I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV yesterday..........

I love the game. It's mindless fun at a higher level. A wide open city where you can do basically anything you want. Violence that is so over the top that it borders on cartoon-like.

I've seen a couple of things that really make me tired of judgemental people. First, there was a piece on the CBS Nightly News last night about the release of Grand Theft Auto 4. It mentioned how it will likely gross more than the highest revenue producing movie of last year. It also mentioned that the video game industry now makes more than the movie industry. At the end of the piece, the narrator said that 'the game is a great time as long as you enjoy hanging around with people like this' and then showed a guy punching another character in the game. They flashed back to Katy Couric and she decided to say 'No thanks!' in response to the reporter's question.

Pardon my french, but who the hell is Katy Couric to tell people what to think? Her job is to be an unbiased reporter and not to provide an editorial. Her job is to present the information, not insert her opinion. If she wants to interject her opinion, be sure that the words 'Editorial' is flashed across the screen.

Another fact lost on most people has to do with the age of people who play video games and how they acquire the games.

1. The average age of a video game player is now 32 years of age. The vast majority of gamers are way over the 18 year old limit for mature games. They obviously have every right to play a mature rated video game.

2. The constant argument against violence in video games is that kids shouldn't be playing the violent games. Guess what? There's a clear rating system in place. Responsible parents who monitor their kids and what they play should have no problems identifying the games that kids should/shouldn't play. Also, there's no way those kids can get a mature rated game without a parent to buy it for them. I'm 33 years old and I got carded to check my age before I could buy the game. They don't even card me in bars anymore, yet they card me for a video game. That's a clear statement that the safeguards to restrict mature games to 18+ are in place and working properly.

Matt Damon came out yesterday and said that he wouldn't do the voice work for the upcoming 'Bourne Ultimatum' video game because he didn't approve of violence in video games for kids. So instead of checking the facts that mature video games can't get into the hands of kids, Matt Damon decided to speak on a situation that simply doesn't exist. Kids can't get those games, Matt. Meanwhile, kids can watch sex scenes on network TV which are supposedly censored by being under the sheets. Where's the outrage, Matt and Katy?

When ignorance can be passed off as fact by these people, it's hard to debate it at any level without pulling your hair out thinking about how oblivious they are to reality.

Never seen that before............

I walked into the bathroom just now. A man in a wheelchair was in front of the shorter urinal. He had his foot propped up on the urinal. I thought that was an awfully funny place to tie your shoe. Just as I finished that thought, he pulled a small hose out of the bottom of his pants leg. It had a cap on the end that he took off. Evidently, this guy has a hose hooked up where he can urinate and then empty it out through a hose in his pants. I'm guessing he can't stand up, which is the reason for the gadget. I'm not sure how it all works and hopefully I don't ever have to find out. But I definitely won't double-take the next time I see it happen.

One drink at a time............

I ran a fundraising poker tournament the other night for my fraternity. We ended up with around 30 people and had a nice mix of alumni/actives in attendance. Afterwards, a few of the actives asked me if I wanted to go down to the local bar for a couple of beers. With Mrs. Lime working late, I didn't have any reason to say no.

The bar has both a restaurant and a bar area. The food there is actually pretty good stuff, but the bar takes over after 7:00 PM. I found the guys in the bar area, already with pitchers of beer on the table. As soon as I walked up to the table, I found the guys being stalked by two 40+ year old women who had drank their share of alcohol. The women were snapping pictures everywhere. Of course, they also snapped a couple of pictures of me. Who knows where those pictures will end up, but I doubt the women will even remember where they took the pictures given their advanced level of alcohol consumption.

After a few minutes, the women left and I started chatting with the guys. One of them was going to be a religion professor. Another one said he'd be interested in being a music professor. One of the alumni was a pool cleaner. I even found a student that wanted to cut hair for a living. Wide variety of people in this gathering, but we had a great time.

One thing that I immediately thought about while I was in the bar was how glad I was to not have to be in the dating scene anymore. Between the stories that the college kids told and the people-watching I did at other tables in the bar, I remembered how much of a hassle it was to go around looking for 'the right one'. Some people see dating as a game. I always saw it as the means to an end, which could never come quickly enough. It seems like such a pain viewing it as an outsider.

