Karma ?

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else," Stone said Thursday during a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News. "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?" - Sharon "dumb as a rock" Stone.

The fact that she didn't trip and break her neck on an upturned corner of that very red carpet is proof enough that Karma is dead and buried as a concept.

Q2 blog - you thought I was joking about the quarterly thing?

Update - The fence is up! Well the left side fence is up woot! 200 feet of gleaming new fence, looks good, and the best part is I didn’t have to put it up! My new neighbour came over and offered to split the cost with me and with that the price ended up cheaper than me doing it myself, so I loaded everything up on a truck and took it back to Home Depot (boy, they were not as happy to take it back as the pretended they would be when they sold it to meJ). Now all I have to do is extend the dogs run back towards the hill and see what my other new neighbour wants to do when he moves in this weekend.

Update – The baby is doing well, better than can be said for my wife. She is having all kinds of issues and I’m not so sure it isn’t because we are having every medical test known to man and a few from our friends on alpha centuri for good measure. We have had Dr appointments every week for 3 months now and we still have months to go. Fortunately work is being very understanding so I am able to go with for moral support if nothing else. Good news is though the baby is ahead of schedule and doing great… oh and it is a Girl…:-)

Update – BOB is still with us, still a complete pain in the buttock region but is doing OK, we had some liver work done on him and he is fine which considering his meds is amazing. He will probably live to 103…

Our youngest, currently 6, is going through a rough patch at school just now. They have 5 “cards” and if they misbehave they get one of their cards pulled. If they have all 5 pulled in a day then they miss out on a privilege (might get silent lunch, laps at recess or perhaps miss out on an ice cream treat or some such) Well horror of horrors she had a card pulled last week, the first one she has ever had pulled. To put it in perspective they get pulled for the most trivial thing in the world and the teachers say that most kids have at least one pulled every day, but to our little girl you would think that the bottom of the world had fallen out. She is sure that she is going to be punished, even though we and both teachers have assured her that nothing happens unless you lose all five in one day, but she can not get her head around that for some reason. She went to school in tears this morning it was more than a week ago since it happened, the teachers have forgotten why they even pulled the card.

Our next oldest turned 9 yesterday, half way to 18 SLOW DOWN! I wrote her a note in Gnomish from the Artemis Fowl books that we read together, she read it as if it were in English, didn’t even glance at the translation table. It is amazing to me how their brains work and that they can grasp things so quickly at this age. I played her Bohemian Rhapsody in the car the other day, she got home ran to the computer, printed out the lyrics and had them memorized within the hour, the 6 year old learnt them from listening to her sister and by the end of the night they had worked out a duet version with each of them singing parts and everything. If you would like to check out the videos go to youtube.com\redfredsed69. There are some of them playing in the yard too if you are interested.

Anyway until there is news of the baby arriving See ya!

Ok, Time for my Quarterly blog….

So what have I been up to? Well my fence is still not up…. There is a story in the bible I think that goes something like A moron puts his house up on Sand, a wise man puts it up on Stone… well a genius puts it on hard packed Georgia clay… Man that stuff is tough to dig through. I do have a small section of the yard done, but have had to call it off for the time being due to errr….. weather, yes that’s right weather….

We still have boxes in the garage (and 70 bags of quickcrete) but not as many as before and I can now park in the garage.... (my trash can not my car). We are down to boxes of decorative stuff, which we will need display space for and stuff that is going into the monster garage sale.

On a family front we are pregnant again, after last time we are extremely cautious and quite frankly scared poop less but things seem to be progressing well. Mrs Fred is sick as a dog… well a regular dog, not one of mine, if she was as sick as one of my dogs I would probably have her put down… speaking of which when my wife was sick with our last baby (now 6) we had a very old greyhound with bad hips and an incontinence problem and she was in some pain, one day late in the pregnancy my wife decided, probably correctly that it was time for “Flower” to go meet her maker, so I was dispatched to the Vet who agreed that it was for the best and did the deed. To this day the family gives my wife jibes about killing the dog in a fit of intolerance…. So we have this German Sheppard who has epilepsy and other issues and, despite being on the borderline liver failure due to the meds he has to take, has been having more and more frequent episodes. The fits are a nightmare to deal with, quite scary to have a 100lb dog convulsing round the room peeing and recently pooping (nice). After a fit he will pace for about 4 hours straight, can not or will not obey any commands, can not walk properly or avoid things like walls, and generally is tough to deal with (did I mention he always fits in the middle of the night) For days afterwards he is a mess, my other dog will not go near him and we have to be real careful with him. Originally he had a seizure once every 5 or 6 months, now we are down to three weeks if we are lucky and we are already maxed out on drugs (if he doesn’t get them he will seize hourly 10 or 12 times in a row sometimes as frequently as every three or four days)… My wife has started calling him BOB since she has been pregnant, it stands for beast of burden. I have another name for him, STBD (Soon to be dead). RIP flower.

Winner

You have won second prize in a beuty contest, collect $10 from each player....



Actually it was a costume contest and it was $50! ARGH!

