Middle America's Worldview

I didn’t get a chance to see/hear the opening statements, but realistically the opening and ending statements are prepared and practiced by both candidates.

I did get to see/hear the debate and I must say I thought both candidates did well in attempting to articulate where they were on their stand of each topic. However, without being biased this is what I captured from the debate. It seemed to me Kerry had a good knowledge of the topics, with the exception of some that was corrected by the President. It also appeared to me Kerry seemed to attack the Presidents past 3.5 years, which analyst expected. I thought the President had to both defend those attacks, in addition to clarify his current position and future outlook of the topics. Note both seemed to be pretty articulate, but Kerry did not articulate what he would do, other than more alliances. Realistically we have more alliances during this war, than any other war in history. So I didn’t quite understand what he meant about that. The other thing that was interesting was Kerry contradicted himself within the Debate in regards to if Saddam Hussein was/is a threat. Rudy Giuliani commented on this after the debate.

In conclusion, the question is do you want a candidate showing experience, with a dedicated known goal in mind, or a candidate that can only look in the past without a clear articulate plan that has changed consistently. My vote is George Bush on November 2nd.

Ahhh sleep. Another thing that you take for granted until you lose it. Last night, I actually did not get a call from work! Unreal but great for me. I was able to sleep the whole night restfully.

We also watched the last of the Orielly interview with Bush. I thought it was actually good. Orielly also mentioned to show the whole 25 minutes the night before the vote, which in my opinion will be a tremendous help to the Bush campaign. But note, Orielly has also been basically pleading to the Kerry campaign to come on my show and be interviewed as well. He then would do a comparison between Bush/Kerry prior to the vote. We have barely a month left before this vote.

Another interesting piece last night was a look at how many states had a vote against gay marriage, nearly 8, I believe. Note Oklahoma and Arkansas are among them. It was asked to a individual last night by Orielly of 'why do you think most everyone are against gay marriage'. Her response was of course, this was a infantile discussion. Whereas not much discussion and understanding was put on this issue. I say BS, the public has continual indoctrination put upon them specifically about this discussion.

The great debate is tonight and yes, I will be watching it with interest. Now I hear on the news, there are 30 pages of the rules of engagements. They commented they can wear their lucky socks. Other than that thier SOL. Wacky that means Sh*t out of luck.

Starting early this morning. I had about 3 calls last night for on-call. Doesn't sound much but since it was basically every other hour after 1 a.m., it didn't allow a very restfull sleep. After 5 a.m. I finally resolved to just get up to stay.

I will be taking my mom to the doctor this morning, seems the pain pills are not helping her. So a run to the doctor early this morning, with a 9 a.m. work confernce call. I already emailed the two others to call me on my cell for it. Hopefully, it wont take that long, but you never know.

Since I also ready showered, took out the trash (trash day), ect. I checked out my bloglist and Jay found an interesting link of airbrushing.

Also on a link from Michelle Malkin, looks like CBS still doesn't know bi-partison. You would think they would learn. Here is the link.

I am looking forward to the presidential debate tommorrow night. But with the rules, it may be a sleep job. I tried to find these 'rules' online but couldnt. Anyone have a link for these rules?

Not a bad day today, actually. Yes, it's always busy, but it wasn't outright crazy.
At work I managed through a couple of conferences, and was able to turn on the Hemocare charges to OPUS. This is the one that was delayed last week. So considering, I call it a successfull day at work.

I managed to sneak away for lunch and attend a Republican lunch. Seems they are held at Pizza Hut within Poteau. It was a bit of a drive, but the meeting was interesting. No I didn't eat any pizza. The thing I could not understand was, the leader kept stating they needed to get organized and have volunteers, ect. Yet, she never made out some task for anyone. I asked a couple of questions and thats about it, jotting notes of her talking.

I started on 'The Interogators' book last night. It started off interesting, so it promises to be a good read. I also managed to watch Bill Orielly last night interviewing the President. Plan on watching the other two, tonight and tomorrow. Really curious if Kerry will do the same.

Going to take my son to therapy and carry my daughter along. My wife is having her tooth fixed at the dentist so she will be sore again for awhile. Hopefully this will be the last of it.

