Craig's List Fun

This afternoon The Boss and I made the final leap into the Internet age. We sold a car through Craig's List.

The VW went quickly. I posted the add at 2pm and by 2:15 I was answering calls. I set up to meet the first of the potential buyers and he test drove the car in a parking lot nearby. Within 15 minutes he was finished looking over the car and the haggling was done.

I probably could have held out for a couple of hundred more bucks with a another buyer, but getting this done in one shot was worth something too.

Of course, I wanted cash. No checks accepted when I sell you a car in the Sporting Goods store parking lot. But as soon as the buyer handed me the cash, I was instantly worried about taking counterfeit bills. The Boss Lady and kids were at the parking lot with another car, so we signed the paperwork and headed straight to the bank to deposit the cash. I think the cashier thought I was nuts when I asked her to check the bills.

So now we are back to being a 2 car family. But of course Marge, the 68 Chevy gets a pass on that count :) We celebrated by washing the Mini Cooper and the Saturn Vue. Then I went and shampooed the seats and carpets in the Saturn. After all, if The Boss Lady is going to let me drive her new car to work, she will be expecting mine to be clean and ready to go.

Driving Miss Boss Lady

A few days ago The Boss called me to let me know that she had forgotten to "remind" me that her momma was coming to town AND that The Mother of the Bride would be here in about an hour.

Since we were in the middle of a couple of weeks off from school, and there was a gigantic pile of clean laundry waiting for a grandma's special folding skillz, I decided that this visit sounded like a great plan. (and a chance to make the pile of laundry grow a little bit more).

Skipping over the real highlights of the visit, it seems The Boss Lady had a plan. She announced that we (without Grandma or kids) were going to pack a suitcase, jump into the new car and then see where the road took us.

I started dreaming of some spontaneous road trip scenarios and we decided on a few ground rules. We would not drive on any interstate highways during the entire trip. And we kept to that rule, too.

We used the Garmin GPS to help us find some good back roads to cruise. And we did a little dirt road driving, too.

We stayed overnight in one of the finest 2 star motels in Huntsville, Texas and spent the rest of the time avoiding big cities and heavily traveled, multi-lane roads. We ate beef jerky for lunch and we ran through most of the good stuff on two iPods. This was a successful spontaneous trip!

Thanks to The Mother of the Bride for the folded laundry (and for watching the kids).



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Motoring Adventure 1

The wife and I are hitting the road to try out the new car. We are swinging by to visit some old friends for lunch and then we have no destination in mind. My only goal for this trip - not a SINGLE mile will be driven on Interstate Highways 35 or 45 (Or 10, 20 or 30).

Taking the iPod, the netbook, the GPS a couple of cell phones and a change of clothes or two. The kids are staying with grandma at our house. Somebody has to babysit the chickens, you know...

A season to remember, that is for sure!

This Christmas Season started out with a bang AND a scrape AND a crunch. The Boss Lady was side-swiped by a high school kid about a month ago. Her 2001 Beetle has seen better days and we had already been entertaining the idea of replacing it in short order (But the plan involved waiting a few more months at least).

When we started weighing our options with Itty Bitty, it started to make a little more sense to either let the insurance total the car or to sell it as soon as we could get the body damage fixed.

Somewhere along there I went insane and agreed to take a new job. I'll be leaving my High School teaching gig and moving over to a Junior High School (6-8 grades) at the start of next semester. The job is going to be crazy busy, but the paycheck should be nice.

The Boss Lady started finalizing her plans about the time I took the new job. But she really hit her car buying frenzy after going out to eat with a friend who has just bought a brand new Toyota SUV. After that lunch, a new car WOULD be bought. And soon, I guessed.

We went out a few days ago and we test drove a few cars. The Toyota Matrix and the Corolla were in contention for a while. But there were lots of cars ruled out. Nothing too small, nothing too big. Safety and good gas mileage were absolute requirements. the more airbags the better and the higher the mpg count, the betterer!

After we test drove a brand new MINI Cooper Clubman, we were thinking a lot about that car. (Probably me more than the wife.) I kept snooping around and found a 2009 MINI Cooper S Clubman sitting at a Chevy dealership a few miles from our house. The car had 12,ooo miles on it and it looks like it was previously owned by a germ-a-phobe. This thing is clean inside.

