Wish You Were There (But You Weren't)

Alas, there was no time for blogging whilst in Santa Fe this past weekend. The drive over was uneventful, the visit with the credit union on Friday went fine, followed by a nice dinner at a hilltop steak restaurant, where Brenna was on her best behavior (for a five year old). Saturday we spent time at a children's museum and at Pecos National Park, looking at Indian ruins. In between all of this we spent some time swimming in the hotel pool (indoors, thank you kindly). In a paragraph, that sums up the trip, but don't despair, pictures follow.

I sometimes think that posting these blogs with pictures that my wife has already plastered all over Crackbook is counter-productive, but you don't get the witty (or lack thereof) commentary there that you would here. So, there.

I will proceed to milk these pictures for at least one more blog, as my life here at the house during the workday isn't terribly exciting.

Below is a shot of the main drag whilst entering Santa Fe. Consider this a reenactment, as we actually arrived in the middle of the night on Thursday. There was still a little snow on the mountains in the distance, and it was pretty darn chilly while we were there.

Here are a few shots of Brenna blowing bubbles at the children's museum on Saturday. She really enjoyed this place, even though we weren't there but maybe two hours. Part of the exhibits were inside, and some were outside, and she checked most everything out before we left for lunch.

Now outside, Brenna spent some time playing some of the musical instruments out in the garden of the children's museum. It was cold and windy, none of us were interested in being outside for terribly long.

Finally, as a sneak preview to shots to come, Brenna is tromping around here in a patch of snow on the way up a bluff to view the Indian ruins in Pecos.

I have a few pictures on my phone as well, and will try to post them in the near future.

Introducing... Emily's Camera!

It goes to show that at least one person reads these blogs, that being my lovely wife. Moments after complaining about not having any new pictures to post here, my wonderful wife presented me with a wide array of shots from her new camera.

And without further ado, and while I have time before the wife and kid get home, here are a few of the highlights.

We recently went to the zoo with Rachel, and I once again was ran over. You may have seen the prior version of this picture on Crackbook, but here's a new one. Chances are if you're friends with my wife on CB, you've already seen this picture, but let's pretend you haven't, along with all the others that follow. Else, my existence here in Blogville is in complete and utter vain.

This is our child's safe place. No, actually her safe place is on a Dora couch under our dining room table, but she small child seems to favor small spaces, including one of our laundry hampers. Silly child.

The local fire station visited Brenna's school recently, and she came away with this nifty helmet.



Here is a nice picture of Brenna at one of her recent swim lessons. It's been really nice having this outlet for her, especially during the winter when it's too cold to do this type of thing outside. Hopefully upon our return from Santa Fe, we'll be booking her with her instructor twice a week until she's made up all of those days she's missed for some reason or another. We're still trying to capture the child in flight, flinging herself into the pool from the side.

And finally, here is another outside outlet, a local mall's play area. Like the sasquatch caught in it's native habitat, Emily captured our child in motion here. I promise, the sasqautch references will taper off eventually, although I'm going to have to exclaim at least more than once "it's pretty damn squatchy out here", as we're driving through the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico this weekend.

Cry For The Indians

I'm coming up for air, at least briefly. I've been back from the frozen tundra of Eastern Tennessee for a few days now, and am about to turn back around for a business in the front/pleasure in the back trip with the family to Santa Fe this upcoming weekend. Perhaps that trip will result in some new photos to share with all three of you that frequent this blog. Since Emily received a new camera for Christmas, I know she's been taking pictures with it, but they've yet to make it to our hard drive where they're useful to me. I'm looking forward to seeing what's on there and will share some of those shots in the near future.

You'll notice that the ads are back since the re-design of the site. If the handsome black man is still to your right where I last spotted him, please click on him so we can raise a few quarters for our child's college education.

We had a pretty busy weekend around here, going over to Aunt Beth and Uncle John's on Saturday to watch Cowboys Vs. Aliens and apparently one of Rachel's favorite movies, White Chicks. We also ran errands on both days, including family going to the grocery store. I know, these are juicy tidbits about our lives that you tune in regularly for.

I had two installs to support for work at one this morning. With the help of Anthrax (the band, not the poison), I'm stumbling through the rest of my afternoon. As luck would have it, I get to work at one tomorrow morning, also. I probably should be napping right about now. Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead, right?

