I disaster-ed Sam!

Sam may kill me when she read this, but at least I warned her I was going to post it. I will leave out particular details regarding the guacamole.

Terri is out of town this week (and not enjoying it due to not feeling well) and sometimes when she's gone I'll take the kids to Casa Chimayo. This is a neat little Mexican place that's been in Manassas longer than Mexicans. The food is great, the atmosphere is great, the service is great, and Terri doesn't like Mexican food.

So there we are, talking about being stuffed and stuff, and Sam has sprinkled some of her cheese in her sour cream. The cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and lettuce is in this basket as sides for her chicken fajitas (or FAJITAS CHIX as it appeared on the check) and the basket is on the table between Sam and me, with her on my right. So we're making jokes about having some fat with your fat and Sam shows her flat tummy, all bragging about how skinny she is.

Well, I saw an opportunity there. My hand was on my glass, and my fingers were rather cold. I figured I'd get those fingers on her belly and teach her a lesson! My aim was off, and I caught the edge of the basket with my hand, sending the contents flying all over poor Sam.

I felt horrible but couldn't help laughing, especially when she declared that she was going to kill Jason as a preemptive measure, to keep him from telling anyone. Little did she know...

And there's Jason over there saying "this is the best day of my life" over and over again between gasping for air because he's laughing so hard. He's easily amused. So next time he's feeling blue, maybe I'll just throw some guacamole on someone.

Color Guards Everywhere!

As promised, I have more of the pictures from Jason's first color guard experience posted. Hit the site map link, then "News-Pictures" to see them. I set them up a little bit differently this time around, where you click on the thumbnails to get the larger version of the picture (same as always) but then click the larger picture to go back to the thumbnails. It's a lot of work to do a separate page for each picture, so I don't think I'll go back and change the older stuff to this format.

Saturday was busy around here. Terri and Jason greeted guests at "Family Day" where she works. At the same time, I was finally able to attend my first membership meeting at my American Legion Hall. The mix was pretty much as I expected with a range of veterans from WWII to Viet Nam, and a couple of younger guys. One of the younger guys works with Terri, which gave me someone to relate to. Jay seems like a really nice guy and I find myself in agreement with his vision for the post.

One of the things Jay wants to do, and got approval for, is building a color guard. The post has participated in local parades, but they march and drive their Jeep but don't carry the colors. With the membership approval, ceremonial rifles and other equipment are being ordered to outfit the color guard, and I've agreed to participate in their first appearance for the Manassas Christmas parade on my Dec. 2. I'm thinking about obtaining a rifle myself, I'd like to do some armed drill again, but we shall see.

Later, while Jason was at the Homecoming dance, Terri and I took Sam over to the Legion hall for their "Early Bird" Oktoberfest dinner. The early bird portion is a free dinner for those that joined or renewed their membership by a certain date. Since I'd also managed to get Terri to fill out a membership application, we ended up paying only for Sam's dinner. Of course when I asked who to make the check out to (meaning post or national) I was told to make it out to the Women's Auxiliary. This of course ruffled Terri's feathers greatly, which is one of the things included in Jay's plans!

Later there was karaoke with Wild Bill. Nice guy, and he works the crowd. Sam had more gumption than I did, singing three songs. I sang one. Poorly. Jay was there as well, and I was pretty well impressed. Maybe I like him cause he wears his hair in a high& tight flat top, like I did when I still had hair. In any case, we spent the evening with Jay and had a great time. We left in time to pull into the parking lot as Jason was coming out from the dance.

Sunday was filled with the kids singing at the early church service and catching up on chores. Terri's out of town this week, so I will get caught up on my own chores as well.

Ellohay!

It's Saturday:) :P
You can say it, it's okay. Hey, why don't I proclaim it to the world?
Life stinks, I'm weird,and I'm proud of it!!!!
See, all of you people who thought of me as normal now know the truth!!
MUAW-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA!!!!:P
Felling better now?
hankstay ouyay ulsjay!!, ndaay achelray!!
Decode that!!!
eesay uoyay noay ondaymay! or undaysay!!!:P :P :P :)!!!!!;)
yebay ulsjay ndaay theroay eoplepay!!

Jason's first time in uniform.

This evening Jason had his first appearance in uniform. They've been slow to get all of their stuff issued, so the kids seemed happy to finally get to wear them. He carried the Virginia flag in the color guard for the homecoming football game. I'll let him share more about that, and I'll get more pictures posted over the weekend.

