Let me tell you about my day...

Happy Monday.

So we start out (only events outside of routine are mentioned here) with Jason supposed to be at the dermatologist appointment at 10 this morning at Walter Reed for an issue with his finger nails. I've never been to Walter Reed, and as is my habit, we arrived with nearly an hour to spare. Getting onto post (Army calls them "posts") was easy. A guard at the gate wrote the necessary information on a visitor pass before approaching me, checked our IDs, and welcomed us in.

First, several buildings are packed into a couple of blocks worth of area, and I had no real idea which one I needed to be in, only that we needed to be in Dermatology on the 1st floor. I took a guess, and as it turned out I did identify the correct building. Unfortunately, there's no parking. Did I mention that poor Jason was sick? Yes, that's right, first I drag him slightly feverish ass out of bed, put him in the truck to go half way to the other side of D.C., then we can't find a place to park. I drove around that damn post for 45 minutes looking for a place to park, said "hell with it" and went home.

Nearly three hours after we left, we get home, having accomplished nothing. I made Jase some soup and put him to bed. He looked miserable.

I located a number for the clinic at Walter Reed and called. Missed appointments in the military are a bad thing. I explain the situation, and discovered, much to my dismay, that there is a shuttle that runs to Walter Reed from Bethesda Naval. Where there is plenty of parking, and I had plenty of time. I leave a message for the doc and went to the grocery store.

Since I started working part time late last summer, most of my grocery shopping has been with the kids. I really despise shopping with anyone else. Between the bickering, the indecision, and the disappearing kids, I tend to make the trips as short as possible. This is not very efficient and I end up going way too often. So I'm sort of enjoying my trip to the grocery store, and bought quite a few things that I haven't bought in a while.

While unloading the cart, I busted open a 10 lb. bag of sugar. This happened early in the unloading process, ensuring maximum grocery glazing.

Later in the evening Sam had a band...demonstration. Her school is a new version of my middle school, in a new neighborhood, with lots of new students. We didn't tell Sam what to wear, but she changed into a very pretty dress and wore her boots, looking very nice for her performance. I noticed that most of the kids made no effort to dress appropriately. Nobody looked nicer than she did.

On the other hand, there I sat in my jeans and Underdog T-shirt reading an R. A. Salvatore book while I waited for the 7 p.m. performance to start. As is my habit, we arrived with plenty of time to spare. Most of the parents arrived sometime around 7, give or take 10 minutes or so. Most looked much nicer than I did. In fact, I'd say that many of the kids were brought to school by grandparents or car pool or something, because it looked to me like most of these people just got in from work. And they didn't bother to silence their cell phones. As a matter of fact, not only did they not silence them, when they answered them during the performance, rather than a quick "I'll call you back," they would explain that they were at their kid's concert and proceeded to filter their way through the bleachers so they could get out of the room and carry on their conversations in peace.

The lady in front of me was priceless though. She had the latest greatest digital camera, about the size of a 1/4" thick credit card. Tiny little thing. So tiny in fact that apparently she couldn't hold it still enough to get a decent shot. She must have taken 40 pictures of her son sitting in the same position over a 20 minute period. I bet the poor kid couldn't even read his music by the time he was done, and he's going to have to live with blurry yellow pictures of himself playing a sax for the next 10 years. I bet she never heard a note.

So we made it home without running out of gas or anything, it's almost midnight and I'm still alive. I guess it's not so bad, huh?

The latest. Again?

Maybe I should just say that every new post made here to the blog is the latest. I mean that's the point, right?

So what's going on in our world? The weather has been fickle. We had a foot of snow a week ago, had a couple of days in the 60s which melted the snow within a couple of days, and now it's 17 degrees with wind chills hitting right at 2 F. No wonder we all seem to be fighting a cold most of the time.

I made a stop in the hobby shop a couple of weeks ago, looking for something to help Sam with a school project. She was drooling over an F-22 model airplane kit, something I didn't want to start her out with. She found a Corsair on the discount rack, and Jason picked up an F-16 kit as well. I told them I'd buy supplies, kits were up to them. I think I came out behind on that deal. Anyway, Sam has made some decent progress on hers, and is picking things up pretty well. Jason's progress is slower, but he's been a little more pinned down with homework and his is in 1/48 scale compared to her 1/72 scale so he has more detail to deal with. Their individual personalities are coming out in this work though, and it's interesting to watch. I'm trying to be as "hands-off" as possible while still helping, and I have something on the way for me to work on which will help in that regard.

