PhoneBoy Says

My son has a total of four birthday parties to attend this weekend. One today and three tomorrow. Mommy is going to be partied out. Fortunately, one of the parties is just down the street from us and should be relatively Gracie-friendly, so I can at least go to that one.

The problem with Birthday Parties now is that someone thought it would be a good idea to give the guests a "treat bag." Now of course because someone started it, everyone else has to do it too. Four birthday parties means four treat bags for Jaden. I have no idea who started this treat bag thing. They'd better stay anonymous else a lot of parents would give them the tar-and-feather treatment.

Meanwhile, it makes my weekend a heck of a lot easier. Gracie is a lot easier to entertain than Jaden is: just take her outside or to a playground and she'll have hours of fun. It's nice right now because the weather is good, but it's gonna suck in the next few months when it's raining all the time.

I got to talk to my sister yesterday. Yay! While we "caught up" with each other because it had been a couple of years since I talked to her, the main reason I wanted to talk to her was about our dad. She had the last contact with him and it has been well over a decade since I spoke to him.

Oddly enough, when I was talking to my sister about my dad, I got an email from him with some pictures. A strange coincidence for sure. Apparently, he found my blog, much the same way my sister used Google to find me several years back. I guess I have to be careful what I say about him now because I know he's reading. :)

I have a lot of history with my dad that isn't very pleasant, which is one of the reasons I've made no effort to contact him. He shouldn't feel bad, I don't talk to my mom anymore, either, though the reasons are very different. I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do now that he's "opened the door"--a door that has been closed for well over a decade.

I had a meeting at midnight this evening and I have to attend one at 7am tomorrow morning. Ugh.

For several years now, I've had various camera phones. It began with the Nokia 3650 and went on from there. I have five different phones that I don't even use anymore. The memory cards have pictures on them. I uploaded several of the pictures from these cards and put them in my photo album on Vox.

The picutre that I was looking for was this one of my sister that I took several years ago--the only photo I have of her I think:

Part of the reason I was looking for this photo was because I'm actually planning to talk to her this week. She just got back from a trip to Romania. It's actually been a long time since I've talked with her.

Here's the obligatory posting of a picture of one of my cats.

Here's a couple of photos taken looking outside. Pretty view, dont you think?

There is a road going in right outside our house. The equipment is 50 feet or so from our bedroom window. What awoke me was the dirt compactor used to make a stable surface for the rocks and asphalt to be put on. It was causing the walls to vibrate making a particular picture on the wall "very loud." So much for sleeping, though as you can see my daughter is still crashed…

This is something I've pretty much managed to eliminate from my diet, though I know other members of my family eat things that have it.This article from the Seattle PI gives a brief explanation why it's bad. More medical details can be found on the UltraMetabolism blog. Bottom line--nobody should be consuming the stuff.

Something Jaden and I did.

I don't need another blog, but I managed to get an invite to Vox, so I figured I'd give it a shot and set up a blog here. It might be a good place to put items of a more personal nature, which is what I'll think I'll focus on here.