1. Mask
2. Body Suit
3. Belt
4. Cape
5. Separate Boots we purchase (which by the way looked perfect)
6. Luke and Vader (Empire Strikes Back Style Battling) Trick or Treat Bag
7. We also purchased him a lightsaber which he didn’t get in his hand until Saturday

My father also managed to dig out my brothers old full helmet mask.   This helmet includes a voice changer and separate buttons that can do Darth Vader quotes.  It is soo much better than the current one they have out in the stores.  The current one is a half mask that doesn’t cover your whole head.  Thankfully my father managed to find that helmet, I actually have an identical one, but it’s still in the box.  I would have opened it …….. but now I don’t have to.

We wanted to dress up in costumes to compliment his.   First choice of course would be Storm Troopers, but for the money and quality you get the only choice was the Supreme Edition Storm Trooper Costume.  As much as Xie and I would both love to own our own sets, we could justify spending around 1500.00 for two of these outfits.  So that was out.   We ended up buying two Darth Maul costumes and added in the Deluxe Sith robes.   For the overall look it worked pretty good.   So we had Darth Vader  and two generic Sith Lords to walk him around.   In the end it was good we didn’t do the Storm Trooper costumes, parents were not allowed to cover their faces in costume at the zoo.

Saturday we went as a family to “Boo at the Zoo” in Columbus.  This was really Lex’s only opportunity to trick or treat because tonight is too late to go out somewhere and drive.   Our town actually (for some illogical reason we didn’t realize until it was almost over) had trick or treat last Thursday.   Let’s look at that for a second.  Why the heck would you have it on Thursday October 27th?   I read online it was going to be the 28th and that makes a little more sense.   Weekends and Friday nights make sense.   October 31st makes sense.   Thursday October 27th makes no sense.

Lex had his costume and was excited for his first Halloween experience.   So we found out he could wear his costume and trick or treat at a place he loves, we jumped on it.   Like all families we did attempt to get out of the house much earlier in the morning.  Like most families this didn’t turn out to be the case.   We did rush out fast enough that we had to feed Lex breakfast on the road.   We stopped at the Waffle House at the I-71 Delaware exit.   While it isn’t the first Waffle House I’ve been in, it actually is the first I have eaten at.   This one (other than the effect they accept credit cards) seems to be trapped in 1977.   The food was ok, but it was a grungy time warped experience.   At around 3 we finally made it to the Zoo.

We all got dressed in the car.   The reason I mentioned that Lex knew what was in the costume (even though he had only tried it on once) was the belt.   At first we thought we forgot the belt.   He noticed this immediately.  After digging we discovered we did have it.   Thankfully avoiding the meltdown of Lex noticing the costume was not “correct”.   This was his Shakespearean acting, and nothing was going to be wrong with it.

Just walking in we started to get strange looks.  There was very few parents that dressed up to take their kids out.  We purchased our tickets and walked in getting all sorts of looks.   It wasn’t supposed to rain, but it did for about 15 minutes.   Every time we go to the zoo somehow it rains, not matter what the forecast is.  Thankfully this was short unlike the Noah worthy rain from the last time we went to the Cleveland Zoo.   As soon as the rain ended Lex didn’t want to ride in the stroller.   He insisted that Darth Vader walked.  He received a ton of compliments.  Some people thought he was dressed as the kid in the Super Bowl commercial.    Unfortunately you can’t make a 2 year old look too intimidating, even in a Vader mask.

After the first stop to keep the magic alive and add to the persona I started playing the Imperial March on my iphone and just let loop over and over again.   Through out the day (according to play count) we heard the song 52 times.  That means for over 2.5 hours that was pretty much the only music I heard.   Lex did however pretty much march in step with the music.   It was a long day.  We kept asking if he wanted to remove the mask, because with the whole thing and the voice changer it was pretty heavy for someone his age.   He however insisted on constantly wearing it while walking around.  He even got upset when he had to remove it to take a drink.   We brought the lighter front only Vader mask that we thought he would want to switch to later, it was never worn.

