• 5 is done with Pre-K which means that this is the last summer before he faces real school related pressures.
• 6 only has a week left of school. He’s handled 1st grade very well.
• Teacher for 6 sent us an e-mail asking us to attend the end of year assembly as 6 will be receiving a Citizen Award for his class.
• If last report card is an indication, 6 will be getting the video game that he’s been wanting for a while.
• I’m more proud of 6 for being recognized as a good person than I am for how well he is doing academically.
• My wife will be travelling to South America for work again next month. The boys handle her being gone well. I do too as long as I don’t mind not sleeping.
• I entered my first marriage after my first year of college.
• I went to college for a little less than 2 years.
• Not going the full 4 years and getting my degree has bothered me for almost 20 years now.

flyoverjoel:

I blame @TheBosha for my following of @SteveHuff. Before I tell you how awesome Steve is, I’ll give a piece of advice. If you want to know who is writing excellent stuff on Twitter check out @TheBosha’s most favs page on Favstar.

So….I was trolling for people to enhance my timeline outside…

Read and follow. Both of them.

No longer able to keep track of them, I refer to each Knight as Sir Guyihad. - diary excerpt Lady Guinevere

Today I turned Arthur into a jackass. J/K, he did that on his own. - diary excerpt Myrddin Emrys

If I hear one more “Lanc-e-not” joke, someone is going to get hurt. - diary excerpt L du Lac

I altered Uther’s appearance so he might fornicate. I alter Arthur’s so he might garden. Thus ends the line. - diary excerpt Myrddin Emrys

In Latin it may be Ambrosius, but M should still eat more pineapple. - diary excerpt Niviane

Others see stars on my robe. I see notches. - diary excerpt Myrddin Emrys

I was very very very very very hungry today. And in rut. - diary excerpt U. Pendragon

Very short test of upgraded audio recording software/equipment.

Decided I wanted to get the presidential diary excerpts I’d posted on Twitter all together.

“I cut it down because of the fucking pollen” - diary excerpt G. Washington

“Mary bought a new 8’ bed for the guest room. Toying with idea of introducing internship program.” - diary excerpt A. Lincoln

“I hope no one exploits my fetish for wearing fur while eating lasagna.” - diary excerpt J. Garfield

“Cut 2” off the legs of every chair and lowered all the mirrors. Wish I could see the new guy’s reaction.” - diary excerpt J. Buchanan

“Martha laughs twice as hard when I take my teeth out before I motorboat her.” - diary excerpt G. Washington

“Gave speech today when a carnie yelled he wasn’t running for office. Crowd threw shit at him. Seemed right.” - diary excerpt A. Lincoln

“I wish he’d realize I’m not always interested in the stories and constant chatter afterwards.” - diary excerpt M. T. Lincoln

“I giggle to myself every time I write the word saltpeter to my dear wife in a letter.” - diary excerpt J. Adams

“The girl’s advice re the beard has helped with public perception. But I have misgivings about the shaved groin.” - diary excerpt A. Lincoln

I’ve been cleaning old files off the hard drive that have been collected over the lifetime of a few computers.

I came across this blurb that I had typed up a little over 10 years ago when I was remembering the first Christmas without my Grandmother.

It may be about a different time of year, but it does share a little bit about me and how I grew up.

*********************

In our family, Christmas rotated to different homes over the years.

One Christmas Eve found Mom, Aunt Debbie and I sleeping over at Grandma and Grandpas.  About 5:30 in the morning I heard Mom and Aunt Debbie trying to figure out how long we’d have to wait before Grandma and Grandpa got up.  They finally came up with the idea of having me “go to the bathroom” so that I’d make enough noise to wake them up.  It worked.  I’m pretty sure that Grandma had been awake all along and listening to us plot and scheme.

Another Christmas found us at Uncle Mike and Aunt Shirley’s when they lived out on the farm (they still had the pony and the pigs).  Once again, we spent the night at the hosting home on Christmas Eve.  It was during this Christmas that I had a loose tooth.  After spending a couple of hours being “scared” by Uncle Mike with stories of pliers and string tied to doorknobs, Aunt Shirley helped me out.  I’m sure that I wasn’t the best of patients, but fortunately she had patience of her own.  With time, wiggling, and plenty of Kleenex she helped with the extraction and I was lucky enough to get a visit from both Santa and the Tooth Fairy.  I remember wondering which one ate the cookies.

Christmas at Aunt Debbie’s and Uncle Jimmy’s had a great ritual which consisted of the Christmas Eve appetizer extravaganza.  Nuts, cookies, crackers, cheeses, Uncle Mike’s beer sausage, toffee, specialty candies, and whatever new recipes the family had come across.  Everyone in the family that could possibly make it did.  No one wanted to miss out on the pre-Christmas sugar rush.  When Grandma and Grandpa were there, we’d smell either Ham or Turkey cooking all night and we’d manage to talk Grandpa into playing music with Uncle Jimmy. Grandpa played guitar and 5 string banjo.

