The previously mentioned jackasses actually came forward and apologized to the neighbor, gave her money, and helped clean up. Well, 2 of the 7 did. I'm glad at least that they took responsibilities for their own actions; that's a rare thing these days...
I'm supposed to be QA testing our latest client build...I just can't. It's such a gorgeous day out, that I want to go riding, do some work around the house, do anything but work on the computer. And that says something...not only not wanting to work on the computer, but work around the house...I hate house maintenance stuff, but I feel like getting out and cleaning flower beds, or something.
Weird.
Hopefully, with Gail being home during the summer, she'll get to get out and do some of that stuff. She at least likes it. Me, I just view it as a chore. One which I usually have to spend money on. I don't have any money as it is. It never seems like we have enough money. They say that the key to happiness isn't all about money, and I agree, for the most part. A little bit more money sure would help though!
Our neighbor across the street had her house vandalized sometime last night. When I first peeked out, I thought it had just been TP'd. It was much more than that, however. The idiots who did this smeared Crisco on the door and front steps, stuck sanitary napkins with ketchup smeared on them all over the garage, poured Fruit Loops in the lawn, threw tampons all over the place, cut up dead fish and threw them everywhere, and pulled up her recently planted flowers and put them in the mailbox.
As a kid, I did my share of TP'ing. But this went way beyond a prank. Obviously, this is the work of some kids, and apparently they have a bone to pick with one of her kids. They just don't understand that it's not the kid they're "getting back" at, but it's the parents who suffer. She might have to replace the garage door because of this idiocy. She did call the cops and file a report, and they have an idea of who it might be, but proving it will be a whole other story.
To top this all off, our neighbor is getting married on Saturday and is expecting a bevy of relatives, including her soon to be Mother-in-law. She doesn't need this kind of crap.
Gail called and we were talking about it. I told her to go buy her some new flowers, and get them planted for her. Hopefully that'll cheer her up.
I have a half dozen things I want to do when I get home from work today. I want to work on the website. I want to start my case mod. I want to get a Windows machine working. I want to clean out my garage. I want to take the dogs for a walk. There's not time for all this AND homework. I have a 5 to 8 page paper due Wednesday for my Psychology class. The bitch of it is, I don't even have a decent subject picked out yet.
I'm starting to panic a bit.
So 90% of this weekend will be spent researching, writing, re-writing, and trying to fill in spaces to make a 5 page paper. Oh, and I have a take home quiz and journal to do.
Summer school sucks. There's just SO much reading to do. A 3 month class shoehorned into 6 weeks is NOT fun...
I swear, if we get anymore rain, my trees are just going to start falling over. It's that wet right now. Last year, we were in a drought, this year, we're getting a ton. Average for May is about 3-3.5 inches. Last I heard, we were over 7, and that was a week before the month ended. In 23 weekends, we've had only 5 that haven't been at least cloudy, if not raining.
As a result of all this rain, there's been a lot of mud around. I mean, a LOT. Not only in the yard, but in the house as the result of dogs and kids and even grownups (OK, just me) tracking it in. We had our end of the year Indian Guides family BBQ yesterday. Lots of families getting together, all for a good time. We went to Claude Moore park, which has a farm on its premises, with goats, lambs, pigs, roosters and even peacocks. A couple of dads and myself took the kids down to see the animals, and after a bit, started walking back, knowing the kids would catch up. Cody came running up two minutes later and said "I accidentally pushed Daniel into a mud puddle". Because of all the aforementioned rain, Cody could have pushed him anywhere and almost guaranteed he'd land in a mud puddle. I looked at him said, "Accidentally?".
He didn't even try. He just said. "No, I pushed him into the mud puddle." Naturally, I asked why, and naturally, got the standard "I don't know" answer.
The rest of the day was nice, even though Cody was sullen and moody. I asked what the matter was. "I'm just in a bad mood", he replied. Even though I had a good idea, I asked him why. "I just feel like a bully", he said.
I agreed, saying that his actions do seem to indicate he's a bully, but that I didn't think HE was a bully, and left it at that. Talking to my mom this morning, she made a good point; he was at least thinking about it. He was down on himself because he knew what he did was wrong, and excluded himself from the rest of the afternoon's activities.
Basically, he punished himself, and from where I stand, that's not a bad thing. I can only hope he learned something from it.
And on a totally unrelated note, I've lost 25lbs so far on the low carb, high-protein diet. Maybe that explains my carb-binging yesterday at the picnic.
Between standing for hours on end at the state HOG rally, Jeff and Marcia’s wedding (at which I was a groomsman), dancing at the reception afterwards, having Cody walk on my back and then jump off, and picking up a 21in monitor, I torqued my back somehow. Went to the doctor yesterday, and he gave me some muscle relaxers, but they don’t seem to be helping much. I ended up getting up at 3am to sleep in the recliner with the heating pad.
The Matrix Reloaded opened last night in my neighborhood theater. I bought tickets a week ago when I heard they were having "preview" showings, and myself and 6 of my friends all went.
I also won a drawing here at work where I get to go see it tonight for free, and as a team, we're going tomorrow afternoon to see it as well. Good thing I liked it. :)
In other news, I think I've actually settled on a major. I think I'm going to go for a Psychology major, with a minor in Film and Media Studies. Why Film and Media? I've always loved movies, love the Internet, and find the way the media in general can manipulate the public thought process fascinating and disturbing. That interest should tie in nicely with the Psych degree.
