In a day and age where people are tending to stray away from online handles and go by their real names, it’s interesting that we still use our old handles from 17 years ago. I find that fascinating.

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Jess and Jackson went to bed early last night and I was left by myself. Not being tired, I decided to go someplace I haven’t been in a while — my PC. It’s been off for a good 2 months now, and only recently was turned back on. Before I could do anything, Jerry and I started talking to each other on Twitter all over a post I made about having some ‘me time’. This lead to a conversation about how we used to play games all the time and how we really missed those times. This graduated into a conversation about how the old games we used to play are superior to what is out there today. Next thing I know, Jerry is talking to me about a mod for Doom he saw called ‘Aeons of Death’. I honestly wasn’t intrigued until he told me it combined the weapons and enemies from all of our favorite old games into one awesome mod. Now I was more than interested. Twenty minutes of downloading and some command line work later and was playing the coolest mod I have ever seen in my life. How cool is this mod? Cool like I was up playing until 4am cool. Not only that, but Jess and Jack both took a nap this afternoon and guess what I did? Yep! I played ‘Aeons of Death’ for a good 90 minutes. I am totally hooked.

Another positive outcome of this mod was that Jerry and I did nothing but talk about games all day. This is something I can honestly say hasn’t happened in almost 8 years. I miss that. we’ve even planned a get together for a nice gaming day/night with some good retro titles.

I’m so immersed in the retro gaming again, I downloaded a build editor tonight and am going to start designing maps again for our Deathmatches.

I know iCal says it 2010, but it feels like 1997 all over again.

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For me, Facebook is my public life. This is where I connect with old schoolmates, long lost friends, work colleagues, and friends of friends I may have met once or twice. Twitter is my private life. I keep my Twitter feed protected so that only my friends can read it. No one who is not my friend can read my feed.

Why do I do this? I had a wake up call one day. I used to link all of my accounts and I believed this was the easiest way to keep in touch with everyone. Everything I posted automatically went to my Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, my blog sidebar, Tumblr, and Posterous. Then one day something happened. I had a falling out with someone, and really wanted to vent about it. Without thinking twice, I made a post blasting this person. A few minutes after making it, I realized it was a mistake. They did not follow me on Twitter, but they were friends with me on Facebook and could easily read what I said there, my blog, Tumblr, or Posterous. It was then that I realized that everything I said or did was totally public. This of course, brought back another painful memory.

A few years ago my wife and I were vacationing in Gettysburg. We had planned a 3 day trip if I remember correctly. We had plans for people to watch out animals and keep an eye on the house. Then, on the day we were to come home, we decided to stay an extra night. I was excited about staying so I made a tweet about it. When we came home, we had been robbed. After talking with the person who was watching the house, everything was there the evening before. In other words, we were robbed on that extra day we decided to stay. If we had come home on time time, it never would have happened. More importantly, if I had not tweeted it and sent that tweet everywhere, no one would have known that we would not have been home when we were supposed to be. Could this have been a weird coincidence? Sure. But I couldn’t help but think afterwards that I basically broadcasted to the entire world that no one was home.

It’s the same reason why I stopped using Four Square and Bright Kite. Sure, its’ fun to show everyone where you are and what you’re doing. But, you’re also telling every nefarious person out there, “Hey! I’m not home right now and I’m about 60 minutes away. Feel free to drop by and take whatever you want!”. If you want to keep your stuff, it just didn’t make sense to broadcast that you’re not guarding it.

So, here is what I do now. I still talk about going out and not being home, but that ONLY goes on my Twitter feed. My feed is not accessible to the public and only to my friends. I also have it setup that I have to personally approve any new friend requests. I’m keeping a very tight leash on who knows where I am.

Every other service is my public face. I have a personal rule that I do not post any information about where I am or where I am going until after the fact. I am going away for a few days this summer, but you won’t know about it until I make a post about where I went to and what we did. Am I being a little paranoid? Possibly. I do however have a reason to be. I have been burned in the past and I’ll be damned if I will be the architect of my own destruction again.

Technology is a great tool, but we have to act responsibly with these new tools. If you leave your door unlocked at night and put no curtains on your windows, don’t be surprised when something bad happens.

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We loaded up the PT Cruiser and set out a night of fun and eating at Knoebels. At least, that was the plan.

When we left Wilkes-Barre the sun was beating down and I was wearing my sunglasses. By the time we entered Catawissa, I had to put my regular glasses on because it had gotten that dark. There was a storm front coming down on us.

We got the park well ahead of the storm. We walked around for a while, and ended up getting something to eat. Jess got her usual baked potato and I got a slice of pizza. Jackson enjoyed the bottle and formula he brought with him. While Jess got her potato, I took him out of his stroller and sat him up on the table. He loved seeing all the nights, the moving canopy, he music, and all the people.