This evening I am tired. I really don't understand why I am so tired, but I am.

Sunday we went to church and then over to Kelli's parents house to help them finish the hall. They had painted it, but we put down the flooring. It took long enough,but I can't complain too much, they fed us lunch. heh heh. At least were able to get that far for them, regardless if it took the rest of the day.

Monday was another Murphy day. It could be worse, but why does it always seem so blasted busy? I was on support today, my one day for this week. Thank God. And it actually wasnt a bad day of support. I am also on-call this week, so here is crossing my fingers while typing for a quite week.

My mother was released from the hospital today. My wife was able to make arrangments and leave her work to take her home and run by Walgreens to drop off the scripts. But get this. The doctor wrote the script incorrectly. So here is Kelli taking off work, trying to get the scripts and my mom home around 10:00 a.m. . One of the two scripts was wrong. Walgreens makes the call to the Doc's office. They wait. I called 15 minutes later to see if they fixed it yet, while my wife runs some errands in town (staying in Fort Smith). Nope, so I called my wife back updating her and then called Walgreens back in 45 minutes. No go in 15 minutes, but they gave me the doctors office number. I made that call and low behold the lady answering the phone didn't have a clue and I could call back at 1 p.m. ( its 12:40 p.m. ). "One o'clock? where is the doctor?" "In surgery" she replied. "Do you have any notes on the call from Walgreens?" "no" "Do you have any notation whatsoever in the chart? Or is there anyone there that can get this corrected?" She sighed and said she can make a notation for them to call me when they get back. I can only assume 'they' were at lunch. I called back at 1:30 p.m. and spoke to first the lady I left a message with then with the nurse that was gone. I gave her the spill and she said she would call Walgreens. She called me back in 10 minutes to explain the doctor rarely orders that kindof med and that's why he had the wrong milligrams in it. But with this kindof med she could not order it on the phone, nor by fax. I had to hand deliver another script to the pharmacy. ( Yes you druggies, its one of those good kinds ) By this time, Kelli was at home and its nearly 2 p.m.. She tried to go into a reason of the delay, because I basically told her it was a shame due to my mom being discharged and now the correct script was written. But you know how it goes, one said they called and was waiting the other said, I didn't get the message till late, yada yada.
Anyway, I took off to grab the script, then took it to the pharmacy. Since that was going to take 20 minutes, i headed to the library to drop off 'Sleeping with the Devil' by Robert Baer. A book I highly recommend. I then grabbed the medicine, took it to my mom's house, dropped off a storage payment for her on the way back home and then hit the work again. During this little outage, my wife had to pick up our kids, the neighbor kid (she asked last night) and our lovely friends kid again. Dropped them off in their respective places, took our kids to the Chiropracter, speech therapy and finally home. Great Scott.

I will have to say while I was at the library, I happened to run across a friend of mine I use to work with long ago. She suggested the book 'Why America Slept' by Gerald Posner. I went ahead and checked it out as well as 'The Interrogators' by Chris Mackey an Greg Miller. She is a full blown Democrat and very smart. We know where each of us are on our viewpoints and chide each other when we can. She told me she was still kindof split on her decision for Nov. 2nd. I was a bit surprised. As we spoke, she couldn't really stand on her Democrat candidate. I won't go into the discussion but just wanted to note even only 36 days left before the vote, some people seem to not had made up there mind, yet. Or they have hesitation to say.

Oh one more thing, the library had 'Unfit for Command.' The book I wanted to get. It was out but I was able to reserve it.

I just finished watching "The Ghost and the Darkness". It's been a long time since I have watched it before. Again, a really good movie. I was fortunate to find the DVD at a yard sale for 5 bucks. Yes, even without any scratches nor skips. I could not help but look up Chicago's Wildlife museum online after the show. The movie remarked the actual lions are still on display there. And the more terrifying part of the movie was the fact it was a true account, not out of imagination. The link to the museum showing two pictures of the lions can be found here. You will have to scroll down to the bottom of the page.