Another thing that struck me was the female lead singer in the band. No, she didn't actually strike me. She spent the time in-between songs yelling out what she was drinking during the last song. Judging from her dancing and her slurred lyrics, she had been drinking quite a bit during the songs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the drinks were likely on the house and she walked out of that bar with a paycheck and a next-morning hangover.

There were also two guys who walked in who were very noticeable. They strutted like a peacock trying to mate. I've never seen a more blatant display of two young guys trying to 'be cool'. I pointed it out to some of the guys at my table and they got a good laugh out of it. The only thing that would have been more funny is if they would have made an announcement at the door letting everyone in the bar know that they had entered the room. They essentially did that, although it was non-verbally.

I'm thinking there's a good chance that I'll take Mrs. Lime to that bar on a Friday or Saturday night. Everyone needs a good laugh from that kind of entertainment.

Too big for their britches??????

Yesterday was 'Take your Child to Work' Day. Per the usual, the otherwise quiet government building was flooded with kids from ages 8-18 who came to see what their parents do on a daily basis. They also had a kids seminar downstairs for a few hours to give the kids something to do while the grown-ups actually took a couple of hours to get some work done.

Over lunch, I ran downstairs to the cafeteria to grab a chicken sandwich. I looked out over the cafeteria and the connected lunchroom and was struck by something. I was amazed at the number of kids who were overweight. I'm not talking just a few pounds here and there. These kids were 20-30 lbs. overweight. Some of the problems were obvious, as their parents also had a weight problem. But there were other kids who had a problem who had parents that were relatively fit.

Generally speaking, my friends have kids that are fit and not overweight at all. I guess that's why it came as such a shock to me to see so many kids with a weight problem. I didn't realize how wide-ranging the problem was in the general population. I honestly think that lack of activity and eating out a lot are the main culprits. I'll certainly be aware of the problem moving forward.

The highest level of respect.............

My dad probably clicked on this blog entry hoping this thread about respect was for him since it was his birthday. While I do respect my dad and wish him the best on his birthday, he likely won't be shocked that this is yet another thread about his oldest grand-daughter.

Last night, I had to attend a meeting for the alumni board at my fraternity. It's only about 10 minutes away, so not too much of a drive. Mrs. Lime was working last night, so I was in charge of Kali 1.2. I decided to take her along with me to the meeting.

I picked up an ice cream sundae for her on the way over. She could eat that for the first 15 minutes or so to keep her busy. After that, the sheer number of people would keep her attention. She ate almost half of the sundae over the first 20 minutes. After that, she sat in my lap with a smile on her face, quite happy with the sundae now residing in her tummy.

She was wiggling around in my lap when suddenly she sat upright with such force that she 'broke wind' with great vigor. Under normal circumstances, this could be quite an embarrassing situation. But this isn't a normal situation. We were sitting in a room with 5 fraternity alumni and 4 fraternity actives. Not everyone in the room heard it, but the few that were nearby reacted quickly............

Active #1: (laughing) Whoa!!!!!!

Alumni #1: Wow, that girl has potential!!!!

Yes, only in a fraternity house will you get that kind of respect for launching an attack of that magnitute on the hearing and smelling organs of an average human. Kali has now received that level of respect.

Grass and fire..........

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be paying for that $60 fertilizing job that took place a month or so ago. My neighbor to the north did not fertilize their yard. Neither of us have mowed the lawn yet this year. But you likely would think that the neighbor has already mowed once. That's because my grass is growing like gangbusters. As a result, I see a beautiful lawn coupled with more lawnmowing in my future. Granted, I have a riding mower, so it only takes about 30 minutes to mow the lawn. Let this be a lesson to me to not maintain my lawn nearly as well in future years.

In addition, Mrs. Lime and I have decided to tackle some outdoor projects. We would like to build an outdoor kitchen area with a grill and countertop. In addition, we're considering doing a fire pit or outdoor fireplace. We're browsing through books trying to figure out what we want to do. When we decide on something, you'll be the first to know.

Up and down videos..............

Here's a couple of videos of Kali 1.2's stair-climbling prowess.

First, the video of her going up........

