Full honors........

My grandfather's best friend (Jack) passed away of lung cancer last week at the age of 82. Certainly not unexpected since he was a lifelong smoker. He probably did well to even live that long.

He was part of the disappearing population of WWII veterans that we have left. My grandfather met Jack in boot camp where they were training for the invasion of Japan. Both of them were spared the bloody battle that would have occurred had they stormed the beaches in Japan by the dropping of two atomic bombs by President Truman. My grandfather said he would have stormed the beach with nothing but a pistol and a 70 lb. radio backpack for command communications.

Jack found out he had a week or so to live, so he had time to plan his own funeral. He was buried by his request in his Army officer uniform (yes, it still fit). It was like looking back into time to see him in his old uniform. He picked out all the songs at the memorial service.

He also requested full military honors at his graveside service. He was a big gun collector and history buff who was very proud of his service. They had a flag folding ceremony where they presented the flag to the family on behalf of the President and a grateful country. They had a full 21-gun salute and then Taps was played (via recording since there is a shortage of bugle players left in service).

You see and hear about these kinds of ceremonies in places like Arlington and some other national cemeteries, but rarely do you get to see it happen for someone you know. Far too often, this kind of honor/ceremony is bestowed on someone who has tragically been killed far too early in battle. It was nice this weekend to enjoy the full event as an honor to a lifelong servant of our country. Jack would have loved it.

The Kingdom of Kali is complete.......

Kali 2.7 slept in her royal (queen size) bed for the first time last night without any issues. Her Royal Highness only called upon me once around 3:45 AM this morning. She had kicked her favorite blanket under the bedspread during her sleep and couldn't find it. I quickly came in and retrieved it for her and she went right back to sleep.

Her bed chamber is accented with many princess and castle decals that have to be seen to be believed. I'll be taking pictures of her kingdom later this week and will post them for all to see.

Painting of the Kingdom of Kali is complete........

I still have to take the tape off the trim and touch up a couple of spots where needed. Paint is all on the walls at this point. Next comes the application of the giant princess pictures, castles, and chalkboard. Yes, a chalkboard.

I'll have pictures sometime next week. Total cost to build previously mentioned kingdom is around $350. Pretty impressive price for a kingdom I'd say.

Uh, that's weed.

Just went over to a cube in my area to have a business conversation with one of my co-workers. I had the unmistakable scent of marijuana enter my nose as soon as I got over there. Powerful stuff.

We'll use this information to make the assumption that the state of random drug testing in the federal government offices is in a total state of disrepair.

PINK!!!!!!

The Kingdom of Kali 2.7 received two coats of paint last night.

It's pink, it's bright and it's bold. She loves it.

With that said, if the light is on in that room, the hallway glows an orangish-pink color due to the light reflecting off the paint in the room. I fear we may have a nuclear meltdown in the room if we make it any brighter, so we'll probably stop right there.

Early drawings of the Kingdom of Kali are complete.....

Kali 2.7 and I made a trip over to Home Depot for the supplies for her new bedroom.

The colors: light pink and dark pink

The theme: Disney Princess

Highlights: Two five foot tall princess decals, a castle decal, and a chalkboard applied to the wall.

Total cost: $300-350 (Labor is free since I've found out that I'm not being paid for the work)

Construction estimate is 3 days. Preliminary taping of trim is complete. Tomorrow, the painting begins.

Another one bites the dust.........

Kali 2.7 continues her run of humbling full grown adults. Kali played Memory against two of my friends, Jonathan and Cindy. The report was that she beat them both in a game of Princess Memory, which has 76 cards (38 matching sets). By the end of the game, Kali was reportedly helping them figure out where the matches were located. I guess she felt sympathy for them since they were behind.

Thursday night bowling........

I've been sporatically going bowling with my friend Hightower on Thursday nights. It's usually only once or twice a month, but it's a good time. Last night I started horribly but managed to rally back to win eventually. Some thoughts.........

1. The bowling alley offers karaoke after 9:00 PM on Thursdays. If there is a worse talent group to pull performers from, I'd love to see it. There are some TERRIBLE singers. At one point last night, a guy was butchering a Hank Williams Jr. song so badly that I started singing the song loudly just to drown out how bad he was.

2. We had a college-age couple bowling in the lane to our right. The guy was being a relative jackass to his girlfriend. She and I happened to go pick up our respective ball at the same time. I told her that just between her and I, I was rooting for her to beat him. She smiled and said she was doing her best. In the last frame, she was down by 5 pins and had to run to the bathroom. While she was gone, her boyfriend tossed a gutter ball for her first ball. When she came back, Hightower let her know that she only had one ball to win with since he threw a gutter ball on her scorecard. She promptly walked up and knocked down 8 pins to win by 3. Very nice.

3. The kids to our right presented an interesting group as well. They were probably all just out of high school. Three of the eight kids over there had pretty bad obesity issues already at a young age. I felt terrible for them. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be badly obese at that impressionable age.

Some people don't know when to shut it......

As some of you may have noted from a previous post, I was basically asked to be a whistle-blower on my office boss by company management. There was a lot of things that he was saying and doing behind peoples' backs that just didn't fly right. Since the company management was busy doing a few other things for a couple of weeks, no action has taken place yet until they resolve some issues in another town some distance from here.

Yesterday, the manager that I blew the whistle on approached me to ask a few questions. Imagine my surprise when, not only did he confide in me his trust for me, but he even went a few steps further and bashed many of the same people that he did before. He did this despite already being asked NOT to engage in that behavior and he did it to a person who, little known to him, is actually the one who reported him previously.

This won't end well at all. I'm always baffled why some people totally lack any common sense. For some, it's evidently too much to ask to just treat people well while not stabbing them in the back on a regular basis. I hope I never reach that point. My morals have been compromised if that happens.

