That whisker

So I'm going through my yearly farce of trying to grow a beard. It's going pretty well. I set the bar above poor and below mediocre and have successfully achieved mediocre. So keep this in mind as I tell this story.

So Amanda and I were cleaning up the house yesterday before her parents showed up. We were in a jolly old mood teasing each other, so I asked her to light some candles.

"Hey, go light some candles."

"You go light some candles."

"It's your stinky kid that we're covering up."

"Nuuh-uh."

"Here, chop chop." As I had her the aim in flame.

Then she points it at me and says, "I'll light THAT whisker on fire."

It was pretty funny.

Browns win!!

Can you believe it, the Browns have won 3 in a row! I have no idea when the last time this happened. What a great way to end a sunday evening.

We had a pretty relaxing fun day. Went to church, where Xander continues to be a good baby and not cry. He does a little grunting and some whimpering, but nothing that isn't solved with a pacifier. I wonder how long this will last?

We got some coffee and a muffin and took our sunday drive around town trying to learn the area. Yup, we are a couple in our 20's with a kid and we take sunday drives after church. Just aimless drives with no destination and the only limit we put on it is to be home in around 30 minutes.

Organized a couple of closets under my CFO's supervision.

The in-laws showed up and we hung out and had some fun. A's dad and I puttered around the house with me and we connected the water to the fridge so now we have an ice and water dispenser that works, just in time for the winter season!

I keep looking at the clock and thinking I had better hurry up and get to bed since it's so dark outside now.

Forwards kill me

So I get this email forwarded to me today. It really frustrated me. Read it for yourself.
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How ironic is this??!! They don't even believe in Christ and they're getting their own Christmas stamp, but don't dream of posting the ten commandments on federal property?

REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of PanAm Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military barracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!
REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks!

Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday
season with a commemorative first class holiday postage stamp.

REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your stamps at the post office.

To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.

REMEMBER to pass this along to every patriotic AMERICAN you know

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Here are a few of my thoughts on it. Where did they get the idea that this is a Christmas stamp? It was released in September of this year.

All of the MUSLIM BOMBINGS. Muslims didn't commit the crimes, people committed the crimes. That reminds me of the homily from this past weekend (Luke 18:9-14). During Mass our priest concluded his homily to say that you should hate the sin, love the sinner. This email reminded me of that homily and I thought why not, hate the sin, love the sinner, respect the religion.

The USPS is doing the right thing.

We really bugs me about people and religion is the fact that people believe that their way is the only way. What do I say to that? Get over yourself!

I will not tolerate Muslim bashing for 1 second.

Practicing Christianity isn't a prerequisite to being a patriotic American.

I think I'll buy a book of these tomorrow. I'll see if they have any with menorahs on them and use those two stamp books for our Christmas cards.

compost

I just finished reading 'A Storm of Swords' by George Martin. It is a pretty good book, quite long too. It is full of good sword fights, which results in plenty of killing, scheming and deception are quite prevalent as well. It's a less flowery version of WoT (in my opinion) and the people don't have as so many magic powers and it is much more graphic. However, the downside to this book is that it is the 3 book in an unfinished series. And that is annoying....and now that RJ died and didn't finish WoT, I'm stuck reading another unfinished book series. Book 4 is written and book 5's release has been pushed back since 2006, so I'll hold off on book 4 and hope this author doesn't die before finishing the series.

The city we live in here doesn't have a free leaf pick up service. Where I grew up (and every other city I've lived in except for here), everyone raked their leaves to the curb and the city came by and picked them up. They do it here, but for a fee. They also offer to pick up bagged leaves, but that is for a fee as well because you have to buy approved bio-degradable bags. Both options are completely out of the question for me...I refuse to pay to get rid of leaves. It's free compost from God, so I'm not paying for it. Instead I built myself a nice compost pile. It also serves as a nice place to get rid of our rotten pumpkins that we carved for Halloween that were nasty and moldy 10 days ago. I was so happy to get that done and thought it was something cool to blog about but it just doesn't come out that way... :)

I signed up to help with RCIA at our church. I get matched up with an inquisitor tomorrow night. Hopefully I will be able to be a good example and a source of useful information for someone else's journey into faith. No pressure there. I shouldn't worry about it, whatever happens happens.

pretty fall colors and closer to the sun

So this weekend I was out and about. On sunday I was out in the sun for a good stretch of time and ended up getting sunburned on half of my face. I was wearing my sunglasses so I have the reverse raccoon look here in mid-October in Ohio. I look like Richard Dreyfuss from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. It's fading now, but monday I was teased alot at work. My boss couldn't even look at me and keep a straight face, which made it tough to have a meeting with him. Tuesday it was still there, just faded a bit. Also on tuesday one of my coworkers was teasing me and asked if I "was on another planet, or something, closer to the sun...on Mars or something?".

Yup, I was closer to the sun on the planet Mars. Mars is further away from the sun than Earth in case you forgot your My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas -- although Pizza is no longer a planet, but that's beside the point. The point is, somebody tried to tease me and it backfired. Ha! That's what that jarheaded Marine gets!


This is how our backyard looked when I came home today. Pretty nice, huh? The red leaves are really lit up because of the sunsetting on them which made for a great picture.

weekend wrapup..

Went back to visit the in-laws this weekend and it was a good time. It was the first trip to grandma's house for Xander. He seemed to like it well enough. Amanda and I only held him long enough to put him in his carrier, feed or change him and take him out of his carrier. The rest of the time everyone was fighting over holding him.

Just us boys went to church this morning. Amanda wasn't feeling well. I think that might have been our first boys only trip out.

I finished my compost pile today. Now the tree and bush trimmings are housed in a nice little box and don't take up the entire area between the shed and the fence. Lesson learned from this building experience: make sure your screws are long enough. Now I have to find a use for that compost.

yup, still here....

So what should I do this weekend?

Work at the office? Work at home? Work in the yard? Man, the days have been really packed lately. Never a boring day anymore.

Work has been quite busy lately. I've been made the system engineer on a project and I've never done that before. Boy there is a lot of paperwork to do. It's been tough learning how 'things' are done at our plant. It's going good though. I've only had 2 visits by the GM cheerfully reminding me of the deadlines next month. It's good. :)

I was thinking of painting our shed this weekend. Maybe I'll just leave it alone until next weekend. Or buy some paint this weekend and do that next weekend.

I've volunteered to be a sponsor for the RCIA group at our church. That should be interesting.

I gave blood last night through a blood drive sponsored by our church. Another benefit of lifting weights is that when I go to give blood, the phlebotomists love me because my veins are huge.

Amanda made a mean meatloaf yesterday and I think it's time for a snack!