Getting One Million Roses!

Juri and I have been hard at work getting the one million roses in We Love Katamari. We have reached 181,000 so far. It's been a chore, but when we work together, the progress moves along quite nicely. We had a plan last night to tape the controller so that the katamari rolls around on it's own, collecting roses while we sleep. It worked okay. I was hoping for some better results. It collected only 5,000 roses after about 7 hours, which I can easily accomplish on my own within 30 minutes. So, I think I need to do a better angle of rotation or something. We have the katamari circling the ice rink stage, which is circular in design and has a HUGE density of roses and rose bunches. Hopefully we can get some better results tonight!

Open House

Today was Open House at Sean's school. It was great to see his classroom and his teachers, learn about the instruction they do, and meet all of his teachers. His new ABA class has really helped him a lot! It was amazing to hear from Sean's teachers about all the good stuff that he is accomplishing and talk about the new things he has started to do at home on his own. Sean is a wonderful boy, and I am so proud of him. Apparently, Sean has been participating more and more in his group sessions, and speaking sentences without prompting lately. I've noticed the sentences at home as well over the past week. My little boy is getting big!

On the way to the Open House, I saw a billboard that made me teary. It was one of those Organization for a Better Life billboards. It was of a man sitting on the summit of Mt. Everest and the caption said, "Climbed Everest. Blind." For some reason, that just really got me!

Katamaris Dance in my Mind!

This freaking game has Juri and I hooked! We Love Katamaris! It's been non-stop for the last four days now. To top it all off, Juri and I worked together to finish the game and we are rewarded with the task of collecting 1,000,000 freaking roses!! Holy crap! We are on our second day of the task so far and haven't even reached 100,000 roses yet (though we are getting close with our spontaneous 15 minute sessions). Thankfully, we are able to save our progress as we go. I can't get the music out of my head either. I love it though. It is so much fun to see how big I can get my katamari to be. I'm holding a record of about 3300 meters, though I know people have achieved higher than that.

In other news, I ran my PRT today. While I did better in my pushups and situps, I fell back some on my run with a time of 11:14. I could have done better, but it seemed like many of us who ran it today fell back in their performance. In any case, I have a better overall score this time with an Excellent Low. Yay!

Well, Juri is hinting at me to get outside and mow the back lawn. Better get to it.

My Children

I have the two most adorable children in the world! I love them completely! Even though we can have difficult times, and stressful moments, every day ends with me putting them in bed, giving them a big hug, and saying good night. That seems to be the one moment of each day that Sean and Maia are quiet and peaceful. While I sit there waiting for them to fall asleep, I sometimes reflect on the day we had, and the love I have for them. Of course, sometimes I play my GameBoy or fall asleep too.

In any case, I love them both unconditionally!

Slow Day

While the wife went to her Creative Memories crop she was holding, the kids and I hung out at the house all day. We didn't do too much though. Thanks to the rain, we were restricted to sticking around the house. Kinda boring. I was supposed to mow the lawn today too, but the weather prevented that. Hopefully tomorrow will bode better for some lawn mowing action. Gotta get ready for the coming winter!

Relaxing Day

Today's been a nice day of R & R. Having had a rough past week, this Saturday was highly anticipated. Juri has been doing business all day, so it has just been the kids and I. We've played outside and enjoyed some beautiful weather. I'm making dinner right now, but I really suck at it... I managed to mess up rice tonight! What a retard I am. Well, at least Juri won't be eating it. She is on a low carb diet, and so she won't be eating the rice. But, if she ate it, she'd yell at me!!!
Okay, she wouldn't really. But, she would definitely make fun of me!

Anyway, today has been a day of relaxation and katamari rolling. Gotta get back to dinner.

Party!

I'm going out tonight! It's been a while... Last party I went to was for a farewell party for my friend Arlis as he departed for officerhood back in February this year. Tonight, I'm going to another farewell party to wish my friend Aaron luck to whatever boat he is heading for next week. Going out to get drunk and smashed is not my thing, but spending time with my friends is, so I'm going to see them, have a couple drinks, and then come home once they have worn off. See ya!

Halo?

My wife comes upstairs while I'm giving the kids a bath and tells me, "Guess what? A Bungie employee called."
I exclaimed, "What!? Who called? Why?" I'm thinking my wife put me on some contest on the Red vs. Blue website or something like that.
She says, "Yeah, Master Chief called for you!"
Huh? What? Turns out, she was talking about my master chief at work! Silly Juri! =) That definitely made me laugh.

In other news, I went out and bought We ♥ Katamari today! Yay! It's really funny, and a lot of fun to play. Juri and I got to try the two-player co-op mode, which was quite difficult to do. I'm sure that once we get the hang of the modified controls, it'll be much smoother.

A Great Day!

Even though, thanks to Lost, I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted to last night, I still managed to have a great day at work today! There wasn't a lot of surprise maintenance that came up, and my watch was enjoyable. I even managed to let a couple people leave early today.

