Jeanne's birthday and other things

Since Father's day, we've had a few events happen.

Jeanne's birthday was on June 32rd. We had already gone out to eat as a family the friday before. We went to a little restaurant here in our town called Marios. I had a super Italian sub. It had ham, salami, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and ionions on it, covered in Italian dressing. The bread was Italian bread. I had a twelve inch sub.
Alex had a small pizza, plain. Jeanne has Manicotti I'm pretty sure. Brian had chicken and french fries; perfect finger food for him.
Jeanne was allowed to sleep in on Monday, wheich she had taken off from work to have a nice four-day weekend. The women at her work made her a birthday cake, which they surprised her with on her birthday when she went back to work. She also made her own cake and when she found out the girls were cooking up something at work, she put hers in the freezer for later. She also got a handful of birthday cards from the various women at her work which was very thoughtful of them.


Jeanne's recently gotten reacquainted with a friend she went to high school with named Stephanie. Steph lives here in town as well and she's got a two-year-old daughter named Awbrie. Steph isn't married, but soes a very nice job of raising Awbrie by herself. Awbrie goes to see her father every other weekend. Steph has taken Jeanne and Alex to the local playground this past week, which is really good for Alex to work on that whole kid interaction thing. Alex gets along very well with Awbrie. He goes around calling her his girlfriend. Awbrie even gave Alex a little kiss too. Isn't that sweet.
Steph has volunteered to take Jeanne shopping later on in the month of July.
Grandma took Jeanne shopping today though, so Jeanne bought two weeks worth of groceries, which works out better because when she would buy for a whole month, she was having to work with two shopping carts full of food.


Finally, on to today. I was bringing in some groceries, and Alex was trying to help. He was out in the hallway, started to run I guess, and then he whacked his head off the wall. He got a huge bump on his forehead on the right side. We tried putting an ice pack on it, but he was trying to take it off like it was too cold. So we bumped it down to just a cold compress and that worked better. We also gave him some tylenol to help with the pain. We gave him some more before bedtime to help him through the night. The bump has already started to go down a bit, but he'll have it for a few days. Jeanne thinks he may come out with a black eye as well, but we'll see.
I think that covers everything up to the present. Thanks for reading this all the way through. Hope everyone has a good day.

massive update

I haven't posted in a long time so I think it's time to play a little catch up.

Mother's Day went very nicely. I bought Jeanne some pretty flowers and surprised her with them. I got her a little stuffed bear to go along with them. I was going to make her some scrambled eggs and serve them to her in bed, but I don't know what happened there, maybe she just got up before I could do it. I also wrote her a nice Mother's Day email that made her cry.

Alex has been doing very well with going to the potty. Sometimes, he wants you to go with him, but he generally goes on his own. He needs help to empty out his potty. He's very independent. He wants to help out so much it's almost painful. Sometimes I feel like I do very little because he wants to do it all.

We've been over Jeanne's dad's house twice since I last updated the blog. We had fun both times. First time we went over on a Saturday for Smores. Second time we went over for a BBQ and that was good as well. We made krabby paddies and took them to be cooked on the grill. We've had them at our house a time before that and they turned out really nice. We had a meal one night of Krabby Paddies and Krabby Fries. I hope they were up to Spongebob's standards.

Poor Brian injured himself June 20th, which was a Saturday night. I don't know how it happened exactly, but he wound up sending a tooth through the place between your gumline and the inside of your upper lip. That little area there he wound up cutting with his bottom tooth. We gave him baby tylenol after we got all the bleeding stopped.

Father's Day. That was yesterday and it was very good. It started out with me sleeping in till 9:30 in the morning. Jeanne got the kids up and got them dressed and fed. After I woke up, Jeanne made me breakfast and washed up the dishes. It was a mix-it-up lunch with everyone having their own things. For dinner, Jeanne made me one of my favorite meals, besides a seafood dish or Chicken Curry. It was Sweet and Sour Chicken. Very tasty. It will be her turn again as her birthday is June the 23rd. She took off work on Monday so she could have a nice four-day weekend.

I think that's everything since the last post. Hope you all enjoy reading.

heat wave

Well, I haven't written in a while, so let's see what there is to update.
Yesterday, Jeanne, Alex, and Jeanne's Grandma went grocery shopping. They went to Walmart, where the prices are a lot better than the local Food Lion. I feel like there's food in the house now, as we were getting pretty low on a few things. A friend of mine on Twitter, is trying to make it to the first of May on just pizza. I hope she has a bit more to eat than that, but man, she's got it a bit rough it sounds like to me.
It's been so hot here the past few days, we decided to put in the air conditioning units in the bedroom, and in the living room. We put them in Sunday night, which was the second day it went into the 90s. Yesterday reached all the way up to 97 degrees fahrenheit, so thank God we had the air conditioners in to cool things down. In the boys' room, it's still quite cool, so we haven't put their unit in the window. In fact, I think their window is open to let in some fresh air.

This morning, Jeanne brought home this big hunk of pork that a coworker gave her. It's been smoked through, and tastes fantastic. We're having that and some pasta salad for dinner tonight. If I could give some of it to my friend Cary, the one who's surviving on a supreme pizza from Pizza Hut, I surely would. Yesterday was also Jeanne's father's birthday. We won't say how old he is, but we do hope he's had a happy birthday.

Wednesday updates

I don't really follow Castle or Cupid anymore, so I won't bore anyone with the episode summaries.
Surviving Suburbia is turning out to be really good!