Jason's science project made it to the science fair, and he earned a "B" on it. I think it's a fair grade. In other news, we discovered that he was the only one from his school that auditioned for the Virginia Honors Choir to be selected. That makes the accomplishment just a little sweeter, although he'd like to see more from his school there. Districts got canceled due to the snow, which didn't start falling with any authority until after the concert would have been over with. Then again, they canceled school last Monday for no apparent reason. It's gotten a little ridiculous with snow and school closings around here. Anyway, Jason is also applying to the IT program at Battlefield High School. I hope he's selected, I think he's shine a little more than he has in his current program.

Sam is really starting to dislike her Sax. I think she plays well, but she's finding it hard to get the practice time in and she's getting tired of lugging it around. Of course she has a science project coming up soon so we have to get to work on that. We've got her idea (more later) and the experiment itself shouldn't be too time consuming. She's digging the model building stuff and dumper $35 of her allowance savings into an F-22 kit.

Both kids are going on a ski trip next weekend with the church youth group. Jason's going snow-boarding, Sam is opting for tubing, which is cheaper. We told them we'd pay half, whatever they chose, and that they had to pay the other half, giving up half their allowance until it was paid. Sam's trip is considerably cheaper. They've been good with youth group, they had a Super bowl party and seem to be enjoying the activities. They've also been good with their volunteer work at SMH (see previous entry from Nov. 20) and have been helping a lady a couple of doors down with walking her dog. The dog walk thing has been mostly Jason's doing, and she's really appreciated it.

Terri continues to work long hours. We work with it, but it makes it hard to get anything else in during the week. This past week she's been working hard making blocks for MCC, looking forward to a "sew-in" that went off today. I believe they finished 5 quilts and got over 200 blocks signed. We've got a work related banquet this upcoming Friday, and she wants to have some blocks to sign there, meaning it's going to be a long week cause the 50+ she had this morning all got signed!

I had a couple of rough days, found a script on 3 out of 4 of my web sites that was designed to cause users to be vulnerable to the recent Windows WMF vulnerability. It's been fun trying to get my web host to understand that they have a problem on their server machines rather than just trying to just fix my problem. I'm working on a couple of patterns to go with my upcoming article, which is supposed to be released in late June. Then there's the whole model thing. I stayed out of it for a long, long time, but it's coming back and rekindling my interest in military aircraft. This could be a bad thing, but I'll keep it a hobby. It's the one hobby I think I've had that I never tried to make money doing.

More later!

The latest news that's fit to publish.

I think somewhere along the line I've mentioned Sudley Manor House. I'm not sure whether I mentioned that since my birthday, my grandmother has been a resident.

Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's right after her second husband, Don, passed away in September of 2004. The attempt was made to have her stay with my uncle, Bruce, but that just wasn't working out. So Grandma ended up staying with my sister, Cyndi, and her husband Gary, and my niece, Mysti, for near enough a year. She was happy there and they were happy to have her, but as the disease progressed, her care got to be simply more than they could provide.

So now Grandma has her good days and her bad days. I get by to see her often when I have a few minutes, since she is now close to me. Sometimes I drop in for 10 minutes and say hi, and it seems to brighten her day. In any event I always spend an hour with her on Thursdays while the kids are volunteering.

Last week she seemed to be in better spirits, and of sounder mind, than average. I made sure I got over on Friday to spend some time with her as well, and I told her I'd bring the computer to share some pictures with her...this is how that came about:

I told her that we were planning to take the kids to Hawaii for spring break in 2007, which happens right after Terri retires. I mentioned that I had told the kids that if they didn't keep their act together, we'd take someone else instead.
Grandma pointed to her own chest and said "You can take me!"

I had the pictures from last year, and told her I'd bring the computer. So I published this web site to disk so that I could share it with her. She seemed to really enjoy it a lot. It didn't take long before we had some of the staff, and some of the residents looking on to see the pictures. Grandma really brightened up seeing some of the pictures, not just from Hawaii, but also older family pictures that Dad had scanned and sent me, like pictures of Grandma's father, her and my grandfather, etc. She would tell the others "That's my dad." or other tidbits related to some of them.

All in all, though it wasn't one of her better days to start, she had a smile on her face when it was time for me to go. As a bonus, she got a couple of Valentine's Day cards from friends, and that means a lot to her.