Raccoons!!!

So I tried to put up this post on Wednesday, but the internet doesn't work so well on the third floor of my parent house and I couldn't upload the pictures. Sorry for the delay. I know there were a lot of people waiting for these pictures.

There were three in the tree. Here are two of them. I think this is momma and baby #1. Or as I like to say, the favorite son. (Just like a certain brother of mine.)

This is momma getting down from the tree.

Here is the other raccoon. I think this was also a baby, but he was in a different branch of the tree than momma and the favorite son. He was sent to fend for himself.

What's wrong with me?!?!?!

Well today was a memorable day, and it's only 10:30 in the morning. Kayleen decided that I needed a haircut. Since it is Saturday, I had planned on sleeping in till noon, but she forced me out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9:00AM! Well, Kayleen insists that she is a morning person and that is when she is freshest to do any work. So Kayleen set up the sheets and everything and I got myself physically (washed my hair and got some ratty clothes) and psychologically prepared. I new it wasn't going to really be that scary, Kayleen was planning on mostly just using the clippers, and not the scissors. Well, everything was going well and Kayleen was almost finished. All she had to do was trim up my side burns and around the ear. Kayleen told me that she was going to use the scissors for this final part, but I was to in shock that she was holding me hostage and forcing me to watch "What not to wear." (In case some of you were wondering, it was about an Olympic swimmer. I don't know really much else about it.) Well, as Kayleen was trimming around the ear I all of a sudden felt a very familiar pain from previous hair cuts with my mother. Kayleen had accidentally (Well that's what both she and my mother claim, that they accidentally cut me.) cut my ear! I know people make mistakes, but my mother made this very same mistake on the same ear several times. My only question is what is wrong with me?!?! What is wrong with my ear?!?!?! Is it horribly disfigured? Are you trying to make it look better by scaring it?!?!? Please! Someone tell me!



Here I am with my horrible disgusting ear. I personally don't see anything wrong with it, but I may not know what I'm talking about.

(And now for a weather tangent. It's funny that my little accuweather application on my web browser is telling me it's raining because it's still mostly sunny right now. (Although since I started this it has become more and more cloudy) I know it will be raining soon, but for a weather report to day that it is raining while it is actually sunny is kind of funny.)

It can't be almost Agust, can it?

Where does time go? I can't believe it's almost August. It feels like we just had the 4th of July! I think time is moving quickly for me because I'm dreading the start of school. I can't wait to be finished with school. People were always warning me about the real world, how it's a cruel world. That it would eat me up and leave destitute and starving living in some box car with a bunch of other drifters. But so far, I haven't really seen this to be true, although I didn't get as much pizza today as I would have liked. (Today was pizza Friday and they serve pizza for us for lunch.) But that was sort of my fault because I got distracted by a foosball game.

Well, this is another entry with no real purpose but to increase my number of posts for July. Sorry to bore you. As a reward, I'll post a clip from Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog.


My favorite part is "Yes, Captain Hammers here, hair blowing in the breeze! The day needs my saving expertise!"

Blog you fool! Blog!

Well I've been getting a better turn out on my poll than I thought I was going to get. For those of you who didn't notice, I have a poll set up asking whether or not my brother who does not have a blog should start wasting his time and start one himself. So far a majority of people (Who I guess don't care what society is exposed to on the internet. Just shocking!) think that he should start one. Only one person really cares for society. Oh well. I guess the only question is for you, Ramblin Man. Are you going to start a blog? You really should, two people thought that you already were? You could already have two reader! (I bet they were reading my blog and thought that is was yours. I don't know why people mix us up all the time.)


Here we are both giving the "Pat" look. I don't know what he really calls it. Probably something like "annoyed with brother" or something like that. He is very good at whipping this out without a moments notice.

