Mothers' Day

The kids were with their mom yesterday. Mothers' Day is a rather odd holiday for me. My money and time are spent to buy a present for the woman that spends little time with our children. Of course, the present is for the kids' sake. They deserve to have two parents that love them and that they can love back. The kids came back last night pretty happy, although that degenerated into bickering.

Been so long!

I have been way busy! First, I began learning how to play cello. I've wanted to learn for about nine years. I bought a cello from these guys. I've learned a lot, but I'm not convinced, nor are my kids, that I have any real talent. Still, I have a good time playing.

I met a single mom of two cool boys. The mom and I have been spending a lot of time chatting, talking, etc. Unfortunately, she lives a long way away and moving my kids from their mom isn't without consquence. I've got a lot of planning to do.

Spam?

I finally get my internet back up and check out my blog and immediately get two spam comments. WTF.

Internet back up

My internet service was down for a couple months. Apparantly, I can't upgrade Windows 98 to SE without problems. I figured it out though.

Neopets

At the bottom of my page is a link to Neopets. This site has been a time-burner for my daughter. She enjoys the boards, where fantasy role playing seems to be the theme. A couple of her friends from school are members and they can chat back and forth through the boards. I haven't found an actual chat function, which is fine by me. There are games where you can earn points and buy virtual gear. You can, of course, get your own smarmy little pets, hence the name: Neopets. The site has really been teaching my daughter about setting up pages and playing with HTML. Plus, she is learning to type and write. It's groovy. As far as I've seen it is a kid-safe site, but there are adults that have pages. So, as always, monitoring what your kids are doing on the net is a must.

Huffing

Have you heard about huffing? Just when you thought you'd covered all the bases by discussing teen pregnancy, aids, glue-sniffing, dope, etc. Time to throw away all our aerosol cans.

Schools out

The kids survived another year of school. On the last day of school, my daughter visited "Michigan Adventures" an amusement park. Her only regret for the day was not riding a scary ride sooner. She found that it was more fun than scary. The school took three buses filled with band and choir students and were supposed to arrive back at 9pm. At 9:50 it rolled into the school parking lot. My son and I waited for an hour, because we got there early. Gack!! The drive is about 2 1\2 hours long. Apparantly a few kids had too much to eat and drink and needed several stops along the way. You would think that the drivers would have planned for the stops, since this is an annual event.

My son, 11, and I did have some quality time, too. Not only did we sit in the car waiting for an hour with nothing to do, but talk, I also took him golfing in the afternoon. His last day was a half day at school and I was going to leave him at home while I worked. I had mixed feelings about leaving him on his own. He wasn't excited about it either. A co-worker said, "It's the last day of school. You should take him golfing." So, I did. We played 18 holes and got a cart. He has never played 18 and and it was his first time playing from a cart. I think he enjoyed the cart more than the golf.

He wanted to drive the cart and I let him a couple times. The course's liability insurance won't cover damages caused by someone driving a cart without a driver's license.

He had fun anyway. His lessons have really paid off, too. He hit the fairway more often than me and is really starting to get some distance, too. He aimed several good-natured "in your face" comments in my direction. He played well, but I still kicked his ass. I expect he will be kicking mine in a couple years, though.

Oh, both kids were promoted to the next grade. Whew!