In the end the line moved well and by 7:25am I was finished and on my way to work. 

I will be really interested to see how things play out tonight, but in truth I’m all election’ed out - I can’t stand any more political ads and get-out-the-vote efforts.  I’m fed up with it.  We live not far from one of the battleground states (New Hampshire) so we’ve been getting a LOT of advertisements but not a lot of phone calls. And this is good - I can always turn off the TV.  So tonight we plan on following the election results on the Comedy Channel - Jon Stewart always puts these things in the right perspective.

gObama!

When we went trick-or-treating on Friday we took all seven of the kids, plus a friend from across the street brought his 2.5 year old.  Really, I think everything worked out surprisingly well.  Nobody was injured.  Nobody’s feelings got hurt.  Everyone seemed to get along remarkably well.

The weather was perfect on Friday night and we all had a good time going to our favorite houses.  Afterwards we returned home and the six oldest kids sat down to haggle with each other for candy.  We followed that up with Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin Halloween special on TV.  Then it was bedtime for the kids!  Whew!

We spent the following morning visiting and recovering.

The rest of Saturday is kind of a blur.  I don’t even remember what we did.  Oh yeah, we went to a swim lesson for the kids and then to the scout store to get some boy scout uniform supplies for Gabriel and Benjamin.  Then I think I watched some football.

Sunday was somewhat more productive.  I cleaned up the backyard and mowed it for the last time of the season.  I put away all the lawn furniture and whatnot.  The mowing mulched up a lot of the leaves that had fallen.  We don’t get very many leaves in the yard anymore - since we lost, like five trees in one season.  “The night of the long axes”.

The boys each had a friend over with mixed results.  Ben and his friend, Finn, blew stuff up on the computer while Gabe’s buddy, Enzo clocked my six-year-old daughter in the skull with a swing by accident.  He isn’t careful and tends to hurt the other kids - I’m getting pissed off at him and he knows that he’s about to get ejected from our house.  I hope he improves.

I ran a couple of errands and watched some more football.  So overall it was a pretty good weekend.  Mostly, any weekend that doesn’t contain some kind of disaster counts as “good” in my book.  Maybe its time I raise the bar a little, though and start shooting for getting more done.

Well, for now I’m back at work.  I don’t think I have any emergencies this week.  yay.

Ben got to shoot a 20-gauge shotgun, a 30-30 hunting rile and an old SKS rifle.  It looked like fun and I wish I could have gone.

Instead I took the other kids to LaserQuest for a couple of games of laser tag.  The kids love it and I even have a good time at it.  But I wasn’t in the mood so Liz and I just let the kids play the first round.  Gracie didn’t have a good time because she didn’t do well. She came out all boo-hooey so for the second game, I carried the pack and she carried the gun.  She did much better and more importantly was much happier.

Gabe was bummed about not getting to shoot the real guns, but he had a good time at LaserQuest instead.

Afterwards we went to Barnes and Noble and each of the kids got to pick out a book - Gabe even got an extra for Ben so he wouldn’t feel left out.  Nice kid, eh?

Then we went home and watched the 1938 movie “Son of Frankenstein” - it was ok.  By now the whole story is a little tired and overdone.  Me and Grace dozed off and slept through some of it, but i think Chloe managed to watch the whole thing.

That night it rained and the wind blew and Liz wished aloud that just once the weather would cooperate for one of his camp-outs.  The next day when I picked him up, Ben reported having a great time.  The other kids, I understand chose to pitch their tents at the bottom of a slope against the advice of their leaders.  Yes, it was flat at the bottom, but its also where all the water wound up.

Some of the kids got really soaking wet, but it was warm - like 48 and nobody was in any danger of freezing or anything.  They found snakes and toads and shot up the targets.  They had a very good time.

We watched some football, which was nice and I helped Chloe and Grace make a pineapple upside down cake in the dutch oven.  It didn’t come out as pretty as we had hoped, but it did come out delicious!

So it was a decent enough weekend.  I think next weekend I have to mow the yard one more time before putting the mower away for the season.

I have a parent/teacher conference with Grace’s teacher on Wednesday so I will probably work at home that day.  I also need to have the car looked at.

• The check engine light is on - I know that the car thinks there’s something wrong with the gas tank.  The mechanics replaced the gas cap, but that didn’t fix it.
• The emergency brake light keeps coming on when the brake is not engaged.  I had heard kind of an ominous “clunk” somewhere in there not long ago and I am wondering if something is resting on the brake cable increasing the amount of tension on the cable making the light come on intermittently.
• The heat takes twenty minutes to come on
• The defroster doesn’t work

With winter coming up I should get this stuff looked at.  I just finished paying the car off in February, so I guess its about time for it to go to pieces.

Tomorrow morning I have to drop Ben off at his boy scout camp out.  The kid got lucky:  the low is only supposed to be in the mid-40’s with a high in the low 60’s!  It could have been MUCH worse.  They’re going to a gun-club and will shoot rifles and shotguns all day.

Its his first camping trip with them after taking a year off so I hope it goes well.  I think it sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  Shoot guns all day long then camp out at night.

