Past weekend we went and did the Frisbee golf gig... which actually was a lot of fun. I didnt realize that their are different frisbees for "driver", "approach" and "putting" and they feel different and definitely fly differently. And that you can definitely need to be in shape to do the course.. at least the one we played was extremely hilly and woody....

Soccer is over.. well.. not really... as now TRY-Outs for the next season officially start today... but I-Mans team won their last tourney last weekend... so the loop starts over again. But it looks like if everyone gets selected again, most of his team will return in the Fall. So a week of the try-outs and we'll see where they land.... But i did see improvement with I-Man this year... we now will start drilling down on some technique as it seems the club is targeting him as a Midfielder, rather than fullback as of now... requires he be in better shape though....

"When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls
And soft summer nights
We'd hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen" .... as heard of Frank Sinatra singing....

I'm not a mother..nor am I a woman. But I have a very healthy respect for all the women in my life, from my Mother, to Jessica, to my Mother and Sister in Law to my numerous close friends who typically tend to be women. And I will say this... Being a Mom is a difficult job, period. Stay at home, working... whatever. The Liberal whack job chick who spouted off about Ann Romney has been met with universal disapproval for her comments. Amusing that you havent heard much from the feminist groups, have you? but anyways...  Just a shame that a WOMAN would say this.. especially since she worked as a stay at home mom too... what, she just assumes that because the Romneys are now rich that she didnt have to attend to her children? yes... there are instances where people use nannies. And if they can afford to, I say whatever... Even so, you wont EVER hear me coming down on what women have to do in regards to our children.... I say that Mrs Romney, who was fighting breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, can have a break, as far as i'm concerned...

here is a poll that seems to show the consensus....

its kinda funny how Betamax..errr... Google+ is doing these days... everytime I go to it on my phone there is only one (1) person in my stream who post anything... even the local TV personality who post 75 things a day on every social media platform that exists rarely posts on it.. But I do think this article suggests something that makes a lot of sense....

So Spring Break saw us take off in the Jetta to parts beyond the Mason Dixon line... have I mentioned that my car gets 55-57 miles per gallon on the Interstate? This trip saw us go up I-77 to I-81 up through the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania then New jersey... then into New York to Coney Island, back to Washington DC down I-95 continuing to Florence, S.C. then Columbia and Finally.. FINALLY back home for 130.00 in gas. Certainly beat a minimum of  $1,200.00 in plane tickets... not to mention we were fortunate to have friends and family who let us stay with them, saving approximately another 700 dollars minimum in hotel costs.. enough rambling on about that stuff....

.. we traveling into New Jersey and crashed at Kristen's house.We didnt really do much except hang out and visit with her family with Ryles helping make an Easter egg wreath while I-Man took the challenge of a Wii battle. I guess I went a little bit into this segment not having much planned and it turned out for the best as it was just leisurely time spent hanging out, talking, etc. Some takeout Chinese, a dinner at a local restaurant and a lot of catching up was nice. Its great to be able to simply talk to an old friend in person for a change....

Ok... we then went into Rutgers University and had a Fat Darrell at the "Greasetrucks" of Man vs Food fame... Gotta admit that I was not too impressed with Fat Darrell, but did see several sandwiches that I should have tried ordering instead of the sandwich voted #1 in the counytry... supposedly...

Now up the Turnpike, thru the Holland Tunnel... dodging people down Canal Street and into Brooklyn where we met up with Uncle Erik, Aunt Pam and their new family member Clark. I found it both amusing and a trip back in time to see what it is like with a 3 week old child, and the obvious feelings of just flat out confusion, joy, exhaustion and nervous tension that goes into suddenly having someone to care for, who is entirely dependent on you, who you have a slightly difficult time communicating with.... but Erik and Pam seem to be well equipped to come out on the other side all the better and stronger with their son. And I am already sensing that Mr Brown gets a little bit more of my perspective on things now that he has Master Clark to look after and worry bout. . Of course, we all now have run into the areas our fathers were once in and some of those things we just didnt understand.. we now see with a all too well clarity...

