11 posts tagged “the wife”

On Saturday, the wife, the wee one, and I went on a trip down to RI to visit the Roger Williams Park Zoo.  When I researched the zoo on Friday, I was a little upset that there were no chimpanzees or a dedicated monkey house.  There were a couple of monkey exhibits but I wanted a whole mess of monkeys being crazy.  However, the monkeys that were there did not disappoint myself or the wee one.  The wife was initially enamored with the zebras, but when she saw the giraffes, she was in love.  The giraffes were a wonder to behold, especially how close they got to us, but for me, it was the monkeys.  The golden lion tamarins where active and mischievous.  However, they were behind a pane of glass so taking a picture of them with the glare was a difficult task.  At another area were some white cheeked gibbons.  Their "cage" was also behind glass but they had much more space to roam and play around.  This was the wee one's favorite exhibit, along with the flamingos.

A couple of photos of the wee one opening presents at my in-laws, me about to open 2 out of the 3 books in the Jared Rea's Halo Reading List, and the wee one getting ready for her PSA; "I learned it from watching you, Dad."

So I have been postponing this post for some time and now I am stuck with the task of putting down a little over a week of no work in a comprehensive manner.  *deep breath* Here we go.

the wee one
The wee one has been in heaven with both the wife and I at home all the time.  The wife constantly reminded me that this didn't feel like a vacation but to me it did.  The regular schedule during the week was that she would play and have fun until around 1 pm when it was time for a nap.  She would go down and the wife would join her, leaving me to entertain myself.  What I did for solo entertainment *snicker* will be addressed soon. 

Since we are on the topic of the wee, might as well discuss how her presents went down.  She ended up with a ton of presents.  She started opening presents from the Thursday before Christmas from various sources.  Friday was the family of my wife's childhood friend whom we still hang out with.  The wee one is like a grandchild/niece to them so they just spoil her.  Notable gifts were a Hello Kitty karaoke tape player and a Hello Kitty art set and carrying case.  We scrounged up the only cassette tape we could find in the house:  The Grateful Dead's debut album and American Beauty.  The wee has been walking around dancing to Dead tunes and belting out her own vocalizations to the songs.  Saturday, she opened presents from my sister which included the Little People Nativity set and Viva Pinata.  Viva Pinata is a joint gift for myself and the wee.  After one late night of it playing it solo, I am only allowing myself to play it under the supervision of the wee one.  Sunday morning we opened gifts from my parents and she received some great bathtub toys and a great pair of Hello Kitty pajamas.  The bathtub toys were such a hit that she wanted to jump in the tub and take a bath immediately after opening them.  That Saturday night, we had struggled to get her in the same tub.  If only we had opened that gift Saturday night.  The Hello Kitty pajamas were never removed (except when she got into her church clothes) until Wednesday.  Monday morning we opened presents at my in-laws.  There she received some great puzzles.  Later that afternoon she finally opened presents from us.  We got her the Little People A to Z Learning Zoo, Little People 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Story Set (damn you Fisher Price for sending us your catalogs), and a box full of books.  The wee one pulled off a N64 kid when opening the box of books.  "Books, books, books, my books" each separated by pants of hyperventilation and followed by squirrel like gathering motions.  All she needed was the fist pump and scratching at the boxes and it would have been complete.  Those books have been a mainstay of her routine this entire week.  The girl loves her books.

getting $%#@ fixed
The holiday did not get off to a good start.  The Camry made it into the dealership and they guess that the Check Engine light was on because the gas cap was not screwed on tight enough.  Ugh.  The light is off *FIXED*.  The wife also asked them to look into the stinky AC smell and the loud wind noise that emanates from the front passenger window.  The AC is no longer stinky *FIXED* and the wind noise is still there *BLEH*.  I think I found the problem area in the rubber stripping so the next time we see them, I can point it out.  After a stud finder was recovered, the wall coat hangers were put back up.  I also put in two more screws into studs that bad boy, so now it shouldn't be going anywhere *FIXED*.  Wednesday, I went to the mall to buy the garage door opener.  I am not a handy person but I do they to tackle various repair jobs on my own with the assistance of my extremely handy father-in-law.  He had offered to help install the garage door opener but when it came down to figuring out a time when, our holiday schedules were not syncing up.  I made an executive decision and paid for someone to come and install the garage door opener when I purchased the unit.  The guy came in Friday and did it himself in about 1.5 hours.  I hung out and talked to him as he installed it watching the master at work.  He ran into a couple of snags from the standard installation but he had all the materials he needed.  I think if my father-in-law and I did it, it would have been an all day affair.  Also, it was pretty chilly on Friday, not very pleasant working out in the garage weather.

keeping entertained
While the wife and the wee one slept (during afternoon naps and at bedtime), I played World of Warcraft playing with the Vox Guild.  Right now, Wrathoras, is level 22.  Not too shabby for a casual gamer dad with only a week to play.  While I was on playing, I was able to chat with Jared, Caroline, The Wee Jenny, Shelby, and Jamie.  I also changed my playing strategy while playing changing from just working on completing quests and leveling to working more on my crafting abilities and harvesting materials.  It has been extremely fun playing with the guild and I haven't had this much fun in WoW for a long long time.  Don't worry Crystal, I will be on an alternating schedule between WoW and EQ2 starting tomorrow.

