Candy, Candy, Candy, Candy, and a really long line?

Wow.

It's been a few years, but I went with April and the boys again this year to Trick-or-Treat(ing) at the zoo. This is a yearly event held at Madison's FREE Henry Vilas Zoo. Support your local zoo, they are wonderful places. Of course, this time of year, most of the animals are away or inside, but we really weren't focused on the animals now were we?

The kids got a fair bit of candy, got to see a few animals, got some coupons to share with Mom & Dad, and even got to get scared or amused depending on the kid in question. Overall, I think they enjoyed it, but everyone got impatient at some point.

I'd like to say it was a wonderful experience and I'd recommend it to all, but it wasn't, and I wouldn't. It requires quite a lot of patience as you deal with endless lines and constant newcomers looking for their place in line.

In truth, it's got to be a huge undertaking to plan and I wouldn't want to be part of that team of people. I think they do their job as well as they can. In my opinion, there is something about the zoo that makes this event very difficult to manage. The zoo has not one, not two, but three different entrances and is more or less arranged in a meandering looping path. What this means, is that vendors giving out candy and treats set up shop along this loop, and there's no one place to start or finish. This of course means that after you've been waiting sometimes ten or more minutes in line patiently (or not) for the next booth, there's a good chance that a group of newcomers (I'm going to assume that nobody willingly went back for seconds) will push their way into the line in front of you, further increasing your wait for the next grab at candy. Of course this turnabout is fair play since when you got there, you had to do the same thing to get in line and start your run at the candy and treats right? This coupled with the fact that kids hot and tired and bored can be especially unpredictable so there was always some incident or another to slow things down even further. One more annoying bit, a tent/booth that looked much like all the others was situated on the route, and we couldn't figure out who the vendor was. They had no candy, just a kid holding a sign with bad grammar (I can't remember what it said) a guy making comments to all passers by, and another guy peeking out of a coffin standing up in the back of the tent. No candy, just a tease. ;)
After all is said and done though, we managed to make our way around the line in around 1.5 hours.

As I said though, mostly the kids had fun. At one point, I felt a bit like a heel as the boys excitedly went into a tent with a sign that read "Enter if you dare". I jokingly said they'd probably come out crying. About 5 seconds later, Ethan did. A largish man wearing a black cloak, bloody spikes on his shoulders, and a skeleton mask was popping out inside and grabbing anyone who got too near. Lesson learned though I hope. 1. Halloween is a time for scares, so expect them. 2. Think twice before entering a tent signed "Enter if you dare."

I think this event is a great opportunity for local vendors to get their names out there though. The ones who handed out coupons with their candy were the smart ones in my book. I can think of a few other local stores that would do well to have a presence there.

Incidentally, I should have mentioned before, we went to the zoo with Elena, her husband Jared, and boys, Drew and Noah. Tim (Elena's bother) and family were also along.

Through the maze in record time!

OK, record for us anyway. I think it took 45 minutes or so. Year 1 took nearly 2 hours, last year took 1 hour 15 minutes.

We went to Schuster's Playtime Farm today. April's friend Elena and her kids Drew and Noah came with. Overall it was lots of fun. We do this every year for the last three years now. They have an Awesome! corn maze, a playground for the kids, a petting zoo, snacks, a "corn" cannon, and more. It's a good way to spend several hours. This years maze even won a national corn maze contest.

For those of you not interested in working your way through a 45 minute or longer puzzle, there's a smaller maze available as well. Check it out!

You can check out photos of the day at the boys' blog here.

Kellen can read.

OK, well, he's 8. He's in second grade. He should be able to read, right?

I'm just proud of him. His school put him into an advanced reading group. You can read about it here on the boys' blog.

Mom and Dad both read a lot and love books. OK, maybe we don't do any deep reading or anything, but books are important and we're glad that he seems to be showing the same joy early on. :)

Our house is officially On the Market!

Check it out here!

Happy Birthday Ethan!

Ethan is 5 today. They grow up so fast.

