouldn’t have fit. So, Chapter 7 is going to be shorter but it will still get everything in it that needs to be there. I’m putting the internet radio on today. I don’t have time to go through and set up a playlist. I actually have a new project that my boss expects me to get done. Man, don’t you hate it when you are trying to goof off at work and your job gets in the way? -Thom
Monday, October 3, 2011
Oct 03
This once a week updating of my blog isn’t working very well. It’s been two weeks since I posted. I really meant to get it done on Monday last week, but one of the guys here at work needed to switch days with me. He had a friend from out of state come in. So, I worked his weekend shift and he worked my Monday and Tuesday shift. It really screwed up my whole week. The working seven days straight didn’t bother me at all. I’ve worked entire months without days off before. What threw everything off kilter was having two days off and then only three days on before getting two more days off. It wasn’t natural. But anyway, I slept most of the day on Monday last week and then, since I didn’t have to come to work, I didn’t feel like doing anything. But, we’re back on schedule today so here’s the update. A lot of stuff happened over the last two weeks, so it might be a long one.
Let’s start off with baseball. Towards the end of the season, we went through a long stretch of bad luck. We lost every game in out last set of home games. It was like seven or nine games. It sucked. What made it even worse was that we were losing on the road too. On last Sunday, I watched the Bronco game instead of the Rockies and they picked that day to win 19-3 against the Braves. They set a team record for hits in a game. But, I missed it. We did close out the season with a win against the Giants, but it came off of a shut out the day before. Over all, we ended the season with a 73-89 record. It was a very disappointing season especially after such a great start. But, there is always next year. I am making plans (Saving money) to take a trip out to Arizona next season for spring training. We’re going to get this team to the World Series even if I have to drag it there.
The Broncos haven’t had the stellar start we were looking for either. It is Coach Fox’s first year, so we can’t expect miracles right off the bat. The first three games were all within three points. We lost two and won one. Even though that’s not a winning record, they were very close games, I didn’t like it, but I could live with it. Yesterday, however, we played the Super Bowl champs from last year, the Green Bay Packers. They walked all over us. The score was 23-49. It was an embarrassment. Yes, they are one of the only two undefeated teams this year, but we should have been able to put on a better show. There is a huge movement by the fans trying to get Tim Tebow in as the starting quarterback. People have put up billboards and stuff. But, if they put him in too early, it could be just as disastrous as having a losing season. There have been several quarterbacks that have gone straight from college to the NFL, but those are rare cases. You can’t just expect him to be awesome no matter how much you want it. So, personally, I’m still fine with him easing into the position. The only thing I don’t like is that when they do put him in, they run him every time. If they’re not careful, they’re going to get him hurt. They need to let him get some experience passing it so he can work on his accuracy.
My soldier girl was sick for several days last week. It was so bad that she had to go to the infirmary. They put her on bed rest for about three or four days. She ended up missing a test on TCP/IP that could have set her back into the class behind her. She is feeling much better now. She took the test and missed a passing grade by two points. She’ll have a chance to make it up and I’m sure she’ll do better. We picked up her contact lenses the other day, and we still haven’t sent them. I hope she hasn’t run out. I’m sure my wife will get them in the mail tomorrow.
My wife went on a trip to Arizona over the weekend. Her mom flew down there to visit relatives. But, she doesn’t speak English that well and there wasn’t anyone that would be able to take her through the Arizona terminal to get her onto the correct plane to come back. So, my wife, her sister, and my father in-law drove down there to pick her up. They left on Friday evening at about six thirty and didn’t come back until Sunday night about nine thirty or ten. So, that meant that I was a bachelor for the weekend. I had plans to do a bunch of stuff, but ended up doing nothing. Since they took our car for the trip, they left us my father in-law’s truck. I took it to work on Friday night and brought it home on Saturday morning when I got off. The funny thing about the truck is that the gas gage doesn’t work. So, I had no idea how much gas was in it. And, it was very lucky that I got home on Saturday, because when my daughter woke me up to take her to get something to eat, the truck didn’t want to start. It was out of gas. So, that put a hamper on stuff I wanted to do. As it ended up, my granddaughter came over and spent the night. So, we had fun playing and watching football on Sunday. My daughter even cooked for us. She made hamburger helper on Saturday night and then omelets on Sunday morning. She even baked a cake. It was very good. My wife’s trip went very well. She did most of the driving and they spent an enjoyable day with relatives in Phoenix on Saturday.