I'll probably think of something insightful to share after I've logged off, but for now, and possibly until Santa Fe, that is all.

My Blood Is Not That Color Anymore

It's been three weeks since I've last frequented Crackbook. At this point in my resolution I'm slightly torn. While I don't miss the vast majority of the nonsense that goes on there and is available for mass consumption, there are occasions where I think it'd be nice to reach out to someone and say "hello", or chat with someone I don't see that often in person who just happens to be on there at the same time as me.

That being said, it's also been nice to focus on other more constructive things, like this mental exercise.

I've been told that I should be posting updates to the Hoes blog as well. Picky, picky. Yes, I'll get around to that very, very soon. Perhaps later this afternoon. The weather continues to be mild for this time of year, and there are a few things going on outside worth taking pictures of.

Tomorrow I'll be taking the wife to a late birthday lunch. We've also moved Brenna's swim lessons to Friday nights, so she can go back to her old teacher, so that will free us up for some errand running on Saturday, and I'm sure some other things not worth posting here, but I'll do so anyway.

And for your trouble today, I leave you with no pictures, but instead one more interesting fact about Sasquatch (not sure if the plural is Sasquatches). The common Sasquatch will snap small saplings in two like matches to build shelter to protect itself from the elements. Should you come across a small grove of snapped saplings in the middle of the forest one day soon, be advised that a Sasquatch may have been there at some point.

The proof is in the pudding. Gonna have to upgrade our cable to include Animal Planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILXBMxiZOUI

Flying

Funny to begin with that I had to drive from Birmingham to Nashville just to catch a flight back to Atlanta that routes me home to Phoenix. I guess you have to go around the world sometimes for a $200 roundtrip ticket, but as fate would have it, the plane coming into Nashville this afternoon has mechanical issues, so I'm now flying home on a different airline through Houston, getting in at eleven tonight. Whoopee. Working tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn should be fun, but at least I've had ample time here at the airport to check my work email, and eat some underwhelming Mexican food for dinner. Caio.

Sasquatch

True facts about Bigfoot:

1 - There isn't just one Sasquatch, as they're more commonly known. Sasquatch will congregate anywhere that there is ample cover, food (sorry, not beef jerky) and water.

2 - Sasquatch will communicate with one another via either whistles, howls mimicking their local four legged friends (coyotes, wolves, etc), or by simply clacking rocks or tree limbs against tree trunks.

3 - Sasquatch travel in small groups, most like a father, mother and any siblings.

4 - Like humans, the color of the Sasquatches hair can be vary, including gray as they grow older.

5 - If threatened by local trackers, Sasquatch will hurl rocks in defense.

More true facts regarding Sasquatch to follow as I continue my field research on Animal Planet.

I've Been Everywhere

Hello again from Blogsville. Since we last spoke, I was leaving for Nashville for the weekend. I've since driven through a rough bit of snow, visited my parents and cousin-bro Bill and his fiance Veronica in Pigeon Forge, and driven back to Birmingham for meeting at work on Monday. On Tuesday I'll drive back to Nashville, fly to Atlanta, and back to Phoenix in time to crash for a few hours before work begins anew the next morning. Yippee. All of this time in the car was in an effort to save the employer a little money on my flight into town, but I got a nice bonus visit in with the family. So there.

Up next on the travel log will be a long weekend drive to Santa Fe at the end of the month for some business and pleasure, as Emily and the small child will be along.

And to abruptly end this blog because I have nothing else to add this fine evening, I give you a picture of my beautiful wife on a boat, and a gecko hiding in a rafter. Good day to you.

The Pentagon Knows How To Turn Us On

Good heavens, not another blog about Christmas. Don't worry, I think this will be the last one before I start living in the present again. And I'm posting this blog on our crappy personal laptop with the "special" keyboard, so I will make this short.

Perhaps a month ago, our child was in a school pageant involving some groovy tunes and cool dance moves.

What? Cool dance moves? You know what that means, it's the return of Shaky Jake, Brenna's classmate that overshadows her at every turn with his smooth moves. Refer to the VBS pictures posted this past summer for reference, and you may remember this fellow.

Here he is taking center stage in this shot, with our child dwarfed to the left.

I was truly hoping Brenna was going to take that gift bag upside his head here, but it wasn't to be.

I know this was supposed to be the crowning moment of the show, the little kids' white gloves and clothes glowing in the blacklight, but all this made me think of was a crime screen from that CSI show.

