Monday, December 8, 2008

Happy Birthday Joshua

My youngest son turned eight yesterday. We got him a Wii game and a Nintendo DS game, and have a game figurine on the way as his last gift.


Then we all went to our favorite local restaurant, Casa Mia. The boys shared a large cheese pizza, and the rest of us enjoyed various pasta and other dishes.
Here he is doing a "rock album cover" pose. He's normally pretty happy-go-lucky, the expression probably reflects the fact that he cannot figure out why dad is making him do this weird pose.


Happy Birthday, Joshua!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Rolling Home To You

Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you
Old man, take a look at my life
Twenty-four and I'm so much more
Live alone in a paradise, makes me think of two
Love lost at such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed, rolling home to you

Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true

Lullabies, look in your eyes
Run around the same old town
Doesn't mean that much to me, mean that much to you
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last, rolling home to you

Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true
Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you


Word, yo.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Some Halloween Costume Ideas

I think I'm gonna go for the Goth look this year. Like this guy, and bonus points for being a wigger and throwing down some gangsta signs!

I only hope this WAS a Halloween costume. If this guy seriously thought he was being badass, Lord help us all.



I think this chick had an accident with a stapler, and then figured she might as well accentuate it. She looks far too pissed-off to be joking.





Next, Insane Clown Posse boy is bad enough, but what the F*** does he have on that leash? This hearkens back to the first picture - please tell me these kids are joking. If they are not, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT let them breed.


Finally, words fail me. So I shall sign off this special Halloween edition issue of I Should Have Taken The Blue Pill with this last image.



HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Enough Serious Posts For One Day

I am tired, and don't feel like typing much out.

So, let's get silly!


I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I DRINK IT ALL UP!







IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET! YES IT DOES, PRECIOUS! OR IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!



Yes, I am feeling VERY weird today.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

New Levels of Spam

I got an email this morning - it actually looked like it was on the level at first. It was from someone claiming to be a webmaster who wanted me to write a review of his website and post it here. In return I would receive compensation or a free sample of his merchandise.

Wow, I thought, money's tight right now, I could use some. And getting paid to write - well, that's a dream job of mine. So I head off to his website, excited to see what it was I would be reviewing.

It was one of those "enlarge your penis" sites. Or enhance your penis. Or some shit like that. It basically involved putting a ring on your.....well, you know. And magnets were involved somehow.

Sigh.

So needless to say I will not be reviewing the penis enhancement site, other than to say it was poorly constructed and horribly laid out. But since I'm not giving out the name of the site, my comments mean nothing anyway.

Just take my word for it, it was lame. And I was very disappointed that I was duped into even clicking the link to this site.

The spammers get more clever every day.

Monday, September 15, 2008

A Really Deep Topic Today

Well, I could discuss the devastation from Hurricane Ike, or the market troubles this morning, or the turmoil my personal life seems to want to permanently become.

Nah. Let's talk about something a little less stressful. Or maybe more stressful. I guess it depends on your point of view.

We in the Seattle area have been living under a huge black cloud lately. No, I'm not talking about the weather, although we have days like that too.

I'm talking about.......our local sports teams.

We are like a city cursed. If I believe such a Deity existed, I would be sending up my burnt offerings right now to the God Of Sports Success. Because if such a Deity did exist, He/She/It would most certainly be PISSED at Seattle.

Quite simply, the fans of the local teams have had very very little to celebrate in many years. Where to start.....?

How about the Mariners, our baseball team? We are about to become one of the biggest jokes in baseball history - the first team ever to have a $100 million plus payroll and lose 100 games. They play 162 in a season, so to lose 100 you can only win 62 at the most. 62-100 is not any one's idea of success. And they could win less than that even.

They have had a few decent years. 1995 sticks in the mind of any true fan - they came from behind to make the playoffs, then won a thrilling series against the New York Yankees. Sadly, that seemed to use up what magic they had that year, as an exhausted M's squad then lost to Cleveland in the next round.

