Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Things I’ve Learned: Apostrophe S Vs. S Apostrophe

Posted on by

My mom used to drive me absolutely crazy when I was younger by refusing to tell me how to spell words.  Instead she would force me to use the dictionary that I had to learn how to spell.  I would probably still be a bad speller if it weren’t for those years spent looking up words when other kids were getting helped by their parents.  Wait.  I’m still a bad speller.  Lets pretend I’m not for the sake of this story.  OK?

Mrs. Williams, my fourth grade teacher had a playground ball that we wanted to stake claim to.  The other students put “Mrs. Williams” on the ball.  You can bet your sweet carrot cake muffins that I had to change the spelling to have an apostrophe to convey a sense of ownership.  “Mrs. Williams'” ball ment it was hurs.  And aint nobody gonna tell me diffrent.  So their.  Why I had to be anal about that is beyond me, but it was important!  Kind of like another time when I had a lottery… but that’s different.

Things I’ve Learned

Posted on by

I’ve decided that I’m going to attempt to write more about things I’ve learned from different people.  It’s not going to be like the 7 things in 7 days series, I learned my lesson there.  Instead it is going to be a list of things that I’ve learned from different people so that you won’t have to read about the ‘frillions’ of things that I learned from my mom or dad, just one each.  Therefore I can list people like my parents, grandparents, brother, sister, friends, enemies and politicians, things I’ve learned from them, and hopefully a funny anecdote or story.  I’m going to throw them under ‘Confessions’ because I don’t need another category on the list right now.  The next one will be coming up after this post.

Cousins

Posted on by

Flickr Photo

Cousins

Originally uploaded by RandyPeterman.

Brennan and Abby went with us on a hike Monday. They’re having a blast playing together, it is just fun to watch. I even talk to Brennan when I can wrest him away from Abby for a few minutes 🙂

Blogging May Be Light

Posted on by

I’m heading to Texas for some meetings and so blogging may be lighter than usual.  Of course I could find myself with spare time and a light night blogfest could ensue.  Of course I could also have my fingers broken by security at Denver International Airport because martial artists have been known to use their hands as weapons… in which case I’ll have a bit of a time doing most things, including blogging.

Bidness Trip

Posted on by

I’ll be hading to Grapevine, Texas until Saturday.  Pray for Jessica as she deals with two little girls and a [girl] puppy.  Pray for me as I deal with being away with said females.  Of course one of the best parts of going to Texas is the food and friends, but I seem to have very little time for non-work friends simply because the company has me booked with lots and lots of things going on.  If you happen to have time for breakfast that looks like my best time for openings.

Goldy’s Last Day

Posted on by

Well, the fish, formerly known as Goldy, currently now having reached oneness with the septic system, died. I found her doing the back stroke this morning and quickly moved her to our flusher. Except that goldy didn’t flush. I didn’t know she didn’t flush, but I found out later. How exactly did I find out?

Abby came down stairs saying in a strained tone, “Daddy, someone put Goldy in the toilet. Was it you?!”

So I had to own up to it and tell her Goldy had died. Stupid toilet.

[for the record Abby was OK with the fish dying]

Sleep, Its a Good Thing

Posted on by

Well, the Puppy has mellowed out now and is getting used to Jessica and I beling the Alpha Male and Female.  Last night she slept through most of it without issue.  At 2:00 AM I had to get up (we set an alarm) and take her out to go potty, which she didn’t do, but I let her try at least, then I went back to bed.  Not until the morning at six did I have to get up again.  It was like sleep, except that it had one interruption.  I don’t do well with interrupted sleep and every time we have a baby I have taken a week to get used to it.  After about that long I get used to disrupted sleep and my body learns to fall back to sleep rapidly.

It is nice to sleep without whimpering from the puppy in the background, though.  It makes it a more restful sleep and I don’t feel like some nasty person who is ignoring a baby dog.  Which in essence the whimpering is output for that sole purpose: “Whimper, yip, yip, whimper! [You are ignoring me, but I can yip longer than you can lay in bed trying to fall asleep]!”  It is like Bill Cosby talking about the children asking over and over because they know they’ll live longer than you 🙂

Hot Pockets

Posted on by

Hot PocketsThis would be our new puppy, HotPockets, or more likely ‘Pockets.’  After having Kicker, my mother-in-laws dog, for so long in the house it became apparent that it was doggy time.  Hot Pockets is a mix of multiple mystery breeds.  The cute puppiness will wear off and we’ll have a full grown mutt some day, but for now she’s pretty darn cute.  More pictures of the puppy and various family members will come shortly… once Abby can handle touching the dog (for some reason living dogs are hard for her compared to stuffed animals).  Evie loves the puppy, and the puppy loves Evie.  But the puppy loves to jump up on Evie, and that just has to be monitored too heavily for the two to be left alone yet.

7 Things in 7 Days: Day 3

Posted on by

Laugh. If you don’t laugh it makes me uncomfortable. When I get nervous I start cracking jokes about anything in site. I could be at the proctologist’s office in the room getting ready for the exam and the used kleenex [please, Lord, let it be a kleenex] in the trash can would be the prefect prop for a story about that one time when so and so did such and such and we’d all laugh and everything would be OK.

I get on the phone with folks and we’ll have to discuss something serious and I can’t for the life of me keep a straight face I must tell a joke even if we’re discussing something like death, disease or a major world catastrophe. I am not trying to belittle the topic, I’m trying to cope. Sometimes when I write satire for this blog (or in an email) the purpose is to get people to think. But rather than come out and be brutally intense, I’ll make it an attempted piece of humor because I find it disarms people.

I probably am not as funny as I think I am, but I try. If everyone’s laughing, everyone must be OK.