Trilogy - Part X of 3 - Boy turns 11

The boy's birthday was approaching so I had to think of something special to do for him. He wanted to invite his friends over so even though I suck at talking to people I did my best to try and help him get the word out so this can happen. We did this last year with some success. He wanted to make out his own invitations and pass them out so that was good for me. We made 5 and 3 kids actually showed up and only 1 of them couldn't stay for the sleepover, Ayden and Dylan stayed and Gavin had to leave.

Those kids were cool and nice and I didn't have a problem with them. They only broke 2 things, Isaac's bedroom door and someone stepped on a Disney Infinity character. They played games and Legos and hung out in his room and watched videos on the computer. Due to Ale's pregnancy and relaxed dieting rules we even were allowed to order pizza and make a 'real' cake from a box of Betty Crocker. I haven't tasted anything like that in a while. We ordered way more food than we thought we'd need but they ate it all and drank 2 cases of pop anyway.

It was all very nice and I was very happy that Isaac had a good time. He got some Legos and Minecraft stuff and some gift cards so his friends were very nice.

I even got to eavesdrop on some of their conversations where they tried to outdo each other on how late they stay up at night hiding the fact they play games on their phones all night secretly after their parents put them to sleep. That sounds like a boastful claim I would have made back when I was their age.

Giant Eagle would not make our cake

Our one co-worker in our group at work ended up interviewing for a position in another group within our same company and got the position. We were sad to see him go as we were all close to him and he was a good friend. The usual protocol in this situation is to use our regular weekly meeting time the last week he will be with us to have a nice party with a cake and tell him we'll miss him, etc. You know that kind of thing. Well it just so happens I was surfing the internet or something and somehow this picture popped up to me which just happened to relate to me and the current situation.

I thought it was funny so I sent it around to the group in an emailing saying something like 'Ha ha this is hilarious, we should get dude this kind of cake for his going-away thing'. I wasn't entirely serious. I just wanted to share the joke with everyone. I did not expect that almost everyone responded with an overwhelming 'YES, GET THAT CAKE!' Somehow I guess this made me in charge of acquiring the cake so I stopped into Giant Eagle after work that day to order it to make sure it was going to be done in time. I told the lady exactly what I wanted, a 1/4 sheet cake chocolate with white icing, put a rainbow and a unicorn on it and the phrase 'You're dead to us now, we hope you fail'. The lady thought it was funny but didn't object so I thought we were good to good.

Until Monday morning at 7:30 am when my phone started ringing. Who the hell would be calling me at this hour? I never answer my phone so I waited until it went to voice mail. It was Giant Eagle and they wanted me to call them. I did and I guess a different lady told me they would not write those words on the cake. Why not? There is no foul language or anything and I am paying you money. Her reason was they just wouldn't do it. It was offensive to them. They would make the cake, put the graphics on that we wanted but the only thing they could do was give us a frosting tube with it to write what we wanted ourselves. I was seriously offended. I'll tell you right now that I will not be buying a cake from Giant Eagle ever again and I will discourage anyone I hear thinking of going there to follow my lead. Yeah maybe this is a small thing but to me a serious one. When I am paying you money to do a job I expect you to do what I require and request. Since when can (note my sarcasm here) a 'cake artist' at the friggin Giant Eagle pick and choose what jobs they are going to do? Really?

Man did my brain go off with some ideas to start flooding them with calls for cakes that I knew they would get upset about just to mess with them to ease my annoyance. Congrats To My Teenage Daughter On Her First Period! was a good one. Let your mind flow I bet you can picture that. I let it go though. It wasn't worth it but I did feel a needed to document this affair and warn the world.

What A Great Holiday

This was an absolutely fantastic holiday season. Perhaps one of the best ever!! Everything went great and with the exception of my car not a thing went wrong at all. I saw tons of my family and friends and did all sorts of fun things with them. I am so very lucky and happy and I wish I could feel this good all the time.

Wednesday 12/22
It all started when I went to the Pens game with Drew. (read more) We had a blast and got to see each other and hang out and catch up on stuff not to mention that the Pens whooped some ass that night. Perfect way to start the holiday.