In 2001 they tied a record for most wins EVER in the regular season, only to get knocked out of the playoffs by the New York Yankees. Paybacks are a bitch. They have never even played in the World Series, much less won it.

Since then they have gone down hill dramatically. This will be their seventh straight season of not making the playoffs, and next year doesn't look too promising either.

Then there is the Seahawks. When Mike Holmgren took over as head coach almost 10 years ago, I felt certain he would guide us to a championship - especially if you'd have told me then that he would be here for 10 seasons.

Well, he did get us to the Promised Land once - we went to the Super Bowl back in 2005. Sadly, because of some poor play and a few questionable penalties, we lost that game. It was our first visit to the Super Bowl, and we have never been back since. Now this year they are plagued with injuries, and have lost their first two games, including one they were heavily favored to win.

The last men's professional championship this town ever saw was in 1979 when the Seattle Supersonics won it all, and induced pandemonium in this city.

Flash forward to 2008 and they don't even play in this city anymore, since a robber baron named Clay Bennett bought them and moved them halfway across the country. This one hurts way too much still, so I'll leave it at that.

The Seattle Storm did win a women's basketball championship a few years back, but sadly for them they still struggle for recognition in a pro sports world dominated by the men's sports. They have a decent team this year, but another championship seems unlikely since their star player is injured.

Even our college teams suck. I have been a Washington Huskies fan for as long as I can remember, and they are on their 4th or 5th lousy losing season in a row. It's about to cost their head coach his job. To be fair to them, they did TIE for the championship back in 1991 - this was before they had a system to allow the top two teams to play each other. Their basketball team has alternated between awful and decent, but since the glamour recruits never want to seem to come to Seattle it seems unlikely a championship will ever come from them.

And don't even get me started on the Washington State Cougars. I can sort of grudgingly root for them IF they aren't playing the Huskies, but their football team could be even worse then ours and if the glamour basketball recruits don't want to come to Seattle they sure as HELL don't want to play in tiny farming/college town Pullman.

I'm 42 years old. I've seen one major championship in my lifetime, plus a tie and one from a team nobody seems to care about. It feels unlikely I will ever see another at this point, even if I live another 42 years.

What sort of burnt offering does The Deity Of Sports Championships prefer?

Friday, September 12, 2008

9/11 Rememberance on 9/12

I remember that 9/11/2001 in the Puget Sound area was warm, sunny and gorgeous, much like it was in Manhattan that day.

I woke up, took my shower, got dressed, had a bite to eat and some coffee, then headed to work. I had about a 5-10 minute commute at the time. During all this I had not switched a radio or TV on. So I arrived at work with no clue as to what had occurred. Being on the west coast, all of the major events had already transpired.

So I walk into work, and I see co-workers gathered around a radio crying. I asked what was wrong, and they started saying something about how planes had crashed and towers had fallen and frankly not one bit of it made any sense to me, it was all too overwhelming.

For the first and only time since it became so huge in our lives, the Internet did not help much that day, at least at first. I remember all the news sites being overwhelmed and loading extremely slowly if they loaded at all.

So I went to the message boards that I have always liked to visit, and slowly pieced together the news from there, plus I listened on small transistor radios with my co-workers. It all seemed like a dream or an epic end of the world dramatization.

I had to attend a big sales meeting that day in our other office, and we still held the meeting, but nothing remotely like sales was discussed. Instead we spent much of our time around a television set in our client lounge watching a TV.

On the drive back to my office I stopped at a 7-11 and bought a small American flag from a middle eastern gentlemen who looked as shaken as everyone else and put it on my car. I am not normally given to overt displays like that, but that day it seemed right.

When I got home that evening I didn't know what to do other than carry on as usual - I made dinner for my family and then took my kids to the pool.

We lived near Sea-Tac airport at that time, and the silence of no planes flying was noticeable that night. When we had first moved in the jet noise was a little annoying, but we felt hope again the first time we heard it again post 9/11.

It sounded like the world was righting itself again, at least a little.

