So life has finally calmed down again. Yeah!

Last weekend was Katie and Jason's wedding. It took a lot of work to pull it off (8 hours of set-up on Friday), but it turned out wonderful. It was fun to see the transition from church wedding to luau reception. Katie looked beautiful and very happy, so that's all that matters. After 3 whole days of wedding (Friday= set-up, Saturday= wedding, Sunday= party for friends and family) I was very content to go home and curl up in bed with my husband and kitties. Luckily, my cats figured out this time to cuddle early and then leave me alone at 2 o'clock in the morning. They are notorious for wanting early a.m. cuddles!

The weekend before the wedding was the bachelor and bachelorette parties. It seemed the boys put together box cars (with welding and everything) and then raced them down a very large hill. Personally, I was a little concerned about the groom possibly having a black eye and/or cast for the wedding, but the bride was very calm. Maybe that is because we spent Saturday relaxing at Glen Ivy and Sunday wine tasting. All in all, a very fun weekend.

As is our current trend, Robert and I spent the weekend of our wedding anniversary celebrating another's wedding. It seems that we married during at a very popular wedding time. However, Robert took Monday (the actual day of a 2nd anniversary) off of work, and we spent it together. Rob gave me this amazing gift. It was a collage of pictures of us (and of course the cats, too) that was then turned into a puzzle. We spent a good chunk of Monday putting the puzzle together, and still have quite a way to go. You would think that putting together pictures of yourself would be easy... but it was a bit harder than expected. I gave Rob the Wii Sports Resort game that he kept on looking at. That was fun to play with too. I have to say, Robert has done a better job on the thoughtful gifts this past Christmas and anniversary. I think it is because with my family I was trained to give practical gifts. It's something I will have to work on.

We also currently had a discussion about gift-giving with my mother. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but we were talking about how Robert gets up at like 6am on Christmas because he is so excited about giving me my presents and opening his own. I guess that when he was a child, it was common for him to get up even earlier. As a child, I didn't even know a time before 6 o'clock in the morning existed. Instead, we slept in, ate breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and then opened presents. I think we came down to the conclusion that though Sean's and my presents were very exciting, they were either something that we couldn't play with at right that moment, or couldn't use ALL day. For example, when Rob asked what presents we remembered the most Sean's response was a telescope and the wheels for his old car. Obviously, the telescope wasn't used during the day and the wheels didn't go on the car until a week or so later. While Rob's presents growing up were something that would keep his attention all day. So either my brother and I are ADD and don't have Rob's attention span, or his family worked really hard at finding/making something really creative. It was definitely food for thought for when we have our own kids. Though I agree with my parent's philosophy of practical gifts (which helps makes the cost of Christmas presents be something that you needed to spend money on anyway), we also need to make sure that one present is like Rob's childhood Christmas. That way our kids will have Rob's adorable excitement and memories about holidays.

Deano

So this is a random posting more for myself than anyone else, so I apologize to anyone browsing Facebook and stumbling upon this. On this Friday night I made the decision to start a major project; a complete rework of my entire music collection. Having 4,000+ songs on my computer, this is a significant project.

Being enough of a nerd to still like the sound of more than just a guitar, a bass guitar and a drum set in a band, I immediately started searching Amazon and other sites for Ska bands. The same results kept popping up:

Reel Big Fish

Less Than Jake

Rx Bandits

Save Ferris

All old bands, who's music I have been listening to for years.

Then another old band came up....Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Chuckling to myself I clicked on the link to take a walk down memory lane. I opened the first link to hear a preview of the song "The Impression that I get." For those of you who don't know it right away, you would if you heard it. Hit up Amazon and check it out.

I was instantly reminded of a happy (and sad) memory from the past. An effect many songs seem to have on me.

I remembered being at the Baywood apartments in Newport, right across the street from Fashion Island. I had a cousin named Dean who I knew as "Dean-o." A step cousin, but none-the-less, a cousin. At any rate, I remember blasting that song on a CD in his boom box in the living room of a one bedroom apartment he shared with his mom Juliana and grandmother Kitty. Juliana and Dean were from Barcelona, Spain and were here on a temporary visa.

Those were the days of what I would call my mid-years, in between elementary school and high school. A period that proves to be rough for most youth, myself being no exception. Escaping t to an area where no one knew me and I knew nobody was a great relief.