This is the reason I went ahead and blogged it. heh heh

I added a two new links on the side, one entitled Farenhype 911. Looks like it will be a good movie, coming out Oct. 5th. http://www.fahrenhype911.com/

Another is a blog, called Mongo's Mutterings that I will be checking out.
Mongos Mutterings


I also removed another dead blog as well. Your Daily Dose

Yesterday was a better day, thankfully. Yes, work was still busy, but at least it did not feel like bombs being thrown at me as opposed to the day before. Without going into detail, I am able to actually work on interfaces, and some issues as opposed to just trying to stay alive.

Learned new horrors concerning the Jihad war within Russia, Michelle Malkins site Look a little down Michelle Malkins blog to see "THE RAPE JIHAD". Personally I would shoot any sick psycho willing to rape 15 year old girls, religious orientated or not. I seen similiar footage from Africa. I recall National Geographic going into the jungles of Africa, witnessing tribal rituals that would partake in raping/sodomizing young boys. sic

Can't help but know about the Dan Rather/CBS blackeye on the issue of false documents. Initially they reported them to be true. Under scrutiny they are found to be forged some say fabricated. Then Dan pushed to say they are absolutely real, but I can't provide the originals. OK. Then news breaks out of phone calls being made in Kerry camp, CBS, Bill Berkett, hmmm. OK so we are a click or at least in communication with each other. Now one side says, I said nothing of the memos in our conversation, while the other side said, they wanted the memos for Kerry campaign. Another sad tale of He said/He said debate. Real issue? We got caught, where's my lawyer, who will take the fall for this. I heard a good comment last night on the news. You can't call them forgery because by definition forgery is a replicate of an original. Whereas the document never existed, so by definition it's a fabrication. Good point. I will be waiting for the book to come out. It's enivatable.

Plan to only rest this evening with the family. No running, working or anything like that. I am looking forward to it. Hope everyone had a good Friday today.

I said it, therefore it must be true, right?

Yesterday, was another busy day as most might expect for this week. But talking to other co-workers not in my group, they are having just as rough time as we seem to be. I also mentioned to our speech therapist that Murphy is working over time and she responded with 15 minutes of her hectic week. So it's not just us.

I managed to grab another cox cable receiver for the living room. So we are yet again complete with what we had, in addition to the channels for our kids bedrooms and my office. I must admit, when time allows, I enjoy watching the news in the background within my office. My wife was told something that made alot of sense in regards to the dichotomy of Cox and Dish. The cable guy pointed it out that with Dish, they do not have the same maintenence as Cox does. Consider Cox must put up all the new cable wires throughout the town and landscape to reach us, hire enough crewman to maintain those wires/boxes ect. This is opposed to Dish slapping up a satelite and do not have to maintain that hardwire. Considering this, Dish is reaping the profit as opposed to Cox just maintaining above the cost to keep alive, made sense. Just a thought. Because we pay the same for one as the other.

Other than that, my mother continues to go really well with her knee. My son continues to do really good. Now yesterday, he couldn't make up his mind at the speech therapy in picking out a toy, so after 15 minutes I just had to go. Carrying him out while he made a crying fit was not good. I had to give him a swat when we got home, but after that everything seem to be ok. This morning he was up and atem eating nearly 3 eggs (a record) and all the chores done. My daughter is a morning person similiar to me. So this morning was actually nice and I didn't need a cow prod to get anyone moving.

Yes, today will be a better day.

What a freaking mess. Monday flew like crazy. Here was the plan, then I will shortly state what went down.

Plan

Had a really busy weekend this weekend. Friday night we had a chance to spend some quality time together without the kiddo's. We went to eat at Cuco's within Phoenix Village Mall, Fort Smith. It was actually reasonable and good food, having the fajita's for two. I grabbed 'Man on Fire with Denzel Washington' to watch later that night. It was a good movie.

Saturday morning, Kelli's mom came to grab us and we hit the Greenwood yard sales. We spent half the day looking for bargains. Our biggest prize was a kids foosball. It looked new for 15 bucks. It will be perfect for the kids. It is currently hiding under a sheet tucked in the garage for Santa to bring to the kiddos.