While looking at some of the animals he would remove his helmet.  At the point he was willing to be picked up to get a better view.   Picked up or not, his whole body language changed.  He no longer was Darth Vader, he was Alexander.   Then the mask went on and the process reversed. He is a natural actor that can get into the role.  We all received compliments (Lex the most) and everyone thought it was great.   There were also other Vader’s there, but none had the full helmet except for Lex.   Geek packratting for the win.  Though he didn’t get as much candy as he could have traditional trick or treating (we did supplement his candy after the fact), I don’t think he could have had a better time for Halloween.

 Lex in his Vader Glory

While I was at college one of my roommates was dating this girl (Kristy) who was in marching band with us.  She was in my trumpet squad so I knew her pretty well.  I was dating someone else at the time, that gave me the best breakup I ever received (another blog post for another time).   Close to the end of marching band season, the girl I was dating gave me the mentioned breakup and I was single.  Somehow this other girl had a big blowup with my roommate and they also broke up.    In the end only one of three of us in the dorm room were seeing anyone.

This was a time that brother came up to stay with me for the weekend.  He would have been 12 at this time.   I think it was the normal little siblings weekend sometime in the October timeframe.  It wasn’t unique – but at the same time it didn’t seem to be common for tons of people to have their little brothers or sisters at the school.   My brother had the freedom of staying out late and hanging with my room mates.   We were doing just that.   This relationship was put into motion because I took him out around the campus that night.

My brother and I were out rollerblading around the campus (how dated does that sound?), and ran into Kristy who also was a rollerblader.    We spent around an hour or so tearing up and down the quad and around buildings.  It was fun and probably one of the last times my brother and I had a normal sibling bonding experience.  It was getting late and everyone was tired.  My dorm was the closest so I went up and dropped my brother off at my dorm room to play with the computer while I went to walk/roller blade Kristy back to her dorm room on the other side of campus.   I returned to my brother about 2 hours later and he was hanging with my roommates and just fine.  I spent the next day with my brother until he left sometime in the afternoon and then I spent the rest of the day with Kristy.

It was a fast whirlwind relationship and she came back with me for the weekend sometime in December and stayed at my Dad’s apartment with me for the weekend.   The most interesting experience was watching her fascination with seeing Lake Erie frozen over.   Something I think that most of take for granted growing up on the lake, but she had never seen it before and was filled with awe.   We walked around town, and I introduced her to some of my friends from my hometown.   We headed back to school and we were a few weeks from winter break.

Winter break came around and my father had purchased a house across the town.   I was staying at my dad’s house and one of my friends was in town from Florida.   I didn’t have my license yet, but my friend did.  We thought a great idea would be to take a two hour drive to New Philadelphia to visit my girlfriend.   My father was kind enough to lend me his Beretta for the trip.    We picked up another one of my friends and off we went to New Philadelphia.   Thinking back this was the last long trip all three of us ever took together.

I honestly had no idea where New Philadelphia truly was, but we had a map.   The drive took a little over 2 hours only mildly going over the speed limit.   I had her home address and phone number and that was all I thought was needed.   Following the map and stopping for directions once inside New Philadelphia we managed to find her town house.   We stop by and knock – no answer.   We didn’t have much else to do and we didn’t want to give up and just head home.   We noticed a mall on our drive in and thought we would go hang out there for awhile and try again later.   She wasn’t expecting us, so sometimes these things happen.

We are walking through the mall and I spy my girlfriend in a jewelry store.   She was in a jewelry with another guy.  This gentleman was a marine whom she had supposedly broken up with before she started dating my roommate.   I went up and confronted her, and they were picking out her engagement ring.   I was floored, but managed not to get into it with her boyfriend (ex?)(betrothed?) in the middle of the mall.   Which of course this is a good thing since I was 150 lb geek and he was a marine.   She tells us to come over to her house in about an hour and we would talk about it.

We manage to get to her house and at this point the marine was ready to tear me limb from limb.   I stuck it out and my two friends backed me up (one of my few true brave face moments). Kristy managed to calm him down and control him long enough to get him into the car.  Of course this included the standard stay back and don’t provoke him on the way to the car.   My friends bless them offered to chase after him when he tore out of there and pull the baseball bats out of the trunk.  Sensible me didn’t take them up on the offer.

