Halloween pumpkin carving....

Well, Kelly and I have done this annually for as long as I can remember... or at least as long as we have been married... wait.. that is the same thing. LOL... Anyway, in the Marriage B.C. years (married but before children for those of you who don't know), we used to do about 3-4 pumpkins EACH. In fact, we even hosted a pumpkin carving party one year when Connor was only about 6 months old.

As we get older and the kids get older and they continue their energy-sucking ways out of us, the pumpkin carving has become less and less. Especially now that they want to help so much. We at least get two done every year though. This year they have graduated to marking the pumpkins for us, though we still do most (or all) of the carving. They picked the patterns, and I think they turned out pretty well.

The finished product...

Good Guys Wear Black!

FINALLY! After all these years the good old guys in black are back as World Champs! Now granted, I have come late to the White Sox fan base. Kel and I lived in Chicago for eight years while I went to grad school. I knew all about the Cubs due to WGN Superstation and the fact they were National League. I knew next to nothing about the White Sox. But getting tickets to White Sox games was a WHOLE lot easier, and it wasn't long before we were getting out to a few games per year. I remember sitting in the right field bleachers at Comiskey (I refuse to call it that corporate sponsored crap they have now) for 3 games out of the last 4 games of the season in a 4 game series with the Texas Rangers in a battle for their division. I remember the pain of all the talk of the White Sox being the favorites to win the World Series in 1994 when the strike hit and there was NO playoffs, much less a World Series. Until the day we moved away, that was still a sore point with White Sox fans - we felt robbed!

Now since I have left Chicago my work has kept me too busy to stay in the loop, though caught myself getting back in the loop this season as they tore up the league. But I remember sitting and watching Ozzie, Tim Raines, Joey Cora, Harold Bains PLAY for the White Sox, not COACH. Kinda bizarre to see fiery Ozzie MANAGING, when there were times he needed the MOST managing when playing! LOL... I remember BlackJack McDowell, Jason Bere, Bo Jackson, and even the Michael Jordan debacle/experiment. I remember going to a game on the spur of the moment after work with Kelly and Connor when he was only months old... on a weeknight... and getting to sneak down in the stands behind home plate, watching the game as we held our new, first child. And I remember the brats! Oh, the Comiskey brats! LOL

Now it's the Konerko's, the Uribe's, the Crede's, the Pierzynski's, the Dye's, and so on. And don't even get me started on the pitching! WOW...

Anyway, I just wanted to give props to a true blue-collar, working-guy, regular Joe team that worked AS A TEAM all the way to the World Championship!

Fall Break trip to the mountains

Well, evidently here in Georgia the kids get a Fall Break in addition to Spring Break. So last week they had Thursday, Friday, and Monday of this week off. My family (sisters and their families and my parents) have been wanting to do a big family weekend getaway, so we decided to head to the mountains north in the state. We couldn't find anything available to us in the north Georgia mountains, but did find some chalets at Lake Guntersville State Park in North Alabama. So we headed up Friday morning and had a blast til Sunday when we headed back. Lots of hiking, a bit of fishing, and some just good old sit around and do nothing in the evenings.


The boys had not done any hiking in quite some time. Not since a couple summers ago at Theodore National Park out in western North Dakota. And that is more hiking around buttes and canyons. They had never done any hiking on mountains. Though excited, they quickly tired...LOL (especially Connor). Still they had a wonderful time.

We decided on Saturday afternoon to go on a hike on a trail the smaller kids (Mitch and Katie) could handle. We found one that was supposed to be relatively flat and short. Well, we decided to branch off that one after a while onto another, and it turned out we had to hike down (and back up) a small cliff face! It was fun, and the kids were real troopers! Mitch tired out on the way back though, so I had to hike the last half mile or so with him on my shoulders. Yeah. That was enjoyable!

We didn't get to fish as much as Connor wanted to, so I promised I would take him and Luke out to my parents' house on the lake Monday morning to fish. I ended up having to paddle an old aluminum boat which again was loads of fun, but they had a blast. There seemed to be more playing with minnows than actual fishing, but in typical fashion, Connor always catches at least one!

No time or energy for witty descriptions of things, but I just hadn't updated the place in a while so thought I would throw this up. For more pics of the trip, just click on the Flickr badge thingy in the menu bar on the right over there... I put up some of the better pics there...

Do NOT try this at home!

So my Sunday school class has our monthly social gathering last night. We try to have a different theme each time, and last night's was a home made chili and ice cream "cook off." I am proud to say that Kel's chili came in second place, and her ice cream won first prize!

