Back on the court..........

My friend Bobby and his wife managed to land access to the local high school gym every week for the rest of this year. Great deal as I don't have access to a good gym in the area to shoot around.

I'm always amazed when I get to play basketball how quickly things come back to me. I can still shoot pretty well. My free throw shooting technique is good as well, thought it's not as consistant due to lack of repitition. I've also found that my jumping ability hasn't change much either; I'm still a lousy jumper.

We played a couple of games after shooting around for awhile. I shot the ball pretty well when my feet were set, but had some issues with my mid-range pull-up shot. I'll have to work on that in the coming weeks. My stamina was actually good. I easily had the best stamina in the last game and I came within a free throw miss of winning the last game.

At the end, we decided to run some suicides to get in some extra work. For the uninitiated, a suicide means you run from the baseline down and back to each of the major lines on the court (both free throw lines, the half-court line, and the other baseline). When I played basketball in school, we had to run a suicide in 30 seconds or we'd have to run it again. While we didn't have an official time, I'm pretty sure that we didn't run our suicides in 30 seconds. It felt like forever, but was likely in the 40-45 second range. We'll start timing in the upcoming weeks to see if we can improve our times. For the time being, I'll just feel good that I even finished 2 suicides after playing a few games.

The good news is that I'm actually feeling good today. I assumed that I'd be sore today, but I'm thankfully intact. I can only hope that continues in future weeks.

Please pardon my nausea.........

Dear me. The conversations that women start in a female-dominated workplace sometimes just boggle the mind.

Woman 1: Yeah, Mrs. Smith's baby was born really early. She had the white goo all over her and her legs were just floppin' around.

Woman 2: Oh my goodness!

Woman 1: Yeah, it was something else. Hey, you're pregnant! Your child will come out with the white goo all over it.

Pregnant woman: Oh no. My previous two kids didn't come out with any white goo at all. Judging from the size of the two boys when they were born, they likely ate all of the white goo.

Woman 1: Ick!

Pregnant woman: They've always been hungry. There wasn't much left to clean up. They ate the white goo, the placenta, EVERYTHING! My boys were born hungry.

You'll pardon me while I empty the contents of my stomach in the porcelein god.

Not my daughter...........

Parents are so oblivious sometimes.

There's a message board that I frequent where you can put pictures at the bottom of each of your posts if you'd like to do so. It's sometimes referred to as a 'signature'. People put all kinds of things in their signature and I'm not sure they think it through completely.

One guy has a 4 year old daughter that he talks about regularly. He talks about how much fun he has with her and things she learns. He occasionally posts pictures of the girl so people can see how she's growing.

In his signature, he has a picture of 7 college-age girls in what can only be described as a compromising pose for purposes of this blog. A middle-aged mother who has older children on the board noted this signature picture. She asked the guy what he would do if his daughter was in a picture like that one. His response: "25 years to life".

While the response was amusing, more parents need to be aware of things they do and the effect it can have on their kids. If this guy is still posting these kinds of pictures on a message board, I'm guessing he lets his guard down a bit more than he should around his kids. I'm not sure who needs to grow up nowdays: the parents or the kids?

How to test your body's limits..........

Rough week for me as I seemed to get hit with one issue after another. It all started about 10 days ago when I somehow managed to get a spider bite. It proceeded to turn bright red and swell up pretty good. Had to pick up some steroids to take care of that situation. As a result, I will not be playing in Major League Baseball this week for fear I may not pass a drug test.

A week ago, I went to the waterpark with Kali 1.4 and Mrs. Lime. We got there and I started playing in the water with Kali. I was so busy playing with her that I managed to forget to put on suntan lotion. Received a nice little burn on my shoulders as a result. I'm usually good about putting on lotion, but what can I say? Water slides make me lose control!

4 days ago, I mowed my lawn. After 5 minutes or so, I turned under one of the trees and pushed aside a low-hanging branch. Unfortunately for me, there was a large hornet sitting on that branch that took offense to my actions and stung me. That turned red and swelled up my forearm. Needless to say, it hurt pretty bad.

2 days ago, I took time to trim back the low branches on my thorny trees in the backyard. I was stuck by the thorns no less than 5-6 times. Painful, but thankfully no swelling this time.