Seven years and a day later it seems like some weird fever dream, but it must still seem like a nightmare to those who lost loved ones and those that were there and survived when others did not.

My prayers are with them.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Freedom!

I feel like I am channeling William Wallace, I am standing on a hill, screaming "Freedom" and waving my fanny at my foes.

OK, not really. That's just the fatigue talking. I need to go to bed early tonight.

Today is the last day of summer freedom for the wonderful, smart, funny, talented Hoerler children. I am hoping they are making the most of it. It's sunny outside, and I can only imagine them running around the yard or walking to the park.

My oldest, Vivian, is starting Junior High tomorrow, and frankly she seems pretty on-edge about it. I have tried to assure her that, despite my own horror stories of my time in Junior High, she should be fine. Besides, it would be almost impossible to have a time as bad as I did. Vivian is far more self-assured than I ever was at that age, I'm not worried about her.

Corwin is going into 5th grade. This may be an interesting year for him, he'll no longer have the shadow of an older sibling in the same school over him. He's a bright kid, and of my three probably reminds me most of myself at that age, except for he is more physically gifted than I ever was.

And our baby, the youngest, Joshua is going into 2nd grade. He's also very bright, charming, and seems to be a buddy to pretty much everyone.

It's always vastly entertaining and educational to watch these three diverse personalities grow and develop. Each has their own style and strengths. I love each and every one of them so much it feels like it hurts sometimes.

Here's to a good school year!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Am I A Bad American?

I ask that question because I just cannot bring myself to care about the Olympics much. Sure, it's nice that Michael Phelps will win yet another huge pile of medals, probably even breaking a record for most gold medals in a single year. He'll be able to pave his entire driveway of his mansion with the medals he'll have won before he retires.

But I just......don't care. There are a lot of events I know next to nothing about, and maybe I'm boorish for saying so, but I don't really want to learn about them.

Two man synchronized skeet shooting? Nice. Whatever.

And any event that does not have a "set in stone"method of determining the winner is not a sport in my book. Swimming? First guy to the wall wins. Easy. That's a sport.

But anything that requires a bunch of judges I tend to look askew at. I'm sorry, I know this will offend some people, but that includes gymnastics. The people doing this are very athletic, and wonderfully skilled, but a good performance can be ruined on the whim of a cranky or biased judge. Again, this is not a knock on the gymnasts themselves. I couldn't do one single thing that they do, I would no doubt splatter myself all over the pommel horse and require it to be removed surgically from my face.

And I'm OK with that.

Maybe they could make it so the gymnasts had to shoot at targets while they did their routines. Yeah, now that would be interesting. "Kerry Strug did an amazing dismount, and blasted 4 out of 5 clay targets with her Remington 12 gauge pump-action shotgun! OUTSTANDING! That should win her the gold!"

But I have not watched a single moment of Olympics on TV, save for glancing at it when passing through the room while at a party at my in-laws.

And let's talk basketball for a moment. America sends multi-million dollar best-on-the-planet players. They are usually huge favorites to win. How can you root for that? OK, maybe a few countries are getting good besides us, but if the US team lost to a bunch of Maori tribesmen representing the New Zealand team, how could you not think that was the greatest freaking thing in Olympic history? I love a good underdog story.

And it's in China, a country whose government I can't say I care for. They still put Christians in jail. It wasn't that long ago they ran over college students with tanks. OK, no country is perfect (hello Abu Graib!), but as far as oppressive governments go ours still has quite a ways to go to match theirs.

And don't even get me started on women's beach volleyball. That's just an excuse for extraordinarily toned young women in very skimpy outfits a chance to leap around. It's become one of the most popular events at the Olympics, proving sex still sells.

Now excuse me, I need to get back to my beach volley.....er, work.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Today, A Lighter Topic

Let's make some funny pictures, eh? There is a website out there where you can make parodies of thos motivational posters that were big a few years back.


So, you could for example, take a picture like this:



And make it into something funny like this:




Yes, you too can harness the awesome power of the internet.