A trip to Coney Island, a lunch at the ORIGINAL Nathans (the one where the hotdog eating championships are held), the the subway into Manhattan, where we first hit The American Girls store... and let me tell you.. that was definitely different. But what I found memorable was the fact that our Ryles, who NEVER strays too far away (or ahead) from us - unlike I-Man who still takes off and never looks back- ... upon seeing the American Girl store virtually took off running to the store as from a half block away, not even bothering to see if we were following behind. And to see all the young girls in this place, and man oh man all the shell shocked Dads. Well, anyway, I managed to get out of there with one outfit, Glasses and some American Girls size keens for Rebecca, Ryles American Girl "friend", who is coincidentally a Jewish American girl from Brighton Beach, where we had just happened to drive thru earlier that day.... Funny that when you walk out of that store, there seems to be a ant like trail across the street to Rockefeller Centre where the LEGO store is... where I-Man took off running and I managed to make it out with a huge firefighting airplane... I thought for a while the Star Destroyer might ctch his eye, and the $440.00 price tag had me grateful for that Jetta gas mileage, but thankfully I-Man settled on a far more reasonable price range in Lego Ville...

The next day...Off to Washington DC where we hooked up with Brian and Lisa Polen. Absolutely wonderful to see them again and catching up with them and their children... we went into DC and the twins got to see The Mall and so much stuff they have seen so often on TV... It just happened to be the 44 anniversary of MLK being assassinated and there was a HUGE crowd at his memorial.. we also walked around most of the other memorials and made plans for when we return in earnest in about 14 months.... after getting a good idea for what type of shape we need to be in, we returned and had a great time catching up with the Polens and the kids made more Easter wreaths... before we tooled down I-95 to Florence....

Where we spent the night with Nana and Papa before heading into Columbia to see more family. (time for an Op/Ed diversion)I still am having a had time understanding why people in this side of the family cant seem to simply figure out how to communicate. I am about tired of every time we come into a town there is some issue. You would think grown people would quit acting like 10th graders... wasting my time and theirs. What? they think everyone is going to live forever?... i fear they are going to wake up one day... and.. its too late. But what do I know....  I DO KNOW THIS... my son and daughter has never met or seen my Father or Grandmothers... and NEVER WILL. Every time I can get my kids to see Nana, Papa and Grandma is a blessing. And when my Sister's In Law blow up in some crisis EVERY SINGLE HOLIDAY/FAMILY EVENT for the past two and half years i think its a damn shame and a waste of time. What? You think the kids dont notice you guys whispering off on your own and ask me what people are whispering about? or what you meant by the snide hushed comments about other people?  Even more importantly to me, this crap is a growing waste of my children's time. My kids and their cousins dont deserve this.

Get over yourselves.... 

now back on point... kids got to spend the tail end of THEIR trip spending time with Nana, Papa and their Uncles and Aunts and cousins. And they are already looking forward to going to see Grandma possibly real soon for a day.

Sigh... today, I was back at work. It was as if none of this even happened. So much mental energy goes into this stuff. And now I am back to the daily crappy grind with only to think about the next thing ... even if it is me sitting at a race outside a camper by myself... because I am going to do stuff, and experience stuff. I will continue to ask friends and family to join me ( and now us, as my son is now old enough to want to join me ) and I will continue to write here... and ramble on, I suppose...

well, I am ready to win that MegaMind drawing tomorrow....

so my daughter occasionally messages me while I am at work This in and of itself is a tad weird to me but I have long ago gotten past the fact that both of my children can text me from their iPads... so When Ryles sent me a message saying she could call me,  I was a little skeptical, a bit amused and  incredulous seeing as how their iPads are wifi only and that they didnt have Skype or anything... and that I was pretty sure I hadnt seen voice calls coming from an iPad... to the right is the conversation leading up to the events... after i said "OK" i had a little smirk and continued to work on something at my desk thinking that she wasted her time chasing some goose down a path... when my cell rings... me: "whaaa...???" as I look at my phone and see an 864 number. and seeing as how my phone NEVER rings as no one ever calls me, i was like..."WTF?!?" so... incredulous.. I answer. Ryles:"Hey Daddy!!!!!".... me: "um...hey....." Ryles: "Told ya!!!!".... I am thinking to myself " NO FRAKKIN WAYYYYY!!!!!!" How did she just manage to totally circumvent and fire the first salvo in the You.Don't.Need.A.Cellphone.Battle before I could even see it coming.... AND IT ISNT EVEN A CELL PHONE!!!!!!