We already had the big party, gathered about 20 of us at Chucky Cheese, blah. But he likes it right? ;) Tonight, we took him to Pizza Hut after we vetoed Chuck Cheese for a second time. He was pretty darn excited about his present from us. In truth, I think it's pretty cool as well.

Check it out.

The way kids think.

April related this one to me the other day.

On monday this week, as she's driving Ethan to preschool, he's flapping away as usual, talking about everything and nothing. Out of the blue, he points at a house and says, "I think Miss Leslie lives there." No explanation, no reasoning, just the quick thought that his preschool teacher lives at some random house.

Once they get to preschool, April relates this tale to Miss Leslie, who is also amused by it. Of course, being a teacher and wanting to share knowledge and such with her students, she corrects him and says, "I don't live there, I live in Janesville." Without missing a beat, Ethan responds surprised but confident, "You live in Crazy Town?"

At this point, everyone has a laugh over it, and Miss Leslie gives Ethan and April a confused and possibly concerned look. April explains all by telling another story. Our boys, being the kids that they are, can't live happily in the car unless they know at all times where we are going. What this means is, at various times, from when they are told we are going somewhere until we arrive, the question comes up, "Where are we going?" Most times, we tell them or remind them where we are going. Of course, sometimes we tell them more or less to shut up and stop asking. One a few occasions, April replies, "We're going crazy, wanna come?" One such time stuck. a few minutes after this particular interaction we arrived in Janesville. Ever since then, Janesville has been Crazy Town.

Ain't it great?

On a completely unrelated note, Wizkids announced yesterday a new release date for the Star Wars Pocketmodel expansion "Ground Assault". The release has been delayed, but there's an actual date now at least rather than simply october. November 14th is the new projected date.

Hooray for a new form of plastic-crack!

Laterz.

Moving sucks.

OK, in truth, I'm very eager to move, but it's been a long hard road so far. It's only been a month and a half since we truly decided that it was time to cut and run. We've been spending a good portion of our last 7 weekends packing and moving stuff to temporary storage. Reason being, the house needed to be far less cluttered to sell, and we're needing it anyway until we figure out just how much room we really can use at the new place.

That more or less poorly explained, this weekend was spent finishing up the process of at least clearning out the excess in prep for sale. Several trips to storage and many boxes and too much garbage moved and disposed of, and we have our pictures ready for the listing. It's remarkable how much the house echoes now that it's missing as much as it is.

Hooray, only two more weekends here! Nevermind the general upkeep still needed until it sells.

Night.

Checking in.

Life has been interesting. Things have been rough. Boo Hoo for me and us, right? ok, enough of that crap.

OK, in case anyone doesn't know. We're selling our house. The basic reason is because we can't afford it. We really haven't been able to afford it since we moved in, but we have kept trying cus we wanted to stay in a house. What can I say, an extra $4000 in heating/cooling the place wasn't in the budget.

We move to an apartment in November.

We'll have a lot of great things that are only a dream now, like a dishwasher, a garage we can park in, two bathrooms, one of them being a master bath, carpet (you wouldn't think that's a plus, but with the kids, carpet will be easier to maintain), lower heating bills, etc.

The truly sad part of all of this is that we aren't allowed to have pets where we are moving. We are looking for homes for the cats, and may be surrenduring them if we can't find one. That will be rough and we can only hope they get adopted. If you know someone who wants a cat or two, we have two eleven year old cats that need loving homes. The better part of this news, is Sid found a home on Friday. We believe he will be very happy with his new owner.

Besides all this, we're working to sell off or give away the extra furniture and things from our house since it won't all fit in an apartment.

Work is crazy as usual, nothing new there.

Maybe I'll check in again sooner than later. Maybe not ;)

I was supposed to do this regularly?

Who ever said that?

Oh..... me?

ok, well, things have not been condusive to reliable posting.

In the last month, work has been difficult just becuase of workload demands. It's tough to be at home and pay attention to anything when your mind is still at work. :(

My laptop at work died. I'm currently writing this from the one I just recieved yesterday at the office.

