Check out what I got for my birthday. It's pretty cool. No more getting lost or stoping for directions (guys don't do that anyway)!!!

Thanksgiving was way too short. Lisa's family came over for our traditional deep fried turkey dinner. The turkey turned out probably better than ever this year and then me being the bonehead that I am dropped the entire platter of leftover turkey on the floor. No left over turkey for us this year. I probably tossed 12 pounds of turkey in the trash.

Work has been hectic to say the least the past week or so. Lisa and I even showed up in the office on Thanksgiving day to help out the "volunteers" that were working.

Woke up this morning to find our mailbox was hit last night and in two pieces, looks like I have a little project to get the damn thing back together and on the post. One good thing that happened the past couple of days is that I got my Indian's opening day tickets!! Only 133 days til opening day!

The weekend was pretty non-eventful as far as weekends go. Friday night Lisa and I met up with friends of ours (Lance and Traci) for dinner. We went to a pretty decent Mexican restaurant called Abeulo's. It's a chain but the food was pretty good as far as I'm concerned but it was a little too Authentic for Lisa's liking. While waiting for our table, we sat at the bar. I had to have a beer while we were waiting (what else is there to do). I'm actually pretty opposed most of the time to putting anything in beer other than the occasional lime into a Corona or slice of some other citrus into a Wheat Beer but I "took a walk on the wild side" and tried a Micheladas. Micheladas is nothing more than a bunch of lime juice in a beer with ice and a salted rim (Gato). I then tried the Micheladas "traditional style" which is the same as the Gato but they added Tabasco, Worcestershire and pepper. The Gato was pretty good but the traditional tasted horrible. I learned my lesson; never add anything to a beer!

Saturday and Sunday was pretty much spent watching games on television. Lisa somehow contacted pink eye so Shawn had an extended "sleep-over" at Nana and Papa's.

Work is getting really busy and I find myself working later and falling asleep earlier. My goal this week is to begin assembling the baby items like the bassinet, crib and changing table so it's out of the way when all hell breaks loose at work.

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Shawn had a parade and party that Lisa helped plan and pull off. I attended the parade. We ended up hitting most of the houses in our neighborhood before Shawn decide he had his fill of candy and being polite. Halloween sure has changed since I was a kid. There were two regular size Hersey Bars and three regular size bags of M&M's. We don't get many trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood so most of the houses give away handfuls of candy instead of the usual one piece. After trick-or-treating for about an hour, Shawn had more candy than I would have received trick-or-treating for 3 hours.

The night wasn't without its drama. Shawn threw a classic tantrum because he didn't want me to put black makeup on his face. I told him that I was sending him back to the Gypsy we got him from and that turned into a full out cry.

This week we have a parent-teacher conference; it should be a fun and enlightening half hour. Okay, time to deal with my employee "witch" (have to be family friendly here) looks like she just flew in on her broom!

Shawn and a couple of classmates

Pirate!!

Shawn's Classroom

Shawn and Mom on the train

Happy Halloween!!

Going to the big Halloween parade at the school this afternoon. I hope to have some pictures and an update posted to night or tomorrow.

We did our Halloween duty last night and booed two of our neighbors. I'm just too old to be knocking on doors and running down the street. If anyone in the neighborhood saw me runnig down the street, they're probably still on the floor laughing their ass off. We picked a family with two young kids and a new neighbor with 4 kids that moved into the newly constructed house behind our house. Shawn had a blast seeing his dad ring the doorbell and make a dash for the car. Our Boo Baskets prior to delivery

Lisa and I had a conversation just the other night about how people that live in our housing development never seem to do anything fun. When we lived in Grand Rapids, it always seemed like there was something family oriented going on. There were activities like the annual Easter egg hunt, scavenger hunts, Christmas parties, bunco and numerous other events happening throughout the year. We really miss those silly events and it makes us miss our old neighborhood and the people in it. Well the event that took place tonight made us feel like there's a glimmer of hope.......we got BOOED!!!!

