Day After Yesterday

Rebecca and I took Mason on a walk…

here is our route.

It was pretty nice.

So independent of each other, Rebecca and I each fell down the stairs this weekend. I hurt my heel, rebecca has a bruise on her backside. My foot still hurts, although only when I put weight on my heel, thus I have been putting weight on the ball of my foot, so now my calf muscles hurt. Great. Rebecca has recovered much better.

Aside from that… On saturday morning I went and picked up a stroller frame and a car seat base from a someone via craigslist. Those were both over 1/2 off retail and that means I can have a base in my car too and we have a smaller stroller that the infant carrier will go into. That was a good deal.

We went out to walker brothers pancake house on saturday for dinner then hung out at my parents. Sunday we went to costco in the AM and amongst other things, we bought frozen strawberries! score. But we also bought a a 9 DVD set of baby einstein movies. We bought then not sure of the price… it was $90. That is a deal considering they are $15 each, but I wasn’t sold. When we got home I got on ebay and ended up scoring a 19 DVD set for $78 shipped. So no one should ever buy us a baby einstein DVD.

Anyway… then we met my parents for lunch in Greektown, which was nice. We decided we should then run up to the garage in skokie to get the roof rack basket that we are lending to caroline for the road trip to california that they are going on. Up to the garage and back in to the city.

When we got home, I had got an email back from some dude I emailed off craigslist about some lexus rims he was selling. So I called him back and locked the deal down. So then we drove up to wildwood, got the rims, then drove back to chicago. They are the 16 inch rims off the non sport IS300 rims.

$175 for them with tires, although 1/2 the tires are crap. but that is ok, we have the tires that were on the car that have 1 more season left on them. So I will mount those up and then I don’t have to pull the snow tires off the steelies. Nice.

Then we grabbed Mr. Salsa and went over to Bob and Lisa’s to watch the sopranos and hang out.

Overall it was a nice weekend, and I got a number of things for a cheap price. I love buying things used…

so sunday, Mason was fussy most of the day. He has been getting up at 6am (thanks skylight) and has been up and wide awake, so have I. So yesterday we had him in the swing, watching baby einstein DVDs, in the chair, on his play mat, whatever and he was fussy in them all. So I put him in his bouncy chair, sit him in front of the TV, sit next to him, and turned on the F1 season opening race. He loved it. I tried to explain things to him to bring him up to speed. He watched the TV or me nearly the entire race, and smiled most of the time. It was pretty dope. And it was a good race too.

It has been a time since my last post… so lets cover a few key points I have in my head…

Frozen strawberries are really good. a great snack. The ones from costco are really nice.

The internet is great. It is really nice to be able to look up random things on a whim and get all the information so quickly.

On that note, anyone notice that Isuzu no longer makes any vehicles in the US market aside from commercial trucks? They only sell rebadged GM products. They still sell trucks in other markets, namely asia, but nothing here in the US.

I hate it when people complain about a product that doesn’t do something it wasn’t designed for. Like they didn’t learn about the product, then they get it, and they are all mad that it doesn’t do what they think it should do. OK.

We watched TLC last night and leared about a couple really overweight people. Like over 1,000lbs people. it is messed up. talk about overweight. Worth watching if you catch it on TLC.

The bush administration/republican party is scarier and scarier with each passing day. That doesn’t surprise me. I am amazed though that the public seems to think it is ok and they still like him. I am not sure what is scarier.

I built a linux box for the house. It was pretty easy and I learned new things, which was nice.

Mason is still doing great.

I need sleep.

So we drove to and back from detroit this weekend… it makes for a long weekend… We left saturday AM, picked up kevin, and headed out…

Traffic was fine aside from a crazy white trash mustache wearing guy in a nascar sticker adorned red lumina who decided that he didn’t want me to go faster than he. So as I merge on to the express way, he speeds up to match my speed…. then when I floor it and get in front of him, he gets all mad. At the next opportunity he floors it, passes me on right, and, puts his POS chevy into a gap about 4 feet wide, cause me to brake. So I back off since this guys is clearly nuts. We pass all the traffic, and he sets his cruise at 71 in a 70 and goes back to the right lane. WTF? ALL of that drama, all that speeding, just so he can go 71 mph again? I don’t get it. Why would you get all mad that someone would pass you when their cruising speed is CLEARLY more than you are planning on driving ANYWAY? I see it all the time-people drive all dumb and pass on the right or the shoulder but have no intent of going fast. They always pass on in the crazy way, then when the traffic is open and clear, they drive the speed limit, which is less than you were driving when they initiated their crazy maneuvers. WHY? It makes no sense? All I can assume is people are just giant dickheads? Fools? I have no idea… The other nice thing would have been had we been in the audi, I could have walked away from him in the first place, and I would have never had to deal with any of that BS. Faster cars can be nicer. But we got like 28mpg in the Camry, and me in the Audi would have never pulled that off. And it would have been much more cramped for those in the back seat.

