chirstmas eve craziness
rita was very sick. so sick that she couldn't get out of bed. i got up early and took the kids to her mom's house. they were sick too so they needed attention that rita couldn't give them. i went to work after dropping them off.
i was at work for a few hours when she called me asked me to come home early. she said her mom had to drop off the baby to be fed, and that she needed my help after she was done because we were having my parents over that night for dinner. i went home and she was still really sick.
i had to go to the store to get some things for dinner that night. i was dreading going thinking the line was going to be long. i was pleasantly surprised to get a parking space right in front of the store. there was a guy playing guitar accepting donations and the typical kid selling candy bars. i went in and got my 3 items and got into the express line. i was happy how fast it was.
on my way out, i saw a fire truck parked in the lot right behind my car. the guy who was playing guitar was on the ground behind the car parked next to mine. evidently he passed out and hit the asphalt with his head a few minutes before. i felt bad for the guy... but my wife needed me at home! i felt bad even asking if there was any way i could get my car out, i mean, i was just happy it wasn't me laying there on the ground with a bunch of firefighters asking me questions. they had all kinds of monitors hooked up to him and there was blood spattered on the ground around him. i'm not sure where it all came from - i only saw a scrape on his forehead.
i decided to walk over to Carl's Jr. to get lunch, walk back and eat it in my car to wait for the opportunity to leave. by the time i got back, they had the guy on a stretcher and the ambulance had arrived. i got into my car and ate. a few minutes later, the ambulance left and i was able to get out and get back to my sick wife and work my butt off around the house to get ready for the evening. the house had been a mess due to everyone being sick. junk was spread evenly throughout the entire house.
i thought the trip to the store was going to take forever because of the line, but it ended up just being something else. it took about an hour and a half to get home. whatever. at least i have my health and my christmas eve went great after that. in the future, i'm thinking about giving the up-front parking space to someone else in lieu of that ever happening again. accidents never happen in the furthest parking spots away from the store... do they?
love
have you ever loved someone or something so much that you can just stare at it in awe for extremely long periods of time? my kids have captured me lately.
in one of the songs off the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb album by U2, Bono sings a phrase, "I've had enough of romantic love, I'd give it up..." romantic love, like what you see in movies, is over-glorified in our society. this is way deeper; more powerful. it's unexplainable.
be happy - people will thank you for it
i've made a conscious effort to be happy. somehow i don't realize it, everything piles up on me and i end up a little bit depressed every once in a while. it takes someone like my band mates or my brother in law to notice and clue me in on it. i honestly don't notice it, but i get short with people, and generally seem unhappy most of the time. i think that i get lost in the moment and let everything take over my life instead of me being in control.
since it was pointed out to me, i feel a lot better. i know that my kids and my wife can tell the difference. they tend to get lost too. hopefully i will notice the next time this starts to happen and I will be able to steer clear of it when it comes.
5th tooth
i forgot to blog that my son, Jackson, who is 6 months old, now has his 5th tooth in. The most recent additions are his two front teeth.
you know the song...
fevers
so everyone except me in my house has had several fevers over the past few days. i mean, everyone has been really, really sick. what's going on? IT'S AN EPIDEMIC!
own it
i've decided that it's better to own the company than to work for it... and if you know where i work then you know what i'm talking about. i've never seen so many people spend so much money. *old man voice* when i was a kid...
shooting stars
i was outside monday night and in 3 minutes i saw 2 shooting stars. it hurts my brain to try to figure out when the shooting star actually burnt up.
The nearest star is some 4.2 light years away, and that distance was known to within an accuracy of better than 0.1 light year.
The light year is not a unit of time; it is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).
anyhow, it was cool to see. it's been a long time. it reminded me of seeing Haley's Comet when I was in junior high, which comes along every 76 years. hopefully i'll get to see that again in 2062. I'll be 88; a great vintage if you ask me.
christmas lights
i recommend going up to Thoroughbred St. in Alta Loma to see the Christmas light displays. it boggles my mind that you basically have to sign a contract that if you were to buy a house on that street, you have to do some insane Chrsitmas light display for oodles of people to drive by every night until Christmas - every year. it's lunacy. and the electric bills must be through the roof.
i put up my retro big bulb Christmas lights on the house last weekend. Rita and I both love the simple look of these lights. they look nice and add a really nice quality of light to the front walk every night.
putting the lights up was a bit scary. i had to lean over the peak of the roof with a staple gun to staple the cord to the bottom of the facia boards. i don't remember it being that scary last year. not very fun.
we happen to have an 8' tall inflatable snowman in the yard too. the boys like to watch him (it) get inflated each night as he "comes alive." it's fun to watch their eyes.
christmas shopping
haven't done any.
new hardware
i just ordered a new 300GB SATA drive for my G5 from NewEgg.com. it has a 16MB cache and it was $127. can't beat that.
finals week
this is finals week for my teaching position at Cal Poly. i wrote my first final this week in preparation for that, even though i've been teaching there for 5 years. i have traditionally collected final projects for my class, but i think this will be a good way of providing an entrance exam to get into the next class that this is a prerequisite for.
i teach beginning 3d modeling in
FormZ to incoming freshmen architecture students in the fall quarter, as well as beginning Building Information Modeling (BIM) in
ArchiCad to second year architecture students. we cover a lot of ground in ten weeks, and we only meet once a week. if they miss a class, they miss quite a bit. the excuses they come up with are pretty funny when they ask me why they receive the grade they did. most of my students do really well... but the ones who do poorly do very, very poorly. you can read in a past blog about some of the things my students do or say.
it's pretty funny.next quarter i will be adding an advanced 3d modeling course as well as intermediate web design to the mix. i will be there three days a week, so my time will be much tighter for those ten weeks. i hope to actually cancel classes a few weeks into it so i can get away to Truckee (near Lake Tahoe) for a week. i'm really looking forward to that.
whats happening
the house is painted.
silo, our dog, got his face ripped off. he is getting better.
i went to a wedding. it was a good time of reflection. man i need to try harder.
jackson got his third tooth.
leighton doesn't cry when i drop him off at preschool anymore.
ethan won his first playoff soccer game.
we're getting a new roof soon.
i'm not happy. i just don't feel it. kind of empty.
system kid show
system kid is playing a free show this Friday night.