Jeanne had a class and a meeting to attend at work today. Both wound up being cancelled. I took care of dinner though while Jeanne tried to get more sleep. She said she didn't get much more in the long-run, but I'll bet it was nice for her not to have to worry about getting dinner ready. Alex and Brian did well for me, as they usually do.
Tomorrow, we are having chicken curry. I can't wait

events for Friday

Today Alex and Jeanne had a dentist appointment. I was very fortunate in being able to sneak into the boys' room and only wake Alex up, instead of having to deal with brian waking up an hour and a half before he usually does. The appointment was for 8:00 in the morning. I hope we never have to do it that early ever again. Alex had a good checkup though. He got a Swiper sticker (from Dora The Explorer) and a new toothbrush and a little tube of toothpaste. Jeanne got yelled at for not flossing enough, but who enjoys doing that? Certainly not me! I don't like the feel of that little string between your teeth. Even as a kid I hated it when my Mom would help me floss. I suppose it's good to floss so it gets the little bits of crap out from between your teeth, but I just use my tongue haha. Tonight's dinner is going to be two-mustard chicken done in the oven. I think we'll be having mashed potatoes with that.
Jeanne also picked up Wick at the store, which gives us a few more gallons of milk, a dozen eggs, a few boxes of cereal, and a couple of bottles of juice.
Jeanne's grandma bought Alex and Brian this little barn for an Easter present that has four little animals in it: a cow, a duck, a rooster, and a pig. When you squeeze their bellies, they make the noise of that animal.
I'll also be getting a haircut tonight. I get one every few months. My hair is quite thick and wavy. The longer it gets, the more curl and wave develops in it. I don't like it when it starts covering my ears. I'm always trying to smooth my hair behind them.

Wait till you hear what's happening tomorrow.
After the kids are in bed, Jeanne and I are going to order a pizza and chicken wings, and kick back to watch a movie, most likely Bride Wars, while we enjoy our meal. We'll be eating dinner with the kids, but we're just going to have something to eat while we watch the movie. Also, Jeanne's picked up some strawberries and shortcakes, so we can enjoy them for dessert.
It should be a very nice Saturday night.

Well, that's all the goings-ons for now. Hope you enjoyed reading. Talk to you all again soon.

Thursday night's In The Motherhood - episode Four

Thursday night's episode of In The Motherhood was a good one.
The episode is titled Practice What you Preach.
After Annie announces she is quitting her karate class, Jane rejoins a kickball at work to teach her a lesson regarding staying on course. Emily and Jason worry about their son's imaginary friend's temperament, and Rosemary shows off her parenting skills at seminar.

Tuesday night's cupid - episode 3

Last night's episode of Cupid is titled The Great Right Hope.
When Marshall, product of a sperm donation, hacks into the donor bank to find out about his dad, he learns about and then meets up with Clint, a boxing instructor, who he begins to take lessons from (without telling him who he is). He decides to set up his mom with Clint, in the hopes that they will hit it off together. Unfortunately, just about everything Clint is and stands for -- his political beliefs, his profession, etc., is at direct odds with her pacifist, leftist ideals. In the meanwhile, Claire has an unpleasant and unexpected house guest in her rather ditzy mother.

Monday's happenings

A few things happened tonight.
First, I found a cool YouTube video that shows how to download and use torrents. For those who are wondering what they are, here's the link I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmGtyVazrrY
I thought that was pretty cool. The person who did the video did a really good job explaining what torrents are, and how to use them. He also gives a few sites where they can be found.

Second thing that happened was, I was going through music I have on my computer and I came across a Dora the Explorer album. Alex really likes Dora and all the other kid shows that air on Nick Junior. I played pretty much the entire album with Alex asking for each one to be played over and over again. I also played some Human League songs; he and Brian danced along to the fast songs.

Dancing With The Stars hit the halfway mark tonight. Won't be long till it's finally over! For all of you who do actually enjoy the show, I hope you're getting pleasure out of it.

Finally, Castle airs tonight with an all-new episode. The title of the episode is Always Buy Retail.
Beckett and Castle are drawn into the world of Vodun, a mystical religion which Castle studied for a previous book, due to a ritualistic killing. Elsewhere,
Castle prepares for a possible return of Alexis' mother.


That's all the happenings for tonight, thanks for reading.


P.S. My computer still hasn't been reformatted yet. It was suppose to have been this past weekend, but what with Easter and the events of the past few days, it didn't get done. We seem to be stable after the reinstallation of JAWS which fixed the video intercpet issue that cropped up. I've been researching ways to reformat the hard drive, since I'd like a clean install of the operating system. It seems that, there's a way to do it, using the Windows XP CD itself. You are suppose to be able to delete the partition on the hard drive, then recreate it, and then format that clean partition. After that's done, you can go ahead and install the operating system. Perhaps next weekend, Jeanne and I will investigate that.

spending time with the in-laws

Friday afternoon we went over to the in-laws for pizza and spent a good few hours over there. I came back home with the kids to get them put in bed while Jeanne stayed back to watch a movie.
Saturday night, we prepared the dessert, and the mac and cheese we were asked to bring to the Easter sunday dinner. There will be ham, potatoes, mac and cheese, and maybe a few other things. Jeanne made "Dirt" for dessert. It's made with oreo cookies, cream cheese, cool whip ... loads of unhealthy stuff lol. I'm sure we'll find lots of things to do.
Brianna is there also with her boyfriend James. I believe Brian's wife Michelle's grandma will be there too. Also, Brian's mother will be there. She was not there Friday night for pizza.

Thursday night's In the Motherhood episode

Thursday night's In The Motherhood was pretty good. Here's what the episode was about.
The tile is Bully.
Jane heads to Annie's school to confront her bully, but when it comes to the workplace, she becomes the bully by using some tried-and-true techniques to get what she wants. Meanwhile, a newcomer is challenging Emily as head mom at the preschool. Also, Rosemary wants to get her 1980's band back together.
I love this series.

