36 Months

So my little one is now 3 years old.  On the way to the big "trey" this year, she's had 3 separate birthday parties and had 4 separate birthday cakes.  We are simply unable to not celebrate Ally's birthday on her actual birthday (even if we know we are going to have a "real" party during the next weekend).  So we get a little cake and then we always end up getting company (both Wifey's family as well as my own end up coming over) so the "little" get together becomes a full blown "party". 

Ally already tells us she wants to "save her birthday for later" on certain days.  What a fun concept that is...I don't want my birthday in the middle of winter so I'm going to "save" it for a nice early spring day.  I'm seriously thinking of suspending celebrating my birthday until it's nice out, maybe a little barbecue birthday action?  The heck with the "make sure the walkway is shoveled so people don't kill themselves trying to get in" crap.

In case your wondering the Dora bike and the Rose Petal Cottage were the two biggest hits.  We'll be assembling the cottage tomorrow, I'm sure that experience will be an entire blog's worth of stuff right there.

Oh, if there's any Red Sox fans out there, please sign the "Keep Mike Lowell" petition to show your support for the best 3rd basemen in Sox history!

"Luke I AM your father...."

Much like the famous scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" HP throws me for a loop, turning everything I know upside down and inside out.  I finally get in touch with "Sal" a Senior Case Manager at HP and he refunds my $99 piece of crap phone support warranty I was tricked into purchasing.  He apologizes for the confusion and then listens to my story (I've already purchased my shiny new Macbook at this point).  Sal tells me that he has the authority to extend my warranty and help me with my problem.

What?  Huh?  Wait a minute I heard this one before...let me guess I pay $99 and all my problems are solved right?  Well here we go again...Sal tells me after a quick review of my case he can extend my warranty, for parts and labor for a year for $139.99.  I tell him I need to think about it as I'm not really trusting anything anyone from HP says at this point.  Wifey and I discuss the issue and determine that we should go for it and fix the old laptop so we can either both have our own, or we can try to sell it.  I call Sal back and end up leaving a message 2 days in a row.  I'm convinced I'll never hear from Sal again, in fact I'm assuming he's been placed in HP's tech support relocation program where they put certain representatives in hiding after they promise deals like the one that was lobbed my way just 72 hours ago.  

Much to my surprise I get a call back 2 days ago and it's my new buddy Sal.  I tell Sal that I'm ready to go ahead and give him my credit card and get fleeced for the $139.99 so I can extend my warranty for another year.  This is the part that catches me off guard...Sal says he's reviewed my ordeal and that he's going to approve my 1 year extended warranty with NO CHARGE TO ME.  Wait...what?  Sal tells me that I've been put through enough and that I can keep the $139 and spend it on whatever I choose.  

So supposedly there's a Fed Ex box being shipped to me with a prepaid sticker on it and I'm supposed to send my laptop in for repairs.  I'm very skeptical that this will work, but I now have a glimmer of hope that HP may not suck as bad as I first thought.  I'll continue to let everyone know of the progress, as HP's reputation (as far as I'm concerned) is hinging very much so on the success of this transaction.

So just like Darth Vader in the Star Wars series, HP began this story as the epitome of evil and midway through the story they take a turn showing a lighter side.  Hopefully things will work out, but until then I retain the right to continue to badmouth and hate HP.

My intense hatred for HP

Beep, beep, beepity-beep, beeeeeeeeeeeep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeep....

This is the sound my 1 year old HP Pavillion laptop made one night while it was sitting on my desk.  I get up and poke it...and it keeps beeping at me.  I figure the battery just crapped out.  No, no, no...it's dead.  

Call #1 - I call HP tech support and find out that I am calling exactly 7 days out of warranty.  Okay so I ask the tech support rep what my options are since my computer isn't working, and I would really like it to be working.  I'm told, from what I can understand...you see HP evidently wants to save some cash and has outsourced their tech support, ... that the rep will check with the warranty department to see what can be done for me.  Okay so I'm not happy since my one year old PC is now a paperweight, but at least the company is going to try to work with me.  I'm told I'd get a call back the next day.  Two days later with no return phone call, I decide I better call back to follow up.

