Shane 11-Month Update!

EDIT: This is another post resurrection. That's why it's also shorter than the other month updates.

The 11-month mark for Shane came at the beginning of November. It was an exciting time, because Shane was teasing us constantly. The boy was soooo close to walking!  Shane refused to stay in one place. He was always standing, crawling, or cruising around the downstairs. Min and Max had not yet learned how dangerous a little boy is when you're a fuzzy chew toy with tail to yank! Shane managed to creep up on them several times with his newfound speed. After some painful lessons, the girls learned to stay away. Ranger was a bit more dense. Carrie has some great photos of the boys sleeping together. The hope is that Ranger will grow up and be "Shane's Cat" in the way that Carrie has claimed Max and Min seems to have claimed me. At the moment, Ranger is more of an attention hound and he doesn't care who gives it to him. After all, in his mind, it's the attention he richly deserves! It must be nice to believe the world revolves around you and owes you everything.

Choking

EDIT: This post was started on November 11, 2011.  I noticed I never finished and posted the draft. It looks like it didn't backdate, but I'll see if I can fix that.

Shane scared the crap out of me today.

Portal 2

My wife beat Portal 2 tonight.

She was ecstatic. I don't know what happened during the end video (she was wearing headphones), but Carrie started cracking up while Shane and I looked on, puzzled.

I introduced her to Portal maybe a month ago. She'd already memorized the "Still Alive" song (and recorded herself singing it), bought a t-shirt, and then she made me buy the sequel when it was on a 75% off Steam sale.  Me?  I'm on Chapter 3 out of 9. I'll catch up now that she's not going to be playing it much more!

Flashback: They Don't Make Them Like They Used To

Flashback post. (Aka, one of the many posts I wanted to do, but the pics were never uploaded or I got distracted.)

Before school started, Carrie and I took our first (and still only) vacation from being parents. We dropped Shaney off with Carrie's parents, went to an amusement park, and WE TOURED A WW2 BATTLESHIP!

(Note: there are videos and other things that need to be uploaded but it's late o'clock and I'm not doing it tonight.)

Do you smell burning?

Thursday was not a typical school day.  It was the last day before the break, so it was filled with children asking "What's the point of having school today?" and teachers who are thinking the same thing.  Of course, if there was no school on Thursday, everyone would just say the exact same thing on Wednesday and we'd have to make up the Thursday at a later date.

So basically, Thursday was supposed to be an easy day where everyone was just going through the motions and some families decide to pull their kids early for vacation. There was even a hour read-in scheduled at the end of the day! Sweet!

Of course, when do things ever go as planned? (Was Murphy divinely inspired when he wrote his law? It feels like the 11th commandment sometimes).

I love my wife

After a long day for both of us, Carrie decided she wanted to watch some Monday Night Football. San Francisco is playing Pittsburgh.

The lights are out.

The game is set to start, and the lights are a no-go!  A transformer blew and delayed the start of the game.  Minutes ago, that same transformer blew again!

My wife's response?

"I find it ironic that the lights are out at Candlestick Stadium."

I love my wife.

Placeholder post

I was just working on my resume a little and browsing the news on CNN and saw a headline stating Kim Jong Ill 2 has passed away. Thank God. The man has helped suppress a whole country and set up a cult of personality worshiping himself. It's a momentous occasion for the Koreas, so I figured I'd post a quick blog entry stating what I was doing when I first heard the news. It's 10:30 at night, I just got done washing baby bottles and picking up, and I was working on updating my resume to try to get into the entry pool for a type of job in the county I may want to try one day. In other words: I'm doing nothing terribly exciting. Oh well! I hope this will usher in a chance for peace and stability in a habitually rocky region. The ego-maniacal loony is dead, long live the next if he's not more trouble than the sire. 

My computer problem has been fixed. No, I didn't fix the old computer. Instead, I've retasked Carrie's laptop into my electronic play-pal. It was just reimaged last weekend when windows had a catastrophic failure, and I've customized it and uninstalled much of the HP freeware that was sucking up processor power.

It's funny, but gaining the laptop shows how far my marriage has come along! In the beginning, Carrie didn't want me messing with her laptop or trying to fix it if broke. I offered to help a few times in the beginning, realized she'd rather do it herself, and then gave a mental shrug and only offered suggestions if she was ever really stuck. My wife never was for long. I chuckled a bit when I pointed this out, and I got my wife to roll her eyes. I'm sure she has plenty of similar stories about my quirks, and we'll leave it at that.

I took video of Shane today tearing around the basement. He got to see Chuck E Cheese's for the first time yesterday and there were some good photos there as well. Over the winter holidays, I WILL upload some of this stuff.

I love tutoring

Tuesday was business as usual for me at tutoring. I came, I worked, and then...then the unexpected happened. I got a Christmas gift! There was dark chocolate, P.F. Changs gift cards, and a card offering a free night of babysitting!

Have I mentioned I really like the family I work with? If not, I want to mention it right here, right now.

Tutoring is a job yet a hobby for me nowadays. The money is nice, but it's mainly just going into savings or Carrie going fan girl and buying a Bazinga! shirt. After a week of dealing with kids with extreme academic difficulties crowded en mass, legal papers, and upset parents, it's nice to work with a single, bright kid, and a nice parent. The kid actually reminds me of myself in regards to many of the things he struggles with. He's ADD, unorganized, and apathetic. He does like success, he's got a good sense of humor, and after some initial resistance we bonded and crap gets done. I've even forgiven him for being a Cowboys fan! Ha! I feel like I'm making a difference. That's more than I get from work most days where I just feel rushed to get everything done. It's great to just focus on one student and make an impact.

That is all for tonight. I need to go try and fix my computer so I can write longer posts and upload some Shane-annigans. I didn't get a chance last night with coming home at 5:45 and then having to rush Carrie to an urgent care, but that's another story. Life is definitely busy and exciting.

Computer kaput

The desktop is dead for the moment. Safe mode loaded, but a system restore and a scan disk did nothing so it's a deeper set problem. Carrie wanted to see how it was broken while I was watching Shane and she said safe mode wouldn't load for her.

One of these days I'll have time to fix it. I put Shane to bed, checked in with Carrie and then I've been doing chores since.

And do you know what? I'm not the least bit stressed about my comp dying. Video games are a nice time kill, but I get so much more dine without them. Plus, I'm looking forward to fixing my comp. I like discrete problems with a clear solution to puzzle out. I'm thinking it might be fun to try a technical position in my county at some point for a break from teaching, but not a break from education. I like learning new things and it could be refreshing.

That's all from me tonight. I have pictures and videos I want to upload at some point, but I've done more than enough touchscreen typing to desire a real keyboard. Carrie's work iPad is a cool little doohickey, but I can't imagine buying a personal one at the prices they go for. Any totally strange typos and word substitutions can be blamed on Apple and my fat fingers.

I was writing a post...

I was writing a post until a certain kitten who shall remain unnamed jumped on my keyboard. You may remember him attacking the mouse cursor from here: A new obstacle. The screen froze, the monitor became non-responsive, and I had to do a hard shutdown to even reboot the thing. When windows started to load, the monitor went black again, so I'm calling it a night.

Oh, and go Broncos! The first chunk of your game was boring to watch but that was an exciting finish! My Redskins lost today, but it beats the days when they struggled to put up double digits points.