Rangers v Yankees with bonus weather

So on rare occasions my company tries to boost everyone's morale and recently they offered up tickets to a Rangers game. The night in question was Rangers / Yankees and I think it was the 2nd game of a 3 game series (late edit... read Rangers sweep Yanks). So I opted in for a couple of tickets and set about trying to convince Luc that he needed to get out more and come to a game with me. Nothing doing. Good seats, Bullpen (read private executive level) suite with free food and drinks. No go for the Lucster. I knew the Crunch would be up for it... that's my girl. There isn't a social situation she isn't interested in and sure enough, she was totally excited about it (especially at the mention of food). That is to say, she was interested once she cleared her schedule.

What we thought was going to be a friendly casual evening of baseball ended up being something else when you throw in a bit of unpredictable North Texas weather. Add the enthusiasm of one teenage girl and you end up with a bit of a marathon but it was still totally worth it.

We got to my office at 5:30 for the (company bought) charter bus ride over. Put a bunch of marketing people on a bus together and I am sure you can imagine the first stop.. yes, the package store. Marketing people are lushes. Who knew? With me fending off offers of drinks on one side, and Karah's questions about why people would EVER drink alcohol on the other... it made for an interesting trip. Anyway, we get there and Crunch wants to eat first. Girl's gotta eat I guess. So we bounce back and forth between our seats, pretty good, and the suite which is really nice. Its like a bar/restaurant with a balcony you can overlook a baseball field at. Our executives must have a lot of fun because they seem right at home at these things. Anyway, I will shorten this monologue and show you a couple of pictures... because I tend to drone on a bit.

Beautiful night for it and you just cant beat a live baseball game. True to form for Texas weather... it didn't last. Everyone knows the old saying: "You don't like Texas weather, hang around 15 minutes..."

Well in our case, it took about an hour but it was mightily impressive to see the ground crew spring into action. Yes, that is sheets of rain coming down. I think they had the diamond covered in less than 5 minutes. Nice work boys.

Here is a shot of my favorite baseball fan. Beautiful no? I blame it on her mom.

So after an hour of forced intermission, which was lots of hiding in the suite because it was drier than outside, the game got back underway. The bus return trip options were one leaving at 9pm, or the others returning after the game ends. Crunch being excited about being there still made the choice easy and we opted for the full monty.

Texas gave up a couple of runs here and there but largely stayed in it through the late innings. The game ended with something I have never seen... the batter getting hit, which walked the bases giving Texas the win. Freak ending but Texas went on to win the next afternoon... a game my brother attended. Neither of us knew the other was going but we had a laugh about it a few days later.

Needless to say... lots of relief pitchers from both sides and a late rally by Texas saw us getting onto the bus after midnight, and our house looming in our headlights just before 2am. I ended up crawling into Max's bed, but he crawled into mine first (in my absence). So to bed late, er early... sleeping in a short bed, and the prospect of it being a Formula One weekend which means up at 6am to watch it live (like all real F1 fans must do) made for quite a morning. FORZA ALONSO!

Crazy you say? Maybe. How about this... I still managed to crawl onto my bike after F1 qualifying, of course I was almost useless but I don't really want to talk about that.

Hope everyone is doing well. I will give you guys a golf update soon.

-bb

More Florida shots...

Just popping in here for a minute... busy at work currently (which is really cramping my online time). Hehe.

Oh yeah, click on shots for a bigger view.


How cute are these two? They had a blast at the beach and have pretty much turned thier noses up at the neighborhood pool since we returned. Max said.. "Dad, once you have been to a nice beach the pool doesnt really matter." Fine by me.

This is the Ponce Inlet lighthouse. I think its the second oldest lighthouse in the United States and is built entirely of brick (structure). The walls at the base are 8 feet thick I think it was said. It was built with 1.2 million bricks. Impressive up close. I could go on because we did the full tour. Amber wanted us to visit and I am glad we did... very cool. A definite highlight of the trip...(punny huh?)

A couple of hundred steps later and I was in suffer mode. I think I felt this "adventure" for at least 2 days afterward and was reminded every time I went up stairs... or set of steps.. or a curb even. Ouch.

