Weekend Recap

A sunny morning stopover always makes for a good start to the day.

One of the benefits of having weekends on and weekends off with my children is that both give me an opportunity to have fun, different kinds of fun but lots of fun nonetheless.

This last weekend was a very good one. After an expensively annoying last week. I need to stop thinking I'm getting ahead, everytime I do that, I get smacked in the face with an expected expense on top of expected expenses I forgot about...

West Cliff at sunset is pretty awesome!

The highlight of the weekend was spending a few hours at the beach and in the water and my older son decided to join us and play in the water too. He usually sticks to digging or reading in the shade but he came out and we all had a really good fun time playing together!

Seeing as how it is now Wednesday, let's add in a bonus recap of the last couple of days, specifically the afterwork portions of the last couple of days.

I've been super fortunate enough to be able to get out and enjoy some of the recent swell while also becoming much more familiar with my new SUP.

We got out for a short bike ride

Suffice it to say that I spent a good chunk of the last few evenings with a giant shit-eating grin on my face as I caught waves to ride the length of Cowells two evenings in a row! The  guy I bought my board from said it was un-pearlable (that's when your front digs into the water and you slide off the front of the board usually) but I've proved him wrong and I pearled a few times before getting a better stance and launch sorted out.

Unlike the bigger board, the shorter one can zoom right down a wave face and go right down the line happily. It also carves back nicely and I'm starting to get into harder and deeper turns.

Pro tip to other SUPers catching waves: Keep using your paddle on the waves, you can gain speed, retain balance and save waves and more by keeping an active paddle. I keep seeing folks standing on their boards with their paddles held mutely in their hand as they cruise along.

More fun on tap this weekend!

Quick Weekend Recap

As weekends go, this one was pretty decent. I mean, as good a weekend can be that doesn't involve several hours of singletrack and sweat. And about as good a weekend can be that involves one of our cars spinning out on the highway, blowing a tire and destroying the rim.

That was low point and it could have very, very easily been much worse as my wife missed the guardrail by not much more than 20 feet. As it was, her outside wheels slipped off the newly laid asphalt lip and dropped about four inches which yanked the car to the left, she over-compensated to the right and the back end of the car whipped around spinning her into a gigantic cloud of dust. She was luckily unhurt and the car is mostly fine, just a tweaked rim, lots of dust everywhere and an ache for a front end alignment.

Scorecard Weekend Wrap

Decent form but my center of gravity is too high.

Like much of my life, my expectations and reality are like ships passing in the night, they can see each other but are clearly not on the same trajectory. But all is well that ends well which is a more elegant way of saying that as long as you wrap up the weekend on a high note, the rest of it will seem that much better through that lens.

And the weekend did wrap up nicely. I finally got out for a very badly needed mountain bike ride, book ended by some laps on the pump track, the later laps with my two boys rolling too. Lots of fun and really a great place for them to get some exercise and learn how to handle their bikes better. So much fun that today actually marks the fourth straight day of pump track fun for them.

Long Weekends, Late Nights and Allergies, Allergies, Allergies

I have a mental note in my head to try and post life updates here more often. Not for anyone else in particular really, more for myself and for my kids to have at some nether point in their future when they might care to know what was going in back in the day.

Right now my kids don't much care about what happens in the world around them as long as they've got some Legos to play with, preferably Lego Star Wars but "plain" Legos will work too. In a pinch. And with some whining (or, as the much more delightfully spelled and pronounced, whinging).

It's just after 6 on Tuesday morning, I've been up since 5 already with a delightful bout of allergies that have been kicking the crap out of my mornings for the last several days now. We're supposed to be getting some rain soon and I'm sure that will help knock the pollen out of the air and allow my sinuses to take a break.

I'm not really complaining too much about my allergies because we had a pretty fun weekend nonetheless. Some good friends were in town for a visit, we had a good party, we played poker late into the night and then chatted even later (I went to bed at 4:30 in the morning yesterday). I also had one good hand at poker, the first one, where I had pocket aces, failed to capitalize when the time was right and then coasted along on crappy 2, 3 off suit hands the rest of the night.

