Let's make a deal . . . with a 4 year old

Last night my son was doing his homework and decided he was getting tired. So he told me he was done and would finish the rest tomorrow. “Nothing doing”, I said. And then he let fly with one of the funniest things I have heard come out of his mouth to date.

“Ok, dad. I’ll tell you what I will do. I will sleep SOOOOOOOOOOO nicely tonight that I won’t be tired in the morning and then I can do my homework SOOOOOOOOOO nicely then. OK??” That from a 4 year old with a grin on his face that was nearly impossible to resist. (He still had to finish his homework that night though. It almost worked.)

Can’t wait until that boy gets to be a little older to see what kind of deals he wants to strike with me then.

Kicking the habit (no,not one a nun wears)

I made a decision a few weeks ago to kick a bad habit. This decision was made upon the realization that my self-control was totally gone in this area of my life. I am talking about an addiction that I know several others who share in the struggle with. It is Diet Coke.

My Diet Coke drinking days came crashing to an end on January 10th when I noticed that in spite of the fact that it was only 3 in the afternoon, I had already consumed 7, yes that is one more than a whole 6 pack, cans of Diet Coke that day already.

I vowed then and there to get the situation under control. Since then I have not only not had any Diet Coke, but I have not had any soft drinks of any kind. That fact is something of a miracle considering the massive volumes I have consumed at various points in my life with frightening regularity.

The first few days, even more than a week really, were pretty bad. I did not medicate myself to ease the headaches and other awful feelings except on one or two occasions, and have tried to be conscious not to replace my addiction with something else, like candy bars or something. So far, so good.

This whole thing has become something of a quest for me to find other areas of my life that I need to gain more control over. I am almost to the point of not really wanting it any more, which is a good thing. Maybe now I can begin to work on the next area of my life that needs some attention. What will that be? Hmmmm. Food for thought. Maybe I should ponder this over an icy-cold Diet Coke. :)

Ordered my new computer

Well, I took the plunge today. I ordered my new laptop. Right now it is (hopefully) being assembled in a plant somewhere near Shanghai, to be delivered in the next 2 weeks to some friends in America. If all goes well it should be there by the time we get there in mid-March.

I am excited, and spent some time preparing all the necessary stuff to take with me to get it all set up once we get there. Email accounts and passwords, software cds and registration/activation codes, etc. I also ordered an inline surge protector and some additional RAM to install in it.

For those of you that want to drool with me, here are the specs:
2.13 Ghz Pentium M 770 (533 Mhz fsb, 2 MB L2 cache)
2 GB DDR2 PC2-4200 SDRAM (once I install the additional stuff I ordered)
100 GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD
Dual layer DVD RW Super-multi optical drive
128 MB dedicated video RAM
Windows XP Professional
Built in wireless and biometric reader
Port replicator/docking station
12 cell Li-Ion battery (good for 6-7 hours continuous use)

A bit of breathing room

Got an email today from some friends who were going to be coming to visit us here. Due to some health circumstances with one of their family members, the group has decided not to come right now and try to plan their trip for another time.

While I was disappointed at this turn of events for a number of reasons, I certainly understand that it was a good choice in the end. I am also thankful for the extra time in my schedule now that will allow me to get caught up on more things before we leave for almost 3 months to go to America.

A bad morning

So today started out very rough. I was still not feeling well (from my fever from yesterday), and got up to get the kids ready to go to school. My wife will not be home for three more days, so the whole morning thing is up to me for a few days. I am not complaining at all. I really don’t mind getting the kids ready for school.

The day began to look not so good when a piece of plaster molding in our house suddenly decided to fall off the wall right as I walked by it, crashing to floor, scaring the bejeepers out of me and making a huge mess.

Then a few minutes later I get a call from my son’s school telling me that today is my son’s snack duty and I have to provide snacks for 22 kids in his class. We are to leave in 30 minutes, there is no food whatsoever in the house (since we had just gotten home yesterday from being gone for weeks on end) and there would be no stores open until at least 9:30 am, and the kids eat their snack at 10 am. No time.

The final clincher to the morning was shortly after the phone call about snacks, I discovered the kitchen door was locked and the keys were not working to open it up. I had a pot of water on the stove heating to clean the kids up a bit, so I could not just leave it locked and deal with it later. Finally, after trying my best to find another way in and running desperately short on time now, I gave the door a good swift kick and busted it open. So I am now faced with replacing a kitchen door, repairing the plaster molding from the wall, and somehow buying snacks for 22 kids . . . . all while dealing with a fever of 101.5.

The good news is that the rest of the day could only get better. Right?

It did. The door could very well be repairable upon further inspection, the wall molding will wait until we have more time to deal with it, and I found a store near the school that for some reason was open at 9 am, which is nothing short of a miracle in my mind.

A small miracle

Traveled home today with my two kids and two other friends. I have been away from home for a month straight now, and was oh so looking forward to being home. Then we got to the airport and heard the rumblings of trouble.

Something about the pilots of the airline we were to fly on being on a strike of some kind, and all flights were grounded. The airline staff, of course, sort of assured us in their ever so guarded verbiage that ‘as of now the flight is still on time’.

People cancelling their tickets and rebooking on other airlines, followed by random crowds of obviously angry people barging into various offices around airport raised our anxiety. I really did not want to spend the whole day in the airport with my 4 year old and 2 year old. And to make matters worse, I was feelings the beginnings of what would turn out to be a pretty bad fever.

We prayed about the situation. My son, the 4 year old, has a knack for praying simple, yet terribly effective prayers.

My friends, perhaps not even realizing how I was feeling physically, did a great service to me by playing with my kids in the airport while we waited. And after asking numerous times, finally we were told to go through security and wait for the flight.

We boarded the plane and left, arriving home less then and hour and a half late, which according to the news was the best of any of that airline’s flights all day. Guess my son’s simple prayers worked again. One of these days I might learn to have faith like he does and quit worrying about so much stuff.

Should it do that?

Got a call from a friend who is staying at our house while we are gone. She asked me if the power supply for our wireless router should smell funny (like it was burning or something) and be bending into funny, weird shapes.

I assured her it should not and asked her to please unplug it right away.

I then instructed her to contact another friend of mine who would know where to get a replacement power supply and make sure it got into working condition again.

Just in case you were wondering . . . electrical items should generally not bend into funny shapes by themselves and smell funny (like they are burning).