This is a shot of a front coming in. Pretty cool to watch but it wasnt anything serious. I love the scale of things when you are parked at the edge of the continent. It just seems so vast when you look out there.


Here is a closing shot of my little guy just because. Luc stays away from the camera for the most part... sorry ladies.

Alright, I will catch up with all of you the next time I have something.

-bb

Couple of Florida shots...

Hi everybody.

We took a couple of weeks off this July and headed to Florida for vacation. I meant to do a long post once we got back but life got in the way... Here are a couple shots I took while there at least. Hey, its something, right?




This is Max "bucket fishing"... Karah caught not one but two fish (or fishlike creatures) with her sand castle bucket and Max, being the ultra competitive little devil that he is, decided that it must be easy to catch fish with a bucket. (click to see the shots bigger)

I swear I do feed him.




Here is Munchie. She just loves it when I ask her to stand still for a photo... She is giving me that "look". Funny beautiful silly girl.





This was the view we had right out our balcony... I think I titled it "Anonymous Couple" or something similar.

Sorry its only a couple of shots... I have more and will try to post some of them in a few days so check back.

Max in full effect

We get home from work one day recently and Max seems to be getting himself all worked up. He says that Luc went for a walk and didn’t return. Its been since 2… or maybe 3 or 4. He doesn’t know. He is just too worked up to bother with timelines. We went about our usual “just got home” routine and wide eyed little Max is on our heels every step of the way seeming more concerned by the minute. Amber had already started dinner and we did a quick glance or two at each other, think a mental version of Rock Paper Scissors… and just like that it was decided that I was to handle the rescue mission for our lost oldest child. With Max, everything is a mission. With theme music. Of course the notion of going out to look is really all for Max’s benefit as we are used to Luc taking off on a walk alone. He likes that and in turn, he is like that. If it was 4 when he left and it was now 5:30… I didn’t really see the concern. Max didn’t see it like that. Every minute we stood around was almost too much for his little video game influenced mind to take… I am sure fearing certain doom had befallen his only big brother. No doubt a laser blaster was involved.

So off we go. Decision on vehicle… bikes are too slow. It’s hot out. White Lightning wins. Check. Cell phone in hand in case he shows up while we are out. Check. Starting on the close streets around our house and making larger circles as we go…check. Getting poor Max to focus on actually looking out the window as a second set of eyes… eventual check. Took some reminding about what we were actually out doing though. Funny kid.

We were done with our neighborhood after having checked the streets, the school playground and even swinging by the neighborhood pool. We also made a pass by the pond (manmade, well manicured and a known Luc spot) just to double check. At this point, I am starting to believe that Max might be onto something. I might be a little worried. It has been a while at this point and we decide to check the school they go to as it’s just a half mile away. We head out of our neighborhood and start heading to the school. The phone rings and I immediately feel a sense of relief knowing that Luc must have just walked up.

Amber is on the other end and she is stifling a laugh. She said Karah had gone to her room to put something away (I know, miracle right?) and she heard something in the room above. Turns out that after our exhaustive perimeter and outlying area search… he was exactly where he usually is, at home in his room. Max insisted for the rest of the evening that he didn’t hear Luc return from his walk… but not before sticking his fingers in his ears and burying his head between his legs to tune me out for a while (his favorite response to getting frustrated at something). This little reaction is actually comical to watch when he is playing video games. I smile a little knowing that the big picture is that Max loves his older brother and was worried about him.

Max is currently on daily lookout for the mail... anxiously awaiting the untold riches that the delivery of his report card will surely bring. I get a status call every afternoon now.

Yes, school is out and the kids are home for the summer. So far they have been getting along and Amber hasn’t had to implement “the Schedule”. In all its glory “the Schedule” is an ultimately fair document… something that somehow gets lost in translation when disseminated by the intended audience. Hopefully we can make it for a few more weeks before drafting the 2010 version. The kids seem almost in disbelief that I still have to go to work during the summer… they look at me like “why do you go somewhere that makes you work almost every day?” Believe me kiddo, I wish I could be cooped up inside the house all day.

