30 is here

I'm 30.

Amanda made me a spice cake and it's good. Nope, not sharing.

...almost there...

I'm almost 30. I had some thoughts on this when I was out in California a couple of weeks ago. I wrote them down in my journal and wanted to share them here; however, my journal is ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS. So it's from memory.

Basically, I'm doing my best to quite that big whining voice in my head that says "oh crap I'm getting old". The way I see it, I'm in my prime. I'm on the peak. I'm on the crest of the wave. I'm going to ride this puppy for all it's worth. I've never surfed before, but the way I see it is I'm in the tunnel on my board. The wave is rising up behind me on my right, curved over my head and crashing into a mound of foam behind me on my left.

Whhhoooosh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CXiWfcsNco

Let me ride.

this continues to make me laugh

I love this picture.

back home

Finally, finally, finally back home. I'm so effing sick of traveling for work. These last 2 weeks I was in California and it was a real pain in the rear. There's two real things that ate at me the whole time I was gone 1) homesickness and 2) working around the house.

Item 1 is a lot of things. I've been out of town now for nearly 8 weeks this year and we aren't in the 2nd week of MAY yet! That's cool though, it pays the bills and my job is nice, but I like my wife a lot (Love, actually). I enjoy coming home to our house and chatting about my day.

Tack on top of that Xander is starting to be really, really cool. Apparently while I was gone on this last trip his vocabulary is suddenly turned a corner and is taking off. While I was away he threw a temper tantrum because there was a commercial during wheel of fortune (aaah, my son). Aaaand, I've gotten him to like eating chips and salsa. Right before I left we were having some chips and salsa and I was dipping the chip in the salsa for him (it was hot, so I just dipped it in there) and he loved it and demanded more. So while I was gone Amanda was feeding him tortilla chips and she would hand him a chip and then he would hand it back and say "baaaa!" (please). How awesome is that??!!

So the 2nd thing I missed out on is working around the house. I have 2 weekends to kill in Silicon valley and it really grates on my nerves that my honey-do list is just collecting dust. And really, why do I even call it a honey-do list? Amanda puts 1 thing on there for every 10 I put on there myself. I think I call it that so she can feel free to add projects on there, so it can be "our" list. But it's not. It's mine, it's all mine. I drive my wife nuts working around the house: wash the car, change the oil, weed the garden, weed the flower beds, plant this bush, paint that, put up this shelf, paint this room, put up a fan. AND I LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!

"Why don't you just relax?" she says. Because it's too damn much fun!

So there I am wandering around state parks of California (Mt. Diablo and Henry Coe --very nice by the way, had a great time) and I'm missing good, sunny, fun in the yard weekends here in Ohio. But I'm home now...lookout!

virtual stock exchange

I joined a virtual stock exchange league with some of my co-workers. I'm blown away by the results. We all started off with 100k and could make any trades we wanted. I bought some stocks based on what I have purchased in real life, others based on what some wisecracking online trader advised and the rest on just a hunch.

What is really killing me is that after 71 of the 90 days of the game is that I'm in 1st place with 136k. My nearest opponent is at 113k. I'm happy I'm doing well and want to do the same in real life, but I'm really afraid this is just a fluke. I really don't know what to make of this.

Want to baffle yourself? Sign up for a league of your own....
http://www.virtualstockexchange.com/Game/Homepage.aspx