After we ate, we started walking around some more. About 15 minutes later, it started to drizzle and the wind really started to pick up. I suggested we head for the log flume and hide out under the International Food pavilion. We found a nice table and ordered up some food. About 15 minutes later, this happened.

This went on for the next hour. All in all, it actually wasn’t that bad. We just kept ordering more food and actually had a great time during the storm. In fact, because of the storm, we discovered that Jackson loves cornbread muffins and honey chicken.

After the storm let up to a heavy drizzle, we walked around (and ate!) for a few more hours until we finally decided (Jackson did actually) to head home around 8:30pm. While true, I did get a little wet because I gave Jess the umbrella, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. I was never soaked thru, and my shirt was about as wet as it would have been if I had went on the log flume once or twice. The nicest thing about the evening was that the park cleared out after the storm. Not being a fan of crowds, this was fabulous!

At the end of everything, this was great impromptu trip that will go down the record books.

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The only thing left to decide this morning was which beach to go to. Jess and I used to love to frequent Sandy Hook, but in the past couple of years, we have fallen madly in love with Ocean Grove. After doing come research on Google Earth, here is the breakdown.

From Dianne’s house to Sandy Hook — 1hr 35min
From Dianne’s house to Ocean Grove — 1hr 36min

Even though they are approximately 5.9mi apart, it only equates to an extra minute of travel time. So obviously distance is not going to be and issue. With that said, I think we are once again heading to Ocean Grove. Not only is it a nicer beach, but it’s a beach town whereas Sandy Hook is just a beach with a few snack bars. The hardest part is going to be leaving Ocean Grove only after a few hours!

As for Jackson, we have debated taking him or leaving him with his grandmother. In the end, we decided to leave him behind this year. He doesn’t do well in the heat, and with just learning to walk, I have a feeling he’ll not only be frustrated by the sand, but will be eating handful after handful. Next year he’ll be walking and talking, which means that we’ll plan a proper beach vacation with our little guy. Also, it would be nice for mommy and daddy to get away, even if it is only for a few hours!

So I am now pinching every penny and counting down every minute until this trip takes place. Is it too early to start packing??

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Due to inter-departmental scheduling issues, I will not be taking my first full week off from work this year until mid-August. This is the latest I have ever had to hold off taking some time off in my 8 years with this company. Even last year when I saved all my time for when Jackson was being born, Jess and I still managed to get a away for a few days at the end of July.

Add to all of this the fact that they are putting more and more pressure on us at work everyday, and it’s really starting to get a point where I really do feel like I’m burning out.

I need a recharge!

How will this recharge come? I’m not sure. We don’t have any plans made for my week off in August, but we have talked about a few possibilities. If we do anything, it’ll be a short day trip. What I am really hoping to do is take my wife to the beach for a day; just the two of us. A plan was presented to us to make this happen, I just need to come up with the scratch to cover it.

I think I really just need some time away to come at things with a new perspective.

I NEED A VACATION!

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What the hell does that mean? That means that I have been trying to get the most out of everyday lately. I have been spending every minute that I am not at work with my family making the most I can of it. Somedays it’s as simple as going for a walk, other days it a dip in the pool. We’ve gone for hikes, shopping trips, visits to friends, and sometime just chilled out at the house.

What does any of this have to do with my lack of posts? To be honest, I haven’t thought about posting in a long while due to the fact that I have been busy.

On a funnier note, I was trimming my beard this morning and I kinda screwed it up a little bit. The unfortunate thing is that I screwed it up in a way that was non-repairable. So, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I shaved it all off.

Anyone remember this guy?

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It started off innocent enough with Jess letting me sleep in since it was my first day off in over a week. After I got up, Jess made us a nice omelette to get our day started. After breakfast, I went outside and started my full scale assault on the yard. After trimming everything, I started on the actual cutting of the grass. By this time, Jess and Jackson had joined me in the yard. While I cut the grass, they started working on the flower beds and planting new seeds. After about on hour, I was done with the grass. This is where the day started going downhill.

After the yard was done, it was about 1pm and I was getting a slight headache. Thinking it was because I had not had enough to drink, I got a nice big glass of water and downed it. Once my refueling break was complete, I headed to be backyard and started taking down a tree. After about an hour of cutting our branches, my headache was getting a little bit worse. I took another break to grab some more water before breaking out the pressure washer an washing the siding on the backside of the house. Once all of that as done, it was shower time.

Once everyone got showers, we decided to start making dinner. Once I got the chicken on the grill, my head started to really pound. It was about 5:30pm by now, and this headache was progressing from bad to worse. Pretty soon, I could barely open my eyes and the pain was something I have never experienced in my life. I ended up telling Jess she would have to finish dinner as I was headed into the bedroom to try and lay down.