Fencing

So I am sitting here looking at my hands, that are just about recovering from the bruising they took moving all my stuff into the new house, and I am thinking about what I just signed up for with a trip to Home Depot last night to buy 40 8 foot 4x4 fence posts, 20 6 foot 4x4 fence posts, 70 bags of quickcrete, 38 6 foot privacy panels and 80 1x6 slats and I am thinking… why me? Why did I buy a house with such a big yard? Trouble is with all that we are doing to the house right away I really need to economize and put the thing up myself, but that is a lot of fence!

Along with the fence and the unpacking of the 6 zillion boxes we seem to have (do the procreate in storage?) I have also discovered the joy of putting up blinds / shades / curtains… window treatments in general… what a total pain in the ass! Everywhere I have lived before already had stuff on the windows and now I realize what a huge selling point that is with a house! And can I say that like my boxes, my windows are rabbits, I have six in the master suite alone!!! So I have learnt the following tips…

* Measurements need to be a lot more accurate when you are doing blinds than when you are doing curtains.

* Measurements are still important when you are doing curtains.

* Measure twice cut once, or better still, measure twice and buy the right size in the first place.

* Fitted bed sheets make excellent window treatments (and you don’t even have to measure them!)

* When you are in the design center and they ask you do you want the window in the master bathroom obscured, say “yes” unless you like waving to the neighbours stark naked in the morning.

Oh the joys of home ownership…. There is so much more to it that a dirty great mortgage payment at the beginning of the month.

Busy times

Well, I have not blogged in a good long time, mostly because I didn't know how to deal with following up the last two posts and frankly it just made me cry to read them again much less post. My wife and I lost our baby, still born, honestly it was the saddest thing I have ever been through and I am still not ready to talk about it much here, but before I can move on and stop being depressed every time I come here I have to let you know so you won't ask me any more.

I do not want to belittle that event but I also don't want to dwell on it so... what else have I done in the past 4 months? Well I have worked my ass off, we are short people and long on workload there doesn't seem to be an end in sight so I am working 10 hour days and some nights and weekends too. Not that I am not busy at home either, last weekend we moved in to our new home and have been painting, furniture moving, unboxing stuff that has been in storage for over a year now, hanging curtains, putting up towel bars and toilet roll holders etc. We love our house, when I moved out to come work in GA last August I had no idea that it would be so long before we were living together in OUR house again and it feels really really good. There is no way I would do it that way again. But we have our new home, it has a fantastic lay out , plenty of room especially where we wanted it and a huge lot, We did sacrifice the basement but the house had so much else going for it it was a no brainer, Oh and we got it for $20k less than we were going to pay!

Not sure how long it will be before I blog again, maybe tomorrow, maybe 4 months, we will see how it goes.

Peyton Rene

Grand daughter #2 has arrived... early!!!

6lbs 2 oz mother and baby are doing fine. :-) no pics yet.. well they are on my cell phone but since becoming a grandparent I have completely lost all abilities to use a "new fangled darn contraption"... I remember when you had to wind the phone up to make it work....

Three interesting things that are happening in my life right now I have not blogged about

1. My daughter is pregnant.
2. I turn 38 this week
3 My wife is pregnant.

Fantasy football

OK, So I volunteered this season as an assistant football (soccer) coach for my 7yo’s team, which as you may have guessed soon turned into a head coach role as they were short of volunteers.

We started practice a couple of weeks ago. I have an 8 Girl U8 team which, by process of kicking balls in to named boxes, is called the Eagles. We have so far had three practices and 2 games. The practices have been a little disjointed as I really have no idea what I am doing! :-) For some bizarre reason they like to run laps so that helps but I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to entertain 8 girls for an hour much less teach them anything. I learned early on they were unable to stand in line and wait for a turn doing anything as the line immediately degenerates into a brawl! So each time I practice anything it kinda has to be an all together activity.

Our first game was a 4-3 loss I thought we played very well though and it wasn’t for a couple of lucky kick and hope goals we would have won. The second game, the reason for me writing this, was one the proudest moments of my life. My Eagles soared to a 5-0 win, three different scorers and my Daughter scoring the best of the lot, her first ever in an actual game. I usually try very hard not to go too over the top when my team scores but I could not contain myself… I pulled my shirt over my head and “soared” about the pitch screaming “no place for losers ‘cause we are the champions….of the world” … OK I threw my hands in the air and said yes!... but in my mind I was soaring!

The team played awesome and I was so proud of each of them they actually did some of the things I taught them despite me thinking they weren’t even listening.

GO EAGLES

Rooty tooty fresh and fruity..

Well finally the denquackquacktist finished of the root canal, now I “only” have 4 more visits… Great. Hopefully the next visits won’t be so painful seeing as he is done all the digging and now we are just building a base for the crown.