It is true. I haven't even started the new job and the car is already in the driveway. But it is also true that I won't be seeing much of this car once skool starts. I'll be too busy and The Boss will manage to keep her foot out of the turbo charger enough that she should get decent gas mileage in her new ride.

Me? Yeah, good gas mileage thing is not gonna happen. I am a dude! This car wants to be driven and he wants to get there in a hurry. So it looks like I'll be sticking with the Saturn Vue. Good thing my car will get me reliably to work. It looks like I'll be needing the paychecks very soon.

A side story about the new car - He already has a name, Randall.

The salesman treated us great. Never been happier to deal with a salesman. Really!

The guy's name is Randall. When The Boss and I got back home, I was joking that Randall had tempted me to really NEED that car. Then I tried out my best John Goodman impersonation, I quoted Scully from Monster's Inc. and said "Randall's your monster."

A day later and the name has stuck. Even the kids are running around saying "Randall's your monster!"

Ready for Christmas Break

Turns out there is one thing all teachers, regardless of grade level or the subject they teach, look forward to. Winter Break! Two more half days and The AtHomeFamily can start ours.

Hoping to post some nice substance during the next two weeks. (But don't hold me to that, OK?)

I spent a good portion of this week prepping for a job interview. No word yet, but soon I may be getting the call-up to the big leagues. Hopefully soon I'll be moving into my first full-time teaching gig. If this job works out then I'll be switching from High School to Junior High.
And if not this job, then I'll keep chasing the next ones.

But for now that 2 weeks without an alarm clock is sounding goooooooooood!

Parade recap

We spent the morning at the Chuy's/Children Giving to Children/Blue Santa Parade. True, it may have the worst name ever in parade history, but it is also the greatest of all parades. For several reasons. One, it happens in Austin. Which is always cool. Two, the kids who attend the parade donate toys to the local Blue Santa program that is sponsored by our Police/Fire/EMS Departments. The toys are given to kids all over the area who otherwise might have nothing else to open on Christmas morning. And three, it is the one day a year that the kids can count on dad waking up way early. But really, it is about the balloons. This is the only parade all year that they use the big character balloons.

This year I hit downtown before 7am (several hours later that years past), but it was only 33 degrees out there, so I was confident that the crowd would be slow to form this year. And I was right! We still got our preferred viewing spot.

I loaded up the netbook and the cell phone, so I kept entertained with random Facebook posts and watching Groundhog Day on Netflix streaming, thanks to the wifi from the Starbucks across the street. The wait was a lot shorter this year, but much colder, so I would rate this as the toughest year yet.

Knowing that there are sometimes 100,000 people at this parade, I go downtown early and camp out on OUR spot. But we are always prepared for some fun while we wait. Last year the kids and I geocached downtown. This year it was chalk art in the street.

The Princess was proud of this drawing, her "Peace Sign Kitty"

The kids and I always stroll over to watch the crews blow up the balloons. This year they had Super Grover, King Prawn (?), The Grinch and the Coca-Cola Bear. The Princess was thrilled to see them inflating a My Little Pony balloon, but something must have happened with that one, it never made the trip down the parade route.

The pickup trucks stop at the end of the parade and the kids rush out to load them up with the donated toys.

Joe McDermott and his band. He is a local kids entertainer who the kids and I have stalked followed since they were babies.

The Biscuit Brothers and Buttermilk. From the PBS Show filmed right here in Cap City.

No PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIGE! :(

I'll admit, when I saw the weather report, I was not thrilled about sitting in a camp chair, freezing my fat butt off, just so the kids could see some parade. But at the last minute I decided to head downtown and park my blanket-wrapped carcass. The kids will be too grown up for all of this nonsense too soon so when the kids and The Boss showed up (with doughnuts, sausage kolaches and Dr Pepper) and they were bouncing around with excitement, then I was glad that we had continued this family tradition once more.

7am, 33 degrees

And here I am again. Too cold to type, so you'll just have to look here to see why I am on a downtown street on Saturday morning.

http://athomedaddy.blogspot.com/2009/11/odd-family-traditions.html

Where now?

I was looking back the other day and I noticed how this blog has gone exactly like most of my other projects. I posted a load of crap originally. Both in quantity and quality. Then I sort of tried to focus on substantial content. So the post count dropped. But the quality probably didn't really jump way up, either.

