Our little Christmas elf

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I'm dreaming of a White.....Thanksgiving!

It snowed today. It started off as rain, and then became snow and rain, and finally just snow. There was quite a bit of accumulation in a short period. Radio reports said the roads were slick, that there were lots of vehicles in the ditches and many collisions. I drove to the gym in the thick of the snowstorm. People were being very cautious, but I did see one Camaro in the ditch (just enough off the road to be stuck).

My workout was pretty good; I put up some good numbers without feeling completely drained. Maybe Friday I’ll have to work a little harder, especially since I’m skipping the cardio workout tomorrow (it is Thanksgiving after all).

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I’m going to do one of those cheesy lists of things for which I am thankful.

1. My wife Raquel – she’s beautiful, loving, and I’m blessed to have her.


2. My baby Lourdes – she’s a beautiful, beautiful baby and I couldn’t possibly love her more than I already do.


3. My family – you have to love your family, no matter what, and I do


4. My friends – some are coworkers, some aren’t but they’re all special.


5. My job – I’ve got a really great job: good pay, diverse work.

My coworkers – Adam and Jerry are the greatest coworkers. We work hard, we have fun, we make fun of each other, we support each other, we teach each other, we learn from each other and we respect each other. But mostly we make fun of each other. I also work with and for many others that are also terrific people that keep things interesting.

6. My pets – they are always happy to see me (especially P-p-p-p-peanut!).


7. My truck – hello, it’s snowing out there!


8. My motorcycle – didn’t put much time on this summer either, but I’m not getting rid of it!

Well have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Election results are in, and the winners are.....

Who cares, wanker. This ain't no political blog.

I've taken to calling my baby Lourdes Banana. It rolls off the tongue with ease. Say it. Not 'it'. Say 'Lourdes Banana'. Wasn't that fun?

Lourdes Banana is standing. She'll probably be walking by the time I get done typing this. She's going through the stage that makes every man cringe: She's touching buttons that power various electronic toys (tv, xbox, ps2, vcr, computer, and printer). I'm going to have to put things out of reach, or put oversized mittens on her hands to prevent her from being very dexterous.

Just sent a package to Paraguay today. Very expensive, over $30, and it's not going to get there for another 4-6 weeks. From now on, we'll just Western Union money. It's cheaper, easier, and guaranteed.

On the immigration front, Raquel's green card is going to take another couple years. I don't understand it. We applied for her green card and the application was approved. However, she either goes back to Paraguay and gets the green card there, or we apply here for a change of status. I don't know if it would be easier and faster to do this through the embassy in Asuncion or wait the two plus years here in the states. We're going to do the waiting thing here. In the mean time, her VISA expires in April and then her passport expires in October. Why can't this be easy?

I think I might go play xbox for a while.

Don't be scared....

I know it's been a while since I last blogged. No excuses. And I won't make any promises to get back into blogging on a regular basis. I'm just going to apologize for not being regular (no bathroom jokes please).

Lourdes is crawling! She's been at it for about a month now. She's not extremely fast but she's fast enough to grab a doggie chew and sit happily and chew.

Pancho

So we've got an infant, two dogs, and  a cat.  What else could we need?

How about another dog?

Mom's dog Cindy had her second litter a couple months ago and we decided we wanted another dog, so now we have Pancho. Pancho is a long-haired blue speckled miniature dachshund and he's Peanut's half-brother. He's a cutie, maybe a picture to follow in another post.

I decided on the name Pancho because that is the word often used in South America (or at least in Paraguay and Chile) for hot dog.

Blogging shouldn't be this tough

Apologies to all who read my Blog (both of you) for lack of updates. It's been since early June and here it is towards the end of June. To be fair, one week of June I was "deployed" to Volk Field, Wisconsin. The rest of the time, I was just lazy.

I wanted to write about taking my daughter to the mall and all the misadventures we had there, but alas, we didn't go to the mall and we had no misadventures.

