Out With The Old

Reluctently I have made the switch to the new blogger. I didn't want to, but when I tried to sign on yesterday I wasn't given a choice, so the switch was made. I haven't even attempted to check out the new features, but I am sure I will venture out that way soon.

There isn't too much happening aroudn here of late. The babies are fine and life is moving pretty much in the direction it should. Our house is getting real close to being ready to put on the market so that we can sell it and move. I'm excited and frustrated about that. Excited to move to a new house that I should like much more than this one, which I never really cared for, and fristrated because I know how much I hate packing and moving and unpacking.......which should be twice as fun with triplets in tow!

My brother Louie really seems to have come to a corssroads in his life and may actually be ready to take charge and do what he's always wanted to do, own his own business. He's looking at purchasing a carryout pizza place in the town near him. I think he'll be awesome at this and he should make some good money doing it. He and I have been bouncing ideas back and forth because I did a lot of research into starting a business prior to the triplets being born when I was prepared to open a comic book store. Louie's been right on with sound planning and decisions and I'm confident he's going to do well and be very successful.

I've got some news I am going to be sharing about my writing in the next few days as the details all get hammered out. It's pretty big news for me, so head on over to the Comic Book Observatory to find out what's happening.

For now that's it, the babies are sleeping and I am going to join them in their fantastic idea!

More Snow & What's Happening

Well, the snow is definitely on its way out. I can actually see the grass poking up in both the front and back yards and the gravel is present in the driveway. They say the temp is going to be near the balmy 50's this weekend with some rain, so I expect that by Sunday almost everything will be gone. Although I will miss the snow, I am not sad to see it go this time; we got so much snow and ice that our gutters became clogged and bogged down from all the weight and subsequently lowered my soffit about an 1/8 of an inch.......which was just enough to interfere with my back door and now it doesn't open without a hand pushing up on the soffit. ***Sigh*** It figures this would happen as we're trying to sell the house.

Round 2 of the stomach flu has kicked off in our home in full force. While the kids aren't really puking too much, they are exhibiting "potty" problems and running fevers, Sarah had a 101.4 fever this afternoon. This equals lots of crying, diaper changing, and holding of babies, which in turn leaves me with very little time to do much else.......even the chores are backing up.

The two photos here are from last week's blizzard. Later that night at about 2am I went and shoveled the final couple of inches that it left. Against the contrast of the dark sky the entire block looked very surreal. The first photo is from the front of our house. I have a little ceramic black bear that I keep in front of the sidewalk for good luck. He sits next to the rain spout and looks out at the driveway and the street. I just thought it was a cool picture of him with just his head sticking over the snow, still keeping watch. The next one is of our house taken from the same spot I took the picture from in the day. It was snowing so heavily I couldn't get a shot without getting some of the fat snowflakes in the picture too.

Well, neither the wife and I are feeling well and we really should get some sleep so we can deal with whatever the babies throw at us tomorrow.

A Blizzard of Activity

Seems like things have been pretty snowy as of late around the country. We didn't get 12 feet of snow like some places already have, but we do have some. I for one enjoy the snow and the change of seasons we get here in the Midwest, it makes you appreciate the Spring and Summer even more.

Well, we've definitely got a blizzard out here. I think we've gotten almost 6 inches already today. It's a very light and powdery snow that is easily blown......mostly into my driveway and front walk it seems! Today I had almost 2 foot drifts in my driveway between my house and my neighbor's house, but next to nothing by the street. Still, I think it's fun and I actually enjoy shoveling the snow, it's a good exercise for a dead Winters day and something about digging yourself out of all that snow is refreshing to me.

My buddy Cary and I were talking via email last week and he's given me the necessary nudge and push to get my writing more active. To that end I am finishing up a story so that I can put together a team of talent to enter in the Small Press Idol contest over at Dimestore Publications. I'm going to save any type of big discussions about this whole event for my other blog, The Comic Book Observatory. You can check there for my info and thoughts about it since it relates directly to comic books.

The big photo up at the top wasn't taken last night, but it was taken at 2:00 in the afternoon in front of my house. I took it when I went to get the mail. It's my street looking east. It's funny looking at the picture and seeing how dark and overcast it is outside. The next picture is from the top of my driveway. It's a footprint I made 5 minutes earlier on my way to the mailbox. After I snapped a few pictures my batteries went dead so I ran in the house to get more and when I came back my footprint was half filled in!! That's some nasty wind.

This next photo is of my driveway. The drift on the left is natural and one I haven't touch, the one on the right against the house is from a path I shoveled out about 4 hours ago. It's already filling back in and the drift on the left is getting bigger. I normally wouldn't even be concerned, but I want to have a path to get my garbage cans through tomorrow for garbage day. The last photo is just of my house from my mailbox across the street. Like I said, it's 2PM in the afternoon and it looks like it's almost dark out! I was playing around with some effects on it and when I switched the picture to grayscale for a black and white effect, it looked almost identical because it's so oppressively gray and overcast outside.

Anyways, that's the fun I've been having today with the weather. Luckily we don't have it as bad as some other places, but it's still fun nonetheless.

A Few Quick Words

There's been a bunch of things happening since I last posted. Life sure doesn't seem to slow down at all, if anything it's picking up speed. I've gotten a bit personal of late here but I'm returning to some more public items today.

Well, my beloved Chicago Bears embarrassed me in the Super Bowl. Not to take anything away from the Colts, but I just don't think the Bears played at their best for whatever reason. I don't care how they do it, but they really need to upgrade both the offensive and defensive lines----and quarterback. Whether it's Rex or someone else, the QB needs to do more. And while I'm at it, I wouldn't mind seeing Ron Turner go either. He's better than John Shoop was, but just not good enough. The worst part is that I really think that going into the 2007 season the New Orleans Saints are going to be the team to beat!

A sad life also came to an end today. Anna Nicole Smith was found dead in her hotel room at a casino, in Florida I believe. Most people have an opinion of her based on her life being paraded through the public, but regardless of what you think of her and the life she lived, I think you have to recognize that for whatever reason she was a pretty sad woman who was in pain. I don't know if it was all of her own making, but the past 12 months were pretty tragic with her son dying and now herself. The sad thing is she leaves a 6 month old daughter behind practically an orphan.

I forget if I mentioned it here, but my wife and I have decided that we need a major overhaul of our expenses due to the fiasco of our contractor screwing us over, downsizing to one income, and the added expenses of having triplets. To this end we are going to sell our house and move to a much more rural area where we can get a bigger house for almost half the cost of what our current house is worth. This little move will do the following: 1. Wipe out our second mortgage completely, 2. Pay off a huge amount of our credit card debt, and 3. Lower our monthly expenses by $1000 or more per month.

We don't plan on this next house being the house we retire in, but it's going to be an important transitional house that will allow us to get our finances under control and ready to meet the demands of the future. We would like to be able to move sooner than later, but I don't see our current house being ready to put on the market until March 1st at the earliest, although I wouldn't be surprised if it took a bit longer. We paid for a home inspection to see what are house looked like from the eyes of a potential buyer so that we could get those things fixed ahead of time. We are almost halfway to what we need completed and then it will be selling time. Once we're ready, we will then start looking more seriously.

I've been fighting a cold and I really need more sleep than I've been getting, so I should probably turn in. Hopefully I'll have more real soon.