Sick Grandpa

My parents have been keeping me informed about my sick grandfather (mom’s dad). He is pretty old (78 maybe) and has had a few strokes over the last few years. He used to be 6ft tall and strong but on our last visit he had shrunk and weakened. His mind was still sharp when I saw him a month ago. Over the last week he has seemed to go down hill which we hope was caused by being dehydrated. He has improved a little but not to full strength yet. I hope everything improves and he can get back to his normal life. I fell bad for my mom – it can’t be easy seeing your dad deteriorate with age. I guess it is a normal part of life but that doesn’t make it easy.

Leapster

My kids have these Leapster video game systems that teach them fun things like:
- Pandas eat bamboo
- A parallelogram and trapezoid are shapes

Z regularly spouts these types of miscellaneous facts. It is pretty fun and funny. I still think the games are rotting their brains

Home Search

We found a home in Bay Village that looks promising. Right price range. Right location. We need to take a look at it and the neighborhood and see how it looks. It is a good time to buy but a bad time to sell our house. M & Z are in school, we’d have to figure out how to sell our house at a bad time and during a bad season. I’m not sure how we would do it. Anyway, thought I’d mention that we found something promising on the west side. The bad news is that D and I both agree that Hudson is where we would live if all things were equal. With family on the west side of town all things aren’t equal but still we agree Hudson would be our first choice. We’ll see.

Back Exercises

I’m still doing those back exercises. I’m on week 4 of the 6 week program and it seems to be helping. I’ve been working in my chair a lot more and still able to function. My back is sore at the end of the day but I haven’t been working standing up hardly at all lately. I’ll post again near the end of the program.

Crazy Work Lately

I’m working on a design at work that is like feels like a dissertation. It is a huge document that explains the work in such detail that it has taken longer to write the document than it will to do the work. It is reviewed and I have to defend my positions or come up with new ones. It is reviewed by 15 other people who use office politics and passive aggressive behavior to make the process as painful as it can be. The goal for me is to survive. The goal for the reviewers is to aggravate me to no end. So far I have survived but it is taking it’s toll. It seems that it may be over in another week or two so I’m looking forward to that. Nobody said work was fun all the time.

Tackle Football

Tonight the kids played their first game of tackle football with some neighborhood kids. It was on grass and they weren’t really playing football, but they were tackling. M got hit once pretty good. Z managed to avoid the action by never having the ball. One of the kids tackled his younger brother who got hurt. Their mom put an end to the game. I was talking to another dad so I didn’t realize what was happening or I would have pulled my kids out of the game (4 is too small to be playing tackle football with an 8yr old). Add that to the list of firsts – first tackle football game. No injuries. Good fun.

Clean Machine

My wife is a cleaning machine the last two days. She is cleaning like it is the last time she is going to get to clean the house forever. She cleaned the upstairs windows, screens and all (don’t get me started on that project). She cleaned out the kids closets because they grow out of clothes by the week. When she gets the tunes turned up in the house and starts cleaning there is no stopping her. Merry Maids my a@@!

Brothers Fight

Brothers fight a lot. I remember when Ryan and Carmen (childhood friends) used to go at it as kids. Now I see my boys going at it all the time. The kids down the street are 8 and 6 yrs old. They fight way more than my boys but some of that is because my boys are still younger. Why do brothers fight so much? I think it is the competition and the cost of close quarters. Their worlds are small. In those small worlds they don’t have a lot of people to love and hate. Parents make the list on both sides now and again and I guess brothers fall into the same category.

Bluetooth mouse sucks

I have a wireless bluetooth mouse that sucks. I got it from work and after reboot it works very well for a short period of time then it flakes out completely and loses it’s connection with the computer. The RF mouse that came with my new keyboard works very well but it hurts my wrist after a while. I bought a Microsoft wireless mouse that felt great but only worked within 3 feet of the receiver which turned out to be a problem. I switched back to the bluetooth mouse because I forgot why it sucked .. then it died and I remembered the pain. Seriously why are all the mice so big? Do I have small hands or something?

BMV

Remember when the DMV used to be called the DMV? Out here in Summit Country they call it the BMV (bureau of motor vehicles). I had to go renew my license for the first time since moving back to town. It was very easy. There is a BMV in Macedonia which next to Twinsburg. I went at lunch and expected it to take 2 hours. It only took about 20 minutes there. I had to take a vision test (with my glasses on), get a new picture, fill out some forms, pay. I was surprised at how fast it went. Did you know that put on your license if you have a living will & power of attorney for health care? They do. I was happy to change my weight down 20 lbs from when I last got my license. At least I’m heading in the right direction.