Why do dentists talk to you, or rather ask you questions when you have a mouthful of god knows what? I mean I could handle him telling me about his weekend or summit (tee hee) but why ask me stuff when I can’t possibly answer? It’s sadistic I tell you. This time it was the nurse, or whatever they are called at a dentists’ office, I am sitting there with drills actually stuck in my mouth for them to take xrays to make sure they are done, I have my mouth as wide open as I can get it so I don’t drive the drills through my tooth that I wouldn’t feel if I did (until the Novocain wore off) I have a mouthful of gauze, blood, tooth, temporary filling and all manner of other crap that tastes foul, I am sweating like a pig through some kind of anxiety attack that I seem to have developed to enhance my dentist experience, and in she comes with my x-ray…

Her : Did you know you have a wisdom tooth?

Me: Uhhh?

Her: a wisdom tooth?

Me: Ohh.. ger huh hughh

Her: you probably want to have that removed..

Me: Bitch! (in my head at least).

Something for the weekend.....

Well kind of a bleugh weekend, Mrs. Fred has a hurt back and I don’t know if she was less tolerant of me or I just was being an extra special pain in the ass but we argued quite a bit.

Friday was cool, I took 7yo to Father Daughter dance, dress was smart casual and I had on Khakis and a mint green shirt that matched her dress. We got there and the first 5 fathers I met were in a shirt and tie.. Great I thought, I am going to be under dressed, but as it turned out there were people there in jeans and t shirts and most of the ties came off. I have never been to one of these things before and had no idea what to expect but apart from the ear shattering screaming I was pleasantly surprised. I did the Chicken song, the Macarena (until 7yo abandoned me in the middle of the dance floor), some cha cha thing, a jump and slide and whoosh… well I’m not sure what that thing was!!!! Oh and the YMCA song along with a couple of slow songs. 7yo had a great time when not dancing with me playing with here 7yo friends and I met one of the dads who seemed very nice and we agreed to arrange a play date or something. Mrs Fred and 5yo went to dinner with our good friend and had a great time too.

Saturday we all went shopping, Mrs Fred and I argued and I sulked…. Then we split up again, Mrs. Fred took 7yo to our nieces’ birthday party (at a bead place) while 5yo and I did one of her favorite things, we coloured. I had picked up some of those felt pictures that you colour in the gaps and sat down with her for an hour and just coloured and coloured until she was happy, then we went into the bedroom and watched a couple of kid movies. I fell asleep through the Care bears one but she woke me up to switch to Madagascar. Later we all met up at the niece’s house for cake and presents but cried off early because of Mrs Fred’s back. On the way home we signed up with Blockbuster’s net flix thing got a little confused, and ended up getting a few in store movies but I think we have the hang of it now. On the way home we argued again.

Sunday, we did a little better and again shopped in the morning. There are so many things that you don’t realize you are going to need when you move into a new place, especially when you only half move in and 50% + of your stuff is still in boxes and the rest doesn’t fit in the new spaces…. Then we came home and argued some more, I ended up at Walmart getting an indoor broom and another new trash can for the kitchen. I also picked up a small coffee machine to see if it could make tea… It worked! (at least well enough for me) and coolest of all it made me a cup automatically this morning at 5am!!! Mrs Fred and I managed to pull it together enough to watch a movie (from blockbuster) which as it turned out was the worst movie we have watched in a while, Miami Vice. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. If you have…. Sorry.

Well here’s to hoping the week wont suck as bad as the weekend… oh wait I have a root canal for this afternoon… yippee.

you tube

OK, So I have figured out I like you tube... lol

I have found old music I loved.... I saw these guys about 20 times!

I have found old TV Clips from my childhood.... Got to love the cotten wool smoke on the train.

I have found The Quote on my blog from Jeff.

And finally I found Bitty

:-)