Up video link

And a short 10 second video showing her descending technique.........

Down video link

Kali 1.2 picture blowout!!!!!!!

The masses finally get what they've been looking for.......less of me and more of Kali 1.2!

Dad, you'd tell me if I had something on my shirt, right?



RIGHT?



Pony up!





What's up?



So I hear apples are good for me?









I'm turning on the cuteness now!

Marcie.......

I went over and put in a session of poker at the casino last night. Nothing terribly special about my play. I folded a lot and won a couple of pots to avoid losing much. For those that don't know, there is also a bad beat progressive jackpot in the poker room. If one person has a hand of 4 or a kind or better and is beat by a better hand, the jackpot hits. The losing hand gets 50% of the jackpot, the winning hand gets 25% of the jackpot, and the rest of the table splits the other 25%. Last night the jackpot was up to over $200,000.

During my session, I could hear a scraping, high-pitched voice say, "Is that seat open?"

The dealer replied that it was and slowly, a older lady stepped into the seat. The dealer quickly greeted her as Marcie. She was in her late 80s and played poker on a daily basis. Her husband was also in the room at another table.

The guy sitting next to Marcie introduced himself as Jake. Marcie looked down her shirt and began to open up her collar. Everybody started laughing as she started to open up her collar, expecting the worst. Marcie looked up and laughed......

Marcie: You guys are terrible! I was just looking for my necklace that had my name on it. But if taking off my shirt will help me win, I'll do it!

Me: So, Marcie, why don't you play poker with your husband?

Marcie: Oh, we play at separate tables to double our chances of hitting the bad beat jackpot.

Me: Oh, I see.

Dealer: Marcie, have you every been to a strip club?

Marcie: Oh, no. My husband wouldn't ever let me go there.

Dealer: Would you take us there if you hit the bad beat jackpot?

Marcie: If I hit the bad beat jackpot, I'm taking everyone at this table to the strip club and buying them all a stripper!

Me: I'm married, so I'll take one of those $5.99 steak dinners.

Marcie: Well, I'm married as well. We've been married for 69 years. If I won the bad beat jackpot, I'd buy my husband a stripper too!

Everyone at the table was rolling with laughter at this point. Extremely smart lady in her old age. And she could play poker. The regulars respected her bets, so I did the same. Several of the regulars came up to say hi to her and received a kiss in return.

Poker is a beautiful game in that regard. This lady was in her upper 80s and her husband was in his 90s, yet they both came out to the casino on a daily basis to play a thinking game of skill while socializing with other people. Better yet, they were able to compete with the other players as the game requires nothing more than the mind.

Marcie didn't stay at our table for more than an hour, but it was a lot of fun while she was there. Always nice to get the opportunity to those kind of people that you otherwise might not get to meet.

Sliding and eating..........

New video of your favorite 14 month old baby. She starts by surprising us when she goes down the slide on her belly for the first time. She then snacks on a blueberry muffin. Finally, she tells the audience exactly who's doing the filming......

Sliding and eating video

When the cat is away, the mice shall play..........

Mrs. Lime and Kali 1.2 are headed to Baltimore as we speak. As a result, I have some much needed free time on my hands. Granted, I'm not off to a great start as I'm about to mail off a bunch of money to the federal government, but we knew it was coming, so no big deal.

I will finally have some time to post some pictures to the blog. I've got a full week planned, including a couple of trips to the casino to play some live poker. So you'll likely get a story or two about some dysfunctional characters at the poker table. Also, a great time to get some car repairs done while Mrs. Lime is out. I'm sure I'll think of some other things that need to be done, but I won't rule out an afternoon nap or two. I've earned that right.

My daughter already needs reprogramming.........

Kali 1.2 and I hung out last night since Mrs. Lime was busy working. We ate some dinner (Noodles, hamburger pasta sauce, corn and peas for the young lady) and then headed over for some playtime on the floor. We read several books together and played with some plastic balls. The basic routine consisted of getting a toy, bringing it to Dad, and then walking back to get another toy before Dad could even engage in playing with the previous toy handed to him. Mindless fun that can soothe the savage 14 month old beast.

