It’s only been two months, but I’ve been enjoying it!

Since my last post we went camping as a family, something we hadn’t done in 20 years or so. It was fun cooking together, hiking, and playing in the Big Sur river. On the way home we stopped in San Luis Obispo and visited the farmers market. Crazy busy, but fun.

Then last week we went to Vegas for a friend’s 30th bday. Stacie saw a show, I dropped $25 on the dodgers, and overall just had fun with friends we don’t get to see enough.

Now I’m dreading going back to work, but I’m enjoying what time I have. Starcraft 2 is amazing, and I would play it every waking moment if I could.

My other interest as of late are “designer” vinyl toys. It started with some neat limited edition Android toys, but then I discovered there are all sorts of different ones available. These come in a “blind box,” where they are wrapped in foil. Some versions are rarer than others. They’re 3 inches tall, and about $7, but they’re way neat. I managed to grab a couple before they sold out, and I pulled duplicates!

That’s it for now. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

So in a few weeks we’re heading up to Big Sur for some family camping! Stacie and I have only been once since we’ve been married, and this will be our first time with Luke, so it should be interesting!

Only real purchase we’re making is a bigger tent. I have a 4 person Kelty that I love (Trail Dome 4), but it’s barely a 2-person tent in reality (55 sq. ft). With having Luke, we definitely need something bigger. There are a lot of options up to about 100 sq. ft, but anything bigger and your options shrink dramatically. I ended up getting the exact same tent, just bigger (Trail Dome 6). It’s 100 sq. ft, so it’s basically twice as big, but also 15″ taller! Woo hoo! It’s a super simple two pole design (aluminum), and has nice ventilation without the fly (yet still private).

We put together a menu the other night at my sister’s. Need to get Luke his own little camping chair, and double check the propane, lantern mantles, etc. We’re doing three nights total, and after that we’re staying in San Luis Obispo on the way home!

It’s hard to believe, but I just finished year five of my teaching career. I feel blessed to have a career at all, and even more so to say that I enjoy it more every year.

Summer should have just the right amount of things to do. Remodeling our bathroom starting in a week. Camping in July, and Vegas in August. In between all that I plan on scanning family photos, and hanging with the boy.

Here are some photos from my newly updated room.

I’m a little behind on blog posts, so I’ll bring you one now, and I’ve got another lined up (and both with pictures!)

I mentioned in the previous post that we went camping and got horrific sunburns. Mine was so bad/hilarious that we took a picture.

The spray lotions are lame. Sure you don’t get it on your hands, but who cares if you end up with a Picasso inspired sunburn! Luckily I’ve done much improving since that picture last weekend. I’m almost back to my regular shade of white.

Pictures of the new water heater coming in the next post.

Back for another “here’s all the not quite tabloid worthy stuff that’s been going on in my life” blog entry.

Over the weekend Stacie and I went camping down San Clemente way. It was technically the “San Mateo” campground, and it was frickin hot with no shade. To make the camping experience even more miserable was our newly acquired sunburns from our day at the beach. The beach and I are now mortal enemies locked in a battle until the end of the universe. Despite the crummy camping conditions, the camping company was great. We caught up with Kurtis, Amanda, Kevin, and Christie over tacos and smores. Overall it was fun, but made me long for a real camping trip in the snow.

After that our energy has been next to nothing as we recover from 87th degree burns. Yesterday we went out to Chick Fi’la, or however the heck you spell it, in Cerritos. We stopped at the Power Toyota dealer to look at some Camrys in real-life. Looking on the internet for close to 9 hours straight is quite informative, but actually touching the car helps too. Since I haven’t given a car update since the “I’m looking” post, I’ve decided on the Camry because it’s a Toyota, it’s big enough, and it gets decent mpg. I ruled out a Civic because of the size. For an extra couple grand it should be a little easier once we have kids and they’re all killing each other in the backseat. Now it will be a bigger backseat for them to kill each other in. I also ruled out the Toyota Camry hybrid. The list price on a Hybrid is $5000 more than the Camry SE I’m looking at. At my current driving habits, it would take something like 23 years to recoup the cost of the hybrid. I’ll stop Charles Dickensing you (that’s a new verb for this being super long). I’m getting quotes from several dealers around town, and it’s already proving fruitful. One dealer has quoted me $1000 less than others for the exact same car. I’m all for saving $1000.