Because I like these things

1. Name people who made you smile yesterday? My five year old told me her favorite letter was "D" because D is for Daddy.
2. What were you doing at 8 this morning? Working, in my coat because the office was freezing this morning.
3. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Reading Jeanette's version of this.
4. What is something that happened to you in 1994? I had my hair cut. My bosses had been asking me to do it for years, but the reason was because my baby wouldn't stop pulling it!
5. What is the last thing you said aloud? Surely you have seen Airplane [the movie].
6. How many different things did you drink today? Milk to swallow pills, Coke (2 cans so far)
7. What color is your hairbrush? Blue
8. What was the last thing you bought? A Wrench.
9.Who is your best friend?My Wife.
10.What color is your front door? I honestly don't know…. We only moved in yesterday and I have only gone in through the Garage… The Garage door is White!
11. Where do you keep your change? In my pocket, which I empty into a piggy bank. I often just trash coins or leave then in a pile on a desk or shelf or whatever comes to hand
12. What was the weather like today? COLD
13. What is the best ice-cream flavor? Raspberry Ripple… or really just plain Vanilla.
14. What is something you are excited about? Moving in to a house, even if it is not mine and not at all permenant, it is still exciting
15. When was the last rainbow you saw? I read a cool book about Rainbows to my 5 year old last week, it had strands of ribon threaded through the pages and it grew one colour at a time as you read. The last real rainbow I saw was in FL 8 months ago.
16. Do you have a sister? Yes I do.
17. Are you very random? I don't like random, but apreciate I am very much so.
18. Do you want to cut your hair? No, I haven't found a new barber that I like yet. The first thing I do once I have a haircut iss rush home and shower.
19. Are you over the age of 25? Yes I am
20. Do you talk a lot? I can tell a good story if needs must, but I like to listen more.
21. Do you watch The OC? No, see answer 19 above
23. Do you know anyone called Steve? No, I do not even have a steve at work.. Weird
24. Are you ticklish? No, my sister and I used to play a game where we had to stay still for as long as possible while the other tickled them, I got very very good at it. It furstrates my kids, but I have found that I am pokelish and scratchlist
25. Are you typically a jealous person? No not really, I usually are glad for people I know who are doing well for themselves.
26. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A.’ Me.
27. Do you chew on your straw? No, I do not do anything that might interfere with coke getting in my mouth
28. What is the next concert you’re going to? My Chemical Romance
29. Who is the coolest person in your life? Me!
30. What is something you say a lot? Bloody. Because everyone at work thinks its cute and it is not often you can vent a curse in a cute way. Also trying to say Summit [for Something] because it winds my wife up.
31. What is the last thing you ate?chicken pot pie and peas.
32. Have you seen the movie ‘Donnie Darko’?Nope
33. Do you have work tomorrow? Yes
34. Is marriage in your future? I would think so.
35. What should you be doing right now? Working.
36. Do you have a nickname? No, in school for a while I was called pidgeon
37. Are you a heavy sleeper? Yes, I have slept through Hurricanes.
38. When was the last time you used a skateboard? When I was a kid I sat on a skateboard and went down a bloody steep hill, never got near on ever again.
39. What is the best movie you’ve seen in the past two weeks? Smokin Aces, It was weird , bizare, I definitly didn't understand they whole thing but is was disturbingly compelling.
40. Are you currently depressed? No, I have my ups and downs, but I do not believe I have ever been clinically depressed. My worst point in recent history was when I was in GA and my family was in FL…but that’s done with now. Concidering my current situation, living in my in-laws home, having a house in a different state I can't sell, living away from my eldest daughter and my Grand daughter, in a new very stressful job with 3/4 of my possesions in boxes in a number of garages I think I am coping pretty good.

Charlotte’s dead.

A few weeks ago I took my two youngest daughters to the cinema to see a film, Charlotte’s web. The whole film is basically devoted to making you feel sorry for the dieing spider to which your natural reaction might be yuck. Suitably my 7 year old is fighting back tears as Wilbur is taking Charlotte’s web sack in his mouth and I have to admit I too was a little emotional. The 5 year old on my lap turns slowly to me and says “is Charlotte dead?” I gave a grimace and nodded, “I’m afraid so…” I start, “Good, I hate spiders” she exclaimed.

It Blogs…

OK, here is my Quarterly offering, hope you enjoy.

This week I have had….

A happy moment: I booked to fly home the weekend of the 8th and the 22nd but just for good measure I got a business trip to Tampa on the weekend of the 15th . I get to see my family three weekends in a row.

A scary moment : On my return last weekend, late Sunday night, I followed my regular routine. I jumped on the train to where I work, and had left my car and drive home. When I got on to the Train a gentleman asked me if it was the train to BLAH BLAH, I said no, you have to change trains halfway. When we got to the place you have to change he asked me another question concerning the platform for the second train and when I got to my stop he asked me if this was BLAH BLAH, I said yes and we got off. He followed me off the platform and through the barrier, down the steps in the parking lot and then down an obscure alley that puts me on the road my company is on. I was a little freaked out that he was still following me but not to bad, I was thinking maybe he thought I was going to the taxi rank or something. I walked down to the intersection and crossed over both roads to the sidewalk that leads into my company… he is STILL following me, OK I am seriously starting to freak out here the only thing down my company’s street are a couple of restaurants and my company and it is 10pm. I walked in the entrance to my company and scrambled over a bank into the parking lot.. And he follows me!!! So I’m thinking This is it, I am about to get mugged, I put my keys between my knuckles and turned to confront him and he said “So, you work for XYZCORP too?” got in his car and drove off…. His car was the only other car in the lot.

A surreal moment: today as I parked my car, I reversed in so that I could display my special badge for overnight parking so I am looking over my shoulder left and right, do a pretty good job if I say so myself, I put the car in park and look to my right and Santa is asleep in the car next to me, his coat hanging in the rear passenger seat.

Last day

Today is my last day at Chase, A mixed emotion day, I am very sad to be leaving the many good friends I have here, the security of working for a blue chip, the comfort of the familiar etc. Then again I am excited at the prospect in front of me, new opportunities, new friends, new everything….. I’m also very anxious, my house here in FL is not even on the market yet, my family can’t join me until it sells, my Girls are gonna miss me and I am going to miss them. Right now just about every emotion is coursing through my blood at the same time, this is it and it is Scary.