... got a chance with I-Man's off weekend from soccer to go down and see Cousin Madison play in her soccer match, as well as see Uncle Wes, Aunt Ashley, Aunt Ellen and Cousin Meredith.... The original intent was for Jessica to get to see her Grandmother but that seemed to fall by the wayside but it was still great to hang out with everyone. I was left thinking on the way home about a bunch of things about how communication works...  I thought about this quote... "If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles". -LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN ....

um.. yeah... sometimes discretion IS the better part..... Zielke clued me in on this link about this happening. I can remember a LOT of stuff being yelled out back in the day. But even then, I somehow think the modern day jdwyatt would have thought better of yelling that out...

There was a time for a while that I thought Ryles might never ride a bike. She initially got a bike at the same time as I-Man (seen in this pic as a spec off in the distance, paying no regard to any oncoming traffic having long ago left us behind both physically and mentally) but never wanted to go beyond the training wheel stage... but then suddenly I thought about the fact that one day sooner than we all think she might be in a situation where she needed to at least know how to ride a bike (as we all know, once we learn, it is something that sticks with us)... well, once I was able to scrap together a few pennies from my bonus after the government had taken virtually all of it, I got her a larger size bike, slapped training wheels back on it and i am amazed that it really only took her a week to rid herself of the training wheels and now she is tooling around relatively good. She aint jumping over stuff like I-Man or tooling up steep hills, but at least she has that hurdle behind her now....

I am putting these here as not everyone messes around with Facebook in the family... I-Man and Ryles classes did books this year where they wrote a page and it was printed into a book with the rest of their classmates. Their two classes did different topics.

I-Mans's was a paragraph or two about what they have done so far, I guess. ( I suggest you click on the picture to blow it up larger to read it). Other than they typical 10 year old grammar in writing (because he certainly doesn't talk this way) i found it a bit interesting to actually look into his mind and how he thinks.. a glimpse perhaps. Like I was telling someone else who saw this, it fascinates me that it isnt the iPads or the Call of Duty games or being decent in soccer or wildly successful in school that he thinks of... its visiting the Cherokee reservation over a year ago.. or spending a couple of nights with Nana and Papa in their camper.. or simply being the last man standing in his class at the end of the year.. that he thinks about. Sometimes we forget just how much the simple things are important. I suspect that when you ask Papa about how much money he spent on his camper weighs on him, I bet he doesnt give a crap at the end of the day. But what he thinks about is spending time with his grandchildren, which makes every penny worth it to him. I know that I-Man constantly talks about going to the water park with Grandma upcoming this summer... and I know the costs of the trip wont mean much at all to Grandma... but the memory and time spent will be well worth it....

then you have Ryles... While it has been chronicled that she is perhaps the sharper, more calculating or the twins i at times see a longer range vision with her. She has mentioned a couple of times about being a teacher, which I kinda flippantly disregarded for some reason or another.. but then her class did the dealio where they were writing a letter to themselves in the future. And yes the writing and sentence flow seem to indicate a little more advanced place for her, what struck me more was the actual content and how ironic this all is... she already plans to be in the band... she already plans to be a teacher... i doubt she really knows this, but her parents were in band and aunts and uncles... and grandparents did the music gig... Virtually EVERY female on my side of the family, from my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, numerous aunts, cousins and even uncles were/are ALL school teachers. That she is heading down virtually the same path that so many people ahead of her went is tre interesting... especially since Ryles mother played clarinet, played in band and became teachers... next thing we know is that she will be wearing a long skirt, tall boots and being Drum Major for Easley High...

