The big move is over. Boxes are almost all unpacked. Garage is cleaned out. The work on the gameroom/man-cave section of the garage, plus the new Transformers collection shelves, is in full swing.

First, the gameroom. I managed to convince Deana to keep half the two-car garage as a gameroom of sorts. It's coming together nicely. The centerpiece, of course, is the arcade cabinet. Last night, I fired it up for the first time while "working" in the garage. Bad idea! I ended up playing Marvel Super Heroes for a half hour. Of course, once Connor saw it up and running, he played for an hour or so himself, while I worked. I'm not sure which one of us had more fun, him playing, or me watching him.

We have a table hockey game, too. It's like foosball but hockey instead of soccer. One of the players is broken, but it's still playable, and it's probably the best $30 I ever spent at Target. On the wall behind the table hockey, I framed and hung my Star Wars posters. If they aren't the best looking movie posters ever, I don't know what would be.

A dartboard is on the wall, near the entrance inside. It's at regulation height, even, and I taped down a line at the standard 8 feet away. So far, the hole in the wall count is at 4, 3 Connor's and 1 mine. (Don't tell Chad Tate.)

The air hockey table is no longer a place to throw stuff on. It's all cleared off and ready to go. Seems there's not much air pressure, the puck doesn't slide very well. Going to have to look into that. Now if I can get a pinball machine, and eventually, a cocktail arcade cabinet, I'm set for big stuff. The rest will be fun stuff: rope lights, a disco ball, and maybe even a jukebox or some sort. I can't wait!

Yeah, yeah, it's been over two months. Quite frankly, our lives have been so busy and filled up to overflowing that I've had less time for pretty much everything. But, I've got a few minutes here to rant and ramble a bit, so here goes.

First of all, school. March and April are by far the most stressful months of the year for teachers. Pressure is mounting for the upcoming state tests. The new addition to the school has been completed and six classes had to move to new locations. All of this means more meetings, more computer work, and less time to actually be teaching. It has been a real headache, plain and simple, and I am getting a serious case of burn out. I simply must cut back on my workload next year, that's all there is to it.

Deana and both boys were sick a week ago, each of them down with strep. Luckily, I made it through with only a sinus infection. We're on the mend now, but it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

We concluded a gospel meeting with Kevin Presley last week. Crowds were huge! I can't recall the last time I saw the building so full. The singing was really uplifting, for sure. It was nice seeing so many friends from different congregations.

I've been reading more comics lately. Partially, this is because of an excellent sale on hardcovers and trades a month or so ago. It's also due to the fact that after working on computers all day, playing PC or 360 games loses a bit of its appeal. Especially when my connection has been flaky and I am sicking of troubleshooting it. I can't bring myself to fix cables at home too...

Reread Watchmen in hardcover, with the new coloring. It looked amazing; Dave Gibbons has one of the cleanest lines you'll ever see. The movie was better than I expected. The adult elements were pushed a bit far for my tastes, but that it what the comic was known for, so it was hardly surprising. I look forward to watching it at home, since the theater I saw it at was slightly out of focus and the sound appeared to be coming from a 1950's record player.

Work at Co-Optimus and Let The Bible Speak is going well. Both of these projects are keeping me busy, maybe even a bit too busy.

I'd write more, but just got another tech phone call. Someone's SMART Board isn't playing sound anymore...

I think there is something wrong with me. I am actually looking forward to the end of the football season.

Blasphemy, you are thinking? Yeah, I'd have thought so too. Let me tell you, I am a fan. I dutifully record each Chiefs and Rams game. I also watch every Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and any Saturday NFL games too. Additionally, I watch the four best games of the week on NFL Network's NFL Replay each week.

Folks, that is a lot of football. In fact, it's too much. Even with the ability to fast forward and skip commercials, that's about 9 hours a week of gridiron action. As the season wore on, I started dropping games. The first cut was the Rams, then, NFL Replays of teams I don't particularly care for. By the end of the season, I had even stopped taping Chiefs games. I heard them on the radio, watched them at my Grandpa's a bit, but didn't rewatch at home later. Two years ago, I never would have let a Chiefs game go by.

I really enjoy the postseason, as there are few games, and each team is good. This usually makes for interesting TV (sometimes not, thank you Carolina Panthers). But all in all, I'm glad the season will be over soon, and there's only one more game to watch.

Hopefully, the Chiefs won't be a laughingstock next year and I'll enjoy the season more. In the meantime, I'll just have to pull for the Cards and former Ram Kurt Warner!

So, I'm over a month late with an update. Unsurprisingly, December was extremely busy. Here are some of the highlights.