Here's another quick glance at Shaky Jake, before I bid you farewell. I'll be on a plane most of tomorrow, and unless they have Wi-Fi, I'll be absent from here for a little while.

Van Halen - Is It Live Or Memorex?

Can't say this is what I was expecting after waiting fifteen plus years for a new David Lee Roth/Van Halen song, but I'm holding out hope for this album, which drops in February. Obviously Roth's voice isn't going to be the same as it was some 25+ years ago, and this new song to me sounds like a Roth solo effort, but I'll take it, given the overwhelming amount of mediocre music that's out there these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WfQ-hV3WtA

I'm hoping the new album will have some gems on it like this one from 1996, the last time the Van Halen brothers dusted Dave off for some studio time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA-DmFtryFY

And of course, something along the lines of this Sammy Hagar nugget would be fine with me as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV0JX1CpHW4

Smash, Grab, and Take It (For Yourself)

I'm thinking this needs to be my final Christmas related blog. It is, after all, the middle of January. This may be my final blog for a little while, anyway, as I'm heading to Nashville on Thursday, and won't be back for a week. Never fear, if I can't find the time to blog while I'm sitting at the airport, or elsewhere, I shall return with pictures of the parents, my cousin-bro Bill and his new fiance, and lots of sleeping trees.

I finally got the rest of the Christmas "stuff" put away during lunch today. This probably will be the only time you'll ever be granted a peak into the disaster that is our garage. We can actually fit a car in there, and God willing, we'll fit another one in there before summer is once again upon us.

We did a (not so) Secret Santa thing at Emily's parents house right before Christmas.

Tyler was there. He likes bacon strips. Don't we all.

Cool looking headwear by Emily.

Aunt Beth, Grandma Becky, Grandpa Ron's boots, and my child's ass crack were also present and accounted for.

Becky's headwear and nifty scarf by Emily. A lot of people got "crotcheted" by Emily for the holidays. She's crafty like that.

The stockings were hung in the hallway with care.

Nevermind that my child's ass was yes, still bare.



Tyler's woman friend Lily was there, and look, there's her twin sister Rachel sitting on the couch with her. I wore red shoes for the occasion, and my bare-assed child wore her Batgirl shirt. Grandpa Ron was enthralled by it all.

Five Steps To Freedom

I somehow couldn't manage to find time to blog this weekend, nevermind the fact that we spent most of it sitting around the house. Good for our budget, good for getting my coin sales packaged and out the door, but not good for much else.

Speaking of coins, I'm doing everything in my power to find/make the time to continue with this desire to buy and sell on EBAY for some extra money for our household. Thus far January is looking pretty good, and I hope to raise the cash needed for my rental car and gas money for next weekend while I'm in Tennessee visiting my parents and cousin-bro Bill.

It's slightly ironic that the year we've committed to buckling down on our spending is shaping up to be a banner year for travel, and just today a trip later this month to Santa Fe has crept out of the woodwork, so it just keeps building.

Here's an example of the types of coins I'm selling. I could bore you with details involving my strategy in buying and reselling for profit, but I'll save that for my future multi-billion dollar, best-selling book. My God, have you ever seen a 100 year old penny look that amazing? Hmmm.

Well, moving onto other non-coin related things. I'm jumping back on the Christmas train, with a few more pictures from that period.

Our small child got this shrine to Disney dolls. My wife spent only a few hours putting this monstrosity together. Better her than me.

The small child received a number of other non-Disney related things, although I think I posted another picture here of her opening an Ariel doll. Anyway, she was well pleased with her haul.

Here I am on Christmas Eve morning (I think), sharing the mysteries of life with the small child. Apparently it was small enough to hold in my hand. Maybe it was a coin.



And here are the Grandparents Homans opening their gifts.

I seem to have ran out of uploaded pictures, so I think I'm done, for now. The wife and child will be arriving home shortly, and I still have a dishwasher to empty and reload before dinner.

Before I leave you, my apologies for any misspellings in any of these posts from January. This mediocre blog software has it's limitations, and those limitations are different on every laptop we have in the house. The laptop I'm using now is easier to type on, and upload photos from, but apparently I can't resize fonts or enable spell check from here. Oh well, I'm sure all two of you that read this can deal with that.