That noon and afternoon, we helped her mom and dad pull frames, wall paneling from their home hallway. Her dad was cooked on the grill while we yard sale and had it ready for lunch. So we ate, visit and got to work. I didn't take to long. Saturday night I wrestled with the kids until they wore me out. ( Didn't take too long, heh heh ) The kids had their sleep over in the living room ( yes they love it ) since it wasn't a school night. I stayed up watching 'Braveheart' on DVD (that I found in a yard sale for 5 bucks ) while the kids watched 'Dino Thunder, Power Rangers'. My daughter and wife fell out pretty quick. My son, like me hung in there till late. I think he lasted till 11:30 p.m at least. I turned their TV off when my Braveheart went off at 12:30 a.m.

Sunday morning, we dragged our kids out of the pallet and we all went to Church. After Church, the kids and I went to visit my mother as my wife stayed home. I had a pretty good visit with my mom. She will have her left knew replaced in the morning. I plan to take her to the hospital in the morning by 5:30 a.m.

We returned home and currently the kids are creating posters for a poster contest at School. The theme is something for against bullying.

Our son continues to do great on the no milk diet. I had to tell the good news to my Sunday School peers. They were all glad to hear of this good news as well.

Great Scott, what a day of support today. The network was totally unstable and I had to continually recycle interfaces all day. Some more than once.
I am currently blogging as I keep an eye on my alerts when someone IM's me of another interface down. Probably take me a freaking hour to write this. LOL

Cable/Dish update: Well this morning, I was on the phone with both to disect this out, seeing my best options. Essentially it boiled down to this. I can get the same channels (in one reciever) through Cox for the same price as I am putting out for Dish and Cox. In addition I will have channels 2-99 in both kids room and my office. Currently we have the Dish Channels in our living and bedroom only.

I have this going down next Monday. Dish will discontinue and Cox will come up full digital.

Good advice Nixon, I gave them the lowdown this morning when I called into cancel.

The individual I spoke with initally asked why I was going over to another cable company. I told him full blown. Basically just told him the truth. Dish first said I could upgrade, giving me the local retailers that can do the work and call them to turn it on. I called the local retailers, they said no that was incorrect. If we do that Dish will fine us. Dish will have to give the yes and they call us. I called Dish back and the second representive said they could not upgrade us due to 'your an existing customer'. blah blah blah. So the guy said, "ok, let me transfer you to our cancelation department."
I was very nice nor raised my voice during the whole discussion. When the cancellation dept answered a lady asked me the same question. "Why have you decided to go another company?" I asked if this conversation wsa taped. She was a bit taken back and replied "I dont know."

So I gave her the whole story again in rich detail. She interupted saying it will be more expensive to go another company. I said no it isnt. She said, "yes it will, it will be cheaper in the first month but I assure you it will rise and be more."
'That is incorrect maam, yes it will be cheaper the first 3 months and then the price will rise, but it will be the same I am putting out for Dish and I will gain 3 rooms of cable.' Well that didn't go over well. You would think they realize we (customers) would research our shit first. grr. She changed tactics and started to ask me if I would like a 522 reciever sent to me with no charge, we can install ect. I kindly responded with 'with all due respect maam, Dish should have offered that yesterday before you made my decision for me. I am requesting you to cancel it Sept. 20th and send me my final bill via mail." She finally resigned her attempts and confirmed the date and amount the final bill will be.

Son update: Recieved tremendously good news today. My wife took our son to the Doctor and spoke with him. This is an alternative doc, registered not a voodoo but not really mainstream either. Anyway, he suggested we are on the right track. ( not that we can't see a major difference ourselves these past 2 days, with the non-milk diet ) Anyway, the thing I found interesting is he suggested to my wife, the belief our son actually does not have speech apraxia, rather since he has been missing 40-50 percent of input, due to the staring out, he is only developmentaly behind. He also stated, he would not be surprised our son would catch up in 1-2 years with his speech. Now I know we shouldnt be too overly confident, but with the last two days dramatic change. This is looking better and better. I have to say Thank the Living God. Yes, we wish we had this 2 years ago, so he wouldnt even be behind, but at least we have it now.

As promised, the election board sent me a sample ballot for Oklahoma. The 10 question s posed on the ballot can be found here. They are state questions, 705 through 708, 711 through 715. In addition there will be the following running for office.

