Yo Programo

Fully convinced that she's missing out on a juicy gossip story that David won't tell her, and after shamelessly begging for David to tell her about it but only being thrown the bone that it has something to do with a "Dorothy Miller", Tim's classmate (SeeJaneTyp) falls hook, line, and sinker for the old use-one-of-your-5-AOL-screen-names-to-pretend-to-be-someone-else trick.
David, Josh, and Tim gladly let her dig herself into a hole by playing along with her manipulative tactics and then take the opportunity to pounce with the final "gotcha" before she realizes she's been had. Note that the things mentioned at the end were all references to earlier conversations between FC Zwicker and SeeJaneTyp which have been lost in cyberspace forever.

Dorth314: Are you the girl asking about the pool thing? David e-mailed me and said you were getting nosey.
SeeJaneTyp: um well david said something about you and tim losing your virginity that night and i was like no way but he swore
Dorth314: HE SAID WHAT??????
SeeJaneTyp: yea
Dorth314: It wasn't anything like that. Do you want to hear it?
SeeJaneTyp: sure but why would david lie
Dorth314: He's a jerk. He asked me out once and I said no.
Dorth314: He didn't talk to me for like a month after that
SeeJaneTyp: hmm so he did lie what a jerk he'll hear it from me
SeeJaneTyp: no one casually lies to me ever
Dorth314: You go, girl
SeeJaneTyp: so what did happen
Dorth314: Ok so like me and tim just decided to eat lunch in his pool that day
SeeJaneTyp: right
Dorth314: so then we start laughing and everythings going good
SeeJaneTyp: thats cool
Dorth314: anyway, i said something, i don't remember what it was and then his root beer went all over the place.
Dorth314: even in my food.
Dorth314: :o(
SeeJaneTyp: ewww spew
Dorth314: i know. so then i show it to him and he starts laughing even harder.
SeeJaneTyp: are you serious
Dorth314: and his NOODLES were sticking out of his nose!
SeeJaneTyp: noodles??
Dorth314: We were eating spaghetti
SeeJaneTyp: eww so mean the noodles were in his nose
Dorth314: Then david starts running away laughing, holding his camera in the air.
SeeJaneTyp: ew david ;( but that is too funny
SeeJaneTyp: what about tim
Dorth314: So I tried to get it from david, but tim beat me there.
Dorth314: Oh, By the way, I don't really have a dog, cat, or braces.
SeeJaneTyp: that must have been VERY interesting
Dorth314: There is NO pine tree.
SeeJaneTyp: i knew that from the begining
Dorth314: THERE IS NO DOROTHY!!!!!!!!!! S U C K E R!!!!!!!!!
SeeJaneTyp: :o
Dorth314: YOURs truely, David, jOSH, TIM
SeeJaneTyp: ahhhhhhhhhhh

Labels: aol ims the good old days

In this AOL instant message conversation from sometime in 1998 or 1999, David, Josh, and Tim lead one of Tim's high school classmates on to believe that David is withholding some juicy information from her regarding a "noodle incident"--an intriguing teaser taken straight out of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Unfortunately, AOL only saved a portion of the conversation back then, so if you didn't save early enough, or if you overwrote the file, then you lost some of the conversation. This appears to be the final portion of this conversation.