My love of snow days is well known, and I haven't been disappointed yet. The week before Winter Break, we were out of school for four days! It was mostly ice and sleet, not snow, and new layers kept coming each night. We used this time wisely, of course: mainly we watched movies, played video games, and snacked. It was cool watching one of my favorite films, Gremlins, with the kids. Connor wants a Gizmo now, but I think Moon would probably eat him. When we did go back, it was for a half day, and it was about as fast paced as you can imagine. Each period lasted about 25 minutes... I kind of wish it was that way all the time!

We've been spending quite a bit of time at my Grandparent's place lately, and we all were there for his birthday. He is pretty good with his new power chair, for sure. Still, he's not getting around well and I know that's hard on him and grandma, especially.

We spent a week in Michigan during the break. It was extremely cold, and when we arrived, there were 13 inches of snow on the ground! Awesome. The kids got to play in the snow every day, and loved it. Each day it kept snowing a bit, just enough to keep it looking nice. Thankfully, the weather warmed up for our drive back home. We had a very nice time up there, it was one of the best visits I can remember. Lots of food, games, and movies. (See a pattern?)

New Year's Eve was spent with friends from Church. I learned to play Spoons, and I am quite terrible at it. Still, it was a nice way to spend the evening. Dana and Kelli are quite vicious when it comes to this game. I was afraid Brent was going to lose a finger at one point.

The January blahs are in effect now that we're back at work. Good thing January Jamboree is just around the corner!

Well, I said last year that I wouldn't go back out early on Black Friday ever again. Then, I said I'd go out, but not go to Wal-Mart, after the Great Transformers Incident of 2007. Looks like I was wrong on both counts. We did go out, and began the day at, you guessed it, Wal-Mart.

Most of the time, Wal-Mart is fairly organized as far as employees go; it's the other shoppers you have to worry about. Not so this year. Apparently, for the biggest shopping day of the year, the Wal-Mart manager forgot to have a meeting to go over everything to prepare. Here's a short list of the incompetency on display by Wal-Mart employees.

As soon as we walked in, we asked a checkout clerk where the store maps were (all the Black Friday deals are in weird places, like DVDs in the frozen goods). She told me she hadn't seen them but knew they were out there somewhere. It turned out a lady standing about 10 feet from said cashier was handing out said maps. /facepalm #1.

When 5 AM finally hit, I was waiting in the line for electronics, as I wanted to pick up some cheap Blu-rays. Turns out I could have picked up the Blu-rays earlier, because the line I was waiting in was for "behind the counter" items. So I walk around, get the Blu-rays, and a guy next to me says that the regular ones off the shelf aren't the sale ones, and you have to locate the proper display shelf with the BF deals. It seemed odd, but an employee verified it, so I put my catch back on the shelves and headed out. On the way, I ask an employee where the discounted Blu-rays are. "Blu-rays?" she says. /facepalm #2. Yes, high def movies, I say, and she directs me to the grocery aisles, where, naturally, all the movies are. All the DVDs, that is. No Blu-rays to be found. I'm pretty upset at this point, as I've been there for 30 minutes and all I have is Spaceballs on DVD for $2 to show for it.

Turns out there are no Blu-rays by the groceries. My fellow BF shopper Chris tells me that the DVDs are scanning as the sale price no matter where you get them, so back I go to the electronics for the stuff I already had once and put back. ARGH. On the way, I ask an employee passing out memory cards about the cheap 8 gig flash drive. He smiles and laughs, and points at the Photo line. Which is horrendously long. He recommends I skip it, and I take his advice.

I head to the electronics desk, and ask about the AC/DC Rock Band bundle. The first employee gives me a blank stare and asks if I mean "that guitar game". When I told her I didn't, she asked the lady next to her. And she asked the lady next to her. And she asked the manager-type next to her. All like some huge game of pass it on. Manager-type knew what I meant, and handed me one. I walked off and noticed it was the PS3 version. ARGH again. I fight back to the fellow and get the correct version. /facepalm #3.

Now, here's the best part. Remember the map? It said that all the toys in the ad were in front of the toys section. Seems natural, right? Except the toys section is about 100' across, and there are wall to wall people there, and if you just want one thing, who knows where it is? Why even have a map if it doesn't tell you where specific items are? I make my way back, and ask an employee opening up boxes where the Power Rangers Helmets are. "I don't even know what that is!" she informs me. I kid you not, a lady next to me shoves the BF ad in this employees face, points to the helmet, and says "THIS ONE RIGHT HERE". Of course, that didn't help. I am quickly growing tired of this, and make my way to the front of the store. /facepalm #4. We did manage to find the Transformers hoodies. None in my size, more's the pity. We finally got out of Wal-Mart at 5:40. That's way later than normal and put us far behind schedule.