She explained to me he asked her to marry him and insisted on buying a ring even though she hadn’t said yes.   I of course was young dumb and eighteen.   For some reason I believed her enough to kind of trust her, but not enough to stay with her.  So while she blocked off time with me (who knew who might show up next) we didn’t stay too long and headed out to the gas station.  I was heart broken, angry, and didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I thought about going back.  I thought about cutting her out of my life (kind of hard when she sits two seats down from you in band).   I didn’t know what I was going to do.

My friend from Florida had to call and check-in (mind you he was 18).   His parents told him that he had to be back at the house in a little over an hour.   It had taken us over 2 hours to get to where we were.    I think we took my father’s Beretta to the limits of driving on the way back.  At one point we almost hit a cop car backing out of a driveway.   We were lucky that there was too much traffic behind us that he couldn’t get out and immediately come after us.  Either way we took the first back roads when we were out of his sight that we could.   We manage to do the two hour drive in an hour and half, only getting him home slightly late.

In the aftermath, it turns out she was engaged though she says she called it off when she managed to get back to school 2-3 weeks later.  In the interim I managed to get back together with my girlfriend I had before I went to college.   Since there is some overlap here, here is a couple relevant paragraphs I did when I wrote about her (remember young, dumb, and eighteen):

School rolled around and I reconciled with my girlfriend (Kristy)from the previous semester.  Now for some reason this should have been a straight break up with Kim moment.   I held off for a couple days and Kim came down to visit.   The situation was not a surprise to my college girlfriend, she knew what was happening.    I took Kim to the local mall and we walked and talked, but my college girlfriend stalked us and was obvious about following us. After getting back to the car Kim asked what it all was about, I explained and broke up with her.  She dropped me off at my dorm room and I thought then that she left.   I went up and spent time with my college girlfriend, while this was happening Kim proceeded to make out with my roommate’s best friend.  That’s the kind of rebound girl she was.

At this point you would think that the Kim college years era was over, well not quite.   I get a phone that she is pregnant and needs to talk.   I arrange it that I come home that weekend to talk to her.  Problem was college girlfriend insisted on going and I had not told her about the pregnancy.  I manage to get up north and slip away for a little bit to talk to Kim.   This leads me back home and my college girlfriend is upset.  She tells me she is pregnant (I had not told her Kim was pregnant yet).  So I’m 18 years old and I find out in less then seven days that I have two girls pregnant.  To add to the top of the tower here, college girlfriend and I break up.

So let’s step back for a moment here to right before the break-up.   Logic me in place seems to mean that Kristy figured out Kim was pregnant and wanted to throw her weight against that notion.   In retrospect seeing that I caught her buying an engagement ring so some leeway to talk to an ex-girlfriend should have been allowed.   So she figured it out, and then she found out that Kim was pregnant.  I was staying at my mother’s house and this lead to a very loud and heated argument in my mother’s living room at around midnight.  We woke up the whole house.   I also had two friends over witnessing this whole train wreck play out in real time.   Kristy was so upset she broke up with me.  She left with one of my friends who said he would drive her back to school.   I almost came to blows with him as they were leaving.   I think my mother held me back.

They didn’t drive back to school, they went to his parents house (he was still a senior in school).   Yes they did that night, and that’s are far as I’m going to discuss it.  They started dating for a few weeks and then he broke it off with her.   He had another girl and Kristy was a psycho.  Here is where we go back to the other piece again:

A few weeks later I’m dating someone else and I find out both college girlfriend and Kim have miscarriages within a week of each other.  I don’t tell anyone and did not tell either one of them, so it’s coincidence that they both told me, and today I think they were both lying to me over the incident.   Around this time period my grandfather died and I was dealing with that also.

 

The night Kristy told me about her miscarriage I just took off walking.   I walked for 3-4 hours that night.  I walked for miles dealing with this.   The weather was a mixture of flurries and freezing rain.  It eventually moved into heavy snow.  At the time I didn’t careMy roommate knew what I was going through and was worried about me.  I showed up right before he was getting readying to call someone.  I walked in with I then immediately sat down and wrote this poetry / essay piece:

Slowly as the sun shrinks and the blowing leaves stop their travels, life does not contain the same vibrancy. My footfalls thud heavily upon the freshly snow covered road. The constant thumps comfort me sadly. They will never leave me, even if I wanted to run from them.