Random Rachel

I heard through the CB airwaves that Rachel got the part she was hoping for in an upcoming youth play. Good for her!

For no apparent reason other than the fact that I was told that this morning, here are some random Rachel photo's I found on my portable hard drive from the last few months, including:

The 12 year old posing with a bunch of other fairies for Halloween, including our 5 year old water fairy.

Making Smores in Ron and Becky's backyard over Christmas. Pictured here with Aunt Beth and that pesky 5 year old that seems to show up in every photo we take.



Not sure what the 12 year old is doing in this picture, but you can insert your own witty commentary here, if you please. If I got a sweater with the same colors as her socks in this picture, I'd wear it. Honest.



A look of suprise as the 12 year old opens a gift card to the mall. Writer's disclosure here, whilst playing pool with her earlier that day, I accidentally asked her if she liked the gift card we had gotten her, not realizing at the time that she hadn't opened it yet. I stupidly thought she had done so in the above picture from earlier in the day at her parent's house. Oops. Good acting, Rachel, good acting.

And finally, a picture that's not new to anyone that follows my wife on CB, or saw me post this picture there myself, but here's a nice family shot taken over the holidays.

Rachel, your five minutes of fame are up, at least on my blog. I hope that you'll still let me live in your mansion when you become famous, or let me at least live in your tool she, ala Bill Murray in Caddyshack, and be your groundskeeper.

Ed. Note - Playing today in Homans' Head, for no apparent reason, Johnny Cash's "Fourth Man In The Fire"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewY9U_FVPeM

Running Too Deep

This is my third installment of the year, in my continuing effort to justify no longer wasting time sitting idly on CB.

I'm glad the kids have started going back to school, I now have something to watch out my office window other than retirees on their bicycles (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you).

I also noticed this afternoon the HOA patrol roll by in their window-tinted sedan, no doubt writing me up for the weeds and leaves in my front yard. I would hope that my Jersey Shore neighbors were also writen up for what looks like the tattered remains of a desk or table that's been sitting on their front stoop since November, as well as the other assorted trash in their front yard (including an old bottle of motor oil - Insert theme song to Samford & Son here).

Whilst pulling the aforementioned weeds, I had Keith Richard's "Running Too Deep" stuck in my head. I don't know if subconsciously I was thinking about the deep reaching roots of said weeds, or that I have more things to do than I have time for. I'm not sure what Mr. Richard's song is really about, as he's more of a mumbler than singer, but perhaps I can pencil in a few minutes later today to research the lyrics and see if there's a deeper meaning there.

This happens to me on a regular basis, having some soundtrack for my life playing in my head from day to day. Most of the time it's pretty appropriate for whatever I'm doing or dealing with at the time, other times not so much, but it's a constant thing that drives me crazy sometimes, especially when I'm trying to focus on work.

Anyway, I promised in an earlier post that I'd catch everyone up on our Christmas happenings. There seems like no better time than the present to relieve those wonderous days of yore.

My wife has been politely suggesting for a few months now that our digital camera is too slow when taking pictures with the flash, and also that having a camera of her own would be nice, since I admittedly use ours quite a bit for buying and selling coins on EBAY. So, being the loving husband that I am, I bought her a nice upgrade.

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but yes, I do what I can to make the missus happy.

Grandma and Grandpa Homans were here for Christmas week, and during one of those balmy afternoons we took the five year old out to the park across from our house for some ball kicking action.

Here's a shot of Grandparents Homans limbering up before the big show.

Grandpa Homans did an excellent Pele impression while entertaining the small child.

Emily tried multiple times to capture the ball kicking action, this being one of those shots.

Here is the "money shot". The small child rather enjoyed kicking the ball at me at point blank range, and despite the fact that said ball was partially deflated and soft as a overripe banana, I still was caught flinching during one of those occasions.




Look at how big our girl has gotten, time flies when you're kicking people in the crotch with an overripe banana ball.

Ed. Note - YouTube link for the Keith Richards' song in question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCn1498bYuM

I Like My Yard A Little On The Trashy Side
(aka The Longest Blog Title Ever)

Word has slowly gotten around that I've given up (or am in the process of giving up) the Crackbook.

My wife, in response to this, stated last night "I hope this means you're going to blog more", and this morning, made reference to my decision as "nonsense". Sometimes men are actually pretty good listeners.