We did find a Power Rangers helmet at Toys R Us, surprisingly for $10 less. TRU was totally different; stuff was easy to find, but the line to check out was hideously long. It moved fairly quickly though; I'd say we were waiting about 30 minutes before we got behind a checkout counter. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong one. One lady's credit card didn't go through repeatedly, so she filled out a credit app. On Black Friday. At 6:30 in the morning. The next lady behind her had a cart full of items that she wanted rung up individually. I can't believe that they let her do that. We ended up switching lines, and got out relatively unscathed.

Gamecrazy was next, and had 2 of the 3 things I needed. The line went out the door into the cold, due to how small the store is. But it was fairly quick. From there, we drove past Target and laughed at how full it was on our way to breakfast. That was easily the highlight of the day; meeting up with our friends to eat and sharing stories is a hoot, every year. My country fried steak was terrible but the chococlate chips pancakes were good. No facepalm here.

Worn out, we decided to check K-Mart (picked clean), Big Lots (no cool stuff), and Radio Shack (never even had PS3 controllers in stock). All in all, a busy day, but we got some deals and I can't wait to give the stuff out soon. I'd say I won't go back to Wal-Mart next year, but I know I will. The cheap stuff compels me, and I always get to tell the crazy stories, which makes the trip totally worth it.

I just start updating again, and I go and miss a Saturday post. Can you believe it's because we've been incredibly busy? Yup, like everyone else, we've had something to do almost every night.

Midquarter has already come and gone. This means, lots of grading at home. Let me tell you, I hate grading. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be a special reading teacher, and not a regular classroom teacher. This year, I'm back in the regular classroom two hours a day. So, a bit of grading. Luckily, NFL Replay gets me through it. Also, I have some"help" from Moon, the cat, as you can see above.

NERD ALERT: I dusted my Transformers, and moved them around a bit. Check out the view over my monitor. I have the best man-cave of all time. Well, the best man-cave you can afford on a teacher's salary of all time, at least.


Deana has been the PTA All-Star. She was the master planner for the first PTA Movie Night at Halfway. Kung Fu Panda, on the projector, in the gym, with popcorn, soda, candy, the whole nine yards. It was a huge success and over 100 people showed up! All the proceeds went to help some needy families from the school district this winter. Bravo, my lovely wife!

Brandon's making all A's. He's also working on the latest Drama club production. He's Young Ebeneezer Scrooge, which is about the perfect role for him, the way he is with saving money. Connor is doing awesome at school, particularly in math. He's also becoming quite the artist. I'll try to get some scans up of his super heroes. No clue why he loves drawing super heroes so much...

This week seemed to go on and on forever. It started off well, but went south pretty quickly.

First of all, last weekend, the hard drive on our satellite receiver went out. There go all our recordings and the ability to pause and rewind live TV. I could live with that, but when the replacement was on its way, it stopped working entirely. No satellite at all, period. Luckily I have an antenna for over the air HD anyway, so at least we could watch local channels. I'd really like to have had CNN for election night, though!

Speaking of Tuesday, ours was pretty lousy. Deana had a real scare at school, with tremendous pain in her arm and back, and numbness and elevated blood pressure as well. We left as soon as we could and got her to the doctor. He ruled out heart attack and stroke first, and let me tell you, that was terrifying, for me. Deana was hurting so bad she cried when the doc had her lay down on her back. This is the woman who took 4 Tylenol when she birthed Connor! After blood work, X-rays, and an EKG, all he found was pneumonia. Deana has been on antibiotics and taking pain medicine as she needs it all week, but she's still run down. She went back to school Thursday and I think it was too much for her. I'm glad she took yesterday off, for sure. Hopefully she'll recover quickly.

Back to Tuesday, the Basketball Dinner was a success, though we were late due to being at the doctor's. We had a very good turnout, the kids (and adults) had a great time, and Brandon was hilarious when he gave out the awards.


Wednesday was a real headache. The replacement satellite receiver arrived, and swapping it out was a huge pain. Brandon and I both whacked our heads several times on our wall-mounted speakers. It looks like a rat's nest behind our TV, what with all the cords and wires running everywhere. Whoever invents wireless power will be very, very rich. Tesla may have been onto something, right?

Flu shots were this week, too. The big jock himself, Brandon, got dizzy and had to stay in the nurse's office for a while. I walked him back to class and told the kids to call him "Dizzy McFainterson" for the rest of the day. Connor was far braver, and as a result he got to open a new Power Rangers toy. Of course, he arranged it with some others "to put on the internet", so here is a picture.


The weekend, in contrast to the rest of the week, has been rather relaxing. I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures and the fall colors. Our yard is covered in golden yellow leaves, and Deana's mums are gorgeous. Lots of Xbox and even the Wii today. We're heading to a birthday party soon, at the movie theater, and watching Madagascar 2 afterward. I'll talk to you later, right now I've got to move it, move it...