A few pics from the Husband's Birthday and Miscellaneous Ramblings

So we had a birthday party for Kristopher here at the house last Tuesday, and I didn't get any pics put up. I have some really good ones because Jaime was here and he's a great photographer. Unlike myself who sucks the big one! First we have a picture of Kristopher's cake. I thought it was really cute, and he picked it out for himself. We actually went to Albertson's together and he chose the spray on image and asked them to put the really cool pumpkin decoration on it. The pumpkin decoration absolutely MADE the cake. It looks super cute in this picture, but when you saw it in real life, it was like your glasses needed cleaning or something. Still it tasted good.

My husband acts like he doesn't like any of the corny shit like getting a birthday song sung for him or blowing out candles - but I gotta tell you...he did a pretty good job of acting like he was actually enjoying himself.



At the party were Beth and Marvin, Patricia Hedtke, Jian Lakerson, Jaime Forerro (thanks for the pics Jaime!) and Terry (Mom) and Kevin - and, of course, me. It was a nice little gathering and we had Papa John's pizza, a bunch of soda and cake and ice cream. Old-fashioned birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein even had party hats on. While I was cutting the cake, we had a bit of a philosophical discussion about how cool it was to have your birthday so close to such a cool holiday as Halloween. Great to be close, but not exactly ON the day itself. If your birthday is on the 31st, you'll never be able to have just a regular birthday - it will always have to be a Halloween party. But if it's just close...say 10 days before - then you have the opportunity to either embrace all the Halloween kitch, or completely ignore it. So, again, it was decided that the little man had a good thing going with his birthday on Halloween. Here he is opening his card from his Mom.

There are a few more pics, but I think I'll stop here. Everyone had a pretty good time, and it was really cool to have an old school birthday. But my present to Kristopher didn't show up until the next day, and when it did . . . well, it didn't fit as well as it should have. But I did manage to get a picture of him in it before he took it off because it was pulling on his shoulders. Check out my baby in his giant onsie.

Of course it was really weird to not have Nick and Maggie around. This is the first year that they are in their new home in Yakima. We'll be seeing them for Turkey day, but I've been with Kristopher for 8 birthdays now, and I've never not seen Mr. Nick on that day. I know that Kristopher really missed him too. Things change - familes move apart...but that doesn't mean you have to like it.

Okay, that's it for now. Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm really looking forward to it. Quite a few people at the office are dressing for the occasion and I'm going to do my best to get some decent pictures. Hopefully I can get someone with a steady hand to take a few of me as well.

Fuck Halloween Candy!

Well, I am a great lover of Halloween - and normally, I don't have any trouble resisting the Halloween candy. However, over the course of the past couple of weeks, I seem to have developed quite the taste for the evil shit. I ate 1000 calories worth of it yesterday. Between the evil Halloween candy and my simpering inability to resist eating it and the fact that the doctor has taken me off of all exercises while my disks heal, I should be whale sized by the time my treatments are done. Well, that's not gonna happen. If I so much as look at one piece of that shit tonight, I'm taking the whole lot of it and throwing it in the trash can. Kristopher and I talked about it, and I think he's about ready to do the same thing. We've had enough for this season, that much is certain. (I think that I had enough for the season YESTERDAY!) Okay...I just wanted to check in and say what I had to say. I forgive myself for my infractions to date because I was getting off of pain killers. Okay. I'm all done with those (they are evil of a different color - but evil to be sure - especially when you are having to stop them.

But on the brighter side.... I don't feel like I need sugar OR pain killers today, so I may be out of the woods. And happy to be out of the woods am I.

Alrighty then! Everyone reading this have a great day.

Spam Blogs and Remote Car Key Responsibity

My other blog, about my course of spinal treatment, was blocked today as a possible spam blog. Weird. I didn't know what a spam blog was until now. I guess these assholes who have been filling our mailboxes for years now with all manner of crap have taken to automating blog production and blog entry for the purpose of setting link traps to get people to click to go to a single site. How fuckn' stupid can you be? Stop it already, assholes...don't we have ENOUGH meaningless and usesless shit out here? Hmm? Why put more? Knock it the fuck off. Who wants to navigate a trash heap? Another excellent example of how a few assholes can ruin it for everyone else. I think Google is doing a great job by flagging anything that might possibly be one of these sites. I don't mind having my other blog locked where I can't write to it for a couple of days to help keep that kind of lame crap from proliferating all over the Internet. Besides - blogs are cool and it's nice to have them around. If this kind of stuff is allowed to run rampant, even a company as rich as Google won't be able to keep up with the server load demand. Okay...that's all I've got to say about that. Oh, and I'll be sure to put a link to my spinal decompression blog in here later.

And now on to the next topic. Remote repsonsibility for car keys.

This one requires a little bit of explanation. I shall now provide that. Ready? Of course you are. Remote responsibility for car keys refers to the phenomenon of my daughter believing that it was my fault she locked her car keys in her car on the same day that she asked me to give her my key to her car because she had come so close to locking them in there before. When she asked me earlier that day to give her that set of keys, I simply told that she had to be careful and not do that, because I was not giving her the set of keys I have to her car since I am still a co-signer on the loan for that car. Now I know that is extremely unreasonable of me. Call me crazy. My 18-year old daughter who has shown such vast amounts of responsible behavior could not possibly ever default on that car and put my credit at risk. So yeah...she winds up locking her keys in her car with both her and her dad's dog inside. And then she proceeds to call me up and yell at me with a "hope you're happy" kind of tone. She also informed me that if I wasn't going to give her my key, I should at least have the decency to buy her another one because this lock smith was going to cost her money. Okay. Now there you have it. I am somehow remotely responsible for what she does with her car key, and it is MY fault that she locked that key in her car. Does anyone else see the point here? Does anyone else see that she never once thought about it being HER responsibility to be careful and NOT lock her keys in her car. I don't know. I just wonder about the girl sometimes. Her brother was over here on Sunday and he was talking about how he remembered how when Andrea was little, and basically all through her life until her father and I divorced back in 2001, she pretty much got any and every thing she asked for. She would cry for it if that's what it took, but most of the time when she was with her dad, that was unnecessary. And now the sense of entitlement is enormous. I am seeing that things are getting somewhat better with that sort o thing as she has to struggle to do as she wishes and faces up to the consequences - but we still sometimes get gems like "remote responsibility for car keys."

October 1! Yay! Hallowed-Weenie Approaches!

yay! It's the month of Halloween. Time to put the decorations on the lawn without fear of the neighbors thinking we're a bunch of crack-pots. Of course, they probably ALREADY think that, and what do I care? i really need to work over my main website "theinvoker.com" but I haven't had any heart to do much of anything for the past many months. See my other blog on spinal decompression for info on why that is if you're interested. However, fall is here in earnest and I am feeling better and I think I should do a little creative web-crafting. We're having movie nights at our house this month. The first one is Johnny Depp night and I'm hoping we have a good turnout. Even if it's just two or three people, it will be fun to watch "Sleepy Hollow" and "From Hell" with some other peeps. As usual, it will likey just be the broom crew who shows up for this. The conundrum of having no friends outside of Craft is a continuing one. It just seems that there is really no time to form or cultivate friendships anymore. Too much going on and too little time to keep up with all of it.

Well, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Good progress with my back treatments, the first day of October, and Hallowed-weenie is emminent. Goddess bless us, EVERYONE!