Saturday, February 21, 2009

Movies

Today was a day of unlikely coalition (Red Alert 3) followed by finishing watching the Pink Panther at home so my daughter and I could make a trip to the movies. Buttered Popcorn, peperoni pizza and a diet coke for me and cookie dough bites, cheese pizza and a Mr. Pibb for her. While watching the movie, we both laughed pretty well and agreed that Mom probably wouldn't have liked it, too much slapstick comedy.

We got back to the house around 8:30 PM and I played a little more RA, while my daughter got on AIM. Meanwhile, it sounds like my wife and daughter in Mexico had a great day too.

Tomorrow bring worship services in the morning and we are off the afternoon.

Left Behind

Well, this week has been pretty difficult since last week I was in Houston for training and came home late Thursday night only to get up and go to work Friday for a full day. The work day came to an end and then it was the weekend before my wife flew to Mexico to visit our daughter studying there for this semester.

Saturday was a blur, I don't know why but Sunday was filled with Church Services in the morning and our bi-weekly home group in the evening. I love to hear and sing praises at church and I love our home group. We now have lived in New Market for 19 months and I must say that I am not very well connected into anything except my best Friend Charlie and his wife Nancy. I can't figure out why. This move has been harder on me than I care to admit.
So began the week. The week was filled with interviewing four candidates for a position at work, getting caught back up with administrative work, getting an invoice off to the owners, and preparing for Friday's onslaught of work at the plant. All of this was followed by the evenings trying to help my bride, where she would allow me too, to get ready for her trip to Mexico. Another week without her by my side :( but I know that she and our daughter will have an awesome time together which makes me happy :).
Wednesday night came and we had planned to head to the Golden Corral for dinner to celebrate my wife’s 48th birthday which she would have the first full day in Mexico. I had a mission on the way home to pick up a specific present that my youngest daughter wanted to give her Mom and to pick up a birthday card and wrapping paper. So I scooted by the Book Nook CafĂ© and they had everything I needed. I headed home and we quickly changed vehicles and we were off to dinner. After dinner was time to open the presents and time went swiftly. All was ready for the trip to the airport in the morning, so I headed to bed around 10:30 PM and my wife came to bed around 1:30 AM and I woke up and could not go back to sleep.
Frustrated about that and giving prayers to our Lord for about an hour, I got up and opened my work computer to try to get more things done. By 6:00 AM I had watched the hour long CEO video, and drafted a start on the presentation for why my company should be the choice for what we do at my plant. I heard the alarms go off, so I hurried to complete what I was doing and headed back upstairs to the shower in preparation for taking our youngest daughter to high school and then taking my bride to the airport. We had planned to leave the house at 9:00 AM to drive the hour to the airport and allow for the time for her to get through the security and arrive at her gate in time for boarding. One last thing before leaving…to put the patch on the helps prevent motion sickness. It worked extremely well on the cruise last year. At 8:45 AM she opens the prescription box and it is empty, a bump in the road and another chance to excel. I called the pharmacy and they don’t open until 9:00 AM and it is 15 minutes in the opposite direction of the airport. So we decided to go ahead and leave the house and head to the pharmacy. We arrived there about 9:05 AM (Leadfoot Bob) and fortunately they had the patch and it gave us a moment to pick up a couple of last minute items.
Off to the Airport, the route we took was all interstate highway from the Giant Pharmacy and with my heavy foot, I made up all but 5 minutes of the time and today there was hardly anyone at the airport. Just last week I had a similar flight from BWI to Houston and spent an hour waiting in the security line to get through to the protected side and head to my gate. This allowed my bride and me to stop and smell the roses in a coffee shop on the unsecured side of the security. We had a nice time talking over a cup of coffee. I think we both silently agreed that we should take more time for these types of moments. As she said, she had watched a segment on television about how to affair proof your marriage and that it asserted that most couples don’t talk but 12 minutes a day and that we should talk more and exclude the topics of money and kids. So we tried to practice it and I know the topics that were said we should avoid came up a couple of times. We’ll just have to work on that some more and I look forward to those opportunities.
It was time to head to the security screening area and we separated. It was an awkward moment for both of us. Usually it is me the runs off to some other part of the world and we both had a hard time remembering when the last time she left me to fly somewhere. We concluded that it was when she had to fly to Virginia from Texas with our youngest daughter who was sick, during our move from San Diego to Virginia, and I had to drive my oldest daughter and me the remaining portion of the trip. Wow, that was 13 years ago. I watched my bride go through security and waved at her across the abyss one last time. I headed back to the garage and then headed home. We stayed in touch by the magic of text messages and I knew that she had made the trip to Houston and was on the follow-on flight to Merida Mexico.
I was not “Home Alone,” my youngest daughter rode the bus home from school and found me busily working on my presentation. We enjoyed each other’s company and had our dinner together. I headed to bed around 9:30 PM after having a very long day.
Friday came swiftly and 5:30 AM was a rude awakening since I had to be at work extra early due to divers going into one of our tanks at 7:00 AM. I got out of my shower and was dressed when I got my daughter up. She woke without a fuss and I headed down to the kitchen to assemble her lunch. Ah, peanut butter and banana sandwich, pretzels, apple sauce, rice crispy treat and a soda. She was set and by the time I put it into her backpack she was out of the shower. I wished her a good day and was off to work.
After work was over, I swung by the Block Buster Video store to pick up the movie “Pink Panther” starring Steve Martin in preparation for are trip to the movies on Saturday (today) to watch the sequel “Pink Panther 2.” Unfortunately I could not stay awake to watch the video we had rented so we will finish it this morning before we go see the next one.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Dinner and Dancing

Things are really looking up. My wife and I went out with another couple last Friday night. We ate dinner at the Brewer's Alley and then decided to go bar hoping. However, we never made it past the first bar. We spent the evening at Bushwallers. At 10 PM a band started playing and somewhere in there both couples were on the floor dancing amoungst the college students.