This may be the lowest content post I have made yet. Have a great weekend everyone!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Wall-E

It's time for a movie review. Go see Wall-E. Go see it now.

I was literally blown away. The visuals were stunning. First with a post-apocalyptic earth, then with the space scenes. Just....wow.

The story was simple, yet moving. I was in tears, and at the end I was literally rendered speechless for several minutes as I tried to process the movie.

Pixar has not done a bad movie yet, I enjoyed each and every one of them, but this is the first one to move me so. It's their crown jewel.

Now, not everyone may agree - Mrs. Hoerler liked it, but placed it more in the middle of the pack of the Pixar stable. But I freaking loved it, I will buy the DVD the very same day it comes out. Hell, I might have to see it in the theater again.

This will be a slam dunk for a Best Animated Feature nomination, and deserves to win.

But I am going to go one huge step further and say I think it should be nominated for Best Picture, period. It's a rated G animated movie that achieves so much more than most any other movie out there.

You don't need to have kids for an excuse to see Wall-E. Just go see it.

Well, I hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July. We went to Ma Hoerler's and food was grilled. The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxing, I got my laptop, and I have already started my writing.

Monday, June 16, 2008

My weekend

Today is going to be one of those "low content" entries, I just don't have a lot to say.

I had a very nice Father's Day with my kids. We went fishing at Bradley Lake, but the park was packed and the fish were not biting, so we cheated a bit and went to the trout farm out by Orting. The kids each caught two, then dad went to the "monster pond".

The monster pond had some huge trout in it, some up to two feet long. I tied a small silver lure onto my ultra-light trout rod, set the drag on light, and after 8 or 10 casts I hooked into a big one. It was cool letting him run around the pond for about 10 minutes before finally being netted.

Then we went home and had a bonfire. While that was going we grilled the fish I caught and some steaks. Yum.

All in all a good day, and sunny to boot.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Graduation

Congratulations to two wonderful graduates I am honored to know personally.

The first is my cousin Darrah. She's smart and funny, and reminds me of what I should have been at that age. She's heading off to college in the fall, and I suspect she will excel there as well.

The second is my friend Kathy. She's smart and funny too, and reminds me of what I would like to do with my life at my current age. She went out on a limb and reinvented herself professionally, and took care of her friends and family while doing it.

So here's a big tip of the blog cap to both of you wonderful women.

Monday, May 19, 2008

A Piece Of My Past, Chapter #4 of 4

About two days after her death.....I am trying to prepare for the funeral. How does one prepare in the face of such a tempest in one's life? I honestly don't remember.

I do remember driving to get my hair cut. I had shoulder blade length hair, and had somehow decided in my grief I wanted it gone. I was driving my little Toyota to the place where the deed was to be done.

Powerful grief can be like powerful drink, and I should not have been on the road that day. I remember driving along, and suddenly being overwhelmed by wave upon wave of utter, anguishing sorrow. My head dropped, I could not focus, and the tears came yet again.

Suddenly, a voice shouted out in the car. It said to me "Look out, dear!" I lifted my head and saw that I was on the shoulder and headed for a fence. I corrected my course, and made the journey without further incident.

The odd thing was that this voice was my own. Even odder was that I have never once in my entire life referred to myself as "dear", either before or after that moment, save that one time. I also had no clue that I was in danger of crashing.

Believe what you will, but I believe I was visited that day. Some have theorized when a departed soul visits a living loved one, it can actually cause the living person to feel fresh grief, hence my loss of ability to focus. And I believe my visitor realized what was happening and saved me the only way she could, by speaking through me.

Flash forward a few months. It is an early spring day, and it is starting to warm a little, the sun is shining and the promise of life is abundant. I am at the mausoleum though, and all I can see is death.

She is there, what little remains of her. I had walked through the door, noting it was propped open to let in the spring air, and made my way to her urn. After a little prayer I felt the now horribly familiar claws of grief take hold of me yet again. I sat on a nearby couch, collapsed really, and sobbed.

Now it's important to know that Gretchen had a love of small, cute furry animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian at some point, but had been stymied by the medications that slowed her mind.