Around 9pm the doorbell rang, the dog went bananas as usual and low and behold we found a bucket full of Halloween treats, a poem and directions to repeat the deed to two other families in the neighborhood. There was also a sign that we are to display on our front door to say that we have been booed. Now we have to find two unsuspecting victims to boo tomorrow. Boo Basket

Look who lost his first tooth!!!

Busy at work today. So much to catch up with being gone last week. Dauber's surgery went fine. They drained a bunch of blood from his ear and sewed him up. Unfortunately he is running around with a cone-collar and running into things.

Lisa had an ultrasound today. Everything looks normal and they adjusted her due date to February 5th. Shawn went with us and was pretty unimpressed with the whole ordeal. It's amazing how much the ultrasound technology seemed to change in just 5 years. The images are much clearer this time around and they took a ton of shots. With Shawn they gave us about 3 images and this time around we came home with about a dozen.

I just cost my owner another $300!!

Our old coffee maker had an attitude and decided it wanted to shut off immediately after it finished brewing a pot of joe so we replaced it with this one. It brews up to 12 cups of coffee and keeps it warm in its internal reservoir. No nasty looking pot to clean any longer. Merely press the coffee lever and fill your cup. This is way too cool!!

I'm back from Chicago. The trip was uneventful and went pretty well. The traffic at the tradeshow seemed better than last year but I still don't think that attending the show is worth the money we spend doing so. The brazillian steak house that we ate at on Tuesday night was great. They served 13 different meets to you; all of which were very good. You are served food from a large skewer in which the server sliced off small portions of meat. You also had a small disk in front of you on the table that was red on one side and green on the other. You merely flipped the disk to green when you wanted more to eat and the servers were on you like white on rice. Along with the meat, you were also served a great salad bar and a few sides family style. The sides included fried bannanas which I did not care for at all.

I got home Thursday evening and spent Friday running errands and taking Dauber to the vet. Dauber's ear blew up like a ballon while I was gone. Come to find out that Dauber not only had an ear infection but also had a hemotoma in one of his ears that needs to be drained. I'm taking Dauber in on Monday morning so the vet can charge me a boat load of cash to drain his ear and stitch him up.

Saturday I had a bachelor party to attend (I'm getting too old to party like a rock star). Lisa took Shawn to a place that had a quarter scale train, model train display and pumpkin patch. Shawn seemed to have a blast talking to the people that operate the trains. I can't figure out where Shawn gets his strong interest in trains. Today I cut the grass, fixed one of the landscaping lights that had a weather seal fail and started to cut down some of the plants in the yard.

I have a busy week coming up. Lisa and I have the ultrasound tomorrow afternoon and Dauber's surgery is tomorrow as well. I will spend most of my work week trying to catch up from being out of the office all last week. My first seasonal employee starts this week and I have a couple of large mailings that need to happen pretty quickly.

Have a good week.

Not much happening lately. Lisa is beginning to feel the baby move a bit especially in the morning. I'm just sitting here watching the Browns game trying to get motivated to start packing for my tradeshow in Chicago. I never though that I would have a job that required me to attend and work at tradeshows and the jury is still out on if I think that they are worth the effort.

The only benefit of attending tradeshows is that I get to visit cities like Chicago for a few days and explore a bit. This trip will take me to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and to a couple of restaurants that I've never been to. There will be a small group of us going to a place called Hugo's Frog Bar and there will be a considerably more of us when we go to Fogo de Chao.

Lisa and her Mom had a garage sale last week and did very well. I've been complaining about all the excess "stuff" that we hold onto forever and she finally did something about it. She sold just about everything that she tried to sell and ended up making a few bucks doing it. It's amazing that others would want to buy our trash.

Nothing much new on the baby front except for the movements I talked about earlier. We have the ultrasound the first week in October and Shawn is really excited to be able to see his baby brother or sister. We are not going to find out the sex of the baby; just doesn't seem like any fun to find out before the event.

I can't believe that the Browns are actually beating up on the Ravens at halftime! Go Browns!!

I recently was contacted by an old high school friend and she pointed out that we have plenty of pictures of Shawn on here but none of Lisa or I so here it goes (I'm the one with the long ears)............