We’d set out the cookies (after tasting them to make sure they were still fresh).  For some reason, no one found it necessary to taste test the carrots we left for the reindeer.  And then the night was capped off with my getting to sleep on the floor under the Christmas tree listening to continuous Christmas Music on the radio.  After such a long night, it wasn’t difficult to sleep very soundly.  In fact, one Christmas, Santa had to “Ho Ho Ho” as he was leaving in order to wake me up to open presents.  I’m sure that this was a relief for Aunt Debbie and Uncle Jimmy as it appears they had been lying awake for some time.

It was great being able to go up early and spend Christmas Eve night with the host family.  But the best part of it was that Mom got to as well.  There was the occasional year when she had to work late, but she almost always seemed to make it on time (even during some pretty nasty weather).  It couldn’t have been easy after working such long hours and at the time I never thought or said too much about it.  But I did appreciate it.

It seemed that no matter what difficulties had happened over the past year, or what family squabbles might have occurred – for a few days in December we came together to share old stories, great food, and a lot of love.  And the last one is what made Christmas so great.

Today I watched my five year old explaining to his preschool friend how to snap. It’s one of those accomplishments like learning to whistle that seems small and insignificant at first glance. But I remember lying in bed as a kid, sorting out which finger to use and how much pressure. I made the classic rookie mistake of thinking it was my index finger for much longer than I care to admit.

It was important to me that I figure out how to do it, because it was something that could only be accomplished by me. Sure, someone could tell me the mechanics of it, but there was a science to making it work.

The first few snaps were barely louder than the smack of a lip, but it sounded like a crackle of lightening to my ears. I had no consistency in terms of getting a snap every time, or even the quality of the sound, but I was snapping my fingers.

Whistling was similar in that it was a progression of mastery. At first, pleasure is derived from just making a tone that sounds like the wind whipping through the trees, or an owl with a sore throat. For a week my whistle consisted of two notes, one created by inhaling, and the other by exhaling.

The next big leap is to try and make a tune. I’m guessing that most kids from my generation and the one before had two tunes that they tried to tackle: Spoonful of Sugar and the theme from The Andy Griffith Show. In my head, I nailed them at performance hall levels. In reality, you couldn’t tell them apart from the Happy Birthday tune.

My six year old knows how to whistle. I suspect that in a few weeks after snapping confidence is built, the five year old will approach him for some tips on making sweet lip music. But for now, he’s happy exploring the world of snapping and sharing his newfound knowledge with his friend.

As for me, I’m an adult now, so small but significant challenges are behind me now. I am a mature grown up with no time for things like that.

If you need me, I’ll be working on the next level of Angry Birds.

Spring Break approaches, and with it comes my annual “what I plan to accomplish list”. I have a number of projects that from this distance look quite doable. Yet, by the end of the week, I’ll be asking myself what I was thinking by wanting to tackle even a few let alone all of them.

I have virtually no work coming in right now, so my time is devoted almost exclusively to worrying about the house and taking care of the boys. This delights and worries me at the same time as it also means no additional income.

I very rarely go out and do anything socially on my own despite my wife’s encouragement to do so. It’s not a shyness issue, it’s more along the lines of if I’m not contributing financially, then I need to be doing more around the house even if it’s just being present.

I deleted my account on Twitter around Christmas time in an effort to start over with a new name/approach. However, I realized after a while that despite my efforts, my wandering mind was still going to treat Twitter the same way. I actually managed to find the original name that I wanted before I joined Twitter, so I took it over. Of course, I’m still having people appear that had been unable to find me or did not know that I had changed accounts.

Word of advice: get the names of the people you follow BEFORE you delete the account. I still have a slew of folks that I can’t find/recall.

I have the greatest kids a guy could ask for. And I’m not just saying that because they are mine. I’ve been told so by many people over the years. I couldn’t be more proud of them. It takes a lot of effort on the part of my wife and me, but it’s worth it. I feel like I succeed more often than I fail with regard to raising them and I’m in constant fear that the balance will change.

I use tumblr almost exclusively on my phone. It’s also tied to my Twitter, so I rarely reply or originate any content unless I’m ok with it hitting both places as the phone app doesn’t have an option to not send it to Twitter.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t use Tumblr a lot to read what many of you are posting and responding to.

Someone asked me my approach to my Twitter posting. I frankly don’t have one. I tend to post something as soon as it enters my head. This is often reflected in the scatter approach in terms of content, rating, and the quality of my tweeting. In particular the quality is quite inconsistent.

Every now and then, something will stick in my head and I’ll think about it for a while and refine the tweet in my head, but it’s rarely mulled over for more than 5-10 minutes.

One tweet exercise that I will do is to tweet something around a theme. They usually come in 3’s. If I’m having a lot of fun I may stretch it out for more tweets. This often results in a lot of tweets over an hour or so of time. It’s probably more of a turnoff for my followers, but I have fun with it. One of my favorites was when I tweeted the results of my beta testing of Twitter HD.

I doubt that even my wife has read this far, and this is why I haven’t posted a Truthful Tuesday before now.