Atlanta Bound

So I have had an adventurous week so I guess I should share with my faithful 2 visitors.... :-)
Background..... 6 years ago when we came from England we settled in Florida because 1) that's where my mother and Father in-law lived, 2) that's where my Wife's best friend lived, 3) that's where all my daughters friends lived, 4) that's where the rest of my wife's family (that we have a great relationship with ) live, a cousin (+family) and an aunt and uncle. Soon after arriving my in-laws were forced to move to New Mexico for his job. Last year the cousin, uncle and aunt and best friend all moved away to Atlanta (it was a coincidence that the best friend moved to the same county as the others. There are another two cousins and their families already living there in Atlanta. Later this year my father in-law retires and they plan to move very close to us. My daughter has grown up now and most o her friends are now away at college and what not.

SO.... As you may have guessed we have been thinking that before the in laws move to Florida we should probably take a look at Atlanta ourselves... I love my job and I work for one of the leading national banks and so I asked my bosses if there was a chance that I could transfer to the Atlanta office, perhaps in the new year. They did not get back to me for a while and last Wednesday night one of my job search bots emailed me a position very close to where we want to live and matching up rather well with my resume. so at about 10pm I sent off my resume without much of a cover letter just to test the water. 7:30am Thursday I got a call from them asking me if I could do a phone interview that afternoon, which I did and it went pretty good, then they asked me if I could get up there for a face to face... sure I said so I booked a flight for Monday around noon. Monday morning my boss phoned me to let me know that there was not an opportunity to transfer as the office in Atlanta was not suitable for my line of work, that he was sorry and hoped that it didn't mean they might lose me. I bit my tongue and caught my flight.

I arrived at the office in Atlanta via a very hot MARTA train ride from the airport (apparently they do normally have AC) and interviewed with 5 people until 6:30pm. then flew home. At 7am the next morning I got a call, I got the job, when can I start? so Tuesday at 10am I handed in my resignation. I start in Atlanta on Aug 28th I will be staying with the friend and my Wife and kids are staying in Florida until the house sells.....

Once again my life sends me for massive loop de loop.

By the way did I mention that the job is about a 25% pay raise, has great benifits and has 20 days vacation ?

Halle

WC 2006...

Did any one mention that it was World Cup time ?


Officially the world cup starts tomorrow!!!!!!!

Holy crap I am excited :-)

Come on ENGLAND, Come on ENGLAND !

OMG....

Just a quick update to show just how close to Grandfather-dom.. or is that ..doom...

The date of the beast.....

6/6/06.... the end of the world is nigh...OK, what a load of crap, but who in MLB was having a laugh when they scheduled the DEVIL rays vs the ANGELS today??????


PS, the Angels won, so all is right in the world.

Get your hankies out….

OK, so I have this story to tell, I wasn’t gonna blog it but if nothing else it will serve as a chronicle of a episode in the melodrama that is “the redfreds”

About 4 weeks ago we were all sitting at the table eating our meal when out of the corner of my eye I spotted movement. A small bird with red and yellow plumage was in our screened patio.



No biggie, occasionally we get birds in there as we leave the door open to let the dogs in and out. The bird hops about a bit and finally finds its way out again. Later that day I spot the bird back again, this time with a twig in it’s beak…. So I stay still and watch it. After hopping about some more it disappears in to a flowerpot we have hanging on the wall. An minute later, exit bird sans twig. Now let me tell you a bit about the pot, our patio area is under the roof of the house, so no direct sun gets there and we had a devil of a time keeping anything alive in there, so in true redneck fashion, we planted plastic flowers. The pot then became a handy place to put things out of reach of the dogs and so nestled in between the plastic stems, a half empty seed packet and three old chewed to bits tennis balls, birdy is building himself a nest. In and out he goes for the next few days and pretty soon this luxury apartment works its magic and we have two birds frequenting the patio.
A week or so passes and I’m out using the BBQ when I hear “chirp, chirp” from the nest. Now I know the birds were out so I surmised that we might have some new arrivals. I got the steps out and peered in to the pot.. hmm nothing…. Tried the other side and sure enough a little chick greets me eyes closed, mouth open. I ran inside and got the camera and sneaked back out and took some pics… as it turned out there were 4 chicks.



This picture is worth looking at close up, Click here

We finished the BBQ and left them in peace, and watched as the adults brought food every 20 mins or so and sneaked looks every now and then, because they were so damn cute.



For the next week or so this went on, then on Sunday one of the adults started behaving weirdly, hissing and calling to her chicks from the bush outside the door. I half expected to see a chick come out of the nest, but nothing happened. That night as my wife let the dogs in she spotted an unwanted visitor….



I grabbed a stick and fended the thing away knocking it into the trash can. After a few surprisingly energetic attempts to get out and some prods with the stick it settled down and I took it through the house, up the street and over one and released it with a parting thunk with the stick for good measure. I returned home and we sat in bed watching TV with the patio light on and the curtain open so we could see just incase he came back.



