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.

Amish People and Wine

You haven't lived till you've seen two horse and buggy carriages duke it out like Nascar on a country road. I kid you not. Bea and I were driving to a little town called Lititz to see this awesome little chocolate factory (they actually make the chocolate that Hershey uses to make their candy) and on this back road, one horse drawn buggy was booking around another horse drawn buggy. I guess road rage can happen anywhere now. :) All in all it was a nice weekend away. We stayed from Thursday night through yesterday morning. Now for the unlearned, Lancaster, PA is the Mecca of Amish folk on the east coast. They still live the simple life. As long as the simple life involves selling their home made goods to stupid tourists for outrageously high prices. There is also shopping. Much shopping. And Eating!! Yes, capitalized type eating. If you don't run an all you can eat buffet, you're not going to last long in this town. And there are outlets out the ying yang. Nike, Ralph Lauren, Bose, you name it. Good stuff. You can find some real deals there (unless you're getting married to a bargain hunting fiend who thinks it's not all that because she saw a better sale 3 weeks ago). But, oddly enough, Lancaster has some other fun things to do as well. Wineries are all over the place out there. They don't make the standard wines as well as Cali or Europe can, but you can find a really nice mulled wine (wine you can serve hot) or fruit wines. Like peach, pear, cherry, etc. We were actually going to go to a chocolate, cheese, wine tasting festival yesterday, but the 200 inches of snow that got dumped on us kind of put the kibosh on all that. :) Anyway, we had a great time, lots of laughs (at both our expenses and some other people's) and saw some cool shows. Saw a play based off of a Henry James novel (must read some of his books if the stories are as good as this one) called "The Turning of the Screw" Very creepy, very well done. I was so surprised that a small playhouse could get such good actors. Also saw a really funny show during some dinner theatre the next night. The food sucked, but the play was fun. And then we knocked boots the rest of the weekend. Have pictures no less. :) Don't know what we'll ever do with them, but I guess it's part of the fun. We'll probably just delete them off the camera in a month or so. Right after I set up the website!! MWHAHAHAHA!!! (you know I'm kidding. :p )

Slow Down Already!!

OK! All Right!! I Get It! Life is fast paced and we all need to get things done, but damn! This is getting goofy. Luckily I've got the weekend away with Bea up in Lancaster starting tomorrow. Fun, sun (though bitter cold, may snow tonight), and she's paying for it. :p Sort of a birthday/Valentine's day gift. And her gift from me is lingerie. Which I guess means it's a gift for myself, but as long as she's happy with it, *cha-ching* Baby!! So. Things will be good this weekend. ;) Hope yours is too.

P.S. No more GTA3. Bea and I had a big blowout about what it means for society in general when we buy in to games like GTA. And while I would really like to play it, she makes some valid arguments on her end. So peace reigns once again in the Spalding/Ackley household. And I'm playing sesame street games. Rock on Grover!!! *sigh*

Smack ma bitch up

That's the name of the first mission in Grand Theft Auto 3. Know how I know? I bought it last night. Couldn't pass it up for 10 bucks. It took a bit to figure out the controls, but once I got that out of the way, I was carjacking my way around the city, blowing up other hoodlums and makin' it with the random hos on the street. Now if I can just figure out how to ramp jump my car onto the overhead train rails.....I came close you know!! Maybe tonight.......

Whew!!

Yeah. I know. You know. We all know. Need to post more. :)

So some more highlights:

Had engagement party last week. Good times. Didn't know you get presents. Made out like a bandit (more than I made for my college graduation) and my mom got us a camcorder!! Awesome! Of course we haven't even opened it yet. :p

Looks like Memorial Day weekend of 2007 for us. So keep your calanders open for that weekend. Most likely it's going to be Sunday, since it'll be cheaper to get some things that day.

Got a raise at work. I just got it. No review. No sit down. I actually didn't even know I got it till a week after I got it. :p I checked my account balance online and thought there was a mistake with the direct deposit. lol. But my boss loves me (even though he pushes my buttons on a regular basis)

Speaking of pushing buttons, I am working hard on my attitude and contentious nature. Learning to be more forgiving of myself and others and generally try to mellow out. So far, mixed results, but it's better than no results at all. :p

I'm adding a new feature to the Blog. "What I'm Listening To" I figure someone would like to know. :p

Ok. Will try to post more and read everyone's blogs. On the "To Do" list!

I Love the Holidays

But I avoid shopping centers and malls like the plague unless I can get there during off peak hours (which means no weekend shopping!!) Went to get some shopping done the other night at the mall (and to pick up newly sized engagement ring) only to be frustrated by Macy's lack of a discernable insurance policy. They have one. It costs $175, and it only lasts 5 years. WTF?! I mean, what happens in 20 or 30 and the stone falls out! Jewelers will give you a lifetime warranty (though I bet you have to pay for their's also) and that's standard for them. Didn't help that the lady at the counter couldn't be bothered to deal with something as important as our engagement ring. Luckily I'm a vindictive individual and my aunt is a big wig in the company. So I'll feel better in the end. :) Though I'll probably do nothing, just be angry for a week, then move on. I don't want to ruin someone's life, just punish them a bit for making me sick to my stomach thinking about this ring business.

Anyway, the holidays are upon us!! Woo!

Oh Boy!!!