But that was fine too. It was a good time seeing my friends again, talking shit, drinking and enjoying each other's company.

There were also some football games, the unbelievable Niners and Saints game on Saturday which seems so long ago now. UFC 142 in Rio with lots of insane finishes, one bad DQ and one champ charging into the crowd of his countrymen after another successfully defense of his belt. It was a great sports weekend. We've got another good weekend of football next weekend to determine who gets into the big game and we could be looking at a brother versus brother Super Bowl if the Niners and Ravens advance one more time.

I just wish I'd been able to get a decent night of sleep as I felt like a zombie most of yesterday and am likely to feel like that most of today if current stuffed headedness doesn't ease up.

But it's okay, the weekend was fun and memorable nonetheless!

Happy We Littered The World Day! or the Fifth of July!

It is so odd, we buy fireworks from China to celebrate our independence from England. Isn't that a bit like trading out one pimp for another? No matter though, our world was full to the brim with explosions, star bursts, booms and sparkling fountains. And we didn't even have to go anywhere! Aside from my hound dog having another really long night of panting and semi-panicked ducking and covering last night was a pretty good night.

My wife and the boys walked/rode in the town parade yesterday for the pre-school. I took photos for the teacher and enjoyed blasting around downtown on my mountain bike. But the downside is that the staging of the parade took hours and hours are too much to try and keep little kids engaged. Plus, I got a light sunburn on my arms which I wasn't sure was possible. But not bad at all.

What a Weekend!

180 degrees of Turning Wheels for Kids Awesomeness!

My wife might say otherwise but this was a pretty great weekend for me almost all the way around. From getting up early and driving to San Jose to take part in Turning Wheels for Kids to getting a good workout in on the way home to enjoying some pretty great fights at UFC 124 and then having most of Sunday to be with my kids which included getting our Christmas tree, this was a good weekend! I even got some chores taken care of which always helps.

And We're Back

It seems like there's almost no time to stop and catch my breath over the weekends. That isn't really true but it feels like it. From the end of work on Friday when Nande and I headed out to Hidden Beach to try out my new triathlon wetsuit to the beach party on Saturday night with the whole family and a whole bunch of friends to yesterday's much lower key outing with just me and the boys.

Add in lots of sports fun, the Giants winning in torturous style last night, the KJ Noons/Nick Diaz fight on Saturday, all of the football action yesterday and last night and it feels like getting back to work is also a good time to catch my breath and start thinking about next weekend.

Some other highlights: We got to see four double up skydivers land on the beach right in front of us and with an awesomely dramatic flared sunset behind them to boot. On Friday night when I went out for a swim, a seal popped up literally no more than six feet away from me in the shallow surf, scared the crap out of me (and him or her). I also saw my first ever green flash though I'm not so sure now that I've read the Wiki page.

And, if the Jets win tonight then I win our local football pool which would be a nice wrap. Actually, I'd happily trade winning the football pool for a Giants win to finish out the NLDS and move on to the National League Championship Series against the Phillies!

But now its back to the grindstone, too much to do, not enough hours to get it done in and too many people waiting impatiently for stuff to work again. Which inevitably means that someone is gonna get their head chewed off for getting all up in my bizness. And then I'll feel like a jerk for a little while again, it is the cycle of life or something.

And Sullivan got a replacement bicycle this weekend too. His last bike was accidentally left behind during a trip to the dog park but it was almost too small for him so he was going to need a new bike before too long. But it would have been nice to defer some of the cost of the new bike by selling the old bike. Either way, we're mobile again and Sully has taken to his new bike with a vengeance! He's faster than before but with no increase in control and I know its just a matter of time before he takes a good digger (he has a tendency to not keep his handlebars straight).

It was a good weekend, a little too short as always but we had a good time anyway. I think I need to get a look at the calendar and figure out when the next long weekend is and start planning a caper for then.

ADHD Stew or The Weekend Wrap

My wife has become ever more vigilant of physical examples of my ADHD manifesting itself in an effort to cut down on the distractions presented to my older son. The goal, of course, is to give him more tools to be able to keep himself on task and my occasional ADHD-on-speed techno-awesomeness sometimes disrupts those plans.

