You know you're old when....

....You're taking a walk with your spouse and you don't point out the cool cars or satelite dish or the pools at the houses you pass by. You point out how nicely the lawn is kept. Or how well the color of the shudders contrast with the color of the siding. And ooh! Look! I think they have a breakfast nook! I want a breakfast nook! And our driveway is too small. Look at their driveway and how big it is. Ugh.

Of course I make up for this with a rabid devotion to my hobby of collecting "vintage" ( though honestly, how can the 80's be considered vintage?) G.I. Joe action figures. I have a pretty decent collection. Lots of figures and vehicles. Mostly everything is in good condition and I have a great little connection at a local comic book shop that is constantly getting in new old toys. So I can pretty much walk in there on any given day and find a figure to enhance my collection. Now I just need to find a way to display all this junk! :p

Keepers are in!

I am such a fantasy football nerd. Not that this is a bad thing, though Barbara might say differently. But to a casual observer, July 31st isn't exactly a highwater mark of the year. Not so for fantasy football. Next to Christmas and a Saturday in late August (see below), I don't think I look forward to a day more than today. Because today I find out who everyone else in the league has kept! That means I find out who I'm going to take with the 1st pick in the draft!

Ah, the fantasy football draft. Months of preperation lead up to this day (the last Saturday in August aforementioned). Figuring out what the situation is with the offensive line in Tennessee or what the new head coach will do with his star wide receiver in Dallas. The minutiae that is pored over and pondered about leading up to the draft is indescribable. And having the #1 pick offers an added bonus. EVERYONE talks to you. And I mean everyone. They all want that first pick, and I've got it. And you know what. They ain't gettin' it! Becuase some idiot decided to put the best player in football (well, fantasy-wise) back on the market. So I can take him with my first pick! MWHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! Oh, poor souls. Now I have 3 of the top 10 players in the league. And I shall rule the world!!

I'm Back!........Again!!

I know. It's been a while. And you have all been eagerly wondering what the hell I've been doing with my life. I can say a lot has changed in the last year. Got married, changed jobs (and careers), learned a lot about myself and who I am, learned a lot about what I do know and what I don't know and I've come to one conclusion:

I'll be fine, as long as I don't try so hard. :)

That being said, I'm having LOTS of fun trying VERY hard to make a baby (or babies if you believe the palm reader my wife went to).

Anyway, I'll be checking in from time to time to let you all know what I'm doing and maybe I can actually get some pics and movies up on here as well (now that I'm supposed to be all techy.)

Crash!

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I start eating healthy. I've already got the exercise thing going. Been walking almost every day of the work week at lunch time. But I still eat badly. Not too much. Just nothing good for me. Too much fast food. I have purchased some lean cuisines (quite delicious if I do say so myself......and I do) and have to figure out a way to make it through breakfast and dinner without making stops at Wawa. They make too many good things for me to eat. And by good I mean bad.

Speaking of bad. I think my boss is on his deathbed. Literally. He was having stomach pains on Monday afternoon, and checked himself into the hospital yesterday morning because he was feeling so awful. Now he's in the ICU and they say he's got some kind of infection and it's made its way to his blood stream. And that ain't good kiddies. From what they're saying he's almost septic, which means the infection in the blood could become poisonous and kill him if they don't fix it. Kind of surreal, but I've never been one to think the worst until it actually happens. (Well, in those kinds of life and death sorts of situations I mean. I know I think the worst on many occasions. I'm Catholic. It's what we do.)

Anyway. Hopefully boss man won't kick the bucket. He's got 3 little kids that need him more than anything in the world, because God help us if they have just their mother. She's about two shakes away from having an empty salt shaker.

The Turning of the Leaves

So another summer has come and gone. And what do I have to show for it? Some good things. I had my first art exhibit at a winery up in Lancaster, PA. It went well. Had a good time and hopefully some sales will come of it. I have to be proactive though, so I'm now banging out even more landscapes than ever before. Castles seem to be the order of the day, which is cool, but I don't do straight lines very well (even with a ruler) and especially not well when I'm trying to paint them. So I'm having to adjust my technique some to be less photo-realistic with the art so the wavy lines of that Castle rampart won't look so horribly wrong. :)

Fatherhood (or Step-Fatherhood in my case) has been something of a learning experience. It's nice to have a 9 year old (well, he's 10 now since his birthday just passed) who can actually understand the words that are coming out of my mouth. Problem is, they seem to rattle around for a bit up there, then slide out his ear, but not after some snide comment that he thinks is funny slips out of his mouth. Oh, joy. Funny thing is, my own family thinks I've fathered this child and just got around to introducing him now! He acts WAY too much like I did when I was his age. Like, scary similarities. The difference is, I'm trying to take an active role in his development unlike my dad did with mine, and I'm kind of coming to the conclusion that my dad may have had it right. Saying nothing seems to get you farther than trying to teach him. Because he doesn't retain anything (he doesn't know how to read a regular clock, doesn't know what day of the week it is, and can't remember his own family's names, let alone his friends and neighbors) it becomes frustrating to try and impart any kind of knowledge to him. It doesn't help either that we only see him part time, so we have to go through the entire week deprogramming him from his father's bad habits. Can you tell I just spent the entire day yesterday with him?!! LoL!! I love the kid, but I can't work and have to baby sit him too. Well, I can, but it ain't easy. He had off school because of Columbus Day, so it was take your kid to work day for me. Whew. Glad it's over. Now I need about 6 months to recover before I'll do that again! :p

Wedding Stuff

To anyone of you regulars who reads this (basically Amy, Lauren, Tess, & Nat), I need your mailing address as soon as possible!!