Seems like there's never enough time to post. Summer has flown by and football season is finally here. We're going to head to OSU tomorrow and hang out and get wreaked. Actually I'll get wreaked and Lisa will watch. Should be a fun time and Lisa loves to walk the campus area to see how it changes from year to year.

Shawn started school a few weeks back and seems to be settling in very well. There have been a few rough mornings and he is getting into a little trouble for talking out of turn but overall he seems to be doing well. Kindergarten sure has changed since I went to school. Shawn goes for a full day and he has activities like Spanish, Gym and Art every week. Can't believe that he has spanish class twice a week...times have changed.

Lisa and I have been pretty busy putting together a bachelor party and a couple's shower for our friends who are getting married in January after dating for 14 years! I forgot how time consuming putting together a bachelor party can be. The toughest part seems to be finalizing a date. I'm way to old to be planning bachelor parties; should be a blast though.

Lisa is now 4 months pregnant (give or take a week) and is starting to show a bit. This time around seems to be a little more difficult than it was with Shawn. She is tired more, isn't happy with her choice of clothes and doesn't always feel really well but lately she seems to be turning the corner and feeling like herself.

I started trying (really trying) to exercise more in an effort to lose some of this excess weight that I have accumulated over the past several years. Adkins doesn't seem to work the second time around so I had to go to drastic measures. I've been taking either a brisk 4-5 mile walk a good paced 10-12 mile bike ride every other day. Two weeks into this effort and damn no weight loss! I'll keep trying, it has to work.

Peace out...............

It has been a pretty hectic month. We were in Washington D.C. for business then two days later we were on our way down to Florida to attend the funeral of Lisa's aunt who was battling uterine cancer for the past year or so. I will post more later about our DC adventure.

This past week we have a relatively big week happening in the major metropolis of Toledo, Ohio. The city played host Monday thru Wednesday to the Triple A baseball all-star festivities and also plays host to the annual LPGA (woman's golf) tournament. I was fortuante enough to attend Triple A activities all week so far. The home run derby was Monday and was pretty cool. Triple A baseball tends to be slightly more family oriented when compared to the big boy's. The home run derby not only included current players but also included two local high school ball players and two former major leaguers. The event was very enjoyable.

Tuesday we attended a fundraiser gala that was a joint event put on both by baseball and the LPGA. The event was at the ballpark. Typical grazing food, booze and music. I wasn't really too overly impressed by the event at all.

Las tnight was the all-star game. It was a blow out with the International League blowing out the Pacific Coast League. At the end of the game, prizes were given away based on information that was revealed on scratch off tickets everyone received when they arrived. Low and behold, our number was drawn and we were one of three out of about 11,500 people to win a $100 Ballreich's potato chip basket. Outside of the grocery store, I have never seen so much junk food in one place. It was a major pain to carry the thing out to the car but we managed just fine.


Need chips?

Start building the ark! Storms blew through here like nothing I can ever rememeber seeing in the past. We had so much rain that the sump pump could barely keep up with it all. I went out and bought a small pump that attaches to a garden hose to help the installed sump pump out in its efforts to keep us dry. I spent about 3 hours with the helper pump and finally, the water level was manageable enough for the permanent pump to work on its own. I think that I'm going to buy a battery powered back up pump to be safe. The neighborhood basically flooded in spots including the street directly in front of the house. There were still areas where the streets had a foot or more of standing water this morning. Hope tonight's storm is not as bad.

Earlier this spring, we decided to start the landscaping in the backyard. I rented a sod kicker and then a roto-tiller and formed a flower bed that ran the entire length of the back of our house. I then tried to improve the soil in the bed which naturally is pretty much pure clay. I added about 1000 pounds of topsoil, about 12 cubic feet of peat and a couple to bags of vermiculite. We finally planted flowers a couple of weeks back and so far we are pleased with the results. The impatients were probably a bad idea since we are pretty much full sun in the back yard but I think the three time a day watering schedule for 7 minutes each cycle has that problem taken care of for now. Now I am trying to decide what kind of shade tree I want to plant and when to plant it.

