Where to begin

Wow, I am already tired this week and it's only Tuesday evening. The weekend went really well. The kids were great for the most part. Jude loves the outdoors, I really need to spend more time with him in the woods and doing outdoorsy type of things. Elise did well, mamaw took care of the majority of the time. I was able to do alot of work which needed to be done to the van, we estimated it would probably cost around $1500 at a repair shop for everything we did. Many thanks to my dad and Tim.
Well.... at work I have talked to several customers. It went pretty good. But I feel like I am feeling around in the dark at this point. Luckily there weren't any big questions asked for me to not answer.
um yeah I started this post on Tuesday night and now it is Wednesday night.

Donations Accepted

This may be an odd post to everyone, but I figured what the heck it couldn't hurt. I have found a house that would be perfect for us, unfortunately it is a little out of our price range, ok a lot out of price range. You can view the house at darrowroad.com If we bought this house I could definitely have a dog. So with out further ado donations will be accepted at my pay pal account jakery1@hotmail.com

I'm hoping someone like Bill Gates will come across this blog and think, "oh they sound like good people let me give them .00001% of my net worth. ;-)

-Later All-

Oh yeah - I'm heading to WV with the kids this weekend. Should be fun.

Jude had a farm and on this farm he had............

So...... today while Delilah was taking her insurance classes I decided to take the kids with me to plant flowers on my grandparents grave in good ole Fredericksburg. But before we got to the cemetery we had a couple of stops to make. Our first stop was at Cedar Lane Farms, my old, old place of employment. It is a wholesale green house. Jude enjoyed looking at all the flowers, he is really into flowers. I also had a chance to chat with my old boss Tom M. It was nice to catch up and see how things were going. After the greenhouse we traveled down the road to Fredericksburg for lunch at Lem's Pizza. I got a sub and Jude and split it while Elise downed a jar of spaghetti. I decided to take a drive around the town we drove past my old elementary school and the baseball field. They have really made improvements on the baseball field, it looks really nice. I decided to drive around the "detour" and drive past my old house. It happened they were having a garage sale so I decided to stop in and chat a little bit. A little but turned into about a hour. It was fun to talk about all the changes my parents made to the property. They seem like really nice people and I believe they will really take care of the property. They have already done a lot to spruce it up. After a visit at the old house we went to the cemetery to plant the flowers. When we finished planting the flowers I decided to stop by to see an old family friend. We stayed for almost 2 hours. Jude loved being their. They live on a farm and have cows. I D & J might turn out to be Jude and Elise's adopted grand-parents. Jude really warmed upto J, she read him 4 or 5 books and did not want to leave. While driving home Jude wanted to go back and visit. I'm sure we will go back to visit sometime soon. While on this day trip Jude decided he wants a horsey, since we were in Amish country and all.
So while driving home from small group tonight Jude asks if he can have a horse. I asked Jude where he would keep the horse. Reply- In our back yard, and we can put the cage in the dirt. I told Jude we need to have a farm to have a horse. Instead of saying anything about the farm he goes on to ask about having cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals he wants for the farm. The kids loves animals.

-More later-

Learning new things

So far at work I have used tools that I have never used or rarely used in the past. Most everything that we sell is fabricated in our shop (including most of the parts and pieces which are used in the fabrication process. Today I used an orbital welder. I've used a pipe cutter and put threads on the pipe. I have used the lathe to to cut off threads on screws. I used the drill press a lot last week to mill flats on a part. Yesterday I was volunteer to run the tow motor to get a fan down from the loft. Mind you this tow motor was borrowed from a shop three buildings down from ours. I have run a tow motor when I worked at a green house about 8 years ago. They must have thought since I had some experience running a tow motor a long time ago. It was tight where I was running the tow motor.
Needless to say I am really enjoying this job. I talked to my first customer yesterday. It wasn't to horrible. If I must say I think it went really well.
-More to come-

The Chase

You know in the movies the will sometimes show a scene of a dog running after a vehicle? Well, that was Lady. Since we didn't have her fenced in she had free reign. When we left (usually to go to Wooster) she would take off down the road after the van. I'm not really how far she went, I can't imagine any further than the square. She would be barking and running after the van. It was quite a sight to see. I'm suprised she never got hit by a car doing that.

Coming out of retirement

I have decided to come out my softball retirement. It has been a long time since I have played. I have realized I am not as quick as I use to be. I am way out of shape. I was shagging flyballs today and after about 5 of them I was sucking for some air.
The team is a co-ed team which is always fun to play on. Today I was trying to catch a pop-up I had to run it down. I reached out and grabbed it just off the ground. My glove got caught on the ground I rolled over and hurt my left ribs or bruised a muscle in that region. So I am a little sore tonight due to the fact that I am so out of shape.
-More later-

More about the J-O-B

I work for Control Systems Company. We make ignitors for power plants. My official title is: Sales Assistant and Shop Assistant. Yes, I have two jobs wrapped up into one. It's not bad though. I will enjoy the flexibility that come with the position and this seems to be a perfect fit for as I can get bored with doing routine jobs. This will allow anough variation in my schedule to keep me interested in what I am doing. When needed I will be working in the shop or when needed I will be working in the office, I have a feeling I will gain more responsibilities in the office then first inticipated. The first 3 days I have been doing just that. I have split my time pretty equally between the 2 areas. In the shop I have been milling flats on pieces of that are used on spark plugs. While in the office I have been learning about Peachtree and Gold Mine, two programs which are used extensively with our sales.
-More to follow later this week-

Porcupine

My family took a vacation to Colorado during the summer one year. I can't recall if it was before or after my 4th grade year. I do recall that we left after Steph's volleyball camp, and everyone was tired. Some where in Indiana our van some how ended up driving on two wheels. But this is another story for another time for another person to write about. (Hint, hint) We eventually made it to Colorado and Lady did really well. We all decided to go on a hike one day and we took Lady with us. At one point during the hike she wandered off from us while we were eating our lunch. When she came back she had porcupine quills in her snout. Dad pulled them all out when we got back to camp spot. Poor girl, it was not a fun experience for her.

First Day on the J-O-B

My first day at my new job has come to an end. All went well. I spent about 2 hours in the shop and 1 1/2 hours at the doctors office waiting to pee in a cup. I am really excited about this new job. I have two major things which I need to work on for this job. 1) I need to be more assertive, 2) I need to speak up. Unfortunately my laid back personality is more of a detriment for me. It will change over time.