That being said, despite the naysayers and nonbelievers, I've managed to log into CB only once in the past week, and that was to say my goodbyes and offer up a link to this blog. I read somewhere that after three weeks most any habit can be broken, so I'm already a third of the way there. I won't go so far as to dub CB as a bad habit, as I completely realize there are some inherit benefits to what it offers the end user, if used properly. With my wife being on there, regularly posting family pictures and whatnot, and most people I know being friends with her already, my presence on CB was really not necessary any longer.

Jumping off of that dead horse, allow me to share a few pictures of what I've been up to lately.

Right now the majority of my pictures are on our other laptop with the funky keyboard that I detest greatly, so I'll have to ponder how I can move some of those over to this PC in order to catch everyone up on our Christmas festivities.

But in the meantime I offer you this.



Ok, so what the hell is it, right? With some of my Christmas gift card money, I bought some supplies to expand the shelter I built a few years ago on the north side of the house. Doing this will allow me to (hopefully) keep vegetables alive further into the summer, among other things. I've managed to keep the height of the shelter below our property wall, so the HOA can't see it from the street and demand that I tear it down. And thankfully, our Jersey Shore neighbors who moved in next door could care less what I'm doing in my yard, as they're too busy lifting on the second floor and listening to their rap music with their windows open.

Getting off on a tangent briefly, you can see the roof over their porch where I've had to climb up twice now and shut their dogs back up in that bedroom. In ten years of living here they are our fourth set of neighbors, and I'm thinking they may be the most interesting, so far.



Well, yes, I already knew that about myself, so let's move onto another topic.

The grape vine on that side of the yard has again turned a lovely shade of red, orange, and yellow. Brenna has enjoyed making leaf pressings or shadings (or both, I forget) from these. But wait, wrong blog to be talking about plants. Please head over to the Hoes blog to learn more about what's going on in the yard these days (damn, what a fine segue).



And because I know most if not all of you drop by periodically to see if I've posted any Brenna pictures that my wife hasn't already on CB, I offer this year-old picture that I still think is one of the most adorable ones of our child. As mentioned earlier, I have a TON of pictures from December, but they're on the other laptop. So stay tuned, resolution or no, I'm determined to make more time for this blog in 2012.

Adios, Facebook

This morning I deactivated my Twitter account, after receiving an email that another random person I don't know was watching my "tweets". By the way, I haven't "tweeted" since May of 2010, and only think about Twitter whenever these random notification emails come my way.

I've been pondering doing the same with my Facebook account for quite some time, and finally concluded that the New Year is about as good a time as any to resolve to do away with as many distractions in my life as possible and focus on more important things, like say, the real world.

Don't get me wrong, it was highly enjoyable in the beginning, catching up with people from my past (distant and not so much). From time to time I've said prayers for people that have asked for them, for whatever reason. I have flipped through pictures of people's vacations to random locations, exotic, or otherwise. I've even gone so far as to engage in online chatting with a few of them.

But then I got sucked into playing some of the games on there, namely Happy Aquarium. I felt the need to log in at least twice a day to make sure my tank was clean and my fake fish weren't suffering unnecessarily. This lead to playing another online game non-related to Facebook that took more time away from doing more important things. After a number of months I recognized how much time I was wasting, and ceased doing them entirely. That was a little over a year ago.

And still I periodically logged in to look at people's dogs, relatives I've never met myself, nor will I ever. I read about people's beef with this politician, or this other person, or problems with their neighbors, problems with their spouses, problems with life in general. I started blogging less often because it was so much easier to just upload photos to Facebook and add one line blurbs about where I was, who I was standing there in the picture with, and what I was doing.

I've missed blogging, whether anyone reads what I say here or not, I've missed it. I work from home in a vacuum the majority of the time, and to me, expressing my thoughts here seems a little more sane than talking to myself. I tend to make more of an effort to share a story with a picture here than I would on Facebook.

I'm quite honestly tired of doing something because everyone else is. I realize that blogging is probably so 2006, but I don't care. For the same reason my favorite band to listen to is Voivod. Never heard of them? Good, that's how I like it.

This is not a formal declaration that I'm officially becoming a hermit. I'd love to hear from anyone that wants to "chat me up", but I'm tired of doing it on some billionaire's mind numbing website.

Facebook, I may be back some day, or find a need to log back into your site again, but for my sanity's sake, I hope not. This is one New Year's resolution that I think I'll be keeping.