"A Day At The Races!"

Pine derby races, that is. Our mission (should we choose to accept it...and we did lol), was to take a block of pine wood, shape it to the model car we desired, and decorate the crap out of it. Between Emmy and Cari I think they accomplished that:



Unfortunately, due to an error in gluing the wheels (which admittedly were kind of tricky on my part) Emmy's car didn't pick up the speed that her competitors did, and came in last each time. Ah well. At least it looked awesome. There were some pretty cool cars up there. One even went one of my favourite directions and made Bumblebee. It won like every race too!

Took them to the park a couple of weeks ago. That was such a great day. It was beautiful outside and I hadn't taken them there in a long time. The only thing that got on my nerves was when we were feeding the ducks. There's this long path that leads to a porch-like area where we can sit and throw bread, or in our case, crossiants (they were old lol). So we walk down there and as we're doing our thing these people walk down to right behind where we are and just stand there staring. Not at us, but it sure felt that way. I was like "Hey, people here". Eventually they figured out we were there so they left, but man, talk about third wheels. Here are a few pics:



Finished my FIFTH week for HealthMarkets and now it's almost starting to make sense. All that's left to do is to figure out how I'm going to say what I need to say in order to be the best. That's right. The best. First time ever I wanted that. All my life I was always content with middle of the road. Heck, sometimes middle of the road was a lofty aspiration. But it took a long time for me to accept that I could do anything I wanted. The only difference between doctors and everyone else is that doctors knew what they wanted to do. I think I could be a doctor. Seriously. I just don't have that passion for wanting to know every inch of the human body. Seriously.

"If I Had A Million Dollars..."

...oh man the fun I could have. Let's assume I won a lottery of around $2 million or so. After the cash option and taxes have been taken out, there was exactly $1 million left over. Let's see what ol' Mikey would do with it:

- $84,000 to go towards paying off ye olde mortgage

- $260,000 in an interest-bearing account for college for two kids ($130,000 x 2)

- $10,000 to pay off our car

- $50,000 for gifts for friends/family (cuz you know they'd be thinking about what's theirs lol j/k)

- $10,000 for one great trip to...somewhere...probably Hawaii

Let's see, that adds up to...$414,000. And we're not even halfway done yet!!

Ahh, what a fantasy.

Now maybe in 1970, $1 million might have been enough to fulfill all your wishes with enough left over to never have to work again.

Flash forward to 2008.

Hey, guess what! Now people treat $1 million like it's nothing. And with inflation as bad as it is, they're probably right. Which is why we need to start planning now, not when we're 60 and have nothing to rely on. The 401k is a thing of beauty for us young people (well, young-ish lol) and must be contributed to as much as possible.

Finished my fourth week at you-know-where. It's really starting to make sense now. What's weird is I really don't get it when it's being taught. Only after it's had time to sink in does it kind of make sense. I know I will be great at this. I have to keep telling myself that. All things come to those who wait, so I shall be patient and know that I have found a place that will take care of me if I take care of them.

Man is YouYube addicting! Anything you could imagine is alive and well and very much in motion. Here is one I found:



Basically a seaplane pretends it is going to crash into the fishing boat only to pull up at the last minute. Ha ha ha. The song playing is by the Moody Blues. I never would have listened to them if ol' Dad hadn't brought them to light many years ago. He's building us some multi-purpose shelves for either the home or garage which will be invaluable. Maybe he's okay lol. The truth is, I always thought he wasn't that great of a dad until I had kids and saw firsthand how challenging it is day in and day out. To quote Dr. Cox when J.D. was downplaying the role his dad played in his life, "He could have done a much worse job."

Got soccer games today and tomorrow! Then going to see Navid's kid tomorrow afternoon. Real proud of him. Hope someone tells him that every now and then cuz it makes a world of difference sometimes.

"My Kingdom for a Tooth!"

Yes, after many months of "How come I can't lose a tooth?" and "How come other kids lost a tooth already?", Emmy has finally lost her first tooth!! It had been loose for literally six months and finally it just popped out! The tooth fairy even came by and left her ten dollars! Now correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't it used to be a quarter? And even when I did get a quarter, there was always a note "advising" me what to do with it. Like saving it. Drag right? Kids will never learn how to save money until they are shown not only how to do it but why it is so important to get in the habit of doing it regularly. Emmy actually owes us like $13 from a library book she lost and then we found only after we had to buy it from the library for $8. Then I gave her $7 to give to the lunch room for her lunches and somehow that came up missing. However, I did tell her I would give her $1 each time she cleaned her room really well or put away the clothes from her laundry basket. So far that's...twice lol. But she's learning. I think it's amazing how kids can be so smart in certain areas and so apathetic in others. Zach on the other hand has to have things picked up most of the time. We used to think he liked doing it but I think he needs to know things are picked up. Every house can use a Monica I guess lol.