It's started. I wasn't expecting to visit theknot.com so soon, but there I was today, trying to figure out what part of this cornucopia of information I should dive into first. Last night we went to get the ring sized. Hell of a time that. I-95 was backed up beyond belief, so I sat for an hour at the restaurant talking to Bea on the phone, trying to keep her mind off the idea of purchasing a firearm for her vehicle. She finally made it and we had a good time running around the mall except for the part where we went to the other jewelry stores and the diamond snobbery came out. You know the type. They're the ones who make sure you know that the 3/4 carat diamond engagement ring you have to shell out money you don't have for the next year is nowhere near the quality they could have given you, and that you should take it back and get their diamonds because "Look how much better ours are than that little piece of crap you bought for her" Ugh. But, ever the positive mind I am trying to be, I really don't care what they think. I like the ring, Bea likes the ring. Tada. Problem solved. Now if we can just figure out when we're going to actually get married.......

December Already?!

Well. Time flies, don't it. I've been wanting to post for a while now, but haven't had any time. *Sob*

Anyway, some highlights:

Mom got married on the twelfth. Very nice time. They were kind enough to remember my father during the whole thing, and Bob (mom's new hubby) cried when he made his vows. Half the groomsmen showed up drunk, 10 minutes late for the service, and another one left before the pictures were taken because he wanted to get to the open bar at the hall ASAP. Mind you these were my uncles. *Note to self. Do not include uncles in my wedding party*

Went to a christening with Barbara and her family. There were 3 other families having the same service done for them at the same time, and there were about 50 or 60 children in this church and it was like a mad house. The priest is having to yell over all the screaming. Kids are yelling and running around and no one could do anything about it. It was hilarious and frightening all at once. *Note to self. No infants at wedding service. Want to hear priest without the use of a hearing aid*

By far the most fucked up part of the last few weeks was a 2nd cousin of mine (though in my family that means he's basically immediate family) being murdered. He actually lived on the other side of my neighborhood. Anyway, last Tuesday he was supposed to go and testify at this guys trial who had broken into his house last year. At 4 in the morning, someone broke into his house, set it on fire, beat him up, or somehow dragged him out of the house, took him in his truck a couple of miles away, beat his head in till it was a pulp and set him on fire in his truck before taking off. Really effed up situation. Now he was something of a drug user. No one knows how much he was into it, but I wonder if this had something to do with that more than the guy who broke into his house. Though I'd rather the Sopranos episodes stay on TV.

Finally, I'm going out with the girl tomorrow for a good time up in Lancaster, then taking a candlelit tour through historic Woodstown, NJ. She's excited, but I'm looking forward to Saturday when I'll be shopping at my aunt's Macy's store for her X-mas present. She's only getting one thing, but it's small, shiny and I'm pretty sure she'll be appreciative of it. ;P

Rebounds

So the girl asks me to come over last night, spend some quality time. I say "Hey! I'll make dinner!" as the waste line needs to be looked at, what with all this bad food I've been eating lately. Get there, make dinner, but she's in a mood (seems to be a thing for women. Fine one second, moody the next). Anyway, long story short, it was kind of a frosty night, but I was willing to chalk it up to just one of those days when we're not in sync (a couple boy band songs spring to mind suddenly). She calls this morning, letting me know how much she liked the food (even though she wasn't singing praises for it when she was eating it) and that she was sorry for being moody. I said ok, still feeling like it was a little too late for that, but then I get flowers with a card delivered to the desk here. It says, "For all that you are, all that you do." Now I'm not much of a flower kind of guy. Actually there was a bug in the bunch who is now happily annoying me by being alive, but I was kind of irked last night because here I am, going out of my way to do something, and wasn't getting much in return. And while the apology was nice, the gesture of the flowers let me know that she's willing to go out of her way to to show me she cares. Very sweet. Nice rebound. :)

Prophetic am I

As most people know and remember, my screen name and username for a lot of things is Malachi. Always liked it, was talked into keeping it by Mike and Alan a while back when I thought it was cool to change my screen names every month. Well, Sunday at church, they read from the book of Malachi. And I knew then, things were going to go well. And they have! My fantasy football team creamed the guy I was playing, my portfolio got printed incorrectly at Staples, so they didn't charge me the $86 I was going to have to pay, but I can salvage about half the job, so that'll cut my costs in half. And I'm not sure of anything else at the moment, but I figure 2 good things is better than no good things. :) Oh, and I was Harry Potter for Halloween. Pics forthcoming...

COPS!! AGAIN!!

For those of you who actually follow this thing, you may have read about an incident back in June or so where one of our guys was arrested in our parking lot for trying to molest a 17-year-old girl who worked for us. Well, now one of my good buddies, Dave, is caught in the middle of a tradgedy. If you don't want to read the article (or can't) the long and short of it is that he had been seeing a woman from his church choir for a little less than a week before her husband (who she was getting divorced from) shot her to death Friday night. And he killed her /because/ of another man (ie; Dave). So needless to say he's a bit broken up about all of this. But it's just kind of surreal. Was huge in the news and all, and I went to the service tonight to show some support with the rest of the crowd from the shop. Surprisingly enough, I ran into a lot of random people I wouldn't have predicted would be there. One of my old customers from the bank, one of my cousin's good friends, and the guy who got arrested for molesting that girl!! Guess he got a leave of absense from jail for this one. *sigh*