Thump, thump………….

My heart is iron. It is dulled and heavy, tempered by remorse I do not understand the people that ask “Why me.” Everything that has happened through my destiny is, in part my doing. The cracks in my iron are not my fault, but I could have avoided them. It is as if I opened my chest cavity as loves swings a sledge to my iron. Never dodging the strike, I am knocked down by the blow.

Thump, thump, thump………..

The advice of avoidance has been given time and time over. I have been told, ” You fall in in love too easily.” How can that truth exist, something so hard and rare never happens easily. I have been truly deep in love three times in the expanse I call life. One lasted for nine months. I loved her with my all. When I was with her I traveled through different social circles. She is now engaged to be wed. The past slips silently through the cracks in the floor.

Thump, thump……….

The second love of my life was one of my best friends. I loved him like a brother. I would have taken a bullet for him or gave him the world. The sun set on our friendship when he broke his word to me. After the promise broke it’s binds, he continued turning the knife in my back. He is now hunting me down because he thinks I returned the favor.

Thump, thump, thump……….

The last love of my life I continue to weep oceans of tears for in the late hours of twilight. One day she is by my side, hand in mine, telling me how happy she was. The next she isolated me and shut all the corridors connecting us. I have knocked on all the doors but I do not get any answer. As it looks I will spend my future alone. She always asked me how I knew she was the one.

Thump, thump….

When I was with her time and space held a different dimension. Happiness was not a possibility but a constant. My heart and mind held no doubts in the dark corners. Mu soul was content. Her smile radiated like a summer sunset. Her eyes held the mysteries of the cosmos. One of these mysteries is why she shut me out, I hope someday I can solve it. I can remember the past. My heart was content.

Thump, thump, thump…………..

The final breaking tore my heart in two. I do not think I can have as true a love again as I had with any of these three. Each moment is painfully filled with happy memories. It is ironic how happy memories can hurt worse then a physical wound. Some people claim I am gifted with the skill of writing. Many times I have regarded this skill as a curse, I can watch the snow plow go down the street beside me and as soon as that image reaches paper it will never be forgotten. All three have poems and writings associated with them, that will never leave me in peace.

Thump, thump………

Glancing at my surroundings I no longer know which road I am on. I do not know how I got here other then a couple hours have passed. Distances are irrelevant anyways. These walks are to sort out my thoughts, not to see how far I could go. distance is a dimension in which I do not have an existence. The important thing is the thoughts that filter through my weary gray matter. The thoughts that run rampant through fields of neglect and sorrow reap fertilization they receive.

Thump, thump, thump………………

Not that long ago I lost my grandfather to a slow painful series of strokes and bad medical conditions. We had never been close and to all my memory had never really sat down and talked. About two or three weeks before he passed away I went to see him on my way to school. It hurt so badly to see the big strong man I had been visiting for so many years, so sickly and small. I could not stay long because my heart sank to unchartered depths at the sight. The only good memory I have is when he said my name in recognition, something he had not been doing for anyone else.

Thump, thump……

I have had many scars in my so far short existence, but I only hold one fear. It is not a fear of depth or pain, I have made my peace with those. Each day I have lived I have cherished every second. If given the option to do it all over again…. I would not take it. All the events that have happened have molded me into the man I’ve become. The nagging fear has not happened, but it might someday. I won’t tell you what it is, but pray for me it does not come true.

Thump, thump, thump…….

As I turn down the next street I find my bearings. I can now start the long trek home. I will go back a different way then I came. What fun is it just to retrace steps you have already taken? The world will continue to turn and I’ll continue walking, sorting out my problems. If you should ever see me, give me a short wave or a nod. I don’t need a ride, just time and distance to help stitch my emotional gashes. I do not need to hear a friendly voice, I have my feet hitting the pavement going thump, thump, thump………..