A small peek into our day to day lives. I thought it was funny and I hope it came across that way here. Hope everyone is doing well and I hope you all have a great summer.

-bb

Lucster

Wow. Just wow. So Amber just got a call from Luc's teacher a little bit ago and she said that "your son has to be the sweetest kid I have ever met". The story goes that Luc's class has had a speaker this week talking about AIDS and how it has affected the world, as well as research being done, etc. He is in the GT (gifted/talented) class and they get to hear and discuss some pretty big topics from time to time that the average 8th grader may not get the chance to. Anyway, the kids all wanted to put together a donation to give to the organization that this speaker belongs to. I think there was mention of a couple of dollars per kid kind of thing. It was all the kids doing and we never heard about it until after the fact.

That was the background...now back to me getting choked up. So the teacher called and told Amber that Luc just turned in an unmarked white envelope that he had put 51 dollars into... he thought he had slipped it by without anyone noticing but Miss A (his GT teach) knew immediately that it came from him. It was all the birthday cash he had received just a week ago when he turned 14. Now that's not all he got for his birthday but that was all the cash he received and I have a sneaking suspicion that he would have tried turning over a gift card or two had she let him...

She just wanted to call and tell us how kind and sweet his gesture was. She also said that Luc was incredibly well thought of by both his classmates and teachers alike. I am not surprised, he is well thought of by us as well.

Sorry for getting all mushy on ya. Just wanted to tell someone about my incredible son. I probably goofed up some of the details because it was Amber that took the call, but you can get her to elaborate. ;]

Would you have done that at 14? I wouldn't have. Wow.

By the way... he doesnt know that we know. And now you know. So Shhhh.

More blog stuff soon.

-bb

Go Conservatives…and something really Cool

I really hope this puts the kibosh on all the rampant liberal spending that has been happening out of DC in the last year. I was truly impressed with Massachusetts last night by taking a state election and making a national statement out of it. Nice work. Restored my faith in our electoral system. Fun watching the entitlement crowd spin this. Gosh I hope the “Chosen one” is paying attention to what middle America is trying to tell him.

Ok, now to something less aggravating and much more fun although I don’t know if my kids would agree with me after the ride into school this morning… I will get to that in a minute. So IPods are everywhere. You probably have one and if you don’t, your kids do I am sure. A friend of mine pointed something out to me the other day that has completely blown me away. It is absolutely incredible and I felt like I needed to tell others about it… at the risk of telling everyone something they already knew thus leaving me to look like the geek at the “in crowd” party...A role I am used to playing by the way. Here goes.

So launch ITunes (if you have it… if you don’t, it’s a free download)
Look on the left side and find ITunes U. It stands for University.

Look and behold… it is truly a wondrous thing. There before you are thousands of hours of lectures and courses from all the most prestigious universities from around the US and abroad. I am completely gob smacked by what is out there. Architecture? How about lectures from MIT? Business school classes for MBA students? Stanford. History? Yale. Languages, tons… I spotted German, French, Italian, Chinese and even Hebrew with just a glance. Of course some of this is only first year classes but I know that some schools put even graduate level work out there. MIT puts almost everything out there for consumption, even tests to quiz yourself on the material.

This morning on the way to work I started in on Beginners Philosophy from Oxford and made the kids listen to it with me on the way to dropping them off for school. It was being taught be a very British sounding woman professor and it literally starts off with the first day of class and her giving an overview of the lecture. Max only had one question… “Dad, is this man from England?” I said… “Woman, and Yes” I told him. I then said that not only was she British but that this lecture took place over in England and they recorded it and put it on the internet for anyone who is interested in listening to it. I think they probably thought I was crazy to be listening to “school” work when I have so clearly outgrown it and wasn’t required to go to school anymore. Ah, youth…it is truly wasted on the young. ;]

I have lined up some business and marketing lectures after I get done with philosophy, and then I am on to computer programming from Stanford. Anyway, check out ITuneU. I think it has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen on the internet.

