Ouch.

After a week of fighting a cold, losing my voice, and struggling with sinus pressure that was about to make my head explode, I went to see the doctor yesterday. Got some heavy duty antibiotics to combact the sinus infection and powerful decongestants that kept me up half the night and make me feel like I'm on speed.

I'm just glad that the pressure is starting to subside. Will resume my posting some point later this week.

Passing on the traditions

We took the boy to his first A&M football game yesterday. It is the biggest game of the season, against our rivals, the Longhorns. We spent Thursday alternating between both of our families for Thanksgiving feasts and then headed to College Station that evening. Arriving just before the midnight yell practice (which happens at 8 pm the night before the t.u. game), we met up with hubby's buddies from the corp. It's been 10 years since we've seen some of them.

It was so much fun to introduce our first born to the traditions that make A&M unique. Yell practice, corp march-ins, shooting the cannon, our fight song and yells, the amazing band. He was humming the Aggie war hymn the whole way home.

And even though we lost the game against the #1 ranked team in the nation, we gave them quite a scare.

There is no god

I am not an articulate writer, so I enjoy it when I find something already written that is exactly what I want to say.

Penn, of the Penn and Teller comedy act, has eloquently captured my beliefs in his article There Is No God.

Thanks to Frank for the link.

The CIA is Watching Me!

I just received an email from someone at the CIA stating someone with my IP address has been to over 30 illegal websites and there is a list of questions attached. Knowing this is probably a virus, but curious enough not to just delete, I first check snopes to see if they have anything about this. Not finding it quickly, I next decide to call the number listed at the bottom, expecting to get a wrong number. Instead, it is the public affairs office of CIA and a prerecorded message states if I am trying to reach Steven Allison with the CIA about an email I received about viewing illegal websites, please delete the email as it is a hoax.

Someone must have had a beef with Mr. Allison.

Disturbing news

It was brought to my attention today that one of my coworkers is a convicted sex offender. I'm a big believer in people minding their own business and 'live and let live' but this involves a minor child. According to the database, he's been released for 10 years, but I haven't seen any evidence that a child molester can be reformed.

I do not associate with this individual outside of work, but I have had my kids up here on occasion. I am not sure what to do with this information. All I know is that this information greatly disturbs me.

Bribes

My son is a young kindergartener and is still struggling a bit to control himself in class. He's very social and loves to make people laugh. In our attempt to help with this effort, we've instituded a reward/punishment system, which is continuously evolving. The kids behavior is based on a color coded chart, with each student getting a clip. As they get in trouble or do better, they move their clip up and down the chart. White is neutral with yellow, orange, and red being progressively worse. Green, blue, then purple is progressively better. Here's our system so far:

white = 1 piece of candy, gets to watch tv in the evening
yellow or worse = no candy, no tv and we take away his bear for the night
green = white + instant reward of Burger King for dinner
4 whites in a row = Chuck E Cheese
3 whites in a row = varying reward, was a disposable camera once, getting the film developed another time and right now is a pumpkin pie

Today might be day 3 for white, so I was looking up pumpkin pie recipes on the internet. I'll just follow the recipe on the can of pumpkin, but I was looking just for grins. I stumbled upon a recipe site for engineers.

Enjoy.

More funnies

On the drive home from school yesterday, the boy asks to go to the circus again. It's been well over a year since we've been since we missed it this year. He asked if he could get the cotton candy when we go. I answered probably not and he got really upset. I have a moral objection against paying $12 for cotton candy. I told him that if he wanted it, he could take his own money and buy it. He asked how much and I told him $12 and he started getting upset because he only had 3 dollars in his piggy bank. He then stated that he did have pennkils and diamonds also.

Some things are just too cute to correct.

Tag!

I've been tagged by Michael at Chasing the Wind.

1) Do you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning?
Yes, but I am usually awakened before the alarm by one of the two kids, the cat, or the dog.

2) What time do you set it for?
5:15

3) Do you hit the snooze button? If so how many times?
Anywhere from 2 times to as many as 10.

4) Have you ever abused an alarm clock?
Does pressing the snooze button 10 times count?

5) It’s “time” to spread some “It’s Blogcess” linky love.

Ok, let's see who's paying attention:
Sara at Accepting the Echo
Eric at Little Bit of This 'n That
Darkle
Random Dale Earnhardt Jr fan

Sell, sell, sell!!

I could use a little extra spending cash....

My blog is worth $108,391.68.
How much is your blog worth?

It's sad when...

... you meet your husband at the tire store to get the tires rotated on both vehicles at the same time so you can have a conversation, the first you've had in weeks

... you wake up at 7 am on the weekend and are excited because you slept so late

... you are so thankful because no one has thrown up that day

... you have to start picking up the house 3 days before the maid comes so she can clean

... the house is trashed again 15 minutes after you arrive home the day the maid cleans

... you have to involve extended family members in your weekend plans just because the two of you have more than 2 places to be at the same time

... you fall asleep on the couch 15 minutes after the kids finally give up the bedtime fight and you wake up an hour later and realize you still have several hours worth of chores to do

But the saddest part of all is realizing that in such a short time from now, your kids will be grown and not need you anymore.

What the...

My kids say the funniest things. Saturday we're driving to my folks to pick up the boy who'd spent the night Friday night. My daughter in the back starts saying- "Hey! You want a piece of me?"

Some of her other favorite sayings:

"Don't say stupid"
"What the"
"That is so not cool"
"Awesome"

Hello?

Am I all alone in the this big, dark blogosphere? Is there anyone out there?

Oh, it is just me. I may have to turn the spam filter off.

Thank you, Darkle, for being my one, lone commenter.

Everyone has a price

Last night we had the in-laws over for dinner. My father-in-law asks my son if he'll sell him his prized, worn, must have in order to sleep lovey bear blanket. The boy looks at him as if he's nuts when he asks. I'll buy it for 50 cents. No? Two dollars? No? Then he takes out a $100 bill and lets my son hold it. Then he asks, $100? The boy answers do you want the brown one or the white one (he has two)?

Not available

I spent yesterday morning in a client presentation to win more work. We presented our plan and the clients interviewed myself and my boss for the position. This morning the proposed project manager comes over to tell us that neither of us are available to work on it. We're both promised on at least 4 other jobs, all starting in January. Next year should be fun. Has anyone perfected that cloning thing?

Shapes in the clouds

Growing up, my best friend and I would ride bikes around the neighborhood to exhaustion and then lay on the ground across the street from our houses and stare at the sky. We'd pick out different shapes in the clouds and go back at night to stare at the stars. I'd forgotten about this particular past time until my son starting pointing out dragons and birds and lions in the sky.

I've always been eager to get to the next stage in my life. In 8th grade, it killed me that I wasn't in high school. I graduated from high school in 3 years just to get to college sooner. I went to summer school every summer so that I could graduate from college in 4 years, when most took 5. My whole life I've been like that. Until having kids. Now I want time to stand still. To take in every day fully and live life every extent I can. Maybe it's because I'm older and realize every day is a step closer to the end. More likely it's because of the way I now see the world, through the eyes of my kids. I see the flowers, I see the butterflies, and once again, I see the shapes in the clouds.