Judicial Retention: Requesting to retain Note they are not running against anyone.
Justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court
James R. Winchester - District 5
Rudolph Hargrave - District 8
Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
Charles S. Chapel - District 1
Judges of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals
Joe C. Taylor - District 3, office 1
Ron Stubblefield - District 3, office 2
Glenn D. Adams - District 4, office 1
Larry E. Joplin - District 4, office 2
E. Bay Mitchell III - District 6, office 1

Coporate Commissioner between
John Wylie(D) and Denise Bode(R)

U.S. Senator between
Brad Carson(D), Tom Coburn(R), an Sheila Bilyeu(I)

District 2
Dan Boren(D) and Wayland Smalley(R)

Then of course the Presidential vote.

Well no-one replied to my recent 'Going Political' inquiry. Oh well.

I had called Dish Network to check on upgrading our current two room to 4 room viewing. I been seeing ads showing you can get 4 rooms, with dvr (ability to record, pause, ect ). So I called, since I way past my initial year contract. I was amazed at what I found out. I cannot get a new year contract with them, acquiring the new upgrades.

Here is how the conversation went.

Dish: "It is not offered to existing customers."

So I simply replied the obvious,
"So your saying, I need to discontinue Dish and reapply?"

Dish: "No sir, you would still be considered a existed customer. Because you would still be in our databanks."

Me: "Well then how do I get Dish in 4 rooms not my current 2 rooms? Because 4 rooms weren't available at the time I signed up?"

Dish: "We cannot upgrade existing customers with the 322 or 522 receivers."

Me: "So no-way on the upgrade in anyway?"

Dish: "We can send you a 522 receiver for 24.95."

Me: " Who would install it?"

Dish: "You would."

Me: "So there is no-way I can get Dish in 4 rooms? Just the 2 rooms I have it in now?"

Dish, rather stressful:" We cannot upgrade you to the 322."

(sigh) I said, ok thanks and hung up at that point. It just didn't make any sense to me. I was only trying to acquire a satellite feed in my kids 2 bedrooms and they wouldn't do it. They only wanted me to acquire a new receiver for the existing one I have.

So I called Cox cable to see what my options are there. See we have both in our house. I know it sounds crazy, but Cox is the only one in this area offering digital internet access. Where as Dish Network was the first offering more than 18 channels in this area. So after speaking with Cox. Sounds like we can get the same channels we currently have with Dish ( don't want to lose any ) and still gain channels 2-99 in the kids room. Not only that, but I should be able to splice the cable to my office so I can get Fox News in here while I work. I plan on speaking with Cox again tomorrow and set it up.

I explained all this to my wife and she said that was why some of her friends went over to another cable company from Dish, because like us, they were an existing customer and they would not allow them to simply upgrade. Crazy if you ask me. You would think they would, if nothing else but to maintain their customers for another couple of years, via contract.

Well it's Wednesday morning and I already have the trash out to be picked up. I finished off the brownies ( nice breakfast, eh ) and wanted to blog real quick before I hit the work again.

I have a slight dilemma in politics, and actually asking for feedback on this one. I am currently registered as an Independent. The reason is because I make my political decisions on the candidate not the party. True I vote as a conservative. But here is the deal. In Oklahoma state law, you can only vote within your party for the primaries. Now Oklahoma is primarily built up by Democrats. Take this last sheriff election. Both candidates were Democrat. Since both were going for it, I could not vote being registered as a Independent. I do not foresee any Republican Sheriff coming on the November ballot, thus the Democrat wins by default. So I really am not having any say in the matter. You might think, what's one vote. But in the last Sheriff election, Gentry one by only one vote. So I personally believe each vote actually counts.

I have been told this year, by more than one person, Bush will acquire Oklahoma hands down. So much is this thought, the Republican Headquarters are having to buy their Bush/Cheyney yard signs as opposed to being given too. The reason? They see Oklahoma as a lock state, and they are pushing more on the swing states. ( sigh ) Sucks, but I guess you have to look at the big picture.