My daughter’s friend had her baby on Sunday. It was a little girl. My daughter wanted to go, but with the car situation, it wasn’t feasible. She also wanted to go to spend the night at a different friend’s house and attend a quinceanera. (Yeah, I can’t pronounce it either) She had a ride and everything, but ended up not going. For a while I thought I caught her doing something bad, like sneaking a boy over. She stayed downstairs while I was upstairs. On Friday when I was going to work, she called up and asked if I would bring her phone charger down as I was leaving. Well, I agreed and after getting ready, I headed downstairs. When I went inside the house, all of the lights were off. I stumbled my way through the kitchen and into the living room. My daughter was sitting up in a chair with all the lights and TV off. It seemed very strange to me at the moment. I asked her what was going on and she said that she wanted to sleep in the chair. I thought it was strange and went to work. After an hour or so, I started wondering if I might have interrupted something. She could have easily snuck a boy in and hid him when they heard me stumbling around at the door. So, I snuck in at six in the morning after I got off. She had moved a bed into the living room and was asleep alone. I’m sure she could have gotten rid of him before morning, but I choose to believe that she didn’t have anyone over.
When I got to work today, there was a memo informing everyone that there is a mandatory meeting on Sunday at two o’clock. It specifically announced that the graveyard people must attend. Well, I have Bronco tickets for Sunday. The game starts at 2:15. My wife got them for me and my son as birthday presents. They are $95.00 tickets. I am not going to lose them to go to some stupid meeting. So, I left a message for the big boss. He’s not going to like it and I’m sure I’ll get a call tomorrow. He usually calls about mid morning a few hours after I have just fallen asleep. He can yell all he wants, but I’m not letting those tickets go to waste.
I’ve been working on the River of Magic over the last few weeks. It’s been slow, and it is turning out different than the other books I’ve written, but it is going to be good. I’m going to continue with it this week and try to work on it more than one or two days. If I keep going as slow as I have been, it’ll take forever to finish. I have been thinking a little bit about Gremlin Planet. I might lay down a few pages of it if I get the chance. And, I need to make another Great Detective to send to my daughter. So, if I can get off of Farmville, I have plenty of stuff to keep myself occupied. I’m feeling kind of drugout today, so I’m going to put something upbeat in the playlist. I’m thinking Def Leopard, AC/DC, Twisted Sister, and Metallica.
Speaking of Farmville, they introduced a new Lighthouse Cove about two or three weeks ago. There were ten levels of enhancing that you had to accomplish along with all of the other projects and stuff that had to be build finished. On the ten levels, you had to collect three different things and every level they wanted more and more of each. Towards the end, they wanted 45 and then 50 and then 60 of each thing. Overall, it was hundreds that you had to collect. I didn’t go crazy trying to get it finished. But, I did move along with it fairly quickly. When I got to the end of it of it this weekend, I felt pretty good. It was an accomplishment. So, as I was about to click on the last item they wanted, I assumed that there was going to be a really good prize at the end. They always give you something and this was a major thing they wanted us to finish. I thought the prize was going to be spectacular. To my utter disappointment, the prize was nothing. I did all that work for absolutely nothing. I am so disgusted at Farmville that I was seriously thinking of just not playing anymore. It has turned into more work than fun anyway. So, even as I am writing this blog, I am still debating with myself if I should continue or not. There are some fun things. I actually like collecting the animals and I have a bunch of them. So, I am leaning toward continuing, but I’m not going to stress over any of their stupid projects anymore.
