Month: December 2008

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Life in these United States

Picture Phone Phriday – Dec. 19, 2008

As a present to the “family” this Christmas, I finally purchased an HDTV. This of course, required the upgrading of my existing Satellite TV, a fact that has escaped my mom and her husband since buying their widescreen HDTV more than a year ago (“I wonder why our picture doesn’t look as good as yours?”)

Anyway, the DirecTV guy came out on a cold morning and ripped out our old satellite dish from where it sat off to the side of our roof out of view of most windows and installed a new one.

He and I sat down and went through all the cool new options and overall, I was pleased. He could have been more warm and friendly, but…whatever.

Anyway, I’ve been enjoying my new HDTV experience, marveling at the picture and generally thinking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” and then remembering, “Oh yeah, I remember. Because it’s expensive as hell!”

Then, the other morning, I sat down at the breakfast nook table and looked up through one of my skylights and saw this:

12-19-08_0907

My installer didn’t, in fact, install the new dish where the old one was, OUT OF SIGHT.

No, he installed the new one about 10 inches to the left of the old one and now it hangs over my skylight, protruding on the serenity of my tree-lined sky view.

I’m still trying to decide whether or not it’s worth the complaint.

What do you think?

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

He was in the prime of his life; but, it was the housecleaning that did him in…

mopping “Daddy?” MLI said, from the top of the stairs. “We’re coming downstairs to watch some cartoons before bed because the TV up in your room is broken.”

Looking up from the floor where I sat folding laundry, “Broken? Hold on, let me come look at it. And don’t come down here! I just mopped and the floor is very slippery!”

Sighing as I placed the clothes in my hand back into the laundry basket, I tiptoed across the freshly mopped floor that was the result of the evening’s earlier Gingerbread Men Icing-fest and then headed up the stairs.

Once upstairs, I confirmed that the TV wasn’t broken; it was just showing the picture in black and white. Knowing this could mean only one thing, I wiggled A/V wires until, sure enough, the color returned.

“Yeaah Daddy!” CareerMom exclaimed.

I bowed, and then headed out the bedroom door, grabbing glasses and other items to return to the kitchen as I went.

Thinking about the twenty things I still needed to do before MY bedtime, I hurried down the stairs.

I stepped down off the last carpeted step onto the freshly mopped linoleum floor and WHOOOOOOPS! Out went my feet from under me! The many various items in my hands went flying across the kitchen and my feet went straight out in front of me! With a gi-normous “THUD!” I hit the ground.

CareerMom, having heard the noise and expecting the worst, came flying down the stairs.

“Are you OK?” Did you hurt your back?”

By this time I had rolled over onto my hands and knees. Rather than just hopping up and exclaiming, “I’m fine…nothing to see here,” like I would have ten years ago, I patiently remained nearly motionless as I took a physical inventory.

Mentally talking to myself:

“Back hurting? No.”

“Butt hurts though.”

“Why does my foot hurt? Man, that hurts like hell!”

I slowly got up and cavalierly tried to wave off CareerMom, “I’m OK.” Then, I took a step and “OUCH!”

I looked down at my foot and could see the swelling coming on. As near as I can tell without going to see a Doctor (which I’m not going to do), I, at the very least, strained some ligaments from my big toe up to my ankle. I’m not sure how one falls on his tailbone, yet torques his toe as if he’d stubbed it, but I somehow managed it.

I iced it and went to bed, only to be woken up around 2:45 with a throbber (my foot gentlemen…my foot!). I downed some “Migraine Strength” Excedrin (with caffeine as I was to find out) and laid on the couch the rest of the night and into the morning.

It’s not broken, that’s for sure. I can walk on the left side of my (left) foot pretty well, but if I put any weight on the toe portion, it’s NIAGRA FALLS!

Yeah, “Yeaah Daddy!” Graceful as a gazelle!

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

And who said the Fire Department only showed up for fires?

Each year, our local fire department, does what they call a “Santa Run.” Basically, you drop off a gift for your child at the fire department a week ahead of time and then the following weekend, they bring the whole fire department to your house, where Santa gives the gift to your child. It’s all very exciting…and loud. This was our second year doing it and rather than giving you a play-by-play, I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking:

Santa Run 1

Here comes the ambulance and firetruck with all the sirens going. We could hear it coming all the way up through the neighborhood. All in all, I think there were probably 15 people involved with about 5-6 different vehicles.

It’s quite a spectacle.

Santa Run 2

At this point, the boys are a little shell-shocked I think. We’d had to wake up MLI from his nap a tad earlier than we’d hoped.

This ambulance drove right by us with the siren going off. It was crazy loud.

Santa Run 3

“OMG! It’s Santa!”

Santa Run 4Everything’s going well with MLI. No tears this year, no tearful hands in his mouth.

I’m pretty sure he’s just speechless over the getting of the gift!

How will his little brother do…?

Santa Run 5

OH! There we go! That’s what we were waiting for!
I also especially liked the look on the guy in the middle’s face. It was as if to say, “I hope these sunglasses hide the fact that I had to get stoned off my butt to put up with this crap again this year!”

Thanks Santa! See you next year!

 

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

I wonder what God thinks about during church…

Church of God CareerMom and I, after much internal and conflicting debate, collected the boys and made it to church this morning. The service was full of Christmasy music and the theme was even one of debating whether or not God exists. So, it was all very holiday-serious.

Unfortunately, the preacher also preached for 40 minutes. Folks, I don’t know about you, but my attention span is little more than my 4-year old’s and after starting out the sermon by reading John 3:16–a scripture that even most Atheists can recite–my mind had started wandering even faster than usual.

But, I made it through the service and as usual, the preacher did his little altar call thing where he asks people to raise their hand if they need special prayer. It’s a sucker move see, and only new people fall for it. Those of us who attend on a regular basis know that, despite saying, “I don’t want to embarrass anyone here today,” he IS going to embarrass you later by asking you to stand up in front of everyone while the rest of the congregation remain seated. And then after you’ve stood up by your lonesome for a few minutes, he asks everyone else to stand up too.

It was after we had all stood up and while I had my head bowed in reverent prayer, that I felt CareerMom nudge me. I looked up at her thinking perhaps she was having a spiritual revival and wanted to tearfully tell me how much she loved me.

Instead, she pointed her eyes down towards the pew seat in front of us where there were two elderly ladies sitting. There was a Bible lying on the pew between them with about 1/3 of a piece of paper showing from underneath it. In a whisper, CareerMom said, “Look at that note.”

I couldn’t see much, but the words I did see, which spanned about five sentences were, in this order:

blah blah blah blah blah bras

blah blah blah blah blah pink

blah blah blah blah caught

blah blah blah black

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones having trouble concentrating.

Bras indeed!

AMEN!

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