All of a sudden my wife shouted, “he’s back, in the nest…” I jumped up, grabbed my stick, the snake had it’s head in the nest so I hooked him and jerked him to the ground with a chick in his mouth, it dropped the chick, and struck out at me and I hit it hard with the stick. The chick was motionless, the snake still aggressive and, somewhat out of anger, somewhat out of fear for the chick and for my dumb ass German shepherd who had followed me out and seems completely blind when it comes to snakes even to the point of getting bit, I whacked the shit out of the little @#$%#^&*er. Only then did I notice the suspicious bulge in its belly… the chick that was in it’s mouth was as dead as the two in it’s stomach, and, in case you thought this story was like Hollywood and had some good news at the end, as dead as the one left in the nest too.

Needless to say we had a pretty shitty night and the next couple of days. The adults came back the next morning, but I have not seen them since, so ends our lesson in the cruel world of nature. I kinda regret killing the snake, but I honestly didn’t know the welfare of the chicks at the time, I kinda regret not killing it the first time. I don’t know, what do you guys think?

Places I have been...

create your own visited country map





create your own personalized map of the USA

First time ......Long time

Right ho….. it’s been a while but what the hey, a new post!

So what’s up with the Freds? Eldest Daughter is only a couple of months away from making me “grand pappy” I’ve thought long and hard about the moniker and that’s the one that seems to make people laugh the most so that’s what it’s gonna be. I’m really looking forward to it, and spoiling the little darling rotten. Mum to be is starting to get real fatigued, good luck for the next year…, and the Future dad is working his socks off to build a nest for them. Honestly with all we have been through in the past year I am really proud of them. They have stuck it out and really turned it all around, I can actually see a bright future ahead of them now.

Daughter #2 has just been on a week long Mediterranean cruise with her school. Itinery included Athens, Rhodes, Egypt, Beirut, Cypress and several other stops. Egypt seems to have been a lot of fun, pyramids, tombs and the antiquity museums. Of course some this was lost on a 12 year old girl away from her parents for the first time. Shopping and donkey poo seemed to hold an equal thrall but I think she will look back on this and remember the important stuff. She has just got her report card back 13 As and a B, and that’s even better than it sounds in an English school where As are truly rare.

Daughter #3 Is also ding well academically she evaluated as reading at a 3 grades higher than she is and is also doing will in Maths. She is also responsible for my lack of blogging in the past couple of months taking on Kung Fu, Soccer, T-ball and Swimming lessons I have my hands full running her from one side of town to the other. T- Ball is done now, she was named MVP of her team and also caught the only out by either team all season.

Daughter #4 also did T-ball although the 4 year old team was less than enthusiastic…. She went to every practice and every game though. Her real passion now is drawing she will sit herself down and draw for hours, her art, for a 4 year old is amazing and easily on a par with her big sister, she can now write her own name and recognize her letters, with a year left to go before Kindergarten she looks like she will be another smarty pants…

This Friday I have an Interview for a Job in Atlanta… If I get it and the 50% pay hike I will be moving the family up there in a hurry so no guarantees that I will blog again in the near future but hey, I blogged once, I will blog again.

My day in court

Dateline Tuesday 7th :- Spent an “enjoyable” morning bored out of my wits at traffic court. A few months ago someone pulled out in front of the car in front of me, and immediately slowed to make a U turn. The person in front of me stepped on the brakes to no avail and clipped the rear corner. Being a good citizen I of course stopped, checked that no one was hurt and on request called the police. Damage was minimal and though a little shook up they both seemed OK but I waited around until the police turned up, gave my statement and left. Apparently the cop then issued one of them with a ticket that they decided to fight hence my subpoena to appear as a witness. Until I got there I didn’t know who had got the ticket, in my opinion it was kind of silly to blame either one of them. Anyway I got to the court at 8:30, but there were no seats left so I stood there and watched proceedings unfold.

My first observation was that there sure were a lot of cops there. FHP, Motorcycle, local, county in all over 40, Tuesday mornings are a good time to speed around here because every cop with a radar gun is sitting in court.

The judge entered the room, and all rose, except me who had already been standing for 45 minutes! First in front of the judge were the people with lawyers or who had appointed lawyers in their stead. They knew all the fancy words, but I must say that they seemed to get heavier fines that those who came later. The one Lawyer that stood out as particularly smarmy got his client off with a $295 fine, which seeing as the max the judge could impose was $500 I was expecting the client to be pissed off but she seemed really pleased so lord only knows what she had done.

Next up in front of the dock was a cops wife, she got special treatment I guess, plead no contest but had the obvious embarrassment of having to stand there in front of all her husbands buddies while the judge doled out her fine. There was plenty of lighthearted banter before court opened and even some of the lawyers got in on the joke.

Then the Judge informed the court that anyone wishing to plead guilty or no contest could line up, they would not get points and he would lower the fine provided that they didn’t have a bad driving record. ¾ of the people in the room stood up and filed past the judge muttering “no contest” a couple got driving school and of course one idiot got up there and said not guilty and was told to sit down then because he was in the wrong line. The final no contest came from a rather large black woman who immediately burst in to floods of tears, it was very bizarre she walked up fine cried until the judge passed judgment and then stopped abruptly… very weird.

