when i got home this evening heather had our new babysitter over to meet the kids. heather met a nice young lady who works at pavillions who was looking to make some extra money babysitting. how heather sparked up the conversation while paying for her groceries i will never know, she's got skills!

after i dropped my bag off and sat down to relax for a minute i over heard heather talking to the babysitter about alcohol and drinking which i thought was weird but whatever. then i hear her tell the babysitter, chris is so shy we can't even have friends come over unless he is drinking. yes i am introverted but not to the point where i have to be drunk to be in public. or maybe i do, maybe i should try it. maybe i should for one day wake up in the morning and instead of having coffee replace that with two shots of wild turkey. then continue that every hour for the rest of the day. should make for an interesting day. i wonder how long i could keep that going, as tired as i am in the morning i would probably pass out by lunchtime but i sure would be fun.

well we just got back from vicky's last game. they won and came in third place. vicky played very well, didn't score any points but did steal the ball a couple of times. still doesn't know how to dribble very well, everytime she gets the ball she tries to dribble and eventually uses both hands and gets called for double dribble. the game was held on the second court so there were no bleachers we had to sit on the wresting mat that was rolled up, which sucked! trying to keep the younger kids off the court was a challenge.

vicky is the youngest girl on her team so she is very sad that she will not be able to play with them next year. she is going into 6th grade where most of them are going to 7th. the coach was upset as well he thought he was going to get to have the same team next year. vicky really impressed him with all the improvement she had over the year.

heather just got back with about 100 boxes cases (6 12 boxes per case) of girlscout cookies. i am not sure why she likes to sell her soul volunteer for EVERYTHING! now she has to sort all the boxes and then put them back in her car and take them to the gs leader's house since nobody can figure out how to get to our house.

for the past six weeks every sunday morning cameron has had njb clinic. basically a class that teaches the fundamentals and rules of the game of basketball. today was his last day and they actually got to play a 5 on 5 game. it was pretty funny, they basically forgot everything they were taught. resembled a rugby game more then a basketball game. the kids would run up and down the court either dribbling with both hands or not dribbling at all. afterwards they all got huge trophies. check out the rest of the pictures.

now we are getting ready for vicky's last game. if they win they will take third place, so it should be exciting. after their loss last week it bumped them out of the race for 1st. oh well, vicky has improved tremendously so as long as we keep practicing she should be great by next year.

I am sitting here at Cameron's cubscout blue and gold ceremony. We were supposed to be here at 5:12p and not a minute later. Well I am sure you can figure it out, it didn't start until after 5:30. Dinner just finished and the program has finally started, with a raffle. The big joke is with every raffle the guy says "and a pencil" cause a pencil came with every prize. I swear these boyscouts are way too funny, NOT! I don't know how much more I can take of this, my a.d.d. Is kicking in and I have turned to my blackberry, I just got the look of death from heather so I better finish this.

[update: well we just got home, its 8:55 the program lasted just about 3.5 hours. what the... cameron did win a prize though, a bike light, he is very excited. joey was very disappointed that he didn't win anything. oh well better luck next time. thank god we are home this has been one busy weekend and its only half over, tomorrow we have basketball in the morning heather has girlscout cookie crap to deal with in the afternoon and i have a management dinner to go to tomorrow night. i thought weekends were for relaxing!?]

We are sitting here at Tony Romas with two other families while they are tearing out all the tables which is very strange. Shouldn't they do that when they are closed? The construction workers are knocking over tables and chairs while they move stuff around. Heather ordered lemonade while the rest of us ordered sodas we have all got refills 4 times while she hasn't got any. Finally I asked for a refill for her and they are going to charge $2, how gay is that? Now they just turned on a vacuum cleaner and turned up the music so loud that I can barely here my kids scream. This is the most ridiculous time we have ever had. Just got the bill, $75. Yes thats right $75 for a fucking lunch, oh i don't think we will be coming back here anytime soon. For anybody who cares its the Tony Romas's in Tustin off 17th and the 55 freeway.

Cameron's second at bat he struck out so he had to hit off the tee. He wasn't very happy with that, but he did hit it pretty good off the tee. The game went on for what seemed like an eternity.