Finished my third week for HealthMarkets and now I'm finally starting to get the hang of all this stuff. Do you have any idea how hard it is to act like you know what's going on when most of it doesn't make any sense? But now I've been on kind of a roll. There are always games and stuff to keep it lively and lately I've been winning points for our team because I've started doing something I should have started doing years ago: stop making things harder then they are. That's been my life story up until this point. I always seem to put myself in a position where I have to be kind of on edge and hope I don't get fired instead of excelling in what I do and being an asset and not a liability. This shall be my mission.

Zach got his first Build-A-Bear last week! That meant trading something in that had been an important part of his life: his pacifier. Or as he called it, his "pappy" ha ha. I have one too but I never know what to get for him.


Zach: "Hey Dad, what should I name my bear?"
Me: "Oh, I don't know...I couldn't bear to name him ha ha."
Zach: "Oh man was that bad."
Me: "Well, you'll just have to grin and bearit ha ha. Just a cross you'll have to bear."

(groans from...well, everyone)

"Valentine's Presents!"

And we got what everyone else seems to have: an MP3 player! They're 2GB which holds about 500 songs so it will take a while for us to go through all of them. The first 25 songs came from this CD:


Bought this at Virgin megastore and I have to say it might be the best $19 I ever spent. Well, maybe not THE best $19...but I am really enjoying listening to the latest work from one of my favourite singers ever. What's funny is the guy who turned me on to him kind of lost interest and hasn't kept up on his life events. And man what a crooked road it's been. I mentioned about 2 years ago how he finally accepted his sexuality (yep, he's out) and moved from Australia to the United Kingdom just so he could get married to some guy. Didn't know who that was exactly until I bought this CD but it's some guy named Richard. And man does Darren gush about him lol. I guess when you find what they have you want the world to know. One of the songs is called "Sing To Me" and it is just beautiful. Here are the lyrics:

You step behind a curtain/In a moment you were gone
Nothing's ever certain/And it's hard to carry on

This is not what we planned/And I know its hard to understand
But if this isn't what you want then
If this isn't what you need pry my fingers from your hand

And maybe it's just meant to be
Maybe you'll find a way to haunt me
Come back and sing a melody to me

Maybe we're just lost at sea
Maybe I'm holding on to driftwood
And I'll be alright if you could
Sing to me
Sing to me

You step beneath the landslide/Nothing feels right when you're wrong
And try to find an upside/Try to sing without a song

This is not what we planned
And I know its hard to understand
But if this isn't what you want then

And maybe it's just meant to be
Maybe you'll find a way to haunt me
Come back and sing a melody to me

Maybe we're just lost at sea
Maybe I'm holding on to driftwood
And I'll be alright if you could
Sing to me
Sing to me

I keep seeing flashes of your hands/When I close my eyes
And I don't know why/And I don't know why

Help me make sense of what I don't understand/'Cause I've gotta know why
I've gotta know why
Tell me why do you sing to me?

And maybe it's just meant to be
That you would sing to me
Maybe we're just lost at sea
Could you come sing for me?

And maybe it's just meant to be
Maybe we're just lost at sea
Would you come sing for me?
Sing for me

The music is perfect for the words too. I wish I could put something like this together. Of course then I'd have to go on tour and never get to see my family, so...maybe I'll leave it up to the pros.

We had our 401K party last night at the Arlington Convention Center. Despite the fact I only knew like 15 people (there were over 1,000 there) I had a pretty good time. They put money in little plush animals and threw them to us. I managed to get two of them and won $15. Plus, I missed winning $1,000 by one number on my raffle ticket...ah well. Win some, lose some. But hey, when you get to leave work at 1pm just to go to it, can ya really complain?

Last week I posted some pics from my super RCT park "Garden State" which a few people were impressed with. So then I went to YouTube and typed in "RCT". Quite a few came up but this one was really fun to watch:


My computer is just slow enough that it can't play the 3rd RCT where you can ride the rides. Hopefully me and Navid can build the ultimate system one day and I can get it.