In other news, Terri and I attended a Transition Assistance Program (TAP) class all week. This program is aimed to help people transition from military life to civilian life. Some of it was very helpful, and the guy we saw most was an interesting character named Pete Shaw. The classes were at Bolling AFB, which is a bit of a trip for us, so it made for a long week. They tried to get us out around 3 p.m. each day so traffic getting home wasn't too bad. Unfortunately one of the portions that could have been the most helpful was scheduled when Terri had to give a briefing, so I've got some research to do in that area. It was a lot of information, but mostly it was a week of spending time with Terri, so it was time well spent.

Now it'll be back to my regularly scheduled program. I often don't feel like I get much done around here, but when I really don't because I'm not here to do things like laundry and dishes and minor bits of cleaning, it really becomes evident. So next week I get to play catch up!

Sorry Juls, and other people!!!!!!!!!

Sorry about not writing for awhile!

I'm doing a science project on Spix's macaw. It's scientific name is the Cyanopsitta spixii. It was named after some Johann Baptist von Spix dude that found it's first blue-feathered anscester. There is only one left in the wild, but that one is possibly dead. There is an estimated 60 Spix's left being bred or in the world because of it's rarity and color. It was a very popular bird back when it was first discovered and was part of a underground bird smuggling place.Now it is one of the endagered species. SO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh,well,back to everyday life..................I had the freakiest dream.....................I'm not telling you.

It was cold this morning!

I know that fall is here because it introduced itself to me this morning!

I rode with Mark and Chris this morning, as well as Brent, who used to work with Mark. When I left the house a little before 9, it wasn't quite 40 degrees yet. With tights and a long sleeve jersey over my regular gear, and a skull cap under the helmet, I was pretty comfortable except for the exposed parts of my fingers. Time to get some full finger gloves. We rode my normal loop, with Brent being the strongest rider of the group. He's been in the U.S. Navy for about a year and a half, as a rescue swimmer. We had a good ride but between the cold air and not eating before riding, I'm feeling pretty well beat up. I know better than to go out without eating.

Jason and Sam are at a church event tonight, through tomorrow, designed to help and raise awareness of the local homeless people. The house isn't free of children though, since we have my niece, Mysti. She never got a nap this afternoon though, and she crashed around 7:30. I'll probably pay for that early tomorrow.

Save The Boobies, Part Deux!

This is the largest and rarest of the boobies, the Abbott's Booby. There are about 2500 breeding pairs left on their only remaining native home, Christmas Island. Christmas Island is also home to the red crabs, famous for their en-masse migrations, and the robber crab, which is the world's largest land crab.

Apparently Abbott's Boobies aren't as interested in boobies as humans are, as scientists estimate that it takes a breeding pair somewhere between 24-30 years to produce two offspring to replace themselves. Check out the link, it's actually pretty interesting reading.

I was going to order some pink ribbon pencils with "Save The Boobies" imprinted on them, but my supplier was out of them. I'll order them early next year!

Save The Boobies.

Yes, that's right, I said boobies. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I take a light-hearted approach with my "save the boobies" saying, but breast cancer is still a leading cause of death among women in the United States, with about 1 in 8 women likely to have breast cancer in their lives.

Thanks to increased awareness and early detection, survival rates are for breast cancer patients are rising quickly. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is one of the reasons that survival rates are increasing, so I thought I'd do my part.

Take a minute to click the link in the title, and do your part to Save The Boobies!

It's a boy...

...and a girl.

Weeble the Yellow Sided Green Cheek Conure is a girl, and Picasso the Painted Conure is a boy.

Weeble is saying "step up" fairly regularly, and clearly. She's using it appropriately, like when she is coming across the floor to me she'll say it, indicating that she wants me to pick her up.

Picasso is making kissy noises, in response to "gimme a kiss" or "can I have a kiss?", and accompanied by a beak kiss.

The week in review.

Not a real busy week around here. Jason had his first live audition, this one for All-County, and doesn't think he did very well. It's hard, as I explained to him, and hopefully he'll learn from it and it'll be easier next time. I'll ask him to tell you more. As a reward for his efforts, I got wings from Hooters, which he had to protect from the birds here at home.

The kids sing at church next week, and if you want to keep track of that sort of thing, I added a calendar back to the main site. The link is on the site map.

Since I'm getting the kids to post here, I'm enabling line breaks again. It'll probably mess up the formatting on some of the older entries, and I'll see if I can straighten some of the more recent ones out.

That's all for now.