I could write about the "deployment" but nothing too interesting happened to me there. I hung out a little with my friends, but found myself missing Lourdes more than I was enjoying myself. To sum up the trip, I taught CPR for five days and fought the most ferocious mosquitoes this side of the Mississippi. Within three minutes of arriving at Volk, I was bitten three times. Needless to say I fought back with some variant of Off with a twenty-something percent DEET that I purchased at the Tomah WalMart. I didn't really like the idea of wearing a chemical repellent but it was better than suffering the wrath of those blood thirsty insects. If I lived there, I would have to plant those anti-mosquito plants all around my house. The scent of citronella candles burning would lead you directly to my house. I would figure out a way to screen in my entire yard. I'm not exaggerating, those mosquitoes were thick.

But I'm a survivor. Hopefully there are no long-term effects from DEET exposure and the twitching will subside. Hopefully the half dozen bites I got won't result in West Nile virus. Or Lupus.

Hey, I celebrated my first Father's Day! Lourdes was kind enough to give me a Father's Day card..in Spanish! ¡Qué inteligente! She also gave me a big box of Hershey's candy (Pot o'Gold I think). What a little sweetie she is.

That's all I can muster right now. Maybe I'll be a little more attentive to my poor Blog in the future and not let down my reader(s) as well.

A cap in your a$$

I'm a lean, mean Air Force trained killing machine. Sort of. I'm not so lean at the moment. I'm not too mean most of the time, but I can get a little cranky. I'm definitely Air Force trained. And I can be a killing machine, especially if you are a paper target located 7, 15, or 25 meters away from me and my M-9.

Today at drill, I fired the M-9, nine millimeter handgun. I've shot a nine millimeter once or twice before, but this was the first time trying at a military firing range. To be considered "qualified" to shoot the M-9, one must put a certain number of bullets on the silhouette at the aforementioned distances. I think the number was 30 out of 36 but I'm not certain. However, to be considered an "expert", one must put 30 out of 36 bullets in a circle in the center of the silhoutte. Somehow I was able to put 33 out of 36 bullets in the center of mass making me an "expert" and eligible to wear the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon. In almost 20 years of military service, I have fired the M-16 several times and I although I have always qualified with the weapon, I have never earned the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon with the M-16 and now in my first attempt with the M-9 I've finally got it!

In other news, we are going to get another puppy. That's right Dover and Peanut are going to have a little brother. Actually this will be Peanut's half-brother and Dover's foster bother. Peanut's mom had a litter of five (actually six but one was stillborn)puppies recently and we are going to get the only male. This little guy is kind of a blue-gray color with black spots (a dapple) and is full-blooded dachshund. His mom is a long-hair dapple and his dad his a long-hair black and tan. It's still a little early to tell if any of this litter will have long hair.

Not much else to report at the moment.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

Yesterday, we drove to Godfrey, just north of Alton for a family reunion. It was raining as we were heading there. We actually got into some heavy rain early into the trip. It was bad enough that we were driving quite slow on the interstate. Fortunately we only had to endure the storm for a short while. The rest of the trip there was beautiful and we safely arrived at the reunion.

The reunion was nice although I really don't know many of the people. I know a few faces and some names, but I'm not clear on who begat whom. Regardless, Lourdes was a big hit.

We were in no hurry to get home. For example, last year we had the puppies and a great aunt, so we needed to get home. Even having a little baby with us this year didn't put us in a hurry. So we decided to take the long way home. We took the two-lane country roads just to see what we could see.

It was a nice leisurely drive. The radio (on a St. Louis station) was calling for thunderstorms and tornado watches in Missouri. I was pretty confident that we were not near the bad weather. So we meandered in a northerly direction in the beautiful countryside. Our route took us through several small towns. The kind with the old brick buildings all interconnected on Main Street, kind of the original stripmall.

Off in the distance, to the west, we could see it slowly getting darker. I wasn't too worried because I thought it was too far away and that we would eventually be heading in an easterly direction. Actually, we ended up heading in a northwesterly direction before we could start heading northeast. That took us into the eye of the storm.

