So the past few nights I’ve had a hard time sleeping, for a variety of reasons.  I was talking to someone about it yesterday and she said “how much caffeine do you have in a day”.  When I thought about it, I came up with 1 cup of coffee and 8-10 diet cokes on a normal day.  That might be a bit much.

So today, I’ve had 1 cup of coffee and 2 diet cokes.  And I have a pounding caffeine-withdrawal headache.  I bet I wont have a problem sleeping though.

I cant believe this makes THREE posts today.  Jenny wont be home until Sunday either, so there will probably be more. 

I saw this website, that can guess, based on your browser history, if you are male or female.  So now, whenever I can’t remember what I am, I can go and check.  (It turns out I’m a guy.)

The first ‘grownup’ book that I remember Eric reading is Harry Potter.  I waited until he was in about 3d grade, and then I used my “drug dealer” plan to get him hooked on reading:  Once he read the first Harry Potter book (I think it was Harry Potter and the Incredibly Embarrassing Adolescence or something like that) and answered enough questions about it that I was sure he actually READ it, I gave him $20.00.  The second HP book (I believe it was Harry Potter and the Painful Rectal Itch) got him $10.00, and so on, down to 1.00 for the last one (Harry Potter and the Boring Prom Date).  By the time we got to the end, he was hooked, and now he’ll read anything he can get his hands on.  That makes him very easy to get along with while we’re on long car trips.  

So anyway, I’m always looking for something new for him to read, and last week I heard about a new set of books about vampires &etc called “The Twilight Saga”. I heard that it was sort of girl focused, but being the modern man that I am, I didn’t really care, so I ordered the first book from Amazon and read it the other day.  It turns out that the books would be great, if Eric were a ten year old GIRL.   The plot is about a teenage girl who moves to Washington (state, where it rains all the time) and goes to High School with a bunch of Vampires.  Of course, she falls in love with one and much hilarity ensues.  There’s nothing inappropriate in the books, and I wouldn't mind Eric reading them at all due to the content, but I just don’t think that teenage romance novels, even with a vampire, are something Eric would like.

But I ordered the second two books in the series so I could find out what happens.  I’ll let Izzy read them in a few years.  It appears that there are hardly any boys reading these books, up to the point where some guy who DOES read them is unique enough to have his own website.  People who blog are annoying.

This week has been marginally less stressful than last week.  I think everything will work out, but it’s going to take a while.  In order to help get back on track, I’ve decided that today will be Christmas in July day.  The only thing that really means is that I’m playing Christmas music. There’s NO WAY you can be in a bad mood after a few good Christmas carols.  This is my favorite:

I know it’s not what Christmas is REALLY all about, but it’s good for a laugh.

Jenny left to go to Seattle this afternoon, and then Jake, Izzy, Alex and I went for a walk.  I think the sign in this picture is mean.

I’ve had a pretty stressful week, and I’m glad that it’s about over.  Usually, I’m the stress-free person around here, but this week I was NOT.  Hopefully, it won’t happen again for a while, I don’t like it.

But enough about me:   Today we went to Sports Connection, which is an upscale Chuck E. Cheese (which, as you’ll recall from my previous discussions, is a cross between an 80’s video game arcade and hell).  For a mere $110.00, we got to have some cheeseburgers, play on an indoor playground, play video games, and bowl.  The kids had a BALL bowling, it was fun.  They were all tired out, so they went to bed pretty easily.  The big news is that Izzy slept in a bed for the first time tonight.  All of the other kids jumped out of their cribs about a month after they learned how to walk…we had to drag Izzy out of hers because she’s almost too big for it. 

I’m going to try to talk Jenny into having another baby.  I like it before they’re old enough to talk back,  Izzy likes to call people “buttheads” when she feels slighted.  That's the problem with having a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds around…they teach their siblings such NICE things to say.

Eric is at a model rocket/church camp next week with my sister’s boy Will.  I think it’s neat how they’re trying to combine religion with blowing stuff up. 

This is Izzy in the bed for the FIRST TIME.  Right after I took the picture I moved her, I didn’t want her to fall out.  Jenny’s going to Seattle for a junket training class tomorrow, for a week.

I mentioned below that a picture I took of Eric got put in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago.  They finally put the picture up on the charlotte.com website. 

I went out tonight right before sundown to see if I could get a decent shot of the sunset, but the clouds were kind of ugly, and I could tell the picture wouldn't look that good.  As I was about to come in though, I saw a spider building a web by the garage, and I spent about 10 minutes trying to get a decent shot.  I had to open the apeture up really wide and use the flash, so I could never get the thing framed right…it was moving too fast.  It’s not horrible though.

We’ve been lucky in that for the past two years since we moved here, the lot next to us has been unsold and covered in trees and grass.  They sold it the other week and have now cleared it off to build a house there.  We were one of the first families to move into our development, so they paid a lot of attention to us when we said we wanted to save as many trees as we could.  Saving the trees takes a bit of effort though, and it’s much easier to just rip them all out and build, so that’s what they’re doing now that lots of people live here.

The boys all asked if the new family had any kids for them to play with.  I just hope they’re not nuts.  And a few people from the south would be good: there are too many Yankees in this neighborhood as it is.

I ordered a topographic map of the area I live in, in case I ever get the urge to wander around in the woods behind my house.  When it got here a couple of weeks ago, I remembered that I had a map case in one of the boxes of old Army stuff that I have in the attic closet, so I went to find it.  I found the map case OK, and I also found this picture of me at Ft. Benning in April of 1989.  The guys in the picture are (left to right) Mike Lofton, me, David Luders, and Albert Bagri.  Albert Bagri was an exchange officer from Benin.  (Maybe someday, one of them will google their names and find this). We’re all leaning because we were parked on a hill (you can kind of see the M113 APC in the upper right hand corner of the page) and we’d been up all night for a couple of days.  It was always nice when the sun came up, because you could change your socks and smoke a cigarette and (if you were lucky) heat up some water to drink a cup of coffee.