Well, this has become a three pager. I’m sure there is still a lot of stuff I’ve left out. If I can think of it, I’ll make another posting later on this week. But, if not, I’ll talk to all of you next Monday.
-Thom
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sep 19
Let’s start it off with another Rockies loss. With this one against San Diego, 8-2 (We barely avoided a shutout and a no hitter with a two run homer by Mark Ellis) we officially have a losing season at home. There are only a handful of games left until we can get ready for next season. I know it is early, but I am going to try to put some money away every payday so that we can travel down to Arizona next season for spring training. I’m officially declaring that the reason we didn’t go to the World Series this year much less the playoffs was because my wife and I didn’t make it down there this year. So, this season is on us. We’ll make up for it next year. On the other hand, the Bronco’s beat the Bengals. It was a good game. We had some very good drives. And, we were out like five of our starters. During the game Eddie Royal got hurt. It looked like he pulled a groin muscle. Hopefully he and the others will be better next week. We won by two points, and it was one of those games that came down to the minute. (The best kind) Since we were short people, Tim Tebow came in as a wide receiver. They didn’t throw it to him or even in his direction. I would have liked to see if he can catch. I also watched the Kansas City game. It was a blowout. They started off with a good running game, but floundered after that first drive. The Raiders and San Diego did well again, even though they both lost. This is only the second week, but the three of us, Broncos, Raiders, and Chargers are all tied in our division with 1-1 records. We’ll see how it goes next week against the Titans. They are also 1-1. It should be a good game.
My mom got back from her trip to Arizona this weekend. I went over to visit today. She said that she had a great time except she really wished she would have had her car. She went down with my Uncle. He was moving some of his stuff from Douglas Wyoming to Wickenburg Arizona where he bought my cousin’s house and is planning on retiring. My cousin actually built the entire house. They went for the wedding of the same cousin and said that it was very nice. They had it outside and the day was perfect. My cousin actually designed the wedding dress and prepared all of the food. I had no idea he was so diversified. My mom spent hours talking about all the stuff they did. It was surprising it could all fit into a one week visit. She said that all of my uncles and aunties were there along with most of my cousins. None of the kids in my family went, unfortunately. I wouldn’t have been able to get any time off, not after taking time off to go see my daughter graduate boot camp. We’re still recovering from that.
Speaking of our trip, I took five days off and arranged it so that I worked on days off before and after. But, our pay period is funky. It ends on Thursday and starts on Friday. To make matters worse, we get paid every two weeks, and the vacation was between the two pay periods. That meant that I had two checks that were missing days of work. The first week, I was missing two and this last one I was missing only one. But, when I got my check it was two days short. Needless to say, I was a little concerned. I was expecting only one day’s worth of money being short and arranged the bills for it. I made a stink and everyone was looking into what was wrong. We get paid on Thursday, but we don’t get our pay stubs until Monday in the mail. So, all weekend, I was griping to my bosses about getting the money they owed me. Then, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about it. And, since I work graveyard, I finally realized that the hours I worked on the Thursday to close out the pay period wasn’t on the check from midnight until six in the morning. Those six hours would be on the next check in two weeks. So, I wasn’t really short. When my check stub came in, that was the problem. So, I’m going to have to re-arrange the bills again. Then, there was a memo on the counter when I came to work today. One of the office personal was fired over the weekend. It also said that if anyone was interested in her job to send their resume. She was an operations manager and I’ve done that type of work before. I think I’m going to send in my resume. It will be day work and I would be on salary. I’ve heard some horror stories about long shifts from the field managers, but I don’t think that extends to the office. We’ll see. I think I’m going to send my resume in and see what happens. If it isn’t more money, I’m not even going to consider it.