...funny that tthis mental image of Ryles also makes me visualize I-Man in the same band, up at the top of the stands in the back of the band... with his Contra... dropping peanuts on people at the football games from the top of the stands, constantly dodging trouble (like he does now) yet somehow inexplicably making even better grades than Ryles...

oh.. and another thing... THIS is why people get annoyed when Obama and "Progressives" go on about "spreading the wealth" and making sure no one goes without. This person wins the lottery and thinks she should still get assistance from taxpayers?

 Asked if she had the right to the public assistance money, Clayton answered, "I kind of do. I have no income, and I have bills to pay. I have two houses."

WHAT?!?!?!?

Sooooo...STUPID!!!!.... if you aint got no job,why not use that 500,000 large, build a 150,000 house to green specs, put solar panels on that house and be off the grid completely... what? 300,000 is you do it right? drop 50 on one (or two) cars.... 50 to furnish house completely and get land.... leaving you a 100 grand to sip off of until you can figure out someway to get a steady income of some sorts....

Instead, we are in a culture now and being led by someone who fosters this idea that you will simply be given everything you need. Look.. I have sympathy for those less fortunate or those who have lost jobs, whatever and are trying to make do until they can get their situation righted. I have little to NO sympathy for those who dont even try...who are standing around with their hands out... when I get my bonus every year for the time, effort, knowledge and hard work I have put into making myself earn that bonus, approximately HALF of it is taken in taxes and given to others who havent earned it. And to see this person WIN THE FRAKKIN LOTTERY and still be expecting taxpayers to pay her is why I have NO SYMPATHY at the end of the day....

i am about as tied in to social media, internet, etc as anyone but.. I dont get how we have people who act as if their life comes to an end if they dont have a working phone with them for a day. Yeah... i know... somebody is thinkin that Jerome ALWAYS has his cell/smartphone/mini computer with him and is never truly disconnected from the "grid". But i seriously think that it would not bother me if I had to go without it for a few days. But i saw someone today virtually go postal becasue they would have to go without a phone for... ONE DAY. And this person seemed to be older than me and would certainly remember going out of the house to the store... WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... went to school WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... went to work WITHOUT A CELL PHONE.... went to church WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... went to the movies WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... went to the game WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... went and played videogames at the local Fast Fare WITHOUT A CELL PHONE... oh well, i know. I have turned around and went back home to get my cell that I forgot. But I am fairly confident I could do without it. Now... I would still like to be able to access the web occasionally. But anyways... maybe its because i dont really get ANY phone calls and rarely get text... anyway... this lady was crying because she would not be able to have a phone until Thursday (or so she thought as you can ALWAYS get a phone for 20.00 virtually ANYWHERE) and how would she be able to do her farm or something another....

THIS is why we can't get anybody normal to run for office in this country. This sorta extremist way of thinking is why you have Whackos on the Left and Whackos on the Right dictating who gets to run for office and then policy of people in office. Seriously, who thinks that you are going to find people who can adhere to those qualifications? Because even if you do, you KNOW what is going to happen... the media is going to dig up some random person  you had a couple of beers with 25 years ago who you vaguely remember kissing goodnight yet suddenly is you being the father of her love child... or the picture of you smoking pot at some frat party... or WHATEVER. They will find something on you, be it real or manufactured. Of course, the State GOP party is saying that they dont support this. But I cant help but think that the type of people we need to run for National office will never run in this environment. Hell, why even run for city council if you have loonies screaming foul at every vote that doesnt meet their extremely narrow and unrealistic view points? But I will say this... This is why Bill Clinton would win in a landslide if he could run today. Yeah, he was/is a typical politician but something about him makes you think that he is a somewhat "normal" guy. He's got flaws. He's not perfect. And he aint saying that he is.... but anywho. That aint happening.

and while I think Limbaugh was stupid to have called that lady a s**t, and he should (and has) apologized... and I certainly agree with him at times and dont agree with him at times.... why is it that Liberal commentators and/or donors like Bill Maher arent held to the same standard. Why does he get to call Palin a c**t and a t**t and all get get is chuckles. he gave a MILLION dollars to Obama. Yet I bet you aint going to hear a peep from the same people screaming about Limbaugh condemning Maher, are you?