Dr. Horrible

A buddy of mine from work was talking about this web episode called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. There are three acts to it and I've only seen the first two. The guy that wrote it, Joss Whedon or something like that, he wrote the Firefly serries and Buffy the Vampire, (Although I only knew him from the Firefly serries.) Wrote it during the writers strike or something like that. I've found it pretty entertaining. The only thing is that the released the shows starting last wednesday or something like that and then they stopped showing them for free on Sunday night. Now you can view it on YouTube, but the copies there, the sound gets 4, 5, or even 6 seconds off. I actually bought them. (I know, the shame of purchasing stuff from iTunes. (Oh yeah, it's on sale on iTunes)) It has the guy who plays Barney from How I met your mother and the guy Mal from the Firefly serries.

Ranting

Hey, oh brother of mine who complains that I don't update my blog as often as he would like and yet does not have a blog himself. I just thought I would point out that I have written on my blog for three days in a row!!! I just thought that I would complain a bit in my blog. The only thing is that I don't know who exactly does read my blog. I keep finding out more and more people read it. I was first going to use this blog as a way to gripe about my wife. (You know, how guys would gripe about their wife's on Home Improvement.) But alas, that dream dies quickly because Kayleen found my blog. Then I thought I would post all the dirty little secrets she tells me about her friends, but then I found out that some of them have read my blog too! (Well, this may not be true. This idea may come from Kayleen's friends stealing her for a weekend to go to Oregon. We may never know though, because I'm not verifying if it is or not.) Now I don't know what to use this blog for. The only thing I can think to do is to post random rants about my random encounters. That way my readership may drop and I can start complaining about certain peoples. I think that is a sound idea. The only problem is that I can't really think of what to rant about. I probably should have thought about that before I wrote this blog. It's just that my brother pushed me to write more often that I'm now just writing stuff about nothing. Oh well, I'll end this segment here and just post some pictures. Everybody likes pictures!!!


I forgot to post this earlier, but here is Kayleen waiting in the doctor's office. Kayleen is still upbeat even after waiting over an hour in the waiting room. This was actually taken with my camera phone! It takes pretty nice pictures for being a camera phone.


We went to the beach today with a bunch of friends. A couple of friends of ours arranged a day out at the beach in Seattle to play volleyball and eat burgers and hot dogs. It has been years since I've played volleyball. Last summer I was in New York and the only sports we played there were basketball, soccer, and football.

I'm married!!

Well, that's pretty obvious already. The only reason why it is news worthy is because I have my wedding ring back. Actually, it's not really back, really it has been replaced. Hey, I can't believe all you women out there! You all are probably assuming that I lost it or I dropped it down the drain or something to that nature. Women so often think so little of men. I am proud to say that I did NOT lose my ring. I actually started getting a rash from it. It turns out that there is a strong chance that I'm allergic to nickel. Well, I know what your thinking, "Nickel, but you got a gold wedding band, why did you get a nickel wedding band?" (And if you weren't thinking this, then I don't know what to say. I wasted some of your time. Sorry) But no, I didn't get a nickel wedding band, gold rings contain some nickel in them to make them stronger. So I had to go back to Ben Bridge to get a new ring. Luckily the took my ring back. Kayleen was with me when we went to return the ring and we ended up picking a ring we were thinking of picking before. It's actually a tungsten ring,. (So, if you pump enough voltage through me, my finger might glow like a light bulb!) It also has a nice sort of celtic-ish sort of knot thing on it. And I also ordered a ring that was a size bigger because I picked the wrong size for my first wedding band. It was alright getting it on, but you needed the jaws of life to get it off. All in all, I think it has been a great improvement.

Here is my new ring. I'm try to take a closer picture but my camera is not very good at close ups. You can see the design if you zoom in a bit on this picture.


But seeing as that I just got my ring back a few days ago, it meant that I was going around in public without a wedding ring! Kayleen was very worried and was contemplating putting a tattoo on my forhead to say "Taken" or "Felon." Either way, something to drive anyone away from me. I guess I'm lucky because my wife must think that I'm still quite a catch. (Even after being married to me for a whole 2 MONTHS!) In the end we both agreed that it would probably be best just to wait for the ring. (I dodged a big bullet there from my very hormonal wife. (hormonal in a good way though, honey!))