Call #2 - I call from work trying to clear the issue up to leave my night free to watch my Sox play in the World Series.  The rep I get on the line this time tells me that they cannot do anything for me, I'm out of warranty and that HP doesn't give any grace period on warranties.  Okay, I'm not happy but at least I understand...okay so what can I do now?  Extended warranty $119.99 is what they offer to me.  If I buy this extended warranty it would cover phone support and parts and labor for 1 extended year and it would include the issue I am having, which evidently is a video/monitor connector error - which evidently means my video card is crap and luckily the genius's at HP have soldered it to the motherboard so the entire thing needs to be replaced = $400 in parts.  So I tell the guy on the phone I'll need to clear this with my Wife before I drop the $120 and I'll call back when I get home.

Call #3 - Wifey does the math and $120 is less than $400 so she says to go for the extended warranty.  I call back and request to purchase the warranty.  Did I mention each time I call I have to review the ENTIRE FREAKING STORY to each representative?  Yeah fun.  So I purchase the warranty, I specifically tell the fella on the phone what my specific issue is...I get transferred to the tech support rep who will be assisting me in setting up the pick up time for my computer for repairs.  The tech support rep then tells me that the warranty I was just sold is for....phone support only.  Wait...what?  PHONE SUPPORT ONLY...I've spoken to 3 different people and told each one EXACTLY what my problem is (physical failure of an internal part) and then I'm sold a PHONE SUPPORT ONLY warrant?  WTF???!!!!!  Okay so I go OFF on the poor tech support guy, I finally calm down and ask what can be done at this point.  I'm told nothing can be done, I can pay an extra $20 to add the free labor part of the warrant but there is no coverage for "free parts" and again the part in question is $400.  Okay forget it I want to cancel the phone support warrant.  I'm told that the rep can't do it, and his supervisor can't process the cancellation it has to come from a "Case Manager" and the rep is sending a request to have one contact me the next day.

The Next Day - Exactly how many of you are surprised to hear I didn't receive a call?

The Next, next Day / Call #4 - I call back, tell the first rep I don't want to go over my story 2 times, so I want to speak to a Case Manager right away.  I'm told I have to explain the issue so they can forward me to the correct Case Manager department.  I give the 2 minute version of getting screwed over so far and I'm told to hold while they transfer me.  I get connected a few moments later...to another tech support agent.  I'm told that there are no Case Managers available on the weekend so there is nothing that can be done for me that day.  I'm told that I will get a call back on Monday.  I tell the rep I don't believe him, I tell him I was supposed to get called back 2 times already and it didn't happen.  The rep starts to apologize for my "inconvenience" I tell him to stop, his apology is only getting me MORE upset.  

15 Minutes after Call #4 to HP - I walk into my local Apple Store.  I'm approached by a nice, smart, English speaking person who walks me through the process of purchasing my new laptop.  I LOVE my Macbook.  I've used it for 3 days now and don't know how I used my PC for the past 7 years.  My first computer was an iMac and I've been missing the Mac OS since getting my father-in-law's PC years ago.  Thank you Apple for making me LOVE my computer again and not just treat it like another piece of equipment I use daily...like a blender or microwave or something.

Monday - still no call from HP.  I've already called my credit card company and the HP warranty charge is "pending" as soon as it goes through Mastercard will be investigating HP for fraudulently selling me a warranty that doesn't fit my needs.  I'm going to call HP as soon as my strep throat subsides.  They are also going to get an email, and a registered letter detailing my experiences with their tech support and their POS computer.  I will also be including my receipt for my Macbook and in the end I'll include a thank you card.  Had my PC not crapped out I would have likely remained in the PC doldrums and not be pushed to seek out a better way to work with my computer.

In the end HP could have saved a customer, a 31 year old male who will likely buy 20+ computers in my lifetime...buy offering to fix a $400 part that broke 3 days out of warranty.  Instead they infuriated me so much that I would rather pay $1600 for a new non-HP laptop than pay $400 to fix my old HP.  What does that tell you about my experience?

Please feel free to leave a comment if you have had a similar HP experience and we can commiserate together.

Field of Dreams...