Sarah "graduates" from daycare today. I'm in work early today so I can leave around 9-ish, and go watch the ceremony. Should be very cute, and I hope to have pictures up shortly after (though I'm taking my 35 mm and not my digital, which in itself wouldn't be a problem if Canon would make a flippin' scanner driver for my Mac, which runs OS X. There's another company that has, but they want 50 bucks...but I digress)...
Cody has SOL tests today (Standards Of Learning), which is a nice, 4 hour long test. He then has a game tonight (he had one last night as well), so I imagine by tomorrow he'll be worn out. Gail and I are getting stuff together for a garage sale we're having Saturday. I discovered I have more computer parts and software than I ever thought, so I'm selling 95% of it. Hopefully, once Gail sees how cleaned out the basement is, she'll let me go buy more crap...er...computer stuff!
Once this weekend is over, we have to start cleaning like mad, as my Mother-in-law (queue Darth Vader music!...just kidding Lou!!!!) is coming to town for a wedding, in which Gail and I are in. And then starting Thursday is the HOG VA State Rally, with Rolling Thunder smack dab in the middle of it...
One of the things Gail and I have been dealing with the past few weeks/months now is Cody's lying. For some reason, he's been lying about anything and everything and it's the stupidest stuff he lies about. A lot of it deals with school work, but the truly annoying lies are ones such as him lying about whether he used toothpaste on his toothbrush, used shampoo, silly stuff like that. It just gets SO old. He'd been saying that the reason he missed "Whacky Wednesday" (a free time for the kids that earn it at school) the past two weeks in a row was because he hadn't received a handout that was due. He's telling us that for two weeks the teacher hasn't given him the paper when she passes it out, but that she's been giving it to all the other kids.
Yeah...right.
So Monday I called his teacher and got things straightened out. Turns out that after she passes out the papers, she asks if anyone didn't get one, and then puts the leftovers in a tray on her desk for those that might have lost theirs. After I sat Cody down and confronted him about all this (And one lie just kept leading to another, even while we were sitting there), it turns out he had all the papers in his desk. With Gail's "encouragement" I kept it very toned down (though I wanted to bend him over my knee and spank his butt like a 5 year old), and mostly positive. Encouragement instead of negativity, praising him for the great grades he brought home last week. It's a good thing Gail was there, because she had the right of it. He responds so much better when we're positive, instead of nagging him to get his homework done (after he sits there for 3-4 hours, it gets annoying).
So, on top of regular homework, we had him bring home his class work, which we're helping him through. Only 6 weeks of school left. I really hope next year he gets a stricter teacher. He does so well with a teacher who's a hard ass :)
As for Sarah...well, I have a feeling she might be more trouble. Aside from the "Go faster daddy" when I'm driving to the "play louder daddy" when I'm playing my guitar, she pulled a new one on me last night. I'd just gotten her out of the bath, and was drying her hair with the towel, and with exaggerated motions, tousled her hair. She laughed and laughed and then said "Daddy! Stop that! I'm a GENIUS and geniuses don't GET their hair dried!"
I just sat there with my mouth open, towel in my hand, as she streaked out in the living room giggling her head off.
So, Friday afternoon/evening, we're having power problems. Stays on for 20 minutes, goes out for an hour to an hour and a half. This continues all evening (twice while I was online. You'd think I'd have gotten the hint the first time....).
Around 11:15 it comes back on again, and something happened to the neighbor's home security system. It starts going off on its own accord. Nice, LOUD annoying "BREEEP BREEEP BREEEP pause BREEEP BREEEP BREEEP..." and so on. I could not get to sleep until about 4:30am because of that damn thing. I even took a walk up the road at 3am to take a look and see if I could disconnect it, because, obviously by now, there was no one home.
Turns out the homeowners had dropped the security service that monitors the alarms, but kept the alarm hooked up. And, naturally, the homeowners were out of town. Friggin' wonderful.
It didn't get shut off until 4pm Sunday afternoon.
I'd better get a nice bottle of beer from them or something.
I had to take Sarah to the doctor's office yesterday for her inoculations. The last time she needed shots, I had to take her as well, and that just killed me. Two nurses had to pin her down, with me holding her shoulders and telling her it would be OK. By the time they were done, I had tears in my eyes. I sure didn't take well to seeing my little girl getting scared and hurt like that. So I told Gail that next time, she had to do it.
Naturally, she scheduled the appointment in the middle of the day when she's at work and can't get off. So I was the lucky one who got to take her in to get shots again. Sarah had told me she was worried, and you could tell during the exam. She was jumping and running and all over the place.
When the nurse came in to give the shots, Sarah was going to sit on my lap. By this time, she'd ceased jumping and laughing and was crying. Hard. And hiding behind me as well. Eventually it took me sitting her in my lap, wrapping both arms around her, with one hand holding both of her hands, and I had one leg wrapped around her legs to pin them down. Poor thing was so scared, and screaming to raise the dead. Two shots in one arm, one in the other.
For some reason, I got a wild hair and decided to make the site here W3C compliant. I validated both the HTML code as well as the CSS. I had a ton of things wrong in the HTML, mostly stuff I'd neglected to take out in the Greymatter templates, and it probably took me about a half hour to get straightened out. The CSS was error-free, just some warnings that I didn't have certain expected elements in my link classes. Two minutes later, all was fine and dandy.
I was going to change, or was thinking about changing at least, the layout of the site. I think I'll hold off on that however, and instead, go with a different layout under the soon to be opened (I hope) graphics section. Naturally, being a "graphics" section, it is going to be a much more graphical interface, as well as some CSS/PHP eye-candy goodiness. At least, that's the plan. And Lord knows how many plans I've had that have gone astray.