 

During the walk I was in a bad place.  I managed to survive.  There have only been a couple times since then that I have felt as depressed and miserable as I did that night.   Kristy and I did get together a couple more times, but it didn’t stick more than a couple days.  We had been through too much.   I don’t remember the last time I talked to her, I don’t even really care.   I did look her up on Myspace to check on something.   I didn’t message her or friend her, I just checked and she had two kids.   Both would have been too young to be mine.   So that was just to kill a lingering question of what if she was still pregnant and lied about the miscarriage.   That lookup settled one thing that haunted me a little bit through the years.

As a final aside – she races lawn tractors competitively now…………

Young, dumb, and eighteen – that is all I have to say for myself.

Reading through I apologize for all the asides – but since I mostly write stream of thought this kind of thing happens.

So yesterday I opened up an ask me anything post on Facebook.  I knew before I wrote it that no one out would respond (know your friends people).   However one of my friends from Star Wars Galaxies did reply.   Her question?  It was to see what I remember about the first time we met (virtually, we have never met in real life).  Her challenge was that I didn’t remember.   To be fair, I’m not sure I actually do.   I am however one of those people that can remember and pull out little details.

I won’t say that Q and I are are close friends.  We are people that enjoying chatting occasionally.  She has helped me pass many hours away on the forums over the years and even helped me overturn a ban once.   We were in the same guild for awhile, but most of our interaction did take place on the forums.  Playing SWG there was two major parts of the game for me.   The forum was a major part.  I was one of the first to break 10k posts in our forum section.   The game was another section.  Both parts were separated by large degree.  I had different friends on the forum, that I did not hang out with in the actual game.

While there are three possible instances where I I met Qitu the first time, the forum was more than likely the first.  She was a regular forum poster, I was a regular forum poster.  It just makes sense.   I don’t think this was the instance she was counting.   So we move on to most likely event number two.   This would be at Groovefest.  It was a server wide party that I highly doubt she didn’t attend.  I can’t say with everyone I interacted with that day that I can remember her, I was in the thick of things.   Let’s move on to what she is thinking of.

Inside the game I ran one of the first museums.   Seeing I borrowed or had sponsors for alot of the museums, I had once person that helped me the most and loved the scavenger hunt.  This person was named Padre.   Padre was the mayor of Serenity Valley on Tatooine – a town Qitu would later be mayor of.   Somewhere around late 03 / early 04 Padre announced he was leaving the game.   I’m not sure I remember why.  When he was leaving the game he wanted to make sure three things were all set and would continue after he left the game.  The first being his guild, the secon d was Serenity Valley, and finally the Intrepid History Museum.

To insure that I had everything of I needed from his item collection, I was taken on a tour of store houses in Serenity Valley.  Wandering from storage house to storage factory we went through items I needed and what he would leave behind.   While we were out jumping around and weighing down my inventory, Padre got pulled aside for city business.   Up comes this person to discuss the city and I’m 99% sure this was Q and it was our first in game meeting.  If I’m correct it was the first meeting where a conversation would have occurred.  So now she can tell me if I’m right or on crack.

Qitu is someone I know by many names and has been a friend for years.   While we never will be best buds, it will be the kind of friendship where we’ll catch up from time to time.   It is the kind of friendship I can see going on until one of us passes.   It’s low maintenance and in that sense there will never really be the drama that exists in other closer friendships.   It is a friendship I have never regretted and would be a little bit emptier than I would have been if I never met her.

Yesterday I made a joke tweet (which get’s crossposted to Facebook), trying to be funny and truthful at the same time:

Dear facebook friends – no matter the cause or reason, I will not copy and paste your status and make it mine – copy paste if you agree

I immediately got 3 likes and one criticism.   I guess this one person thinks I was calling them out, but they actually post pictures and the occasional video.   More content than a lot of people on my friends list.  Glancing at my news feed n any given day I would say 1 in 5 status messages is a copy /paste type post. These posts come in a few styles.

1.  Copy Paste if you agree, don’t comment if you don’t – this one annoys my wife the most.

2.  Copy and Paste to acknowledge it’s (XXXX) week – this happens weekly.

3.  Funny things like honoring death star contractors or people eaten by dragons.

4.  Question and answer games.

5. Slacktivism – the people that think changing their status message or profile picture actually brings awareness or change.  These same people usually only change these things and do nothing else to support these causes.