Rewind to 5 days ago, last Wednesday and our first trip to Fenway park looked to be a dud in the making. A quick check of the Red Sox website told me that rookie Clay Buchholz was scheduled to start Saturday night for our game. I'm slightly disappointed that we weren't going to get to see one Boston's "big 4" (Becket, Dice-K, Schilling, or Wakefield) we also find out that Manny Ramirez is out of the line up as well. Wifey is now complaining that we paid $60 over face value to see a depleted Sox team in action, as a ploy of making Wifey feel better about spending $160 on $52 seats...I mention how we'll get to see "The future of Red Sox pitching" in Buchholz.

4 days ago, and the whole "Future of Red Sox pitching" thing goes out the window when a glance at the Sox website tells me that Julian Tavarez is now scheduled to start Saturday. The guys at work are making fun of me, Julian freakin Tavarez...just my luck. One of my buddies sends me an email that reads "Prediction: Tavarez pitches a no hitter". Clearly meant to be a good natured jab at me as Tavarez hadn't pitched that well lately, and at best was the teams #5 starter...however his mocking email turned out to be more of an omen that either of us would have known.

3 days ago, on the ride home from work I hear on the radio that Tim Wakefield is a late scratch for that nights game. Immediately I know this impacts our trip, as Tavarez is going to be moved up to pitch Friday night leaving Saturday's starter...unannounced as of late Friday night.

2 days ago, Saturday morning. I check the Sox homepage to learn that it will be Buchholz after all. Okay, well at least we'll get to see the kid who will be a full time starter next year. The trip into the city goes well not having any real problems. We decide to go up to Fanual Hall for lunch at Cheers, then after a quick stop to gear up in our Red Sox apparel it's off to Fenway for us. We take in batting practice from the outfield bleachers right behind the bullpen's. We see Hideki Okajima about 30 feet away, he waives and tosses a few balls into the crowd. The importance of the trip going well and Wifey having fun is immense...if she has fun, convincing her to come back next year will be easy...if she doesn't, I may end up watching the games on NESN from now on. After a quick stop for refreshments we make our way to our seats.

The Game. The game starts slowly, Buchholz hits the first batter he faces but gets out of the inning unscathed. Papi clears the bases with a wall ball double in the 4th and the crowd goes CRAZY. The volume of the fans and the cheering is one of the things that gets lost in the translation from stadium to TV. Top of the 5th finds us at the concession stand again for a Fenway frank, and some soft serve ice cream treat. Ignoring superstition, I mention to my Wife that the kid hasn't allowed a hit yet, she makes little of it as she's just hoping we come out of the game with a win as the Yankees had already won their game and are now a scant 4 1/2 games behind us. The 6th inning gives us a 3 run homerun by Kevin Youkilis and a 8-0 lead. Oh, by the way any non-Boston fans out there...that sound you hear when Youkilis comes up aren't boo's...it's 36,000 people yelling "YYYYYOOOOOOOOK...". 7th inning and it is now clear that the possibility of a no hitter keeps all 36,000+ fans in their seats despite a 8-0 score. 7th inning stretch, 8th inning singing of Sweet Caroline...and then on to the 9th.
The 9th inning. Out comes Buchholz and Fenway goes NUTS. I've literally never heard anything that loud before, ever. Every strike is accompanied by a tremendous roar, the crowd is in a feeding frenzy now. Buchholz strikes out Brian Roberts and is only 2 outs away now. Corey Patterson lines out to Coco Crisp, two down only one to go. Up walks Nick Markakis, the Fenway crowd on their feet, I scan the crowd and confirm my suspicion, not a single person has left this game. 1 strike, then a foul to Nick Markakis and it's all come down to this....the pitch....and Tek doesn't even wait for the call from Umpire Joe West, he bolts out of his crouch and runs towards the mound. West rings up Markakis a fraction of a second later and then pandemonium breaks out. I'm yelling and shouting as loud as I can, and I can't even hear myself (how is that possible?) I'm jumping up and down and crying and hugging my Wife. Buchholz becomes only the 3rd pitcher in baseball history to pitch a no hitter in his first or second start. Tina Cervasio pulls Buchholz aside for a quick post game interview, but it's fruitless...the speechless pitcher can only babble out a few words before the crowd engulfs his response in another thunderous roar of applause.

So there it is folks, my first trip to Fenway ends up being a no hitter by a guy that wasn't even supposed to start the game. Thank you Clay Buchholz, you just ensured a new tradition in my household...2 trips to Fenway each year in addition to a night I'll never forget.

