Birthday

It's my birthday today, I'm 42 years young today. This past Friday morning I had surgery to repair an inguinal hernia. I've been basically down and unable to walk fast (or at all) since then. Today is the first day that I'm able to get up without great strain and move faster than a sick slug. I have been popping percodin like candy, well ok, not quite but it seems like I'm always in a fog.

I did manage to pass my first GEOG test on this past Thursday, got a 100%. Highest grade was a 104 so apparently I missed two questions (of 40). Not a bad start to my third college career. I have another test tomorrow evening, History. It's going to be difficult, but the instructor has already given us the questions, we just have to supply the answers. I've been kind of studying today, basically writing and rewriting my responses to the questions over and over trying to commit them to memory.

The worst part about this whole surgery is that I've gained about 15 lbs since I had to quit running about a month ago (from the pain) and I have another month or so to fully recover. I almost hit 230lbs, whoah. I'm now on a serious mission to get back to 200lbs, then to start working on my conditioning and how I look.

I haven't substituted yet, but I have volunteered quite a bit at the elementary school. Things should really pick up next semester, I'll start going full time during the daytime instead of going at night. That's when things will really get interesting.

I haven't worked for over a year now, thank god for Stef.

~james

Mr. Mom?

So I'm still unemployed, and recently stopped doing a paper route. Was trying to sell a crime blotter type newspaper at the local convenience stores, didn't sell enough to cover expenses and couldn't get enough stores to sell 'em. So now my wife is working mass amounts of OT while I take care of the kids & house.

Ran z mile and a half this morning though, back to boot camp this week.

Guitar for Christmas, can now belt out a mean rendition ofbtwinkle twinkle little star. Not much into chords though, will have to really work on that. My fingertips really hurt still, but not as much as previous days.

Love ya.

quick update

I just looked into teaching...I think that it's going to be harder to get started than it might be worth. It appears that teaching is set up for people that are fresh out of college, not really for old farts looking for a career change. And then I saw that teachers work for free some days (furlough days) and on top of that the spend nearly $600/year of their own money on supplies. Wow, what a turnoff.

I'm working on the media room off and on today, taking down speakers and putting up new ones. I'm also taking my son to a birthday party tonight. Should be fun!

recently laid off

I've just joined the ranks of the unemployed. I have until my birthday to vacate the premises, then I get a severance check and Intuit and I part ways...after 10 rocky years. I've been let go four times now, each of the previous three I've managed to find another position within the company and avoided unemployment. This time I think it's different. My recent role (boss really) has left a rather sour taste in my mouth and I think me and ol' uncle Intuit are going to part ways.

I know that it's a risk, me being 40, no prospects, no real "talent" and the job market the way it is, but my wife and I have been living rather frugally for some time now and I (I not we) believe that we can make it on one full time salary. I don't have any immediate plans yet, I'd really like to figure out how to earn some money by working for myself somehow/somewhere and not having a boss. This isn't a great time for starting a business (or is it?) but I'm just not that into working for someone else.

I have no earthly idea what I can do yet, but we'll see won't we?

Today I'm making ribs, getting tomatos ready to preserve, cooking up some chicken with homemade tomato sauce and managing the kids (and blogging). Very good day so far. I've scheduled myself to go back to the Y starting on Monday, since the kids start school on Monday I'll have mornings "free" again, so getting the kids up and out and then quick cleanup and then off to workout will be the gold standard for most mornings.

Perhaps I can get my real estate license reactivated again...Stef and I have also been talking about going into teaching. Now wouldn't THAT just make my grandparents happy!!

All for now, I'm going to start scouring the interwebs for other stay at home dad blogs and see if I can leech some good insight and info from them. Maybe even steal an income idea or two from them as well.

~james

You still live here?

After all this time, here's what I look like now. Still in GA, still working for Intuit, but at a different position. The kids are now 4, 5 & 6 and I've just gone over the hump...to 40.

Let's see how long it is now until my next post, there's got to have been some kind of record broken for length inbetween posts here.

Hey,

Got my blue belt a couple of months ago, here's my most recent picture.

Hey!

It's an odd thing to come back to a blog and think about posting, and then looking at the last post's title. Wow, 6 months or so since last post!

What's happened in all that time? Well, first and foremost, the kids have grown up. We're doing swimming lessons and soccer practice now (soccer dad!).

