Happy Birthday!

To my son, of course, but I also just realized that this blog had its first anniversary a couple days ago. That snuck up on me.

Here's a picture of the birthday boy in a shirt from his Gammie. Man, he's getting so big, but still so cute. His hair is out of control, but everyone loves it.



Wow, he's growing so fast. Both boys are.

In house news, we found one we really like, and are going to make an offer on it. We'll have to make the offer conditional on selling ours, though. Let's hope for the best.

And Daisy asked for my review of Half Blood Prince. It's now my favorite of the Harry Potter books that I've read (replacing Prisoner of Azkaban). I knew about the big shocker at the end, but there were still surprises for me, and how that shocker played out was thrilling and devastating. I'm all jacked up to read Deathly Hallows now.

My one complaint with the book, and that applies to pretty much all of the books, is that Harry is a lazy student and not a very good wizard. The only true wizarding skill he's demonstrated on his own is doing the Patronus charm. Everything else is handed to him, it seems. Is that supposed to reflect how kids are these days? He doesn't have to be a prodigy, but give your hero some amount of ambition, work ethic, or skill. Sheesh!

The Virus Has Struck

As most of you probably know, I have two young boys. One is about to turn 2 (THIS SUNDAY!) and the other is 7. The 7 year old is very much a "boy's boy". He loves guns and video games and cars and wrestling and action movies. He's a sweet boy, but he loves his violence, too. That's why I thought that we were immune to the sickness that has swept the nation over the past two years. Unfortunately I was wrong.

My son now loves High School Musical.

Last night he couldn't stop singing and dancing at the dinner table, singing a small section of an HSM2 song over and over and over (and over and over). He saw the movies at his cousins' house. I didn't think it would take with him so strongly, but he's growing up and moving on from only liking cartoons to liking live-action fare. He loves Nickelodeon's "Drake and Josh" and "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide", which is not so bad. I dig Nick cartoons, and there's some funny stuff on D&J and Ned's. (Although I do worry that my son will think that every pretty girl in high school is a whore because they all kiss Drake at the drop of a hat.) Unfortunately he also likes shows from that member of the Evil Triumvirate,* Disney. Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, and now High School Fucking Musical. What's a dad to do? I'm sure he'll grow out of it. Maybe this spring when we start him in lacrosse. Hopefully he and his teammates won't break into an impromptu rendition of "Get Your Head in the Game" on the practice field, though.


Now, in "musicals that hopefully don't suck" news, my wife is taking me to Spamalot for my birthday! I'm very excited. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and told her just gift cards for music. But then I saw a billboard for Spamalot and called her to tell her about it. She tried to play ignorant for a while but couldn't. She had already bought tickets weeks before. I love my wife!

Have a great weekend, folks!


* The other two being, of course, Coke and McDonald's.

Reports of my death, though hopeful, are greatly exaggerated

Holy cow, I had to think for a minute when entering my password to log into Blogger. It's been a while, eh? Either my life is too boring, or I'm way too unimaginative to spin my life's events into a semi-interesting account fit for a blog. Things have actually been happening, but not such things that make for funny or thought-provoking stories. Not even cute kid things that we've caught on tape. Just life stuff. Here's a summary:

Saw two concerts since my last post. One was Chris Isaak for free. He was really funny and entertaining. The music was good, but not the type that really moves me. It was at a smallish outdoor venue that allows people to bring food and alcohol, so it's always more about the ambiance than the acts, which usually cater to upper middle class, middle-aged folks. This Sunday we're seeing Keb Mo and Robert Cray there.

The other concert was Rush, this past Monday. It was great. I went with my older son's biological father, who is a Rush freak. The band sounded great, the crowd was large and very into it, and the guys played some great, unexpected tunes. The only bad part was the fact that I haven't heard their new album yet, so when they played songs from it, I couldn't air guitar/bass/drum like the familiar tunes. But a great show, nonetheless. A funny thing did happen: when buying a t-shirt, they were out of extra large of the style I wanted. The large looked big enough, so I bought it. It's not going to be big enough after washing, though. The funny part is, I did the same exact thing 5 years ago at a Rush show and haven't yet learned the lesson.

I don't think I've seen any movies since my last post, but I am about half-way through Half Blood Prince. I've kind of stalled because of studying for a test next month and another reason I'll get to later.

Regarding indoor soccer, it's over and went well. My team went 7-1. I even scored some goals. One game I had two goals that I felt very proud of. I'm not a great soccer player, not having really played it since high school on an intramural team. I stopped playing organized soccer in 6th grade. So there are a lot of skills that I don't have. But I think I have a pretty good sense for the game and I put a lot of effort in. I made plenty of mistakes but never cost my team a game or let in goals. I got along well with the guys on my team and thought that we were going to stay together for subsequent seasons. Well, the rest of the team decided to go on without me, registering as a team without even telling me. It was a pretty shitty move, in my book. I don't think leaving me off the team is going to make much of a difference. I'm pretty bitter about it, as you can tell. I think mostly one guy is responsible for the snub, but the other guys could have said something either to include me, or at least let me know what was going on. What really sucks is that a major reason I played was to meet people and make friends. Oh well, that plan failed. I'll probably sign up to play again, but not for the current season. I'm much too busy with something else:

We're finally moving!!!!!

Well, not actually. We put our house up for sale and are going to start looking at new ones soon. Whether and where we move is heavily dependent on selling our current house and what price we can get. The more equity we can get out of it, the better house we can buy. It's a tricky process, trying to sell your house without having a new one lined up, and not even knowing what you can afford until the sale is done on your own house. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime we're working a lot to make our house ready to show. We did a lot of painting. I learned how to remove baseboards, put them back on, and caulk over them. I love learning new handy skills. Now we have to clean up all our stuff and pack it away so the house doesn't look lived in. So we need to cram a bunch of crap in our garage (which is already full of crap) and keep things looking nice. There's also some yard work to be done, but nothing major.

It's pretty exciting, but my wife and I vacillate between optimism and despair that we're asking too much for our house and that it either won't sell or will sell for an amount that won't allow us to buy a house we really want. Yesterday I came home to find the sign in front the house. That was really weird to see, and still is. Now comes the self-esteem onslaught waiting for people to view it and make offers. I'll keep you all posted about it. That may be the only stuff I write here for a while.

So how are you all doing? Any major life changes happening? Any real estate victories/nightmares you'd like to share?