time to take a good hard look at yourself...

as part of a new corporate record keeping policy i am being asked to complete a voluntary "self-identification" form. the questions are as follows:

1. are you hispanic or latino? yes\no
2. if you selected "yes" stop here
3. if you selected "no", select one of the following

american indian or alaska native (not hispanic or latino but having origins in any of the original peoples of north and south america, including central america, and who maintain a tribal or community attachment)

asian (not hispanic or latino but having origins in any of the original peoples of the far east, southeast asia, or the indian subcontinent, including, for example, cambodia, china, japan, korea, malaysia, pakistan, the phillipine islands, thailand, and vietnam)

black or african american (not hispanic or latino but having origins in any of the black racial groups of africa)

native hawaiian or other pacific islander (not hispanic or latino but having origins in any of the peoples of hawaii, guam, samoa, or other pacific islands)

white (not hispanic or latino but having origins in any of the original peoples of europe, the middle east, or north africa)

two or more races (not hispanic or latino but all persons who identify with one or more of the above five races)

why this is important i'm not quite sure but it seems too complicated - i'll pass

a good walk ruined...

for the last dozen or so consecutive years, jeff, al, and myself have played a late summer\early fall round of golf. the fourth guy of the foursome has changed a couple of times over the years, like a band who has to keep auditioning drummers, but we've latched on to a guy now who plays poorly enough to fit in with the rest of us. we have 5 total rounds in this summer between the four of us so we should be in for a treat. as it turns out the weather couldn't have set up nicer for us as we're looking at sun and low 80's. for late september that's pretty darn spectacular. as we've pretty much hacked our way through most of the local courses by now, we're playing phalen park, in st. paul, for the first time. see a lame visual tour here. our motto has become "it's not about the golf", which is also a convenient excuse to dismiss our limited skills. what it IS about, we're not quite sure, mostly about skipping out on work and enjoying a boys day out.

tv stand in the place where you live

i was given a nice tv stand a couple of years ago when my neighbor moved. i figured i'd store it for awhile and eventually want to use it. as it turns out we are set for tv's and stands for awhile now so it needs a home, that isn't mine. i offered this to a few friends but was met with mock and ridicule so instead of doing the craigslist dance and having to quibble with a stranger over a few bucks, i'm offering it up for free at twincitiesfreemarket.org, and letting a stranger just come get it. in fact, as i was writing this i just got my first inquiry. with any luck i'll be extra tv stand free by the weekend. c'mon people. you stand in line for a free yardstick at the state fair. for the love of god, come get a free tv stand.

update
received 9 inquiries, item claimed at 10:38 am. yay

what did i just say?

i had a hard drive crash on a desktop yesterday. below is a loose transcript of my phone call to dell this morning.

me: "i have a gx520 under warranty, with a bad hard drive. like to see about getting it replaced"
dell: "are you sure the hard drive is bad"?
me: "yes, it's bad".
dell: "how do you know?"
me: "i can hear the classic grinding and thrashing noises of a head crash and it says no bootable device is available"
dell: "do me a favor and hold f12 while you boot to go to the boot device menu. than choose hard drive diagnostics"
me: "ok"
me: "it says sata primary hard disk drive failure"
dell: "it looks like you've got a bad hard drive"

it is finished...

above is the step-by-step time lapse photo documentary of our biggest home remodeling project ever. i made a half-hearted attempt to post updates as i went, but those photo's were all taken from my cheesy cell camera. it should be obvious to most that a professional photog, i am not, but this is what you get with a nikon coolpix 4600 4mega pixel camera, limited lighting, and limited experience.
there may be a few more tweaks we will add to the basement, for example, we may actually put books on the bookshelves, but short of photoshopping in the additional props, this still gives you a solid idea of the finished project.
be warned, there are no less than 56 photos here, so this is for my hardcore fan base only.
i promise to everyone else, this is the last you will hear from me regarding my finished basement.

new smile...

my son lost his first tooth of many today. it had been wiggling around for days and finally came out this morning. i hope the tooth fairy is generous...within reason.

it rained on our robot parade...

this afternoon we headed to three rivers park district's hyland lake park reserve in bloomington to check out the target children's book festival. the plan was to peruse the booths, catch a couple book readings, get some freebies, and of course catch some musical acts including, lisa loeb, justin roberts, and they might be giants (of whom i am probably a bigger fan than my kids and they like them a lot). i had illusions of hip-checking a few random toddlers out of the way and elbowing my way to the front of the stage to get a couple of closeup pictures of john and john and maybe get a couple of cd's signed at their booth afterwords. but alas, it was not to be. mother nature had other ideas and all the musical acts were canceled due to the rain (for which i am directly blaming "ike" fairly or not). since we were already there, we made the best of it and still took advantage of a few freebies, let owen bounce around wet-socked in the giant tot bouncer, and purchased justin robert's latest effort on cd. by then the rain fell harder and it was time to take the bus back to the parking ramp. so although the day was less excellent than it could have been, we managed to get by and the kids did their best to cheer me up on the car ride home.
in other news, as it turns out, alaina is playing fall soccer instead of gymnastics. in fact her first practice and game was this morning and she happened to score a goal in their 6-4 victory.

muddling through...

week one of the school year is in the books. it went pretty well for the most part but a few of us limped through the week with colds that are still lingering. alaina missed a day of school already after perfect attendance last year. owen is adjusting well to having to go to school every day and thinks having homework is cool (homework meaning using scissors to cut out a few shapes of paper). we'll see how long that lasts. the kids full schedule has not quite kicked in yet. the girls opted out of dance this year in favor of gymnastics. alaina was signed up for fall soccer but we pulled her out when we learned that they didn't have enough players for girls and boys soccer and were going to combine the teams. i guess i'm not wild about my skinny 11 year old girl playing against 13 year old boy thugs. the girls will also be taking piano lessons. so in a way, it's nice to just have school and nothing else at the moment. the full complement of events starts soon enough.

turning the page...

most families have traditions and ours is no exception. we started an annual tradition about 5 years ago where we have a bonfire, make a few 'smores, and talk about our favorite parts of the summer on the night before school begins. as a symbolic gesture, when the fire burns out, summer is pronounced deceased (not unlike the olympic torch but on a lesser scale). the challenge is that, even though it gets darker earlier now, the kids need to bathe and be in bed by eight - their official bedtime during the school year. this often means that i light the fire under bright sunlight at six, not necessarily an ideal time for bonfire making. on this particular eve due to abnormally hotter than average summer weather, we found ourselves nestled cozily around the fire in 90 degree heat. this certainly could not be considered "best practice" but the tradition lives on, and all was not lost as the sun began to set on cue and darkness slowly enveloped us, we acknowledged the unofficial end of summer and beginning of a new school year.
in other news a lot has been accomplished with regards to final wrap-up of project basement finish. 2 weeks ago we got a leather sofa, last week we got tv stand, this weekend we got 2 book cases and a new lcd tv (i wanted a 50" inch, the wife said absolutely nothing bigger than a 37" so we compromised and got a 37"). it really is looking great and i plan on putting together some before\after pics a little later on for those who still care. i have one more day of vacation left before i go back to work on wednesday. i'll be around to see the kids off to school in the am and have a few errands to run. other than the fact that i seem to be getting an end of summer head cold, i think that pretty much catches me up. more later.