With all those gone we progressed to the cases where the cop was there, this is where the real entertainment started. First we had a guy charged with failure to secure a load, apparently he had been dropping sand / gravel, he claimed nothing came off his truck, he even brought the tarp that he used to cover the truck which the judge totally ignored. As he was telling his side of the story he let slip that the cop had found a small amount of gravel that had come from his truck and the judge pounced on that inconsistency.. Guilty.. Next.. then came a man who was ticketed for failure to wear a seat belt. The cop said how he had stopped the guy for speeding and issued a verbal warning but also noticed the seatbelt was not being worn so issued a ticket for that, the guy claimed that he never got a speeding warning (Florida law doesn’t allow cops to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt alone) but was real vague and freely admitted not wearing his seat belt then tried to change his story to say he had taken it off as the cop approached.. idiot, Guilty, Next… A woman clocked doing 71 in a 45 she claimed everything, she claimed the cop must have hit the wrong car, she claimed her car made a bad noise over 50 mph so she never went that fast, the judge pointed out that 50 in a 45 was still speeding to wit she replied that her neighbour was a cop and the 8 mph over the speed limit was ok…. She even brought her elderly father along as a witness that she wasn’t speeding.. he could barely walk much less answer the judge, it was all I could do not to burst out laughing…. Guilty! Next.. this judge should be in charge of hanging people. The one guy who got some leniency was a Mexican immigrant who was up for having the wrong address on his drivers license, he claimed that as an immigrant he was unable to get it changed because of a backlog of the necessary INS papers. The judge looked skeptical and asked what proof he had that he had tried to change is name to which he replied quite a lot actually and produced a dossier 2 inches thick filled with letters and forms and receipts from INS and the driving license place suitable impressed the judge dismissed that charge and reduced the other charges against him, so it pays to be prepared

Finally we got to cases where the cop hadn’t turned up… First up a little old lady on oxygen and a big file of papers waddled slowly up to the dock. She spent a couple of minutes composing her self and sorting things out and the Judge asked her two questions and dismissed the case… she looked at the untouched papers and then at the judge and then at the papers again and shuffled off. A couple of other cases were dismissed equally quickly and I could see a trend, if the cop could not make it to the court then his ticket wasn’t going to hold. My name was called with that of the lady that had pulled out and after a brief discussion the case was dismissed and my 3 ½ hour ordeal was over.

Out of touch…

The Oscars are upon us and once more I am perplexed… how out of touch am I? Here is a list of the past 20 winners, those that have won since I came of age.

1985 (58th) Out of Africa - Never seen
1986 (59th) Platoon - Never Seen
1987 (60th) The Last Emperor –Never Seen
1988 (61st) Rain Man – Fell asleep, twice
1989 (62nd) Driving Miss Daisy – Watched on DVD
1990(63rd) Dances With Wolves – Saw in the Cinema
1991 (64th) The Silence of the Lambs – Never seen
1992 (65th) Unforgiven – Never seen
1993 (66th) Schindler's List –Never seen
1994 (67th) Forrest Gump – Watched on DVD
1995 (68th) Braveheart – Watched on DVD
1996 (69th) English Patient – Never seen
1997 (70th) Titanic –Never seen
1998 (71st) Shakespeare in Love –Never seen
1999 (72nd) American Beauty – Never seen
2000 (73rd) Gladiator -Saw in the Cinema
2001 (74th) A Beautiful Mind –Never seen
2002 (75th) Chicago –Never seen
2003 (76th) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King –Saw in the Cinema
2004 (77th) Million Dollar Baby –Never seen
So that’s 3 seen in the Cinema, 3 more watched on DVD, one slept through and Thirteen never seen…. 65% of the "Best Pictures" have not even interested me in watching them on TV. I appreciate that some of those films, Silence of the lambs, Titanic, Shindlers list and Platoon are probably unfairly lumped in there with the crap that constitute the "never seen" list, but even so it is glaringly obviously my idea about the best picture throughout the year is far removed from that of the academy. So onto this years offerings…
"Brokeback Mountain", "Capote", "Crash", "Good Night, and Good Luck.", and "Munich".
I guess I will keep up my average this year! I’ve only even heard of one, Brokeback mountain, and that is not because of it being a good movie.
Needless to say I won’t be watching…. What a snorefest.

So REDFRED’s recommendations for your movie going pleasure….

DON’T go see The Pink Panther…. Man that film sucked
GO SEE Running Scared…. But don’t take your kids!

The results are in......

Today was scan day for the Refredlet's baby....

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not last week as originally thought.....

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And I can say without further ado......


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That the baby is healthy.........


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and of course we found out the sex.....


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Which is all you want to know right?


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Well.....






REDFRED is to be the proud grandfather of.......







A GRAND...........




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Child, who will be a .........



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Are you excited?

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A GRANDDAUGHTER!!!!!!!

