@toddsingleton.net
Here are a few more pictures of the place we’ll call home at the end of next month. There’s a lot of painting and wallpaper removal to take care of. I might even take off the last week of September to get it all done if I can squeeze in the time between projects at work. Right now I’m slammed on all fronts. But there is more good news this week… Amy got a job! She starts Monday in the claims department of an insurance company I can’t think of the name of right now.
Kitchen, Living Room:
It’s been 10 days since my last entry because I have been extremely busy this month, just like in July. Our offer on this house in the town of Wendell was accepted last night. I searched all over the Internet and discovered you can buy A LOT more house for your money outside of Raleigh/Cary/Apex. In short, once the deal goes through on this property I will have saved almost $60K over any comparable house I’ve seen in Raleigh.
We’ll have half an acre of yard and 2200 square feet of living space. The first floor has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, kitchen, living room and dining room. The upstairs has two 15×16 bonus rooms and a full bathroom. It’s located about 10 minutes from where Dillon Supply will be located after the move in December (so I’ll be just as close to work as I am now). The best part is that there will be a lot of yard space between us and our neighbors, something unheard of in Raleigh subdivisions.
It’s not a done deal but if the contract goes through we’ll be closing on September 23rd (one day before Connor’s birthday). I told Amy that once we move it’s the last time we’re going to do it for many years. Later we can add a kid or two to this house and still have enough room to keep our sanity. I just don’t know how I’m going to afford to furnish it.
This month was hotter and busier than any I can remember. At work, at home, even at my parents house something was going on all the time. We started off by taking Connor to see fireworks for the first time. He jumped straight into Amy’s lap when he heard the first explosion and didn’t get out until they were over. But he liked them. And I managed to get out of the fairground parking in under 45 minutes so I didn’t mind it much either.
The weekend following the 4th we threw my mom a surprise birthday party. Amy and Mary Kay organized it and had well over 50 people there. When mom walked around her house into the back yard she was genuinely surprised. It was a well kept secret. Then later that week I had a Colonoscopy.
The next weekend I lost my wedding ring in the deep end of a diving pool. I noticed it missing from my hand that night after we got home. I went straight back the following morning but despite all my self-proclaimed genius I did not bring a snorkel, goggles – nothin’. But I did spot the ring on the bottom.
First Amy dove to try to get it. She felt around on the bottom but couldn’t grab it. I watched it drift around on the bottom for about ten minutes and told Amy to go get a mask. The trip took her about thirty minutes. During that time a bunch of other people got in the pool and stirred the water. I lost site of the ring and never saw it again. I wished I had never seen it on the bottom to begin with.
Later on in the month Connor took a couple of trips to Pullen Park to ride the choo-choo, boats and merry-go-round. Last weekend when we went I saw a guy I know on the choo-choo with his daughter, Ava. Dawson Roark, if I remember correctly. The last time I saw him was last year in St. Louis at the Prophet21 convention. So we talked about work and P21 for around thirty minutes.
Speaking of work; this month Dillon Supply officially moved the forklift division across the street in downtown Raleigh so I turned up a new segment of our wide area network. Very smoothly if I might add – 1 minute 45 seconds total down time on the core router; a Cisco 3745 which now supports three T1 circuits (two are bonded) and a 45Mbps DS3. Tomorrow morning I’m installing the first component of our new storage area network, a 1TB NetApp FAS3000.
It’s been a helluva month.
It’s time for another round of me vs. Crohn’s disease. This coming Tuesday I will spend the morning having a colonoscopy. I will take many more iron pills and a new medication, Colazal. Then on Friday I will have a series of X-rays and MRI’s in a procedure known as an Upper GI Tract. Yey.
I’m really not having any problems except for a stomach flu last week. All of this is just preventative maintenance. All I know is the cost better be minimal.
Have you seen this symbol? More and more of these decals are appearing on the bumpers of cars all over the country. You have to be a “member” of a law enforcement agency to buy one (by providing a verifiable badge number to epolicesupply.com). So it’s a symbol for the nationwide law enforcement gang “the thin blue line.” A symbol of pride? It’s more like “I’m a fellow cop, so don’t pull me over if you see me speeding in my civilian car.”
Mike Davis made this point: If I want to put one of these stickers on my car what’s to stop me from printing one out of Photoshop? And once I have what laws going to say I can’t have this sticker on my car? Would I be arrested for impersonating a law enforcement official because I have this symbol that can only be sold to cops? I’m sure plenty of people who don’t dive have diver down front license plates and stickers on their cars. So if I think this is a pretty black and blue design no law I’m aware of can stop me from putting one on my car, forehead or front door.
I really like this bumper sticker on the epolicesupply website: “Sometimes there’s justice, Sometimes there’s just us.”
Sorry Officer(s). There’s only justice – no gangs allowed. It’s your job to enforce laws and that’s the extent of it. It’s an individual job. Okay, so sometimes you might need back-up or manpower to perform your job. Just remember that gang symbols and slogans don’t put you above the rules of engagement set forth by the justice system and legislators. Of all people cops ought to recognize that the “thin blue line” is a term used by the civilian public to pronounce distrust of officers involved in scandals and cover ups.
