Dr. V

So I had my dreaded visit with my new Dentist (from here on out Dr. V).. I have some crappy teeth.. several of them are in bad shape.. and I'm going to need several more fillings and one more needs to be removed.

I say one more because I just had one ripped from my mouth today @ 2:50 pm. I wasn't in any pain... He numbed me up really good (topical numbing.. then like 3 or 4 needles in my gums) He did a filling then had to yank my #2 tooth all the way in the back.. which wasn't a big deal anyway because there wasn't even a tooth below it so it didn't do anything anyway. The most uncomfortable thing was when Dr. V was cranking on my teeth I could feel my jaw bone flexing and I thought my face was going to split in half... but luckily it didn't.

Best part is I get to go back on August 7th to get the one on the other side yanked and another filling. I figured it's best to get all of this work done now, instead of waiting for it to get worse. I wasn't in any pain.. but any more waiting wasn't gonna do me any good.

Goodbye delicious soda... you will be missed

More than meets the eye

Saw Transformers the other day.. pretty awesome movie. I don't get people who try to pick this movie apart... it a movie about cars and airplanes turning into freaking robots. Just enjoy it for what it is.. awesome.

The most surprising part of the movie was how funny it was. Shia Labeouf was good in it too. Maria saw "Knocked Up" and said it was the funniest most entertaining romantic comedy she's ever seen. So there are good movies in the theatres folks, go out and see one.

And yes, Maria and I are officially an old married couple who see seperate movies.... (j/k.. I was in the mood for a little testosterone shot.. and what 27 year old who grew up with Transformers is gonna pass on seeing it on it's opening week in theatres?)

BLARG

Ifeelreallysickthismorning:(

BBQ and YOU

We had our first "get together" yesterday on the hottest day so far this year. On my way home the bank thermometer read 95 degrees... wow.. what the heck. We had quite an assemblage of food at the ready.. but we don't really own any chairs or any tables that are easy to get out the back door. We had no idea if anyone would show or not... one look at our house in it's current state would probably at this point draw drug-addicts and hookers (we call it the crack house.. cause.. well, it looks sort of like a high class one).

We have a pretty big driveway by most standards and we needed it. We had probably 15 people stop by.. so it was a rousing success in my mind. It would have been much cooler if there would have been a moon bounce or maybe a slip'n slide.

Next month (July 21st we are going to have Holden's 3rd birthday here at our house in Fruitland. We are going to rent a moonbounce and the easter bunny (a clown is just too expensive). So if you have a child who likes bouncing and rabbits.. make sure you come out.. oh, and a fondness of the "little guy" would be nice too.

Epson is French For Piece of Garbage

I'm sad to say that I was one to buy a CX4800 all-in-one printer/scanner last christmas. It has worked well (we've hardly used it) and now when I want to print it won't. It loads in paper all crooked and gets a paperjam every freaking time I try to print something. Luckily I don't have anything pressing to get on paper at the moment, but this damn printer almost found it's end being thrown out of a second story window onto my driveway. Instead I punched it in the face and mooned it... twice.

$120 bucks wasted... never buying an Epson again.

The Owls Have It

We are getting a hooters in Salisbury (the old Atlantic Book Warehouse). I now can die a happy man.

(I've actually never been in a Hooters before... but I can see my co-workers dragging me there sometime for the "wings")

ill communication

I think my cat Otis might be the noisiest animal on the face of the planet. He constantly "talks" to me in the morning as I go about my morning routine. A symphony of "meows" at different pitches and lengths... some mornings we have quite the conversation as we meow back and forth. He also constantly weaves between my legs.. I guess he's hoping that one day I will die in a fall down the stairs so he can dine on my entrails.

Maria has her Lucas moon.. I have my Otis moon..

I'm on a roll

One more post after this and I would have already posted as many times as I did all of last year. Of course I didn't have mini posts like this to cheat my way to victory.

Open up my eager eyes... I'm Mr. Brightside



One day I hope to have the expendable cash to buy a nice Digital SLR. Would anyone persuade me in either the Nikon or Canon direction? I already have several Canon lenses on my old SLR that will work with the digitals.. so i'm already extremely overwhelmingly biased.