One Nation under God...

I am a proud member of Red Sox Nation. It hasn't always been easy, and it hasn't only been since '04 when they "broke the curse". Living in Massachusetts I can honestly say everything starts and ends with the Red Sox around here. The New England Patriots win 3 out of 4 Super Bowls? You'd think they'd gain in popularity on the Red Sox, you'd think wrong. The year the Patroits won their 2nd Super bowl in a row, Tedy Bruschi one of the star players, and most likable guys on the team makes an appearance at our local shopping mall and about 500 show up and wait up to 2 hours to try to meet him and get an autograph. Later that year Johnny Damon, centerfielder and Jesus look-a-like from the Sox has an autograph signing at the same mall...over 3,000 people show up. The line started forming 3 hours before the mall opened, and most people couldn't even get near Johnny, they just wanted to snap a picture from the 3rd floor. The Red Sox had finished 2nd in their division that year, and had gotten swept out of the playoffs by the Chicago White Sox...that's how things go in the Nation. I was at the shopping mall that day and as I stood looking down at the mayhem I noticed an "old timer" standing there wearing a faded Sox hat on. "You'd think they had won the World Series this year" I say to the guy, then I mention that the Bruschi autograph signing didn't bring even half this many people out. "This has been and will always be a Baseball town, and there isn't anything those boys out in Foxboro can do to change that...". I don't think I could have said it any better myself.

It's late summer / early fall 2004 and it's time for my Wife and myself to start our birthing classes in preparation of the birth of our daughter. Of course these classes take place at night, from 7 to 8 pm every Wednesday night for about 6 weeks. What else is going on during this time? The last couple of weeks of Baseballs regular season, and the Red Sox are battling with their bitter rivals, the New York Yankees for the division lead. I sit listing about how to massage my Wife during her obviously painful labor process, the breathing, the copious amounts of fluids that will be involved...and I can't help but think how the Sox are doing. I know I'm not alone in these thoughts as a quick survey of the room announces no less than 3 dark blue hats with the signature red B on them, a few more have Sox t-shirts, and I even noticed a few other Dads-to-be have Red Sox bumper stickers. I thought about asking if we they could put the ball game on the little radio they have there, even if they want to turn it way down...but think better of it as I'm sitting in a room with women completely strung out on hormones. I settle for constant text messages at the end of each inning updating me on the score. We end our birthing classes just in time...for the playoffs that is. My Wife's due date is bearing down on us with surprising speed, and I'm deathly afraid I'm going to be "that guy". You know this guy, he's the one you read about who's in the birthing room and has the nerve to ask one of the nurses "Hey can we get NESN on this thing?". Yeah that guy, it is now my biggest fear. The ALCS starts and we are 3 weeks away from our due date. Game 1, Red Sox lose. Game 2, Red Sox lose. Game 3 Red Sox get crushed 19 to 8. It's all but over, no team has ever, EVER come back from a 0-3 deficit in any playoffs in any sport, and now it's October 17th night of Game 4
still 2 weeks away from our due date. Unlike 90% of Red Sox Nation, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I somehow knew we would come back to win, I had accepted that the Yankees would do it to us again...but on the upside the whole ordeal would over and I could focus on the whole having a baby thing. Well wins in Game 4, Game 5, and Game 6 bring us to Game 7 October 20th one WEEK away from our due date. I'm scared...I'm scared that the Red Sox will do it to me again and blow this great comeback they were working on, I'm scared that my Wife will go into labor due to the excitement of the game, I'm scared of what my reaction would have been if she had gone into labor...during Game 7 of the ALCS Sox versus Yanks. Well I'll spare you the drama...Sox won, and no labor in site. Great, except now the Red Sox are going to the World Series, which means more games and we're now within days, HOURS of my daughter being born.

