Preparation for the Inevitable

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity in the Smith House! Andrea is getting ready for her first Volleyball game, Jacob started Confirmation, Kris makes almost ten pounds of Potato Salad for a Family Celebration, and I finish gearing up for the game on the 24th.

Andrea's Volleyball Game
The last two weeks, Andrea has been going to Volleyball Practice, though, from the sound of it, she's not giving too much effort on practicing. Andrea was benched on her first game because Academic Probation for flunking last year. She seems to be trying a little bit harder this year, but has already began showing signs of slacking off. She was told she would be yanked from all afterschool events if she can't keep her grades up.

Andrea is also getting ready to celebrate her 14th Birthday on October 4th. She seems to think she will be getting a job at a local Fast Food place, Culvers'. But, again, this depends on her grades. She is more than welcome to get a job, so long as it doesn't affect her school work. Last year, she had a hard time keeping up with her academics without the extra-curricular stuff.

Jacob's Confirmation into Lutheranism
Jacob, after some meddling by his father's family, has decided that Confirmation would be cool and has begun attending Confirmation classes. Like Andrea, they seem to only be doing it to make their grandmother happy. None of the Faanes species are particularly religous people. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if each and every one of them didn't spend eternity melting in hell.

The Faanes only attend church so their Grandma Zeke can brag to her Bingo Friends about how her kids and Grandchildren never miss Sunday School. Afterwards, they only darken the doorstep on Christmas and Easter. They also are probably as far from Lutheran as you can get and certainly show no signs they have ever been to church. Most of the Family acts horrible to the other, making Archie Bunker look like the Waltons.

Jacob is also showing no signs of having learned anything remotely good fromt he experience. He still talks to his dad and Kris like the rotten little bastard he is. He has only recently began lipping me, again. He is a little more careful, though. I told him if he acted like that again, I would take the Gamecube back and get rid of all the games.

Kris' Potato Extravaganza
This weekend, Kris was tasked with making her father's Potato Salad for a Family Celebration of one of her uncle's birthday. To make enough for everyone, she bought 13 pounds of potatoes. Later, Friday Afternoon, she was told that we wouldn't need 10 pounds and to make a little more than half the amount. Kris still had boiled 2 dozen eggs, so we now have some hard-boiled eggs to get rid of.

Andrea has put it upon herself to make some brownies. The idea was not bad, except for the fact she feels the need to make anything she's doing the center of attention and major Hollywood Production. Her Brownies will contain Marshmallows, Chocolate chips, sprinkles, heath Bar bits, and enough crap to make the whole prospect of "Brownies" obsolete. Luckily, she had her Grandparents fund this project.

MOLLE gear and AK47 is finished!
Well, not quite. I am still waiting on the new stock for my AK, which I did not order in time for the game. Since I don't have the matching Black stock, I will likely have to resort to a tried and true method - Electrical Tape. I know it is a little lame, but its better than nothing, I guess. The last of my MOLLE gear showed up on Thursday.

MOLLE gear is a fully customizable Tactical gear that allows you to mount modular pouches and pockets on a vest. The pouches weave through several web loops to secure each pouch in place. The pouches vary in size and shape to carry magazines and other gear.

I have plenty of spare magazines for both my AK and my Hicapa. I am not quite sure whether or not I want to take the USPc. I also have all of my other gear and camo ready to go. I will be posting pics of the AK once I have finished it, along with my gear and other guns. If Jason gets some good pictures, I may be posting those as well.

I hope to be back on schedule with the regular posts, next week, once all my other Projects are finished up.

You Got to love Robin Williams...

I got this email from a good and longtime friend of mine from Ohio, Jennifer Mitchell (aka Smileygrrl). She occasionally amazes me with news she is still alive :) and occasionally dazzles me with a hello on AIM. Well, here's a good one for ya. And thanks, Smiley. Ya know Kris and I still loves ya!

You got to love Robin Williams......
Even if he's nuts! Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan. What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.



Robin Williams, wearing a shirt that says "I love New York" in Arabic.

Robin Williams' plan... (Hard to argue with this logic!)