We crossed the Illinois River at Beardstown. As we were crossing the river, the wind picked up and it started to rain. There was a tugboat pushing several barges up the river. Just in front of the barges, there was a "cyclone". It was like a "dust devil" but it was huge and over water. Very cool, and a little scary. We got to the other side of the river and it started raining very hard. I had to slow down because it was difficult to see. A Dodge Ram was right on my butt, but I wasn't going to go any faster. Then we started up a hill and there was a slow vehicle lane. I took it and the Ram sped by me. We crested the hill and seemed to be back out on the plains. We went through an intersection and then it started raining really hard. I could barely see in front of me. We came to a crawl and then suddenly we couldn't see anything in front of us. Fortunately we came to a stop right by a side road so we pulled off on the side road to wait out the storm (and to get out of the way of any crazy people who wanted to continue).

We waited for a few minutes on this side road. The rain and wind rocked the truck and I was worried about what we needed to do. We were in the middle of nowhere and a huge storm was on top of us. Who knows if there was a tornado as well.

It was only a few minutes but it seemed longer. The rain and wind let up a little so we hit the road again. The rest of the trip was fine, no hard rain, no strong winds and we arrived safe and sound at home.

Pretty Little Lourdes

The crack of the bat....

...over Jerry's head.

I know I already said good night, but after I signed off I was telling Raquel what happened to Jerry last week.

Jerry loves baseball and he coaches a boys baseball team. He was coaching first base and his player got walked. Jerry started to annotate something on the lineup and was engrossed in the sheet. The boy who was walked started to head towards first. He wanted to throw the bat towards his dugout. It hit Jerry in the head. I wasn't there but I can just imagine the sound of an aluminum bat resonating after thwacking a skull.

Jerry's got a tough nugget. He's hit it several times. He cut his forehead on a ladder at work and got stitches (about a year and half ago). Last summer, on at least two occasions, while mowing his yard with a riding mower, he hit his head on a low branch of a huckleberry tree. Not sure if he tried ducking too late or didn't see it all. Either way, both times (or possibly more) resulted in a good scrape on his noggin.

Poor Jerry wasn't thinking straight and told his dad to take him to the wrong hospital. Fortunately, he had to wait a while before being seen by the doctor. I say fortunately because he came to his senses before seeing a doctor and incurring an emergency room charge that might not be covered by his insurance. He went to an emergency room in his HMO and got 5 staples in his head.

Good night again.

Drop and give me 20 (pounds)!

We went to visit Greg and Deb and their two beautiful daughters this weekend. Greg took some pictures and posted them. There were a couple of me in there that were none too flattering...I wasn't able to suck in my big belly.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had put on quite a bit of weight over the winter. I like to think of it as sympathy weight. Trouble is, Raquel had the baby and I still look pregnant.

I've started running and walking a couple times a week after work. Now, I know I need to go more often. It's really disheartening to try to run. My shins hurt from the extra weight. I get winded easier. My time for running 1.5 miles is 20% slower than last year...and last year was less than spectacular. But I'm going to fight through this. I'm not going to succumb to a fad diet diet like Crapkins. I'm not going to count calories and determine if they are from protein, carbs, or fat. I'm just going to eat better (less sweets, smaller portions), drink fewer sodas, and drink more water. And work harder during exercise.

I'm a little tired now and can't think of anything funny or interesting to write.

Good night.

Help, call the police, my baby is on fire!!

A few years ago, a young man that I worked with was married to a young woman who was deaf. I bought a book to learn a little bit of sign language so that I could talk to her. "Help, call the police, my baby is on fire!!" was the first sentence I put together. I don't think she was overly impressed.