I know, I know the birth of my first child is a once in a lifetime moment...and some of you may be saying "How can you possibly compare a simple sporting event to the birth of your child?". Well...let's keep this in mind, the last time the Red Sox actually won the World Series....1918, so that's 84 years ago...so it would appear that this could also be a once in a lifetime thing. We watch the Sox win the first two games of the World Series, then we head into the hospital for a scheduled induction the night of October 25th. Luckily for me, there's no game, it's the off night for travel. Curiously we are sent home, with no baby, the morning of the 26th. I won't bother with the details of that little ditty here, maybe some day, but this isn't the time. Regardless, we go home on the 26th and I have mixed emotions, I was expecting to be somebodies "Dad" by now and that was postponed for a few days, but on the plus side I get to watch the Sox game. The Red Sox went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series in 4 games, the last one on October 27, 2004. A trip to our OB's office on October 29th and end up scheduling our C-section for Tuesday November 2nd.

This is how, unbeknownst to her, my daughter allowed me to watch the greatest moment in Red Sox Nation history. Ironic since she hasn't been as forthcoming with the whole allowing Daddy to watch the game since she was born, but I still appreciate that she hung (literally) in there and "took one for the team".

Wifey and I will be going out to Boston next weekend to catch our first Sox game together. Hopefully it'll be the start of a long standing family tradition. Is it wrong that I can't wait to bring Ally to her first game?

Poopy, Pie, and Mommy the bocka, bocka...

Supper, night #1 in Lake George. We're at a semi "fancy" restaurant, just finished placing our order and Ally turns to me and announces, rather loudly, "Daddy, I need to go poopy". The younger couple trying to have a romantic dinner behind us glare at me. "Okay honey Mommy will take you". So Mommy takes little Ally to the bathroom. The couple behind me still staring at me, I wait for the triumphant return of my daughter, knowing all to well what happens next. "Daddy I made POOPY!!" Ally shouts as she returns from the table (she starts the shouting about 15 feet away). The glares from the young couple behind me continue, this time even more disapproving than the last. Typically I don't revel in the uncomfortableness of others, but I can't help feel just a tinge of pride knowing that these people are all out of whack because my 2 1/2 year old daughter happened to mention that she had made a poopy. I mean what's the big deal?...had they never made poopy before? Seriously she's 2 years old...what did they expect her to say "Daddy I went to the lavatory and had a bowl movement?" Heck even I don't say that. They should feel lucky she doesn't phrase things like her Daddy does, for example... "Honey, I wouldn't go in there I just took a dump...".

So after supper we decide to not stick around for dessert as who knows what other bodily functions Ally may need to announce to unsuspecting bystanders. We do a quick tour of the outlet stores then we decide to look for something sweet to bring back to the hotel for dessert. At the mercy of the suggestion(s) of our GPS unit, we make our way to a Getty gas station. I'm picturing getting a few Ring Dings, maybe we'll get lucky and they'll even have Chocodiles. On our way we run into the "General Store" of the area. I immediately forget about the gas station convenience store knowing my options are better at the family owned general store. I go in expecting to be able to pick up some cookies or something, and find out I hit the jackpot. Not only do they have homemade banana bread w/ frosting, but they also have a nice selection of homemade pies. After a bit of internal deliberation, I decide I'm not going to buy a whole pie, I'll just get a couple of cookies, milk, and some of the banana bread. I bring my bounty out to the car and relay all of this to my Wife. I'm instructed to go back inside and I'm not allowed back out until I am in possession of pie. Evidently my Wife was also jonesing for something sweet as well...at least we were both on the same wavelength. I go back in, the lady behind the counter looks at my with that curious "Didn't you just leave?" look. I walk over to the counter and end up deciding on a strawberry rhubarb pie. Not an easy choice, but looking back I think I made the right decision. So as Jack Kerouac says in On the Road...pie is the ultimate road food, it's wholesome, compact, and filling. This pie helped sustain our sweet tooth's in two different cities, over a 3 day period. It was the best $11.00 I had spent in a long, long time.

