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Annette turned 39 this week. Last of the dirty thirties. Annette has never seemed to be very age conscious which is good because it's all a facade. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! I've known 70 year old people who have more life in them than a 25 year olds. I got Annette a gift certificate to her favorite spa. Plenty of money on it to last her through the year. I also picked up the CDs of the audio book version of A Million Little Pieces. It's the "memoir" of some guy who hit rock bottom and was able to rise above it all. A feel good Oprah Winfrey formulaic book. It was criticizes recently for having a few shall we say "writer's embellishments". Actually the ones that were pointed out were very minor. Mostly just the same attitude I spoke of in an early blog, people love to watch the rise and fall of others. Anyway I ripped them the CDs to mp3s and put them on her mp3 player and sold the CDs back on half.com and only ended up losing 2 dollars. Last night we celebrated Annette's and her half brother Brian's birthday at her dad's house. Lots of fun as usual in that household. Her Uncle George and Terry came over to help raise the roof. Both are great guys whose "Irish blood" serves to empty more than a few beer bottles :) I stood and listened to the 3 brothers have a conversation in the kitchen (room closest to the beer) and had to laugh at them. They are like little kids, poking fun at each other, giggling over it. Close family indeed. Grandma didn't look good at all. She fell and injured her rib after xmas sometime. At 92 that's something to be quite concerned over since the body's healing abilities are pretty much gone at that point. We could tell she was struggling all night long. I tossed the football with Brian and his brother Sean. I enjoy that a lot. Kenzie includes herself by hiking the ball to me :) My dad use to always take time out to throw the football with me. One of my favorite memories of growing up. Usually on fall weekends we'd both get excited about watching the football Cardinal game and go in the backyard and toss the football around. He's throw crossing routes to me and in my teenage aspirations I'd imagination myself being Mel Gray or Jackie Smith. So I guess tossing the football to the boys brings back a lot of good memories for me. I love imprinting good memories in kids since it meant so much to me.

Saturday I also attended the funeral for the mother of a friend I knew in college, Lou. I haven't seen Lou since college, which was almost 20 years ago now. Gads, that's a long time. Lou lives in Raliegh North Carolina and his mom died suddenly last month. His father passed away 2 years ago and he is an only child so he pretty much had to drop everything and fly home to take care of everything. He said he found his dad's ashes and put them in his mom's coffin. But he had a lot of trouble finding anything else in her house, like a will and other "probate avoiding papers". Not many people showed up for the funeral, a few relatives and friends. I got to spend time talking to Lou, catching up, even though we do keep up through email quite a bit. He hadn't change at all, just got bigger like most of us. I met some of his high school friends. He grew up in Festus Missouri so you get that small town effect where your high school class is like family the rest of your life. Growing up in the burbs I only know one person from my high school. Lou's friends were really nice guys, enjoyed talking to them too. Since not many people showed up Lou asked me to be a pallbearer. So I stayed all the way through to the burial, which I had never done before. I felt kind of sorry for him since we had an earlier discussion how he felt alone in the without his mom now. I rode with him in his car, tried to be around to let him talk. It was a gray overcast cold day, perfect for a funeral really.

Friday Kenzie and I went to the Father Daughter dance that the girl scouts put on at her school. I did it last year with her and her grandpa was planning on doing it this year but he had to have surgery so I was optioned in. This year they had a theme of dressing up like going to the ball. I donned a suit (had to sub in a pair of my regular dress pants since I'm too fat for the suit pants) and Kenzie convinced her momma to buy her a new dress and shoes. She looked beautiful as usual. Annette got pictures of us but I forgot to get digital pictures to share here. Kenzie hangs out with the girls from her troop and they all pretty much danced together the whole night. They had a line dance which I don't do. Line dances are easy to do but I noticed how Kenzie wasn't satisfied with the step back, step right, turn left and jump instructions that make these dances popular among white people with no rhythm. She added her own flair of shaking her shoulders, wiggling her hips, doing double steps. It was fun to watch especially since I have no rhythm.

Moment of Zen this week - Wendesday at the gym I was walking out the showers and in walks in the AB boss, Joe, who we all me in the last blog. He says "hey there he is", I say "hi Joe, how's it going". We proceed to talk about him getting up at 4 am to fly to Texas for a meeting and how I'm glad it's him and not me making those flights, etc. I realized after he left, we're now gym pals! I can't handle this.