The final phase of develpment in our neighborhood is in full swing. Unfortunately, the last phase happens to be in our backyard. There are 11 lots left. One house has its shell completed, another has the foundation poured, the one directly behind our house has the foundation dug and the forms are being placed this morning and this morning another lot was being marked for digging today. Progress? I think pain in the rear end! There goes the view.

We had some pretty nasty weather in the area last night. No sooner did we park our cars in the garage and a storm that dropped hail, some as large as golf balls, blew through. Most of the hail was in the 1/2" size but there was a lot of it and in a short period of time. Sounded like the windows were all going to break! The only damage we had was a couple of areas of the back of the house had the paint knocked off. It was if the hail worked like a sand-blaster on one area of the house.

Unborn Baby News!!

There's only one in momma's belly! Baby is about 8mm long and has a due date of February 9, 2007. Heartbeat looks steady and strong.

We have a little "Boston Market like" restaurant that does BBQ instead of chicken a couple of miles from our house that we have tried an liked in the past. The place is called City Q BBQ. Today they were advertising "free BBQ today 7am-10am". Of couse we had to stop to see what this free promotion was all about. They had a little drive up table set up in the front parking lot and were handing out brown bags with the makings for a pulled pork sandwich and a sample of texas sheet cake. Pretty neat idea!

I'm sure that most of you have heard the happy news by now but if you haven't, Shawn is going to have a sibbling!!

When I called John to give him the news, he and Allison happened to be in Manhattan near The Ed Sullivan. The Ed Sullivan theater is where David Letterman does his show from. So what does John do? He heads to The Happy Deli and hands the phone to Rupert Jee a regular haunt that Letterman visits and harrasses during his show. Needless to say, Rupert now also knows that Lisa is pregnant and he wishes us "the best of luck". Rupert actually talked to me for about 90 seconds asking me if we knew the sex of the baby and if it was our first and saying congraruations (yes it is mispelled for effect).

Our trip to Anaheim was a hectic one through southern California rush hour. What was supposed to be a 1 hour 45 minute trip took more like 3+ hours not to mention that the mapquest directions we used were less than accurate. We finally arrive to the hotel about 6 pm and had a few adult beverages at the hotel's manager's reception then off to explore downtown Disney. If any of you have gone to Disneyworld's Downtown Disney, you will be terribly disappointed in the California version. Disneyland's downtown is not nearly as large and was extremely overcrowded. Oh course we has another Shawn "I need a prize" meltdown and headed back to the hotel rather soon after we arrived.

The next two days were spent at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure which was similar to Disneyworld's MGM Studio's park. Shawn discovered the joys of amusement rides during this portion of the trip. He even when on one of those white water rafting type rides were you basically get soaked and loved it. Unfortunately the folks at Disney don't think it's enough to charge you $350 for admission for two adults and a child for two days but they also see the need to charge you $3 for an apple, $4 for a coke, 7.95 for a basic turkey sandwich.....etc...etc...

The second day we were at Disneyland, we decided to head back to Downtown Disney to sit and relax for dinner. The lines for all the restaurants were pretty long but decided on a Mexican joint called Tortilla Jo's. The food was decent but again with the large Mexican population in the Southern California area, I really thought that the mexican food would be much better. I opted for the Carnitas Burrito and Lisa had the Chicken Burrito. The pork was really dry but the chicken seemed to be much better that night. The bright spot was the guacamole; pretty tasty and there was plenty enough for six to share.

Saturday, it was time to start heading back to San Diego for our Sunday flight home. On the trip back to S.D., we stopped in Long Beach. Long Beach is the permanent home to The Queen Mary. The Queen Mary was one of the largest cruise ships build in the 1930's and now is a permanent museum and hotel. The Queen Mary is also said to be haunted but major draw for us (Shawn) was that it is now hosting a traveling Titanic exhibit. The exhibit was really neat. There were tons of artifacts taken from the wreckage and quite a few facts about the passengers and their fate. When we walked into the exhibit we each received a card with a passenger's name on it and toward the end of the exhibit we each learned the fate of our passenger. Lisa's passenger was the only survivor of the three.