SeeJaneTyp: yes??
FC Zwicker: My fingers are tired.
SeeJaneTyp: gq= very handsome
SeeJaneTyp: no they're not
SeeJaneTyp: type with your toes then
SeeJaneTyp: :)
FC Zwicker: I'm not buying it--does GQ stand for Grossly quirky?
SeeJaneTyp: no havent you ever heard of the magazin gq? its a mans fashion magazine
FC Zwicker: oksasd I;asn tyoep; wekd myoa rtodds neoaw.
SeeJaneTyp: all the hot guys are in it
SeeJaneTyp: was that really with your toes
FC Zwicker: Ok, so when I get the issue with me on the cover, I'll tell you all about the noodle incident.
SeeJaneTyp: no thats to long
FC Zwicker: Ok, do you know Dorothy Miller?
SeeJaneTyp: its umm a decade issue
SeeJaneTyp: no...... why
SeeJaneTyp: oh yea
FC Zwicker: Never mind.
SeeJaneTyp: no i do know her i forget last names
SeeJaneTyp: really i do see i already forget your last name
SeeJaneTyp: what is it again?
FC Zwicker: OH, and I already forgot the details of the noodle incident.
SeeJaneTyp: no you didn't you remember now and isnt your last name zwicker?
FC Zwicker: Oh, yeah--it is! Thanks.
SeeJaneTyp: :P phtt and you remember the noodle incident too
FC Zwicker: Well, ffft fft to you too.
SeeJaneTyp: i didnt mean it it was very stupid of me
SeeJaneTyp: it was irrational thinking
FC Zwicker: Yes it was. I'm leaving.
SeeJaneTyp: nooooooooooooooo
SeeJaneTyp: no im sorry
FC Zwicker: Was it typical female irrational thinking????
SeeJaneTyp: yes im sorry
SeeJaneTyp: now about that noodle incident
SeeJaneTyp: you were saying
FC Zwicker: very sorry?
SeeJaneTyp: very very very sorry
FC Zwicker: Falling-on-the-floor-and-groveling-and-drooling-and-begging-for-forgiveness sorry?
SeeJaneTyp: with all my heart
SeeJaneTyp: yes that too
FC Zwicker: No, you have to say it.
SeeJaneTyp: ok falling on the floor and goveling and drooling and begging for forgiveness sorry
FC Zwicker: In ALL CAPS so I know you didn't cut and paste.

Labels: aol, ims, the good old days

Forgive me, readers, for I have been dormant. It's been almost a year since my last post-session. (Hey, it rhymes with "confession" so just roll with it!!).
(c;

During that time:

1. I (and some friends) redug the sprinkler trenches, installed the sprinkler system (2 feet deep so we don't have to blow them out to keep them from freezing), filled them back in, and laid down sod.
2. I somehow let Eric scratch my left eye (he had already done this to my right eye about a year before) and had to go to the ER again.
3. My wife and I buried our daughter, Brianna, who made it halfway through her gestation period (long enough for us to find out she was a girl) before she died.
4. One of my friends was hired on as a co-worker!
5. We Took a vacation in Southern California where we attended my sister's wedding and got to attend a Bible study hosted by one of my friends from junior high who has since become a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. She and her husband have a daughter about Eric's age, and they had a great time playing together!
6. I had a surgical procedure to remove four kidney stones.
7. I got so busy that I didn't track my expenses or balance my accounts for almost a year. Then, last week, I discovered that someone had charged up just over a thousand dollars worth of expenses in my name!!! They actually manufactured a credit card with their name and my number on it and used it in the Seattle area for about a week on hotels, an airline ticket, and sending packages via FedEx. Fortunately, the credit card company credited back all the charges even though it had been so long.

Now that we're all caught up, let's talk about what I'm doing now:

Becky and I are getting serious about our budget for the first time. Oh, I've been tracking my expenses down to the penny since long before meeting Becky, but when two people are spending money, and they don't communicate about it very well, and the receipts get entered every month or so--or after 11 months as in the recent case--then the "budget" isn't really a budget. It's just a log.

Let me give you some background details:

• We were billed about $40,000 in medical expenses last year. We paid about $10,000 out of pocket. This year (1.5 months into it), we're at about $21,700 with about $3,300 of that out-of-pocket. Two births, a four-appointments-per-week pregnancy, a burial, and a surgical procedure in the same 13-month period can be unbelievably expensive, and we haven't even paid for the gravestone yet!
• We've got two boys in diapers, and even though we're trying (again) to get one of them out of diapers, training pants are even more expensive.
• We make every excuse in the book to go out for dinner.
• My chronic absent-mindedness doesn't help me notice speed limit signs, so I've gotten many tickets for going what I truly thought was the speed limit. (OK, and one more for going well over what I knew was the speed limit--but I had accidentally left my wife at a gas station on a cross-state trip, and only realized it after I'd past the last exit before a 10-mile stretch, so that one gets blamed on my absent-mindedness too!)