I simply haven't felt like making the effort.



OK... News to report:
I got a promotion at work. Congratulations to me, I now make less money per hour. YAY! I hope that gets better, but so far, more extra hours than extra money ;) Either way, it's a good thing. My official title is "Manager of Delivery Service". Personally, I think it should be something like "Manager of Service & Delivery" which makes more sense to me... but whatever, I've found myself after these years being in charge again of someone other than myself. Let's hope I don't screw it up or get burned out too quickly eh?

We're car hunting for April. We need a new car for April, and as a request during my promotion, my boss is fronting the money for April to get a car. Nothing fancy, 4 wheels and a seat is all, but something that she can get out of the house with and even take all the kids with if need be. The hunt goes on. We tried to drive out to Albany this morning, but we made the mistake of taking all back roads. After one stop for Ethan to be sick, and two more for Kellen, we decided it wasn't fated to be. Other cars call, we'll see if we answer. ;)

Tomorrow's Mother's Day. I always feel like I fail on this day. Nothing ever feels like enough whether it's a card or flowers, or dinner or whatever. That's just me though, I get wierd like that. It's all so "done" that I feel like I'm not doing anything special, but I also feel like I can't just do nothing cus that's not really very cool either. "Rock. Hard-Place. Hi, my name is Jared. Why are you so close right now?"

Beyond that, like I said, I have a laptop again. I'm using it now. Yay. It's not a bad little machine once I disabled all the crap that loads automagically each time it boots. A computer should not take 15 minutes to boot when it's brand new. It just seems wrong, don't you? Like I said, not a bad little machine, but Lenovo commits a few sins with their new systems. First, like all of them, they bundle Norton. This would be unforgivable, but everyone does it, so it's just simply stupid. In addition to this though, they bundled all sorts of Corel software. Not that corel software is necessarily bad, but when you install it, it loads all sorts of programs that run in memory just waiting with controlled anticipation for you do do something with them. Great, right? No. Since I will use Corel rarely, it just makes the computer slower. Bye Corel. And now the end. Laptops these days all seem to come with handy utilities to help you when you run into a problem. Specially branded help programs, that you need a manual just to use, and pretty little graphics that display on the screen every time you use a special function just to let you know you've done it. All very nice and pretty. Each one taking up it's own space inside the system's memory. I went from having 17 different notification and status icons in my taskbar to 5. The system is much happier with me and me with it. YAY!

OK, enough computer time. I'm going outside now. Have a good day.

And a week goes by

It's been a stressful week, so I haven't felt much like posting here, but I decided to come back here and check in again anyway.

A few things are going on at the moment, some of which I'm just not going to go into. But here's some of it:

1. I'm watching Clerks II at the moment. It started slow, but it quickly got to the goodness that Kevin Smith movies are. It's irreverent, crude, and completely hilarious.
2. I'm having to take breaks from Clerks II now and again so I can go into the basement and strip paint off the woodwork that's been sitting there for over a year now. It's time we got the bathroom looking ok again.
3. It's snowing crazy right now, for the second day in a row. Last night, 4 inches or so fell out of the sky, now it looks like it may be worse tonite. At least I have a snowblower. I live on a corner so have two sidewalks to clear, and on top of that, the corner we're on happens to be a very busy crossing corner weekdays as we're within site of two elementary schools.

And now, we'll take a break from our regularly scheduled program, to talk about the disturbing part of Clerks II I'm watching. There's a man "Kinky Kelly" having a little too much fun with a donkey. You need to see it to believe it I think.

And back to the post.

4. Kellen has a cub-scout meeting tomorrow night.
5. We have a house to clean.
6. At work, there's a shakeup. One of the guys that I've been working with for the past two yours plus has decided to leave and take his clients with him. I think it'll be good for him, it may even be good for the company, but it's a bummer, and will likely also mean that my workload gets huge for a bit.


OK, this is a weak post, but I've got a lot going on and am having trouble concentrating on any one thing. So with that, I'll leave you with two things:

Ooh, Cake!
and
Man, I miss my Donkey!

