For those of you that don't read other people's comments, James was "friendly" enough to update all of you on my life.  Thank you James.  Anyway, it inspired me to finally post.  I have been wanting to.  Don't think I've enjoyed torturing all of you by not posting.  I am so sorry my public.  I decided I would give you some pictures, and then I'll talk about how things have been going.

Here is a picture of some baby I saw in my car today.  She's pretty cute.  Ok so maybe she's mine.  That's right, who would have thought that half of me and half of Melissa could look so cute.  What's that, you all expected this?  Ok, well fine.  (Sigh) she's growing so big so fast.  It's speeding by.  Slow down child!  Parenting is awesome, but I don't think anyone can warn you enough.  They need to write  book about parenting called Everything they Forgot to Tell You.  Only problem with this book being that they would have to update it every six months.  They should make one of those for Marriage, too.  Again, the update rate would be a little much to keep up with.  In all seriousness though, life is awesome with my ladies.  I couldn't ask for a better home life.  My wife is the most incredible, beautiful, graceful, and patient woman in the entire world, and I love and appreciate her so much.  I'm so thrilled that Katelyn was born in time for Mother's Day.  I got her some nice stuff for tomorrow.  Ok, well I hope she thinks it's nice stuff.

I haven't talked about my motorcycle in a while, but I have added a new part, so I thought I'd mention in.  As you can see in the blurry picture (stupid cell phone), I have added a windshield to my Honda Rebel.  I think it makes the little bike look a little bigger.  It makes a huge difference on the highway, and I'm pretty sure it increases my gas mileage too.  Of course at 75 mpg, I'm sure not hurting.  I'm going to be using this bike a whole lot more in the future since I'll be driving to the Police Academy every day.  It's not that much longer of a morning commute - probably about 35 minutes now instead of 7.  Compared to some people I know that's a pretty short drive time, so I'm not complaining.  I've been so blessed by other people that this windshield is the first upgrade I've actually had to pay for.

Sweetheart, you can skip this section if you want to, because you hear so much about these every day.  I have new guns.  I sold my Glock 23 and bought a Glock 22 and a Glock 27.  For those of you that don't know (most of you), all three of the guns I just listed are all .40 caliber pistols.  The 22 is the full size model, the 23 is the compact, and the 27 is the sub-compact.  To recap in English, I got rid of the medium size and got the big and little sizes.  I'm going to use them for my duty and back up weapons when I work for HPD.  I have taken them to the range and they are wonderful.  The Glock 27 is the smallest pistol Glock manufactures.  It is TINY.  I can hide it anywhere.  Something I didn't include in the pictures is that the Glock 22 came with night sights.  They look like regular sights in the daylight, but if you get them in dim lighting or no lighting, they glow a very nice green color.

Glock 27

Glock 22

Both.

So in other news, I have finally quit my job at Best Access Systems, and I couldn't be happier about it.  After one month, I have been accepted into the Houston Police Academy.  I'm so excited to finally be on the road to Law Enforcement.  It's going to be six months before I'm on the streets, and a year until I can start doing extra jobs and fun stuff like that, but I'm working on it now.  I was so tired of waiting.  I can hardly believe that it's really happening.  I will have more to post on the academy once it starts of course.  I will keep you all updated.

I'm going to pick up dinner now (KFC, yummm), so I'll talk to you later.

$

She's Encaptured!!

My dear friends, it has been a while since the last post. I would apologize, but I've been so busy with the HPD hiring process, a hungry baby, and a tired wife that I just haven't had the time or energy to post. On the bright side, I have LOTS to talk about!

Item One: Katelyn has her days and nights mixed up. The poor thing sleeps all day long and eats all night long. She's getting better, and oh my gosh she's so cute when she sleeps. We have taken many more pictures and a few videos. Someday we're gonna be watching those videos with her future husband and she's going to wonder what was wrong with us.