The shape of things to come

Tonite Annette is going back to the gym after a long absence. So finally I'll have a partner again. Even though I usually hunker down and workout on the ellipticals with my headphones on, it's still fun to have her there. One of the things I enjoy is watching her watch TV at the gym. She's the only person I know that smiles when she watches TV and it's cool to watch her smiling. Weird I know but this is about sharing right?!

It's snowing today and it's supposed to be 60 F on Sunday. Go figure. Winter has been messed up this year. More warm than cold. It's nice to see it snow, I miss that. It use to snow a lot more when I was growing up and that's just not "good memories" making me subjective. I did do some research and snowfall totals were much higher during the 1970s, at least in St. Louis. I heard two theories on why we get colds during the winter. Theory 1 goes like this. During winter warm spells we go outside and ride the bike, rake the yard, toss the ball. We come back inside and our bodies are slightly weakened by the activity and it's gets sick from all the germs in our closed up homes. Theory 2 suggests that our sinuses fight off germs by staying at body temperature, heat kills germs. However when we are in the cold air a long time our sinuses drop below body temperature which gives the germs an opportunity to grow.

I discovered a fun web site last night while surfing. It's a site dedicated to an old radio station that use to play here around the 1980 time frame. That was the time when my brain was being impressed with music. Stuff you listen to in your teens is usually the music you always consider your favorite the rest of your life. Not sure why that is. Perhaps there is some switch that opens up as a teenager for music that flips off later on. Everything else just pales in comparison. Anyway, I digress. The site had compiled a long list of popular songs that the radio station played. It got me to thinking why not make a CD of mp3s full of that special music that was locked into that era. So I perused my 10000 mp3 collection and came up with enough to fill a CD using the list as a guide. Back before we could just burn a CD full of mp3s we use to record songs off the radio using cassette tapes. How's that for retro kids? The guy who did the web site still had cassette tapes from those days and converted them to mp3s and placed them there for download. What fun that was. I liked the promos they ran for upcoming concerts like Sammy Hagar, Ozzy Osbourne and REO Speedwagon. They even ran interviews they did with rock stars. Now that's classic rock!

I talked to Annette today. She misses me when I don't come over after work but instead go to my place and do my own thing, like reminiscing. So she said I need to get busy and finish my data center so I can move in. I guess that time frame is moving up eh? Did I hear a whip crack? It's already starting... ;-) So I guess I'll put the insulation in the exterior walls and start drywalling this weekend. I'm always amazed at guys who put up drywall for a living. I've never figured out how they make it look so easy. I guess if I did it everyday I could do it in my sleep too. But I struggle along. It is satisfying though when I get all the walls covered though.

To continue with my moment of Zen, here goes. On Wednesday I go to the gym after the work. I drop my gym back off in a locker and go to use the bathroom before getting dressed in my sweats. I come out of the bathroom and coming out of the shower is the guy who runs Busch Entertainment, where I work. He of course sees me and says hi. So I think whew, that was weird, well I'll go get dressed and try to avoid him. But he follows me, him and his “dangling“ parts, all the way back to my locker. Oh yeah, his locker was right next to mine. That's just the way these moments of Zen work out I guess. So he's toweling off and starts discussing work stuff with me, while I try not to make eye contact. I try to be business like and slowly get undressed hoping he'll be quick about getting dressed. Luckily he does. I've been going to this gym for over 2 years, where did he come from?! He made mention that he's normally a morning person, so maybe this was a fluke. I'll be going to the gym in disguise from here on out folks.

Moving on

Happy new year to everyone. The 10 day holiday break from reality is over. Back to work. It was refreshing to have that whole week off from work. But it's nice to get back into a pattern again. We are all creatures of habit no matter how hard we try not to admit it. The holiday week is a lot more packed since I met Annette. Since she is the child of a divorce she has several families and therefore several xmas's to celebrate. Her family on all sides are wonderful people and I enjoy visiting with them.