New Weight Loss Program

A guy calls a company and orders their 5-day, 10-lb weight loss program.
The next day, there's a knock on the door, and there stands before him a voluptuous, athletic, 19-year-old babe dressed in nothing but a pair of Nike running
shoes and a sign around her neck.
She introduces herself as a representative of the weight loss Company.
The sign reads, 'If you can catch me, you can have me.'
Without a second thought, he takes off after her.
A few miles later hufffing and puffing, he finally gives up.
The same girl shows up for the next four days and the same thing happens.
On the fifth day, he weighs himself and is delighted to find he has lost 10 lbs as promised.

He calls the company and orders their 5-day, 20-pound program.
The next day there's a knock at the door and there stands the most stunning, beautiful, sexy woman he has ever seen in his life.
She is wearing nothing but Reebok running shoes and a sign around her neck that reads, 'If you catch me, you can have me'. Well, he's out the door after
her like a shot.
This girl is in excellent shape and he does his best, but no such luck.
So for the next four days, the same routine happens with him gradually getting in better and better shape.
Much to his delight on the fifth day when he weighs himself, he discovers that he has lost another 20 lbs as promised.

He decides to go for broke and calls the company to order the 7-day, 50-pound program.
'Are you sure?' asks the representative on the phone. 'This is our most rigorous program.'
'Absolutely,' he replies, 'I haven't felt this good in years.'
The next day there's a knock at the door; and when he opens it, he finds a huge muscular guy standing there wearing nothing but pink running shoes and a
sign around his neck that reads, 'If I catch you, your ass is mine.'

He lost 63 pounds that week .      

Bruce Hornsby

I've always liked songs by Bruce Hornsby. I have a few of his albums: Harbor Lights, The Way It Is, and Big Swing Face. Off of the Harbor Lights ablum, I really enjoy a song called Fields Of Gray. It's a very pretty song.

Bruce Hornsby is now fifty-four-years-old. He was born in Williamsburg Virginia, which is not too far from where my family and I live. He was signed a recording contract in the 80's, performing with a small group called The Range. He's done songs for other groups as well. He has two kids of his own, probably all grown up now. If you haven't heard of this singer, or haven't heard many of his songs, I'd recommend you give him a good listen. He plays piano, a few synthesizers, and even an accordion.

Tuesday night's Cupid - second episode

Well last night's episode's title seems to have changed. I thought it was going to be My Fair Masseuse, but it turned out to be Live And Let spy.
Here's the summary.
Trevor sets up Claire's friend Riley with a social activist... who unfortunately turns out to be married. The cynical private investigator who exposed the activist's married state seems an unlikely successor, except to Trevor. Trevor also hooks up his boss/roommate Felix with a woman who turns out to be the mother of Lita's new boyfriend.

Maybe the title was changed completely, or maybe that particular episode was moved till later in the series.

Looking on TVRage.com, I noticed that as of right now, episode 6 is also titled, Live and Let Spy, so maybe episode 2 was mislabeled.

Monday Night's Castle and other news

Here's the run-down for Monday night's Castle.

Episode five is titled, A Chill Goes Through Her Veins.
A frozen woman is found tangled in steel bars at a construction site, leading Beckett and Castle to connect it to a cold case. As the two uncover facts about the victim's past, Beckett must face hard memories of her own, giving Castle insight and material for his novel.
Monday night is also the night the computer problems were worked on. It all started Sunday night though after the computer restarted. I had to take the monitor from Jeanne's computer and place it on my computer, since my broke quite a while ago now.
We seem to be stable at the moment and Jeanne has her monitor back again.
Since tonight is Tuesday, it's time again for another Dancing With the Stars cast member to be voted off. Wonder who it will be this time. The air time on Monday nights is getting shorter, now that a lot of them are gone. Tonight, Cupid also airs for its second episode. Stay tuned to find out if another love match is made.

computer complications

Something strange is happening to my computer and I don't like it. I think we're edging towards a reformat in the near future.
I was doing a scan for adware and removing it when my computer decided to restart itself. When Windows came back up, there was no sound, no taskbar, and no start menu. Only thing there was, was the desktop. My wife and I tried going into Safe Mode and doing a System Restore, but that function couldn't be accessed. we wound up using the Windows XP CD to repair Windows and that seemed to fix the problem. However, my screen reading software was giving me Video intercept problems, so I had to uninstall it, then reinstall it again. Once that was done, things seemed to be all fixed. Only problem however, is with the screen reader. It will start automatically, but it won't start speaking until I load up something else. I have a backup speech package called NVDA. You can go to http://www.nvda-project.org to find out about it. I'm taking this week to back all my major programs up, and moving things to my external hard drive. I have created an MS-DOS startup diskette, which I will use to reformat my hard drive and then, use my Windows XP CD to reinstall Windows fresh. After that, it will be a tidious process of putting all my programs back on, registering all the programs I have licenses for, etc. Probably another week at best to get everything fully up and running. I know it's good to wipe everything off after a period of time. I haven't reformatted in over three years. It probably hasn't been that long, but it sure feels like it.
That's all I have to report on the computer issues right now.

in other news

In other news, two shows aired that are worth mentioning, one of them a new series starting on, you guessed it, the ABC network.
First, the new show is called Cupid. Here's a little synopsis on what the show is about.
From creator
Rob Thomas
(Veronica Mars)
comes Cupid, a remake of the 1998 cult favorite
of the same name. New York's new resident, Cupid (Bobby Cannavale),
must orchestrate 100 happily-ever-afters before he is allowed to return home to Mount Olympus, punishment from the Gods for the current sorry state of love. Sent without his trademark bow and arrow, Cupid must learn what really makes love work as he navigates the modern metropolis of New York City. There, living under the name of Trevor Pierce, meets famous psychologist and author Dr. Claire Allen (Sarah Paulson)
who too is dedicated to helping lonely souls find happiness though she has a very different view on love than Trevor. As they work together, Claire tries to figure out who Trevor really is. Is he Cupid, or just a man who has lost his mind?

