Monday, April 30, 2007

The ER...Late Night Edition

So it was a usual night. Kiddos drifted off to la la land in my room watching my TV while Lawdog, yours truly and one more were sitting in the main hall shooting the breeze. The wife comes in and asks me to put the little tricycle motors in their own beds and I jump right up to oblige her.

Here's where things go south...quick.

Put the boy in his bed without a hitch.

Pick up my daughter and she starts to cry telling me that her ear hurts...did I mention that it's nigh on 10pm? No? It was. I carry her on to her bed and send in Dr. Mom to assess the situation and get sent to Wally World for children's Tylen-something.

By the time I get back, my daughter is in tears and not showing any signs of letting up, so I do what any self-respecting man would. I grab my 15" Mag-Lite and look in her ear...ye gods. There was something the size of a pea in her ear.

Breathe Tole...It's not moving, Tole...Everything is gonna be ok, Tole.

See I have this overwhelming need to protect my kiddos, especially my little girl. I want to put mass quantities of hurt on anything that comes within miles of causing her any grief, but I'm at a loss here. So, I once again do what any red-blooded American man would do in this situation...

I call my mommy.

She calms me down and tells me she will go with us to the ER...by the by we're closing in on 11pm now. On the way to the hospital, I damned near killed myself when my little girl, with all the calmness of someone 8 times her age says to me, "Daddy, I can feel whatever is in my ear moving and going pop pop pop."

Oh bloody hell, she's got a bug in her ear. Eww Eww Eww!!!

Just to finish this, because I am still juiced on adrenaline. After being examined by first an EMT, then an RN and finally an NP, we determine that the temporary tube that the Ear, Nose and Throat doc put in almost a year ago is making its exit. No big deal.

My daughter's reaction? "COOL? Will I get to see it when it comes out?"

Youth.

Tole

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Scary Stuff

I am going out to the local University to get the ball rolling on an MBA. It is a daunting thought. I am about to put myself through three years of hard work and hope it pays off in the end. I’ll be 40 by then…yuck. Wish I had started sooner, but hey if wishes were horses, we’d all be eating steak.

I guess the biggest thing I will have to relearn is how to be a student again. It’s been over a decade since I received my BBA, and to be honest I wasn’t all that great of a student then. Of course I was young, dumb and full of…well you know how that old saying goes. I really wasn’t driven and had no reason to be. Now I do. I have 3 of them and they all depend their mother and me to give them what they need. IMHO, they need her at home with them and the only way that happens is if I am able to provide the income we need to see to it.

The next biggest obstacle will be from the kiddos themselves. They love to play and so do I. Not only that but they make enough noise for 12 kids their size. Studying will be an interesting prospect. I guess I will have to build that addition on the house so I can have a Fortress of Solitude.

So it is once more into the breach friends to do or die in the attempt. I begin classes in September and tremble a little at the thought.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

No More

After the terible ocurrence at Virginia Tech, I have been bombarded by the media with all the regular hoopla and fanfare. I'm sick of it.

Let the healing begin. Let the families of the victims and, yes, even the shooter start to move on. It's time to let this kid's name fade into the past without so much as a footnote in history.

The thing that scares me the most is that with our competative nature in America, there are already those thinking, "I can top 33 easy."

We need to quit glorifying and raising these evil acts up and to steal a phrase, "banish the name of the evildoers from our society." If we quit making the villians into heroes, some, mind you not all, of their incentive to gain notariety goes away.

Tole

Wally Wallington and Stonehenge "Reloaded"

I was sitting at my little pc checking my email when I get this link emailed to me from my Da'. When I read the accompanying blog link, my initial reaction was yeah right, but I watched the YouTube video anyway.

Bugger me, but I think this old boy might be on to something. Judge for yourselves and let me know what ya think. Personally, I think I may be building my own very soon.

Tole


Thursday, April 12, 2007

Big Trouble

Lawdog came by the other night and it didn't take long for us to decide it was movie time. I would like to point to item #3 in this post here that speaks to the quality of movie I enjoy. That being said I continue...

A couple of weeks ago I scored a major win at the $5.50 bin at Wally World. Big Trouble in Little China is up there on my list of all time favorites. Hell, all of the Kurt Russel/John Carpenter movies are great...The Thing, Escape from New York (and or LA), so on and so forth. Luckily Lawdog shares a similar affection for these films so we pulled out BTiLC and popped it in.

Here's where things got sideways.

We've both seen this flick 147,748 times so we thought, "Let's check out the Special Features first." Lo and behold the only choices were Language and Commentary On/Off. Having never watched a movie with the commentary on we decided to give it a shot, and we were well rewarded.

What we got for our intrepidity was a running dialogue between John Carpenter and Kurt Russel as they drank and reminisced about the film and their lives in general. At one point the discussion got so far off track that they even commented, "Oh, hey I guess we should talk about the movie since that is why you all turned this feature on."

I think that the "Escape" films are next in queue. Should be interesting.

Tole

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Patton By God

Got this in an email from my dad today. Now while I would never endorse the blanket bombing of the middle east **looks around and whistles innocently** I do find this as funny as hell. Kinda makes ya wonder how the War on Terror would be conducted by some of the old school military greats from our history. Lightbulbs and liquor bottles, heh heh.


Make It Aluminum They Said - The Finale

Started it up this morning around 10 AM and let it come up to operating temperature. So far, so good. Decided I needed to road test it to ma...