Tinkerbell 0.11 is growing rapidly........

I was sitting in the couch last night looking over at Mrs. Lime across the room when I had a sudden realization. I could barely see Mrs. Lime. The reason? Tinkerbell 0.11 was standing between us and is getting VERY tall. Tinkerbell's back is only a couple of inches shorter than Kali 2.7 right now. She's not fat by any means, but she's very tall.

Tinkerbell also got great reviews from the kennel as usual. She's a crowd favorite and they love it when she stays there. She plays non-stop when she's there and always sleeps for the next two days when she returns from her stay at the kennel. Must be tough playing all day and sleeping all night.

Back to the grind.......

Had a short work week last week and went to Baltimore over the weekend to hang out with Mrs. Lime's sister and her husband. We had some great seafood (Baltimore's main redeeming quality) and the Chiefs almost upset the Ravens on the opening weekend of the NFL. So I can't complain too much.

Kali 2.7 had fun playing the Memory game with Aunt Shell. She also got to play with their three dogs. Kali got a kick out of their dog named Jake, who hops when he walks due to him missing a front leg. He surprisingly runs like a normal dog, but he bounces along like Tigger when he's walking. He and the other dogs loved the attention that Kali was handing out. Kali was even taking pillows off the couch for the dogs to lay on.

Now I head back into a full work week. I'm already thinking about Columbus Day and the next 4 day work week.

Time frame.......

Kali 2.6's new deal is to delay the inevitable menace otherwise known as bedtime. It's a relatively mundane attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. A couple of months ago, it was time to put Kali to bed and I told her so. She said 'no', so I thought I'd try something different and give her an option. So I asked her how much longer she wanted to stay up before heading to bed. Her response? Two days.

Of late, her demands have become more reasonable. Her current requested time is only 'three minutes'. That's easily done. She feels like she wins because she gets her three minutes. I win because she has no idea how short of a time frame 3 minutes is relatively speaking. Hopefully that will remain the gold standard for some time moving forward.

Maleficent goes to dinner.

Last night, we all went out for dinner since Mrs. Lime had a night off. She was worn out (apparantly carrying around a baby in your tummy does that to you), but she's always ready for an outing.

Kali 2.6 was highly entertained by a baby near our table. Kali quickly identified that a mommy was feeding the baby. The baby was also very interested in Kali and her antics. The mom had trouble keeping the baby focused on eating because she was so busy watching Kali.

During the meal, Kali caught on to the whole feeding trend. Kali mentioned that there was a baby in Mrs. Lime's tummy. Mrs. Lime responded affirmitively. Kali then took a fork and scooped up some lettuce off Mrs. Lime's plate. Mrs. Lime said she was full, but Kali said 'Kali feed baby'. She had made the connection watching the baby get fed, so she decided she'd feed the baby by giving her mommy a forkful of food. Smart girl.

Later in the meal, I had finished my food and was stealing some of Kali's fruit on her plate. Kali said it was her fruit. I took another piece of fruit. Kali took her fork, plunged it into the fruit bowl and said "YOU'RE TOO LATE!" and then cackled like a witch. Mrs. Lime busted out laughing and then informed me of the comedic reference my daughter had just uttered. In the movie 'Sleeping Beauty', the princess pricks her finger on a sewing spindle just before the fairy godmothers can stop her. Malificient (the evil witch) then screams out "YOU'RE TOO LATE!" followed by a fiendish cackle.

My daughter is now making movie references to crack jokes at dinner. I'm so proud of her. (tears up)

You lost.........again.

Kali 2.6 has taken the game of Memory to a whole new level in our house. It's her new favorite game, replacing Candy Land. We play this memory game with 42 cards (or 21 pairs). That's a lot of cards for me, nonetheless a 2 year old. When the board is still relatively full, I still flip over the wrong card quite a bit when I think I have a match.

Kali is a sniper in this game. She KNOWS where the cards are and has a great memory. Even when she thinks she knows and she misses, you can tell that it was an accident because she usually is just one card away from the correct match. Consider yourself lucky if she misses. If you flip over a card and she knows where the match is, she'll flip over that same card before you can even cover it up and will quickly grab its match. She has no problem beating you while smiling at her good fortune.

Before, it was just a fun little game with some animals on cards. Now, it's a real competition. I've found my best chance of beating her on a regular basis is to turn on Sesame Street while we're playing. It takes her focus off the game to the point where she doesn't fully pay attention to the cards being revealed. If she's solely focused on the game, you're screwed.

Uncle Carl's food..........

Kali 2.6 and I went out to my father-in-law's project to meet with some people. While there, a family friend of ours named Carl showed up. He ran an Italian restaurant for many years in downtown KC. We said hi to one another and Kali got a kiss from 'Uncle Carl' as she knows him. She sheepishly smiled when she got the kiss, making Uncle Carl happy to no end.

Carl let me know that his son had just opened up a new drive-thru location in the north end of town that was serving all the old food that Mrs. Lime's family and my family regularly enjoyed for many years. Mrs. Lime's mom was a HUGE fan of the food. It was one of the few places we could go and know we'd get great service and also know that her mom's food would be cooked just to her liking.

So Kali and I headed over to pick up some of "Uncle Carl's Food" as Kali called it. We got the family deal, which had a big bucket of spaghetti and sauce. It also came with a huge loaf of garlic bread and a big portion of salad. Kali was a big fan of the 'long noodles'. Mrs. Lime had cut up some spaghetti for her, but Kali wanted to eat them one at a time. She'd hold one way above her head and eat the entire noodle.

Really great food and it was affordable as well. If you want to see the menu or see the location, you can visit their website at http://www.igtogo.com/.