I know it's been a little over a month since I last posted. No real excuses, but the transition to a new(er) computer was one delay. Greg left a few questions:

How's Raquel and the baby? Raquel and baby are both fine. Raquel loves being a mommy and she's good at it. Lourdes has been such a good baby. She doesn't fuss a lot, she has slept a few times through the whole night (otherwise she wakes once), and she's really cute to boot. She had her two-month check-up yesterday. She weighed in at 11lbs 9oz and was about 22.5", putting her in the 50th percentile. She's in the 99th percentile in cuteness. Who am I kidding, there's not a cuter baby out there. Oh yeah, she had her first immunizations yesterday. She didn't enjoy them but she recovered quickly.

Dogs learned any new tricks? Not that they've showed me. But I suspect they are secretly trying to gas me at night.

Anything pissing you off lately? Not really, nothing of note.

What are the specs on this new computer you got? It's an emachines T2245, 2.2 Ghz Celeron processor, 768 MB of RAM, 160 GB primary hard drive, 40 GB secondary hard drive, DVD drive, CD-RW drive, 10/100 Mbps ethernet card, and Windows XP Home. A friend gave the computer to me sans hard drives and only 256 MB of RAM. I pumped it up to it's current configuration. Probably the most important thing I did to it was load vcom System Suite 5 software. It includes a firewall and Trend Micro antivirus software. If you run Windows, I highly recommend System Suite 5.

Had any time to take the Harley out for a spin? Well sort of. I fired it up a couple weeks ago and took it for a spin around the block, but I didn't have the current license sticker at that time. Now I'm legal, and I hope to start riding to work, especially since gas was $1.95 today. If it's nice tomorrow, I may take a short trip over to Morton.

How about those Cubs? I'm sure you're referring to the Chicago kind, so a quick look at their official web page shows them in second place, 2.5 games behind the first-place Astros

Let my people go, you damn dirty apes!

The Ten Commandments is on tonight.

Friday night we went to see The Rock in Walking Tall. Not the greatest movie in the world but not bad for an action flick. I wished The Rock would have kicked some more butt.

I had drill this weekend, things went smoothly. The only problem was the time change. I can't remember the last time I had to spring forward and it wasn't a drill weekend.

We went to see Hellboy tonight. I found it to be pretty entertaining overall. The main character was played by the same dude that played the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. I feel sorry for the guy, he's so ugly he has to play freaks in films.

Lourdes did just fine in both movies and is doing wonderfully in general. Still growing.

Lourdes says hi.

Well, she didn't say it, but I'm sure that she would if she could. I was sitting here holding her and didn't know what to write and she was intently looking at the screen so I interpretted that to mean she wanted to say hi to everyone.

This weekend was a full plate. Friday night we went to see The Ladykillers at the new Rave Motion Pictures cinema. The capacity for the movie was 442. I had Pibb Xtra and SnoCaps. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly and Lourdes slept through the whole show. She's such a good baby.

Saturday we got a late start but we went south for the day. We first stopped to visit my Grandma and to introduce her to her 45th great grandchild, but Grandma wasn't home. So we went to Kim and Randy's house to show off our little Lourdes. Katy was there with her little girl. Cammie is a couple months older than Lourdes but not a lot bigger, apparently she was pretty tiny when she was born. Poor thing is getting over a bit of a cold and seemed a little fussy, but not too bad.

From Kim's house, we tried to visit Dave and Marcia. They weren't home. We next tried my dad's house, but he wasn't home. So we went to the El Matador in Mt. Zion to eat and to show Lourdes to a Paraguayan lady who works there. Next we went to mom's house but she wasn't home, but that was ok because I wanted to work on her computer. It won't print, and I know it's not the printer. It's not the USB port, because other USB devices work. I think the operating system has gotten itself corrupted. After toiling with the computer for awhile, we went back to visit Dave and Marcia.

Today we went to see Secret Window. Again, Lourdes slept through the whole movie. Such a good baby. After the movie, we went to WalMart and bought, among other things, a vibrating bouncer for Lourdes. She seems to like it. I wish I had one big enough for me.

Back to work...

Today I went back to work. It was very different leaving home this morning. Raquel always sends me off with a kiss and tells me to hurry home. Today, Raquel and Lourdes sent me off with a kiss and told me to hurry home.