Cameron is playing his first year of pitch ball. The coach is the pitcher and they get three tries or they hit from the tee. Camerons first at bat he got a basehit on the second pitch. Very cool.

We are at Joey's first baseball game where Joey just got a hit. He ran to first base but didn't know where second base was so he ran to right field. Very funny and very cute. He is now playing catcher. Wait till you see the pictures way cute.

Second inning: Joey got another good hit, still doesn't know where second base is, haha. He is now playing in center field where he stays in ready position even as the ball rolls right by him. He is very excited though.

Third and final inning: Joey hit the ball very well this time, he just forgets to run after he hits it. Playing short stop this time. Joey played very well for his first game. Now we need to run home very fast to get Cameron dressed for his game that starts at noon.

every day i sit in my office and sweat to death because my office mates like to be REALLY hot. now i am not talking your average lets keep it at room temperature, 72 degrees. they like it HOT! between 78-82 if they get there way with it. i might as well be in the desert. i have to sneak turning the damn thing on and it usually only lasts about 3 minutes before all the complaining starts. im cold, its like antartica in here, blah blah blah! i just can't win, EVER! i would be happy if i could just get it 1 degree colder, but it is never going to happen. this just sucks.

tomorrow is 'crazy sweats' day at joey's school. joey doesn't have any sweats, it wouldn't be much of a crazy day tomorrow without sweats so after dinner we went to kohls. what an awesome place. we found the sweats but also i found 3 shirts and a pair of pants all 70% off. 2 of the shirts where $5.00 and the pants were $12.00 all totaling around $35.00. normally one shirt would have cost that and the pants alone regular price were $42.00, f'ing amazing! definitely need to go to that store more often.

i just got a call from heather. while waiting for vicky to get out of class cameron decides to pick up some rocks and throw them. now cameron has been told NUMEROUS times not to throw rocks, EVER! explaining to him that when daddy was his age he got into a dirt clod fight and got hit in the head in which a rock was in. blood poured out of me like i had been sliced by a knife. now as a child it scared the living hell out of me and i don't think i ever threw another rock again. fast forward 23 years and my son is now throwing rocks. fortunately he only hit a brand new mercedes. yes thats right he hit a BRAND NEW FUCKING MERCEDES and yes he dented the car!! why, WHY can't children listen, EVER?

heather said the lady was physically shaken, but said not to worry about it. not to worry about it?? oh cameron is going to worry about it all right, for a LONG time. AHHH!

bug me to buy you something for a long time. then when i finally break down and actually buy it for you, return it to me, unknowingly, and take mine. when i find out about it make me feel like the asshole.

today and tomorrow i have to take joey to school and boy do we both love it!!! i don't have to get up a 5am, sleeping in till 7 is the best thing in the world! joey is extremely happy as well not that he doesn't like his mom to take him, its just not everday that he gets to see dad in the morning. usually i am long gone before he even wakes up. sleeping in a little bit sure does a lot for motivation, i am actually in a good mood and ready to work now... lets see how long this lasts.

i swear this day has got to be the longest day in history. its 3:30p i have been here since 6:15a and it feels like i have been here for 15 hours. everytime i look at the clock it seems like it is going in reverse. its still raining heavily here which is very unusual and not good for business or my neighborhood but i really like it, if i didn't have to drive in it it would be even better ;-)

my kids are freaks. they have been cooped up in the house all day screaming at the top of their lungs i finally told them to go outside, actually i think i screamed much louder then them to get out. so they got their raincoats on and joey asks if it starts raining could they stay out, i said as long as they had their coats on that was fine. big mistake. joey comes back in about 2 hours later drenched head to toe with dirt in his eyes. i asked him what happened, he said that the ball hit him in the face. i asked why he was so wet, he said cause it was raining. so i called the other kids in and they admited that the reason they were so wet was because they stood underneath the water runoff from the roof. only my kids would do such a thing.

as the 3 day weekend winds down, FAR too soon, i got extremely bored of my orange background and have been listening to ferry corstens purple haze that i became infatuated with the color purple. what do you think? im liking it right now but when i wake up in the morning i may hate it and change it to something else.