:-)

Weekend from hell

OK, This weekend I volunteered to work on a project at work to move 80 employees from one location to another. My part of the process should have taken aprox. 2 or 3 hours on Friday after work and perhaps a couple of calls during the weekend. From the very start of the move things started going wrong, certain tools that we use failed and we had to revert to manually moving each person one by one. This stretched the 2-3 hours into 7 ½ and I left the office at Midnight, satisfied at least I had done my part. What I didn’t realize as I crawled into bed at nearly 2am was that I was not the only one having trouble. Saturday I was called first thing in the morning and had to put in 4 hours firefighting issues due to a huge malfunction that prevented the users data from being migrated to their new location. I got things under control and despite a couple more calls again crawled in to bed reasonably comfortable that my work was done. 2am I am called… I worked an hour fixing a problem, crawl back into bed at 3:30, 4am the phone rings again, another hours work this is getting ridiculous. Anyway I’m wide awake so I called my daughter in England. Crawled back into bed about 6 ish. 9am phone call, and I ended up working through ‘til 10:30 pm when finally I had to call to have someone cover for me. What should have been no more than 5 hours had turned into 28. Monday Spent all day working with them, Tuesday, today spent all day and when I left they were talking about sending half of them back.

None of the issues were anything to do with my work, but if we have to send these guys back I will have to do it all over again and then again when they have fixed the issues.

Can I just say this sucked as a weekend, I missed the superbowl, I missed putting the kids to bed let alone doing anything with them and basically I am totally drained and it is only Tuesday. Tomorrow I will be tied up again, and maybe we are moving them….. UGH!

Siriusly good….

For Christmas this year I got some really cool stuff, My number one gift, a month in, is without doubt my Sirius Radio. Can I just say that this is the most entertaining thing I have ever listened to. I have a hook-up for my car and another at work (for my birthday I will be getting one for home) now my whole day is spent to a background of excellent radio content, and it goes like this.

7am leave house with Kids for daycare, tune to CH116 – Kidstuff, listen to Barney or the Wiggles or today the Animaniacs. Find a good song the kids like and then replay it all the way to the day care.

7:30am set off to work, tune to CH100 – Howard 100. I have never heard Howard before, but I must say it is an awesome show. Worth the monthly fee all on it’s own and it is only the beginning of my Sirius kickass day. Pick up a quick nonstop traffic report for Tampa on Ch158 during a break to avoid the major snarl-ups.

11am Howard finishes off and I switch to CH104 – Rawdog comedy. Some fantastic stuff, 5 minute skits from comedians from Dane Cook to Richard Pryor, un-edited

12am switch over to CH105 – Laugh break for more family orientated humour or perhaps CH23 hair nation, 20 – Octane rock or Ch11 BBC radio1

1pm Back to Howard 100 for the Danny Bonaduce show, he is only doing a week right now but I’m sure they are going to pick him up, they need to he is hilarious. To think this guy is Danny Partridge is just awesome, I don’t think I have ever heard someone so open to admit his screw ups…

Then the Coup de grace…. 4pm Ch101 – Bubba the love sponge. When I started here 2 years ago one of the things that offset the hour plus commute was that I would get to listen to Bubba for longer in the morning… 2 weeks after I started they fired him. When my wife picked up the sirius for me she had no idea about Howard or Bubba, they didn’t start until Jan 9th, but boy did she hit the jackpot as far as I’m concerned. Bubba’s back and I’m loving it.
Siriusly go get a radio!

Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl

Well this Friday is scan day. My Daughter goes for her 20 week scan, and we get to find out the sex of the baby and obviously check out it’s development. Part of me is nervous, part of me is excited, part of me wants a boy part wants a girl, and part wishes we were not finding out until the summer. Two of my children were surprise sexed babies, and call me old fashioned but I preferred it that way. The words, “it’s a girl” were almost magical. However it seems I am alone in thinking this and the offer to “keep it a secret from me” is not very appealing, so like it or not Friday is the day (unless it keeps it’s legs crossed!

I will say in advance, I hope it is a boy, with 4 daughters, I would love to be able to buy offspring of mine train sets and toy soldiers, but a girl would be cool too and I know my daughter wants one so either way we will all be happy. I will of course update this post later in the week…

New Post.

I’ve been neglecting this a little with my busy life so here is a new musing for both of you to mull….
Every night I read to my daughters, I am not a good reader. I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia when I was 13 and I have a problem recognizing words. Frequently my mind makes a snap decision about what a word is before I have even got to it in the sentence I am reading, and no matter how slow I go it is locked in. even when I say it out loud and know it’s wrong I really have a hard time re reading it and coming up with the right word. To compensate I guess when I am reading I will rearrange all the other words around it and make the sentence work. Now this worked fine when my 6 year old was 4 but now she is able to follow me in the book, and I get "Daddy…. That’s not what it says" It is sad to say that my 6 year old has surpassed me in the reading department. What is really weird for me is that her teacher came to us and said she was the top reader in her class and was reading a couple of grades ahead of her age group… how does the daughter of a dyslexic father who can’t manage the cat in the hat get to be such a great reader? So any way she is signed up now for a story telling concert in March where she has to retell a story for an audience, so her reading focus is centered on "are you my Mother" and I have a feeling she is going to excel once more.
I guess what I am saying is that I am so very glad that my daughter is not cursed the way I am and that one day when I am old and decrepit that she will sit and read to me, that would make me very happy.