Speaking of Lost, that show has me really hooked in. I didn't see every episode last season, but the second season opener was absolutely amazing! The show revolves around mysterious pasts and a crazy island, and when you think that some events can't possibly be related, you end up getting smacked in the face with evidence to the contrary. If you haven't watched this show yet, DO SO NOW!!! It's great, believe me!

Worst Sleep Ever

Title explains it all...

Gotta go to work now...

My wife really loves me, and I appreciate everything that she does for me, especially when she wakes up in the morning with me to tell me she loves me. =) Thanks, baby.

Can't Sleep... Random Thoughts

We've gone to bed, yet I can't sleep. I know that part of the reason is that I fell asleep while I was putting the little ones to sleep tonight for an hour. However, m mind is also racing from one random thought to another, so I figured writing about them might help put my mind to rest and let me catch some Z's. So, here we go in no particular order or sense...

• Maggie won Big Brother 6 tonight. Good because Ivette didn't win, bad because Janelle didn't make it to the end.
• Is this issue with tagouts ever going to be resolved? Will I go to Captain's Mast soon? Who is driving this insanity? Are they just trying to make an example out of my coworker and I?
• I got another new person at work today. I need to introduce him to the rest of the section tomorrow and make room for him on the planner program (I shouldn't have deleted those extra spaces we had before, Matt).
• Final Fantasy VII is god awful by today's standards! I can't believe how much I loved that game when it came out, and how great I thought the graphics looked. We've come a long way since then! And who the hell translated that game?? It's horrible!
• Am I too hard on my children? I feel like I am. I really don't want Maia to act like a spoiled brat, but she seems to get worse day by day. I think I push Sean too hard to be normal, which is definitely wrong.
• We raised a lot of money for the Albany Autism Society Walk, but those people who said that they were going to donate on the web site after the Walk ended still haven't done so... and probably will not ever.
• I really need to get back to work on my arcade cabinet!! What a slacker I am! That control panel has me really pissed though. Maybe after taking such a long break from it will help be gain a new perspective on its construction.
• Why do I keep having these issues with my router randomly dropping our connection?! Where are these DoS attacks coming from that the router's firewall is blocking? Is that the reason for the random loss of connection to the router?

Alright, that's enough. I feel a little better getting that off my chest now. I hope I can fall asleep now. Good night.

The Sick

There's a sickness going around work lately, and I've been fortunate enough to avoid it, so far. Of course, now that I'm saying something, I'll probably get whatever is going around. As usual, my family will get sick as well, which just causes all sorts of misery and pain. 2005 has been a bad one for getting sick. My entire family has been sick at least 10 times, thanks to us passing around our nasty viruses between each other multiple times over the course of the year.

I'm very much loved!

Today at work, when things seemed their worst, my wife gives me a call. All she wanted to do was tell me that she loved me. It was the sweetest thing and it really cheered me up. The positive outlook improved my day and made things go much smoother.

Thanks, baby!

Tired

There is only one reason why I hate the day shift and training week shift over swings and midnight: lack of sleep. For some reason, I stay up too late (usually to midnight) and wake up too early (5 to 5:30 am). I'm way too tired!! =(
I suppose I should go to bed early tonight. More than likely, I'll end up falling asleep while putting the kids to bed. I have to stay up in the bedroom with the kids while they are falling asleep because if they don't see me in there, they get out of bed. Usually, I play on my Nintendo DS in order to stay awake, but this time I'll let the sleep grab hold of me and pull me under.

Walk for Autism

Tomorrow, my family will be participating in the Walk for Autism. We were able to raise over $400!! Good stuff! I want to thank everyone who was able to donate to this cause, even with all the other great causes to donate to recently. I've always felt bad about asking people for money, but this time was different. My son, Sean, has been diagnosed with Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD), a part of the autistic spectrum. So, it has become a more personal cause for me.

When I was young, I participated in the Aids Walk often. One of my cousins died from Aids, so I felt compelled to help. Juri always says that I feel compelled to help anyone in need. However, I was never able to raise much money for the Aids Walks that I was a part of because I hated to ask others for money. Now I realize that the issue was a personal one. By being personally impacted by the autistic spectrum, I knew that money I raised could personally aid my family in the future, whether it was through research to find a cause or cure.

I wish my family luck tomorrow. I wish I could walk with them, but I have to work. We don't ahve enough people at work lately to support me taking the day off that day. =(

New Blogger

Alright, I admit that I've jumped onto the band wagon. My wife gets a weblog page, so I feel compelled to follow. Don't get me wrong, I've wanted to do so before, but I just didn't know what to write about. With blogging, though, you don't need to have a topic to write about. I can write about anything at all. So, I'll be writing about my life, my thoughts, and my actions. Hopefully, through this blog, you can find out more about me, and family can discover what I am doing with my life, since I'm so bad at making phone calls every so often!

So, I will attempt to post at least once a day to my weblog. Thanks for reading!