All together, our monthly budget deficit is approximately $1,000. Then again, that's not counting the money I don't get until the end of the year because Ethan still isn't listed on the W-4.

Here's what we're doing about it ("it" being our financial situation):

1. We now choose our dinners for the whole week before the week starts and make our grocery list based on that plan plus a general idea of what we tend to have for lunches.
2. We're cutting back on celebrations (for the record, for Valentine's day this year we went to Taco Bell (without the kids, thanks to free babysitting by the youth from our church) and only went to the [quite nice] riverside grill for dessert).
3. We're going to cancel our television service right after the winter olympics.
4. I'm trying to drink more water to avoid kidney stones and the money they cost to get rid of.
5. I finally caught upon balancing the accounts and entering all those receipts into the budget, so now I'm going to be breaking those categories down further so we can nail down and eliminate our unnecessary spending.
6. Today I discovered coupons.com and have already saved a few bucks with it.
7. I've been writing down and actively comparing price-per-ounce/pound/unit across multiple stores for almost every product we buy, and have adjusted where we buy it accordingly. For the most part, Costco really is the best place to get things, even when Wal-Mart seems to have great deals.
8. Today, I got my (badly needed) haircut at a place where they don't wash your hair.
9. We put everything on the rewards credit card and pay the statement balance at the end of the month whenever we possibly can. We take our rewards in the form of a check for cold, hard cash that we can do whatever we want with. Lately, there have been a few months were we could not pay the statement balance, but believe it or not, even when we can't, we're still racking up the rewards higher than the finance charges (thanks to an awesome rewards program and an unbelievably low purchase APR: 4.24%).
10. We will probably itemize deductions this year. It's our first full year of mortgage interest, so that, plus our medical expenses, etc. should push us well over the standard deduction. Now if I could just get my W-2...

Other than that, there's a few less drastic (but still postworthy) things going on:

1. Ethan has taken a few steps (though not when his daddy is able to watch). He has also stacked a block on top of another one.
2. Eric can identify many colors, and even some letters.
3. Becky is teaching herself to cut Eric's hair with a trimmer. (You'll notice I opted for the cheaper barber shop than to be the other guinea pig.) Sorry, Eric, but at your age people don't care as much, so you were volunteered to take one (or more like however many it takes) for the team. Just be glad she didn't wait until you started junior high.
4. Eric is learning to use a mouse. His daddy still uses it during the more complex learning games so he can focus on the fun part.
5. I now have over $600,000.00 in worthless chips on the Facebook Texas Hold 'Em app. I tried to challenge Janell, who is my richest Facebook poker buddy and has about double what I have, but I haven't gotten a hold of her at a good time just yet.
6. I'm hoping to have time soon to start a Meetup group in my area for practicing speaking in Spanish. Maybe one for playing board games as well.
7. Eric is enrolled in early preschool. They are learning to talk in 4-word sentences, such as "I want juice, please." He's still working on meeting that goal but has progressed. He's really good at 1-to-2-word sentences such as:
   • "Where Daddy?", "Where Baby?" [Where did Daddy/Ethan go--I just saw him (Daddy) but now I don't, even though I know he's supposed to be in the office all day.],
   • "Mommy Had." [Mommy, you seem sad.],
   • "Mommy Happy?" [Did I just see you smile/laugh, Mommy?],
   • "Dat Daddy!", "Dat Mommy!", "Dat ooh!", "Dat Eric!" [I recognize that person in the picture. It's Daddy/Mommy/you/me!],
   • "Hab it?" [Can my brother, Ethan, have this?],
   • "Baby in! [I want you to put Ethan in the pack-and-play.]",
   • "Tummy hurt" [My tummy hurts.],
   • "Go way!" [Go away; I want my privacy (or possibly, because I'd like to create an opportunity for me to do something that I know isn't allowed).],
   • "Jue peeeese" [May I please have juice?],
   • "Door too!" [I want to come to the store with you!] (whenever I put on my shoes or sweatshirt, no matter what the reason),
   • "Watt teebee!" [I want to watch cartoons on TV!],
   • "Wuh Payte." [I want to paint.],
   • "Hed?" [Daddy, may I please put this piece of paper through the (surprisingly pretty safe) shredder?],
   • "Bwoken!" [ This toy came apart.] (usually where the parts were actually designed to separate),
   • "Candy?", "Ticker!" [I get to { have a piece of candy | pick out a sticker } because I went potty in the toilet, right?],
   • "No, pay!" [I don't want to {go to bed | leave the playground}; I want to stay here and play instead.],
   • "Kitt ooh." [I want to give you a goodnight kiss.],
   • "Towey." [Please read me a(nother) story.],
   • "I 'cared." [I'm scared.] (of his bedroom or of the ceiling, based on responses to follow-up questions)