For the past year or so I seem to have been distracted by every other possible thing. And a lot of what I do now, working with other people's kids, is off limits. At the end of the day, I can only make my usual, high-quality, pity observations about laundry and chickens every so often, so the blog has been the easiest thing to back-burner.

I used to see something during the day and I would think "can't wait to blog this!" It is sort of ironic that now that I have the constant ability to blog via smart phone and netbook, that I seldom consider doing it that often anymore. Besides all that, there have been a lot of times lately when I just don't wanna blog. So I don't.

This whole thing started out as an alternative to a baby book. The kids are well past the baby book stage and my AtHomeDad days are mostly over now, save for summer breaks between now and college, but surely there are still some crazy, head-scratching events to come.

Last week I was debating if I should just shutter the whole thing. In the end I think not yet.

Her Momma told me there would be daze like this

The Boss Lady has escaped!

Please alert the media and call your local fabric stores. Mother of two is on the loose. Last reported sighting in Philadelphia.


I should have noticed that something was up last week. First, the kids got a sudden infusion of cash on their lunchroom accounts, all of the laundry suddenly washed AND folded itself right into the dresser drawers. An extra couple of gallons of milk and breakfast cereal showed up in the kitchen. I even tripped over a suitcase sitting on the freshly vacuumed living room floor.

Yep, the signs were all there. I should have figured it out, but I have never been accused of being "quick on the uptake" and usually respond better to a brick to the head than to subtlety.

****

The Boss Lady is attending a conference in Philadelphia. She and her team have worked themselves silly for a year to get a chance to present information about their research and methodology to a group of their educational peers.

I was recently "volun-told" that I would be helping with a huge public even that would take up most of my evenings for the past week and all day Saturday. Luckily, The Mother of the Bride drove in Friday night to hang out with the kids for the weekend so that they could hit up all their favorites - the movies, the Target toy aisles and McDonald's.

The Mother of the Bride is heading home this afternoon. The Boss Lady will return on Wednesday afternoon. I finished up my project after a loooong 12 hour day yesterday. The milk should not run out until Thursday morning and at least the know the kids will be getting nutritious meals at school. And they have clean underwear so what else could they possibly need?

Looks like we are good for the 4 day haul here but still, c'mon Wednesday!

Gratuitous Hen pics

I was going to title this post Gratuitous Ch1ck P1cs, but I decided that might cause a traffic jam at my blogsite.

I got home from work a little early today, so I spent a little time in the backyard with the hens. FYI, all the hens are well, a day in the isolation ward seemed to do the trick for Gold Diamond and kept the other birds from getting sick, too.

Flower stalks the camera anytime I walk into the yard to snap a few pictures. Obviously she knows she is a star and who am I to keep her from her happiness?

Three Pullets sharing a dust bath. Thing 1 and Thing 2 are Buff Brahamas. Butterscotch Jr (at the top of the picture) is a Buff Cochin. All are now 5 months old. All are still slacking in the egg-laying department, too.

First Egg!

Flower has finally started earning her keep. She laid her first egg today!


I got home from work and turned the chickens out of the coop. There in the nest box was M&M's egg as usual. Yesterday we got none. Zero. Nada eggs. So I was sorta bummed to find a less than spectacular yield today, until I looked again and saw the tiny little egg tucked into the corner of the nest box.

I am assuming it is Flower's since she has been checking out the nest box since this weekend.

After letting the birds run for a few minutes I noticed that Gold Diamond was wheezing a little bit. I set up our old Hen Pen in the storage shed and isolated her for the time being just in case she has something contagious. Hopefully it is nothing too big and she will be feeling better soon.

News from the coop.

It has been a while since I blogged anything about the chickens. I took a little time this afternoon to get the birds a little better set-up for our brutal :) winter weather. And of course, I had to snap a few pics of the girls.

This is Flower, she is a 5 month old Australorp and based on the way that she has been hanging out in the nesting boxes all weekend, she should start laying eggs any day now.

A couple of shots of Thing 1 (Or maybe it is Thing 2!?!) One of our 5 month old Buff Brahma pullets (with the gray feathers). The other bird is sometimes called Alarm Chicken, and sometimes called Nameless Bird or Butterscotch Jr. I guess the kids should get decided on a good name for her soon.


Flower is NOT camera shy.


The "Winter-ized" Coop.