But never, I mean NEVER, do this all in one night....There were 9 different chili recipe's to sample, and three different home made ice cream flavors. Being the good and dutiful judge, I sample ALL NINE types of chili, two of them twice. I then proceeded to sample only one of the type of ice cream (Kel's... the other two were kinds I knew I did not like)... but I had two full bowls of hers - chocolate ice cream, with like multiple chunks of chocolate and cocoa melted into it, as well as Reese's Fast Break candy bars, with peanut butter cookie dough chunks mixed in...made with eight eggs, whipping cream, and so on... can you say heart-attack-in-a-bowl? I thought you could...

Needless to say, the rest of my evening last night was not pleasant. I have not felt that crappy in I-don't-know-how-long... One of those times where you wish you could just, um, regurgitate the entire contents of your stomach and get rid of the evil that lurks inside your belly... but can't. I mean, doubled over, writhing in pain stomach ache... but doubling over put more pressure on your stomach, hurting more... then you had to stretch out to ease the pain a bit, but then end up doubled over again? Yeah. That kind of stomach ache. Half bottles of Tums and Pepto Bismol later, I am at least able to move this morning...SLOWLY. I have no idea how I am gonna make it through today seeing patients all day. At least I get to sit on my butt all day. But it is like I am moving in slow motion this morning... if I take a step too fast, the nausea comes rushing back! Yuck!

Just say no to chili/ice cream cook off's in the same evening. You'll thank me for it later.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Crap

Ok. So I have seen the previews for the HHGG movie, and thought it looked funny. Since it is now out on DVD I thought I would give it a rent. But before I did, I wanted to read the book. Yes, even though I loved that kind of stuff when I was a kid/teen, I never read anything from the HHGG series. So I, um, "searched" around on the internet for an ebook version I could download to my PDA. I just finished reading it, and I can say is...

wow...

What a complete and total waste of several hours of my life!

HHGG had to be the most tedious, boring, unfunny, extremely poorly written, inane, disjointed, incomplete drivel I think I have ever read!

Go on, flame me. This book was so bad that I don't care how you try to convince me otherwise. It ain't happening. It started interestingly, with things left unsaid and potential character development and plot issues left enticingly undeveloped to pull you into the book. But it stayed there. You followed these guys along for the whole book, with things thrown out there for you to think, "Wow I wonder where that is going to go?" But then Douglas Adams never went back and did anything with it. It's like it was his own personal joke to throw people setups with no punch lines or follow-through. He just leaves them hanging out there. I can understand the abrupt ending since it was a series. But there were abrupt endings and dead ends throughout this waste of paper and pixels.

Wow. I am just floored that this book has such a following. No. I take that back. I am floored who this endless string of words has such a fan following. I cannot in good conscious actually call HHGG a "book." I feel that term is reserved for pieces of literature that have adequate plot, character development, and correct sentence structure and grammar. HHGG had none of that.

The one good thing is now I know I will be saving valuable hours of my life by not reading any more of this series.

Spit some milk out your nose...

I know a bunch of ya'’ll already know about this place, but I find myself forgetting about it, remembering it, sitting at the computer screen for over an hour laughing, and eventually forgetting it again for months until my memory gets triggered again. For those of you who don't know of the place, it is loaded with funny video clips, audio clips, pranks, flash animations, pictures, games, and so on. I just find myself sitting in front of the screen clicking....and clicking... and clicking... Granted, some of the stuff is a little too off color for my tastes, but a lot of it is fairly clean and hilarious!

The tag line for the site is:

eBaum's World - Media For The Masses - funny videos, flash games, jokes, clean humor, hilarious flash, funny pics, office humor, prank phone calls, flash cartoons, optical illusions, and tons more!

Long tag line, but it really is chock full of all that. My latest favorite is the kid in the National Spelling Bee competition who does a spot-on Napoleon Dynamite impersonation...

...anyway, nothing major to add... just thought you'd like a little milk-through-the-nose time waster resource...

I'm gettin' real tired, ya'll...

I'm getting burnt out. I am blessed with a very healthy practice right now, but cursed with no prospects for hiring a colleague to help out. I am seeing patients til 7:00 pm or 8:00 pm just about every night. I am booked solid (yes, no free slots at all at 60 hours per week) for the next month straight, and am booked daily for psychological evaluations through mid-November already. The only time I have now for the deluge of paperwork and reports is, well, right now. It is 11:38 pm. I was at the office at 7:00 am this morning working on reports. Started seeing patients at 8:00 am. Didn't stop til 8:00 pm.

Sorry to vent. But I am getting worn out.

And to top it off, coming home is no relief. For one, I have to bring work home. So it really isn't a break anyway. But the boys have been rough lately too. Well, those of you who know about my three sons know it is never a break at home, but it seems to have been especially stressful lately. I need time to decompress from the day and the stories I hear all day. And lately I just ain't getting that. It's a dangerous combination.

No, no need to call 911 or remove all sharps from my home. LOL... But I definitely am in the midst of a Job (that's the Biblical Job, not job, LOL) time of life, and definitely in an "Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood" moment.