My sister gave me (under her children's names) Elite Beat Agents.  I love this portable rhythm game.  I sneak this in before I go to bed or when I have a moment to myself.  The game story and presentation just cracks me up.  The songs are fun and it just made me smile and have a good time.

I also did some reading and had some time to catch up on the NetFlix queue.  That will be a later post.

The wife informed me this afternoon that tonight's dinner would be take out and for me to have the background processes of my brain crunch on where I would like dinner from.  Today was not your typical Saturday with the wife, the wee on and I walking into town to visit the library and coming home to have the wee one take a 2.5 hour nap.  I sneaked in a 2 hour one while she did in preparation for the eventful late evening that awaits me.  When she woke up, with the 45 minutes of remaining daylight, I raked up the backyard.  When I returned from raking, the wife took a shower while I kept the wee one entertained.  When she walked out of the shower, she showed me the Not Your Average Joe's take-out menu and said "what do you think".  I was thinking the same thing.  So I tell her what I want and I hop in the shower (found a tick crawling on my hand when I returned from raking..bleh).  She calls it up and let's me know that I need to be there by 6:30.  I leave the house at 6:25 knowing full well that the food won't be ready at 6:30.  I have been burned by them before without my Daddy Diaper Bag.

So I get there and tell them "I'm here to pick up a take out order, under the name of raf or <wife's name>".  They scamper around the back and check all the receipts and can't find it.  "Could it have been under another name?", they ask.  "No, it would be under raf or <wife's name>."  "Oh, here it is."  There was our meal off in a corner, off to the side away from everyone else's orders.  They begin to inform me way our order is segregated from the rest.  "Umm, there was a problem with your order.  We have the side of green beans and Chicken Carbonara.  But we no longer serve the Grecian Chicken.  So we only have the green beans and Chicken Carbonara".  My face is completely dazed.  "So in this bag, is the Chicken Carbonara and no substitute for the Grecian Chicken", I ask for clarification.  "Yes, that is correct.  Whoever took the order wasn't aware that we no longer serve the Grecian Chicken." "&@#$ &@#$ &@#$" my mind reels off.  I quickly call the wife up and let her know what's up.  "WHAT! THEY WHAT!  You're giving the hell right?  OMG.  This is ridiculous.", was the wife's response to the good news.  "I can order something and wait for it.  What do you want?", I said in a soothing tone.  I listed off every entree from the updated take out menu.  Nothing rung her bell (nor mine for that matter).  I reminded her that there was a sub shop that is a family favorite in the same strip mall that I could hit for her.  That worked for her.  "They asked for my number, raf.  Why the hell would they ask for the number if they weren't going to use it".  So I inform the staff that what they had prepared was sufficient and began to pay for the order.  I looked at every receipt they had and none had our phone number on it.  I asked them "Didn't you ask for our phone number when the order was placed?  Why wouldn't have you called us if we asked for something that you wouldn't prepare?".  She gave me some response that it was her first day, that she didn't take the order, and she didn't know.  I told her "that I wasn't blaming her, but...whatever, you have to understand that this is a real pain in the ass."  And I walked out with my food.

So, WTF.  They ask for your phone number and they don't call you if they messed up the order?  Also, looking back, I should have called for the manager and asked for some type of compensation for their serious screw up.  Perhaps I will send them an email.  Mmm, maybe I should sick the wife on him since it was her order the screwed up.

The wife reminded me on the walk back to the car from the Cosby show last night  that it was our anniversary today.  WHA!  The combination of excitement and sleep deprivation from the Wii pre-order adventure must have corrupted the high priority memory storage because it had completely slipped my mind.  I honestly told the wife that I forgot and she just said reminded me that as long as she got a plant she would be okay.  So after I finished raking the leaves this afternoon, I went to the local gardening center and searched for a plant.  The plant caught my eye and I didn't want to pick it up because it is difficult to maintain.  However, I could not find an equivalent substitute, so I ended up picking it up.

Show us the view outside your window.
Submitted by Cat.

Taking a shot outside my window is a little too close to home and removes some of the anonymity of my location.  So instead I decided to take pictures from the view of my driver side window during the morning commute to work. 