The first episode opens like this:
It's New Year's Eve in Times Square. The ball has just lowered and lit up the sky with "Happy New Year," but our hero has helped changed it to read "Holly I'm Here" for a lovelorn street musician who hopes his message will reach his intended. Despite his good intentions, our hero, who claims he is Cupid, the Roman god of love, not unsurprisingly is placed in a mental institution. There he is placed under the care of Dr. Claire McCrae, an author of a book on love and relationships. After three months, claiming his real name is Trevor Pierce, he is released but placed directly under Dr. McCrae's care and responsibility. She requires him to attend her singles group therapy sessions on a regular basis so that she can monitor his progress. Trevor, who strongly believes in passion and chemistry, finds himself at direct odds with Claire's rather cold and clinical attitude towards love and relationships. Trevor meanwhile works towards attaining his first match.

Then, on the show In the Motherhood, which aired last night, episode two is called Vacation.
Jane feels like taking time off to be with her baby is as tough as being at work. Rosemary explains the need to unionize to Jane's nanny, Horatio. Emily and her husband decide to take a stay at home vacation this year, much to the disappointment of their children.

With that, you're all caught up to the recently events that are going on.

Brian's Pediatrician Appointment

Brian had his pediatrician's appointment today. He's doing fine. He's holding steady at 20 pounds and 7 ounces. That's only a four-ounce gain from the last visit, but he's eating well and he is more active with walking and running around, so that could have a bit to do with it. He'll be late getting his back teeth the doctor said.
Jeanne left about ten minutes after ten o'clock this morning and she got back home shortly after two o'clock. Brian did fine all the way up till Jeanne and her grandma pulled in the driveway, but Brian woke up, he threw up all over himself and his seat. Alex isn't one for long car rides either.

Monday happenings

Several things happened today.
First, our friend Carole had a doctor's appointment today. She has an ongoing condition called Cellulitis, which is an acute inflammation of the connective tissue of the skin, caused by infection with staphylococcus, streptococcus or other bacteria.
Her lower left leg keeps swelling because of this and thus the reason for her doctor's visit today. She also has the possibility of developing clots in her lower legs, which the doctors are treating with heparin injections. Today she was shown how to inject herself. She'll have to do this on her own for about a week. Next week she'll go back in for another ultrasound scan to see if the clots have moved into her upper leg, or if they've been dispersed. One person that can sympathize with having to do injections is my wife. During her pregnancy with our second child, she developed gestational diabetes. She has to give herself daily injections of insulin.

Second, today was the day for our monthly grocery run. Since we don't have our own vehicle yet, we set up monthly trips to the store with Jeanne's grandma who is kind enough to help us with this. Alex got to go to the store with Jeanne, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He got some snacks out of the deal, including teddy grams, and several flavors of goldfish.
Jeanne now has more food options to choose from in her diet she's recently undertaken. She's doing this one-cup portions diet, which allows her to eat anything she wants, so long as it's in one-cup amounts. She eats every two hours, then, at the end of the day, she goes online to see how she did in terms of fat content, amount of calories consumed, number oc carbs, etc. She's lost about six pounds so far. It's hard because there's lots of times she still feels hungry after eating her one-cup allotment.

Third, dancing with the stars aired tonight. Sadly, there were a few couples who did not impress the judges with their dancing. One or two of those couples really did poorly. There will be a double-elimination tomorrow night. I think the show will soon be moving to just one hour installments, because as we swing into April, there are a few more new shows airing on ABC and I believe one of those new shows will air on Monday night after Dancing With The Stars.

Fourth, a new episode of Castle aired tonight. This is the fourth episode in the series. I hope they continue to air new episodes because this is shaping up to be quite a good series, at least in this blogger's opinion.
Tonight's ep is titled, Hell Hath No Fury.
The body of a New York City Councilman up for reelection is found murdered and rolled up in a rug, sending Beckett and Castle deep in to the world of politics.
Meanwhile, Castle's final novel of the Derrick Storm series arrives at bookstores, sending his mother out looking for any sign of failure.


I hope you enjoyed reading this entry.

In To The Motherhood

What do you all think of this new show?

bird in the house

We had something rather unusual happen to us this morning.
Jeanne came home from work, and went to bed for a short little nap as she does every Friday morning. I got up with the kids and got them dressed and I even had their breakfast out for them. As I was washing the dishes, Alex was saying something to me about a bird in our house. I heard some banging on the window in the kitchen, and what sounded like wings. I went and woke jeanne up and she varified that there was indeed, a bird, in the house. We opened up the windows in the bedroom and the bird thankfully flew out on his own. He left a little present for us in the laundry basket though. I think he came in when Jeanne first walked in from work, which means he's been in the house for at least an hour. I don't know how he went unnoticed until Alex saw him in the kitchen. I thought that was so different for us that it deserved to be written about.

TV Viewing for this past Monday night

I've neglected to tell you all about the second and third episodes of Castle I watched on TV. The show airs on Monday nights at 10 o'clock, on the ABC network.
The second episode is titled, Nanny McDead.
When a body of a young woman is found inside the dryer at a laundry room, Castle and Beckett uncover that the young woman worked as a nanny in the upscale
building. Meanwhile, as Castle works on his "Nikki Heat" novel series he watches Beckett's actions as she works the murder case.