Thurs 12/23
No more work for the weekend!! I was supposed to call Drew to invite him over to Matt's for his holiday/the dog's birthday party but he ended up being busy with his family but it didn't matter. I had another absolutely fabulous time. I got to meet Matt's new girlfriend Brandi and she seemed really nice. Plus tons of other friends came over and we watched the Pens and then the Steelers and did shots and got drunk and it was just insane. I remember wanting to cut out early when I started getting tired but because I was the first one there my car was jammed up in the back and there was no way I was getting out. I ended up sticking it out and being the last person to leave. The only bad thing that happened is that Brandon broke the ESPN food dispensing football thing that Matt had. Now it doesn't play the sound when you hit the button to open it so we had to do it manually all night. People wondered why we were doing that but it was funny to us.

Friday 12/24
I got up late today and decided to just laze around until 6pm when Isaac was supposed to be here. I had a package in the mail though when I went out to check and it was my copy of 3D Dot Game Heroes for PS3 that Ale had bought me for Xmas! Yay!! There was something for me to play.
Got Isaac, left out bells for Santa

Sat 12/25
Xmas!!
We played all day!! The big toy of the year, Snap Circuits, was a huge hit!

Sun 12/26
Globetrotters, went to see Pappy, Rick's for dinner

Mon 12/27
Played, went to see Pappy, saw the cigar box guitar museum at Speal's Tavern

Tues 12/28
Played, practiced karate, built Lowes trains

Wed 12/29
Thurs worked

Fri 12/30
Went to Nate's, played w iPad

Sat 12/31
Winter Classic, tailgating

Sun 01/01
Recover time, went over goals with Ale

Alevacation part 2

2010/07/03

There was hardly any traffic. I shot thru town and made it to the airport super early. I started tweeting and texting to see where she was but she must not be here yet. I hung out by the baggage claim for what seemed like eternity until I finally saw bags coming down the chute. I tried to hide around a corner so I could sneak a picture before she saw me but she came running when she saw me. *HUGS & *KISSES

I grabbed her stuff for her and we headed back to the car. I was so happy she was here. It felt so right. We held hands the whole way back to Jim's to unload and relax. Luckily her flight wasn't too bad. We scheduled her a bit of a delay in DC so she'd have time to get thru customs (unlike my experience) but it turns out she flew thru and probably could have scheduled an earlier flight. Oh well better safe than sorry I guess.

We got back, spread out our stuff and made the place our own. We chatted about the trip and how everything was going. We didn't really need to talk too much since we all together online so much. Ale got cleaned up and ready and we went together in PA for the first time. We were going to try to stick to our itinerary as much as possible so we went straight to Primanti's to allow Ale to experience some real Pittsburgh cuisine. She ordered a real Primanti's sandwich and I took a lot of pictures of her trying to eat it. I was happy she liked it and now she was at least 10% more Pittsburgh than she was previously. :D

After we were down eating the next thing on the agenda was to stop over at Gall's for his 4th of July party and meet some of the Greensburg crew. Ale was nervous because like me she is not exactly a people person but this were my guys so I reassured her that everyone here was cool and that she should totally feel relaxed. We saw Dave and Callie, Dan and Steff, Q and Tina and bunches more. I was so happy to show Ale off to someone finally. She is so great and I love talking about her and telling people how awesome I think she is and this was the first time I got to do it when she was actually standing right next to me. I almost died. There was a little friction at one point because I forgot Ale didn't drink and wasn't really familiar with the culture we were in. She objected to me having a beer while we were there which kind of shocked me but I wasn't going to start a fight about it. I was all her's while she was here so it was no big deal. We didn't stay for too long since she had such a long day so we headed out and back to Jim's. My dad was in town for the weekend. I told him he didn't have to come the whole way up just to meet Ale. I had no place for him to stay and I really couldn't do nothing with him since I was with her but he really wanted to meet her so when we got back I called him and he stopped by. They talked briefly and we watched a little bit of TV until we were all passing out. I think day 1 was a success.

TO BE CONTINUED

Alevacation part 1

I don't want this blog to drag on and I never finish it like #revacation but I do want to blog about it so I can remember how awesome it was and hopefully reading the main details will trigger my memories of the other in-between stuff that is really hard to convey. I'm hoping to make it like the other blog just shorter and more to the point so I can get these out faster before my memory dims.

PROLOGUE

2010/07/02

Today was a busy day. I had to get out of work as soon as I could to go get ready and when the time finally came I was extremely happy to be free. More so than usual because tomorrow I will be at the airport to pick up my girlfriend who is coming all the way from Argentina to hang out and be with me.