"I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's one plan."

1) "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good ole boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea, the Middle East, and the Philippines. They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given! A special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

5) No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm, and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH...learn it...or LEAVE... Now, isn't that a winner of a plan?

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece of me?' "

Weekend without Cable!

Following last week's Willsblog 1-year Anniversary, I have made some slight revisions to the Blog Template. You can see I added a Weather.com section. I did not have room to post others, so we'll just have to hang in there until I can make space on the mainpage. Our cable was mistakenly cut off, leaving Andrea in agony over missing her TV shows. Jacob and I spent the weekend playing the Gamecube, while Kris was generally irratable about not being able to watch her shows.

Life without TV - too horrible to think about.
Firday morning, as I left for work, I noticed the Cable Network Interface box was open. Apparently, our new neighbors had gotten cable and the technician was in the process of installing it. Last summer, the Cable company dug up part of our yard to run new cable lines to the house, so seeing the blaze orange cable was not too much of a shock.

At around 3pm, I decided to call home to check and see what Kris wanted to do for dinner. Andrea answered the phone, fuming mad, demanding to know why I had not paid the cable bill, and what the hell was I thinking. To which I replied, "it's non of your damned business and I hadn't requested the cable be disconnected. Then I told her if she didn't want a smack when I got home, she'd better drop the attitude."

I checked the cable company website and found that our account was still active and further calls later revealed there was no order to disconnect our service. I was two days late paying a partial bill, but the last 7 months of timely payment had me in relatively good standing. Speaking with their tech, we found out they couldn't fix it until Monday. No big deal, I understand and this is only a slight annoyance for me.

Andrea was devastated. She couldn't miss TV for three days. Yeah, I know, its a little screwy. She called her aunt Leann, who works for the cable company, pleading for her to do something. Then Kris, who had waited until I got home so that I could handle, called the service center to chew them out, requesting a call to the dispatch center to get this fixed. No dice. Nothing would be done until Monday.

So, we spent the weekend quietly. Annie spent it at her grandparent's house, because she could not miss a single moment of her precious TV. I didn't really miss it. But, unfortunately, our Internet was out as it's on the cable service, so I was a little late with my Blog Update. I didn't really miss anything. Jacob didn't either. Leaving the most bitching coming out of Kris and Annie.

Weekend of Gaming
Jake and I spent most of the weekend playing Gamecube. I als set Army Men RTS up on the laptop while he played the same game on the Gamecube.


Army Men RTS is a Real Time Strategy game based in the "Army Men" universe where the plastic green army men are forever combatting the plastic tan army men. The game takes place in "battlefields" around a families house, and is mostly set in a child's perspective. The game is extremely campy and plays off the "Toy Story" side. The franchise has been extremely popular with over nine games on PC and various consoles.

Real Time Strategy games center around giving the player a "commander's view" of the battlefield and allowing him to personally oversee resource management, building of production facilities, defense of his bases, and troop building. The player can then deploy those forces to fight the other teams, who are doing the same. RTS gaming was extremely popular before the first and third person shooting games took over. It requires players to think on strategic levels and budget resources so that he may continue building his war machine.

Kris spent the weekend working, playing her own computer games, and napping. She also watched Hudson Hawk on DVD twice with Jacob. They both enjoy that movie and watched it in our bedroom.

German Forklift Safety Video

A Day Late and Dollar Short?

This week's blog marks the one year anniversary of Willsblog. The last year has had its ups and downs, but so far, I am proud to say that the job I was working when I had first started this blog - with the intention of developing web design for 1 Reason - has helped me cope with the garbage from Bob, through the mess of work with UPS, and getting my job at Discover net.

It has been a tough year and there has been heavy criticism from my non-tech-inclined older sister, comments from friends and family, and feedback on my site desine. Let's not forget that my older, less intelligent sister stooped to the level of defending the evil, hate-mongering Pat Robertson. HA HA! Let's never forget that Vanna defended Pat the Rat. Never. Ever. Ever.

Ever.