This is where things really started to get funky. The pain was getting more intense and had gone from throbbing to stabbing. After laying there for a few hours, the pain was now causing some extreme nausea. Before I knew it, I was running to the bathroom and puking my guts out. This is where I knew I was in trouble. I had just vomited blood.

Jess, not even skipping a beat, started packing Jackson up and told me she was taking me to the emergency room.

About 45 minutes later, I was in the emergency room. What followed over the next few hours was an IV (my first) with fluids being pumped into system, a CAT scan (another first) to make sure my head was alright due to the amount of pain I was in, and a nice tube going up my nose and then into my stomach so they can pull out samples from my stomach (yet another first).

We waited for a few hours while they ran all of the blood work to come back along with the CAT scan results. In the end, the blood work came back fine and they didn’t find anything wrong with my CAT scan. The only thing they could not figure out was where the blood was coming from. Since I was not actively bleeding, they finally decided to give me a shot for the pain and to send me home. Here is where the really cruel part comes in. I had been trying to fall asleep for a few hours but could not because of the pain. Then a little after midnight, they gave me a shot for the pain, followed by a shot of Benadryl. My wife asked why they were giving me Benadryl. They said that the pain med they were giving me tends to make people hyper, so the Benadryl will put me to sleep. Since they have me the shot directly into my IV, I felt the effects immediately. At first, it was the pain meds. I immediately felt like I had a buzz on. Also, the pain was instantly gone. Feeling like a million bucks, I snuggled in and as quick as the pain was gone, Mr. Sandman was there. I fell right to sleep…only to be woken up a shirt time later being told I was discharged and had to go home. Oh what cruel irony! Now that they gave me meds to sleep,I had to have everything disconnected, get dressed, and ride home, all the while I was literally in a drug induced sleep.

Once we did finally get home in the early morning hours, I literally abandoned my wife and child, stumbled into the bedroom, and fell into bed and was fast asleep. I didn’t care that I still had my hospital wristband on, or that the electrode pads were still on my chest; I need sleep.

After a night of what I would deem to be ‘interesting’ dreams, I woke up around 12:45pm, still with the same headache. I called into work and took a sick day since there was no way I would be able to schlep appliances all night. I immediately started drinking glass after glass of water in a effort to re-hydrate myself. Around 2pm, I started getting hungry. My wife was nice enough to go get us something to eat since I just realized I hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours.

Oh what a night.

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When she came up for Jess’s birthday party in December, she was a little late. We did think anything of it since anyone who knows Jess’s family know that they are collectively late about 98% of the time. It’s like gravity; that’s just a fact and it’s not going to change for anyone. Anyway, we never thought twice about it until we all got together later in the month for our belated Christmas. At my mother-in-law’s house, Jenn handed Jess a standard clothing box and said this was for both of us. I was intrigued since not too many people know we tend to wear each others underwear quite often. (let’s just forget I just typed that) When Jess opened up the box it was full of paperwork. At first I thought Jenn was trying to pass off some work onto us, when Jess started to really look at it. Here, when she was late to Jess’s birthday party, she was really shopping for us in downtown Wilkes-Barre. In this box were gift certificates to the local theater downtown, our favorite thai restaurant Thai Thai, and Barnes & Noble. Not only was this cool since all of these locations were on the same block downtown, but in with the certificates was a note from Jenn stating that this was a ‘date night’ and that she would come up when we decided to use these and babysit Jackson for the day. Awesome!

Flash forward to yesterday. We finally cashed in our Christmas present. In the morning we woke up, got dressed, and headed to Gavin’s baseball game. It has rained all morning, but by the time his game started at 11:30am, the sun was out and the skies were blue. We watched his game, and right at the end of the last inning, we left to go meet Jenn who was at our home. Since the field is only across the street from our house it was not that far to travel. About 1/4 of the way home, we met Jenn who was walking over to see us. We all walked back and gave Jenn the 10 minute down and dirty tour of Jackson’s world and what to expect. By 1:20pm, we were in the car, on the way to the theater to see ‘Iron Man 2′, and our official date night had started.

The movie, first and foremost, was awesome. Granted, I would have to say that I like the first one better simply for the fact that I LOVED watching him build his suit. But no matter how you look at it, the second movie kicked ass! After the movie, neither one of us was too hungry, so we walked over to Barnes & Noble. This is where a hilarious and weird thing happened.