We decide to check out the Olympic Ski ramps that still reside in Lake Placid on Sunday morning. We take the short ride over and peering at us over the tall pines are two towering structures. These are what we had come to see. Standing at about 150 feet high are the ski rams left over from the 1980 Olympic Games and are used today as tourist attractions. People plop down $10 each to ride to the top look around and come back down. We get our tickets and make our way over to the welcome center. Making our way over I already see a problem...the only way up the hill to the bases of the ramps is....a chair lift. I already know this isn't going to fly with Ally nor Mommy. A quick chat with the people over at the welcome center confirm my suspicions...that this is the "primary" way to the top. My Wife looks at me, then the lift, then back at me...and I already know what's going to happen. "Is there a 'we are too chicken to take the chair lift route to the top?'" I ask. I'm told that there is a separate alternate route to a parking lot for people with SPECIAL NEEDS. This is what we're told, and a quick glance at our program guide we got with our tickets confirms this. So after navigating our way to the "special needs" parking area (and yes we were the ONLY car parked there) we make our way to the elevator that waits to bring us to the top of the ramp. We exit the elevator about 130 feet higher than we started and we're on an indoor observation deck. I start snapping photos here and there hoping there's going to be some sort of exterior photo area. Luckily I find a set of stairs that brings you up to just such an area. A quick glance at the top of the stairs and I know that Ally and Mommy need to come up and see this. It's an unobstructed view of the surrounding area and it's beautiful. Mommy doesn't want to go up, Ally couldn't be happier to run up the metal stairs as fast as she can. Mommy goes against her better judgment and decides to join us at the exposed upper level. Now here's something I didn't know about my Wife...she has an unexplained fear of heights. How do I NOT know this?....we've been together for 13 years and I am a fairly observant person. I'm assuming that she's either been really good at hiding it, it's something new, or we just haven't been high enough to bring out this fear before. Anyway back to the story...I'm near the railing looking out over the landscape, I turn around and my Wife has a death grip on the back railing with one arm, and she's desperately trying to hold on to Ally with the other. The tears begin to roll not too long after this. Oh boy, okay, obviously either I've taken this situation too lightly, or my Wife's taken it too seriously...either way I know I need to do something because my Wife's now babbling through the tears, sounding like Rain Man, "Too high, too high, I can't, no let go, too high...". All I wanted was a photo with the three of us looking out at the nice scenery, instead I got a picture of my Wife grabbing my daughter and latched on to the railing like Bubba to a doughnut. "Okay Honey, let's go down now". Ally looking over the situation decides to try to sooth her mother the only way she knows how..."Mommy's a chicken, hey Mommy....bocka, bocka, bocka...". It was an interesting stop, a wide range of emotions were involved, and I learned a few things...#1. My Wife has a new (or is it?) fear of heights, and #2. My daughter enjoys seeing her parents squirm.

Road Trip

Our daycare person had this past Thursday and Friday off, so it was my turn to stay home with Ally. A quick email to the Wife tells me that she's got nothing planned for this weekend. I decide I don't want to spend the weekend at home just hanging around so I hop on the internet and start searching. My mind is racing with possibilities...the Cape, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, the options seemed endless. A couple of quick searches on Expedia tells me everything I pretty much needed to know...that I'm a moron for thinking there's going to be an availability at any place remotely worth traveling to. Great. So I email this to my Wife listing the few options I had found. Literally 2 minutes later I get an agenda from what appears to be a licensed travel agent. It had points of interest, prices, times, hotels, directions, estimated arrival information, the works. I get this and immediately think to myself...evidently it's been too long since my Wife's last vacation.

So like the all great road trips we start in the planning/prepacking stage. We've laid out our route: West through Massachusetts to the New York boarder, continue West to Albany, then North to the great Adirondack mountains with stops in both Lake George and Lake Placid. The trip revolves around our ability to deal with two very important pieces of electronics, which are important for two different reasons. The first is a borrowed GPS unit to help us navigate the trip, and the second is a borrowed DVD player to keep Ally quiet while Mommy and Daddy try to get everyone to the vacation spot all still alive. Let's start with the GPS unit. It is fairly easy to use and works well...the scary part about the little unit is how dependent you quickly become on this thing. After as little as 1 hour on the road I am now completely relying on this little electronic gizmo to keep me going in the right direction. Once we get off the highway and a turn or two later and that's it, no matter how ridiculous it's directions are...I am now committed to following them.