6.  Facebook warnings (going from privacy issues to facebook is going to start charging)

7.  Computer virus alerts – seriously people some of you are posting of issues that were patched 2-3 years ago.  That is centuries in internet time.

I get it.   For me personally it is not something I find interesting to really participate in on either side.  My biggest problem is with “Sunday Facebook Users”.  These are the Facebook users that only update their status with these messages and nothing else.   They never upload photos.  The only thing they have put forth in original thought for the service is wishing people Happy Birthday (and these people are truly the most on the ball to wish someone Happy Birthday).   Even updating their status to something unique and real once a month would be nice – even for a second.    These people however seemed to be scared of showing any part of themselves that isn’t part of the Sheeple, I want to be just like everyone else culture.

The people that have accounts on Facebook but don’t really use it, I understand.   The people that only use Facebook for the games, I understand.  The people that put enough effort in to copy and repost, but nothing else; I don’t understand.   I want to read original thoughts and hopes people.  I want to know what you are doing in life and what you want our of it.   What I don’t want is the equivalent of spam and chainletters.   This is the kind of thing that my son will be grounded for later in life – or it be the punishiment to read through all of them.   “Son, here is an unfiltered Facebook feed – you must read, repost, and repsond to EVERYTHING for one week”.

There are some similarities with Twitter.   On that service we have the retweet.  The difference between retweeting and copy – repost is that we are acknowledging (rewarding) the person that originally posts something.  We can generally trace something back to the original author.   You can’t do this on Facebook if you copy and paste.   Blogging also has some similarities, but once again it is either original thought or at least links to something that is.   This is a referral reposting.  Finally there is link sharing, which once again leads to read something of original thought and not spam.   All of these are good examples of taking something else and posting it as your status.  Unlike the examples I gave above.

Is it so wrong that I want to create something and be an individual.  That I want craziness and beauty in what they believe and do?  I want to look at all my friends and say they are all beautiful and unique individuals, instead for some of them they are mindless drones.

It’s too bad they don’t make a toddler sonic screwdriver.  He is already obsessed with Doctor Who.   Well I guess a science officer in the federation will do for now.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

My father was telling me how the people there were talking about the Storm Trooper being movie authentic.    I think I’m sad because I know he is a sergeant in the Imperial Army from his uniform………

…..smile…..

:P

For those going WTF – she tweeted this yesterday:

I HATE it when people insert “…smile…” in their blog entries instead of just using an emoticon. “…smile…” makes me want to puke. :P

Over the last few months I have been reading Lex a bed time story every night consisting of a chapter from Frank Baum’s Land of Oz books. The first thing Xie said when I told her that I wanted to work through these books with him was “There is more then one?”. It seems that there are quite a few people that think the story begins and ends with “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Obviously this is not the case.

Baum composed a total of 20 books to the series and it was then picked up by other writers after him. I’m not sure if we will go into the books by other author’s (which canonically add another 20 for a total of 40 books), but currently we are at book seven.  Some of the books are great – others it seemed Baum was just “phoning it in”.  So when you are starting the next book, you can’t be sure of the quality you are getting into. Though I have a feeling over my life I’ll be reading these again. Lex is still at the stage where he is listening to my voice, but not really paying attention to the story yet. So when he is I’m expecting to have to go through all of these again.

I got into the Oz books when I was around 9 or 10.  I used to check them out of the Amherst public library and just devour them (hence why I was aware of the series).   I doubt I ever read them in order, I never read any not written by Baum, and I’m positive that I did not read all the books that he wrote.  I loved reading them regardless.

Working through the thought process I take that back – I didn’t read any other canonical books by other Authors.   I did have a science fiction-esque book that took place in Oz. It was titled “A Barnstormer in Oz”- my parents bought it for me when I requested to pick it up when I saw it sitting at a Big and Small Lots store.   I got it home and low and behold the story it told.   Well really I can’t tell you the story since I don’t really remember it, but there was nudity and sex in the book.  This was one of those cases where the child never tells the parents what the book really contained.