As part of the package we purchased for The Queen Mary included admission to a Russian Sub that was decommissioned in 1994. The Russian Scorpion tour was pretty interesting. If you have never toured a sub, it is worth the tour. This tiny little vessel housed 78 men for long periods at a time and walking through the tiny corridors, you would be amazed that people didn't off themselves on a regular basis.

We left Long Beach and drove down the pacific highway or highway 1. The drive was very scenic and a nice end to a rather busy vacation. We ended up stopping in Balboa Island for dinner and to walk around their quaint tourist trap of shops which reminded me of the Western Michigan beach towns that we experienced when we lived in GR. We ate at a place called Ciao. I think that Ciao means not so great but overpriced Italian food (seemed like a common theme throughout our stay).

When we arrive back in San Diego, we had to find a grocery store in order to find Shawn some milk and to replenish our snacks for the plane. On our way to the store, we notices a pretty cool election sign on the side of the road that I just had to have for a souvenir (see photo below).

All in all a great trip!

Shawn after the water raft rideQueen MaryScorpion Russian Sub

Finally finished putting things back together after being gone for a week. Grass was what seemed to be nearly a foot long and Lisa is just finishing the laundry. I'm gonna try to give a pretty thorough update so here we go.

We landed in San Diego around 9:00pm after spending all day in the air or in airports. Picked up our car that I reserved through priceline for $25 a day which happened to be a rental from National Car Rental. National has a pretty cool policy of checking you in and directing you to an area where your class of car is located. You merely look at the options, load up your luggage and drive off in the car of your choice. We had the choice of a Chrysler 300, Pacifica, Magnum or a Buick LaCrosse. I opted for the Chrysler 300 because we needed the extra luggage space. We had about a 15 minute drive to our hotel which was a Holiday Inn Express (the pictures are much nicer than the hotel).

We spent Monday at Sea World. Since the closed the Sea World in the Cleveland area a few years ago, we thought that this may be one of Shawn only chances to see the big Killer Whale. We also ended up making reservations for Sea World's lunch with Shamu. The food may have been the best that we had on the entire trip. My favorite was a shrimp creole type dish which I thought was strange seeing that we were at Sea World; I felt kinda guilty eating seafood at an amusement part that was built around sea life. The guilty feeling passed after the first bite. Lunch was very good but the draw was Shamu and his trainers put on a little private show for us and we were about 8 feet from the large whale.

Sea World in San Diego is pretty much the same as the one in Aurora Ohio that I can remember except that the one in S.D. also has a few rides. Shawn was amazed at the water ride and insisted on going on the ride. Shawn was so giddy I could hardly restrain him from jumping in front of the line. The excitement soon turned to fear as we rode up the first hill and then dropped down the water filled slide. If that wasn't enough, the water part of the ride ended in a dark elevator-type shaft and we were lifted up to a point that was slightly higher than the first hill of the ride and to even my surprise, the water ride turned into a rollercoaster. Not a Cedar Point type rollercoaster but a good one none the less. That ride pretty much did it for Shawn...so I thought. Overall, the park was pretty enjoyable except for the nagging 5 year old constantly asking when he was going to get a prize. The park was only open until 6 that night, so we returned to our hotel and got ready for dinner.

We decided to take a drive downtown to a shopping/entertainment area called Seaport Village. Pretty much your typical open air tourist attraction area with great views of San Diego Bay. We had a tough time deciding where to eat but finally came upon a restaurant (San Diego Pier Cafe) that was built on a pier which if nothing else would provide a nice view to relax and enjoy dinner. The food was just standard. I had fish tacos, which were okay but nothing special, Lisa had the Tilapia and Shawn a pizza. We also ordered guacamole and an order of deep fried jalapeno slices. The guacamole was mash it yourself and was just fair but the highlight of my meal was the pepper slices. I have had deep fried jalapenos that were stuffed with cream cheese before but these were merely fresh peppers sliced and then deep fried. The little boogers had some heat!