My daughter went to the eye doctor today. She has some kind of sty in the inside of her eyelid. It looks pretty gnarly. They gave her some cream to put on it twice a day. They said that if it doesn’t get rid of it, they might have to dig it out with a knife. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
On Friday, the guy I work with decided he was going to clean out the refrigerator at work. He came in on that day and I was already in. The two people we were replacing were ready to go and he came in complaining on how dirty it was. He announced to everyone what he was planning and the first thing out of the two people that were leaving were to not throw out any of their stuff. Laughing, he said he wouldn’t do anything like that. So, I didn’t even mention the brand new unopened pack of M&Ms I had in the freezer. We spend one hour in the control room and one hour out, switching all night. I was the first one in that day so, he went on his cleaning rampage. After we switched, I just happened to go down into the break room to find that he threw out not only my M&Ms, but everyone else’s stuff too. Then, he threw the full bag of trash into the dumpster so even if I wanted to retrieve my M&Ms from the wastebasket, I couldn’t get them. He didn’t seem to realize that he did something wrong. I made sure he understood that my stuff was my stuff and he shouldn’t ever mess with it. Today when I came in, I found a new bag down in the freezer. Unfortunately for him, everyone else that works here wasn’t as nice as I was. Over the weekend, he didn’t get it too bad because it was only weekend workers were here. But, today all of the regular people found out what he did. He’s not the most popular person at the moment. It looks like he might have to spend his paycheck replacing everything and I am sure that he will be replacing food that was never in the refrigerator. (That’s what you get for messing with other people’s stuff)
My son and his girlfriend might be breaking up. They had a big blowout over the weekend and it got messy. I don’t want to get into it here, but I’m hoping everything will work out between them whether they break up or stay together. He called my wife today while we were driving somewhere and they were at the Halloween store. He was going to get her her costume already. But, my wife talked him into waiting until we could go with them. I want her to be a superhero. I saw some really cute Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman costumes. But, all she wants to be is a princess. She was Belle last year, and it looks like she wants to be Cinderella this year.
Well, I better get busy. I’m putting Boston, Journey, and Chicago into the playlist tonight. I’m going to work on The Great Detective and the River of Magic today. I got my daughter’s address, so I have to send her a detective case. She’s doing really well in Georgia. She’s out of phase 4 and into phase 5. Now, she can go off of the base and wear regular clothes when she is off duty. She might not be able to come down for Thanksgiving because of a rule about traveling more than four states on extended weekends. So, she looked into how much it would cost for my wife and I to fly down there. But, I don’t want her spending all her money on us especially when she’ll be coming home a month later. I know, she wants to have some family around during the holiday, but that’s a lot of money. She’s going to need it when she gets back here and goes into college. But, more on that later. I have to get going. My hour is almost up and I have to post this.
-Thom
My mom got back from her trip to Arizona this weekend. I went over to visit today. She said that she had a great time except she really wished she would have had her car. She went down with my Uncle. He was moving some of his stuff from Douglas Wyoming to Wickenburg Arizona where he bought my cousin’s house and is planning on retiring. My cousin actually built the entire house. They went for the wedding of the same cousin and said that it was very nice. They had it outside and the day was perfect. My cousin actually designed the wedding dress and prepared all of the food. I had no idea he was so diversified. My mom spent hours talking about all the stuff they did. It was surprising it could all fit into a one week visit. She said that all of my uncles and aunties were there along with most of my cousins. None of the kids in my family went, unfortunately. I wouldn’t have been able to get any time off, not after taking time off to go see my daughter graduate boot camp. We’re still recovering from that.