Don't worry about me

cause I had a 5 o'clock shadow on April 8th and I rocked it hard

Maybe He's Just Happy?

I think my cat is gay

If you don't want to have a bad impression of Christians

Then definitely don't come out and watch them play softball in a church league. We played a church that threw a hissy fit that we were enjoying ourselves (not rubbing it in their faces) and winning (by a lot). Our pitcher is quite a character and does a lot of dancing between pitches. You are allowed 6 seconds from your first movement to make a pitch...the coach on the other team didn't like this (and probably didn't read the rule book) and threw his bat against the fence as hard as he could and stormed off. Way to show off that great Christian image to the children watching us play! He couldn't contain himself and called our Pastor and probably anyone else he could think of in the management of the softball league. I just hope someone reminds them that the pitcher they brought in later in the game was doing the same stuff to us as well.

It was fun though... I think we won like 25 to 12... and we up until the past 4 games or so hardly ever won, so what's wrong with going out there and having a good time? Our pitcher pushes the limits of the rules, but like the ump said we didn't break any of them.

The Hizzle

I promised some pics and commentary on the fruitland house about 2 months ago, and I'm going to try and deliver on that promise sometime soon. There is still so much left to do.. random details and a few major things, and we are also in the midst of getting a home equity loan to consolidate our debt and possibly build an addition to the house (a new master bedroom area w/ walk-in closet & master bath & 2 more bedrooms upstairs).

Holden asks me all the time "why did you build my house daddy?".. and I give him the honest answer "so you'd have somewhere to sleep and play", and then he always tells me he likes his house... which is pretty sweet coming from a 2 year old. He's growing up so fast now, he dosen't pitch a fit anymore when I put him in bed for the night. He used to bang on his door or manage a way to open it and would sit on the stairs listening to us in the living room. It's the greatest feeling now that I don't have to work on the house constantly and miss all the time with my kids. Pearl & Larry are also quite awesome in their own ways. I'll have special blogs on each one of them in the coming week.


Maria seems to think I was born with a hammer in my hand.. I'm not so sure I'm up for another major project that will inevitably go way over budget in both time and money. But we'll see... it will be weird to tell others that we have a 6 bedroom 2-1/2 bath house when it is all said and done.

We thought our cats were goners. During the night, Otis and Abraham escaped through a vent shaft in the kitchen (actually a window.. they popped out the screen and jumped 12 feet to the freedom field below). Abraham came back a lunch time the next day, but Otis made the most of his time carousing and didn't come back until almost 9pm the next day. I was just about to head out to look for him on some of the backroads newr our house when I saw him in the backyard. Maria freaked out and was ready to call the shelter and make reward signs. I knew he'd come back, he's my dawg yall.

Oh snap! It's lunch time.

The Stewarts

We had a fun little time having some family pictures done. Click the link below to bask in our togetherness.

Check out picture time at the pond

Baby Day Looming

For those of you who don't know I am the delivering physician for my daughter Pearl. She came out only 30 mins after Maria had the first signs of labor in the wee hours of the morning of Feb. 25 2006. There was no time to even warm up the truck and there we were having her on my Father-in-law's living room floor. It was one of those surreal moments that change you forever where everything happened so fast and it was so unbelievably terrifying with the nucal cord wrapped around her neck (my father in law still has nightmares about it) The chances are baby #3 is going to come out just as fast if not faster (how could it be any faster?), so I am bracing for this baby to already be popped out before I can even wipe the sleep from my eyes.

I'm thinking I need to start getting together a "Bag 'O Supplies" for this new little one. I need some help in what to get for this so called "Bag". I figure I need one of those mouth sucker thingys, some blankets and towels, shop vac, bottle of vodka, and maybe a self vasectomy kit to prevent this from ever happening again.

No, seriously though... I need some feedback. What do you think I should round up for a "In Case We Can't Get Out The Door In Time And Have To Have This Baby At Home Again Bag" or ICWCGOTDITAHTHTBAHAB (just rolls off the tounge don't it?)

