We spent this past weekend on Jekyll Island, just getting away from life. Our Colorado trip was work for me and the Lousiana trip was work for Kimberlie, so we decided we needed a mini-vacation that the entire family could enjoy. Friday night I watched Space Shuttle Discovery finally lift off, even though I was 200 miles away. Saturday we were beach bums all day. Yesterday we played a quick round of mini-golf before heading back home to normal.
Everyone knows that I’m as unpatriotic as they come. My child, however, is the complete opposite:
Happy Monday everyone!
When I was 18, it was cool to have a credit card. Flashing that plastic was cool stuff. Now that I’m 30, everyone I know has a credit card. It’s just part of life. Nothing special. You would think that the days are gone where flashing the plastic impresses the chicks.
Not for me . . .
As any reader of this blog knows, I am a Disney Fanatic. So naturally I jumped on getting a Disney Visa card when they debuted in 2003. At least 1% of every purchase is returned in Disney rewards which are good for anything Disney. Four years ago we spent a week at WDW for free and we went on a Disney cruise two years ago for nearly free. And we bought Disney annual passes this year and paid for several nights at WDW with our rewards. I put nearly everything on my Disney Visa (and yes, I pay it off immediately).
You can choose from about seven different card designs and for the last four or so years, I’ve had a Finding Nemo card. Let me tell you that this card serves as an icebreaker with nearly everyone who I present it to for payment . . . especially hot chicks.
My coworkers couldn’t believe at first how fast I could melt a girl’s heart with my credit card. Now, they just roll their eyes because they’ve seen it happen so much. It’s unbelievable. Kimberlie didn’t notice as much at first, until I remarked one day that I should have had a Finding Nemo credit card before I got married. It would have been so much easier finding girls.
When I’m paying for something with Kimberlie, the waitress/cashier/etc. aren’t usually as vocal about it, but they always mention it. Some of them, however, could care less that my wife is with me. Kimberlie used to get a little jealous, but now, she just rolls her eyes too because it happens so much. Tonight, the very soft spoken waitress at Applebee’s returned my card, thanked us for dining with them, smiled, and quietly said, “Oh yeah, I like your Visa”.
So here’s a hint for all of the single guys out there: I’m happily married, but Nemo can have any chick he wants!
Since I was about six, I have been extremely interested in NASA and the space program. When I was 8, and then again 20 years later, I toured Kennedy Space Center. When I was 11, I attended space camp. The NASA website is one of the few government web sites that I visit frequently. One thing that I haven’t done, however, is witness a space shuttle launch.
In college, I had a car pass to get my vehicle into the space center for a particular launch, but that launch was postponed until during my final exams so I was unable to go. Last night, after getting home from work and settling into my winding down routine, my boss calls. Since the shuttle was launching in the middle of the night, you could look a certain direction and see the trail of light in the night sky. I thought it was ridiculous to get up in the middle of the night to see what would appear to be a shooting star. I suggested that he drive down there, witness the launch, and drive back and be at work at 8am.
Long story short, less than an hour later he was on the road — with me in the passenger seat. 5.5 hours to Cocoa Beach, Florida. We arrived an hour before liftoff and found the perfect vantage point: 10 miles from the shuttle, clear view across the Banana River from a pretty decent elevation. Ten minutes before liftoff . . . .SCRUB!
So we drove back, disappointed and sleepless.
Tomorrow will be a difficult day.
Last Labor Day weekend, while I was running the Labor Day Road Race, a coworker/friend was on a trip to Birmingham. Her son Joshua, one of Tristan’s friends, became ill and was taken to a local emergency room. To make a long story short, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It’s difficult for me because he is Tristan’s age.
I’ve wrote about Joshua before here and here. You can also read more about him here.
On Friday, he died at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital. I visited them Wednesday and he wasn’t doing very well. I have to say that the PICU is one of the most horrible places that I’ve ever been. Each room has huge glass windows into the hall, so everywhere you look, you see children suffering. I hope I never have a reason to go there again.
Joshua’s mother is the only person that I work with who has a child the same age as Tristan, so for the last four years we have chatted about the crazy things that our little boys have done.
Every night for the better part of a year, Tristan has asked God to “help Joshua feel better” as part of his nightly prayers. Friday night, I talked to him and told him he didn’t have to say that anymore because Joshua was in heaven. When my mother died last year, Tristan didn’t fully understand everything that was happening, but going through that experience helped him understand the end of life on earth. So when I told him about Joshua, he grieved for the first time. That was difficult for both me and Kimberlie.
Tomorrow, I will go somewhere that I’ve never been to before and somewhere that I hope I never have to go to again — to a child’s funeral.
Today was Mackenzie’s first day of 3K. There is nothing much to report, except for the fact that she didn’t cry when we dropped her off!
This morning, we dropped Tristan off at kindergarten for the first time at my old elementary school. My first grade teacher (from 24 years ago) is still there and was manning the crosswalk. My third grade teacher was preparing her classroom and my old assistant principal (who is now principal) was helping in the car pool area. It seems like time has frozen at Heard Elementary School. Tristan’s classroom is my old sixth grade math classroom. It was very surreal. I have so many memories of that place — I did spend six years of my life there and then visited often (my mother later worked there).
Enjoy the pictures below. I especially love how they “serve” crayons in the baked-potato bowls from Wendy’s. You just have to love public schools.
So I looked at the calendar yesterday . . . and it’s August? 2009? Where does the time go?
Instead of apologizing for not posting in the last week or so, I’ll just tell you what I’m up to now:
Tuesday we are headed to Six Flags. We only go when we have free tickets because it sort of sucks. We scored two free tickets off of mycokerewards.com and bought a $15 ticket for Tristan off of a twitter special. Mackenzie has been taught that being two at Six Flags and WDW saves Daddy lots of money and I think she’s OK with that.
Thursday my boy starts kindergarten. 25 years ago, that was ME starting kindergarten, but the blur between then and now called life happened so here we are. He’s going to the same elementary school that I went to and believe it or not, there are a lot of teachers still there . . . including my 1st and 3rd grade teacher and the principal!
Work is hell. School starting back is enough, but over then summer there has been over $1,000,000 worth of construction in our building and the technology that comes with that isn’t just going to happen by itself. On top of that we are suppose to have a new website (first time in 5 years) by September and our web developer conveniently quit in June. That leaves me working literally 7 days a week, sometimes around the clock. This weekend was spent getting familiar with Drupal, our chosen (but not my me) CMS.
My half-marathon training plan is on. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
I’ve been sick pretty much all week, but I don’t have a choice except to keep going. I went 120 hours without drinking coke, which was a major feat for me!
Also, classes start back for me in a few weeks for that stupid graduate program I put myself into. This semester I dropped everything but one class so that I can deal with all of the above. I’ll be taking a class that deals with artificial intelligence in game programming (fuzzy logic, probability, and a few other things I could spell out here to make myself sound smarter).
So obviously, I’m still working on “getting all of my ducks in a row”. (That’s Rachel’s phrase.) And when I do . . . this blog will be BACK!