As a result, I'm going to barricade myself into my home for the next week in the hopes that I can avoid any further injuries. Given my luck, a 747 will likely crash-land on my house.

Royals/Cards 2008 trip.........

Last year, some of my friends had made the trip out to St. Louis to see the Royals play the Cardinals. I wasn't able to make it as Kali 1.4 was only 3 months old at the time, which would have made travel a bit more difficult. This year, the game came at a perfect time as the family all needed some vacation time and it was a manageable short vacation for us to work into the schedule.

We decided to take the train to St. Louis. Although the travel time is roughly an hour longer, it's a much easier trip to make on a train when you have a baby. The ride on the cars was much smoother than I remember on my previous train ride. The seats were also much more comfortable. Kali was able to get up and move around all she wanted with two parents available to assist since we weren't driving. We'd take walks down the aisle and also walk down to the dining car for some snacks. Kali loved to walk down the aisle, turning to just about every person she passed to say 'Hi!' or 'Hey!'. Everyone in the car quickly grew accustom to her walking by.



The train that we rode on goes right along the Missouri river for a good portion of the trip. It was pretty impressive to see the river up close given the amount of flooding in the Midwest. Portions of the track were no more than 5-6 feet above the water. We saw lots of ruined fields and closed roads along the way. We also saw some small homes built next to the river on 10-12 foot columns to keep them above the water. Many of those homes were surrounded by water, but they often had a boat tied to the house for transportation purposes.







My friend Ted picked us up when we got to St. Louis. We drove to a restaurant to get some food for Kali and Mrs. Lime. After lunch, we went back to Ted's house to relax for a bit. Mrs. Lime and Kali took a nap and I hung out with Ted. We played a few video games to burn some time. I played a game called 'Hitman' which I hadn't played before. The main character is an assassin who can choose how to proceed through each of his missions. You can be stealthy and try to avoid detection or you can go in with guns blazing. I did one mission using mostly stealth, though I did the vast majority of my work with guns on auto-fire. The mafia boss in me just came busting out.

After the girls woke up from their nap, Ted drove us downtown to the new Busch Stadium for the Royals-Cardinals game. It's actually a very nice stadium that reminds me of Camden Yards in Baltimore. I later found out that the two stadiums share the same designer, which made perfect sense. The main difference was that Busch Stadium probably has better sight lines than Camden Yards. Otherwise, there wasn't a huge difference between the two stadiums.







The Cardinals were missing Albert Pujois, who is their star player. The game was great from Kali's perspective, as it only lasted around 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is very fast for a baseball game. Her normal bedtime is 8:00 PM, but she was still awake at 10:00 PM. We decided to make a side trip on the way home and go get some Ted Drewe's Custard. For the uninitiated, Ted Drewe's Custard is a big St. Louis hangout. We arrived to see 200-300 people crowded around a small ice cream stand with police directing traffic (on a Tuesday night!). We eventually found a spot and picked up some custard. Kali hung out with Cooper at the game and then played chase in the parking lot while we were eating custard. She managed to avoid falling and scuffing her knees, which appeared to be a minor miracle given the pace she was moving. We finally got home at 11:15 at night and Kali was amazingly still awake. But she went to sleep with only a quick 15 second cry once we got back to Ted's house.





We slept in until 10:00 AM the next morning. We decided to head over to the St. Louis Zoo. We wandered through the first section of the zoo and didn’t find much until the end where they had an animatronic dinosaur exhibit. Kali really liked that because all of the animals were near the trail and made lots of noise. We didn’t let her know that they weren’t really real and that the noises were coming from stereo speakers.

Later, we headed over to the Children’s Zoo. Kali really liked that area. She was able to get up close with all the animals. The petting area was her favorite. She brushed several of the goats.







We moved on to the next Children's Zoo exhibit. Kali pointed over at an area and said 'Cat!'. I looked over there and told her that it wasn't a cat. However, once we got over there, it turned out that she was close to being correct than I was. It was actually a Meerkat. Nothing like finding out your 16 month old daughter knows more about the animals than you do.



Kali and I headed to the Conservation Carousel for a quick ride. Kali got to ride the endangered Black Rhino and had a great time. I was glad to see that she did so well because she got scared the last time she rode a carousel.