Well, as Eric would say, "I done! I done! I done! I done! I done! I done....."

Since moving into our house in June 2008, we hadn't had much of an opportunity to organize anything in the garage. Sure, we had a few stacks of boxes, mostly baby clothes, but for the most part there was a lot of stuff strewn around the three sides that we don't drive through in order to enter the garage. Parking often involved attempting (usually successfully) to gauge the distance to the nearest object with no permanent place, such as the lawnmower or a stroller, so as to leave some walking room in between. There were a few miscellaneous boxes left from our move that just weren't convenient to access. Locating and fetching the stroller we needed for the particular task on which we were embarking (we have 5 strollers, all meant for different uses) was a dreaded chore.

All that began to change one fateful day (last weekend) at Costco, shortly after Becky had headed back to the car to feed fussy little Ethan, Eric and I took a detour through the non-food aisles on our way to check out. And what do you suppose I saw? Well, I'll tell you. (I was going to make you type and submit a guess, but I figured that might not work so well through RSS.) A storage rack!

There were two of them, actually. One could be used for industrial purposes and the other was shorter and not quite as sturdy, but looked like it would probably work for what we needed. They were both the same height, so I compared widths and prices and determined that if I were to buy two of the non-industrial-type units I would have more storage space than one industrial-type unit and still pay less. I also compared the weight it's supposed to be able to hold. Both held at least 1,000 pounds per shelf, which was plenty adequate. Not being an impulsive buyer and not having an empty trunk (or whatever you call the back of an SUV), I wrote the information down and we headed back home to think it over.

I bought one unit (just so I could put it to the test before buying any more). I put it together on Saturday afternoon this weekend, with Eric strapped into a high chair and watching from a slight distance. It was a pretty simple design; no fasteners were required. I got it assembled and then filled it up with some boxes. I even took advantage of the adjustable shelf height by clearing a large space for taller boxes on the bottom while leaving just enough room to fit the 2 leaves of the dining room table that we won't use unless and until we have a huge family gathering. I even tried putting the recycling bins on the middle shelf. They fit, but the storage rack was on the wrong side of the garage for that, seeing how we'd have to walk all the way around the car every time we had something to store for future recycling.

We decided that the product delivered the storage solution that we had expected, and that we would need a total of three of them to store all the stuff we had laying around. I slipped into Costco just before closing time on Saturday and returned with two more. Having gone through the assembly process already, constructing a couple more was easy. I did find one defect in one of the angle brackets in the second unit that would have prevented me from assembling the whole unit had the assembly been permanent, but since disasembly just required banging on the bottom of a few beams with a rubber mallet, I was able to render the defect in the bracket irrelevant by switching it out with another bracket that i had already installed. This placed the defective shelf hole in a place where it would be absurd to actually put a shelf.