As for work today, I biked in again. Two days strait! It's been good to get some exercise and also, I need to get gas for Kayleen's little car and since I've been biking, I haven't needed to fill it up and the gas prices have been coming down a bit. So not only did I save on the gas I didn't use to drive, but when I do fill the car up, it will be a little cheaper than it would have been... AGHHH... This is getting confusing to write. In short I saved money at the cost of running myself ragged and getting a rather sore keester. THE END! (Sorry, it's late and I'm tired. I'm not thinking clearly. You may ask "Then why are you blogging instead of sleeping?" Well, it's because my brother (WHO DOESN'T EVEN BLOG!!!) complained that I don't write in my blog very often. It's all his fault I'm blogging while I'm tired and grumpy. You can blame him. You have my permission.)

I'm going to be a daddy!

Well I already this, but yesterday was a big moment where it really sunk in. When Kayleen and I first found out she was pregnant, we were both exhilarated! We were both just so happy. We started reading up on this little person we had created, how it was growing and its organs were developing. All this was great but at the same time, it just didn't feel very real. It was hard to connect with our child when my only evidence was that my wife was very very sick very very often. But yesterday when we went into the doctor's office, they used a Doppler to listen for the baby's heart beat and when I heard the wooshing sound, it was just so amazing. (I has already read up on the Doppler thing and so I kind of new what the doctor was doing when she started using it. Kayleen had no idea and was very pleasantly surprised. I guess I should have told her before hand and told her how the baby's heart at this point makes more of a wooshing sound, at least it does on the Doppler.) It made this whole thing very real. Kayleen bought a book on being a father during a woman's (They can't say wife anymore) pregnancy. In the book the author talks about how it's harder for a father to connect with the child durring the pregnancy because the fathers are kind of on the outside of the whole thing. But by being helping out and going to doctors visits with your wife, that really helps out a guy to connect with the child he and his wife have created. Also, he talked about the first time he heard his child's heart beat and how it too just blew him away. I am so excited for our little child (if I call him mini me, is that copyright infringement?) and can hardly wait for August 20. Even though I will be going back for my last semester of school, we will also be going in for an ultra sound!

Here is Kayleen after the doctors visit. This is the picture I chose because she deleted my other one. The other one looked fine, she is just picky about pictures. Luckily she didn't see this one, or she would have deleted it for sure.

Also, I rode my bike into work today. Here I am in my snazy biker gear. I bought the biker gloves because my palms were sore after my last bike outing. My time into work was rather slow again, but my trip back was tem minutes faster. This was probably due to my back tire being bent. Since it is bent, it was hitting my rear break. To fix this I simply disconnected my rear break and I found it much much MUCH easier to peddle. As for my keester, I fixed my seat at work so that my seat doesn't fall back. This made it a little easier on my backside.

Super Awesome Exciting Weekend!!!!

Well, my weekend without the wife is halfway over. Well, I'm actually working on this on Sunday so my weekend is almost over. Kayleen should actually be back in an hour or so. Hmmm... I should probably start cleaning. Well, that can wait until after I'm done writing my blog entry. I had a great weekend, although I don't know how much of it is sworn to secrecy. (Kelly, you didn't tell mother about my blog, did you?) I'll be happy when Kayleen gets back, I'm running out of clean shirts already. Well, I'll also be happy to see her, but I do need shirts for work tomorrow. (I guess I should point out to people who don't know me that I'm being sarcastic here, I did miss Kayleen and will be happy to see her. I just don't wont to get in trouble for my sarcasm. It's not my fault that I am sarcastic, it's just my nature.) Since I don't know exactly how much of my weekend has supposed to be kept confidential, I guess I will talk about other things that are not confidential. (I didn't know where I was going with that, and I don't like to erase my work, my writings end up a lot shorter when I do rephrase things.)