The first thing I needed to do was finish with my packing. I had most of my clothes and everything I was going to need. I just needed to make sure I had all my electronics and plugs, presents for Ale, etc.

Once that was square I had to go to the grocery store and get us some food for the week. I went to the Giant Eagle and bought a ton of stuff: cakes and sweets and sandwiches and breakfast stuff. Now I have to get all this stuff over to Jim's which is where we would be staying. (Instead of renting an expensive hotel room for the week I had asked Jim if we could rent out one of his rooms since he traveled a lot it seemed like a much better idea, lucky for us he had no problem with the idea)

I talked to Jim earlier in the week and got a copy of his key off him in case he was traveling at the time and wouldn't be around to let us in. I pulled in and hauled some bags down to his door and when I walked in I had to make sure I was in the right place. It was clean! I have never seen Jim's house this clean and I was amazed. Not that Jim always had a dirty house you know it's just... let's call it a single man's house. I guess he was practicing for when his girlfriend moves in. Whatever the reason I appreciated it because I wanted to make sure Ale would be comfortable here.

I brought the rest of the stuff in and put it away. Then I set up everything in my room and decided it was time for a break. I called Matt and he stopped by for a bit and we had a little party and then I crashed. I think I was supposed to do some chore for my mom in the morning but I don't remember what it was. I think it ended up being done anyway so not knowing how Pittsburgh traffic was going to be, I left early to go to the airport.

Another Wild Weekend

The father and son team of Isaac and Marc were at it again this weekend. Talk about a contented state of exhaustion. We were all over the place and saw tons of people and hung out with family and it was awesome. I'd just to highlight our adventures here so we can remember that this one is going to be tough to top.

It all started on Friday June 25th. Lisa had to go to work so she had to drop him off to me as soon as I got home. So I tried to be nice and get home as soon as possible to facilitate this. I needed to talk to Jim to get the key to his house off him because he was going away again for work and might not be there next weekend when Ale gets here to open the door for us. (We are staying at his house instead of a hotel for the #Alevacation) He wouldn't be home for a while so we chilled out and played some Red Dead Redemption. Isaac isn't that good at it because he doesn't care about doing the missions. All he wants to do is sometimes shoot a bunch of people but mainly chase down the train and ride it around. You do know he loves trains right? So we did that for a while until I got a text from Jim saying that he was home but he was going to cut the grass. I figured I could take Isaac out to eat and by the time we were done and drove over there Jim should be done with his chores so that was the plan we were going with.

We stopped at The Great Escape Clubhouse to have some dinner. This place is okay. It's a local place and the prices aren't too crazy. Isaac was excited because I guess when hanging out with his one friend Adam and his parents once they took the kids here. So he was familiar with it and he was telling me all the stuff they did. I grabbed some quarters from my car to let him play the games. I got a buffalo chicken sandwich and it was pretty good. After we were done I needed to stop at the state store next door and guess who I saw walking out? It was Aunt Dee and Aunt Mary Jo. They just came from a funeral home and they invited us to come over. I told them I had to meet my friend but that we would stop over later. From here we got in the car and went to Jim's.

I was glad to see that Jim was watching the NHL draft. For whatever stupid reason the place we were at had NBA draft coverage on and who the hell cares about that. I talked to Jim about what was going on and everything and he was really cool about it. He let me go upstairs and see the room and then told me if we were going to need an air conditioner that there was one in the basement we could use. I said no doubt we would need that and I went downstairs to get it. From there we started moving more things around. He needed a couch to go in the basement so we moved that. The futon bed that we were going to use needed hauled up to the room. That was a little harder to pull off but we that too. I asked him if he needed anything else but he said that was it for now. By around that time the draft was only on pick #12 or something but it was quarter to 9. How can it be that late already? My plan was to hang out until the Pens picked (#20) but if we were going to go to Blair's house we would have to leave now. Jim gave me the key, I thanked him for everything and we were off.

Last on our stop for today was Uncle Blair and Aunt Mary Jo's. It was fun to go over there and hang out. Mary Jo loved Isaac (cuz he's so cute) and since I haven't talked to those guys in a while it was nice to see them again. Isaac caught lightning bugs and Blair teased that he would give Isaac a dollar for every one he caught (He ended up not paying out :P). I got to run me and Ale's house idea past Dee to see what she thought. It was good getting additional input on that. I should write that up in a blog next. We didn't stay too long because it was late and getting dark and this was only the first day of our fun so we went home and pretty much went straight to bed.