Sadly, Gabe can’t attend.  Technically, he could, but he’s joining along with a number of other kids who aren’t quite 11 yet.  The scoutmaster was afraid that if he let Gabe go then all of the others would gang up on him so they could also go.  This troop has plans to go again in the spring, so I told Gabe he would have to wait.  He was pretty disappointed.  I’ll have to see if there’s something cool he and his sisters can do with me instead.

Kids & Weekend

Grace came home from school with an ear infection.  She has a fever and feels sick to her stomach.  She’s on antibiotics.  Poor kid.

Anyone who is well enough and isn’t shooting guns will go to swimming lessons on Saturday morning.

Otherwise I think the weekend is wide open!  well, except that I have work to do on Saturday evening.  Yeah, can you believe I volunteered?  That’s how weak my Saturday nights are.  I was confident that i wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile so I decided to get some stuff down that required downtime for the system.

Movies

Last night me and Gabriel watched the first Jurassic Park movie.  He really liked it a lot and is eager to see the next one.  I haven’t seen parts II or III.  Are they any good?

Its the time of year when I watch every halloween movie I can get my hands on.  Sometimes that includes slasher movies but it always includes zombie movies.  I also make a point of watching Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Excellent movie.  I like that it has a sense of humor in the middle of the gore.

Dogs

I went home yesterday determined to convince my dog, Buckaroo that there is nothing to fear from the clicker that we want to use for dog-training.  I gave him some awesome treats and then started using the clicker and he got very skittish.  But it improved substantially when I started moving around and walking with him on the leash.  It never kept him from eating a treat that was already close at hand, but about 20% of the time he wouldn’t come get a treat because he knew I would use the clicker.

We’ll get him cured in time!

But this is a different angle.  Hilarious.  Too funny.  Pay special attention around 45 seconds in to it.

Reading Is Fundamental

We went to the first class last night without the dog.  It relies on clicker or marker training with a lot of treats.  I have mixed feelings about it, but they seem to have good results without beating the dogs, so I suppose I can get behind it.

But there’s one thing I didn’t count on.  Bucky is afraid of the clicker.  Really.  He’s always been skittish about cap-guns and I guess he has decided that the silly clicker sounds close enough to a cap-gun to merit some terror.

So Gabe and I have a week to convince him not to be terrified of the clicker.  Liz was trying to associate the clicker with some treats, but clicking the clicker whenever she gave him a treat, but she says that he’s too afraid of the clicker to come get a treat.

I guess we’ll have to start off somewhere else.  Start with treating and work our way up to clicking?! 

Oy vey, I don’t know if I have the patience for this.

So over the last few months they’ve been making a concerted effort to bring everyone under the same roof and make it all one big happy family.  Well, except for the 300 people who got laid off yesterday.  They’re screwed.  In IT I think we lost maybe five or six people.  Not bad, I guess, but still disconcerting.

I do good work and have a strong reputation so I have no fear for my particular job - as long as they still have an IT department I think I will be a part of it.  But I hate seeing good people let go.  Everyone spent the day waiting to see who would be the next to march in to the HR-department and get the axe.

Afterwards, I took the boys to Boy Scouts and dropped them off.  It felt good to be able to leave them and not get involved.  I don’t mind helping out and I still like the outings they have - camping, climbing, caving, etc.  But there are also other things I want to do and its very easy to get all of ones’ time sucked in to something like that.

I hate my lawn-mower.

It took me two hours to do my yard – and its not a big yard.  I have nobody to blame but myself.  I got a brand new craftsman-brand gas mower, but when it hit a rock it stopped working.  I have to take it somewhere to get it fixed.

In any case, I think we spent most of Saturday visiting.

Sunday morning we went over to the skate park so the boys could show their grandmother how good they are.  It turned out well because nobody hurt themselves.  I thought that made it a good event.

Afterwards we went to King Richard’s Faire in Carver, MA.  We sampled the mead - good stuff.  It was very sweet, though.  People put so much effort in to their costumes - a lot of them turned out really well.  There were innumerable pirates and the wenches were always a sight for sore eyes.  There were some very creepy/frightening costumes.  I even saw a Star Wars Clone Trooper. What does a clone trooper have to do with a renniasance fair?  I dunno.  But even that guy stayed away from the two guys dressed as Stargate Atlantis commandos.

We liked the jousting tournament.  I kept looking at the weapons, I have to admit.  There were some low-quality swords that were affordable, but frankly weren’t nice enough to put on a wall or anything.  There were some beautiful swords that were a couple of thousand dollars.  Finally there were some middle-of-the-road swords that ran $300 or so.  Still, I didn’t want to spend that much money on what would essentially be a decoration.  I mean, lets be honest, I have no use for a sword.  Any kind of sword.  Not even a machete.  I don’t even play dungeons and dragons or anything, for crying out loud.

So I passed on it.

The kids had a great time.  Gabriel bought a cute pair of leather bracers.  All in all, it was a good time and I think my mother-in-law had a great time.

The whole ren-fest-thing was a bit lost on me, though I have to admit.  Yeah, they have lots of cool things for sale - but I don’t want to buy any of it.  Why would I want a $70 leather pounch?  Or a tunic?  Or a staff?  It seemed to be mostly vendors there.  Of course there were shows, too.  There was a mideval food court with ye olde pizza and whatnot.  And of course there was the spectacle of seeing all the people dressed in their costumes.  But I kept feeling like I was missing something.  I’m still not sure what.