My parents bought be Wizard of Oz smut and never realized it.  You can’t blame them, it would be the same as if I bought Alexander a Harry Potter spin-off book in a few years and never read it myself.   You would go, oh Harry Potter – go ahead kid knock yourself out.   All and all I don’t think it was all that graphic – but it was graphic enough to shock a ten or eleven year old reading it.  Somewhere around the time I went to college the book disappeared from my possession.  It is just as well, it’s not one of the book’s I plan on reading to Lex anyway.

Most nights we get through a single chapter – some nights he falls asleep quickly so I don’t finish the chapter, other nights he is bouncing around and refusing to sleep so we get through two or three chapters.  This is done every weeknight after his bath and before my dinner. He get’s top priority, so every night we have the routine down to maximize my time with him.  Get home, feed him, play for a little bit, give him a bath, and then read to him until he is passed out.  All in all, it’s not a bad routine.

I’m hoping to do a blog write up on each of the books, ideally I was going to do a write up as I finished each of them.  Doing the math of not a single write up so far, and the fact I am on the seventh book – that doesn’t seem to have happened.   This isn’t something that is alone related to the Oz books – I’ve finished a few other books this year that I wanted to do write ups on but haven’t yet had a chance.   Life the universe and everything like that.   Hopefully soon these will get written, published, read, and commented on – or more then likely ignored.

Until then I hope you all have a pleasant journey with me as I travel down the yellow brick road one chapter at a time.

I don’t have too many face shots that are taken head on enough for this to work – so the one I used was about as good as it was going to get. The one of Lex was one I considered the most elf like. Enjoy!

Just cause I have pants on my head doesn’t mean I don’t want any candy!!!!

Just a bad iphone picture from today that I thought I would share.

Actually this video is a few months old, but I haven’t posted it. This all started when I was mock throwing a shirt at Lex, and he found it funny. It led to one of his first laughing fits. Enjoy.

Some people think I am joking when I say that playing at home upsets the baby. Let this video be proof for the rest of you.

I was in a meeting at work and around 3:45 a call came into my cell phone.   Since the meeting was ending soon I didn’t even look at the call and sent it straight to voice mail.  As I left the meeting a few minutes later I walked out and saw it was Xie calling me.  I called her as I was walking back to the car.   Her mother had her and she was on the way to the hospital.  I rushed back to my office and rushed through everything I had to get done, get the paperwork filed for the maternity leave I was taking and try to rush out there.   Now my hiring company (I’m a contractor) was in town preparing for the following week to do performance reviews – while I was waiting for my boss to show back up they rushed me through my review.   My boss finally appeared and I rushed him through what needed to be known and done, and had the paperwork signed.   Thirty minutes after talking to Xie I was on the road to home. My commute was an hour, then another half hour to the hospital.

When I got home I rushed taking out and feeding the pets since I wouldn’t be coming back that night.  I also grabbed everything Xie and I needed, but she didn’t take with her.   While the dogs were eating I managed to get out the announcement on the blog that we were heading to the hospital and things were happening.  I had actually written that a couple weeks before but had it ready in preparation so that took only a few seconds to get it marked as published.  Everything said and done, I was at the hospital about two hours after Xie.

When I arrived she was in a staging area, where they get you ready to have a baby.   A room where you are not far enough along to move into the next room.   They had her on medications, but she was still feeling quite a bit of pain.  Her mother was there comforting her and feeding her ice chips, essentially wrangling it so I couldn’t get in at all.   Now I have stated that I may not always be the most comforting person in the world, but I didn’t have a chance.   At one point Xie interjected and pleaded with me to talk to her.   Now I’m normally a guy with too many words and would just keep talking about anything and everything, but I blanked – and felt like total crap over it.

Continued in part 4 coming soon

My father, what do I say.   I love the man to death, but for me he wasn’t the perfect father, but neither was I the perfect son.   I can say now that he is one of the closest family members I have.   Part of that is my nature, part of it is the relationship we strengthened when I was traveling on the road and my dad and I had many hours of long conversation.   Either way we have a great relationship now.