Strange (to me) that daylight savin' time is coming THIS SUNDAY!!! I am not really a fan of it despite it giving more "daylight". For some reason I havent been able to come to terms with, I find the change unnatural and weird. But I will adjust as we have converted to a country where we spend more time in this altered time than we do outside of it. I feel a lot of my resistance is that when the sun goes down has little to no bearing on my life. Nothing stops with me just because it is dark.. or nothing continues just because it is light. And it is no longer an issue with my kids in regards to getting them to bed at 7:30pm and it still being light outside... One of my first memories is the confusion I had when I was forced to go to bed and it was still bright outside... I didnt understand what was going on....

anyways....

i paid 4 dollars for a gallon of gas today. I only put in 20.00 and at highway drivin I figure to get 300miles...or maybe 225 miles at back/forth to work drivin. As chronicled here before my car gets good gas mileage. But... if this goes to 5 dollars a gallon wont this have a far negative effect on everything? It really ticks me off that out leadership thinks that we should let it get to 8 or 9 dollars a gallon. Its easy to be all "green" andstuff when you havent paid for your own gas in years and will probably NEVER have to pay for gas for the rest of your life... Not everyone lives in the city.

God Blessed Whitney Houston with something close to perfect as far as a voice for singing. A lot of people are going to mention how much she was a figure in their lives growing up... long before the crappy rap and garbage that passes for "artists" today. No doubt, the end of her life is sad... some of it brought on upon herself. Bobby Brown can rot in hell... but... we make our own beds, and no doubt Whitney was warned... many times... not to head down that road... any ways....

... Unless it is a marching band playing it straight up, i almost always remember back to 1991 when Whitney Houston presented this performance of our National Anthem. And people have been chasing this standard every since then. And no one has come close. It has become the gold standard, and I often wonder why any artists would even try now. If I was a super mega start and they came to me and asked me to sing the National Anthem, I would ask them to get a local marching band... or play this over the loud speaker cause I cant do it justice to the level you are looking for.... Mariah?... hasnt come close .Aguilera? ..um..No. Beyonce?... nice try. Clarkson?... keep tryin'. Taylor Swift?... I dont think so. And think about it...how many times have we heard these singers compared to.... Whitney Houston?

I honestly get chills when I listen to her sing this. It is great in that she sang it and stayed close to true to the original, adding slight (for her) embellishments that didnt go too far "out there". Seriously... close your eyes and just... listen. ListenI honestly think that when we see people jack up the National Anthem, it is in a hopeless attempt to outdo this standard... anywho..tis sad a great voice is now silenced forever.

I think it took 3 washings to get I-Man's Uniform clean after yesterdays soccer match. I am still wondering why the team chose "All White" as their home uniform. Its not like ebery family has an industrial size, sports team type washing facility to clean uniforms like a college or pro team would...

The Super Bowl was somewhat entertaining. The halftime show brought back memories. But why our supposed "artists" of today feel that they must flip you the bird or say profanity is beyond me.... M.I.A. is officially crossed of the list and added to the Kanye West file....

The spring/summer itenarary is starting to fill up... Wynton Marsalis Concert... A trip to New York/New Jersey/Washington... A couple of soccer tourneys... Darlington Nascar race and All Star Race in Charlotte...Trip to waterpark in Concord with Grandma and Uncle Jerry... are all penciled in pretty solid for now.... the first half o da year is shaping up pretty solid for now....

So I got a chance to catch up on Phineas and Ferb as well as An Idiot Abroad this morning. The debate is is still on whether Karl Pilkington is really being this way or is acting a part. Either way it is extremely amusing. And I find it amazing that no matter where he goes, be it the middle of no where China or no where Pacific Ocean they find people who seem to speak better English than I do in these villages....