Kali was still hungry by 7:15 PM, so we went over to her high chair and ate some animal crackers. I spent time emptying the dish washer while she ate. At some point, she decided that she was done eating. As I put away the dishes, I heard something hit the floor, followed by Kali yelling 'Dog!'. I turned around to see Kali looking down at a piece of animal cracker on the floor, about to be sucked up by Nova 8.0. So my daughter has figured out that she can throw food on the floor, scream 'Dog' and then watches for the dog to eat the food. As I said in previous posts, an unholy alliance is definitely developing. This may call for drastic counter measures.

Good news and bad news.............

The good news is that they can no longer say that a Big 12 team has never won a NCAA basketball championship.

The bad news is that Kansas was the one to break the streak.

I admit that I was rooting for Kansas just because I wanted to see a Big 12 team win the championship. However, I feel less inclined to feel good about their win this morning. That's because all of the beaker fans at my workplace are being downright obnoxious at work today. It's a good thing that they don't let knives into government workplaces. I fear there would have been multiple stabbings already on my floor alone.

The crawler has become a biped........

Kali 1.1 has been working quite a bit on her mobility skills. Over the past month, she's developed some stair-climbing abilities. She crawls up and down the stairs several times a day at this point. Mrs. Lime and I supervise her, but haven't had to help her in any way for a few weeks now.

Also, in recent days, she's upped the ante and has started walking without holding on to any furniture. She takes small steps, but her balance is getting a bit better each day. Yesterday, I counted out loud as she took the steps. In one burst, she covered a distance of 6 feet with about 11 steps without falling down. She ended up at another piece of furniture that she grabbed. Had it not been there, she likely would have just kept on walking.

She's also paying quite a bit of attention to our actions. We have locks on the cabinet doors that can be released with a magnetic opener that is placed against the outside of the doors. The other day, I handed Kali one of the openers. She immediately took the magnetic opener and started touching it to the cabinet doors. While she has no clue yet that there is a specific spot that the opener needs to touch, it's blatently obvious that she has been watching us and knows that the opener is supposed to touch the cabinet doors. I'm sure she'll keep refining her door-opening skills as time progresses.

So I've been a bit busy...........

I haven't posted in 6 days, which has to be some kind of record for my blog. Even when I've been on vacation, I've generally posted from the vacation spot.

I took over my new management position last week. Spent some time with the VP getting things set up. We're still not completely transitioned over, but it's getting close. I'll start doing things like approving time cards and having a weekly meeting with the government manager on the project. If any openings become available, I'll have to fill those spots as well. I don't think it will be nearly as frantic as most management positions, but it's a good thing to have on the resume in case I ever want to move to another management spot in the future.

I've also been doing quite a bit of manual labor over the past couple of weeks to help out some friends. It's always good to get down and dirty every once in a while. I'm reminded of two things whenever I do a lot of hard manual work.........

1. You get a heavy dose of respect for those people who put their bodies through this kind of work on an every-day basis.

2. You become more thankful than ever before that you have a job that doesn't require you to beat up your body at that level.

I'm a bit sore, but I'll survive. I've lost a few pounds in the process, so it's not all bad.

Is it April 1st again??????

Yep, it's that day again. It's April Fools' Day and it's my 8th wedding anniversary. Our anniversary is somewhat deceiving, in that we've been together for nearly 14 years now. So we're actually quite a bit further along than our anniversary year total would suggest.

Obviously, a lot has changed over the past year as Kali has grown from a very tiny 0.1 model up to the current 1.1 version. Certainly, there's a lot more of Kali to handle as she's grown around 15 pounds and is now on the verge of walking. Casanova 8.0 has been around for the whole marriage and probably wishes that everything were as quiet as it was when we first got married and didn't have nearly as much excitement in our house.

Mrs. Lime and I have grown A LOT over our 8 years. I'm not even sure we're the same couple from a relationship standpoint. Both of us have matured immensely over the past 8 years. I can easily say without hesitation that our relationship is as good as it ever has been. It certainly wasn't bad by any means in the past. But we're closer as a couple than we ever have been.

So I'll take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Lime for giving my life a wonderful purpose and for making these past 14 years a blessing. In 42 years when we have our 50th wedding anniversary, I'll likely still be saying the same thing and wondering why we can't do 50 more years.