We finished the day by going to the Sea Lion show. Kali nearly fell asleep at the start of the show, but we managed to keep her awake and she liked watching the sea lions move around and jump out of the water. The largest of the sea lions (Alex) weighed nearly 600 pounds and he was very protective of his food. One of the smaller ones (Rosie)tried to grab one of his fish treats and ended up getting bit by the big sea lion. You'll note in the picture below that Rosie retreated to the pool at the bottom of the picture to get away from Alex after his tantrum over the food.





We took the train back and Kali didn't sleep a wink despite the fact that we didn't get back until 9:50 PM. She stayed awake all the way back home and finally went to sleep around 10:30 PM. Must be difficult to go to sleep when you have so much fun packed into two days.

Back from the Lou...........

Got a trip report from the trip to St. Louis upcoming, but it's not quite complete yet, so you'll have to wait. In the meanwhile, I headed back to work today. Nothing like showing up to work and opening up the Inbox to see 150 new e-mails. Finally finished that up after a couple of hours in the office and then headed around the office to catch up on the office gossip/politics.

As much as I have additional work with my new management position, the office politics take up just as much time. I have to constantly make conversation with the other manager in my group. I meet up with my subordinates to make sure that they stay happy and make sure they're comfortable with their workload and enjoy their job as much as you can enjoy a job. It's a constant juggling job, but it's worth it in the end. It's a good experience.

Tomorrow I hope to put in another fine day in my 2 day work week before heading into another weekend. It's a rough job, but somebody has to do it.

Kali 1.4 picture blowout.............

More pictures for the masses.....

Hey, someone forgot their clothes!



I think the dog wants in.........







Playtime in the back yard.........







Somebody went to Marti Gras and didn't tell Daddy........







Princess in our prescence..........



Hey!!!!!!



No pictures please!!!!!!





Cousin Gwen climbing the stairs.......



Man, is Gwen happy to see Grandpa or what?!?!?!



Who likes chocolate chip cookies?







Dad, enough with the pictures! I can't see the cartoons!



Ladies, always make sure to take your purse in the car with you.......









I thought this was Kali's naptime?!?!?!



Daddy's little girl........

Fall down, go 'boom'.........

I'm always amazed at how resilient a 1 year old's body really can be. Kali 1.4 seems to injure herself in every way possible on a daily basis. Most of it just involves the trial and error of learning how to walk (and learing how to fall safely). She falls, trips, stumbles, and walks her way through the day. She probably only injures herself 3-5% of all falls. The problem is that she falls A LOT and so we end up with a bumped, bruised, or a uninjured but upset baby quite often.

You never realize just how many hard surfaces a child can run into until you have a baby. Some examples:

A wall
A high chair leg
Concrete sidewalks
Toy drum
Stair
Crib railing
Changing table
A moving swing
Coffee table
Window sill

And MUCH, MUCH MORE!

Snack time with a twist...............

Video time! What do you get when you combine a Tiger keychain, some snack mix, and a dog hoping for a handout? A pretty funny video.............

Snack time!

By the way, that is a black eye that Kali 1.4 is showing off in the video. She got into a fight with her toy drum. As you can see, the drum won.

Chatterbox............

The words are starting to just roll right out of Kali 1.3. One word after another. She's reached the point that she's making the connection between various objects and the associated words. For example, she was carrying her sweater jacket around with her last night. I asked her if she was carrying her jacket and she said 'jacket' with a big grin on her face.

In some cases, she knows that two objects are different, but when she says them, they basically sound the same. She has a car and also has a deck of alphabet flash cards. The words car and cards both come out as 'car', but she definitely knows that they're two different things. Consonants are often left out as well. Frog is prounounced 'fog' in the Kali version of the English language.

Yesterday, Kali and I ran over to the nearby Target store to pick up some groceries and other items. From the moment I took her out of the car, she was interested in one thing: talking. It was absolutely non-stop. Some of it was incoherent babble, other times it was 'Da-Da' over and over again. We even got to the Cheerios and she said 'Cheeee!'.

I saw a study several months back that noted that women use three times as many words in an average day as a man. Kali is well on her way to increasing that number. That girl can talk like nobody's business when you wind her up.

Obviously, I have to be more specific.......

Kali 1.3 has a couple of puzzles. One puzzle is made of wood pieces that fit into a form. The other puzzle is a cardboard puzzle that looks more like a conventional jigsaw puzzle and the pieces are contained in a sealable plastic bag.