Speaking of our trip, I took five days off and arranged it so that I worked on days off before and after. But, our pay period is funky. It ends on Thursday and starts on Friday. To make matters worse, we get paid every two weeks, and the vacation was between the two pay periods. That meant that I had two checks that were missing days of work. The first week, I was missing two and this last one I was missing only one. But, when I got my check it was two days short. Needless to say, I was a little concerned. I was expecting only one day’s worth of money being short and arranged the bills for it. I made a stink and everyone was looking into what was wrong. We get paid on Thursday, but we don’t get our pay stubs until Monday in the mail. So, all weekend, I was griping to my bosses about getting the money they owed me. Then, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about it. And, since I work graveyard, I finally realized that the hours I worked on the Thursday to close out the pay period wasn’t on the check from midnight until six in the morning. Those six hours would be on the next check in two weeks. So, I wasn’t really short. When my check stub came in, that was the problem. So, I’m going to have to re-arrange the bills again. Then, there was a memo on the counter when I came to work today. One of the office personal was fired over the weekend. It also said that if anyone was interested in her job to send their resume. She was an operations manager and I’ve done that type of work before. I think I’m going to send in my resume. It will be day work and I would be on salary. I’ve heard some horror stories about long shifts from the field managers, but I don’t think that extends to the office. We’ll see. I think I’m going to send my resume in and see what happens. If it isn’t more money, I’m not even going to consider it.
My daughter went to the eye doctor today. She has some kind of sty in the inside of her eyelid. It looks pretty gnarly. They gave her some cream to put on it twice a day. They said that if it doesn’t get rid of it, they might have to dig it out with a knife. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
On Friday, the guy I work with decided he was going to clean out the refrigerator at work. He came in on that day and I was already in. The two people we were replacing were ready to go and he came in complaining on how dirty it was. He announced to everyone what he was planning and the first thing out of the two people that were leaving were to not throw out any of their stuff. Laughing, he said he wouldn’t do anything like that. So, I didn’t even mention the brand new unopened pack of M&Ms I had in the freezer. We spend one hour in the control room and one hour out, switching all night. I was the first one in that day so, he went on his cleaning rampage. After we switched, I just happened to go down into the break room to find that he threw out not only my M&Ms, but everyone else’s stuff too. Then, he threw the full bag of trash into the dumpster so even if I wanted to retrieve my M&Ms from the wastebasket, I couldn’t get them. He didn’t seem to realize that he did something wrong. I made sure he understood that my stuff was my stuff and he shouldn’t ever mess with it. Today when I came in, I found a new bag down in the freezer. Unfortunately for him, everyone else that works here wasn’t as nice as I was. Over the weekend, he didn’t get it too bad because it was only weekend workers were here. But, today all of the regular people found out what he did. He’s not the most popular person at the moment. It looks like he might have to spend his paycheck replacing everything and I am sure that he will be replacing food that was never in the refrigerator. (That’s what you get for messing with other people’s stuff)
My son and his girlfriend might be breaking up. They had a big blowout over the weekend and it got messy. I don’t want to get into it here, but I’m hoping everything will work out between them whether they break up or stay together. He called my wife today while we were driving somewhere and they were at the Halloween store. He was going to get her her costume already. But, my wife talked him into waiting until we could go with them. I want her to be a superhero. I saw some really cute Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman costumes. But, all she wants to be is a princess. She was Belle last year, and it looks like she wants to be Cinderella this year.
Well, I better get busy. I’m putting Boston, Journey, and Chicago into the playlist tonight. I’m going to work on The Great Detective and the River of Magic today. I got my daughter’s address, so I have to send her a detective case. She’s doing really well in Georgia. She’s out of phase 4 and into phase 5. Now, she can go off of the base and wear regular clothes when she is off duty. She might not be able to come down for Thanksgiving because of a rule about traveling more than four states on extended weekends. So, she looked into how much it would cost for my wife and I to fly down there. But, I don’t want her spending all her money on us especially when she’ll be coming home a month later. I know, she wants to have some family around during the holiday, but that’s a lot of money. She’s going to need it when she gets back here and goes into college. But, more on that later. I have to get going. My hour is almost up and I have to post this.
-Thom
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Sep 12
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
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 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
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