Like this weekend where I had my laptop feeding internet football feeds into a picture in picture display on the main tv so I could track two games at once. By the way, Veetle is an outstanding resource for internet video feeds. The randomness is almost as awesome as the chance to catch movies that are still in the theatres (The Expendables and Salt have been on heavy rotation). Veetle is, basically, a video-re-broadcasting site. All of the feeds are set up by end users and the media is streamed from their machine. Whatever they feel like showing is what gets shown. And on Sundays there are always a couple of football feeds to grab.

Big Weekend Fun for All!

Long weekends are the very epitome of Dad Life and Labor Day weekend is the finale for the summer bbq season for most of the country. Of course, not in Northern California where I live, its bbq season all year long here (with the occasional cooking in a downpour for fun).

And the best part about long weekends, aside from staying up too late and sleeping in the next morning, is packing in lots of activities and filling each day with things to do. The speedy summary:
Friday - Watsonville Fly-In Airshow Monster Trucks
Saturday - More Airshow fun, photography and
Sunday - Beach day with friends from out of town
Monday - Bike riding with the boys at the Polo Grounds and a great sushi dinner with friends.

On Friday I was looking forward to a low key evening after a pretty tiring week. I had not been planning on monster trucks in any way, shape or form. But my wife came home with a set of free passes to the Watsonville Fly-In Airshow for that night which featured some monster truck on the runway action. We got to check out a whole bunch of planes before the monster trucks starting blasting around.

Ending Spring Break Right

Most of Spring Break was pretty low key, playing with my kids, trying to give my wife some time to get on top of her paperwork, the monster of a desk she's been trying to cope with, working on her shop, yardwork and emergency fence repairs.

Not a bad break by any stretch.

But not too much to write home about and rave either. Until the last few days of the week and the weekend in which much goodness, fun and too much sun was all packed in.

First off, I got two good mountain bike rides in, one less than I'd targeted but I can call the demo ride of the Delta 7 Arantix at the Sea Otter Classic a half a ride so I'm even that much closer to my goal. But I did get two good rides in, one with Nande which makes for a more fun outing, usually.

My second ride was on Thursday and wasn't quite as far as normal but I didn't want to over-tax Nande on her first run/ride in a while so we took it easy. She did alright overall but was definitely riding the lag wagon towards the end.

On Friday, I headed south to Laguna Seca and the Sea Otter Classic bicycle festival. Aside from the long slow slog in, it was a great time. The weather was magnificent, there were some great races to enjoy, the dual slalom was particularly cool as well as the BMX trick riders. I did do a full write up of the event on NorCal Bikers, I think the link is in the post right below this one.

On Saturday, we hit the beach so that the boys could play with their cousins. The four kids had a ball running into and out of the surf, throwing sand at the water, making designs in the sand and generally running around like wild little boys. We also got to see a rather large fish wash up on the sand, still alive, flap around for a bit and then get carried back out into the bay. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of fish it was. It was about four feet long, had pretty big teeth and a bunch of spines on its dorsal fin. It also was extremely iridescent in the sun and flashed bright blues, greens and maybe some purple.

Sadly though, no pictures as I'd just put my camera back in my bag when it rolled up on the shore. And, because the four kids were getting really close, I couldn't just run over and grab it. Especially not after seeing how nasty big those teeth were!

On Saturday night, a buddy of mine and I went out to Salinas to watch UFC 97. Overall there were some pretty good fights but Anderson Silva's title defense fight was about as thrilling as watching paint dry. Which sucks because he was trying to draw Thales Leites into a fight but Leites seemed content to flop on his back about fifty times. The fights also pretty well ended Chuck Liddell's career with another TKO stoppage. That was a bit of a bummer. Overall, I went 5 for 8 on my predictions and should not have gone with the sentimental prediction on Liddell or I'd have gone 6 for 8. Not a bad night of fights but it could have and should have been way better. Silva may be winning but he's losing his marketing draw with each successive boring crappy fight. They need to put someone in the ring who will bang with him.