saturday morning we had to wake up early, 7am, to get cameron and joseph's baseball pictures taken. it was pouring rain like you wouldn't believe. like i have never seen it before, we might as well live in seattle. when we got to the school by the time we got to the room we needed to be we were all drenched. the school was flooded, you couldn't walk anywhere without being 3 inches deep in water. it was ridiculous but the boys were really good, vicky on the other hand went looking for the deeper puddles and then when she came back was pissed off at us because she was soaking wet up to her knees, ya i love the logic. since both games were cancelled we came home and relaxed. about 5 my mom came over and we went to eat at chevy's. afterwards we came home played life on the computer and watched sky captain and the world of tomorrow, where i fell asleep 5 minutes into it.

sunday cameron and i got up early, again! we had to get him to basketball practice. nothing else very exciting. this morning both vicky and joey had dentist appointments thank god heather took them so i got to sleep in for the first time this weekend. joey is going to need a root canal, poor guy, somehow he cracked one of his molars probably due to him grinding his teeth at night. its still raining off and on. the house that they tried to save on the hill has collapsed and we are getting a lot of freaks trying to get back up here to look at it.

about a month ago vicky was assigned a huge report to do on the state of oregon. it was due 2 weeks ago, but the teacher gave everyone an extension. everyday heather would ask vicky to let her help her with the report and everyday vicky would say she either forgot the paper or she is working on it in class with her teacher and there is SOOO much time left. well this past weekend she was supposed to be on restriction for fighting with her brothers and what not but being the WAY to nice parents that we are we let her spend the night at her friends house and play. asking her a couple of times if all her homework was done, of course the answer was YES!

about 8 monday night vicky starts freaking out her report is due the following day and she hasn't even typed it yet. well come to find out, not only hasn't she typed it but the report is only half way done. fast forward two days, i have been formatting it cause she doesn't know how a word processor works and heather, who is the grammar god will need to proof it. you can tell by my blog that grammer is not one of my strong points ;-)

i am not sure what they are teaching in the 5th grade but reading this report kind of freaked me out. from this report i learned that the president of oregon is david allen p. yes thats right the president, wtf?

David Allen P is Oregon current state president. He watches over the state and makes sure it is safe especially for kids. He will ALWAYS be watching.

doing a quick search i found out who david allen p was, the president of multnomah bible college/seminary in oregon and his name is david p allen. some other interesting facts i learned:

The least amount a house was sold for in Oregon was $42.00. The most is $840.00.That is a big difference.

hell ya thats a big difference and a HUGE difference with houses here in the OC where the average cost is $600,000. i need to pack up and move our asses out to oregon!

man i thought when i graduated i was done with school. joey and i can sit and do his homework, although some of it is pretty damn hard in preschool. the rest of it is left to heather, cause she is so damn smart!!

i wanted to take this oppurtunity to say happy valentines day to everyone, especially my wife. heather i love you very much!

as joey and i were waiting for my mom to land at the airport joey says to me, "dad can we go to the museum where they have pictures of jesus?". wow, where did that come from? for some reason joey is VERY interested in jesus right now. we had taken the kids about a year ago to the los angeles county museum of art and joey wanted to go back today so he could see the pictures of jesus again. vicky wanted to stay with her friends so heather the boys and i packed up and after cameron's baseball practice headed back to LA. joey loved it cameron not so much. cameron said he could barely breathe cause he had to whisper but joey was in awe. its amazing how a 5 year old can be so enthralled with art. i think its just awesome! here are the rest of the pictures

last night everything was setup perfectly. we had been planning this night for sometime now, the stars aligned and we got a babysitter and tix to go see heather's favorite people, rabbit in the moon, who we saw for the first time at nocturnal wonderland.

we all went to vicky's basketball game at 3:30 and wow what a game. vicky sure has come a long way, she played awesome! she scored 4 points and had atleast 10 steals. the only problem is she is way faster then the ball and can't control it when dribbling up the court. the team won by 29 points and was very exciting.