TGIF?

I'm really tired. Bed time yet?

Got my first call for work today at 7:15am. Got the client back up and running as of 12:30pm. Heck of a way to spend half a day. Best part, that 5 hour fix was a bandaid to get them through the weekend until it can be done right. Aren't computers great?

Anyway, not feeling like typing. I want to go to bed. Night.

Its Thursday, right?

Not much going on today. I got my new cellphone for work. Not new really, just a replacement just like the old one. It's nice to have a phone again that doesn't suck.

April's almost done with the Mudroom project. It's cool, and scary. It will be fun if it turns out right, though we could be shooting our resale a bit ;) Ahh well, it's a conversation piece.

Tonite was a good TV night. I watch WAY too much of it, but there are several shows I'm enjoying lately. House, CSI, CSI New York, My Name is Earl, Rules of Engagement, Gray's Anatomy, and Numbers. April doesn't care for the suspense, but the storylines for Grays and for CSI (Tonites shows) are really interesting right now. Leaving you wanting more and teasing badly. For once, I think there's actually some good TV on these days. Yes, it's all generally worthless, but it's entertaining and allows me to stop thinking for a bit ;)

And on that note, time to stop thinking. Night.

Happy VD

Or Valentines Day if you prefer.

What can I say, I like Valentines Day, but at the same time, I don't. I love my wife everyday, do I need a special day to celebrate it? It seems more genuine to celebrate it spontaneously, doesn't it? Also, I hate giving out flowers. Flowers die. Of course, before they die, they wither and wilt and generally look miserable. I think flowers can be construed in more insulting ways than in complementary ways. But that's just me. I like to give out a card and a Teddy Bear. Also, a big part of me wants to give out a box of chocolates, but I worry it's not the right idea. I don't know...

Either way, it's over. This year, I got April a fun card and a little stuffed tiger holding a heart. She seemed happy, that's all I can really ask, right?

Hope everyone else's day was a good one :)

I hate cell phones

I used to like the idea. That was before mine became a leash. Once I was required to have one for work, the idea wasn't so grand any longer. Now, my cell phone is not working well. It won't hold a charge and has a tendency to shut off at odd times. It's unreliable. I hate it, but I need a new one. Work was miserable today, must've spent half the day dealing with my broken cell phone or trying to get it replaced.

Ahh well, new one arrives Thursday.

Here's some fun for your day. It may amuse you, it may disturb you. Honestly, I don't care which, as either way, it's memorable ;) Enjoy.

Also, caught this link on a friend's journal.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain am I?" quiz...

What can I say, I'm a dork ;)

And the fun never ends

A new week begins.

Was an ok weekend. Sid went to the Vet on Saturday. He's not overweight like we thought he might be, he's dead on. He's a 130 pount oaf. Check him out here. He's a good boy though. Among other things, he had to have blood taken for a test, and when the vet crouched down and began to put his hand out to grab Sid's leg, Sid picked up his paw and handed it to him. It was pretty cool. Even the Vet got a kick out of it.

Sunday was a bit of a cleaning day. Put away laundry, gather dirty laundry and bring it to the basement, clean up trash, that kind of thing. Just general housekeeping. Thrilling, I know ;) We also did a bit of shopping Sunday, but that was also boring. Isn't this fun, we get to talk about all the boring stuff I do ;)

Today, I woke to a couple inches of snow. Had to quick get out and clear the sidewalks. Technically, we have 24 hours to clear the snow after a snowfall and it was still falling when I was clearning, but with two schools within sight of our house and a very busy crossing guard right out front, it's important to me to keep the sidewalks as clean as I can when kids are getting dropped off. The snowblower makes the job easier of course :)

Work was work, lots of driving so I got to finish Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets today. Finished it out on a quick run to Janesville with the family. Kellen was dissapointed when it was over. The copy I'm listening to is on tape so more difficult to listen to in the house. We've reserved the CD copies from the Library and will get him listening to those as we are able. I'm thinking we'll have to make sure we have a book available for the next long car trip, it should make things go quite nicely.