The third episode is titled, hedge Fund Homeboys.
When a teenaged boy whose family has recently fallen on hard times is found dead in a boat in Central Park, Castle and Beckett must piece together the mystery
behind the boy's final moments. Meanwhile, Castle mulls over leaving Martha home while he chaperones Alexis' trip to Washington, D.C.
This is turning out to be a very good series.
Dancing with the stars is moving right along as well, thought the first hour of it on Tuesday night was preempted by the President's televised press conference. We got to see the results show however. Like I said in a previous post about this show, I don't particularly care for it because I can't see the dances being performed. The music is good, but it's not enough to just sit there and listen to the music. If you can't get into a show, it's just boring. Two new dances will be practiced for next week's show though, so that will be interesting for the sighted viewers to watch.

doc appointment

I had a doctor's appointment today. I was seen by a nurse practitioner because the doctor was up at the hospital doing "procedures", whatever that means.
I am on anti-anxiety medicine to help me with anxiety and they're working, so I can stay on it. This pill helps me to sleep better by easing my mind and helps me to relax. When I am close to running out, I just need to call the doctor's office and they'll in turn call the pharmacy to refill the prescription.
I also take two other medications. The first is Nexium, which I take for Acid Reflux. I take this pill once a day, every day. The second is Reglan. This one I take four times a day, preferably before meals to aid in my intestinal motility.
I have an appointment scheduled in June to see the doctor again, and by that time I'll need to have Nexium and Reglan refilled so they'll take care of that for me.

random thoughts

Hey there everyone. I'm just going to be spitting out random thoughts in this post.
We had pepperoni chicken tonight and it was very tasty. That's one of the recipes we got from Jeanne's friend Gen. I had one thigh and two legs. we had a rice side with it. Normally, we'd have a vegetable with it, but we decided not to tonight.
I call my Dad on Sunday nights. I usually do the calling once a week, so it will be good to talk to him. Can't wait to tell him our pipe problem's been fixed.
I'm so glad the pipes were just replaced. I'm pretty sure that the new pipes are bigger in width than the old pipes as well. That's a good thing because of the way the washer pumps the water through them, it would back up into the sink down in the bathroom and begin filling it up. Now it doesn't do that at all. Also, you can't control the amount of food that goes down the kitchen sink either, you need to have pipes that will accomodate that sort of thing.
Jeanne and I had a good night last night. We didn't end up watching a movie like we originally planned but we still had fun. Getting the kids off to bed was a bit weird though. One minute we were playing on the bed, all of us were, and I thoguht it was only 6:00PM. The next thing you know, it's after 8 o'clock, only we didn't realize that until it was ten minutes after the hour. We were going to have a drink, Jeanne and I, but we didn't have anything to mix them in, no coke, no orange juice made, so we were just going to have Raspberry schnapps and vodka. I drank all mine but Jeanne said hers was too strong lol.

I am thinking of putting music on for a bit but not sure what to listen too.
I think that's all the randomness I have for now. You all take care and happy reading.

having fun

My wife's father is married to a young woman named Michelle. She's got a little boy named Brent. He's having a party today to celebrate his birthday. Alex and Jeanne went over there while I stayed home with Brian. While they're gone, I'll be getting dinner started. We're having cornish game hens, mashed potatoes and stuffing with gravy. My job is to get the hens ready. I'll clean them all off, then stuff them with one garlic clove and some onions. They'll go in a nine-by-thirteen pan and placed in the oven at 350F for about an hour and a half. Jeanne will be home after 4:30 maybe and will get the potatoes mashed after 5:30 or so. This should be exciting. Oh yes, I need to baste the chickens with a mixture of olive oil and some herbs.

The Shining

I just finished listening to a movie called The Shining, by Stephen King.
It's about a little boy named Danny and his family spending the winter at a hotel called The Overlook. Danny has a special gift, a psychic ability that allows him to see the future a bit, and he has an imaginary friend who is very real to Danny. Once at the hotel though, bad things start happening. By the end of the movie, the hotel has come to life, and it's up to Danny, his mother, and a friend named Dick to escape the evil hotel before the boiler explodes. Danny's father, an alcoholic, begins drinking at the hotel, which allows the hotel to take over his mind and turn him against his wife and son. The father perishes in the hotel, allowing his son and wife to escape. The movie is about 4 and a half hours long, but well worth the time. I really enjoyed it.

Clog saga finally ends

The problem with the clog has finally been fixed. After several days of calling the landlords and their resident handyman (the handyman with no luck at all) a plumber was finally called out to deal with our continuing problem of a clog being in the drainpipe where the washer drains into. Basically what wound up happening is, all the piping was taken out, and new piping was put in. This project should have been done years ago, but it took something like this to finally make this solution happen. The pipes were full of yuck, and were corroded on the inside. We now have all new piping in the bathroom, as well as under the sink in the kitchen. Everything works find now, and hopefully it will be fine for years to come. I will be very careful what goes down the drain. We certainly do not need something like this happening again. It all started last week, on a Wednesday, and finally got resolved today. We had to wash out dishes in the bathtub for the past several days and let me tell you from that experience that it is not fun, and shouldn't have to be something to resort to. I have no idea why it took this long to be resolved, but I'm very thankful to the plumber for coming and fixing it.

Computer woes

Sunday the 15th, all of us went over to Gen's house around 5PM so I could help her son Josh with his computer. He has a virus on it of some sort, plus it's running slow, and it's locked the administrator out of several areas that I think are rather important. I'll have to do a little research to see if I can regain access to those areas. I installed a copy of my screen reading software (JAWS) onto his computer so I wouldn't have to have him read the screen all the time. One of the areas we were denied access, is the Registry Editor. This area is important because there's a few places I would have liked to go to keep several programs from loading at Windows startup. Another important area to which we were denied access, is the Task Manager. He says he's a System's Administrator, yet the error message says something like "such and such has been disabled by your system's administrator" and to contact them for assistance. Also, he has no My Computer, or Control Panel. We have to get to My Computer through the Recycle Bin. It is very strange. I also installed a copy of a spyware/AntiVirus program on there to remove all the trojans, adware, and other nasties that are residing on his system. He's got a free edition of AVG on there, but it detected nothing, while my program found lots of stuff. I will most likely have to go back over there to work on it more in the future. I could probably do with just taking his CPU to my house and hooking it up here to work on it. While I was upstairs with Josh's computer, Jeanne and the kids were downstairs hanging out with Gen.
Gen did feed us some dinner. We had leftover pizza from the party they'd had the night before. It was fun to get out and try to help someone with a problem they didn't have any idea of how to deal with. I'm glad I have the knowledge I do about computers.