after the game we went to panda express, my first mistake. we came home and ate, WAY to much. by this time it was 6:00, so i thought i would take a quick nap, my second mistake. we left about 8:00 and got to hollywood around 8:45. walked into the club no problem, which was very strange. i didn't get frisked, nobody asked for id, it was very different then the normal take everything out of your pockets and get felt up kinda thing. as we walked in a lady asked if we had a table. a table? what do i need a table for, i'm gonna be dancing! she told us that well since we didn't have a table we could pretty much go anywhere we wanted. so we headed upstairs to get a drink.

after we sat down we noticed something very strange. the dance floor was covered with tables and really fat people. not your normal club group. in the background they where playing 80's music, hmm this is very weird. then the dan band came out. wow, we were definitely in the wrong place. three white guys who sang 80's music, but not ur normal 80's musice. these guys sang woman's songs like gloria, she bop and a lot of wilson philip songs.

during the dan band something very bad happened to me. i broke out in a cold sweat and started shaking uncontrollably. i was very nauseous. i drank maybe a quarter of my drink and was getting very nervous that i was going to lose it. heather went to see if her friends had made it yet by this time the dan band was done and they were clearing the dance floor. i didn't know what i was going to do, but i was doing everything i possibly could not to throw up. by about midnight i couldn't take it anymore and rabbit in the moon didn't come on until 1, heather being the best wife ever, said come on lets go. i didn't want to ruin the night for her but if i threw up, it would have been a lot worse. life just isn't fair sometimes.

we got home about 12:30 and roxy called heather about 1 when they went on to let her at least listen to it. it sounded very cool, it really sux that i felt like complete shit. this morning i feel a lot better. now joey and i get to go pick up my mom from the airport while heather, poor tired thing, has to take cameron to basketball practice. last night really sucked, but i am glad that heather got to at least meet up with her friends for a little bit.

wow its finally over. they demolished the house, heather got some great shots here. she also took an incredible video. when i get home tonight i will edit and put up here. pretty amazing, very sad. heather said they had to hold the owners back, as he tried to rush in when they started.

today my dad would be 56. there isn't a day that goes by that i don't miss him or need him. it has been almost 14 years since he passed away. at times it seems like yesterday and at times it feels like a distant memory, a dream. i always think, what would he think of me today. certainly there would be things he would be proud of. my kids if only my kids could meet him. life just doesn't make sense but i am thankful that for 15 years i was blessed to have known this great man. happy birthday dad, i love you.

my patience with this whole house sliding down the hill nonsense is growing thin. our mail man will not deliver mail to our house. the post office suggests that we get a po box in the mean time, so now i have to pay for mail? i don't think so!! we are being told right now that the city will not be able to pick up our trash, so we are going to have to take our trash to the dump. they better rethink that whole thing or i am going to freak out.

apparently they are having geologists drill 50 foot holes in the ground near the houses to take soil samples. you can see the drill in the picture above. they need to just demolish thing and get it over with!!

heather took some awesome pictures. its only a matter of time...

well the house is still standing, barely. as i left my house this morning at 6am i saw at least 10 news vans idling standing by waiting for something to happen. its amazing to see these people waiting around the clock to get the "live" shot of this beautiful anaheim hills home sliding down the hill. i must have something wrong with me and if you ask my wife she will definitely agree! i have no interest in this at all. i have not gone down there one time to look at it, where my wife and kids and every other neighbor have been practically camped out there since saturday. i understand the fascination with it, like watching a train crash or a car chase and if it were either one of those i would be, like you, watching, waiting for the police to shoot the guy or whatever but this is different for some reason. it is very tragic but not surprising. look at the hill, look at the history that anaheim hills has had with landslides there is no way in hell anybody should have let them build that house. so now we wait and in the mean time we get every freak and jerk trying to get on our street to get a glimpse at this destruction. we have to travel down a fire exit to get to another private road that takes you to the main street and in the mean time pissing off every other neighbor because they don't want you driving on their private road. hell i understand thats why you buy a house on a private road so nobody comes up there, but this is my only way in and out and looks like its going to be for some time now. and to top it off i can't even have a pizza delivered to my house, this just sux!