And that's enough for now. :) More snow predicted tonite, so I need to be ready to clear tomorrow again.

What's next? Chili cheese fries?

No, probably not. Actually, they sound disgusting, don't they?

Yesterday, I mentioned that I'd be talking about some of my diversions so here we go:

1. Web Sites
- Little Savages - This is a stupid little game that April and I both play. Check it out. The essence of it is, you control a group of imaginary people. Any by control, I mean you look at them now and again, and do what you can to sort of steer them in a direction that you might want them to go. There's very little real control, but there is a high score list that allows for bragging rights among the other players. At least at the moment, I'm number 10 out of several hundred. This is not bound to last. ;)
- Travian - This is a city based strategy war game. Build cities, improve cities, build troops, conquer other villages, win the game. Or in all likelihood, loose. But it's still fun.
- Marapets - This is like Neopets. If you haven't played neopets, it's a game where you take care of virtual "pets". Play games to earn virtual money with which to take care of your virtual pets. It's pretty much a game teenage girls play, but it's a fun diversion anyway. April plays this one as well, and in fact, she's the main reason I play at all.
- Kingdom of Loathing - This is an irreverent game that pretty much pokes fun at everything you could imagine. It revolves around drinking booze, over-eating, and poking fun at other players. Gets boring after a while, but what game doesn't?
- The Dictionary - OK, it's not a diversion. But as I'm typing here, I've had to use it several times to check my spelling here. Yes, there's a spellchecker here, but I didn't realize that right away so be quiet.

2. Books
- Today, I'm listening to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on tape. I've already read all of the published books in the series, but I'm re-listening in preparation for the new book coming out in July. Books on tape is a great way to go for me because of the amount of time I spend in the car.
- I just recently finished Undaunted Courage by Stephen E Ambrose (A Wisconsin Author), a book based on the journals of Meriwether Lewis, of the famed Lewis & Clark. It was very interesting. I had no idea that Lewis committed suicide, among other things that I learned.
I'm also listening to a bit of Robert A. Heinlein these days. He was a good Sci-Fi author. I listened to Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers. Starship troopers was much better than the embarrassing movie of the same title loosely based on the book. I recommend any sci-fi fan take the time to read it. I also have The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to listen to as soon as I finish a couple more titles.
- I'm sorry to say, I've done very little in the way of printed books lately. I read half of the last Dune Novel, half of Contact by Carl Sagan, and a few others in the past few months. I need to get better about this, but time hasn't been there. Before Christmas, I did read a group of youth novels. I really enjoyed the Artemis Fowl series, and also choked through Ink Heart and Inkspell, good books, but not quick reads.

Hmm, that's a lot of typing. Is anyone else bored yet? I need something to write later on so I'll stop here.

Night.

Somewhere to start

So here it is. Yet another attempt at a public journal or blog or whatever they're called these days. Will I actually keep up with this one? Only time will tell.

I'm trying again for a few reasons. I have at least one friend who adds a regular entry over at www.livejournal.com. I'm also tickled that April (My wife, for those of you who don't know me, though I can't imagine why you're reading this if you don't), has setup and maintains a photo-journal of Kellen and Ethan (Again, why are you here if you don't know these are my boys?). Check it out here: http://kellenandethan.blogspot.com. It's one of the simple joys of my day when I visit. I get to see first hand some of the things I miss while being at work. You know the drill, a picture tells 1000 words and all that. Yes, yes, I could just make an effort to look through the years worth of pictures that we have stacked away either in print or digitally, but the sad fact is, I won't. It's not convenient enough. Sad, and pathetic, yes, but it doesn't make it any less true. But I digress..... It all boils down to my own inspiration for this sort of thing. As I said before, lets see if I do anything with it.

That said, I'm all out of words and April is now making fun of me for my efforts :) One of the many reasons I love her....

See you another day. Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about some of my other silly diversions.