Labor Day Weekend
I can think of no better way to spend the Labor Day weekend than having a quiet house to myself. Because of the odd 31-calendar days in August, the fifth was on a Tuesday. 18 days from my last paycheck from my porevious - that was just shy of three weeks. My previous pay was stretched pretty thin and Kris and I will now be recieving pay on alternating weeks.

The weekend was very lowkey. I don't think I accomplished one damned thing this weekend. It was great after a real killer week at work. I met our new neighbors, a young married couple with three young kids and two incredibly "yappy" dogs. They moved in within hours of Andrea and Ben moving out.

On Monday (Labor Day), Kris and I went out to one of her co-worker's farmhouse to do some computer repairs. It dawned on me, the actual similarities between my father and I - I was sitting in a person's basement working on their computer in much the same way my father, 25 years earlier had sat tuning pianos. The day was not without further ironies. As it was not anything major, her co-worker decided to pay us for our trouble in steaks and squash. I don't think I've ever know my father to work for frozen slabs of cow, but we had certainly visited some cow-infested places while he tuned a piano.

Jake's Homecoming
Jacob came home early Monday morning before we left after spending a month at his dad's house. His hair was long and I teased him about his long blond locks - Goldilocks! HA HA! He came home and had to get ready for school on Tuesday. While I worked on Diane's computer, he and Kris played penny-ante poker.

On the way home, we had to stop by the Parker's house so Karry (brother-in-law) could take a picture of Kris and I. They were putting together a photo album of family for Kris' Uncle Robert, who will be celebrating his birthday on the 23rd of the month. Afterwards, we stopped by Rick's house so Jake could pick up someting he had left their. Rick gave us another two squash, since Jake loves squash. Rick also took the time to gripe about Jacob's behavior during the month. Hmm, it seems Jake really does treat everyone that way and not just me and Kris.

Andrea's Hell - waiting for three hours
When we got home, Andrea was sitting on the front stoop crying. She had had to wait for us for three whole hours! Awww shit, that's too damned bad. The reason for this ghastly wait:

1. She did not bother to call us before she came back
2. She forgot her purse with the key at the cabin and had to wait for her aunt to find it.
3. She did not have her aunt wait to make sure she could get into the house.

Since we didn't know when she would be home, we could only assume she would be back later. Since she didn't bother to call us, we didn't know when tyo expect her. And we had told her we would be going out on Monday. Its really her own fault she had to wait. But as usual, nothing is ever her fault and she let us know just how angry she was by spouting off at the both of us and being sent to her room to cool off.

Let's not forget Vanna defended Pat Robertson
I would really have to refer you to my blog entry regarding my response to his previous spewage. My response to her comments can be found on this page. To get more depth, Vanessa has usually come across as a self-righteous person, who sticks her nose into other's business. The last time she and I were at odds over a similar issue, comparing her to my aunt Shirley was more than enough to shut her up.

I would try to talk to her more often, but she is never home or is usually shopping or blowing money so that I can only talk to her for a little while. She makes herself inaccessible and never returns phonecalls. Its her loss.

September 24th Game
I may be attending the Eau Claire Area's first organized airsoft game in Osseo at Battlefield Paintball on September 24th. I have been asked by one of the organizers to ref. I suppose its a good opportunity to help organize our area players. I just hope people show up, not like the last event I helped to organize. I'm definitely not going to sink any personal money into it like the last one.

I had promised to take Jacob with me, thought I'd probably have him stay in the staging area. I'm not completely sure what I'm supposed to accomplish as a ref as reffing an airsoft game is kinda useless, in my eyes. Players are on the honor system. If they don't call out, its obvious they would be cheating. SO all we have to do is toss them out of the game. I hope it doesn't come to that, but you can never tell.

I should have my rifle ready to go by then, leaving my gear and actual travel plans to make. Osseo is 20 miles south of Eau Claire, so its a quick drive. I'm not really sure where this field is, though. I will have to talk to Jason and get some more details, but hope to be ready to go by Sunday, the 24th. I may have an additional rifle, but I will prolly just have my AK. I'll see if I can get some pics and post them when I go.