Kali was walking next to the table where the cardboard puzzle was sitting and picked up the empty plastic bag. I told Kali, "Why don't you pick up the puzzle pieces and put them in the plastic bag?"

Kali proceeded to walk across the room, pick up the wooden pieces from the wooden puzzle one by one, and put them in the bag. Moral of the story is that I obviously need to be a bit more specific when telling Kali to do something.

Some things don't need an explanation..........

Just heard this at work over the PA system.........

"Ladies and gentlemen. This is a test of the emergency public announcement system. If you are unable to hear this announcement, please dial 5-1234 so the issue can be resolved. Thank you."

There's obviously a reason they pay these people the big bucks, but I just can't put my finger on the reason.

Keeping the manager happy.........

My manager was in town yesterday for a quarterly status visit. Per the usual, he has me pick out a good restaurant to eat at while he's in town. I gave him 3 different options to choose from. Not surprisingly, he chose BBQ. He's a sucker for the BBQ in Kansas City (as well he should be). We took him over to Gates BBQ for lunch.

First, for those that don't know, Gates BBQ has a fine tradition of attendants at the counter who end up intimidating the uninitiated visitor. The regulars know that when the girl behind the counter screams, "Hi! May I help you?" that you're supposed to immediate state what you want and then she'll move on to the next person. The regulars also know that it makes for great comedy if you fail to reveal this process to the new initiates.

So we walked into the restaurant and I promptly ordered 'beef on bun'. The girl behind the counter screamed 'Beef on Bun!' and then turned to my boss and said 'Hi! May I help you?'. He got a panicked look on his face and leaned towards me.

Manager: What do I want?

Me: Beef's always good. They have pork and ham along with ribs as well.

Manager: (to girl behind counter) I'll have what he's having.

Me: Fine choice.

We headed over to chat and eat. My manager took the first bite of the sandwich. "Oh man, that is ridiculous good. You're batting 1.000 on restaurant selection. Keep up the good work."

Who knew that all I had to do to keep in my manager's good graces was to keep picking fabulous eating establishments for him to visit?!?!?! I'm already planning for his next visit. I need to make sure that he stays happy.

Hand to hand combat with playing cards.............

I played in a poker tournament at the casino last week with my friend Rudy. The blind structure was pretty fast, so skill didn't play a major factor in the tournament. One thing I've noticed about live tournaments is that I feel like I do have an advantage in the live games over the online games of similar skill. The reason is that my ability to read a given player's verbal and non-verbal tells has really improved over time. It's reached the point now where I'm already feeling sorry for my daughter as she grows up. She's going to have a really tough time lying to me and actually getting away with it.

My starting table was a wide mix of players. There were two younger players not much older than 21 years old. I immediately put them on being very aggressive players. They were very quiet and bet very quickly. They also would never establish eye contact with anyone after they bet quickly, which usually means they're bluffing. Had they taken some time to decide on a bet and then not established eye contact, the opposite would be true. They'd like have a stronger hand at that point. Veteran players can fake these tells to throw you off, but these guys weren't good enough to do it yet. My thoughts were confirmed when both of them were called down early and had to show their bluffs.

The older players and the female players generally played to their stereotypes. Very tight and very quiet. I use my gift of gab at the table to get a feel for these players. I started meaningless banter at the table. It didn't even matter what I was talking about as long as the other players at the table were opening up. I want to see how they act to my conversations when the cards are being shuffled or when they aren't holding a hand. The reason I do this is to get a baseline feel for how these players act under normal conditions. Once I do that, I can then put them in a similar situation when they are in a pot to see how they react. It paid big dividends.

One older lady at the table was very cordial and chattered quite a bit under normal conditions. Roughly a half hour into the tournament, she came in for a raise. I immediately commented while smiling that she must have a monster. A veteran opponent in that situation would remain emotionless and focus on a spot on the table. This lady looked up at me and flashed one of the weakest, nervous smiles you've ever seen. The reason? I was right. I had Ace-Queen and laid it down without thinking twice. She ended up in a big pot and ended up showing King-King. Anyone at the table who was paying attention should have known she was very strong, but one of the aggressive young players let his bluffing get in the way of making a smart play.