When Kayleen got back, she had not gone to mass yet so we went to Blessed Sacrament. It is a very beautiful church, very traditional. It has the traditional cross shape and the communion rails. (although I don't know if they use them anymore.) It was a very spiritual experience just being there, and the priest there gave an excellent homily. He talked about Catholics relationship with Christ. It went very well with our own parish priests homily this week, Fr. Joe said in his homily that people should love the Lord with as much love as people who are getting married have for each other. People would say to Fr. Joe that those people that love God that much are extraordinary people, and Fr. Joe would say that no, not the extraordinary person but the ordinary person should be filled with that much love. Being at the church at Blessed Sacrament made me think "What am I focusing on here at mass?" We are in the true presence of God, why would we want to focus on anything else? Why would we want to move him out of the church? I was very appreciative of the priest sermon because he was trying to stir up the church and get the parishioners to live out their faith. It seems hard to find priests that do that these days. It is hard for them I'm sure because people tend to give them a hard time if they don't like what they hear from a priest. We should pray for priests to listen to God and not to be afraid of delivering God's message.

It is finished!

Oh, just an update, since Kayleen has already decided to go on her trip, I'm not going to finish up the remaining 14 reasons she should not go. That is all people, you may return to your lives.

Well I have finished my puzzle!!! The box says it has 902 pieces but unfortunately mine only had 901. (And I will refuse to do any frowny faces.)
I think Kayleen is worried about what I will be up to this weekend without her, she already bought another 3-D puzzle of a castle. I think I will let her do more of the work on this one because I think I did more on the Empire State Building than she did. (She may deny it but I'm pretty sure I did.)

Also, we went to Gas Works Park for the 4th of July. Here is a video of the Finale.

It was an amazing show, although they only had the one patriotic song during the pyrotechnic demonstration.

And lastly, today I rode my bike into work. Boy oh boy, was that an experience. I'm about 10 miles from where I work and pretty much all of it is on a bike trail, which is really nice. The ride into work took me an hour, mind you I stopped a few times at trail junctions to make sure I was going the right way and also I'm on a mountain bike, not really a good speed bike. Well, when I got to work I felt fine, although my hands had a bit of a burn on them. I thought that my legs would have been killing me but I had no pain from them. It wasn't until an hour before I was done with work that my keester (my bum) started to hurt. I thought, uh oh, this may hurt on the ride back. Unfortunately for me, I was right. The ride back took me an hour twenty and was very painful. I don't think I will elaborate on it any more, it's kind of crude.

(But riding on my bike on the way back, I was thinking, why do people say I going to drive somewhere, but when talking about bikes, they say they are going to ride them. If someone does say they are going to ride in the car, it is very clear that they do not plan on driving. Do people who ride their bikes actually not control them? Are they riding some sort of bike that controls where they are going? Where do you get these sort of contraptions? I don't know, like I was saying, it had me thinking.)

I accept your challenge!

Well, Kayleen's friends are trying to convince her to join them on a weekend of gallivanting and carousing. One of her friends wrote in her blog and gave 26 reasons why Kayleen should go with them. I told Kayleen "Oh no, now I'm going to have to give 52 reasons why you should not go." And she quickly replied that I would not be capable of giving that many reasons. Well Kayleen, I accept your challenge. I will come up with 52 reasons why you should not leave me to spend the weekend for a fun filled ruckus time with your friends.

1. You would be leaving your husband to fend for himself. After spending almost two months non-stop with with him, you should know that I am unable to take care of myself.
2. You will be lonely without me.
3. I will rearrange the apartment while you are gone. You will be worried the whole time!
4. You will need to leave me with money in case I go over to visit Pat.
5. I might buy a hamster with the money you left me with in case I had visited Pat.
6. I might buy a ferret...
7. I might buy a gerbil.
8. I might buy a squirrel
9. I might buy a squirrel army.
10. I might buy two.
11. I might have the armies fight each other.
12. We might get kicked out because of my squirrel armies, and we will be evicted from our place.
13. The survivors of the great squirrel battle might attack me because I was not able to lock myself in our place.
14. The squirrels might win and kill me!
15. I might watch a bunch of House episodes without you.
16. I might start drinking again. (oooo... People are now going to think that your husband is a drunkard!)
    