NOT! our street is the lead story on every news station here in southern california though, abc, nbc and fox. the houses still haven't fallen but its only a matter of time. heather, the kids and the rest of the neighbors have been camped out down there watching with all the news crews. apparently this is a HUGE story but i am just not seeing it. it is very tragic, yes, but come on now. they say our street will be closed for 3 years, yes 3 fucking years. sorry for the cursing mom, but this is just ridiculous! so now we have to travel down a dirt oneway road where already people that don't live here are trying to come up and in the process blocking us from being able to come or go. this whole thing fucking sux but it doesn't seem that it is going to change anytime soon so i guess i better get used to it. anaheim hills is on the map, baby!!

[update: here are some updated pictures heather took]

this morning cameron had basketball practice. i got up about 8:15 and cameron and i headed out about 8:45 this morning. when we got there we walked into the gym only to find out we were the only one's there... that sux, i could have slept in another hour or two. oh well. we came back home and i was going to go to work for a little bit but heather reminded me that her car wasn't working and that she had to take vicky to girlscouts so i decided to just work from home. i have been working on and off all weekend and actually getting a lot done.

the super bowl is on now and my family is camped out down the street watching all the "hoopla" and drama of the neighborhood. its all pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. new england finally scored so i am going to go back to that.

the past day and half has been pretty eventful. yesterday, tony took steve, mike and i out to lunch to korean bbq. none of us had ever eaten korean food before and were all a little leery. we all drive by the place everyday but none of us has ever had the nerve to go in. as we walked in we were greeted and sat down at a huge table with a grill in the middle of it. the menus were handed out but none of it looked very familiar so i ordered the chicken, of course. everyone else ordered beef. the waitress started bringing out bowl after bowl of all different kinds of spicy vegetables. by the time she was done i counted 42 bowls!! the food was actually pretty good. looking around it seems that everyone else ordered some kinda soup and noodles so maybe next time if we are adventurous enough we will try that.

after work, the kids, heather and i were to have dinner at the macis' but before we could leave there was a knock at the door. very strange since we live on a private street and we never have anybody knocking at the door. it was one of our neighbors telling that they were closing the road at the bottom of our hill the houses on the other hill are going to be sliding down at anytime. there is really only one way in and out of our house which is the main road but now that it is closed there is a dirt fire escape something of a dirt road that is very narrow and will only fit one car that now has to be our main road to civilization.

as we leave and are headed down this road a cop is coming up gets out of his car and wants to know where we are going. we told him and he couldn't believe we were just leaving our house, he asked "aren't you moving out?" heather explained that our houses are in no danger and that we were headed out and told him where the road went so he could take a look for himself.

we finally made it to the macis' house and what an awesome house they have! they have the most incredible view. on a clear night you can see all the way to downtown LA, pretty impressive. we had a lot of fun, eating and drinking, playing basketball and pool. we could definitely get used to hanging out there. about 1:30am i was very tired and heather very drunk we decided to head home. cameron spent the night.

this morning i woke up with joey to an empty house. heather and vicky went down the street to go watch the houses slide, scary pictures. apparently they are about the slide at any minute so the neighbors have pulled up lawn chairs and are video taping the destruction.

now joey and i are playing xbox while heather took vicky and her little boyfriends and girlfriends to the movies. i was supposed to go to work today but i woke up way to late so i think i am just going to work from home today and go into the office tomorrow before the super bowl. not that we are doing anything special but it will be nice to watch the game.

to get an eyelash stuck halfway in your gums behind your molers? what the fuck, this is just not my day. i have been digging in my mouth for the past half hour trying to figure out what is lodged in my gums. finally after giving myself a mouth full of blood i get the damn thing out and its one of my fucking eyelashes.

We are the music makers.
We are the dreamers of dreams.
Wandering by lone sea breakers.
Sitting by desolate streams.
World losers and world forsakers on whom the pale moon gleams.
And yet we are the movers and the shakers of the world forever
it seems.

by Arthur Shaungenssy

don't you just hate it when you are working on something for a LONG time and somebody comes in and interrupts you with something URGENT so you stop to help them and it turns out it really wasn't all that important and all that work you had been doing is lost because of it? I FUCKING HATE THAT!