before...after

i happened to have the entire week off of work this week as part of my company's new use-it-or-lose it policy and decided that the time was right to upgrade my son's bed and paint his room. he has been sleeping in a fisher-price race car toddler bed, which has served him well, but it has started to get a little small for him. besides, it would be decidedly uncool for a boy graduating from kindergarten next week to still be in a toddler bed. i had been looking for weeks on craigslist for a twin bed and came up empty until last night. found the perfect fit, mattress, box springs, frame, and bookcase headboard for less than i could have gotten a new mattress! what did we do before craig and the innerwebs! tuesday we bought paint, comforter and sheets, yesterday i painted, and today i picked up the bed. happy to get this project done and be productive with my time off.

do not forget...

just wait til next year...

okay, so i'm not writing off the twins completely this year. the truth is the american league central is pretty weak all the way around and anything can still happen in this young season. i did find out that my ticket contact has secured our seats in section 119 in the new twins ballpark, target field, for next year. above is an animated representation of the view from sec 119. very awesome indeed. not directly behind home plate as i am for the dome but better than expected and i'm thrilled with how it worked out. no more viewing the game from behind a net.
tonight the wife and i take in our first twins game of the year, interleague play against milwaukee. i think may 22nd is a record for how far into the season i've gone without going to a game, but the truth is, ticket prices are up and the entertainment budget is down. i have 4 games (10 tickets) in the premium seats secured for this year and the plan is to take the kids to one or two games in the nose bleeder seats. of course next year we move outside which, let's be honest, is where baseball should be played. i'm not a dome hater, but having been to many of the classic stadiums (yankee stadium, fenway park, wrigley field, etc.,) the teflon roof, artificial turf, and plastic baggy outfield wall just don't cut it for a baseball purist like myself. yes, there will be rain, there will be cold, and there will be wind but there will also be sun and warmth. it's a trade-off worth taking in my book.

on top of the world...

just awesome...

happy birthday mom!

have a great day & see you tonight!

day glow

thought i'd mix up the color scheme on the blog a bit to keep things fresh. it's absurdly easy to do now so why not? going for a day glow look here. not sure if it works or not but whatever.

happy mothers day!

happy birthday alaina!

it's hard to believe little lainie turns 12 today! how quickly the time passes. happy birthday lainie j! we love you!
see the pics here.
click here to see the video footage and to hear "happy birthday" sung in 8 different keys.

learning from history...

to help prevent a repeat scenario of a dark day in history, or as i like to call it, the tragedy of '05, i recently purchased a 1 terabyte, (1,000 gb) external hard drive for backing up my personal data. what with a bloated music library, and my recent additions of a tv tuner card, and a flip video recorder, the time was right for adding some storage capacity. my previous backup method had become sketchy at best and recently stopped being recognized by my computer all together.
to put this in perspective for those "tech?no" folks who may be reading this, my first computer had a hard drive of 1 gb. my new external hard drive is equivalent to 1,000 of those hard drives. this may mean nothing to you but it means more piece of mind to me. sad? maybe a little, but there's just no excuse for not having important data backed up anymore. it's too easy not to do it.