Time went by very slowly today. 9 a.m. felt like 11, and so on and so on. After work I was going to exercise. It's been since early December since I've worked out at all so I was going to ease in to it by going for a walk. I ran in to a guy who had a baby in February and we ended up talking about our babies and I didn't get any exercise.

I've chunked up over the last few months. I weighed in at 235 today and it's not a good 235. Since early December, I've come straight home from work and watched a lot of TV and played a lot of Playstation and eaten lots of sweets. I'm going to get back on track.

Last night I couldn't sleep. I went to bed at a reasonable time and fell asleep fine. Unfortunately at 10:20, Peanut stepped on my left testicle and woke me. It wasn't a pleasant way to be awakened that involved my genitals. For some reason I couldn't sleep after that. I tossed and turned for an hour, then I got up and read about math on the internet for about an hour and a half. I read about speed arithmetic. I might look at that a little closer. In no time, I'll be helping my girl with her homework.

Hopefully, I'll sleep better tonight. Watch where you step Peanut.

Growing like a weed

Yesterday we took Lourdes to the pediatrician for her 2-week checkup. She weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs 2 oz and measured 21 inches. That's over a pound since she was in the hospital. Doctor says Lourdes is perfect, but we already knew that.

Lourdes did seem a little clingy yesterday. She did not want to be left in her bassinet, not even when she fell asleep. Maybe she was cranky because her umbilical cord fell off.

After the doctor visit, we went to a new movie theater close to the doctor's office. Rave Motion Pictures Grand Prairie 18 just opened last weekend. They boast that there is true stadium seating so no one will ever block your view of the screen. They also boast about 48 inches of legroom between each row. When we pulled in sight of the theater, I was impressed. It's gimongous! And they weren't kidding about the roominess. There's enough space in the rows that if the theatre is crowded and someone has to get a refill or use the facilities, they can walk, not sidestep, to the aisle and not once trip on someone or put their butt or crotch in another person's face. And the screen was huge as well!

We saw Taking Lives starring Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. It was pretty good. I had Pibb Xtra and SnoCaps. I didn't even have to smuggle the SnoCaps. Oh and baby was perfect through the whole movie, not a peep.

I've been playing MX Unleashed on the PS2 lately. It's been very entertaining. I had been playing an old PS1 game called Syphon Filter with the intent of finishing it and playing the rest of the Syphon Filter series (through SF3, all designed for the PS1 console) in anticipation of Syphon Filter 4 for PS2 which is due out sometime this year. Maybe I'll get back to it again soon.

The dogs have been really good with Lourdes. They are definitely interested in her, but have been behaving. Unrelated to interaction with the baby, Dover has picked up a cool little trick. If the water bowl is empty, he picks it up and brings it to us to remind us that we need to take better care of them. Hopefully Lourdes will behave similarly.

Family Night Out

We went to see Hidalgo last night. Yes we took the baby and she was perfect. She slept through the whole movie until about the last 10 minutes, but Raquel fed her before she got very loud.

The movie was pretty good and I had Pibb Xtra and smuggled SnoCaps. I have to smuggle in the SnoCaps because the movie theater suddenly quit carrying them. Deb and Greg may also question Pibb versus my usual Cherry Coke. Well the theater doesn't carry any kind of cherry cola. Besides, Pibb Xtra is really good.

There was a cool looking trailer for a movie coming out this summer, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It looks like 1930's sci-fi movie, only modernized.

Baby's sleeping the night better than I am. I have to get up at least a couple times to pee or let the dogs out. The last two nights, she's only got up once after we went to bed.

The dogs seem to like their little sister. They are definitely interested in her, they want to smell her and lick her, but then again who doesn't. Well everyone wants to smell a new baby, anyway.

Today, we'll be visiting Decatur/Mt.Zion and showing off our beautiful little Lourdes.

Welcome Lourdes!!

Lourdes Dianna came into our lives on 5 March 2004, weighing in at 7 lbs 7 oz and measuring 19.5". She's beautiful!!!