Back to my question. I have been thinking of changing my party to Republican. Mainly because I am currently locked out of both primary party votes and truthfully my conservative is swayed more toward Republican ideology. More-so now, due to the extreme liberals taking over the Democratic party. I will say this, I know of some 'southern democrats' that are so fed up with the liberalism in the Democratic party, they are also talking about changing their party. Some may think 'whatever' but I have to say this. Living in Oklahoma all my life, in this area, the mentality has always been, 'my granddad and dad has been Democratic, so I am Democratic'. But of course the problem is, Democratic party is changing, not the 'southern democratic. I was also told yesterday, even Brad Carson, the Democratic runner in Oklahoma for the Senate seat, is starting to stay clear of Kerry, because he knows Kerry is bad news.

So with that background, should I change to Republican for my same means of thinking or should I change to Democratic because that is mostly what is in this area?
By the way, I am voting for Coburn (R)for Nichols replacement, and I voted for Corn (D)for Senate. I value both men's history and ideas and highly respect each.

There are 10 things on the ballot in November 2nd for Oklahoma. I have asked for the Election Board to mail them to me. I will post them once I receive them. I like to know what and who is up to vote on / for before I go in.

Site Update: Messing around my site, I removed two dead bloggers and actually alphabeticalize my listings. You will also note some new headings and links over there.

Received fantastic news today. Kelli called me around 3:10 p.m. telling me Tiffany ( the teacher assistant that has been with our son for 2 yrs ) said she been waiting all day to tell her. Our son didn't have a single staring out today. He not only finished all his work, he wasn't the last to do so. When the teacher walked the room, he kept an eye on her. He had energy all day and played like crazy. What is more, there were two other people, remarking to my wife how our son's skin color wasn't as pale as it had been before. A noticeable difference. Talk about great news. So even with him only drinking yoo-hoo a difference was made today.

Found out today also the prospect of a new peer doesn't look good. The lady they had heard (she has an interview tomorrow) isn't very technical. Not good. I asked my boss lady why isn't there so many people looking for this position, isn't there anyone out there needing an interface job? So much for a drop in job loss. We cannot even find a reasonable applicant.

Today is my dad's birthday. He turns 57 today. I surprised him this morning by wishing him a happy birthday. Also when the kids were in this evening, we had them call to wish him a happy birthday as well.

I am drinking the last of the silk soybean chocolate. I actually like it. Oh well.

I also found another Robert Baer book, called 'Sleeping with the Devil'. It's about "How Washington sold our soul for Saudi Crude". I will have to say how it is when I complete it.

I finished the book 'See no Evil, by Robert Baer'. I found it totally fascinating and insightful. I do highly recommend it. It portrays his career as a CIA agent on the grounds as a anti-terrorist group. It even brings it up to his findings on the oil scam regarding Roger Tamraz having Senator Kennedy's wife on the payroll, along with having access to Bill Clinton and the campaign finance. Yeah, it was very interesting.

Kids and wife are off to school and work. Getting ready to hit it again. I figure it will be busy day to get my projects underway. Looks like I will be moving a new interface out next Tuesday. I will also be migrating other interfaces off the OPENLINK and onto the new BeyondFTP server. I have a meeting scheduled this Friday.

Oh well, I hope to hit the town today and pick up the donations for the PTA silent auction. I also plan to hit the library again and find another similar book. I enjoy the fiction true stories more than before. Probably showing my age.

As expected, I was on the phone all freaking day. I then get a call about 10 till 5 p.m. asking to check a interface. I thought why not. Next thing at 5:30 I kept saying, I really need to go now. I wasn't on-call and couldnt get the on-call person at all and then find out they are not even going live with this interface tonight. crap.

So as my wife continues to inform me, I am not on-call nor would the others be doing this. I split and we race to pick up the friends kids from the babysitter to run to Fort Smith. We had planned to meet our friends ( 4H couple ) at LoneStar tonight since kids eat free and they had all the ribs you can eat.

Needless to say we made it on time but the couple was a bit late. ( GO figure )
Well the ribs were good at first but then they became more and more salty. I personally do not like salt on my food. Any of it. I mentioned to my wife it's pretty salty and she said the steaks were too, but she liked it that way. Well, I barely finished what was brought out. So that was a bust. Then when the bill came, they charged us for the kids meal. Well, I had to mention it and she came back and said only Sunday and Wednesday. No, I replied, that is not what Brady said the other day, its all week. You see, for PTA silent auction the manager had donated two lunch coupons worth 25 dollars to the PTA, in addition kept saying we are having kids eat free all week. Expressing his desire for us to tell all about it. So that is why I had to make a correction on it. They took it off the second trip back. But all in all, I enjoyed the conversation with everyone and the kids did very well for the time we stayed.