For those inclined, pray for me and the practice and that I will find someone to hire on staff. For those not inclined, do it anyway. LOL

Thanks for letting me sit on the couch for a while.

See ya at the Pole... this is wonderful...

Now I have heard about the Youth Christian movement, and one of the things they do across the country, called See ya at the Pole (SYATP). This is a day when Christian teens in junior high and high schools meet at the flag pole in the front of their school before school begins for a time of worship, prayer, and meditation. When I lived in Bismarck I had a friend who is a youth pastor, and I remember him talking about going to the high schools to be with the youth as they did this. However, I have never seen it myself. Well, yesterday was SYATP day. As I was driving by my church, I saw a huge crowd at the flag pole in front. See, we are temporarily housing a private Christian school at my church for the next couple of years until the school gets their building completed. So of course, this doesn't surprise me that a Christian school would be involved in SYATP. But it made me curious about the other schools in town. It just so happens that one of the two main high schools in town is on my way to my office, so I made sure to drive by on the way. The front of this school is the "hang out" spot before school, where all cliques, groups, racial and ethnic conglomerations, and so on, congregate before the first bell. The flag pole s dead in the center of this mass of adolescent flesh and hormonology (LOL), so I was curious to see how faithful the Christian teens would be to SYATP in this environment. As I drove by, in the midst of all this stuff, I saw three separate rings of teens holding hands deep in prayer...focused on their internal worship and oblivious to the groups around them. It was wonderful to see about 50 teenagers in a public school unabashedly and unashamed in their faith, and boldly expressing that faith literally in the midst of their secular world.

I wish I had pictures of it. It was a powerful image.

To all you Christian teenagers out there, others are seeing what you are doing, and lives can be changed as a result. Rock on.

Just because I feel like it...

...thought I would post some old pics that I had put up on our old MSN XBLF pages... I know one is your personal favorite, LSG...LOL



Here, Lulu evidently got a little upset with ike... Hope he's okay... what will little ike do?!







And here, Lulu's foreman caught her dipping into Sluggy's Special Blend a bit too much....




First, we almost didn't make to Guntersville for our Annual River Trip.....
...and then this really put a damper on the trip and slowed us down a bit!



Yep... it is getting to be close to good ol' deer season down south... but I think that the deer are mounting a coup this year... I fear their dreaded Bambi Kamikazee Squadron... here's the carnage that can happen when they die for their cause...




What can I say? This guy was just an idiot. Or blind. Or both.

And for LSG, her personal favorite....

Innocence shattered...

So I have decided I am gonna try to put at least one thing on this blog daily, even if it is just a one line quote or something... but today, I have something kind of sad...

So Kelly calls me as I am going to pick up a prescription for our 9 year old son, Connor, and says, "Well, Connor learned the hard way not to stick his middle finger out today." Turns out he was standing in line for something at school, and a kid next to him said something about something having wet paint on it. Connor wiped on it with his middle finger - yes, the bird finger - and held it up to the boy and said, "See? That paint isn't wet." Well, when this kid saw the middle finger held up in front of him, he evidently freaked out. He called the teacher over to them and told her Connor flipped him off. Connor has no clue about "the bird" - he is the most loving, caring, soft-hearted, and generally innocent boy I know - and freaked out likewise because he had no clue why he was getting in so much trouble. His teacher started lambasting him about how inappropriate and rude his behavior was and that he should never do that again and so on and so forth. Connor was trying his best to explain what happened but his teacher kept interrupting him and never let him speak or explain.

Poor Connor comes home with the dreaded "red note" from his teacher to Kel and me telling us that he should be "taught how inappropriate his behavior was" or some such garbage. He asks Kelly if she knows what is so bad about the middle finger, and playing dumb she says, "No Connor, what is so bad about the middle finger?" He says, "See?! You don't know either!" He told Kelly, "She wouldn't let me explain! I tried to tell her the only reason I used that finger was because of the wart on my other finger." See, he has this little seed wart on his pointing finger and is embarrassed by it. Further, Connor tends to use his middle finger a lot in pointing, like when he is reading and following the words in his book, and so forth.

So here's this poor innocent kid who does something innocent. But because of our jaded and antisocial and post-Columbine society, it is assumed that he is being aggressive and harassing when that couldn't be further from the truth!

Chaps my hide something fierce I tell ya!

Needless to say, Kelly called Connor's teacher immediately and tried to explain. But his teacher maintained her annoyed tone and basically told us that we need to do a better job in preparing our children for this crappy, antisocial, and harassing society we live in. Thank you for the advice, Ms. Latimore. But I think I would like for my innocent child to remain innocent as long as he can. Society is going to taint him soon enough.

While I was at the pharmacy picking up his prescription, I bought Connor some pads to help get rid of that wart.

Maybe that kid and Ms. Latimore will wake up with some tomorrow.