Ramblings
I Hate Valentine’s Day And I’m Not Single
Feb 12th
There are certain things about certain holidays that drive me up the flipping wall. I hate how Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice holidays start in October. I hate how Easter now seems to require gifts, although, the Cadbury eggs make up for this. And I HATE Valentine’s day. I can’t stand the idea that I HAVE to be romantic or buy more stuff just to show the woman that I married and have had 2 kids with that I love her.
I must mention that I have the best wife ever because she doesn’t demand or expect an over-the-top Valentine’s day. She knows I love her and I show her that EVERY day of the year. She has learned to live with my contempt for many of our holidays and for that I love her.
What bothers me is the pressure from society and especially manufacturers/retailers that you are a rotten spouse/partner/boyfriend if you don’t go spend a ton of cash on this particular day. The commercialism of our holidays is getting way out of hand to the point that I’m considering ignoring them completely. Seriously, what’s the point?
Wait, I would keep Thanksgiving. I love this holiday. Nothing but food, friends, family and fun. No cards, no jewelry, no commercialism. Perfect.
Yeah, I’m a little grumpy today.
b
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Our Little Princess
Jan 8th
Behold the princess of the house!
When this little one was in the womb we never would have dreamed that she would be such a little girly girl/princess. Our friends with girls would warn us and tell us how EVERY girl does it but we thought we would have the exception to the rule and she would avoid pink. WE WERE WRONG!!
We are up to our eyeballs in pink/princess/fairy/purple/ballerina goodness. I’m not sure how many magic wands we have had to replace. She has more dresses and tutus than any real princess or ballerina, EVER. Sometimes I really find it astonishing. It isn’t like we care, we are just rather surprised. I guess we were imagining more of a tom-boy type.
So why am I voicing our previous expectations and now surprise: What’s my point? Because it leads to beautiful photos like this one and that’s what we REALLY care about.
Have a great weekend!
b
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Finding Family: Internet Style!
Jul 2nd
Happy Fatherhood Friday!! Check out Dad-Blogs.com for some great reads. You’ll be glad you did.
I have a brother. I have a sister. Big deal you say? Well, I only found out that one of them even existed about 2 years ago! I grew up with my brother, (C who also contributes to the blog) for the most part. When I was in high school my dad and mom divorced and I lived with my mom and my brother lived with my dad but for the majority of my formative years we grew up together. This was the complete family that I knew of for over 25 years, until I decided to construct my family tree.
Waiting, Patiently Waiting
Jun 23rd
Hi everyone, sorry I was introduced and then you haven’t heard anything from me. We have been busy getting everything in place for the arrival of our baby. It is my wife’s “official” due date today (6-23) and with what is left in the day I really doubt she will be born today so we patiently wait. Hopefully after she is born I will be able to get posting some more and let the real fun begin. If you are one of our twitter followers I may see about posting up some play by play action as I have the opportunity (or not) to. So please hang tight things should get a bit more interesting from me in the near future.
Thanks, C
Tragedy in Kansas
Jun 1st
Although my blog is not intended to be political, I am the father of a daughter and feel very passionately about all of her human rights, including her reproductive freedom. I was so sad to read of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas yesterday and feel the need to remind all of us that, as parents, we work hard to protect our children from injustice and this is a reminder that there are many working hard to make women and doctors feel threatened and unsafe. I am pro-choice and will always work to make sure my daughter and other people’s daughters have access to medical options that she and her doctor agree are appropriate.
Even if you disagree with my stance on choice, I think we can all agree that nobody has the right to call themselves ‘pro-life’ if they advocate the killing of doctors and activists. This is a disturbing trend that is gaining more and more supporters. If you have time, please take a moment and send a message of condolences for those suffering from this loss. Here is a website if you would like to express your support and sadness at this horrifying murder.
Thanks for letting me process.
b
Help Me Choose A Wordpress Theme
Apr 21st
I’d like to talk a bit about the blog again if I may. I’ve already ranted about my issues with Wordpress and now that they seem to be fixed (mostly) I can’t help but think that maybe a theme change might help even more. While all indications seem to point to a WP issue I can’t help but think that a more efficient theme would take care of things once and for all because quite frankly, I’m not a fan of being back on WP 2.6.5.
Presently the site is running Atahualpa 3.3.2 from Bytes For All. Overall I absolutely love it. It looks good, it’s clean, it’s very easy to customize with tons of options and you never really have to touch code if you don’t want to. Having a “control panel” for the theme itself is a tremendous help. I’ve used themes in the past and if I ever wanted to do any sort of customization you had to go in and edit the code via WP Admin. Not with this theme though, I have yet to touch code. Also, whenever a new version is released all I have to do in drop it in, all the settings stay.
So what I’d like to find is something that has the same “control panel” for changes and customization but maybe a bit lighter and is a bit more efficient. I have thought a lot about Thesis but I’m not too sure that I am ready to shell out cash for a theme yet. I guess I would if I really saw the value and it made sense. Also, I’d like it to be similar format/style, 3 columns etc.
If you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
b
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Wordpress Frustrations
Apr 13th
The past number of days have been extremely frustrating for me with regards to this site. The loading speed of the overall public site as well as the admin page has come to an excruciating crawl. While it has gotten better (slightly), I’m still not even close to getting it to where I want it and where it needs to be. I thought that I’d share what I’ve been dealing with both for your benefit, (if you have a Wordpress blog) and to hopefully get some helpful tips from some of my terrific readers.
Easter As Non-Christians
Apr 10th
I’m going to go a bit out of my comfort zone here for a while and talk about something that I normally keep to myself because that’s exactly how I think it should be. Religion. This tends to be one of those topics that almost seems taboo in certain arenas but I’d like to dabble a bit if I may. Mostly because I can be an antagonist sometimes but you’ll learn that soon enough. 