Also on YouTube (really dwelling on that today lol) are a lot of Transformers stop-motion videos from people who were actually foolish enough to open their items. Here's a recreation of the scene from the movie where Bumblebee is chasing Sam to protect him and Barricade is chasing everyone:


Too funny. Will get more of them on here at some point.

Back to Darren for a bit. He was married for a while but I guess he was living a lie too. I've seen too many times on Oprah and Dr Phil where someone was in that same situation and were so afraid that their parents would disown them that they kept it to themselves which led to them being miserable. I would rather my kids know that if this is who they are then they can come and tell me and know that I will never shun them or make them feel like they aren't welcome in my home. Because without them there is no family. Dear Abby posted a letter about a mom whose son came out to her and she ended up distancing herself from him for years. Only when she had become ill and couldn't take care of herself did things change. Her son invited her to move out to...Arizona I think...wherever he was...and stay with him and his partner. She accepted reluctantly and moved and was cared for lovingly by them. She regretted every single day she kept to herself and hoped her letter would inspire other parents not to be so single-minded toward their kids. Is there anything so bad that a parent would stop loving their child? Ehh...probably. But being true to oneself can't be one of them.

"One Fun Night Coming Up!"

And it's about time! It's been a while since Cari and I had a night out sans kids. Their grandma Mary is hanging onto them tonight and we are going to a lovely dinner...somewhere. I proposed Cheesecake Factory since we have a $50 gift card plus everything they have there rocks. Too bad I get the same thing all the time ha ha. Well, not tonight. I'm going to try my darndest to get something I've never gotten before. Of course I say that and then I get the tons 'o' fun burger. But man, it's so good! Maybe see a movie too. I think I got a good night's sleep last night so I should be up for it.

Man what a Super Bowl! If I was a betting man I would have lost a bundle. Good thing I never ever bet on sports lol. I think it's obvious the better team won Sunday. Who wants it more? Who's willing to push themselves a little harder to achieve their goals? This is what it comes to not just in the NFL, but in life. Which is why I am looking forward to seeing what I can do at HealthMarkets. Now granted, it's only been a week and we've only started learning about a few things, but everyone there seems to enjoy what they do. I'm not looking forward to being on the phone all day, but I can transfer out of that sometime around August 4th. But I may not get the bonuses and incentives this job has if I switch. Ah well. Long time down the road.

My plan was to design an amusement park to trump the other one I made. Kind of took some heat from the wife for spending so much time working on it, but now that it's finished I don't think I have the energy to make another one. And now, let me reveal...Garden State!:


Here is the entrance. I decided to make the first 25% completely surrounded in flowers and trees, plus I made some water rides rivers themselves and put bridges over them.


Once you leave the garden, you come across the subwat station where you can take the train to another part of the park. I put food courts on top of both sides of the loading station and added some skyscrapers to create an urban atmosphere kind of different from what the customers just left.

Here is my fruit candy island. One of them is called Starburst and the other is called Skittles. In the background you can see my winter go-kart island.


This is one of my favourite attractions. Two river rapids run next to each other for a while then split off in their own direction. I added waterfalls in and out of the walls and had rapids run underneath the waiting lines.

Time well spent? Nah. But sometimes the left brain needs a little stimulation right?

Dr. Phil had a show on last night where a 16-year old girl was pregnant and her parents had no idea until the high school principal called them and told them. Isn't that a great way to find that out? We usually only hear about the girls who wind up pregnant before they reach 18 and not about the ones that don't. Which might be a good thing since it sounds like for the most part most girls don't. In my opinion the number one reason this happens is due to one thing: ignorance. Parents simply do not talk about the risks and responsibility of sex with their kids until it's too late. I know no one talked to me about it. If I hadn't been so shy and awkward around girls when I was in high school (yes, it's true) I probably would have had sex with any girl who asked. Which probably would have led to me being a parent at 16 or 17 or whenever. Which would have led to my parents not wanting me around. One thing I try and teach my kids is that one choice leads to another and another. Life is never "pass the test and relax". Each day something new may pop up and you have to have the resources to handle it. Now granted I have been fortunate to have people in my life that have been there for me and I will never underestimate the power of a support circle. But it's also important to know that sometimes...it's just you...