In an effort to keep the birds from getting too hot during the summers, our coop was built with wire fencing around the lower 2 feet of the entire perimeter. This allows air flow all summer long and keeps my from having to run a fan in the coop. The extra ventilation is also good for the birds, because they are not as susceptible to passing around respiratory illnesses in an open coop.

Anyway, it is already getting cooler at night and I want to keep the birds comfy. Happy, comfortable birds lay better eggs you know. But I also want to keep to the original low budget theme of our coop, so today I am trying out a canvas tarp, cut to fit, around three sides of the coop. Hopefully this will block most of the wind, while allowing a lot of airflow, too, since I am keeping the front of the coop open.

I'll probably come back and add a few more photos, but my dinner is ready. So go away.

It's not nothing. It's something. But just barely.

Yep, I am indeed still alive. The students haven't drug my bloated corpse into the back of the library to never be seen again. Yet.

The school job is certainly keeping me busy and I am usually worn out at the end of the day. But this job isn't exactly what I envisioned when I started in August. For the past few weeks, and likely for the rest of the school year, I have been working as a one-on-one student assistant. I work with one student all day long, every day.

Lucky for me he is a great kid. Unlucky for him, he sees me all day long, every school day. He has a complicated medical history that makes it necessary for staff to always have "eyes on". And it just so happens that those eyes are mine 95% of the time.

In the past I have worked with loads of kids with behavioral, physical, emotional, medical and whatever-other issues but this is the first time that I have spent this much time working one-on-one with a specific kid.

Anyways, we are a few weeks into the new job duties and so far, so good.

In other family news, Flag football seaason is almost over. High school football is nearly over. The University of Texas Longhorns football team has tanked for the season. And then some other stiff happened last week, too.

Specialization is for insects

This afternoon, I was reminded of a quote that flew around the internet a while back while The Princess was laying out her carefully designed plan of seven careers:

"Daddy, I want to be a famous clothes designer, a famous ballerina, a famous car painter, a mommy, a famous artist, a house painter and a famous story writer."

Yep. looks like this one is on track for a liberal arts degree. We better start saving now, so that we can afford to have her move back home after college.

See, I told you Rule Number 1 was a good one.

It is more than a year after the fact, and Rule Number One has only need a minor revision. The Kids and I took care of finalizing the details today while in the car on the way home from School.

With that, I give you the new, and improved Rule Number One.

Rule Number One - Don't be an idiot.
Rule Number One, subpart a - Don't eat the meatballs at a furniture store.
Rule Number One, subpart b - No tickee, no washy.

And that pretty much covers every eventuality that has come up in the past year.

I will say that I still feel that Rule Number One covers EVERYTHING but the kids are insistent that Rule Number One gets an overhaul.

Let's try this a different way

So one thing I am learning every single day in the classroom is the importance of presenting new information lots of different ways. The idea is that each kid learns new stuff a little differently, so if you give lots of variety in the way you present stuff, then eventually most of them will catch on.

Yeah, so that is the way it is supposed to work anyways.

So with that in mind, I have decided to try a new approach to this whole blogging thing. You see, I like facebook because I have been able to rediscover lots of friends for years ago that I thought I would never hear from again. But I always feel a little limited in what I am able to share. Some of that is a result of the way facebook (and twitter even more so), limit the AMOUNT of content you can share at one time. Now I have been accused of lots of things, but never have I been thought of as a "man of few words". So this space limitation is tough on me.

I also try not to share some things because of the mix of people on my friends list. I know most of them. And I even like many of them. But (and looking at my friends, it is a big butt!), sometimes I just want to think about a subject before I share too much about it. So with that in mind, I am going to start blogging occasionally ABOUT my facebook posts. Because I am too tired to think of anything more creative, I'll tag these posts as "facebook further". I now present you with the first installment:

From just a few minutes ago,

Sitting here watching the kids while they watch STOMP Live. I bet the house is going to be even louder in the next few days. Especially since we bought them all new drumsticks a few weeks ago when we were at the music store.

A few weeks ago I decided on a whim to change to strings on my acoustic guitar. In the process I broke one of the bridge pins. So we headed over to Guitar Center to buy some pins. The kids weren't too excited until they got tot he drum room. They spent about half an hour banging away in there. When we left The Boss Lady grabbed a couple of sets of real drumsticks out of a clearance bin.

