Author: Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did.

When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing).

Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content.

And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Sleeping in a strange bed…and loving it!

(Posted last night around 9 p.m. apparently right before the raccoons took up breeding right outside the house up in a tree)

image So I’m up here at TrishaTruly’s place, and after a relaxing evening of smoked Gouda cheese and a nice red wine whose name my foggy brain cannot recall, I am purt-near pooped. I must admit that I do miss my boys and hearing them on the phone asking, “Where are you daddy,” just about made me get all teary eyed  (just about).

I didn’t plan on blogging at all on my trip, but I happened to check and I know that Trisha has wireless here on the old homestead. So, I just have to get her crypto key before I can get online…something I’ll hit her up for tomorrow.

But, I noticed something on my trip up today: My first plane from Atlanta to Newark was your typical 80-passenger jet. I sat next to a very nice lady who was all dolled up (with pearls). She was a flight attendant coming off of vacation and flying back home to Newark. The other attendants on duty were also nice and well-dressed and overall, it was a decent flight.

And…then…I walked down the runway in Newark to catch my flight to Scranton, PA, only to find myself walking back down some stairs onto the tarmac in order to get on a Dehavilland Dash 8. If you haven’t flown one of these little gems, it’s a dual prop plane that seats about 50 passengers.

And I noticed something that perhaps isn’t applicable worldwide, but which certainly deserves more study:

The quality of the flight attendant is directly proportional to the size of the plane

Yes folks, apparently in the airline industry, SIZE MATTERS!

Whereas with my larger plane from Atlanta to Newark, the crew was nice and neatly pressed; however, the lone attendant on my journey from Newark to Scranton (home of, “The Office”), the flight attendant looked as if she’d woken up late, pulled on last week’s uniform and then had a couple of shots of bourbon on the way into the airport.

Anyway, just something I noticed.

Tomorrow, I meet the oft-quoted “D”, who is Trisha’s Beau and we will drink more wine and eat red meat. A healthy evening if ever I had one. In between all of that, sinuses permitting, I hope to get some sort of workout over at my sister’s house so that I don’t slide even further into being a fat blog of a husband and father. If we get bored, Trisha has offered to lend me one of her rifles so that we can go shoot critters and if I get good enough, perhaps when I get home I can stake out my front lawn in hopes that my turf-destroying mole will stick his scruffy lil’ head above ground long enough for me to shout, “FREEZE GOPHER” and take a pot-shot or two before the cops show up.

Hey, a guy can dream!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

Marriage and child-rearing…tricks of the trade part 1

I’m not sure when my ‘clean’ gene kicked in, but I know it was sometime in my late teens. I suspect it had something to do with the cleanliness with which our house was kept as I was growing up, coupled with the fact that, as a child, I didn’t have much “stuff.” I didn’t have action figures, or Hot Wheels cars lying around. No, everything I had could easily be hidden under the bed, in the closet, or in the hideously 70s green colored toy box my dad made for me. Even when I was single, I was never afraid to have a girl over to my condo because it was always immaculate, even with my dog there.

But the funny thing is, my organization only goes so far as the exterior. Once something is in a box, or in a drawer, it can be as disorganized as it wants and I’m generally OK with it.

Out of sight…out of mind

If you were to walk through our house either at night after the kids go to bed, or after the kids go to school in the mornings, you would hardly know we have kids. CareerMom and I do our best to keep things picked up and hidden. We do such a good job compared to CareerMom’s siblings in fact, that my MIL is always remarking about how clean our house is.

Don’t get me wrong, we clean a lot, but the trick my friend, is in storage.

Let me show you some of our many storage areas:

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The Bombay Company cedar-lined toy(?) box 		Holidays and Birthdays 08-09 080
The really really tall, dark-wood entertainment center we bought in our old house…that really doesn’t work with a large flat-screen TV
Holidays and Birthdays 08-09 082

Living room bookcase on the left…

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…and…Living room bookcase on the right

Let it also be said that there MUST be at least one “tosser” in the marriage. And I use the word “tosser” in the American vernacular to mean, “Someone who throws things out,” as compared to the English tosser which generally means, “wanker.” And if you need further explanation as to the origins of the word “wanker,” well then, I’m just gonna send you here.

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Fatherhood

Hey, I ain’t runnin’ no ark over here!

image I’m a handy kind of guy. It’s not that I’m just sooo good with tools and all; more like, I’m just not afraid to try. And believe you me, I’ve screwed up enough stuff in my life that I have learned a bit about homebuilding humility and I know when to call in the experts versus trying to do it myself. Because home ownership is nothing, if it isn’t rife with constant projects that need your attention, I normally spend a good deal of my time at least walking through my basement, even if I’m not actually doing anything there.