Party Party

Jeanne went to gen's house Saturday night (the 14th) for a party. There were three birthdays being celebrated at the same time. Everyone there had a laugh and did things like play card games, do a little drinking, and generally just had a great time. Jeanne left about 6:30 that evening. I took care of the kids, getting them ready for bed, and then I had my own relaxing. I watched two movies, Ghostbusters being one, and Click being the other. It was a great night. Jeann got home just before midnight. I was feeling a bit tired by then mostly because of the sleeping pill I take at night. Jeanne wanted to spend some time with me, and I was too tired to do much. She was a little upset by that, but we got things straightened out.

Battle Of The Clog Continues!

The story of the clog continues!
My wife bought Drano for the kitchen sink, and the pipe the washer drains into and at first, I thought we had progress with the kitchen sink. Alas, this was not to be the case. The clog still exists in the washer drainpipe, and the water goes down very slowly in the kitchen sink. In addition, water from the kitchen sink gets backed up in the washer drainpipe, so the water ends up all over the floor, making an even bigger mess. My wife and I managed to wash clothes tonight, only by letting the water drain into a cleaning bucket and dumping it out in the bathtub. It took about 8 and three-quarter buckets full of water. This was done twice from start to finish. A normal load of laundry would take about twenty-five minutes. For us, it took about forty-five minutes.
The problem of washing clothes has been averted, but we still need to wash dishes. We will have to do them in the bathtub as well, until we can get a plumber out with a snake, or some other means of removing the clog that's down at the bottom of the washer drainpipe. Wish us luck with that. As I write this, we're coming up on a weekend, so probably nothing will get done till Monday at the very earliest. As it is, my wife needs to make a cake tomorrow for a party she's attending later that night. Plus there are the meals that will be happening throughout the day. Is there no end to these constant water problems?

stressful evening

What a mess it was this evening. Let me tell you guys all about it.
What caused the mess? A clog in the pipe that connects the sink in the kitchen, with the pipe for the washer, and the pipe for the bathroom sink.
Basically there's one pipe that connects everything except the toilet and bathtub. I'm very glad those are connected differently. I think whoever built the building we live in long ago was either stoned, or just had no idea what they were doing. The pipe work isn't designed for heavy use, which is exactly what a family needs it to be. If you get a clog anywhere, it effects everything connected to it.
What I think happened is, food got caught up in the pipe the washer drains into, so what we had was water pouring out of that pipe all over the floor. Thankfully, my wife heard the noise and stopped things before they got really out of hand. As it was, the floor around the washer was completely soaked. The washer had to be pulled out, and some towels put down to soak up that water. After that, I rang everything out and put it in a basket, took it down to the bathroom, and rinsed it all out in the tub. Hopefully, everything will dry by the morning. I may need to run the dryer two or three times to make sure it's all completely dry. I can't tell all of you how many clogs we've gotten in the piping since we moved into this place. We so need to move to a better house, even if it means going a bit smaller than what we have now. This building is ancient, and so much money has been put into stuff to unclog the pipes it's not funny. One time, we had to call professional plumbers to come and suck out this big wod of noodles I accidentally let down the drain. My wife will have to pick up some drano from Right Aid tomorrow so we can get rid of this clog. I seriously don't know how they use to wash clothes by hand before washing machines were invented. My hands ache from squeezing out all the water from the clothes, especially the thick ones. If anyone reading this has had any problems like this, please, drop me some comments.

Business As Usual

We had eggs and bacon for last night's dinner. after the nice and warm weekend, it was back to business as usual with slightly lower temps. The weather now is predicted to have a warm front and cold front meet tomorrow (Wednesday). Later Monday night, I watch the new series called Castle. In the first episode, Writer Nick Castle is called into help the police department after two murders occur that are strikingly similar to the plot of his book. Seems to be the start of a great series. Dancing with the Stars also aired on ABC last night. I don't know about other blind people, and if there are any blind folks reading this blog please feel free to contradict me, but I can't seem to get into that show. The main reason is, there's dancing, and judgment is past on the people doing the dancing. Dancing is something we blind people can't appreciate. It's probably a little too early to say who might be a winner, but anyone is welcome to leave me comments, stating what they think of the show Dancing With The Stars, and who they think a possible winner might be.

what a lovely spring day

Today was a beautiful day. We've had a string of nice days where the weather's been in the mid-seventies. Today we decided to go outside to enjoy the fresh air after our youngest, Brian, got up from his nap. We were out there for perhaps an hour. Brian had shoes on for the first time. I don't think he was that thrilled with them. We don't wear shoes in the house, so Brian hasn't worn shoes till now. Alex had his bubble-blowing puppy toy he was playing with out there, blowing bubbles everywhere. I brought out a tricycle we bought for him last year, when his legs were too short to reach the pedals. Now he can reach them, but he wanted to just walk the tricycle with his feet, instead of using the pedals. With the spring weather just starting, we'll have tons more days where it will be fit to go out and enjoy it as a family. We plan on taking full advantage of those days. Maybe one of these lovely days we'll have ourselves a little picnic there on the front lawn. When the breeze blows, you can hear the wind chimes from our neighbor's house. It's nice to listen to at night. Last night was a bit breezy so they were dinging away.
Tonight's dinner, which you'll see on my wife's blog as the recipe of the week, was cheesy stuffed shells. It's large pasta shells, stuffed with mashed potatoes, ham, and sweet corn. Then the shells are topped with cheese sauce. This recipe was given to us by Jeanne's friend Gen. She has contributed another recipe to our repertoire that will probably also make it to recipe of the week called Pepperoni chicken.
Now that the kids are in bed, it's time to see what there is to do. Take care everyone, and happy reading.