So now it's already 9 p.m. and I already threw the kids into their showers and bed. Hence also updating this blog.

Couldnt blog last night. I am finding at times, I am unable to create a post or get into Blogger. Must be pretty busy with the amount of users for it. They need to upgrade their processers, ect.

I managed to help dad out yestrday with the furniture moving and I was also able to just sit and talk. It was nice to chat on life, and catch up with everything.

I am interested to see how today will be with Braden. We went cold on milk and dairy since Friday morning. I guess we will see. I made some pancakes ( kind you just add water ) this morning adding a bananna. Everyone seem to like it. I am also the one that will end up drinking the Silk choco drink. No-one else likes it. He's been feasting on Yoohoo's, water and juice over the weekend.

I have alot of conference calls scheduled today. I don't expect to get anything done. In fact my first one is in 10 minutes from now.

We also learned last Friday, our peer is finally out. But in addition the individual that they were looking at, dropped out as well. He didn't take the position. This is the same one everyone expected to be in the team by mid-october. I already have my tickets bought to be at Corporate. But now we are back to square one, trying to find a person to feel the vacancy in the team.

Needed to catch-up on my blogging this morning as everyone else remains asleep.

The kids were out of school Friday so our friends kids stayed over here, and Kelli watched/entertained them all day. I heard them through the door as I worked. I didn't make any calls Friday, as I was trying to catch-up my work and projects. I managed to create a working charge interface that has been on my list for quite some time. I also learned in addition to NWTH facility in Amarillo going up on the new ordering system in December, they want the Aiken facilities lab upgrade to be done by November 1st. So it will be off to the races again. Consider this, each interface that currently touches the ordering system in NWTH will need to be modified for that one facility and each interface that touches the lab system in Aiken will need to be modified. So you have two separate facilities with about 20 interfaces per facility that will need to be worked on and ready for those individual deadlines.

Friday night the kids went to their nana and papa's. So what does the wild couple do without their little ones? We went out to eat a steak since Kelli was hungry for one. After she talked about it, I also became hungry for one. Yes it was good. We had to wait nearly 20 minutes before we had our drinks, yes I had a corona, but the food was good. It was a Logan's Run that just came into Fort Smith.

Afterwards, we hit Toys R Us and we found some good bargains for the School PTA silent Auction coming up October 9th. Then we hit Walmart on the way home and walked around there, picking up some more yahoo's, ect.

We had grabbed two movies on the way to the restaurant to watch later that Friday night, 'Jersey Girl', 'Punisher'. I was impressed with both. Jersey Girl wasn't as I thought it would be with, but I still enjoyed it. I was most impressed with Punisher it was a remake with John Travolta playing the mob boss. I stayed up till nearly 2 a.m. watching it. My wife barely made it through Jersey Girl, since we came home later than we thought we would. So there you go, a wild night out. : )

All day Saturday, we were at the Poteau Fall Carnival, assisting 4H with their booth. I helped sell raffle tickets for a smoker someone had donated. They will draw for it October 18th. Kelli painted finger nails, and put designs on the fingernails. The raffle was one dollar per entry whereas the finger nail painting was 2 dollar each. I heard more than once a lady saying the quality of the nail jobs was equal to a 40 dollar manicure.

Kell's parents brought the kids around 11 a.m. and so the kids were able to see the animals and play the games. They also had these huge blow up activity contraptions. One of those jump around with the net to hold the kids in and a big slide. The thing would take half our backyard blown up. But the kids had a blast and for the duration we stayed there, they did really good. But admittedly around 3 p.m. I and the kids were about faired out.

There were also a republican and democrat booth at the carnival. I stopped by both. I was able to pick up some Bush/Cheney yard signs as well as some Coburn yard signs. The Republican gal told me to please not to put them out till mid October( I planned to hit Pocola with them ) because, they were having problems with people picking them up and throwing them away. I mentioned I noticed a couple of my signs I had put out were no longer there. She said it was not only illegal but not right, but that was a problem they are seeing in this area. Figures.