Item Two: we had a lot of fun last week - we found termites in our apartment. We didn't know that's what they were at first - we just knew bugs in apartment = bad. We went to the front office and asked for help and they told us they couldn't do anything. Then they threw us out of the office. If you are ever looking for an apartment, don't choose Stonegate Villas - they don't care about you. Tell your friends. Anyway, it's been an issue - we had someone come out in 30 minutes and tell us it was termites, so I told the office on Saturday. They called me on Tuesday so say "we don't think they're really termites." Obviously that didn't sit well, so I told them to try again. They called me back with, "ok, they are termites, but we don't have anyone available to fix the problem - we'll try to squeeze you in on Wednesday." I got a call today to say "ok, our bug guy says they were blown in with the wind, so we can't do anything about it." Wonderful isn't it? So the way I see it, if no more bugs show up, we're ok. If bugs show back up, I'm going to capture some and set them loose in the front office and THEN see if they care. At least that's what I'd like to do...

Item Three: Polygraph tests are freaky! They put all this crap on you and then drill you for like two hours about lying. I was so freaked out the whole time. It's like walking through a metal detector - I'm always afraid of setting it off even though I have nothing to hide. Either way, I passed the test. Assuming HPD doesn't find anything in my background that I don't know about, I should be good to go. I'll be so glad to get out of this current job. It's almost hard to believe that in less than a month I could have my dream job. Here's to hoping it goes well!

Item Four: You're probably still wondering about the title to this post. The first week home with Katelyn was not a week of much sleep for Melissa or myself. It led to more than a couple cases of gibberish talk. Melissa tried to wake me up one night and I replied with "She's encaptured!!" I have no idea what that means. It's a product of sleep deprivation.

Item Five: If you haven't seen the movie Dan In Real Life, let me warn you - it's depressing. I watched it with Melissa the other night, and it left me so depressed by the end that I wanted to find a dark closet and hide from humanity. His character echoes so many feelings I used to have as a kid it's not even funny. Strangely enough, my parents love the movie. I dunno. I didn't like it. I liked the bloopers and the special feature on the soundtrack better than the actual movie. The music is good on that movie. Look up the artist - Sondre Lerche. He looks a little funny, but he's really good with a guitar and has a pretty good voice, too. I think I'm gonna get the soundtrack cuz it's all his music. Check it out.

I probably should get back to work, so I'm going to go for now. Leave a comment if you have any interesting news. Later,

$

My Daughter is Finally Here...

Well ladies and gents, she's finally here.  Some of you are probably thinking, what, you're only just now saying so??  But hey, when you have a brand new baby, you run out of time for a lot of things.  We've been busy not sleeping.  Don't be deceived, we couldn't really be much happier, but we are a little tired.  Our sweet princess doesn't require as much sleep as we do during normal hours.  No, she prefers to sleep when we're awake.  Oh well, one look at her, and you just can't be upset.  She's so perfect.  I have lots of pictures.  I'm only showing you a few because I haven't figured out how to get my pics from the camera, but i have a few from my cell phone that i don't think anyone else has.  Here we go...

I took this Thursday night.  Kind of a gangster look...

I just couldn't resist.

Look at those big beautiful eyes...

I think she heard a noise or something...

This is shortly after birth, I think just a couple hours...

With Grandma Susan

With Mommy right after birth...

With Grandpa Randy

How precious is that...

My favorite

About as peaceful as she gets...

With Aunt Bethany

Biiiiiiiiig yawn, liiiiiiitle mouth

At rest...

What did you just say???

This is cool because this represents a four generation span...

With Ryan

How adorable!!

Doesn't get much better than this...

Out cold...

Wish I could sleep this well...

So cute you could eat her...

Up close and personal

Mommy was tired too...

More pictures to come soon!!  Stay Tuned!!

$

Hmm...

So I wonder, how come nobody's left a comment asking where I am, how I'm doing, if I'm even still ALIVE??? Maybe you all take me for granted. Then again, only like ten people read this blog...Ok, eleven if you count the mysterious anonymous commenter (who are you?). Still, ok whatever.