Saturday Date Night

Jeanne and I had a wonderful date night. We fed the kids at normal time, and we ate something small, saving our appetites for our dinner for two later. After the kids went to bed, we started on our meal. I had a salmon fillet, jumbo shrimp, and garlic mashed potatoes. Jeanne had a steak with her potatoes. We were going to watch a movie, but I couldn't find the film we wanted to watch, so we laid in bed and talked about our day and the plans we have for the future. After that, we had strawberries and cream for dessert.
I forgot to mention that, with our meal, we had a wine cooler apiece. We had another wine cooler apiece during dessert. Jeanne took a picture of me with a big strawberry with cream on it in my mouth. Wait till you see this.
all in all, it was a great date night. Next Saturday Jeanne will be going to a party, so that night I'll have to think of something for myself to do. Anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do?
Thanks for reading

.

Friday Night Skype

Last night, which was a Friday night, my wife went to visit her friend Gen at work, and I went on Skype with a few friends. My friends and I had such a good time talking on Skype. We were on from about 9:32PM eastern, till my wife came home, which was roughly three hours later. One of my friends, Tidus (don't know his real name) lives in an apartment at college. He shares it with three other roommates. Those roommates throw parties every night apparently. Tidus was still recovering from a bout of the flu, so he didn't join in. You could hear every bit of the party though. At one point, the party goers were butchering a song from Queen. That was hilarious to listen to. I was joined by two other friends: Carole, (who likes to be called Caz), and Crystal. Crystal was having a bad time with her connection. She kept having to be added back to the skype conference. We were intermittently chatting on an IRC server as well. I'm glad all of us were able to be there and to have a laugh. We've got to do that again real soon.

The Chronicles of Narnia - Book II - The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Book II in this series is about four young people, two brothers and two sisters, to embark on a jerney into Narnia by way of a wardrobe in an old house. One of the brothers named Edmond, meets up with the white witch, and soon leanrs she's not as nice as she pretends to be. The others, meet up with Aslan, and plan to free Edmond from the witch and take back Narnia from under her evil spell of winter. Aslan sacrifices himself in Edmond's place, but returns to life and assists the children in defeating the White Witch.
The children are then made kings and queens, and they rule over Narnia for many years. At the end of the story, they are following a great Stag, and wind up back where their adventure first started. They unwittingly re-enter the wardrobe and transform from adults, back into children. It's a fantastic story of good being triumphant over evil. If you haven't read this one, go ahead and do so. It's the first book C. S. Lewis has written in the Narnia series, but chronologically, it comes after the Magician's Nephew.

the bouncy ball

We have a bouncy ball that was either bought somewhere, or came out of a cereal box. We've had it for a few years now. Alex played with it when he was just learning to walk. He'd love to run after it, following it around the kitchen. After he started saying basic sentences, we made a video of him playing with that ball. we still have the video; he's so cute in it. Well, after a while the ball disappeared, or so we thought. I was cleaning out behind the dryer the other day, and I found that ball again. Alex and I played with it today after lunch. We took turns bouncing it across the room. Alex would bring it to me, or bounce it to me so I could take my turn and throw it. He's been playing with it all day.
I think he rushed through dinner this evening so he could play some more with that ball. Last night, he was having fun pretending to be a dog, and we were playing fetch with him. We weren't throwing the bouncy ball for him to fetch, but rather, a soft ball we have in the living room. He has a baseball, a football, and a soccerball, all soft and squishy. We throw them for him to "fetch", it's a lot of fun. Do any of you throw balls to your kids indoors? If so, what kinds of games to you play? Let me know in a comment to this entry.

The Chronicles of Narnia - book I - The Magician's Nephew

I listened to the dramatized version of book I in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis last night. It was very good. It was well presented. A young boy and girl get these magic rings that can transport them between worlds, and they happen upon a world that was just being born called Narnia. They meet the lion Aslan, the creator of the world. They accidentally bring a witch from another world (called Charn) into Narnia, therefore bringing evil into an otherwise peaceful land. In book II, which is called The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, that witch will be dealt with. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to listen to the others. If any of you reading this blog have heard of either C. S. Lewis, or have heard of the books in the Narnia series, I urge you to give them a read starting with The Magician's Nephew, because this is how Narnia came into existence. I will post on each book as I read them, giving a little synopsis on it. Happy reading!

Survival Of The Sink

The sink was fixed Monday morning. A new part was purchased for inside the faucet and the handle was reattached. This is the second time the sink decided to break in under a month. This time though, it seems to have been repaired better than it was the first time. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it stays fixed this time.

The Wifey

My wife's name is JeanneMarie. I met her through a mutual friend back in early 2004. We spoke on the phone, and over the computer through emails and over MSN Messenger. We were married in Septerember of 2004. She currently works at a group home for the mentally retarded here in town. She seems to enjoy it, although there are plenty of mornings where she'll come home, very tired, and even, very stressed over what's happened during that night or morning. She works nightshift, which start at 10PM for her, and she finished up at 8AM. She has Friday through Sunday off, so it's during this time that we do stuff together, such as play with kids, doing housework, getting any shopping done that we need to, and watch movies on TV, just to name a few things.
She is a fantastic cook. She thoroughly enjoys cooking. If anyone reading this checks out her blog, I'm sure this will become quite obvious. We have two wonderful kids so far, and when it's all said and done, one day down the road of life we will have four kids total. we hope to move from this apartment into a house at some point, which will enable us to spread out a little more.
My wife loves the Harry Potter series, both the books and the movies. She also enjoy horror films like I do, but she also likes the romantic movies. She's a huge Beatles fan as well. She has all the albums, and has probably seen all the Beatles movies. The only one we have right now is Across The Universe. She likes the Saw movies. We have all five, but I've only seen one and two so far. She and her friend Gen, will be working on Jeanne getting her driver's license. This will be a huge help to us not having to rely on anyone to get us from point A to point B. Her grandma has been very helping in getting us where we need to go, but at the same time it will be nice to be able to just get up and go where we have to without having to check with anyone else's schedule.
That's all I'm going to write for now, but keep readin to learn more about my family and the funny things that go on here. Feel free to post your comments to these posts.

