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?