Has anyone been to the Post Office lately? it opens at 9:30am!!!! and and shuts the down by 4:30pm!!! nowhow is anyone who has a normal job supposed to get inside this place. Of course, I guess hours vary but no wonder this place is losing billions despite raising the cost of stamps every three weeks or so... You should have heard the cursing as people walked to the door and realized they were... CLOSED? at 9am? on a Thursday? that is not one of the 37 government holidays?

And I continue to wonder how it is I cant find a decent swimsuit for my daugther that doesnt look like she is in a contest for Miss USA or Miss Universe... I see plenty that would be fine for a 22 year old girl on Spring Break at Daytona, but none that are suitable to a 9 year old. Looks like she will be wearing boys swim trunks and a boys rashguard....

and another thing.. is it me or are all the Jack in the Box's closed now all of a sudden?

an answer

my mother gave me a little insight as to why Ryles might be balking at wearing I-Mans jeans... she says the button is on the opposite side and that makes it not feel right when you put them on and try to fasten them. And that I-Mans sweatpants, etc. DONT have any buttons, therefore dont have the same foreign feel... It does make sense to me....

So on Sunday Kirk Randazzo came up to visit the chapter and gave an impressive presentation on Leadership. I have seen it before but I saw the tweaks he has done to "freshen" it up ad it works...

I came away a bit energized myself in regards to moving the chapter forward in a manner meaningful to them and our Alumni of Kappa Beta...

.. and I was reminded at how much of a POSITIVE influence Scott Hendrickson played in my life, even though I wasnt exceptionally close to him. No doubt his death spurred my "career" within the Fraternity as I never would have repeated as President of the Chapter if he would have been there, which in turn may have led to me never running for District or National office.. or being in a position to be asked to Sponsor the chapter. I certainly wasnt as close to him as others who read this blog. But I always remember his positive energy that he generally displayed. And whenever I sing the Fraternity Hymn, I think of him. Every single time. And it is people like him and others who have followed and worked so hard within the chapter that makes me strive tomake sure there is a POSITIVE experience during their time at Clemson within the chapter. And to keep it going as a souce of pride for those very same Brothers.

Happy Birthday to Jessica!!

today is my wife's birthday!!! Happy Happy to her...

I-Man went outside in the rain and picked some plants for her this morning...

I often wonder why it is that Ryles simply will NOT wear I-Mans old jeans, which actually fit her fine, look virtually brand new but somehow are branded "boy jeans" by her despite looking EXACTLY like the jeans she normally wears when she isnt wearing some pear of jeans that has some butterfly or flower or ladybug on them. How does she even tell them apart?

It annoys me that she wont wear those perfectly good jeans, but will snag a pair of I-Mans old sweatpants and wear those... just fine. No problem with those. NOT. AT. ALL.

while not my birthday or anything, I did find out this info....

i have been living for 525 months, or 2288 weeks or 16021 days...

Sometimes I wake up with weird threads of thought running thru my mind... i guess they are probably some extension of a dream I might have been having (which I never remember). But this morning I woke up and was thinking about just how many times I might see some of my friends in my lifetime. Some of them I have a feeling I can probably place at the UNDER 20 range. Yeah, I know... morbid. but, realistic? I have no immediate plans as of now to get to New York/New Jersey/North Carolina before Summer 2012. I guess I could change that as it is within my power to do so.. but.. it still remains that it makes me sad. I dont work in a place where we are all friends and hang out after work. So my friends are all away from work. And outside of Brandy, Lynn and Harwood it takes months of planning to see anyone. And even when I see those above, it is an 45 minute lunch here, an hour brunch there... never anything where I get a feeling that I have had a legit chance to reconnect and talk about substance for any length of time. And when I do even visit with long times friends up north, etc. it is an 11 hour trip to have an hours worth of conversation while our kids run all around us. Now... life is what it is. And I dont think any of us would want to go back to sitting at Huddle House for hours on end versus what we have been blessed with now with our children and families. But I do miss an occasional night of wasteful rambling conversation going from one topic to the next... sigh, oh well.. I guess I just need to get over it and get ready for work.. again...

I have often said that I see a lot of myself in my son at times, especially when he gets angry or is in trouble. He is far more emotional than my daughter, and a huge difference between them is that at times my daughters emotions seem a little contrived (one day she is going to read this and be peeved) whereas my son is more genuine. I still wonder if/when he will develop more self control and be able to internalize this stuff... i wonder..

so.. it seems that someone hacked an acct of mine and was doing the oh so childlike typical things kids do when this happens... but.. I did find a trojan horse of sorts on my desktop the other day and I ponder if this had anything to do with it. I doubt it as my antivirus spotted it immediately, but who knows... But this deal of facebook/google/aol/twitter/EVERYTHING being all tied together is starting to make me wonder. I have started the process of updating all my logins to a stronger, totally different password that will take NASA a while to crack. What ticks me off is that I had stuff I had planned to do this morning, and have wasted an hour tracking down where/what/how I was sending random IM's to people... they "seemed" to come from Facebook, but actually were coming from AOL AIM, where it seems someone had accessed my acct thru an old phone number from 10 years ago, that was still linked to AIM...

