bugger

just swell.

just finished enjoying a tasty burger at a friend's cookout and was getting up from my spot on the patio when i shooed away some good-sized mosquitoes on my legs.

i also shooed whatever was on my arm before it gave me an f-u sting and buzzed away. damn thing was a yellowjacket — the first one that had laid a stinger on me since august 2015, when i nearly died from an angry nest of the nasty little effers.

i dismissed the little prick as a nuisance and put together a second cheeseburger.

i'd gotten about halfway through when the stress of kris commenting on a redness in my face and constantly monitoring the welt around the sting led me to chuck the rest of the burger into the trash, down the rest of my beer and bid farewell to our hosts.

turned out the medical assistant at the med express who took my vitals was the same lady who caught me when i passed out from the first yellowjacket attack. she said i looked a lot better than the first time she saw me. ("no color" was her descriptor for me as was laid out.)

i gave her my thanks after the physician assistant prescribed a few days worth of prednisone to go with the benadryl i was supposed to take to keep the swelling down and reduce the reaction.

headed back to the car, kris said, "i should spank you."

i don't think she — or the boy — have quite gotten over the original ordeal. (he was fidgeting with worry and apparently trying not to cry in the waiting room; the girl was wondering how long i was going to have to stay in the hospital.)

anyway, i'm alive and well and can sleep with a little more peace of mind knowing i passed the clinical tests with flying colors.

futbol fields

soccer complex

on the pitch and on the field for the first day of fall.

jv db

the nephew is now playing high school football.

se

finally got a new phone. that is all.

bloomer

the girl has gotten too big for her britches. literally. 

after more than two years of being potty trained and in big girl underpants, she's moved to the next size up. 

funny thing was among her assortment were her "dora the explorer" bloomers, which made her feel so grown up. 

the next size up, though, featured the tweener "dora and friends," who has forsaken her magic animal friends in favor of pre-teen relationships and dilemmas. 

this is what the girl is striving for: becoming a teenager, already, at age 5. i don't think there's much i can do to dissuade her from being in such a hurry, but i'll do my best to enjoy her still being my baby right now. 

home game

so this was nice ...

🎥 Check out all the highlights from today's 56-20 win over ECU:#HailWV pic.twitter.com/8AHWgCORKt

— WVU Football (@WVUfootball) September 9, 2017

but this may not be as much ...

Now 2 games into the books and It is clear the D has some work to do, especially considering how Tech O struggled against Delaware

— John Antonik (@JohnAntonik) September 9, 2017

but this was really nice, too.

little no. 7 meets big no. 7

all in all, a pretty good day. 

dumbasses

boarding up the frou-frou home improvement store

the guy on his knees isn't evacuating because he's "the man" at his workplace. even the goddam ceo of the company who was supposed to visit with him tomorrow couldn't make it because of the weather.

not sure a category 5 hurricane is the occasion to prove to a bunch of suits that they picked the right guy for the job.

I combined the images of Hurricane Andrew (1992) & Hurricane Irma (today) at scale in a gif. Irma is a damn leviathan. pic.twitter.com/4HEw1NNxxd

— Joel 🌮 (@JoelNihlean) September 7, 2017

errands

errand buddy

so i took the girl with me to the post office after dinner while the boy went to karate class.

we spent the whole time talking, her sharing songs she learned at school and me trying to decipher the lyrics. learned a new one, about "tony chestnut."

toe (foot) knee chest (torso) nut (head) nose eye love you

which was awesome.

as we walked up the post office ramp, with her gladly holding my hand, i asked her if she said she'd still love me when she was 10 (yes) and when she was 15 (yes) and when she was 20 (also yes). i'm taking her at her word.

she asked questions as i did the self-serve kiosk and affixed the postage to the package. she put the parcel into the bin and i closed it up. good job.

once we got belted into the car, she said she'd love me and mommy for 1,000 years. when i told her that if we lived that long nothing would make us happier, she got a puzzled look on her face. the idea that we couldn't live that long seemed completely foreign to her.

we took a trip past the statehouse to see if that was the building she was thinking of (looks like a jail with lots of stairs near kitty's doctor where we saw a parade). it was the columns that she remembered. i couldn't remember a parade.

we talked all the way home. i used to run lots of errands with her back when i had fridays off. same with her brother, before he started school. i should remember to take these opportunities while spending time with daddy is still something that's really great.

10:25 a.m. friday 25 april 2014

home alone

vanilla milkshake

so halfway through some intense training, we learned our mission changed from registering applicants to manning help hotlines.

by the end of the day, we were fried — and most of us hadn't completed the program. i called kris to say i wasn't making it to her folks this evening; we had one more day to finish the registration training and then begin helpline training.

i went to church, where i was distracted by thoughts of dinner. did one last look for a birthday present for the godson before visiting ye olde b.k. lounge (aka "burger king").

picked up a no. 1 meal with a milkshake for my semi-annual whooper, fired up the flatscreen and, on this first weekend of college football, found a game off the digital antenna.

i'm tired and ready to pass out, but oddly satisfied. good night.

the days grow short

when you reach september. 

long work day helping organize call center for hurricane harvey relief registration. 

made an email distribution list, wrote informational email and tried to liaise with their contact person to set up our communications. that took much longer than you'd expect. 

then mostly completed my friday chores before calling it a day.

now my ass is tired. good night. happy september.