Today brought new and exciting annoyances. The incoming water hose on the water heater decided to develop a crack and start spraying water all over. No good. Called Mike Diamond in my haste and fear. Guy came out, but the numbers he was quoting me sounded insane for what was wrong. Almost $400 to fix a flex hose that costs maybe $10? That’s retarded. I called my dad and he agreed. I managed to get the incoming water valve to turn (it was majorly stuck) but it’s a crappy gate valve that decided not to work. Turn it and turn it but the water doesn’t stop. Now the water to the entire house is off until we can install a new ball valve, which should hopefully be done tonight.

Those are the exciting happenings around the house. We’re still working on planning vacation, so I might put up a new map soon. The book is still in forward motion, though I let Stacie read the first major “act” of the story. She provided some excellent feedback that would make the story a lot better. I’ve read some people that say never go back and “edit” anything until the whole book is done, just keep pushing forward…but I couldn’t do that. I’ve gone back and I’m fixing some things before I go farther.

Brother’s bachelor party is this weekend.

Billingsley, Kemp, Martin, Loney, Ethier, you all rule! The future of the Dodgers right there.

Transformers is out today, and seeing it on the big screen will be a must.

That about sums up life for now. Hope everyone is great!

Summer is off to a nice start. The dog is laying in the backyard sunbathing right now. She’s a weirdo.

Played a game of baseball online this morning. Went down early 2-0 against the Devil Rays of all teams, but had a couple nice innings and won 4-2, raising my record online to 10-4. Last night Angelo helped me fine tune my network setup and change my dsl router to a “bridge,” which should simplify things. But that’s nerdy mumbo jumbo you don’t care about.

We’re going camping this weekend at San Onofre which should be fun. I haven’t been to the beach in forever, and it will be nice to go “away,” even if it’s only for a short time.

Andrew and Sarah are well on their way of making Denise and Paul’s condo into their own. They’ve done some painting and moved in furniture. It’s great to see them start their new life together. I have a much greater appreciation than I used to for weddings and marriage, now that I’m married. You know what the people are getting themselves into and what a special time that is in their life.

We started to watch the season of ER that finished a month or so ago. We didn’t watch it all during the year, but instead saved it for summer viewing. It’s a well done show, but the liberal nonsense is unbelievably annoying. Here are the recurring liberal story lines:

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

Sorry for that diversion from my summer, I apologize.

I’m off to start Act 2 of the book. Act 1 clocked in at around 20k words, or somewhere around 45-50 pages in a real book. It’s sitting on Stacie’s desk waiting for a read through. It’s amazing how much time it takes to get a story going and established. I’m looking forward to what comes next. It should get exciting.

The last week of school is finally here! After ten months of work I am rewarded with something most adults only look back on with fond memories: summer.

Technically I have to work all week, but it’s much easier than that. We only have students for four of those days, and one of those four days I will be at Knott’s Berry Farm. Of those remaining three days, one of them students leave at noon, and another they leave at 1 pm. The only full day that I have to be there we have a two hour awards ceremony. All things considered, I’ve officially started my summer vacation NOW.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things this summer. Andrew and Sarah are getting married, we’re going camping one weekend, on a cruise for a few days, and there are several things I want to do that are hard to get done during the school year. I still have a lot of old family photos to scan and archive, I want to spend a lot of time working on my novel, and the house badly needs to be cleaned from top to bottom!

And I shaved off my beard!

“Tommy, it’s time to set the table!” Mom worked diligently over the stove cooking a familiar meal.

Tommy was four years old and had enough energy to blown down a house. Even when he was learning to walk his mother had commented that he went straight from crawling to running. He was always in motion, and channeling that energy was always a challenge. This meant that the rest of the family was usually involved in a Tommy activity like coloring, riding scooters, or hide and seek. Tommy was certainly a handful.
He was sort of an odd boy, and definitely not a kid you’d see in a Pampers commercial looking perfect and cute. That’s not to say he was a bad kid by any means, he was “unique.” He wore big glasses with a prescription that rivaled Grandma and Grandpa. The lenses made his eyes almost twice their normal size, which looked very out of proportion for his head. His hair was straight and blond, but he had a defiant cowlick that liked to stick up in the front. His hands were always dirty, and if Mom didn’t pay attention, sometimes he had the dreaded snot and dirt face. When you’re four you don’t bother with tissues, and you don’t wash your hands unless someone forces you. Smeared boogers on the face are gross enough, but when you mix in dirt it really brings out the texture, sort of like a work of art. Tommy was a budding booger artist.

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