And that brings us to yesterday. The early part of the day was spent at the house, doing yardwork, fixing a slowly disintegrating fence and trying to steal a little rest while avoiding the sun because it was hot, hot, hot here, must have been in the mid-90s. But the afternoon was spent at a birthday party. Lots of kids, a little wading pool, a sprinkler and some damned fine Hoegaarden White Beer on tap. It was alot of fun but very tiring.

After we got home, got the kids bathed and into bed where they put up only the most minimal resistance to going to sleep, we watched Thursday's episode of Survivor. And saw the most annoying character since Johnny Fairplay keep stroking his scraggly beard and massive ego. This season is turning out to be a pretty meager and bordering on annoying enough to stop watching one. The Coach guy is a complete tool, liar and jackass. If he'd been voted out then I'd have been happy but nope, we'll be subjected to more weeks of his incredibly grating personality. You're losing me, Survivor, you are losing me.

And that brings us up to current. This week will be a busy one, with meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, after school work on Tuesday and lots of little computer fires cropping up from the break.

My legs are worked, I might have pink-eye and a spot or two of poison oak but I look pretty darned tan and healthy even if my allergies are starting to lose the battle against the post nasal drip.

It was a very, very good end to the week off. Now we'll see what kind of looniness develops as California just got another $3.1 or $4 billion for education. I hope that money goes to its intended use and not to another of Schwarzenegger's projects because that money could mean I have a job in the fall.

The Weekend, By The Numbers

Lifted from Rude Cactus, here's my weekend broken down into numerical forms.

# of Twitters - 35
Number of followers lost - 4
Number of new followers - 2
Hours spent mowing lawn - less than 1
# of lawns mowed - 2
# of times restarting mower because it choked on the super thick grass - 16
# of times hot tubbing with the boys - 2
# of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made - 4
Grown up movies watched - 1 (300 on my computer, it was excellent!)
Episodes of Dora or Diego - at least 6
Long ass-kicking mountain bike rides - sadly 0
# of pushups - 136 (week 5 of the program is in the books)
Hours spent editing video - 1.5 (laid on a soundtrack, will publish tomorrow!)
# of loads of laundry "processed" - 5
Hours lost to social engineering masquerading as daylight savings time - 1
# of times it took me to spell masquerading correctly - 2

The Weekend

This ended up being a pretty good weekend despite the absolutely insane mid-November heat wave that peaked yesterday with temps on my deck reaching and breaching 100 degrees. No lie! I've got photographic proof if need be.

On Saturday, I took the boys to "Blue Ball" park in Soquel. It is so named because the predominant feature there are a series of huge blue balls set into the hill side. The park itself is large and sprawls a bit but the main attraction is a couple of slides with a bump at the top and a good runoff landing in the sand below. One of the slides had been removed for repairs so the remaining slide was pretty impacted and the kids had to wait their turn.

It was hot enough that I had to take my shirt off to keep from overheating. Sully had to be convinced to keep his pants on. We played at the park for nearly 3 hours before we all got hungry and headed off for some lunch. Sully took a short nap on the way home but that was it, I was pretty sure they would both crash. But nope, they charged ahead without naps which means we could look forward to sniping at each other as the evening goes on. Sully still needs a little break to recharge his batteries or he turns into, well, a little fucker. It isn't really his fault but boy does he get annoying. From stealing Graydon's toys to trying to hit Nande with whatever he can lay his hands on to shutting off the tv repeatedly to laying the open hand slap on whatever bare skin he can to dumping his juice on the floor.

On Saturday night I took up a teacher friend's invitation to join him for some mixed martial arts mayhem in UFC 91 Couture vs. Lesnar. I've already written it up along with my scorecard from my predictions. One re-reflection I'd like to note is that Lesnar showed some real class in his victory over Couture. Unlike his last facing of Heath Herring when he beat him, this time around he handled it well. Oh yeah, one more thing, I was kind of shocked at how quickly Demian Maia walked through Nate Quarry.