Ha!... funny how Gadhafi' all of a sudden calls a "cease fire!!!" when the UN announces the go ahead for military operations against him. When Obama was wringing his hands, you saw all the typical bluster and bravado from Gadhafi' and his minions against his population. Then France, Germany and England gave up on the US making a move and decided to make a move themselves, and we see the typical actions of a bully...

i know I have talked about this before... but... it is so weird, yet comforting to lie in the bed and be able to smell your wife...no.. i am not talking about B.O. type of smell or anything like that.. but her perfume or bodyspray will be on the pillow/covers and it is always comforting . I assume it is this way with most people. I dont know... but it also leads me to sleep on "her side" of the bed whenever she is away for what ever reason. I just think it is also kinda weird that i DONT like when I can smell either my son or daughter from if they have been lying in the bed watching TV or something. It is interesting that this turns me off, so to speak.

off the beaten path topic, I know...

last week I had a brief one day bout of some sorta stomach thingy, which had me actually throw on the way to work... while in the car. Luckily, I had a big ole Bojangles cup, and well, you can guess the rest.... So that day saw me simply turn around and go back home and sleep for about 17 hours straight... all better then.

But that prompted me to think about what triggers that reaction... i think its different with everyone, but by the time you are an adult, you KNOW the symptons.. whatever they might be with you. With me its this weird sensation in my mouth, an almost tingling feeling that tells me "ALERT, ALERT... YOU HAVE EXACTLY 4... REPEAT NOW 3 SECONDS TILL THIS HAS GOT TO GO FROM YOUR STOMACH!!!!.. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!"

time is going WAY too fast....

the other day, I went to the Awful Waffle with Lynn for a brunch. The food was awesome, except for the bacon, that they used a press on and made it just too flat and unjuicy... I was amused to see that it seems to be run the same as it was back when we frequented the place regularly withthe womenz workin' in the morning and the menzfolk working @ night. I was was also struck by how absolutely run down the place is, yet I bet it was exactly the same way almost (gulp) 20 FRAKKIN YEARS AGO!!!.. has it really been that long?

more on Carlos Estevez

here's an opinion on Charlie Harper

I've said this before, and I'll say it again... listen to virtually ANY Michael Jackson song and it makes me both sad, and happy at the same time. Sad because we all saw just how jacked up he was. But happy when I see my kids and how positively they are affected by his music. They know little, if anything, of the extremely eccentric actions and things he did, or the allegations of his "relationships" with kids. But the reation they have to his music... all positive. I wonder if 200 years from now all the negative stuff will be anything more than a footnote in Wikipedia

looks like an actual ticket to the Bristol Sprint Cup race has fallen into my lap... this will check off one of my must see races... anyone want to go with me? ( i believe I have two)

.. i setup Skype with a video Cam on the I-Man's newly souped up (doubled his memory) computer. I am going to put a webcam on Grandma's computer sometime and also setup Skype on Nanna's laptop and see if video chatting is something they might like... the webcam was 10 dollars and it is amazing how good the video is now on these things...

..oh, I have my netbook back up and running again with anywhere access. Kinda funny how out of sorts I felt without being able to get online at anypoint... weird when I remember a time when there was no internet...

... which brings me back to that Alan Jackson song "Remember When", which I sometimes think they play in the mornings just so I will be singing it in my mind all day long...

If I were President, I would send in 2 or 3 small yachts manned by innocent looking "families" who in actuality are S.E.A.L. teams with orders to eliminate anyone who attacked them (off the record, of course). I wonder how long these "pirates" would remain in existence in that area if suddenly they all started disappearing. None of this arresting them and bringing them to "justice" in some court in New York.. just a little bit of frontier justice.... just sayin'

'Where's Waldo?'

Why is their no outrage about Charlie Sheen? If this was Bill Cosby, or Rosanne Barr would we stiill be getting the virtual pass on the behaviour? I mean, its is being shown but it is almost like "heh, heh, look at Hollywood playboy Charlie...isn't he cute" but there would be a public outrage and NOW and the other Social Injustice groups would be screaming if it were other types of people. This guy has beaten women, publicly demeaned women and its ALL GOOD it seems...

By the way... Finally cut I-Man's hair on Sunday... or i should say Jessica did...

On Saturday, we went to Table Rock, put on the Tevas and went hiking... we didnt go to the very top but I-Man seems ready to do it. Or at least he thinks he is. i dont think he realizes how far or long that will be for him. But we will be returning one day soon to attempt to reach the summit. I did find it interesting that a lot of the same dynamics exist within our small family.. I-Man running off ahead with little concern and never looking back while Ryles hovered back with us, never straying more than 20 feet ahead. We had to constantly keep asking I-Man to come back, or get down off those rocks, or get out of the creek, or get back on the trail....

... we then went to Pizza Inn that night (celebrating good grades and the free coupons the kids got because of it) where I actually ate 15 slices of pizza. Thin slice pepperoni/sausage will let you pound a ton of it. But what I found amusing was how easy it seems for kids to randomly talk/play with other kids who they do not even know at all. I go and look in the "arcade" and the twins are gathered around with some other kids and they are all playing these games... instant friends...