"How 'Bout Them Mavs!!!"

Oh man oh man was that an awesome game!! Game 5, Western Conference Semi-Finals, Mavericks up three games to one, looking to get past the first round of the playoffs since 2006, with some serious demons to purge from their playoff souls. I found myself staying up past my bedtime (yes, I have a bedtime! 10:30...give or take) watching them pimp-slap the Spurs into submission. It wasn't enough that we won by 2 or 4 points, but we won by 13!! Cari has family living down there so next time we all get together, believe you me this will come up in the conversation.

We painted our house last weekend!! We actually bought the paint last summer but man does life get in the way, what with soccer games and Girl Scout activities. So finally we all picked a weekend and got it done. And wouldn't you know, every kid in a 10-mile radius swarmed us and begged us to let them paint. They actually got a bulk of the grunt work done which meant less for us.



Green isn't it!! When the rose bush in the flower bed blooms (and we all hope that it will) and the grass is a little greener then it will all look really nice. And I learned something about myself, too. Painting isn't really so bad. Now granted, I wasn't up on the really high ladder like Cari's dad was, but I was using my ladder and getting some tough spots. Wasn't so bad.



Posted my first YouTube video from my new camera recently! None other then Emmy playing soccer. Not very "hit-worthy", I know, but maybe someone will search for a soccer game and find it. Here it is in all its' glory:



Emmy's first Communion is next Sunday! Wow, how time flies when you go to a Catholic church. But she is so excited about it. This morning I was driving her to school and she asked me if it was going to just be her up in front of everyone (it's a b-i-i-g church). I laughed and assured her there were going to be other kids as well with her. She sounded so relieved. She always tends to put pressure on herself when she doesn't have to. Maybe that's the sign of a successful person. But she drives herself to succeed in everything she does. Now if she can just get up in the morning instead of burying herself under her covers and hibernating ha ha.

"Revenge...is Coming..."

No, I did not shoot this in a theater. But someone did. Apparently they ate Pop Rocks and Coke beforehand as the picture is quite shaky. But man, Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is looking great! If you read my July 2007 posts, you can see how jazzed I was that my favourite toy growing up was going to be done in real-life (or as real-life as you can get considering computers made a BIG difference). And now...the sequel. Two months and counting. Don't know how many of the toys I will be acquiring since 1) it adds up, and 2) I don't know how excited I am about collecting things anymore. Maybe I'm growing up, who knows. Maybe it's a case of been there, done that, but I am pretty sure I will pick up one, maybe two items, but not eleven like I did back in 2007. A one-car garage only holds so much.

Re-tiled the bathroom floor on Monday! I wanted it to be a surprise for Cari when she got home. I almost had it pulled off but she showed up a little early as I was finishing. With the exception of a couple of spaces in between tiles it looks really good. I've been wanting to do that for months, ever since we bought the tiles and the old floor started coming up on its own. Now the toilet decided to start leaking right after I finish retiling. Argh. Fortunately, I identified where it's coming from, so now I can replace the pipe that connects from the wall. EIGHT HOURS I spent doing this. I woke up the next day sore beyond belief. My plan was to do both bathrooms on the same day. Oh what a fool was I. It took over four hours just to get the old floor up. Apparently, and this is following in the spirit of the house, one part of the floor came right up and the rest of it was perma-bonded to the floor with some sort of adhesive used only by NASA. My hips and arms were (and still are) killing me.

We found some kittens in our backyard last Saturday! Here are some pix:




The mom came back and got them some point Sunday night, but it was nice to have pets around the house besides Zach and Emmy ha ha. According to my new BFF Wikipedia:

"Several ancient religions believed that cats are exalted souls, companions or guides for humans, that they are all-knowing but are mute so they cannot influence decisions made by humans."

True? Possibly. I always thought Egyptians worshipped them due to the fact that they would always find the highest place in the house (or adobe) to sleep. How could you not pay your respects to something like that?

"Picture Time!

Yes, after two years since we got the kid's pictures taken and more then five years since we have one taken as a family, we packed up the kids and made the long drive (12 minutes) to Portrait Innovations and have some classy pictures taken. By classy, of course, I mean without clown makeup. Had a really bad experience the one time we tried that. No one know who was who, knowhutimean? Here are my faces:


This one is a really good shot of Emmy.


Have you seen a cuter boy? I mean ever? The only boy in the world that can even think of rivaling Zach is Matthew McConaghey's boy Levi. That kid...future heartbreaker.


I love this shot. True, it doesn't make me look slimmer, but what can ya do, right?