Since then it has been a little more rhythmic around here. I occasionally hear some pounding beats coming out of each bedroom. No wonder I noticed a few new dents in each of the bunk-beds this week. With this showing of STOMP Live, I assume those dents are just the first wave. In fact, as we are finishing up the movie, The Talker is sitting on a giant exercise ball and drumming his heart out.

And from a few days ago,

Helped serve dinner for 25 on Monday night. Cooked dinner for 50 on Tuesday night. Helped teach a cooking class this afternoon at work. Followed all of that by whipping up spaghetti for 3 tonight at home with a ton of help for the 6 year old chef-to-be.

Hoping to not see a kitchen for a few days.

Lately we have been incredibly busy. I am realizing daily how much I loved our simple, uncluttered life with one income and a much less busy schedule. Most of that was bound to go away, as the kids get older and more involved in sports/dance/music/art/whatever. But I am still trying to wrap my little brain around how quickly and dramatically things have changed for our whole family.

A side story that I was too ashamed to put on facebook: we ran out of milk last Monday. Neither The Boss nor I had time to get to the grocery store until Saturday. The store is less than a 2 mile round trip from out house. I used to walk up there. But it truly was "that kind of week". As we get this figured out a little better, then we can plan a little better. But until then, we are jumping around putting out fires as the pop up.

Which reminds me, we are out of milk again. I should have time to grab some on the way home of Thursday. Oh wait, I have to cook for another meeting that night, so maybe Friday...

Right.

Granny wuz here

The Mother of the Bride was here for a couple of days. So she got to be the first guest to sleep on the new guest bed that serves as the lower, full sized bunk in The Talker's room. I walked in to tell the boy "goodnight" and I was immediately met with a schnoz full of TMotB's perfume.

Thinking that we could change the sheets quickly before bedtime, I said "It smells like your grandma's perfume in here." The Talker quickly responded "Well, that is because I just took off my socks."

I have no idea if he actually heard what I said. But his response seemed appropriate enough, so I left.

Busy little Lions (and Mustangs and Falcons)

Life is busy as I ever feared it would be, with two kids and two full-time jobs. I'll be the first to admit, I still haven't made a full adjustment to being this busy. This weekend is a great example.

The Talker's football team (The Falcons) practice at 10 this morning, followed by a game at 11. Luckily they are right down the street from Torchy's Tacos, so life isn't all bad... But by 10 am I had already driven the Princess and her two cousins out to my high school so that they can all participate in the school's Cheer Day activities. The entire lot of us have to go back out to the school for a performance at 2pm.

We are skipping at least one birthday party to make all of this happen. Or else the day could be even busier.

Added to that, that there were 4 kids in the house, awake and playing before 6. Goodnight Nurse!

Off to football. Maybe I can catch a nap over there.

The kind of days Grandma warned me about

Austin is a great place. Everybody knows that. And if they don't know, then they haven't been here yet. If you are going to live in Texas (and why wouldn't you?) then Austin is THE place to live.

All of that is especially true in the Fall and Spring. It is hard to believe that a month ago we were still dealing with 100+ degree daily temperatures. But today we have a low of 45 and a high temp of less than 80. Not a cloud in the sky and it is NICE! out there. All of that is even better because it should stay like this all week long.

I have heard days like this called "Chamber of Commerce days" because this is the type of stuff you advertise on your website to convince companies to do business in Austin. But my Grandma had a different outlook on the beautiful weather.

She was a lifelong Austin-ite and evidently she liked her weather mild and also kept secret. And she liked her city small. I remember one gorgeous day about 20 years ago she stepped onto her front porch to greet me and she had a scowl on her face.

"Nice day, right Granny?" I asked.

She replied without hesitation, "I don't like it. this is the type of day that makes people want to move to Austin." Touche'!

So if you happen to be lucky enough to visit Austin during this awesome time of year, don't get any wild ideas about settling in for too long. My Granny is watching out for people like you.

Too tired for anything too good...

Things are finally settling into a decent routine around here. Nothing too exciting (or hilarious) to report.

The kids are doing great. The chickens are still laying eggs. And shopping for the new TV has begun. LED, LCD or Plasma? 60Hz or 120 Hz? 720 or 1080? 1080p or 1080i? 42" or 50"?

These are the questions that are currently filling my off time and emptying our checking account.