As I’ve blogged about ad nauseum lately, I’ve been busy. I haven’t done much around the house. Plus, it’s winter. I mean, seriously…

But this weekend, what with the weather being perfect and all, I found myself with time on my hands to work on a couple of small projects (shelving in a closet) that afforded me the opportunity to spend time in my basement.

And that’s when I discovered that we have a little visitor.

Poop here. Poop there. Poop and torn insulation everywhere!

The little bugger–dare I say RAT-bastard–has apparently made himself quite at home this winter in my absence. I first found his spoor over in the corner after moving a tarp that was lying on the floor. I then tracked his movements around the wall and under the toxic waste dump plastic shelving where I keep all of my chemicals. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except he completely ignored the 20 things up there that would have killed him, and instead ripped into a 15lb bag of grass seed. He/it also apparently wallered in it like a Sumo wrestler at a Denny’s Breakfast buffet because it too was full of poo!

So now I’m off to the hardware store to try and find something yummy that will kill the thing so that I can, in a week or two, stumble upon his little dead body while tracking down some awful new stench in the house. Good times.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

Today is my son’s actual birthday, and I forgot to tell him Happy Birthday…

Romi’s comment prompted me to at least make a small effort to blog, so here goes.
BTW: Yes, the title is true. But in my defense, we had a family party last Sunday and he\’s having a dual-party with a bud of his next weekend, so cut me slack for forgetting that today is his actual birthday!!

Day 3: CareerMom comes home this evening sometime around dinner. Her flight lands around 4ish and then she has to trek all the way up through Atlanta to the burbs. So, figure around 5:30-6 p.m.

I looked around the house with a critical eye this morning and it was NOT pretty. Normally when she’s gone, I have time to work, take care of the boys AND clean, but this time around, the cleaning part fell victim to work that I had to do after putting the boys to bed. I had not swept. I had not vacuumed. I DID turn on the dishwasher and a load of clothes (no folding…), so yay me!

One thing I will say though, is now that the boys are 5 and 2 years old, it is WORLDS easier than it was when I had an actual baby to deal with, which is ultimately why I have been looking upon this pending baby in August with such dread. CareerMom’s job is not going to get any easier, nor will it involve less travel as long as she\’s with this company. So this time next year, I’ll be blogging about doing this all over again, except this time I\’ll have a 6-month old to deal with!

What’s a guy to do? My job is important too, but just because I don’t travel, then by proxy, it’s less important. It means that when she DOES travel, that extra hour or two I usually gain by not having to take the kids to daycare, or pick them up, when she’s here working from home, is now built into late night work while everyone else sleeps. I mean, even though my boss is a mom herself, and she understands what I’m dealing with, she’s also still my boss and my deadlines are her deadlines.

I’m sure CareerMom would balk at the mere suggestion that her career is more important than mine, but each time she goes out of town, leaving me to do my usual duties, plus hers…then we really see what’s #1 around here. Cuz, when I told her that this was a BAD week for her to be gone, I don’t remember her saying, “Really? OK, I’ll get out of it.”

I submit, clause 7 from a random Partnership agreement:

Management Duties and Restrictions
The partners shall have equal rights in the management of the partnership business, and each partner shall devote their entire time to the conduct of the business. Without the consent of the other partner neither partner shall on behalf of the partnership borrow or lend money, or make, deliver, or accept any commercial paper, or execute any mortgage, security agreement, bond, or lease, or purchase or contract to purchase, or sell or contract to sell any property for or of the partnership other than the type of property bought and sold in the regular course of its business.

Restated for Marriage
The partners shall have equal rights in the management of the partnership household business, and each partner shall devote their entire time to the conduct of the business. Without the consent of the other partner, neither partner shall on behalf of the partnership make decisions to increase the capital expenditures, increase the net assets (either human or inanimate), or dissolve third-party relationships with other partnerships. In the event that either partner stays absent from the partnership for a length of time that detrimentally affects the performance of the other partner, upon said partner\’s return, the partner who faithfully remained and carried out the duties of the partnership, shall have the option to immediately disregard any and all provinces within this partnership; thereby, freeing the partner to spend money flagrantly, drink heavily, and generally act in a manner that might normally be deemed inappropriate.

The sad truth though, is that upon her return, though she will immediately “set me free,” instead of going and doing something fun for myself, I’ll probably just sit down and do more work.

Yeah, I’m THAT behind.

*sigh*

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