Lake George is a wonderful area. We stopped at a children's park called Magic Forrest. It's a nice little park in the idea of Mountain Park, which is an old amusement park from the town I grew up in. Magic Forrest is also home to the nations last diving horse show. Now for those who aren't familiar with that term...it's basically a show where they have a horse run up this long ramp and then "jump" (okay it's more like fall/slide) into a 14 foot deep pool. In case you are wondering, the show is everything you're thinking...yup a horse falls into an above ground pool. It takes about 45 seconds tops. If you're ever in the area, you should definitely stop in and check it out. We walk up and down the strip checking out the numerous outlet stores, make a few purchases here and there. Then it's back to the hotel and Ally's favorite part of the vacation by far...the pool. This pool actually has a water slide too. Nice. Ally and I go down the slide a few times until a gaggle of preteens arrive and take over the pool area. How nice, some nice "responsible" parents brought all 29 of their children to the same hotel as ours and decide to let them descend on the pool all at the same time. Great. Now preteens don't really look out or wait for the 2 1/2 year old waddling by...so it's the end of pool time for us. Back to the room.

Pillows. Pillows were our downfall this night. We're talking no neck support, squishy, crappy, $2.50 freakin pillows. Everyone is allotted two pillows (Ally's sleeping in the bed w/ Mommy and Daddy). This does not work. Ally evidently likes to play Twister while she sleeps. Right foot Daddy's groin, Left hand Mommy's face...you get the point? Let's just say she quite the "active" sleeper. So between the trying to find a comfortable spot to sleep and trying to defend myself from Ty-Kwon-Do Ally I find little sleep this night. But alas we all go to bed before 8 so getting up at 6:30 was no big deal.

Natural cave and bridge trip. This is our first trip of day 2, heading towards Lake Placid (home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics). The cave/bridge attraction is a good one. First of all, at $22 total for the family, it's an economical trip. It was also a great little bit of exercise, it was about 2 hours of fairly intense hiking over a "trail" looking at a nice gorge and into some smaller caves. The problem we ran into is our daughter is: crazy, independent, and currently in the middle of a HUGE defiant streak. This is a GREAT combination of attitudes to bring a 2 1/2 year old over a bunch of cliffs and very narrow passes all made of rock and loose stone. Needless to say...great levels of both caution and patience were required in order for everyone to make it out alive.

Lake Placid. Beautiful. Peaceful. This is where we should have came straight away. The lake is great, the Olympic stadium cool (some how I still hear Al Michaels "Do you believe in miracles?"), the shops are neat and the people are generally nice. So here I am sitting in the Golden Arrow Hotel and resort bringing you this blog entry. There's more to this trip (like the Asian fellow trying to throw my daughter into a gorge at the cave attraction) but I won't bore you with ALL of the details just yet. Tomorrow (hopefully) we'll check out the ski jumps (140+ feet high) from the 1980 Olympics, then it's either on our way back south or we'll try going across a ferry into northern Vermont. Either way we should find a few other fun things to share.

Until next time...thanks for checking.

- J

The first lie is always the hardest....

2 years, 8 months and a few days.

That's exactly how long it took my lovely daughter to tell us her first lie. Actually let me rephrase that...it's the first time we caught her in a lie. Since the fact that this one came so naturally to her (almost as if she's had weeks of practice) that it wasn't technically her "first" ever. What was the motivation behind this lie to begin all lies? Chocolate, what else? (I mean she is a female after all). We had just finished supper and Ally doesn't finish her meal. "Ally you need to finish your supper if you want any dessert" I say reviewing our fairly consistant meal time rules. Ally decides to not finish (not really touch actually) her turkey burger. Mommy decides to finish off her meal with a square or two of our favorite chocolate. Ally clearly wants more than anything to follow suit. "Ally honey, if you want a piece of chocolate you need to finish your burger" my Wife says. Ally goes back to the table, pushes the food around on the plate decides she'd much rather save room for chocolate than actually eat any more of her supper, so the bargaining begins. "I want some chocolate, I eat it all"..."Actually Ally I don't see that you ate very much of your burger at all"...."Yes I eat it all...I want chocolate"..."No Ally you need to finish your sandwich"..."No yucky, I want chocolate"..."I'm sorry Ally if you don't finish your meal, you won't get any chocolate"....then it happened..."Daddy said I could".