17. I might go crazy. (I guess the squirrel army thing wasn't me going crazy yet. Just makes you think...)
18. I might waste my whole week and just play xbox.
19. Do you really want to spend your whole week with her? (Now you really can't go because everyone there will be thinking "Who is the "her"? What did she tell Mike about her?" Even if this whole reason is a lie, your friends won't know and the whole weekend will become very awkward.)
20. I might spend time with some of my bachelor friends!
21. I might go to bars!
22. I will probably smoke some cigars.
23. I will probably become addicted to cigars.
24. Your friends won't be able to appreciate you as much as I do.
25. Your friends were able to (so far) come up with 26 reasons as to why you should go. I'm trying (I say trying because I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it now.) to come up with 52!
26. You'll come home to a big mess that you'll have to clean up because I'll have to work the next day.
27. This would be a great chance to show up your friends and make yourself appear as "Miss High and Mighty" over your married friends and you can say "No, I'm not going to leave MYYYY husband. I Love MYYY husband." (Again, I would like to point out that saying this would only make you APPEAR to be better than your friends. We all know that you would be bagging out to only stay at home on the couch.)
    
28. You would regret the weekend because you could have spent it working as a nanny somewhere. You were thinking of buying your husband some nice gifts and nice gifts aren't cheap.
29. If you are hanging out with your drunk friends, they are liable to throw up. Seeing them throw up might cause you to throw up. Your other friends who had not thrown up might the start throwing up. Then everyone will be throwing up. Not a very pleasant sight. I'm not going to elaborate on it.
30. I don't like the idea of you spending your time with so many nurses. They may know which drugs you can take while pregnant, I don't want you getting high or anything.
31. People at church will think that you were mad at me or that you left me! I'm not going to want to have to go up to everyone and tell them that your just out of town.
32. If reason 31 is wrong, there is still a chance that people will just wonder where you are, then I'll have to say to everyone "No, she is just out of town with her friends. Sort of a last girls weekend thing." And I'll be forced to give a smile as they tell me some joke about me not being able to take care of myself. I wont be able to say "I told her! I told her not to go!" because you know how I can be a little shy.
33. I wont eat my vegetables while your gone.
34. I wont eat my fruits.
35. I wont eat healthy food at all!
36. I'll eat out every night!
37. You'll miss out on all me crazy antics!
38. You'll be sad of the lack of crazy antics in your weekend. (I should have probably spread these two out because now these appear to be for the same thing and should be combined.)

I guess I'll write the other 14 later because you are yelling at me to make my lunch. I'll hopefully be able to finish my list tomorrow.


Ahhh... The puzzle update now! Sorry, I meant to post this picture a while ago. I was up to this point on Monday I believe.


This is where I was about midnight on I guess you would say Wednesday morning.

This is later on Wednesday morning.


And here is where I am today. The hard part is getting the base of the tower connected to the rest. The pattern's aren't matching up and It's getting very frustrating. I guess if and when Kayleen goes on her trip (Yeah, I am pretty sure she is going to go.) I'll have time to finish the puzzle properly, even though Kayleen wont be there to help me. She did help me with various different parts to the puzzle.

Engineers have a sense of style!

Kayleen was telling me about one of her friend's blogs about how engineers having no sense of style. I really don't know what she is talking about, I work at a software company and everyone there sems to have a decent sense of style. I think I'm a pretty fair judge, as you can see by my picture I have quite the eye for style myself.

In case you guys have been wondering, work has been going great. We normally have pizza on Fridays but last Friday that was not the case and it has put me in a funk ever since. Today made up for the lack of Friday pizza, I got an email and it read:

"PIE!!!!!


LOUNGE!!!!!


NOW!!!!!"

And it was pretty good pie too! Key lime pie! I had never had it before, but being key lime I figured it must be pretty good.

Puzzle update: So the empire state building puzzle has been proceding well, I even got some help from the Mrs. I must admit though, I am taking a different approach to erecting the building, instead of the normal bottom-up method, I have unwittingly done the top-down method. This was more due to the face that the first pieces I was able to assemble were the upper pieces.