Tuesday Morning we decided to take a trip to Balboa Park. I guess I would describe it as S.D.'s version of New York's Central Park but somewhat smaller. Balboa Park also is home to all of San Diego's museums and the world famous zoo. We didn't really have much time to explore the park due to the 3 hour drive that we had ahead of us that afternoon but we did get to check out the San Diego Model Train Museum. The train layouts were very cool. Very large models of many of the areas around Southern California. Shawn again was more worried about when he was going to get a prize than exploring the model trains. Spent a little time wondering around the museum areas of the park and then headed for LaQuinta.

The three hour trip to LaQuinta wasn't too bad. The scenery along the highway was different than what we are used to seeing so it was a rather pleasant drive. We stopped about half way into our trip to reload our cash supply and to grab some food. We decided to have some mexican food at a little fast food type place that reminded us of an authentic place that we have gone a few times with Lisa's brother in Chicago. The food was pretty good. I had fish tacos again (I have some fascination with fish tacos) and they were pretty tasty. Lisa had the guacamole and a couple of chicken tacos. Much better than Taco Bell.

As we drove closer to LaQuinta, there were all these windmills along the side of the road in an area called San Gorgonio Pass. Later, I found out that the area is a giant wind tunnel between the mountains and the power generated from the 3000 or so windmills provide for about 1.5% of all of California's electrical power. The site of what seemed like it went on forever was another neat part of our drive that we did expect to see. It almost seemed like we were in a giant flower garden but instead of flowers, we were surrounded buy large 3 bladed windmills.

We finally arrived in the desert golf mecca of Southern California if not the world: PGA West in LaQuinta California. The entire development is gated and as you drive through the housing development, you would think that you were about to walk into homes that were about 1500 square feet in size but once you walked into the houses, you find out that looks are deceiving. We were visiting Brian and Kathy. Brian was part owner and VP of Engineering for the company that I used to work for. Brian decided to retire instead of taking part in the merger nightmare that resulted and landed in LaQuinta. In my opinion, he definitely made the right decision.

Brian and Kathy live on one of the courses at PGA West. A mere 3000 square foot 2 bedroom ranch style house with a detached quest house (casita) across the front court yard. The guest room is really set up like a hotel room with its own bathroom, door locks and thermostat. There are a couple of really nice features of the house not to mention the large gourmet kitchen. The entire backyard is a natural landscaped pool and hotub with a running waterfall. The entire rear wall in the family room and kitchen is glass that opens up to enable the inside to become the outside. The entire house was beautiful. And the views of the par three in the back yard with the mountain backdrop was...well I can't even put it into words.

Brain and Kathy took us to the member's clubhouse for pasta night. The food was served buffet style and was very good. We then took a drive around several of the more scenic gold holes; unfortunately it was really too dark to take any pictures.

Wednesday morning, Brian and I went golfing on the Jack Nicholas designed tournament course. This is one of the two courses that the PGA holds it's qualifying school ever other year for those golfers attempting to earn the right to play on the professional tour the following year. Walking the course would have been a highlight of my golfing life in itself but to play it, I was in heaven. I actually played pretty well too. I shot an 85, a round that included 4 birdies (that was a first for me). The temperature at the time we finished our round was near 100 but it really didn't seem to be that bad. I'm not sure if it was the fact that the heat was very dry or the fact that I drank about 2 gallons of water in a 4 hour period but I never really felt overheated.

While Brian and I went golfing; Lisa, Kathy and Shawn drove to the Palm Desert/Indian Wells area to visit The Living Gardens. The Living Gardens is basically a park that is dedicated to the animals and horticulture of the desert. They saw Coyotes, Bighorn sheep, road runners and other heat loving animals as well as plants that thrive in the desert. For Shawn, they also had a large outside model railroad display that Lisa says was the largest display she had ever seen. Shawn of course was unimpressed; just wanted to know where his "prize" was.

We took one last golf cart ride around the development and took some golf course photos before we left to travel to Anaheim. I will update tomorrow about the second part of our trip.

"Lunch With Shamu"

Shawn's Water ride at Sea World

Dolphin Arena

View from San Diego Pier Cafe

Balboa Park

Windmills at San Gogonia Pass

Par 3 on Nicholas Course at PGA West

View from Brian and Kathy's BackyardAnother golf course shot

Pool and Spa and Brian'sTrains at The Living DesertLiving Desert