So we got to detroit and went to the xmas party. It was fine. The pics are here. Nothing amazing. Mason was pretty well behaved and most people were excited to see him and hold him. He is a good baby. It is odd to think next year he is going to be moving around and what not. It is gonna rule.

This is the first time I have seen uncle kenny since he got in a bad car accident and had had a seizure (I think he had a seizure). (He had the accident in my old subaru). As a result of the ordeal, he had to relearn a bunch of things, walking, talking, writing, etc. Motor skill stuff IIRC. The other negative thing is that he has trouble linking words in his head, basically vocab lookup internally. Like he will be like “hey, I need a couch”. He really needs a pen. But when he does the mental lookup for pen, it returns couch. And he doesn’t necessarily realize it is wrong until you go to get him the wrong item, or you are like “what are you talking about?”. It must be SO frustrating. But I talked to him a bit, or rather hung out with him. He has been living in an assisted living/rehab kinda house that I guess has been really good for him. He has lost a LOT of weight. I am not sure I have before and after pics, but I will check. He is diabetic and he has been keeping better track of that too, which is good. But he was laughing and seemed to be having a good time. I hope so, since he has had it rough.

Aunt Bev brought all these old pictures she had laying around, which is funny cause half of them were from weddings or of people that have since gotten divorced and remarried and were there with their new spouses. Awesome.

We hit the hotel, kevin took the car and got some coney islands from national, and we set up all the babies stuff, watched some TV, and went to sleep. I was damn tired. We got up the next AM, drove a bit, grabbed einstein’s bagels, and hit the highway. We eventually caught up with my parents, had lunch with them, and drove into chicago. We dropped kevin off at his house, and we drove to winfield for rebecca’s grandfather’s 94th birthday. It was chill and nice. I fell asleep on the couch. TIRED. They decorated the tree a bit. Getting old is tough though.

Rebecca drove home, which was nice, since I wasn’t driving.

I must be getting old, as I was totally tired, but I used to drive way more. I mean this was a 315 mile trip each way. And we made good time, but I was tired. I have done 1,000 mile days in the past and sure I was tired, but still. I dunno. Maybe I am out of practice at the distance driving. Maybe it was the baby adding stress, or the party, or the fact that I slept poorly in the hotel, who knows.

Back at work, busy busy busy. I am looking forward to a nice 4 day weekend.

so I haven’t posted in a while, primarily because I have been busy, and I rebuilt my laptop and didn’t put the software back on it…

So what has happened since thanksgiving? Hmmmm… work is going ok, selling lots of stuff on ebay. The ebay thing is getting old, but we do need to move the stuff, and it is my job, so that is that. The boss is out of town tomorrow through end of the year, so hopefully I will catch up on all the little things that haven’t been getting done. Not that it is huge, but I have little things I would like to implement that I haven’t had time to work on…

I have a website project that I need to get working on… It is a site for a company that does something (I honestly am not sure what) but I am hoping to have the skeleton of the site done soon. There are some admin pages to control the content, so that will be kinda cool to work on.

Car related… the Jetta hasn’t been touched, but the Suzuki Throttle Bodies came. Those are cool. I need to order the standalone engine management too. Oh and start building the engine. I have been thinking about painting the car myself, although we need a bigger compressor for that. The Audi is doing fine. Al got me a great deal on the AC compressor that I need, so that will be fixed by summer. I also put snow tires on the Camry, although I didn’t replace the valve stems, so they leak air. awesome. Now I have to pay to get them fixed since we are driving to detroit this weekend and I am not risking that…

Mason related… I will post more on his blog, but he is doing good, although nothing super notable. He is smiling more, which is cool, but it is usually when we engage him. Soon it will be in general, which will be neat. He had some shots the other day, but he did quite well, barely cried and was fine since then. I am still waiting for him to be more exciting. It will come quickly.

Christmas is NEARLY here, which is kinda freaking me out cause I am not ready. We put the tree up, and there are pics posted of course… I also built shelves into the wall, which I still need to sand and touch up, but they came out pretty nice. I like them. Pretty modern looking.

I haven’t got my shopping done, which sucks cause I haven’t had time to think about what to get people. Time is slim now. And I am getting late in the season to shop online as I usually do. Grrrrr.

The xbox is cool. NES and SNES and Genesis games are cool. Old. But cool.

So there are more pics of Mason that everyone should check out. We are ending month 2. Word. He rules.

It has been a while since my last post, but I have been busy. And I rebuilt my laptop, so that didn’t help since I haven’t put the blog software back on. We have been having a good time with Mason, he is doing good. Strong little bugger. And he has begun smiling at times. It is cool. I have posted a bunch more pics…

Other than that, nothing really exciting to note.