A retired man to my right was also a very easy read and an extremely nice guy to boot. He came across as a very intelligent guy who was a bit shy from a social standpoint. Players like this are the ones that talking also comes in handy as they tend to open up A LOT when someone strikes up a conversation to the point where they betray their hand strength. After figuring out early on that I wanted to steer clear of any raise from this guy, I jokingly told him that I wouldn't call in any pot he was in unless I had a monster pair (QQ, KK, or AA). Funny part was that I was being truthful. I saw him raise two hands. In one hand, he showed KK. In the other hand, everyone folded to his raise. He was ready to throw that one away without showing it, but I smiled and told him that he should keep those cards. He smiled and turned over AK. Making friends at the table has its rewards.

I was moved to another table with the retired man and the older lady when the tournament was down to 19 players (started with 38). I was relatively short on chips, so reading other players took a back seat to finding a hand of some sort that was good enough to go all-in. I eventually found 88 and pushed it all-in. The guy to my right thought for a minute and then called. Unfortunately, he had 99 which was just about the worst hand for my 88 to go up against. I didn't get any help from the cards and I was out in 16th place.

The retired man who I had played with the whole time took the time to stand up and shake my hand and said he 'thoroughly enjoyed' playing with me. Those kinds of reactions are why I love playing poker, especially live poker. It's a great way to meet all kinds of people while engaging in a competitive mind game with the opponents. There's the occasional jerk or gambler who's angry at every facet of his life, but most people playing poker are good people who enjoy the game for the same reason I do.

Mrs. Independent............

Kali 1.3 is all about doing 'big girl' things right now. She's becoming very independent in everything she does.

The other day, there was a pair of shorts sitting on the couch in the living room. Kali spotted them and walked over to grab them. She immediately began to try to put them on over her clothes that she was already wearing. She figured out that she couldn't do it very well standing up, so she sat down and started poking her foot into every leg and waist hole available, trying to find a way to put on those shorts. I tried to help her out, but she didn't want any help. She eventually gave up after 20 minutes, but it was a pretty amusing 20 minutes.

Last night at dinner, she wanted to use a 'big girl' fork. She's been working with Mrs. Lime on her fork skills. They aren't quite up to snuff yet, but she's slowly getting the hang of it. She pokes at things on the plate, but has some difficulty actually getting the food onto the fork prongs. We reached a compromise where I'd grab the far end of the handle while she continued to hold the fork. I'd help her get some food on the fork and then she'd feed herself the rest of the way. She liked that and ate quite a bit with her fork.

Kali recently got a new push car that she can ride in while an adult pushes her. She absolutely loves to play with the new car. When she's watching cartoons, I'll turn the car around to face the TV. She'll go over to the car and watch cartoons while sitting in the car. She's also learned that there's a seat belt in the car that clicks together. She'll sit in that car for a half hour trying to figure out how the seat belt clicks together. She hasn't been successful yet, but she's very persistant. One of these days, I'm going to hear her fussing and come over to find that she's buckled herself into that car and can't figure out how to get it undone. It's only a matter of time.

Hijinx foiled..........

Kali 1.3 got a new toy over the weekend. Her cousin Gwen got a car that can be pushed with a handle. We thought it would be great to have for walking around the neighborhood, so Kali and I picked on up on Sunday. She absolutely loves it. I tore around the house with Kali in the car and she squealed around every fast corner. Mrs. Lime noted that it was a 'kiddie coaster in the house'.

Earlier in the day, Kali and I sat down to watch cartoons that morning. I took out Kali's binky and gave her some morning milk. We watched cartoons for a bit and then read some books and played with some toys. Three hours later, Mrs. Lime came out of her office to hang out with us. Kali ran over to her and sat in her lap.

Kali: (pointing at me) KIE!

Mrs. Lime: Does Daddy have your binky?

Me: (wry smile) What?

Kali: (nods head up and down while pointing at Daddy) KIE!!!!!! KIE!!!!!!

Mrs. Lime: You think that Daddy has your binky?

Kali: KIE!

I played dumb for a couple of minutes before finally handing it over. I still can't believe that she played for three hours without a binky, but when she started to feel sleepy, she remembered that her daddy had taken her binky out that morning and put it in his pocket. She's getting far too smart.