Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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, April 22, 2009

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

Friday, April 17, 2009

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.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

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, April 13, 2009

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.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

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.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

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.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

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.

Friday, April 3, 2009

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.