Saturday June 26
I talked to my friend Anne this week and she invited us to go with her out to Keystone State Park today. Her boyfriend Ryan didn't get off work until 3 though so we wouldn't leave until shortly after. (Check out the band Ryan is in, The Boogie Hustlers, pretty awesome!!) That gave us some time to relax. I got my bills done and worked on backing up some of my videos and adding them to my tracking sheet. Isaac played more of the cowboy game (as he calls it). Around 3 we got our stuff ready and left. I told Anne we'd meet her at her house. When we got there and knocked on the door some dude I never seen answered. His name was Dan and apparently he lived there since April. Good job keeping me up to date on this stuff Anne. :| She texted me that she must have assumed she already told me she moved. Whatever. Not a problem. We just went back to my house and waited for them to come by and we followed them to the park.

This was another place I have not been in forever (see Father's Day 2010) but now I was sharing some time there with my son. He did mention that he was here before with Lisa and her cousin Katie. Not sure if that is true or not but hopefully so. At least she is doing some stuff with him. We picked out a spot on the beach and started playing and swimming. I warned Isaac about doing that gagging thing he does when he gets water in his mouth. He was pretty good about it today but he did puke once and I had to take him out of the water for a bit. I still don't understand that. I've never seen anybody else do what he does and it bothers me a bit. Besides that he played in the sand and with Ella and Sean. He made some new friends too. I took him out to the deepest parts a few times and let him go to see if he could swim and he did great. He's not a strong swimmer but he could probably stay afloat and save himself if he had to so I am proud of him for that. We may have got there late in the day but we stayed until dusk came so it was a good long time. I know I was exhausted. After we got dried off and changed we even fit in some playground time. There was a nice playground right there so I let him play around on that and got some more pics for 2010PlaygroundFest. I lit some of his fireworks when we got home since we really couldn't do that at the beach. Nothing spectacular since we are in lamo anti-fireworks PA but he still enjoyed it. The little neighbor kids even came over to check them out. I made us some food and we took showers and went to bed after that.


Sunday June 27
We woke up today and had one more awesome thing to do before the weekend was over. It was Allie's 4th birthday party!! She is my cousin Stephanie's kid. Aunt Dee called in the morning about this. I guess she was coming too so it would be a good idea to pick her up when we left. We ate breakfast and got our stuff ready to go. Zip was supposed to follow us over but he was not there. He had one of those inflatable jumping houses for kid's birthday parties and he was going to set it up for them. That was cool! We made a quick stop in Delmont at the Wal-Mart to pick up some presents and we were off. This is in an area I don't normally go so I had to use my phone's GPS to get there but we had no issues. I couldn't wait to see their new house.

There were already lots of people there when we arrived. Lots of older people that must have been Sam's (Stephanie's husband) relatives because I did not recognize them. I did see Elaine (her mom) but from what she told me most of the other relatives that I know from her side of the family were on a cruise in Alaska at this time and were not coming. I did see a girl that I went to high school with there and that was weird. We had a blast though! The house was amazing! I am so jealous. This is the kind of house that I could picture myself being happy with. It's big and there is a room for everything. Their property is very nice. A whole acre I think they said. I walked all around everywhere when I first got there and checked it out. You could say it's sort of close to Pittsburgh but it's still in a woodsy area which is nice. Their pool was awesome too!! I know Isaac loved it. I think my child is turning into a fish. We could not keep him out of it once we let him in. Everyone seemed to be apprehensive at first about going in except a few of us and then the pizza came so we had to get out to eat. We went back in for a bit but it started storming so we closed it but it stopped after 20 minutes so we opened it again. We had to get out again when it was cupcake and present time. The cupcake's she made were awesome. They were Oscar, Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes!! Allie loved all her presents. A lot of people left by that time but there were a few of us who stayed. We got back in the pool and played some volleyball for a while. They had flippers and I never used them before but I love them. It's amazing how dramatically they can improve your swimming skills. With those on I could motor across the pool in seconds. I kept them on for the rest of the day and my ankles were hurting later. We also got see and play with her new baby Jillian. She is so super cute. Actually the last 2 groups to leave were us and her mother. I got to talk to them seriously for a bit. I also told them the house thing and she was kind of bugged that my mom made excuses not to come. We also planned what we are doing to do next week when Ale comes because they want to meet her. I guess she gets some deal at this bowling alley nearby so we are going to do that. I hope to show their house to Ale so I can give her an idea what I dream of for us together.