And that's how it starts. I'm thinking when did this happen?...or maybe the better question is How long has this been happening? Needless to say Ally didn't get any chocolate until she finished her supper, but I couldn't help but feel we'd reached some sort of developmental mile stone. One that parents magazines and doctors offices don't keep tract of....smiling?...check, crawling...check, walking?...check, talking?...check, LYING?...check. I couldn't help but feel a bit of a failure as a parent, here is my 2 3/4 year old daughter lying to her parents...for a piece of chocolate....great. I guess in the big scheme of things, throughout her life she'll lie hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, hopefully she gets worse at it (she was pretty convincing, I was even thinking...when did I say that?) or we get better at seeing through her...but at the end of the day we just want Ally to know she doesn't need to lie to her parents, she'll get her chocolate one way or another.

Greetings and salutations

Peer pressure, Communism, Lyme disease, Global warming...I can't decide why I clicked on the "Blogger.com" site and logged in...but the name I had originally selected for this blog "It's cheaper than therapy..." probably best describes why I've joined the weblog world.

Let's get the introductions out of the way first. I'll be going by J, and you're clearly someone who must be incredibly bored if you're reading this. Good, now that we've been formally introduced let me catch you up on things. I graduated high school back in 1994, married my high school sweetheart in 2002, and our daughter was born in 2004. Our household also includes 3 cats who happen to think that they run the show. To be completely honest...I'm surprised one of them doesn't have their own blog yet.

More about me: I work in the health insurance industry (more on that later) and like most guys my age...I like sports (football & baseball particularly), expensive electronic gadgets, movies, and select TV shows.

I'm sitting here trying to think of something witty or interesting to end my first entry with and for some reason I can't decide if I should go with my "Unadvertised Sale" rant, or the story where my buddy and I come up with the coolest horror/monster movie concept ever. I'm going to pull a last minute switch-a-roo...and for the record none of this is fabricated or embellished, this actually happened...

It's 1994 and the trio of my future wife, my bestfriend, and myself are going to our local ice cream parlor for a treat. My mother asks us (me) to bring her back a hot fudge sundae made with her favorite ice cream...chocolate almond chip (nice choice). No problem. Backstory: my Wife had been trying to impress my mother for quite some time during our early courting stages to try to "out girlfriend" my previous girlfriend (who happened to be insane). Flash back to our story...so we go and get our treats and order mom's sundae. Problem...no chocolate almond chip ice cream. Now we were specifically instructed to not 'fall' for the "we don't have any of that ice cream" trick that they'd try to pull...we were to ask them to open a 1/2 gallon of the aforementioned chocolate almond chip ice cream and use that to make the sundae. My wife is...shall we say...averse to confrontation so we ask the fella behind the counter if we could buy the 1/2 gallon of ice cream and then have them make the sundae with it. He agrees. So far our plan is working flawlessly. About 200 yards from home a thought hits me like one of Zeus's thunderbolts.....What the heck are we going to do with the left over 1/2 gallon of "evidence" that we now had to tote inside? If my parents saw it they'd know what we did and throughly disapprove...and knowing my Wife I KNEW that failure on such a simplistic task was not an option. Here's what we came up with...me and Wifey-poo go in first, distract the parents with our successful procurement of the sundae, and then the best friend sneaks in and hides the "evidence" in the freezer and no one would be the wiser. This part is completed without incident. We adjourn to my room for debriefing. Upon further discussion it is determined that the hiding the ice cream in the freezer is an unacceptable alternative as my parents buy the groceries and they'll obviously know that there's an extra 1/2 gallon of contraband ice cream in the freezer. We sat quietly trying to come up with a suitable alibi if our ploy is discovered when...I came up with an alternate plan as to what to do with the ice cream. I turn to my Wife and with a completely straight face tell her "You need to go down stairs...get the ice cream...take it to the bathroom...open the window...and THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW INTO OUR NEIGHBORS YARD.". All is quiet in the room for about 3 seconds and then my Wife answered...and upon hearing her answer I knew she was the women I was going to marry...she said "You'll have to come and help me, I don't think I can throw it far enough". Some how my sweet, innocent, and gullible Wife thought I was serious. Well in the end we did nothing...zip, zilch, bubkiss...we left the ice cream in the freezer and no one was the wiser. I learned a few lessons that day but the most important was to never assume my Wife knew I was kidding...

When I get down, need a laugh or pick-me-up...I often dig deep in the memory banks for a visual of my wife opening a little crank out window in my parents downstairs bathroom and chucking a 1/2 gallon of Friendly's chocolate almond chip ice cream into our neighbors yard.

Thanks Honey.

- J