After both other units were built, Becky and I loaded them with location-appropriate items, cleared out all the extra cardboard we didn't need that had been hiding within the ranks of the unstackable items, and stood back and took a look. I sure wish I had a "before" picture to show y'all (at the time--"before," that is--there had been no motivation to snap a picture, as it just wasn't picturesque). You'll have to settle for seeing the "after" shots.

Labels: eric, pasco house, stuff

My back and side yards are full of trenches. They're supposed to be two feet deep and wide enough to contain the piping necessary to feed 18 sprinklers in 4 different zones, meaning that they start out with four pipes and then at some point the pipes split away from each other so that the sprinklers in each region are fed by a region-specific single line.

I started digging them several weeks ago with the intention of finishing them in a couple of weekends with a couple of friends and then laying down sod on top of them. However, the evening before the Saturday that we were supposed to start I came down with a horribly dreadful disease--yes, you guessed it--the 24-hour strap-yourself-down-to-the-toilet-with-a-bucket-in-your-lap virus. Fortunately, I was feeling better sometime the next morning, though I still had some sort of mild headache

Anyway, I ended up renting the trencher on Sunday and attempting to dig myself some trenches. Well, they don't make those things very maneuverable. It got jammed in the sand as soon as I started using it, at which point I figured out that you aren't supposed to try to go forward with while it's digging. I managed to dig it out, but then the wheels were spinning freely without moving, and I couldn't budge it. I don't own any loose two-by-fours, but after many, many attempts I finally got some cardboard underneath the spinning wheel and enough sand out of the way of the other one to drive it out of the pit it was in. One of my friends then drove over and stopped by long enough to help me turn it around (no easy task; he is much stronger than I am) and I began digging the trench around the edge of my property.

Every half minute or so I had to strain with all my might to sway it back and forth to try to raise the back end which had sunk into the sand again. Along the back of the property, where there's a fence, after which the soil slopes down sharply to a point well below the street level, I wasn't able to keep it going long enough to continue. I finally gave up on that trench and began working on the one that runs behind the house, past the patio, plus one that runs and the eastern side of the house. Since that's level ground it went a lot easier, but I didn't dare try to dig side trenches coming out of it or even connect the two main trenches, because I knew I'd never be able to lift that thing out of the resulting pit.

After returning the trencher, I began hand-digging the side trenches and trench connections. Unfortunately, Becky came down with the same or a very similar dreadful disease the next weekend. Thankfully, another couple of friends were willing to watch Eric while I dug that day (a huge favor, as I made lots of progress), and then I got some help digging the next day from the friend that had initially turned the trencher around for me.

Now that it's freezing cold outside and gets dark at 4:15pm or so due to coming out of daylight saving time, I don't make much progress during the weekdays. Two weekends ago, Eric "helped" me dig--I gave him a trowel (one of those tiny shovels for gardening) and he dug some dirt off of the piles I had made and then threw rocks into the trenches. That same weekend, we took advantage of the huge JC Penney sale to try to buy all the clothes we'll need for the next 20 years. and last weekend I took Eric to the park adjacent to the elementary school down the street--he LOVED the slides. I still managed to dig out some of the loose dirt that the trencher left behind, for which I'm using the trowel rather than my trenching shovel, because the trencher blade is about an inch or so narrower than the shovel and I don't want to have to widen the trench just to get the existing dirt out. I ended up laying on my stomach--a.k.a. "gut", hence the title--reaching down into the trench to scoop, and lifting my torso up with my abdominal muscles to empty the dirt into a pile in a location that won't interfere with emptying the loose dirt out of the rest of the trench. It's quite a workout.

