The boys have been staying up later than usual lately. While Calvin has been pretty good about sleeping a little later in the morning, Nigel has never been known to adjust his waking schedule in coordination with when he falls asleep at night. After an adventure-filled weekend, the boys were quite a handful last evening at dinner. What needed to happen was to get the boys in bed early without all the drama that is guaranteed to happen with such an effort.

So, as the boys were busy not doing what they were supposed to do after dinner...I moved all the clocks forward one hour. The boys never missed the hour that they lost. The power outage overnight reset the clocks, making returning all the clocks to the correct time without raising suspicions a lot easier this morning.

When Harper woke up at 4:30am, I became fully aware of a horrible headache. I tried hydrating myself and took some medicine this morning, but it is nearly 2:30pm and my forehead feels as if it has been reinforced with 3 feet of cement.

I still want to know if Mary is from Denmark or if the pastry is hers.

I was shopping at a local fireworks trailer. I couldn't find my favorite type of fireworks there. I try to describe the fireworks to the owner. He's not entirely sure, so I then say:

"It looks like a big Tylenol...with wings."

I realized what I was saying as it was coming out of my mouth. Well, in all honesty, it does look like a big Tylenol with wings!

If that video creeps you out, how about when they performed the song on Letterman?

This morning I was reflecting back on the time when the weekend was a period of mostly rest. Yes, there was a time when the week wasn't for "career" work and then the weekend was dedicated to "household" work. *sigh*

I think I need a really rainy weekend to help refocus one weekend to just puttering around the house.

Harper:
* Has started eating meats. She enjoyed Arby's roast beef for a couple of weeks, but has given that up and is now gorging on ham almost every day. Harper also really enjoyed chicken nuggets this past week. Hopefully, she'll like them on her 2nd, 3rd, and other tries.

* The girl is very independent minded. She will entertain herself and prefers to walk/lead when she and I go out to the mall, etc.


Nigel:
* Really enjoys practicing lying. The boy can nearly keep a straight face and tell us anything. We're either going to be uber Big Brother with that boy as a teen or we're going to end up getting a call late at night from the police at some point.

* Two weekends ago, he "invented" a rolling drum set with help from my dad. They used scraps and parts they could find around the house. Nigel really took the lead on this and Dad was just providing advice when needed. This weekend, they made a "bass banjo" with wood and fishing line.


Calvin:
* Had a "Cola Cascade" birthday party at our house on Monday. JD has been stocking up on Diet Coke (when on sale) and we used that stockpile along with a collection of Mentos to have a dozen or so cola fountains on the driveway. We also had a water sprinkler going in the yard to help clean the syrup off of folks.

* Calvin continues to completely absorb anything he sees on TV. The other day he told me about the entire OxiClean family of products, "how" they work (as described on TV), and which products are for which kind of cleaning jobs. No, I haven't told him about Billy Mays dying. He hasn't liked discussing death lately and tells us to be quiet when Nigel has been asking questions.

* He and I have been getting together downtown after his art classes at the art museum the past two weeks. With exception of this past Thursday, on T/Th when he had 9am class, I would drop him off. I would then pick him up an hour later. We grabbed lunch a couple of times from the hot dog stand in the courthouse square and ate them next to the spring. He and I discussed the spring, aquifers, Huntsville history, and geometry during these lunches. We would then walk the rest of the way to my office in the Times Building.

Woke up at 6am, picked up my dad, drove to UHaul, drove from Huntsville to Florence (~90min), filled UHaul truck with items from maternal grandmother, had horrible pizza at Godfather's, visited with grandmother at nursing home, drove home, pulled out fridge and other items for my house, drove to parents' house, unloaded rest of stuff from truck, fetched dinner from Sonic, filled belly while sitting on a wood seat, drove home, showered, and am starting to melt into bed while spending only the second time today online.

Thank goodness it wasn't as hot as it has been, but the humidity was quite a bit more.

I'm now bracing myself for the Jacko conspiracy theories. Is he now residing in peace somewhere else in the world. Does he and Elvis work at the same 7-11?

For better or worse, being an Army brat and all the traveling that involved.

Oh, sure. The stand-alone freezer in the garage made it through the blackout just fine. Unfortunately, last night, Calvin went on a hunt for popsicles. He didn't find them in that freezer...but didn't close the door well enough. JD came into the garage late this morning and there was an ice cream pond from the freezer, past and under a couple of sets of shelves, and stretched to the ride-on toys and JD's car.

We had to clear everything out of the north side of the garage. I then pulled in a length of garden hose, sprayed down the area, scrubbed with detergent, rinsed, scrubbed with vinegar, rinsed, and then used a couple of fans to help dry the floor. All told, it took about 5 hours to clear, clean, and re-install everything into the garage. The boys did next to nothing to help us, so they weren't allowed to watch TV while during that time.

Neither of us can really get onto Calvin for leaving the door open. JD or I did the same thing about a year or two ago...it just wasn't nearly as much of a mess.

I'm going to be worn out come tomorrow afternoon. I've been very busy today and will be just as active tomorrow. Must update later.

Most folks I meet with are familiar with Huntsville, so I can't recall the last time I played tour guide here.

In Washington, D.C., however, I am the family tour guide. For the first couple of years of college, my dad was stationed at an Army post just north of Baltimore. Relatives would come up to visit during the summer while I was up there. This lead to me taking several groups of family over the years on the train from the Marta station a 1/2 mile from my parent's quarters to Union Station. They would tell me what they were interested in or wanted to see. I provided navigation, advice on where to get food/souvenirs, and provided historical facts and trivia about the district/museum/memorial/whatever.

A few things I had a tendency to do with folks was to get a pastry from Vaccaro's (I've gone on and on about their éclairs before. So big, that I nicknamed them "gophers."), hit a few of my favorite shops in Chinatown, and if we weren't on a hotdog-for-lunch budget, we'd hit one of the trendy restaurants behind The Hill filled with politicians and hordes of young female pages in their pencil skirts.

My first "lottery" ticket I bought was a scratch 'n' win. I won $11. That's the best my lottery/gambling luck has been, thus why I don't gamble with money.

The in-laws stormed the house around 9:30am. Soon, we were all out in the yard doing various weeding tasks in the different mulched areas and beds. By 1pm, we had: pulled weeds, sprayed Roundup, spread mulch, sprinkled pre-emergent weed stuff on new mulch, altered one gutter downspout to turn south farther up so the pipe maintained a good angle from the corner of the house to the edge of the mulched area, trimmed two large limbs off the maple tree, and cut those limbs into smaller chunks to carry to the curb. I sawed my right arm off today - FIGURATIVELY - by having to cut the metal downspout and struggling with the back portion where the metal overlaps and then doing all the tree trimming by myself sans chainsaw. My right shoulder and arm have moments of weakness and trembling this afternoon.

I'm really hoping that the kids will permit a lazy afternoon for me to recover. A nap would be bliss, but I must fight the urge to think about such things. The two minutes of rolling my feet over my foot massager was filled with husky sighs of gratitude (yeah, it sounded as dirty in real life as the description).

The boys are definitely getting melatonin at bedtime if there are any indications of resistance to slumber.

No, it's not the worst job on the planet, but one job I've always been grateful that I've avoided is something in the food services. Waiting tables would be absolute hell for me.