As I sat on this couch, a small grey squirrel entered through the open door, ran across probably 20 yards of carpet, and hopped up onto the couch on the opposite arm. It sat there and looked at me with inscrutable eyes for maybe 10 seconds, then hopped back off the couch and scampered back outside.

I've dreamed of her many times since, and I believe we are visited in our dreams, but to me these were the last two messages in the waking realm from a departed soul.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

A piece of my past, chapter #3 of 4

When our front door opened, you looked down a hall into our bathroom. She was there, lying on the floor by the toilet.. It looked as if she had been sitting on it when she had a seizure. She had slumped forward, still not wearing anything, and landed headfirst on the tile, her knees still drawn up so that it looked almost like she had knelt down then placed her face on the floor rather than fall to it.

Time stretches out at this point, a ten foot hallway becomes a half-mile, then a thousand. I reach her, I think I had been calling her name. I don’t even have to turn her over or take a pulse. I put my hand on her back, and she’s terribly, horribly cold.

I can still feel it now, years later. I cannot bear to turn her over, perhaps this is a mercy at this point. The scene has haunted me to this very day, and seeing her dead eyes may have pushed me past any point of ever returning.

The air seems filled with a molasses fog, and I am struggling to breathe in it. I move in a drug-like daze to the phone, pick it up, and dial nine one one. I cannot recall what I told the person who answered, but I was still remarkably calm. Calm because this had to be some sort of nightmare, and nightmares always end with waking up and putting one’s arm around the warm, soft form of one’s sleeping spouse. The nightmare is the cold, unmoving form in the bathroom, the one that I cannot believe in.

I remember going to the window to watch for the aid units, and laying my face against the window. With a nasty start, I realized it was cold too. In fact, all warmth seemed to have been drained from the world.

I moved to the couch, and slumped down in my state of stunned disbelief. Next was a knock at the door, and a voice calling out. I answered weakly, and a cop walked into my living room, while his partner confronted my nightmare in the bathroom. I remember some basic questions, and the arrival of more people, including an ambulance with medics. I remember very little of this, except I know I gave them my mom and step-dad’s phone number. The cop called, and merely said “something bad has happened, you need to get over here right away.”

They lived very close, but time had lost all meaning to me at that point, all I know is that my mom’s tear streaked face loomed into view sometime after the call. Strangely, I had not shed much in the way of tears yet. This was, after all, a nightmare and oh please it should soon be over.

Finally, the cops and a medic sat down with me at the dining room table. They explained what would happen next, but they were speaking some strange dialect to me. Then one of the cops brought it all home. He held out his hand, and placed into mine two rings. One was Gretchen’s wedding ring, and the other a decorative ring she wore on the other hand. This was a touch of realism I didn’t usually find in my nightmares, and this is what finally cut through the haze and hammered home to me that this was real.

Putting those small personal effects of the woman I loved in my hand was like a hard slap. Gretchen was dead. It was then that the furious thunderstorm of grief began.

A piece of my past, chapter #2 of 4

I awoke the next day with the anticipated hangover, tired and out of sorts. A shower and hot, black, strong coffee helped a little. Gretchen was between jobs at the time, and was still sleeping. I dressed and made ready to leave. I kissed her and told her I loved her, and she repeated the same back to me. As I was getting my coat and heading out the front door, she called it out again. Being tired and out of sorts, I called back “I know” in a half-cranky/half-sleepy way.

Through the years that have passed since then, I have regretted those two words more times than I could ever count. I think she knew something was coming. I wish I had known, or at least responded better.

I showed up at work, on time as usual. I have always been anal to the Nth degree about being on time to anything I needed to go to, and even hangovers did not stop that. Karen came in shortly after me, and we both gave each other a sickly grin and a sympathetic moan of the post alcohol blues. It was just another rat-race day in the rat-race work world.

I was a production coordinator at a company that manufactured software packages for retail sale or shipment to end users. I basically took the written orders from the sales staff and translated them into work tickets for the work crew, and then fitted the job into the production schedule. It was not my dream job, but it paid the mortgage for the little condo we lived in.