MMMMmmmmm......Liqour!

So if you are bored some night and want to get creatively drunk. Try a caramel candy apple!

1/2 Cup Sour Apple Pucker
1/2 Cup Butterscotch Schnapps
2 Tablespoons Triplesec

Everything should be freezer cold and you may want to cut it with a bit of water if you don't like the thickness of the drink (it gets to be like the consistency of cough syrup) but YUMMY YUM!!

I thought about adding a section in my sidebar for "What I'm Drinking" but decided that would make me out to be much more of an alcoholic than I can claim to be. :) So you'll have to content yourself with making you own drinks. I would suggest the WebTender. ( http://www.webtender.com ) It's a great website that can be constantly updated and has any kind of drink you can think of, from party punches to shots to cocktails, you name it. The part I like is the section "In My Bar" You tell it what you have in the fridge (or the cupboard, you can tell it you have cayan pepper if you want) and it will give you a list of drinks that you can make with you selections. The one drawback is that it assumes you already have things like lemon peels and lime wedges, so maybe you should pick some up before going home to be Uber-creative. :)

Finally!! The Internet!

So something you might want to consider when moving into a home *cough*Amy*cough* is checking which rooms have cable and phone hookups, and which ones do not. Because if you go through all the trouble to set up your computer and speakers and printer and all that jazz just to find out that there isn't any way to get an internet connection in the room, weellll, let me just say that it's no fun paying for an internet connection you can't use!! After much thought (pretty much an epiphany on the way home from work yesterday) I have moved my computer from the garage (future site of my studio / gym/ Bea's sewing area) to the family room. It's not the best setup, but until I figure out a way to run a connection to our library ( love the library) and the garage, we must make do. Ah, the trials and tribulations of owning a home! Now if I can just jew down the price for this kid down the street to mow our lawn....$40!! I tell you it's criminal!!

Wow. Been a while.

Ok. It's been a while. Some highlights;

• Got my first professional paycheck for artwork via Mike's geocaching coin dealio.
• My cousin got married and has moved to Fort Worth, Texas. *sniffle*
• My sister's bridal shower was marred by the fact that half of her fiance's family wasn't invited. So she gets another shower. This one not a surprise. :)
• WE BOUGHT A HOUSE. This is the big one of course. It was a horrible mess, what with the mortgage company screwing everything up left and right. We actually did a dry settlement, which means we signed the papers, but the money didn't get wired until the next day. So we moved all of our stuff in on Thursday, slept on the floor in the old apartment, and actually stayed at the house on Friday. So now we are moved in, settling ourselves some, and basically trying to make a life. Rah!

So I'm going to try and update this thing from time to time. I really want to. We won't have internet service at the house till Monday ( I could go on for days about how these utility companies screw the hell out of you on a regular basis, but I won't waste your time with it) so it'll be a few days before I can post anything else. I'm going to see Superman tonight, which I heard is a pretty good movie, and I'll hopefully be getting the last disc of the first season Lost sometime next week, so I can wrap that up (I'm a Netflix junkie now). Then it's on to the first season of 24!! Love that show!

By the way. Check this out! It's the funniest Star Wars parody I've seen yet!

Art and Makeup

The tough times of being an artist typically occur when questions about your artwork crop up. Because it's never just a question. It becomes a statement of your ability to acheive your goals within this very difficult field. And I honestly don't think it has anything to do with Bea. I just get very defensive (usually without me knowing it at first, realizing it later, and not really being apologetic about it even after realizing it). I've spent so much of my life invested in this goal of becoming a successful artist that the idea of relegating it to a hobby just seems more than a bit depressing. But in the end, who do I really have to blame for my unsuccessful streak? I would say myself. And I really can't get angry when people have doubts as to whether or not I can make it happen. Now Barbara loves the idea of me being a successful artist, and wants to see it happen, but where we come into problems is that we have so much going on right now, what with planning a wedding, trying to move into a house, getting full custody of her son, and her graduating college in May (on top of full time jobs and general everyday stuff) that the art just has to take a back seat right now. And maybe that's for the best. It's a tough pill to swallow to say that maybe I just didn't do enough to promote myself or get my stuff out there, but sooner or later I'm either going to have to shit or get off the pot as they say. And the more I become a family man, the less it seems that I'm going to be able to be an art man. But the clock hasn't run out yet on that. And for all I know things will pick up once she's graduated and needs a project to work on. ;p

The one plus of this is that make up sex rocks. Just FYI.