Stef and I are preparing for our next chapter, flipping houses. We're both studying for the real estate test and getting ready for the whole adventure.

I earned my blue belt in jiu-jitsu a while back, which is great, except that all the white belts want a piece of me now. :-/

LoL, I promise to post more. Even pictures too!

har

Non posting sonofa**** !

Where oh where does my time go? I just cannot believe that it's been so long since my last post.

Here's some highlights of what's happened since last post:

• I went to my high school 20 year re-union: it was a terrible experience, for some reason I was just not happy "going back" twenty years. We got there late (both days) and left early both days.
• We went to a family reunion, which was awesome! I got to meet so many relatives and had such the good time. I really am looking forward to seeing everyone again.
• We've entered rainy season again...
• Work continues on the yard, we've had a patio put out back which is great considering there was just that awful red clay down there. Work (still) continues on the play yard for the kids...I am ALMOST thinking that a pre-made kit would have been better, almost. We've been laying down mulch all over the place, front, back, sides of the house, the plants really are liking that much better than the pine straw that was there.
• I've kicked it up a notch at jiu-jitsu, going to class three days a week and I found a guy in my subdivision that also trains, and he comes over the other two days a week...so for a short time I'm training 5 DAYS A WEEK it's awesome!
• I have a tournament tomorrow morning, I'm getting nervous as I haven't really cut any weight so I'll be in the 200lb range...some gorrillas in that category I think....my goal is to win one, yes one match.
• I've started school again....ok, now my head hurts.
• Wesley (my son) finished his first set of swim lessons, he can ~almost~ swim/keep himself afloat
• Kylee is CRAZY, a little maniac!
• Jadyn is talking up a storm, it's insane around here!

I've got pictures to post, I'll do that maybe this weekend after the tournament. Hopefully I can get someone to take some pics while I'm out on the mat as I'm going alone. That's all for now, I've got classwork (and real work!) to do.

me

We've successfully transitioned to our new home and are adjusting to subdivision life. It's taking some getting used to, but we're getting it. We have managed to upgrade our home significantly which is quite grand.

Here's a couple of pictures that won't help you catch up, but that I felt like including.

Almost seven months later...

Oh my...so much has happened in the last SEVEN months! First off, please excuse me for not posting anything (lately?...lol) I've been "busy" :-/

Anyway...I won't be able to recap it all here in this post, so I'll cover the move and what's happened since then over the next few days.

Right before we left (two weeks before) I started getting a rash on my chest, didn't itch or anything, but it looked TERRIBLE. Then I got sick, terrible fever and very, very achey...then got a case of the chicken pox! Can you believe it, 37 years old and getting the chicken pox. It was no fun let me tell you.



This lasted a few more days but by this time it's not contagious, apparently I was contagious for the entire week that I had the rash and went to work!!! No one got sick at work though, I was surprised. We're still not sure how I got it. Jadyn ended up getting it pretty bad too.





The move went well, we flew out (Me, my wife and three kids and the three cats) of Tucson at night (overnight..) to Atlanta and it went pretty well actually, the kids slept pretty much the whole way.



Here's the house that we're in now. I work from home now, which is..interesting. See that window on the second floor all the way on the right? That's our office and if this were an updated pic, you'd see me looking out and waving. (use your imagination for this one). The house has 4 bedrooms upstairs and a "sitting room" in the master suite which we've turned into our office.

Well, nice to re-meet you, I'm at work so I'll keep it short. And I'll try to keep updated content coming.

me

SOLD!

We got the call on Friday that the buyers had reconsidered our counteroffer...and have signed the paperwork to buy the house. WE ARE OUTTA HERE!!
We open escrow today. We're writing the closing date at September 26th, 2005, so it looks like we'll be moving to Georgia that week, possibly taking a plane flight that day.

I'll post more later, send your congratulations. :-)

late

More of the same, and a little on the side

What a banner week so far, two days, several blogs!

Took the kids out for a walk last night, boy do they like that. It's really nice here during monsoon season in the evenings. It is about 80 degrees and humid (which they like and to us it's nice and cool). We walked up to the neighbors house and looked at the donkey and horse that the neighbor's just bought. The kids really like getting out of the house, and generally pay attention to me.