On my lunch break, it was my habit to call Gretchen, to see how she was doing and share the thrills of my work day. I picked up and dialed our number, and listened to our home phone burr the customary four times before our answering machine picked up. I left a message, figuring she was in the shower or still asleep or something. Or something. I tried again a little later, and the machine picked up again. Odd. I waited maybe thirty minutes and tried a third time - no answer. I got a strange little feeling in the pit of my stomach. I told myself to stop being silly, everything was fine. Gretchen had been doing occasional on-call fill-in work at a local daycare, they must have called her in after I left that morning. It had happened several times before. But something whispered in my mind, a quiet and as yet unintelligible whisper that still filled me with dread.

As the afternoon wore on, and a couple more phone calls went unanswered, the whisper grew into a nameless fear. Something was wrong. Our company had parties once a month for all the people who had birthdays in that month. I normally love the attention, but for some reason I wanted to do nothing but hide in the back of the room that day, even though my birthday was one of the ones for that month. The company president called off the names of the birthdays for January, and when he got to mine I sort of waved and smiled weakly, then hunched down into my sweatshirt and tried to disappear. After I had put in my obligatory appearance, I scrambled back to our office downstairs and tried one more phone call – still no answer.

It was almost quitting time now, and I rode out those last moments in a quiet dread. Finally it was time to go, and I threaded my way home through the afternoon traffic, all the while listening to the whisper turn to a roar – SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.

I pulled into our carport, got out of my car, and started up the steps to our front door. It hit me then. What I had felt at work was like being on a beach, and little waves washing at my toes, then my ankles. This was like a sudden wave, dark and cold and huge, and overwhelming after the small ones. I knew with certainty that something was dreadfully wrong. I went to the front door, inserted my key, turned the deadbolt, and opened the door.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A piece of my past, chapter #1 of 4

I wrote this a few years ago, it's way too long to post the whole thing in one piece on a blog, so I'm going to post it in chapters on days like today when I can think of nothing pressing to write about.

So here is the first installment:

It’s my last dart for this round. I looked down my arm, over the flights of the dart. Lean forward, envision your target. Triple twentys now. That’s it. Aim, exhale, release. Damn. I hit a single one instead. I sit back down and drink some beer.

Karen and Tony have been our friends for a while now. She is tall, willowy, and very Nordic. She is wearing her customary tight fitting peg leg jeans and loose, baggy sweatshirt. It’s as if she wants to only show off her figure from the waist down. She’s actually my boss, and a pretty cool one. I’m going to have a hangover at work tomorrow, but she will too. Our collective misery will enjoy the company.

Karen is married to Tony. Tony has a glorious blond mullet, and a muscular build. He could be a rock star, but instead he works for a local city, maintaining storm drains. He’s a good guy, quick to laugh.

Gretchen is not too tall, a little heavy built. She has long blond hair and a warm, genuine smile. She’s pretty in a “girl-next-door” sort of way. Her speech and mannerisms make some people think she is a little slow upstairs, but if you take the time to get to know her you realize she is actually reasonably bright. I know her well, we’ve been married for a year and a half.

She’s actually just legally stoned on Phenobarbital, this is what makes her seem slow. It’s one of the medications she takes to control her grand mal epilepsy. She’s had the seizures since childhood, and they have grown slowly worse over the years. We were together for five years before we married, so I’ve had some time to watch.

Like the time she visited me at college, and dropped like a rock in the cafeteria, losing a tray full of the deep fried crap they fed us students. The campus cops grilled me good on that one. They were quite convinced she was drunk or high on something more illicit. Assholes. They were washouts from the State Patrol, and suffered from little man complex.

Or the times in the shower - for some reason the repetitive noise of the water could bring it on. It was a bitch of a place to go down; she took her fair share of bruises from those times. There was nothing to do at that point but dry her off and put her in bed.