when good meals go bad

We were going to have a cream corn soup meal tonight for dinner. It's made using a crock pot (or slow cooker), but when we taste-tested it, it didn't taste very good. From a blind man's perspective, it didn't smell very appealing either. The broth was bland, and I think it tastes too much of corn. It also had chicken in it. I didn't taste a piece of chicken. So tonight, we're ordering pizza. A large three-topping pizza with a bottle of Sprite, and an order of cheesy bread with garlic butter sauce to dip it in. If you go to my wife's blog, which is http://MyFamilyThroughFood.blogspot.com you'll be able to read the review on the cream corn chicken soup meal when she puts one up.

What about Brian!

I figured, since I've written something about Alex, I should put up a post talking about our other son, Brian. Brian is fourteen-months-old now. He can walk very well. Sometimes he'll crawl if he wants to get somewhere really fast, but for the majority of the time, he's walking everywhere. The days are fast approaching where he'll really start getting into things. When Alex learned to walk, and subsequently learned he can reach things he's never been able to reach before, he was getting into all sorts of things. The one thing Brian really loves to get into right now, is the garbage under the sink. He'll just open the door, stick his hand in, and pull out something nasty lol. He gets away with it more when I'm taking care of them during the weekdays, because my wife works the nightshift, so while she's asleep, I'm in charge. Brian also has eight teeth, and is working on more. He's got quite an appetite let me tell you! One night, he ate three whole plates of food. He eats jsut about everything we do. Brian can also drink out of a hard-spout sippy cup now. He's been doing it for a while. He'll even steal Alex's cup and drink out of that if Alex isn't paying attention. I think brian has the worst temper out of the two boys. Brian also likes to cuddle up to you more than Alex did. Both boys sleep through the whole night and are in a good mood when they wake up.
I think that's all for now, but rest assured, there will be more posts in regards to Alex and Brian in the future. Those boys are always doing something. You can tell me some interesting stories about your kids, or even someone else's kids. I'm sure there are plenty of amusing stories out there.

Getting hair washed

My wife and I are at a loss as to getting our son Alex's hair washed. Currently, we wet his hair a bit, then we put on the shampoo. This shampoo is tear-free by the way. After the shampoo is firmly in his hair, we rinse it out with water in a little plastic cup. It's fine when we pour the water over the back part of his head. When the water starts pouring down the front of his head however, that's when the battle begins. He starts crying and he rubs the shampoo into his eyes, which causes them to start hurting. He doesn't want to lay down in the bath. He doesn't want to hold a cloth over his eyes. We've tried getting him to tilt his head way back, and we've also tried to get him to squeeze his eyes very tightly. My wife Jeanne has suggested to him that we could use the detachable shower hose to wash the shampoo out, and he's fine in the beginning of that, until the water hits him in the face. We don't know of anything else to try to get this boy's hair washed! We've just had to muddle through with the plastic cup of water, because that's all he'll really tolerate. If anyone reading this has any suggestions at all, feel free to leave comments with ideas. We'll try anything within reason.

Our poor sink!

Our poor sink was injured today. My wife was using the sink to wash a few dishes and suddenly, the faucet just came off in her hand! We've had problems with the sink in the kitchen before. The washers inside the faucet had to be replaced because the old ones just wore out. One of them was in a few pieces inside there. Now, I'll have to call up our handy man to see if he can come round and put this faucet back on, or put a replacement one on the sink. If you've had anything like this happen to you, let me know! I'd love to read what happened and how you handled it. I'm debating whether or not to wash the dishes in the bathtub, because the only water that will come out now is hot water. After a while, it's scalding hot. We have many other interesting stories involving water I'd be happy to share with everyone. Keep reading because you never know what else may get posted here.

Miriani

Miriani is a great online game I play. You need a mud client like MonkeyTerm or Vip Mud, just to name a few. You connect to a central location called a server, and off you go. The website for this great game is http://www.toastsoft.com The server address is toastsoft.com and the port number is 1234. What is Miriani exactly? Well, it's a space game you play with other players, or by yourself, depending on what types of activities you engage in. I ppersonally love to salvage for debris, go on missions to fight enemy ships, and go out of local space to collect alien artifacts. You earn credits, which is the type of currency in the game.I've been playing for over four months. I have five ships, two of which are fully upgraded. You have several methods of communicating with the other players. One way, is over the communication channel which are: chatter, general, newbie, and the various alliance channels. You also have private links which you establish with individual players. These are especially helpful if you want to speak out of character. Out of character means real life stuff... things that happen outside the game. If someone asked over the chatter channel "how do I power up my ship", you couldn't reply "type the word power". That is out of character. You have to respond and say "push the power button". It took me a little while to get used to that. I have never played an RPG game before, so I was a little confused at first. The only thing that makes Miriani a bad game to play is the occasional loser who may try to stun you or take your ships away from you and demand money for their return. Those people are called "pirates". I dislike them very much. Well, that's enough about Miriani for now. I'll be speaking more about it in the future along with lots of other things I enjoy doing every day so stay tuned.

greetings

My name is Matt. I'm 31, and I am totally blind. I live in West Virginia. I'm married with two children. Alexander is the oldest at three years of age. Brian is the youngest at fourteen months. My wife's name is Jeanne. She is twenty-five-years-old. She likes to tease me and tells me I'm old, but she's really not that far behind. I am getting used to this blog, so if there are any mistakes, it's just me feeling my way around this new place.