So yeah, Katelyn is still not here. Baby girl is one hour away from being nine days late. She is nearing Daddy's record, and that is not necessarily a good thing. We would much rather be counting the days that she has spent outside the womb than the days that she is spending still inside. Baby girl come OUT!

This almost feels like a long weekend, but here we are again preparing to start a new work week. I am comforted by the fact that I probably won't have to finish this work week because my daughter will be born. Oh, I got to do another ride along with Jersey Village PD. That's police department for you civilians out there. Anyway, this time I got to ride with James instead of someone I've never met. We pulled over lots of people, went really fast on the highway, and arrested someone. Ok, I didn't do any of those things, but I got to watch James do them. It was really cool. The only thing more fun that going on a ride-along is being a cop on patrol and getting to do all that stuff.


What...the...HECK does "crunchy" mean????? My wife and Lynne used it tonight, and I don't understand. I thought about just asking, but then I figured, "hey, if I put in on the blog, then they'll answer on the blog, and everybody else will get to learn, too!" So smart am I.

Can't think of anything else for now. Later,

$

Day 283

So, we're three days late. Still no baby. That's ok though, because if she's not out yet, God must not want her out yet. That's not really any consolation to Melissa, because it means the baby is still inside her body, but at least we know she'll be here soon. Worst case she'll be two weeks late, that's about as long as we're willing to let her stay in. We're happy letting Lynne have the record among us for latest baby. Melissa has tried just about everything for getting this baby out, and Katelyn has dropped a LOT, but still no baby. We're trying not to obsess, but we want her here NOW. If she could just see all the stuff we have waiting for her, she'd be out here two weeks ago. This little girl is gonna have so many cool clothes and toys and stuff, she should come out and enjoy them. In other news, there is no other news. Umm, no seriously, no other news right now. Nothing's really going on, we're not going anywhere anytime soon other than the hospital. You will know when the baby is here - I'll post about it, and we're going to build her her own blog for pictures and stuff.

Question, when you see a movie like The Patriot, 300, or Gladiator, (I know all you women love these movies) do you care if it's 100% accurate? These three movies are on the list of the top 10 most innacurate movies. Stupid little facts. For example, in 300 the men didn't wear just the little speedo things, they wore bronze armor. So what?? What woman watching that movie wished the men were wearing more? And for the guys, we couldn't care less, because the action was great. Granted, some of the things about that movie could have been left out, but overall a good movie. You get my point. Which matters more, the accuracy or the story line? I'm gonna say the story line matters more. Unless it was something that affected me directly - some family history or something, I would rather see a good movie with a few smudged facts than watch a boring accurate movie. Aren't movies supposed to entertain anyway? I dunno. I'm not expecting a right or wrong answer here, just wanting your opinion.

Anyone see Brittany Spears on TV last night? That's right, she was on How I Met Your Mother. Her acting is even worse than her singing. Although she didn't look half bad. That poor girl just couldn't handle the fame and pressure from her younger years. Too bad. She should go get a real job or something.

Anyway, I'm gonna go for now, gotta work cuz I never know when I'm gonna leave for the baby.

P.S. Look up the news story about the woman where they took out her organs to remove cancer.

Later,

$

No, I'm not dead...

It's been a long time again, I know. Many things have been going on. Looks like we're finally selling our stupid Explorer this week!! Yay!!! That officially means that I can go ahead with my HPD application, and Melissa can for sure stay home and not go back to work. Yay! It has been a huge stress lately because if it hadn't sold, well, things would have been really tight. But that's over now, or will be by Saturday.

So I got a new phone! My Verizon account renewed so I got one of these. Oh yeah, that's totally a bowl of water. It's waterproof. How cool is that? Lynne and Melissa are insisting that it is NOT babyproof, but who cares, what really is? I'm gonna keep telling myself that it is. Oh well, it's cool.

So what's up? Melissa is due on Saturday. That's right - this Saturday. We are soooo ready for that baby to get here. Melissa has been put on modified bed rest because of high blood pressure, so one more reason she'd like the baby to get here.