I did have a little adventure at Target yesterday on my way home. I bought one of these storage bins 16 days ago, and they went on sale. I decided that for $20, I'll "return" the one that I bought and get another one. Well, since I purchased it more than 14 days ago, I had to actually return the product in order to then re-buy the product at the lower rate. As it turns out, the price matching at Target only applies to the first 14 days. Hrm, well, that made things slightly more difficult as I have already been using the storage bin for 2 weeks, and it's full of toys and the boxes have been trashed already. The associate was nice, but assured me there was nothing that he could do, so I said thanks, and "maybe I'll just go buy another one, and return it with the $60 receipt."...to which he replied, "if that's what you have to do, that's fine, just remember that you said it, not me". So off I went, buying another one at $40, just to return it for $60. 10 minutes later, I'm standing in front of the same guy telling him that the bin "just didn't meet my needs", to which he replies "that works for me". Then another trip through Target to buy yet another one this time for $40. All in all, in order to get my $20 I spent about an hour at Target. I can't decide if it was really worth it or not.

On another note, as I'm printing out the info-tube info sheets, the realtor calls and asks if the buyers that we've been playing footsies with can walk the property this morning. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but at least they're not out of the picture yet. Last night the realtor called and said that the buyers think that we're asking too much for the property, (we are), and would we entertain offers? I said sure! we'd entertain offers, of course we would! So we're again (still?) in waiting mode and hoping that they do make a reasonable offer so we don't have to dance the "sell the house" dance too awful much. Stef has been running the numbers and has already figured out our "rock bottom price", which we have to get in order to be satisfied. We'll see, and I'll keep you posted.

Seacrest Out!

Buy this house.

This is my daughter, Kylee...she eats dirt. Here she is not only licking rocks, but stacking dirt in a pile on a rock and licking it off...then licking her lips like it really tastes good.

Jadyn enjoying the ride in the snuggli

Jadyn in the snuggli helping me take some pictures

Sorry mom

I didn't take any pictures last night, so I put up some that I could find. Hope these are "alright" enough for the girls.

I'll try to remember to take some more today.

me

House is still for sale...Interested?

The "buyers" haven't bought the house...grr...I know that it was really too good to be true (to sell the house for more than we thought without even putting it up for sale), but I sure was hoping that they would have gone through with the deal. Let's not jinx it, they might still buy the place, but we haven't heard anything from the realtor, so we're not counting our windfall yet.

We decided to get a little proactive and put the house up FSBO (for sale by owner) this weekend, we put a bunch of signs out, hope that drives some traffic. We've also decided to up the price again, heh, hope also that that doesn't drive people away! We'll see.

I did a bunch of landscaping, yard maintenance this weekend, trying to make the place "drive by pretty", the trees really like all of this rain we've been getting and have to be clipped all the time it seems. We've got chilean mesquites all over the house and they're growing like mad. I cut about 4 wheelbarrows full of clippings off of the trees (4 trees are about 10 feet tall, two are about 5 feet tall).

I did also manage to get all of the solar lights out as well, they've been sitting in the shed for ages (AGES), now they're in use and all the way down the driveway as well as the walk to the shed.

With the info tube that we bought, we get a "webspace" listing, so we'll be updating that over the next few days, adding information, pictures, half-truths, etc. I think the url is: HOME FOR SALE, please remember that I just now created that, it doesn't have pictures yet, nor any descriptions, as I said, we'll be updating that over the next few days.

Seacrest OUT

I always seem to get the kids when they're looking, well, odd.

Welcome new addition

Kylee, Jadyn & Wesley in a rare moment of peace

Hiya

Jadyn and Wes

Same Day

Jadyn a couple of months ago

Jadyn

Jadyn

House update

Apparently the buyers liked the pictures and the price, they're coming over tomorrow to look at the house...So needless to say, we're clearing everything out of the closets and trying to arrange the kids toys in a "nice" pile. (lol) Invested in a steam cleaner, hehe, we should buy stock in that company. Whoever invented clear kool aid should get a pat on the back and a roll of stickers, and if they're reading this...THANK YOU!.

We could be in Georgia next month if all goes perfectly....whoooot!

keep ya posted!!

BTW...

If you want your kid "enrolled" in a sticker club, email me, I can send you what I'm talking about. Basically its a "chain mail sticker club" where kids end up getting mail from all over the place (world possibly) that has stickers in the mail, and it costs little to participate (little = cost of 6 sets of stickers and postage).
Let me know if you're interested.

Outtie...