I am this close to organizing my home movies. What puzzles me is when I take a bunch of little clips and make a big clip, I can't play that clip until I burn it to a CD. It plays, but there's no sound. But I've made big strides so far. Now what I wanna do is make a cool clip of something and post it to YouTube. One day...one day...

Hope you had a great Easter. I think we did. Of course, it rained all night before but fortunately the ground wasn't too muddy so we were able to have the egg hunt. Of course, everyone found a zillion eggs so no one went home unhappy. So many holidays these days, Easter would get swept to the wayside if it weren't for the candy and chocolate industry. Not that I'm complaining. I love candy. bet ya didn't know that about me ha ha.

"Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!"

Who said that? Shakespeare? Nope. Stephen King? Guess again. It was the Three Stooges, and rumour has it a big-screen movie is going to be made about their life on and off-screen. Now granted, it's been a while since I relished waking up at the crack of dawn to watch Moe, Larry and (fill in the blank) do what they do best, which is (ineptly) run a business and slap the stuffing out of each other. While YouTubing, I found this clip of them running a dental practice:



Good times.

I have a VHS five-pack of their best work:



And a DVD box set best of, which I must have packed away somewhere.

And a collector's set of bobbleheads:



Now the notion was that the Stooges were primary aimed at guys and kids since we all seem to think the same things are funny. And it's true. But I find it hard to believe that a few chicks out there wouldn't fall down and laugh at the sight of people getting poked in the eyes over and over or being hit in the head by something that normal people wouldn't think of as bludgeoning instruments. I know I do. I remember waking up one morning at 6:30am just to watch the 15 or 20 minutes they would allow on KTXA21. I go in the living room and my dad's in there...asleep. To this day I'll never know if he was pretending to be asleep in there or if he was waiting to watch the same thing I was. I think he was embarrassed to have someone catch him watching this "comedy" and laid down and closed his eyes real fast. Little did he know he (may have) put on a big show for nothing.


I found this picture on Wikipedia of the last picture taken of Moe and Larry together. It was around 1970 and man, it kind of spooked me a little. This was the first time I had seen them...well...old. I guess it is inevitable that we all have to grow old and then die. I have been struggling with the idea that we work our whole lives for something only to leave it all behind. When people go into a depression it usually revolves around, "What is the point of it all?" And on many levels, they're right. But we were put here for a reason, right? I had always told myself that the secret of life was to value and appreciate each day, not necessarily as if it were our last, but just to not let a day go by and not be satisfied with what you had accomplished that day. Most of our days we really don't accomplish anything. We work, come home, eat dinner and go to bed. And, repeat the process over and over. I'm sure a lot of us have dreams and ambitions that will more then likely never be realized. I guess it's easier when we convince ourselves we never had a chance anyway, so why subject yourself to rejection? I'm such a downer sometimes.

"One Small Step For Man..."

...one giant leap for me! That is to say, after weeks of trial, error, and some cursing, I have finally figured out how to make movie CDs of all the movies on my camcorder! Now I can upload here, to YouTube, etc. because I can create movie files. I even figured out how to cut and paste bits and pieces to streamline them so to speak. Maybe I'll make a movie about something now! But for now I will be content with getting them stored for posterity. That a word?

Well, after 14 months of faithful, dedicated service to the ol' Healthmarkets, I have finally gotten my raise for 2009! I know this will sound like sour grapes, but it wasn't as much as I was hoping for. But then again, after thinking about it, I am ecstatic that:

1)I got a raise at all, and
2)I have a job that gave me a raise

See? I'm not so self-absorbed that I don't appreciate the gifts I have been given. I only act that way...sometimes...

Took the kids to our beloved Water Gardens in Ft Worth last Friday. Here is one picture I'm kind of proud of:


I took it while Emmy was in mid-jump but the picture got it just as she was jumping so it looks like she is balancing on the steps with a crazy look on her face lol.


This shot I absolutely love. The sun was setting, it had just rained, and the lights inthe background look like they were put there just so I could take this shot. As Lester Burnham would say...spectacular.

I had THE weirdest dream last night. So get this...Jessica Simpson and me and some other guy are walking around downtown Ft Worth where evidently the three of us all worked at the same place. She informed us that she was quitting and we wouldn't get to hang out together again. While the specifics of this dream aren't evident, I remember being hurt at hearing this news. It was as if I had lost my best friend and didn't know how to feel better. Then I wake up, feeling hurt but also feeling puzzled that I feel this way at something that didn't even happen. But it felt real. Real enough to invoke an emotional response from me. So I turn on E! this morning and guess who is the subject of the "True Hollywood Story". Why do these things always happen to me? This is too much of a coincidence to just say "Hey, how about that?" To be continued...