Who we thought they were

Are you down with the Sickness?

I think I might have SARS, or the Birdflu, maybe something else.

I don't know what I got, but it's making my day at work really unproductive. I've never felt this bad and still actually gone to work.

I did it cause the nausea is what I thought it was! (not so bad really, just enough to complain aboat)

Mud Boggin'

So I'm working at the house last night, trying to get everything finished up for our inspection, when I look out and see my neighbor driving his truck through his backyard. He just bought one of those Toyota FJ suv/station wagon thingys and I guess he was itchin' for some off-road action.

With all the rain from the nor'easter (he had a foot deep pond in his back yard) he managed to get his pretty little truck stuck around 9pm or so. Me and Jake laughed and said "dumb ass" at almost the same time. You feel bad for the guy, cause I mean.. who hasn't got their FJ stuck in the mud before? We kept on working and would occasionally look out the window to check on the situation.

I would have helped him if he came over and asked, but I didn't want to get out in that wind and cold and rain if I didn't have to. A little after midnight he came over to borrow a rope, and I laughed a little bit because the only rope I had was really weak, but he was thankful and him and his roommates continued in their struggle to free the FJ.

About an hour after that I heard the "beep, beep, beep" of a tow truck... who couldn't pull him out either (he was in the middle of this pond, that was about 80 feet from solid ground).

Somehow he got it out, as when I woke up it was gone. That or the boogidty monster stoled it!

Cash Cow?

Most people don't know this, but I make pretty decent money on the side when I get the work. The only problem with this "sidejob" is that it's woefully inconsistent. Maria's boss wants me to make 15 of these things for him, and at $150 a pop it'll add up to pay off our uber fanci appliances (note: front end loading washing machine that Maria just could not live without). No, it's nothing criminal, and no I'm not ashamed to admit what it is that I do. It's just that I like to keep up the interest so you'll read this blog to then end just to be letdown (like usual).

Now that the work on the house will be completely done on the inside by early this summer, I want to get the word out and actually start a little business and see where that leads. I also have a part-time job as the "Media & Technology Director" for my Church

My church wants me to start uploading the videos and intros that I make for them to a website that lets you keep 50% of the profits... so in turn that will pay my part-time salary. But there is a part of me that says "Hey, I can just go do that on my own on the side and keep all the income, not just the 100 bucks a week church pays me. But then a part of me has a problem with that.. my friend Phil works in a part-time company "spinoff" of our church called Encompass. That branch of our church does media and technology for events for other churches, school, groups whatever. He does this and doesn't make any extra money for it.. it all goes back into the church.

So yeah, I have sort of learned how to use many a video editing, photo editing, graphics animation program over the past 2-3 years, and I see it as a way to help me and my family out... but I'm not sure how to go about doing it (without alienating people at church who I consider friends).

Death By Suds

I just recently lost something that has brought me hours upon hours of joy over the past year. I actually got it right around this time of year (it was my 3rd anniversary gift from Maria, she got an ipod). Our anniversary is April 5th... 4 years and going strong. We know now that if we can make it through the whole house debacle, we can make it through anything.

But yeah, I left my Zen Micro mp3 player in my pants pocket and it found it's way into the wash. I took it apart today and let it dry in the sun for a little bit and put it back together, still dead. I got a great deal on it used on eBay, so it's ok. It got me through many a night with my music to sing along to while working on the house.

So pour out a 40pk of CDrs tonight in remembrance

When I find time I'm going to photo journal about the house on here... it's done in a lot of rooms, and there are a lot of people that helped us out a ton and would probably like to see how it ended up.

Oh and we now have a fully functional sink and dishwasher, so now we can cook food and not have to eat out all the time!

The M-O-V-E

Yes, we are finally moving into the new house. The new carpet is going in Monday (3/19/07) and I get the rest of our appliances on Tuesday. Only the upstairs will be livable, but it's gonna be nice to finally be in our own home again. This past year has been pretty tough on everyone in the family. I just wanna thank everybody who came out to help at various stages of the renovation.

I will also have more time to donate to this blog to make it something special... so do what I do and synchronize your watches!