I haven’t been in touch with any of the guys pictured since then, the only reason I know their names is that I wrote them on the back of the picture. 

That was a long time ago. The picture is in pretty bad shape, I might be able to fix some of it with photoshop, but at least now it’s in the computer so that I’ll never lose the picture again.

The Sunday before last, the Charlotte Observer put a picture of Eric in the Union County section.  Unfortunately, it’s not online yet, even though I spoke with the editor and she promised that the pics would be up by last Friday.  Jenny sent the picture in without telling me, and I didn’t know it was going to be in the paper until I saw it Sunday morning.   It’s not my favorite picture of him, but I like it OK.

Last night I was getting ready to go to bed at about 9:30 or so.  Since I use my phone as my alarm, I went to grab it to set it up, but it wasn’t where it usually is.  So I walked downstairs to get it from where I put my keys and other impedimenta.  It wasn’t there.  So I looked under the couch, between the cushions of the chair I sit in, on the kitchen counter, the bookshelf in the attic where I put a pile of books, underneath our bed and a few other places.  For about 2 hours.  Finally, at 11:45, I went and checked Jake’s room, woke him up and said “Do you know where my phone is?”, and he sat up, looked straight at me, and said “it’s in the refrigerator in the playroom” (in a tone of voice that said “you idiot, where else would it be?”), and then laid down and went back to sleep.  Sure enough, the phone was in the (toy) refrigerator that Jake and Izzy play with sometimes.

He put it there to mess with me.  Everyone is out to mess with me.

This is Jake, plotting ways to drive me up a wall.

One thing about Microsoft is that the volume of email is horrendous.  So much so, that by the end of the day, unless I have rigid self-discipline, I’m overwhelmed, and start half-reading things.  Today, for example, I get an email kind of like this:

From: Joe Program Manager in Redmond
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 18:13
To: Bill the Customer; Dan Someone Else in Redmond
Cc: Bill Loytty; Some Mailing List; Michael The Customer
Subject: RE: Some Mess I Know Just A Little Bit About

Bill,

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah synergy laser-focus xml super cool blah blah blah.  What should we do?

Joe

(This was the first I’ve heard of any of this, they cc’d me in because I get a lot of weird stuff about my customer)

the text of the email was about something I’ve been peripherally involved in off and on for about 3 or 4 years.  I didnt look to hard at the To: line; it’s to Bill The Customer, not Bill (Me).  Since this was about the 400th email I’ve gotten today, I scanned the email, and it looked as if they were asking me something, when they were really asking BILL THE CUSTOMER about something.  Since I’ve never let not knowing what I was talking about ever stop me from talking, I threw my .02 in, only realizing afterwards that they were just cc’ing me as a courtesy, not because the wanted me to bloviate about things I don’t know anything about.  Luckily, I didn’t say anything really wrong, or too off the wall, and everyone accepted my kibitzing in good humor.

I hate when that happens.

Here is a picture of some kids to atone for talking when I shouldn't.

The lake was fun, food was good, it was nice to see the family.  I’m very tired now, though. 

The other day, I mentioned that we should reflect on what a bad guy King George III was.  Someone asked me what exactly he did that was so bad, so I got to answer him with this link.  I’ve always wanted to be able to googleslap someone with the declaration of independence.  And you know, it doesn't matter how old I get, I always love this part:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I’d get an I Thomas Jefferson t shirt if I could find one.  Happy 4th!

I’m taking the big kids to the lake this afternoon, and Jenny and Izzy are coming up tomorrow.  It’s going to be very low key, since no one has recovered from the family reunion yet, but it will be fun.

I hope everyone has a great 4th, and if you’re American, you take a moment to sit back and think about what a jerk King George III was.

I’m about caught up from my week’s vacation, so things are finally calming down.  The worst thing about vacation is seeing what stuff you have to clean up when you get back to work.  I’m lucky in that my backup knows my customer very well, so there weren't any surprises.  Jenny is off hobnobbing with some of her team members, so I’m in charge of the kids.  Jake and Izzy are in bed, and Alex is watching Hannah Montana, after I FINALLY let him back into the house (I’m mean because I make him play outside).  Other than that, things are pretty slow and normal here, so there’s not much to report.

I hope everyone is having a good summer.  I’m in the process of re-ripping all of my CDs onto the computer (long story why), and I’ve started playing some of the Christmas ones.  It’s only about 3 months until I can start playing Christmas music at work (Nov 1 is when it’s Christmas time in Bill Land), so I’m getting ready to be in the holiday spirit.  My co-workers can hardly wait.

It’s also annual review time at work, so everyone is trying to make themselves look good right here at the end.  It’s also the time of year I try to think about what I want to be when I grow up, because I really need to make a decision.  I’ve narrowed it down to either an astronaut or a trapeze artist.  My role with my customer is ending in about 18 months, so I have to have a plan in place for what I am doing after it’s over.

Here’s a picture of everyone at the family reunion.  It was great fun, but I was ready to leave at the end. The last evening we were there, we were supposed to have a cookout, but it started pouring rain.  My parent’s lake house started life as a double-wide trailer, and has had additions built onto it, so it’s kind of like a redneck mansion.  Even with the addition though, it was not a lot of fun to be inside with all of the people in the picture below while we waited for the rain to stop.