We probably didn't leave until like 8. We stopped at Burger King to get some dinner and even after I was nice enough to put on a shirt the kid still gave me crap for not wearing shoes in the store. I was going to call and bitch the place out about him but whatever. As big of a total no-issue that was I guess he was just following rules. We took our food home and ate then took a shower. I put Isaac to bed because it was getting late and he needed some sleep after that weekend since he had to get up early with me this week to go to Penn Pals. I called Ale on Skype and pretty much fell right asleep after telling her about what all we did. I can't wait until she can come with us when we do those things. <3

Birthday party at Seabase

This past weekend I got to pick Isaac up a day early because he was invited to his friend from school, Nicholas McCracken's birthday party, which was at Seabase in Greensburg on 2010/03/18. I feared that Lisa would not take him (as she has failed to take him to similar events in the past) so I had to take charge and make sure he was going to go. Luckily she said she had to work or something so she couldn't take him and it was alright for me to get him a day early to make sure he got to go. Common sense prevails, YAY!! In return I traded her a day next week to make her feel like she wasn't getting slighted. A day that I needed her to watch him anyway since I wouldn't be back from my vacation yet so see how awesomely that worked out! ;)

So we went. Neither of us have ever been there before and it was really nice. Tons of climbing stuff for kids, a small arcade, a mini golf course, even a laser tag course and a big cafeteria area by the party rooms in the back. We were in the Whale room. All the kids had a blast and I got to meet a few more parents of Isaac's peers. I'm not good at the social thing but I thought I did an okay job of mixing in and talking to a few people. Although I have ran into Chris, Nicholas' dad, before (PT Fall Festival last year) I think this was the first time I met his mom, Amy. She was very nice and commented that Nicholas was always talking about having Isaac come over to play. I said we should make sure this happens then. Garret's mom, Tina, was there who I see often when picking Isaac up at Penn Pals but I don't really talk to her. They were at Isaac's party last year when he turned 6. I also met some other guy who I forgot his name or who his kid was. I noticed he really was going around chatting it up with everyone so I felt more comfortable talking to him. I think we talked about how we got here what roads we took and how crappy traffic was everywhere.

Anyway while we mixed it up the kids got to run around like nutballs and climb and run and jump all over the place. For as big as it was it seemed kind of empty. Amy told me that it's on weekends you don't want to be here because then it is packed to excess. We did that for about an hour and then it was time to go back to the room. They had pizza first and then cake. What really impressed me was the young girl that worked there. She seemed to be trained very well. She handled giving all the kids food expertly and afterwards when it was time for presents, she was handing them off, disposing of the wrapping paper and then storing them in a bag so they could take them home later. She must have done this many times because she had it down to a science I thought. I got this big Crayola pad thing for Isaac to give to Nicholas for a present. I figured it was better than a toy gun and I didn't want to randomly grab something that someone else may have also randomly grabbed (which happened, he got two of the same Star Wars Playdoh thingies). Plus I figured it was educational to help him with writing and stuff. It was something I would have bought for Isaac. I hope the kid liked it. After presents they all lined up at the door and the girl gave them all a couple tokens to play games with. Before I could get out and find where Isaac went he had already blown all his tokens at the arcade in some train game machine. A ball rolls out onto the back of this train car and you can control how fast or slow the train goes. The point is to get it past a few spinning obstacles that are trying to knock it off the car and get it the whole way around the track. I guess if you make it you win. He still got a bunch of tickets for trying though. He cashed them in for candy. That was about it. I let him run around for another half hour or so and I noticed people were already pulling out. My plan was the whole time to walk over to Primani's while this was going on to get some food and watch the start of the Pens game. I just wanted to scope the place out and make sure he'd be okay but I ended up staying the whole time. It worked out better that way in the end. The whole thing only went on for less than two hours but I guess it seemed longer to him. All in all a very good time. Glad we went. Glad we were invited. I made sure that Isaac thanked Nicholas and his parents. I also thanked them as we left and we went home from there. I did miss the Matt Cooke fight live (retribution for taking Savard out a week earlier with what some consider a dirty hit) but that was okay. Fluery got his first shutout of the season and we beat Boston 3-0. The day was full of win!