There was even a time during intimacy. I had been away for a couple of weeks without seeing her, and we were both pretty worked up – both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, stress or mental excitement could trigger the seizures too. One moment we were doing our thing, the next she was gone, eyes rolled back, twitching violently, making that odd half gasp noise she made repeatedly during bad seizures. I put my hand through the wallboard in frustration on that one, mad not at my sweet Gretchen but at this condition that she came to loathe.

And there was me. Young, sometimes impulsive. I had a blond mullet similar to Tony’s, but could not match his exquisite build. I had put away a lot of beer in my time, and it showed. Not excessively, but I had a soft, somewhat overweight look that was not going to pass as muscle of any sort. I liked to play hard. I drank with some regularity, but I was young enough to work through the hangover the next day. I loved being with Gretchen, I loved her with all my heart. I liked to live the fun life. Hell, I was a mid-twenty-something, full of vigor and ready to party.

The four of us were the members of a dart team that played in a recreational league. We represented the Irish Rose Tavern. We were decent shooters on our best days, a drunken wipe out on our worst. Usually we saved the heaviest drinking for after the match, so we were actually in contention for a playoff spot in our league. I don’t remember the score that night, although we managed a win. I know we enjoyed each other’s company for a while after, and the drinks flowed.

We finally made our way home close to midnight, through a cold, wet Seattle January rain. We made it into bed, and curled up together for warmth. For some reason, neither of us could sleep, so we cuddled and talked for a while about nothing in particular. Talk gave way other things, with the rain pattering down outside. Afterwards we fell asleep in each others embrace. It was the last time we would be together.

Monday, May 5, 2008

And the earth shook....

If you felt a small quake yesterday, that was just me falling down in the bathtub at the Chateau Westport. I got a nice gash over my eye, and there is a little discoloration today.

I've become used to the shower we have at home, which is a stall with a door and a nice non-skid floor. I'd forgotten that I need to be much more careful in a shower that is also a regular bathtub. The tub had non-skid strips. but my foot managed to slide right down the space in between two of them.

Joshua and I were down there because it was his turn to go on a trip with me, and there was one final razor clam tide for spring. He may have been the only person in the entire hotel not to hear the thundering boom of me landing on my face in the tub - he was far too engrossed in whatever cartoon he was watching at the time on the TV. He didn't even seem phased by the sight of his naked, bleeding, soaking wet father staggering out of the bathroom with a stunned look on his face.

Good times......good times.

Actually, the rest of the trip was very fun. We climbed the Grays Harbor lighthouse to the very top. We dined at Grayland's finest eatery, the Mutineer. We went swimming not once but twice in the pool at the hotel - before I tried to break my face of course.

And the weather was spectacular, sunny and very little wind. We easily limited out on clams. This trip was very different than the one Corwin and I did just a mere three weeks prior where it snowed on us. That was a brutal trip, with the temperature in the 30's and a wind of at least 30 mph coming straight off the water. It was so cold even the clams went into hiding.

I just want to give a shout-out to my three faithful readers. Thanks, and I love you guys!

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Bring Your Child To Work Day

So today is Bring Your Child To Work day, and I am taking my usual break to post some more of my random thoughts to you, my dedicated readers. Both of you.

Corwin is here with me. Corwin is my oldest son, and is ten now. So far he has discovered the wonderful world of filing a complaint with the IT department because the billing module in our order entry system is being glitchy.

Again.

He's also had a tour of the plant, and as a typical guy the machines seemed to fascinate him the most. Now, as I type away and wait for the billing module to get fixed, he is happily playing on his Nintendo DS Lite.

This is the second time now that I have brought one of my kids in for one of these days - last year it was Vivian. She wound up being bored to tears, which I was actually able to turn into one of those "positive lesson" moments. The lesson was this: stay in school and do well! Otherwise you will wind up with a job like your old man.

But Corwin is a different creature, I think he is just happy to be away from school for a day. Maybe letting him bring his DS was a mistake?

Nah, nobody should have to watch me file complaint tickets and do billing for eight straight hours.