As for the sod, I ended up planting some grass seed a week or two before it got real cold instead, since I'm nowhere near ready to lay the pipes down--besides having to empty loose dirt by hand for the majority of the trenches, I still have to dig two more side trenches from scratch. We're trying to remember to water it (the grass seed) every day, but haven't been real consistent. We've already seen a couple of tiny little individual grass blades poking through the surface, but I don't know if they'll stick around because it's quite frosty in the morning. At least we know the seed has germinated and didn't all blow away in the windstorm we had a couple of days after I laid it down.

Put the abortion ticker on your site.

Although usually people that are expecting figure it out sometime between "four" and "six" weeks along--"four" and "six" are in quotes because they count from the first day of your last period, and conception usually begins about two weeks after that, so a woman who is "four weeks" pregnant has generally had a baby inside of her for two weeks, and by that method of counting, you can never say that you're "one week along" because at that point you're not even pregnant yet--we didn't realize it quite that soon because there were several things going on in our lives that were significantly stressful enough to produce the same sort of telltale signs that would prompt the average married woman of childbearing age to head straight for the doctor--or perhaps to the local pharmacy for an EPT.

Well, we became suspicious enough to go ahead and use that EPT that we'd already bought "just in case," and this time around, it was unambiguously positive. Eric has a younger sibling! He doesn't understand quite yet, but we've been bringing it up to him a lot anyway (no, not using the word, "brithster"). We had our first ultrasound appointment last Tuesday, and we saw a beautiful little child moving around inside his or her mom. He or she--this is why I like to know the gender as early as possible like we did for Eric--had his or her knees up and gave Mommy a good, powerful, two-legged kick while we watched. We saw an extremely clear profile of his or her entire body, including the face. Whoever he or she is, he or she sure is a beautiful baby.

So, it's been almost a year and a half since I've posted to this blog. I'd pretty much given up on blogging. Partly because my wife, Becky, blogs everything anyway, partly because I've been sooooo busy with work, and partly because I'd taken up a new "hobby" that has been consuming my spare time like an expectant mother consumes a sizable bowl of ice cream (minus 10 points for the cheap shot).

A lot of things have happened in the almost-a-year-and-a-half that I've been AWOL (or UA, as they say in the Navy) from the blogging community. As I've already mentioned, my wife has blogged about them all, but as my brother brought to my attention lately, I have a different way of looking at things and it comes out in my blogs, so I'll treat you all to a Yo Programo-style account of what's been going through my head besides Eric's finger (yes, I plan to post more about that).

I was going to give you a numbered list of everything significant that's happened that you could click on to expand that portion of the post, but I became convinced that this was a bad idea for the following (expandable, numbered list of) reasons:

1. Nobody's attention span is that long.

   If I haven't found the time to post a blog in a year and a half, how likely is it that all my "readers" (if that's what you call someone who keeps checking a stagnant string of posts, month after month, to see if maybe, just maybe, the stalactites and cobwebs have randomly combined to form the words of additional post that is somewhat legible) are going to try to catch up on a year and a half of missing commentary in one sitting? Hm, about as likely as it is that Monica Lewinsky will be the next president, or that or that "Planned Parenthood" will spend the money that the government gives them on encouraging anyone to be a responsible parent. (Okay, I'm done, you [imaginary?] readers can add more comparisons in the comments if you are so inclined.)

2. I'm tired.

   It's past midnight. I've spent a good portion of yesterday evening and this evening thinking I would make a lot of progress, only to get one and most of another "section" (a.k.a. post to follow) written, and it's getting harder and harder to be witty or make sense, and I've still got 4/5ths of a work-week ahead of me.

3. I'm using my expandable list anyway.

   Being reluctant to see all the work I did making the expandable list work on a blog go to waste, I have succeeded in (cleverly, I would like to think) integrating it into this post so I feel a sense of accomplishment even though I've actually abandoned its initially intended purpose.

Alas, instead, I will separate them into separate posts. I plan to post the ones I have already drafted in the next day or so, and then the rest can follow over the next week or so, but we'll see how that goes.