I could talk much more, but I'm really behind at work and should get back to it. Later,

$

March is here!

So, guess what, we're havin' a baby this month!! I say this month, because we are totally believing that the baby will not be more than 9 days late. Plus, can you imagine being born on April Fool's Day? I think I know a person that was, but talk about getting made fun of. Yeah, she's coming out this month. We are so ready for Katelyn to be here. We have a crib, and a stroller, and a travel system, and some diapers (finally!!), and sooooo many cute clothes. If you haven't ever bought baby girl clothes for your child or someone else's child, you may not understand what I'm about to say. I want to buy one of every little outfit!! Good grief, they're all just so cute. My daughter has so many clothes already, she's not even going to wear all of them I think. We'll probably end up swapping some out for larger sizes.

So how's your week going? Yesterday was sooooooo slow, but today seems to be going much faster. Supposed to rain today. Yesterday was beautiful during the afternoon and ride home. I wish it could always be right around that temp - upper 60's to low 70's with sunshine and a couple clouds here and there. It doesn't matter that much in a car, but we bikers prefer nice weather. :)

So really, what's up? Somebody tell me something cool. Anybody seen any movies lately? Done anything exciting? I tell you what, I actually, get this, I went to work yesterday!! How crazy is that?!?! ........... Ok so I tried. I did manage to burn my arm on my exhaust pipes yesterday. It looks like my forearm got shot with a paintball. I didn't think I was that close to the pipe - I was trying to wipe some stuff off of my bike. Weird though, it doesn't hurt today.

So Melissa has officially started her maternity "leave." Yeah, permanent leave. She ain't going back there, no sir. She sent me a text on Monday morning and I quote: "This... is weird." I warned her, though. If I hear her say "I'm bored" even once, it's back to the sweat shop! Ok maybe not, but no talk of being bored. :)

So I need some opinions. My lunch for today is wrapped in aluminum foil. I left home at 7AM, and remembered to put it in the office fridge at 9:30. It's still ok, right? Hopefully so. let me know!

Later,

$

Humor For Lexophiles (Lovers of Words)

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Police were called to a day care where a 3-yr-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

The butcher backed up into the meat grinder & got a little behind in his work.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months.

A thief fell & broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.

The dead batteries were given out free of charge.

A dentist & a manicurist fought tooth and nail.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.

A will is a dead giveaway.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.

A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft & I'll show you A-flat miner.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.

You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

A calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
Acupuncture: a jab well done.

Another Week Begins

So my fellow humans, how is life? I'm tired. My wife, if reading this, is shaking her head thinking "Oh YOU'RE tired?!?!" But she's 36 weeks pregnant, so she can think like that. So can Lynne, cuz she's on a trip with just her 7 month-old son. So can James, cuz he's working like 180 hours a week (do the math). Ok, I'm tired - other people are too, I'm not saying I'm....tireder than you, I'm just tired. So what's up this week? We're hoping that Katelyn comes out soon. Like Melissa's blog (ordinaryexultations.blogspot.com) says, she's full term now, so any day is great! Why is it that Houston weather is so weird? It was 50 degrees when I walked outside this morning, and the high today is 82!! How do you dress for that? Ok yeah I know, LAYERS, but I don't like having to transport them back home. It's one thing if you have a car, but on a bike, a whole layer of clothing takes up a lot of storage space!

We watched the Oscars last night, I don't know why I watch them every year. You watch the Oscars to see what the ladies wear, and who wins what prize, right? Almost every woman there is wearing a weird dress. The ones that aren't, a.k.a. jennifer garner, miley cirus, look great, but they're million-dollar celebrities, so of course they look good. Sheesh. I hate watching award shows like that, because my picks never win! OK, almost never win. POTC won a couple times, and Sweeney Todd won one last night, but they usually never win, because they aren't the politically correct choice. The shows are rigged. Gotta be. Some world domination thing. Oh well, what are ya gonna do? So I'm gonna go, have to work now. Later,

$

Larry the Cable Guy...soooooo bad