Identifying law enforcement symbols should be banned on all civilian possessions and clothing to protect the integrity and trust of the profession. I particulary like it most when a girlfriend or wife of a cop has one of these decals. It says “my husbands/boyfriends a cop”. Um, so what? I guess they’re entitled to some special treatment also.
Connor loves the Carolina coast. Last weekend he got a tan; mommy and daddy got burned. He makes heading on to the water a whole new experience. We can forget about laying around anymore. Someone’s got to constantly keep him out of the ocean or go in with him. We take shifts because he has no fear and will go in by himself. Now that he’s putting words together he said “bye-bye beach” the whole way home Sunday.
When I got home last night he ran to my truck screaming “beach! beach!”. I don’t think he cares that it takes 2 1/2 hours to get there.
I’m not used to wearing sunscreen but I’m not going to argue with Amy about putting an SPF 45 all over the little man. It works. He has a tan and I’m peeling a little.
I’m now an official satellite radio subscriber. This is one of those things I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy and now I don’t know how I lived without it. I went with Sirius over XM radio because one is for adults and the other is for kids with Honda Civics and go-cart mufflers. XM radio sports selection consists of Major League Baseball. The only thing more boring than watching baseball on TV would be listening to it on the radio.
Sirius on the other hand has NHL, NFL, NBA and many ESPN channels. During my research I found that the music and news selections are better too. I guess “XM” just sounds cooler than “Sirius” so parents this is what your teenager will want (and why XM has more subscribers). Despite this Sirius is in better financial shape than XM. This could be because of a more mature user base that can actually pay the bill. Personally I like the fact that there is better news and jazz on Sirius. I guess that makes me an ol’ geezer but that’s what life deals.
WRAL.com – News – House Committee Approves Two-Year Death Penalty Moratorium
So at least the NC House of Reps has a little common sense. WRAL has a poll going that is evenly split between people that think the moratorium is a good idea and those who think it’s a step towards outlawing the death penalty.
So here’s my poll: If you do not support a moratorium of the death penalty while it’s studied for problems explain your position by selecting one of the following (and you MUST chose one or you do not have a justifiable claim to your position):
A) I do not care if innocent people die as long as executions continue.
B) Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary I think the death penalty is a deterrent to would be murderers.
C) I believe our judicial system is efficient, just and without bias.
D) I do not think that prosecutors are politically motivated in their pursuit of criminal convictions.
E) I can cite a criminal case in NC where a prosecutor has obtained evidence that would exonerate a defendant and voluntarily presented it in court for an immediate dismissal.
F) I am a redneck, neo-Christian-conservative who believes an eye-for-an-eye is ordained by God. Innocent people are just casualties of our “War on (insert latest sin here)”.
WRAL.com – News – House Committee To Consider Two-Year Moratorium On Death Penalty
I love it when hard-core Christian conservatives ban together in support of killing innocent people. Who cares if a couple of people who didn’t commit any crime get the hot needle? A few innocent lives is a small price to pay to make sure the real bad guys burn right? Ah,where would we be without good ‘ol NC redneck, lynch mob ideology?
This story quotes one really intelligent death penalty supporter, Representative Nelson Dollar, as saying that releasing two innocent men who spent over five years on death row shows the system works. Yep folks, this genius was elected. What does he care – no reparations are required. And never mind the controversy that surrounded the investigation of the crooked lawyers who withheld evidence that could have exonerated one of the men during their original trial.
Here’s a solution, I’ve posed it before but it doesn’t seem to popular among criminal prosecutors: If any defendant is aggressively prosecuted, with blatant disregard for researching facts that could lead to an acquittal, and that defendant is proven to have been wrongfully convicted, then the prosecutor must serve a minimum of half the sentence imposed on the innocent defendant.
Somehow I think the prosecutors are going to want to hold on to their current infallibility.
My little babies gone and my big guy is 30+ pounds and 34″ tall at 19 months old. According to Dr. Chip who he saw last week that’s in the 98th(W) and 100th(H) percentile for his age. And he’s in a size 8 childrens shoe. The Doc’s stick by their prediction of 6’2″ to 6’4″ before he’s done growing.
According to my sister, sorry – I mean Aunt Mary Kay, he’s at his cutest age. He’s darn cute but he’s getting a head start on terrible 2. We changed his name to No-No but he does it anyway. Throw some food, kill the plant, bang toys against the TV, run across the living room screaming and fall down. Then do it again… five more times. Mommy is ready to go back to work part time. She’s begging me to get her resume done tomorrow.
One thing we do have going for us: at 8:30 or 9:00 when he’s ready for bed he’ll say “nigh-nigh” and walks straight to his crib and wait for mommy. If he’s too tired for Amy to read him a book he’ll shut the book, shake his head “no” and say “nigh-nigh”. Nothing comes between sleep and food. That’s my boy.
PS – notice I also listed this under the catagory of “Money”. That’s for the grocery bill.