We hit the house Saturday afternoon. Kelli bathed the kids as I ran the movies back. I called my Dad, since he was on the caller id at home. He wants me to help move furniture today, Sunday. I will be going over there after Church today. I also called my Mom checking on her and I will be taking her to a knee surgery not this Monday but next. She has to be there by 4:30 a.m.

So last night the whole family were pretty much wiped out and we all hit the bed before 9 p.m.

This morning, as I drink my coffee, the family remains asleep. Never a dull moment around here man.

Friday for me.

Yesterday evening my wife was given some astounding information. Our son is highly allergic to milk. The thought is this is what is causing his staring out. Those unaware, our son has small seizures called staring out. To us or the outside it appears as if he is just daydreaming or zoning. It was explained to us like a lightbulb that goes off and nothing comes in till its back on. He receives nothing as far as information for those periods of times. This news came at once, literally around 4 p.m. My wife came in all excited, 'this may be the answer we were needing!' . I couldn't help but be a bit reserved. Seems she was consulting women at church and doing research about it for quite some time. ( God knows when she had the chance ) Researching the abilty to dispell ADHD and staring out by diets. I was astounded of info online where kids with ADHD lost symptoms entirely just by their diet change. Did you know milk held the highest product of people being allergic? More so then peanuts? I didn't.

Kelli explained to me the means of the Dr.'s testing him for allergic. If I wrote it, you would think it was as crazy as I did when I heard it. But it had to do something with a reaction of the vega nerve. The other interesting aspect was this same Dr. consulted with another Docter in Tulsa by phone, giving out the symptoms. She immediately told him it was due to an allergic reaction of milk and by removing it from his dietary would elimanate 90 percent of his problems. This could also assist his speech ( speech therapy is where we take him each day ). This is what prompted the allergic test. Note the Tulsa Doctor was not told of anything but his symptoms. Want more interesting info? He mainly drinks chocolate milk every freaking day. The kid can't get enough of it. So it's looking more and more like this could really be it.

I don't mean to be skeptical and I hardly know everything, not much of anything when you look at the big picture. But my main fear is another setback in Kelli's resolve. However, she genuinely glows when discussing it and I have to admit it sounds verrrryyy likely. We will be going cold on milk around here for at least 5 days to see the results. It will take 72 hours for the milk to be clean from the system. We should see dramatic results by Monday. We had parent/teacher conferences last night and informed his teacher and assitant. They are excited to see if any improvement occurs as much as we are. The kid is smart, no doubt about it. Even with his staring out occuring nearly 50 times a day he is one of the first 3 to have his bee on the board. This means he knows his phone #, address, town, state, ect. I was impressed considering it was from the whole class of about 17 kindergarten students. So I will definitely post the outcome. I joked to Kelli's friends last night, rather the kids smelling booze on our breath, they will smell milk. We will become closet milk drinkers. : )

Yesterday morning, I assisted the Grandparents Lunch at school. I helped as a dishwasher. I figured l let the pretty ladies out in the front while I stayed in the back. At least that is what I told them. Personally, I rather do the job few like. It always make it go by much faster and I do not like just standing around out there. It seemed to go well. The plates just kept coming. There were a stack of them in the corner ( normally 3-4 stacks at at time ). My goal by mid morning was to hit that corner stack. But no sooner than I was nearing it, the next class of kids was dumping their trays on us and I was behind again. This along with the kitchen ladies putting silverware and pots in front of my plates ( they had only one of those steamed dishwashers running 90 seconds per turn ) kept me behind. I had to leave at noon to go to work, and never did make it to that freaking stack. Oh well. At least I was of some help.

The parent/teacher confernces went really good. Both teachers had good things to say on our kids. I was impressed and proud of both of them. Each seemed to be accomplishing above their peers and personally that's how I like it. Can't help it, you want your kid to be the best. No-one is perfect and mine included, but each teacher had good things to say about them.

I also ran to Walmart after 10 p.m. last night acquiring non-milk drinks, products for the weekend. Wish us luck.