Oh, us? We are all good. Everyone is happy and healthy. Karah needs an eye test and probably new glasses so we are doing that this weekend. Let’s see if she wears them this go-round. Luc and Max both got haircuts… I think Amber was impressed that I got both of them to agree to it. Shaggy is Luc’s nickname… especially when he wears a green T shirt. Have you seen him walk? RoROH. ;]

Amber is edging just that little bit closer to 40 this Friday. We took the day off to spend it together and we are both really looking forward to that.

Speaking of being the dork at the “in crowd” party… going to the “Gala” tonight for our company’s sales group. Our company seems to be run in a very sales-centric manner and at times (often) the pie seems split unevenly between Sales/Exec and Engineering folks... at least in terms of importance. Its funny but I don’t think either party wants the other there at events like these. The CEO is ex-sales so go figure. Long story short is that my group (all 8 or 9 of us) won an award this week for the work we did in 2009. We won the “Spirit of Genband” award for doing exceptional work in the face of adversity was the way it was put I think. We got trotted up to the stage to shake hands with the Exec VP of Engineering and the CEO who handed us our plaque. I joked with them on stage that had I known beforehand (about the award) I would have tucked my shirt in which got a chuckle out of our VP. Anyway, as award winners we were "invited" to something we never really get to see, like this "Gala" (love that word). Even the "invite" wasn't handled very well and it all felt very forced... I am guessing that our entire compensation for our efforts will culminate with the plaque (and mention in front of company) and a mediocre dinner with a room full of people that probably wouldn't talk to us in the hallway the next day anyway. On the plus side we will get a peek at the inner workings of the other side of the company, the side that gets to do all the fun things like executive off-sites in exotic locales... that sort of thing. I am sure there will be lots of "patting themselves on the back" kind of moments but it should be interesting nonetheless. Hopefully I don't get fired for my comments. The internet is a strange thing that way... hehe... maybe they will like reading about my goofy life.

OK so Political comment, quick update on Family, Work happenings, and even something cool thrown in... yeah, I think I covered it.

So bring on 2010. It’s definitely going to be better than last year and infinitely better than the one before that. I hope this finds you all well. Catch up with you soon.

-bb

Happy New Year the outtakes...

Hey everyone. I hope you all have recovered from the festivities and this finds you all happy and healthy.

We did our annual New Years photo a week or so ago. This is always met with a lot of resistance but as usual, I force my will on the masses and then off we go. Invariably they all end up having a good time so I fail to see what the problem is whenever I bring this up. Its only once a year. As an aside, we don’t put a lot of thought into it… I just yell for them to gather up, throw shoes and jackets on and then we head toward any interesting spot I have staked out in the week prior. Amber and I decided never to worry about what they were wearing, nor did we want to make it any sort of formal type shot…we just wanted to show them as they are every day but try to do so once a year consistently while they grow up. Everytime I do this I wonder why we chose the dead of winter as the date… I know, to challenge the guy behind the camera. The landscape always looks dead and flat but in the plus column New Years remains an interesting day, and will always be a marker in time in each of our lives. I am sure the few who follow this blog already received our letter which means you have the shots we picked out to send. For something different, I thought I would show you the outtakes. Funny kids that they are, some of these I really like because it shows their personalities. (remember to click on the picture to enlarge)


As always, once they get together there is lots of horsing around...



This crowd doesn’t take anything very serious.



Luc has had enough at this point and throws up his patented reaction.



Now Max does intense and Karah has had enough.



This shot had potential but the lighting was just so difficult… Just 30 minutes later would have helped things tremendously. Oh well. I almost drug them back out there the next day for a reshoot… which would have gone over like a ___ in a punchbowl. (Amber just rolls her eyes at my many "old" sayings)



They even crack themselves up… lousy shot but funny as an outtake. This was thrown in to show how silly it gets. You have to be quick and frequent on the shutter button with this crew or you end up with a lot of these.




These shots were meant to be taken in series. I kind of like the way it worked out. (click on it for full effect)




Here was the winning shot of the day… the one we sent out to family and friends. Not my best work but you can’t argue that the subjects aren’t the best. …damn harsh lighting…





I just wanted to put up a couple of shots and to say Hello to all of you. Great news from Tess about their “peanut”. Very pleased for you guys.

Some concerning news about my Uncle Travis. I will be praying and thinking about him.

I miss all of you.

-bb