First stop is the wee one's day care school.  We left earlier than usual so she could get a decent nap in before I brought her in.  Lately, she has been passing out 5 minutes before I get there, so luckily she was able to get close to a 30 minute nap in.  10 of those minutes was in the parking lot of the school.  A bird decided to visit the tree by the driver side window.  He showed off long enough for me to grab some pictures of him.  Unfortunately, it was hard to spot him in the LCD screen.

With the wee one dropped off, I head to destination #2 on my Tuesday and Wednesday commute: Starbucks.  A Venti Mocha was in order.
My final stop on the way to work was the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the way to work.  Since I was the recipient of a coaster that should have contained the Guitar Hero II demo, I went in to exchange my OPSM with a new one, even though I knew I had the last one from the magazine rack.  I checked the magazine racks and couldn't find any.  I approached the Customer Service desk and I told the person behind the counter that I had a defective demo disc and I would like to exchange it.  I also told him I checked and couldn't find any replacements.  He then asked me where they were on the rack and from beneath that rack pulled out a drawer filled with magazines.  After some searching I found another OPSM.  That was not the outcome I expected, but it was a good outcome.
On an unrelated vox hunt note, the demo disc worked this time.  I played each song on Medium, Hard, and Expert difficulties once.  My Expert ratings were:
The jump in difficulty from Hard to Expert is much larger than in the first one, but the hammer ons and pull offs are much easier to execute.  I didn't get any co-op in since it was late and the wife was tired, but she promised to play sometime soon (before the actual game is released..

It was the second or third day after moving into my dorm sophomore year.  I brought with me a stack of Lollapalooza '94 fliers that had all these great Buddha type images.  I wanted to cut them out to put time on my wall, but neither I nor my roommate had scissors.  I figure that someone on the girl's side of the floor would have them.  Not a lot of people had not moved in yet, so there was not a ton of people to ask.  One room (the large center room) had its door open.  I asked the brunette in the room if she had scissors.  She confirmed lent them to me.  Seven years later, we were married.

The wife called me at work with a panicky voice. "Raf, you won't believe this."  My mind races that the wee one has done something terrible or something bad has happened.  "I just deleted my entire inbox.  I thought I had only one stupid email selected but somehow I deleted all the emails".

How would I react to this?  Not a problem.  Why?

Three years ago I devised a backup strategy for the house.  Currently we have two desktop computers (my gaming rig and my wife's computer), two laptops (his and hers), and one Linux file server.  My wife's desktop is the most important computer in the network.  Her computer stores all the digital photos we have ever take as well as her email.  If there was ever a loss of data on either of those fronts, there would be hell to pay, and it would be me paying the bill.  So three years ago I made an investment to purchase some pricey backup software that could do two things: perform incremental backup of a hard drive image to a network drive and perform those backups on a schedule.  I can not expect my wife to remember to backup her data every night (it's hard enough to get her doing her Windows updates).  Hell, I don't run Backup on my Mac laptop except when I install a new version of OS X.  And that's the problem with most backup software for home consumers, you have to push the button.  But with said pricey software, it all happens auto-magically.  Every night at 3 am, little backup elves work their magic on the wife's computer and do their backup dance.

So, when the wife told me this problem, I told her to turn off her email client (to cut off the flow of new email) and I would take care of it when I got home.  It took me 2 minutes to recover her inbox from the snapshot taken last night and she is back in black.  If I hadn't had a backup, I don't think I would be here right now writing this post.  I would be listening to a rant regarding the evils of computers.

So readers, we all have a love/hate relationship with computers.  But the one thing we do love is our data.  Find away to backup your most important data incase you get a nasty case of the deleties, or your hard drive decides finally goes through with that career change of being a paper weight.  You will be glad you did.

Follow up to: Not The Way To Start The Day

The wife doesn't work today and still feeling a bit under the weather (currently at 99.8% health), I decided to catch some extra zzz's.  I am awaken to the sounds of the wee one and the wife coming up the stairs from the basement.  I hear the wife telling the wee one some instructions that involve walking up to me and saying something.  Hmm, the wife is usually good about keeping the wee one away while I slumber, so I was extremely curious what the wee one was supposed to do.  So I shut my eyes and pretend to be sleeping.

"Daddy, look.", she says with her head poking over the mattress.
"Huh", I respond, barely raising my head to sell that I have been sleeping the whole time.
"Look it at what I got".

In her wee hands is a bag from Dunkin' Donuts.  "Daddy's donut." she exclaims.  I pat her little head and get out of bed, with a coffee also waiting for me in the kitchen.

Show us a cool shadow.

The wife took this one on her recent trip with the wee one to Maine.