It was a fun evening and I enjoyed spending time with Manuel, his wife and his very sweet little boy (who's got a little of the stinker in him too). Plus, the Marzen tasted awesome, I forget how good that beer is.

On Sunday, the wife and kids were headed to a birthday party that I was invited to as well but Sunday's are pretty much my only day to be at the house, get projects pushed along and enjoy some pigskin fun (that's football). And I did get a whole bunch of stuff done around the house including most of my laundry, I finished hand sanding the bunk beds and they are ready for pre-staining, staining and sealing. I also gave Nande a bath which was desperately needed if the amount of fur coming off her was any indication. I had to stop and clear the drain at least ten times. And then, later on in the evening when she was dry, I took another massive pile of fur off of her. She really has an amazingly thick coat. And she was rather happy to get cleaned up, rubbed down and brushed.

The Forty-Niners put a whooping on the Lambs which was a refreshing change from their six game losing streak. But then the Redskins had to go and lose to the Cowboys which will make winning my football pool a little more difficult. Basically, I need the Browns to win tonight and the total score to be more than 52 or 53 points.

I also had a good chat with my mom.

All in all, it was a good and productive weekend. I would have liked to get a bike ride in too but it was just too freaking hot on Sunday to go out even though I'm sure it was at least ten degrees cooler in the shade at Nisene. The problem with going riding in Nisene Marks on the weekends is that there's about ten times as much foot traffic as during the week. And its no fun to scare the living crap out of walkers who happen to be on the bike trails. Okay, its a little bit fun.

Time for me to get cranking on my massive tasklist. Hope you had a great weekend too.

Fly Butterfly

This was an unusually busy weekend for us with three parties in two days. One was an end of the school year faculty party held at one of the teacher's houses above Watsonville with a stellar view. One was a birthday party for a four year close to some other friend's with a great backyard. And the last was a bbq among our pals leading into drunken poker (which I didn't stay for).

We almost made it out of the party mode without any injuries but my two over-tired and crazy boys got into a game of chasing each other around the car's in the carport (after Grady had a night-ending accident but was in some clean undies again). Sully was in pursuit and either dragged his foot or just tripped over it. Either way, the end result was a bloodied up toe and screaming loud enough to wake the recently deceased. Which gave way to passing out as soon as we got on the road heading home.

I knew by 8 or 9 on Saturday that I was going to be pretty well wiped out come Sunday morning. And I was. But that's alright, it was a pretty fun weekend even if I was in a pretty crappy mood on Friday afternoon due to some even more depressing news from my department and district. Suffice it to say that I'm not so bummed to be leaving anymore since the support crew is getting shuffled up and downgraded in quality and ability. Not good. Also, I found out who has officially taken my position at the one school that has re-upped the site support tech contract for next year. That was kind of depressing.

I also got more research time in on job leads, building out my skill list and continuing to craft my cover letters.

Oh, and I got some tomatoes planted which will be really nice. Fresh dirt, four seedlings in a half barrel in the sun and we should be very good to go! I was going to take a pic and then try to do a new pic every couple of weeks or month but time got short this morning and I had to roll out at speed to get to work close to on time (not that anyone's really waiting and watching for me but still).

Delightful Weekend

We had a cold and windy (some might even say blustery) weekend but we also had a good portion of my family visiting from New England. And anytime I get to see my family is a good time. Even more so when Grady and Sully get some family time with their cousins, aunt and uncle and grandparents.

Add in a trip to a windy beach with four little boys, a stop at a playground on the way out and then a totally kickass sushi dinner and you've got the makings for a pretty excellent, if short, visit.

I do wish we lived closer to my side of the family because I really do enjoy their company, they are interesting people with interesting lives and, of course, I love them. But its just that 15 month long New England winter I COULD hack, I just choose not to. I like my two wheeled toys far too much to stare at them for most of the year.

And now its back to work, back to trying to suss out whether I'm on the shortlist to get pink slipped (i.e. notified about my contract not getting renewed for next school year) and back to helping keep the technology of the educational system running as smoothly as it can given the obstacles put in our way by the Governator and Shrubya.