As per our usual protocol when entering a book store, we walk in together and quickly go our separate directions. As much as we love each other, our tastes in literature rarely overlap. Usually I’m starships and Stargates, while she’s more, well, anything else really. So, we go our separate ways and browse. I head right for the Sci-Fi/fantasy section, my usual favorite place in any book store. While browsing, nothing really caught my eye. As I was looking at the last rack of books, one did catch my eye. The book was ‘Flash Forward’ by Robert J. Sawyer. This is the book the television series of the same name was based on. I know the book differs from the TV series since David Hewlett talked about it on Twitter while he was reading it. Since we had gift cards, and I didn’t have to worry about hitting my back coffers up to purchase this tome, I grabbed it and continued my browsing.

After another 20 minutes or so of browsing, I happen to run into my wife in the back of the store. I noticed she had a book in her hand. We walk over to each other to see what each of us had found. When we go about 6 feet away we both started laughing. Somehow, some way, without every discussing it, we both had picked the EXACT same book out to purchase. What the hell are the odds of that? Now, I can understand this event if we had talked about picking up the book the next time we were out. But to my knowledge, we have NEVER talked about the book at all, let alone buying it at some point. After laughing about how creepy and funny this event was, we ended up spending another 30 minutes or so looking at more books and left the store with a nice bounty of new editions for our bookshelves. After this, we headed straight for dinner at Thai Thai.

Dinner there was amazing as always. I decided to feast upon the ginger duck, and Jess had a whole, fried fish. Funny story about the fish actually. After Jess ordered the fish, our waitress came back over to our table about 2 minutes later and asked if she wanted the whole fish — fins, head, tail and all — or just fillets. My wife, not only being the adventurous type, but am amateur foodie as well, opted for the whole shebang. Impressed with her decision, I applaud he choice. Then a few minutes later, a look of dread come over her face. She had never asked how big said whole fish was. What if they bring our this huge 4ft fish that requires a separate table just to present it? What if it’s so big that every time she cut into it, the kinetic force of her knife make the tail flop and hit’s the fine couple siting next to us? Worried about being presented by a possible ichthyosaurs, she calls the waitress back over and inquires about the size of said fish. Much to her delight, she is told the fish will only be about 14″ long. Crisis overted.

After dinner, we go to do some more shopping and are home by 8pm. After thanking Jenn for watching Jackson all afternoon, she heads back home to New Jersey and we relax with Jackson for an hour or two. I say an hour or two since Jackson was asleep by 10pm and we were both in bed by 10:45pm. Even though it was an early bedtime for all of us (totally by choice), we had an awesome day!

Today is Mother’s Day, and Jackson and I are letting Jess sleep in as late as she wants to. we’ve been playing in his room for the better part of an hour now. Today’s is my last day off for a week, so I think we’re all going to spend it relaxing around the house together. A perfect end, to a perfect weekend. Mission accomplished.

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So, being that I don’t have to close all the time anymore, I was gifted with a nice 7am-4pm shift. Some people may look at that shift and think it’s pretty shitty since I have to wake up and be at work by 7am. Before you judge, look at it from my perspective. I’m usually up around 7am anyway to take care of Jackson, and then I get the honor of working until 11pm at night. Now I get to wake up about an hour earlier, and be done with my work day a full 7 hours earlier. Yeah, that’s cause for celebration, baby!

Today was one of those days that you dream about during the cold, grey days of winter. The sky was the perfect shade of blue, there were wispy clouds in the sky, the sun was shining and warm, and yet, there was a nice cool breeze blowing to keep you from sweating. In essense, it was the perfect spring afternoon. Knowing I did not want to miss out on this, I hurried home, got dressed, and took Jackson our for his first foray into the yard.

As Jackson and I made our way out into the yard, I literally stopped and looked around. Our side yard, where we typicall enjoy most of our outdoor activites, is nice, fenced in, but totally in the shadow of the house all afternoon. I was afraid that it would be too cool for Jackson. So, on whim, we headed down into the backyard, an area we literally only go into when we need to access the garden. After sitting there with Jackson and my wife for about 30 minutes, I looked around and really had to wonder why we don’t use this area more often. I mean sure, you’re exposed on 3 sides and there is little to no privacy, but just hanging out doesn’t really require any privacy. In fact, the backyard, though sloping in several different directions, actually makes more sense for outdoor activites than my severly sloping side yard.

I took a lot of pictures this afternoon while we were in the backyard. After downloading them to my Mac and taking a look at them in iPhoto, a few stood out to me. These were the ones that made me really wonder why we don’t use the backyard more often. For instance, take a look at this picture.

Doesn’t that look inviting? The green grass, the blue skies, and the little fence I put in years ago to keep Loki contained. Here’s a look at the same scene from the other side.

I think once we all get over the stigma of using the backyard rather than the side yard, we’ll find that its not the desolate wasteland we once thought it to be. In fact, I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more pictures like this this summer.

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