Though he will say otherwise, I’m not exactly the child he wanted.   I wouldn’t worry too much about that though, my son could easily turn into a mustang driving jock, very far the opposite side of me.   I’m sure I’ll have to deal with the same problems my father did; not understanding the time period, not understanding what I was going through in school, and not understanding me.   Part of this is par for the course of being the oldest child, and part of it was the differences that sprung up in interest.   My father collected alot of books growing up and said he enjoyed reading, I would say this is one thing we have in common over the long course of years.    The problem is I don’t ever remember my father reading a book.

If we set aside some of the truly negative memories we can focus on some of the more interesting memories:

• My father forcing me to do practice with the Greenville HS swim team when I was 12 because I was swimming circles at swim class of those my own age
• Driving home in one of my father’s work beater cars that he went through that had holes in the floor boards and you could see the ground
• My father taking us to my grandfather’s in Greenville every year and taking us out for Maid-Rites
• Taking my brother
• Teaching me to play Chess at age nine (and my brother learned also when he was 4)
• Setting up a swing in the garage, until a neighbor girl fell off it and smacked her head
• Sneaking change from his dresser some my brother and I could sneak up to Convenient and buy candy
• Building us a clubhouse, that eventually was vandalized and was burned down
• Building us snow forts in the mounds of snow left behind by snow plows
• Picking me up from the police station when I was busted for shoplifting at age 14
• For being there later in life when I needed him

For being a decent father to a rotten son ;P I can say he did an ok job.  He taught me to take acceptance of the consequences of my actions, that I need to be my person.  That I can do things my way, and as long as I was making forward progress he wouldn’t stand in my way or get mad.  While I didn’t see it growing up, I can look back and say my father made me a better man.

Happy Father’s Day Dad.

Xie and I had been anti-kids our whole relationship.   Well, anti-kids is pretty strong.  We will leave it at the fact that we had no plans to ever have any children.  Even after the ectopic pregnancy we didn’t have any plans.  It was something that if it happened we would handle it, if it didn’t we wouldn’t feel that we were lacking anything in our lives.  So when we found out Xie was pregnant again, six months after the ectopic pregnancy we were a bit surprised.   Keep in mind that up until 2007 Xie had never been pregnant – so we assumed that it wouldn’t happen.   So within eight months she had been pregnant twice.

After what we went through six months prior we still waited a couple months before telling any family.  We didn’t know what to expect or if we were going to have a repeat.  Well eventually we passed the information across the family.  It also shows that even though I don’t speak to my mother, some news passes across borders.  I told my father and then the next day drove up north to tell my grandmother, well they feigned surprise – but I found out from my sister who I visited after leaving their house that they already knew.   I confronted them on the subterfuge, but they said they didn’t want ot ruin it for us.  Welcome to the back channels and gossip that runs in the back current of my family that no one wants to admit occurs.

During the pregnancy mostly things went normal.  There was a couple concerns the first and one that still exists is that he had a multi-cystic non functioning kidney.   So essentially today he only has one kidney.   This is something that they have only been tracking in the last few years, and one in every 750 births there is instance of a child being born with only one functional kidney.  My sister through different circumstances has had a single her whole life, and things have been normal for her.   I don’t anticipate it effecting my son’s quality of life too much with the exception of what sports he can be involved with.

The other issue was that a couple of tubes in the cranial cavity were enlarged that could lead to learning disabilities in life.   This test was reversed on the next and subsequent visits.   So this is really a null issue, but something we dealt with.   One thing they kept trying to pressure to get done was the test for Down’s Syndrome.  It’s not covered by insurance and unless abortion is an option for you if it comes back positive (which wasn’t for us) it’s completely useless.   Every doctor visit where I went along they kept trying to push it.   The thing with this test is that there is nothing they can do one way or the other, it’s just to be informed.  I guess there are just somethings we were willing to leave to surprise.  Xie had to hold appointments at two different doctors and at the end of pregnancy was going to one or both every week.

Depending on who you asked the baby was due either February 16th or 18th.  We had bags packed and procedures in place.   Xie even bought a new (used) car on February 23rd in preparation.   We were getting ready to start planning to have the baby induced when I got a call on Thursday February 26th….

Continued in part 3 coming next week.