So amazingly enough, life with a baby has created a time crunch of sorts… So I will attempt to recap things… I will be random, forgive me…

this weekend rebecca took mason to the burbs with her and they went to get paper for the birth announcements. They done chose good stuff. I went out the garage with dylan to hang out and work on cars. In typical Dylan/Bryan fashion, we spent more time driving around and eating then working, but it was a nice break none the less. We got work done on the rabbit, I cleaned out the Honda, reseated the stereo, and finally got the CD changer magazine out (rebecca hasn’t seen those CDs in a long time). Then we picked up Sarah and went back to our house.

We hung out a bit, then Dylan and I went to pickup Robs as well as Mr. Salsa and Thai. We all hung out at the house for a bit, it was nice. We ate at the table. It was cool. In hindsight, it is really funny. Like we haven’t ever had that many people over and eaten at the table. I think we should have more things like that. Not even dinner parties, but just people over and then we eat. Perhaps we could throw in a game of some kind as well. I love Cranium. That could rule. I may be on to something here. I need a card table or something though if we are going to play around the couch. or a coffee table. hmmmmmmmmm….

We also sold the Honda to Dylan for Sarah’s folks, so that car is no longer in our arsenal.

Sunday we stayed in for the most part. I ran a few errands. I installed the timer control for the front porch light. It is pretty neat. It occupies the place where the switch was and it is fully programmable as well as has a full look up table for sunrise/sunsets. I have it set to on at sunset and off at sunrise. It is pretty cool.

Monday I installed the projector to the wall and set that up. I forgot how nice it is to have a huge TV and video games. I played some Burnout-Takedown until Rebecca got annoyed. It was dope. The xbox mod chips come this week too, and I picked up a 160gb HD for it. Micheal and I are going to mod them up and I am all over installing xbox media center on mine. It will make watching all the tv and videos I have on the computer way easier. It will be nice. And I love tinkering with things.

We also stopped by the wabansia house and saw the kittens. Damn kittens are cool. They are so playful and entertaining. Michael needs to take more pictures. Michael’s dad built this incredible cat castle. it is insane. HUGE! totally cool, although it makes them look kinda dorky, but that is certainly ok with me. It would actually get bonus points in my book!

Mason is doing great, check his blog for more updates. He is still eating and sleeping and pooping, but he is awake more now than ever. He is also a bit fussier, not such that we can’t get him to be quiet, but it is still kinda annoying. He still grunts and groans as he tries to move around and use his muscles and whatnot. It is funny. But you can tell his vision is improving and he can focus better, which is neat. His dexterity is also improved, as he now actually will hold onto things, like a blanket, etc. It is cute.

I am sure there are other things that have happened, but I forget things.

Tonight we are going over to Robyn’s to see the new place, have dinner, hangout, etc. It is gonna rule. Mason will get to see a new place and new cats.

So I was doing some side IT work for a gentleman in my office building whom I have done work for for a couple years, although never much more than a couple hours here and there. So yesterday I was setting up his new wireless network and I was showing off pictures of Mason from my fotki and he commented on the fact that some of the pics were taken with a Canon 20D, and he was impressed that I had a 20D. I explained how it was a friends, and that I was looking to buy a Digital SLR but hadn’t decided on it, money, etc.

He responded that he wanted to upgrade from his Canon Digital Rebel (300D) to a Canon 5D and was I interested in purchasing his old on, since we was gonna put it on eBay… We worked it out that I traded both previously done work not yet invoiced and a little bit of work in the future for the camera. Since I hadn’t invoiced him in nearly a year, it was not in the for front of my mind and thus I had forgotten about it, so it was like a free camera to me!

The Canon Digital Rebel (300D) has gotten great reviews over time and is a solid little camera. The kit lens is an 18-55, which is ok, although a bit slow. I will likely pick up a lens or two in the future, but it is fine for now. I ordered a 2gb card and a card reader which should arrive next week.

So I got a great camera for little out of pocket, and I now get to take more pics and I finally get the control that I so missed when I switched from film SLRs. Depth of field is cool. I am very excited. I have already started taking more pics of Mason, but I haven’t really sat down and taken anything really good yet… You know I will get more car pics too…

some times I forgot how good Ben Folds is. So good.

Life is good. I am getting a lightly used Canon Rebel 300D Digital SLR in exchange for some IT work I have done, so that will be nice. Baby is doing good (and rest assured I will have more pics in the next week once I pickup the new camera). I have lots of work to do, but it isn’t bad.

And we are going to ikea tonight so that I can buy the shelves I need for the den downstairs, which means I can wire and set up the projector and get the tv up and running. I am excited. Robyn is coming over tomorrow night. Everything is coming together nicely.