I spent a lot of time last week adding an office in Annette's basement. It's where I plan to house my computers when I move in with her. Better yet, lets just call it what it is, a data center. It'll be windowless with plenty of space and quiet. Gives me shivers thinking about it :) I even fancied the idea of adding subfloor to run cables underneath. Wouldn't that be the most geek thing? I saw on ebay somebody was selling off some old IBM mainframes from the 60's. Dang that would be sweet to have one of those monsters humming along in your living room! Let it crunch on some COBOL. Ooh look kids, it's tape drive is spinning, must be accessing all 8 bits of the core! I'd stick a HAL 9000 faceplate on the front of it. Anyway back to the data center, I just finished up framing the room and I hung my first door. Lordy was that a learning experience. But I'm pretty confident next time I do it, it won't take me 8 hours. Kenzie got all excited and wanted to walk through it when I finished. Kids.. you gotta love em.. they exist to remind you of the simple stuff -- see as a child sees... In case you're wondering we haven't decided on when I'll be moving in. We are gonna make a few adjustments. For instance Annette and Kenzie are early risers and I'm not so they are gonna use the hallway bathroom so I can sleep. Aint they sweet?

Anyone make any resolutions or something approaching that concept? Annette makes them every year and makes a majority of them. Good for her! I know you're supposed to establish goals in life to grow and be able to adapt to changes that can strike from out of nowhere. I've never been very good at goals though. A friend once described me as somebody who has so many positives that I just roll into wonderful opportunities. Hmm.. maybe so. I think it's my magnetic charm and coy smile <glinting smile>. Seriously though turning 40 does allow one the selfish pleasure (or pain) of looking back on life and planning ahead. Staying healthy by eating better and exercising is a continual goal that I seem to be getting better at. My mortal coil thanks me. A long range goal I've had is to get out of the software industry and find something else to do that will sustain me into retirement. I can't see myself hacking code at 50. My friend Lou has been making some solid financial investments in gold and day trading. I may look closer at how he's doing it. I think that returning to school is also an option, this time as a teacher. I've even considered taking the massive paycut and teaching at a trade school. Getting back to setting goals. I think it's inherent in us to be moving, up or down. As individuals or societies, we don't do well stagnating. Must we always being moving though? I remember once in college someone introduced a book to me. Except this book was one you created yourself. You start out with the character in a dilema and you decide should the character choose a or b. On and on you go, adventure at each step. I kept picking the choices where the guy would settle down and just consider the lillies. Usually I became a sitting duck and some alien would come along a blow me away, end of story. Ha! Have you ever wondered why people gets their jollies watching other people rise in popularity and success and then turn around and fall into utter disgrace? If you're not moving, people lose interest in you. In the entertainment industry that's a career ender. Which explains why movie stars and musicians are such complete idiots. If they weren't they'd all end up on pbs hawking Lawrence Welk tapes. Some of the most memorable people are ones that shot up and fell back in a short period of time. Peter Frampton was a good example. Fernando Valenzula is another. People get addicted to it and the tv industry knows it and pumps star power into their collective vein nightly. Whoa how did I wonder off like this?! Move on, these aren't the droids you are looking for...

Today at work I was discussing how geeky our significant others are. Since most of us consider ourselves 100% geeks, that would be the baseline. Thinking about it I consider Annette 22% geek. She is really geeked out on home remodeling. She doesn't know a lick about computers or scifi but she is slowly learning the difference between Klingons and Vulcans. She does understand some of the technical jargon I throw out like megabit is better than kilobit when it comes to bandwidth. She does get the joke that I'll work for bandwidth..haha. Kenzie however needs more work, I put her at 15% geek. She does like watching Star Trek with me. I'm not sure if that's out of kindness or not though. She does go along with me when I come up with geeky nicknames for things though. She did get into calling the tv remote an IR frequency modulator the other day...haha.

Here's my moment of Zen - Last night I stopped off at the grocery store to pick up this week's protien nourishment. I always enjoy going late since the whole store is mine. I have my own cashier, no chemically dependent children screaming at their parents “you need to get me more Kaboom cereal!!”. So I was walking into the store when a young girl stops me looking kind of freaked out. She looked about 17 or 18. Dressed like any kid in a upper middle class suburb. She's very apologetic and said her car ran out of gas, could she borrow some money to get gas so she could get home. My initial instinct was to look for signs of drug abuse, that wasting in the eyes. Not really. So I gave her 3 one dollar bills I had in my wallet, figured that should get her home. She thanked me like an embarrassed teen and was off. I think she was for real. I got into the store and realized, dang that'll get her about a gallon of gas. Should I go back and give her more, drive her to a gas station, she if she's running up to Walgreen for a bottle? Dang my whole carefree grocery store trip was ruined.