I remember how refreshing it was to hang out with Deano. He was so full of life and excited about everything around him. I remember that he was a huge Jean Claude Van-Damme fan. One day on the way down from their second floor apartment to the pool I watched him mess up a harmless ficus tree like nobody's business.

We would swim one day of the weekend, and on the other walk across the stree to Fashion Island to see a movie and spend hours in the music store.

I am not quite sure of the specifics, but from what I understand Kitty's visa had expired, and eventually Kitty and Deano were forced to return to Spain right around when I started my freshman year of high school.

Several years later, in my freshman year of college I believe, my mom let me know in a fairly coincedental conversation that Deano had passed away. Apparently Kitty had left Deano at home with his sister, and when she called to check on them, no one answered. When she returned she found Deano collapsed in the shower. He would have been about 19 years old.

I never really got the details, but I remember a conversation about how the utilities in Spain were not as safe as in the U.S. I believe it was something about not adding an odor to the gas that would let you know if there was a gas leak. Here in the states a gas leak will smell like a rotten egg. The doctors believed a gas leak had caused a build up of methane in the shower and that Deano had passed out and eventually died from asphyxiation. Juliana found his sister in the other room just fine.

At any rate, rather than a moment of sadness, it was a pleasant moment...thinking about younger years and the enjoyment of careless summers. Summers much like the summers I used to share with my cousin Sean.

Usually such a "pop" song would not be palatable; but remembering Deano's face as he sung The Impression That I Get so enthusiastically, and busted his Jean Claude-like dance moves, brought a real smile to my face.

So I paid my $0.99 and added another song to my collection.

Preparing for Katie's Bridal Shower

Hi everyone. It's Shannon. I guess I'm supposed to begin blogs introducing myself since it links to Robert's Facebook page. He doesn't want people wondering why he is throwing a bridal shower :) And yes, I am still boycotting Facebook. We'll see how long that lasts, but it just seems like too much work.

Anyways, this is blog, as always, is a bit outdated. Katie's Bridal Shower was last Sunday, and I'm just now talking about preparing for it.

Since I'm a teacher I have my summers off and need things to keep

me entertained... so I had lots of fun preparing for the bridal shower.

The other bridesmaids and I decided to have a wine themed dinner

party. I decided to take old wine bottles and spray paint them ivory

and then and then add black and red decoration. After inserting red

flowers and ivy, they looked very classy. You can't see the wine bottle

in this picture, but you get the idea.

I also made wine charms as party favors. Each party favor was tied to a glass wineglass. Guests were able to choose a glass based on which wine charm they liked and then put the wine charm on their wine glass.

Of course I also had to hand paint glasses for the bride, mother of the bride, and the 3 bridesmaids. Unfortunately, I had a mishap with the bride's glass. She was supposed to have silver wedding rings painted on her glass, but I ran out of the correct paint. The one that I tried to use rubbed right off, so Katie's glass ended up having red hearts on it also. Oh well...

The one food item that I didn't make was the cake. But it turned out so cute that I had to include a picture. Christine did a wonderful job. I did. however, make the rest of the food. For appetizers we had tiropitas, spinach artichoke dip, bruschetta, and sausage bites. Dinner was a salad and homemade spaghetti and meatballs (with the marinara sauce and the meatballs made from scratch. It's sooooo much yummier that way!) There was supposed to be Parmesan twists also, but there was a minor catastrophe and they had to be scratched last minute. I just hate when things go wrong on spot.

All in all, it was a successful party. Now I can plan the Bachelorette Party!!!!

Fourth of July

Well it was a pretty nice fourth of July weekend. On the third I got some more yard work done and did a little napping before we headed out with some of our friends to the Frog's Breath cheese shop in Orange circle. We did a beer and cheese sampling string that consisted of about eight different cheeses and four or five beers.

Two of the beers I have had before and didn't really enjoy very much, but a new white ale and an amber I hadn't tasted were pret

ty interesting. Shannon and I did find a cheese that we both really liked called Tintern. It is a creamy cheddar cheese with some chives and shallots. We bought some for our fourth of July party the next day at Shannon's parents momentarily forgetting that her father is allergic to onions, and that her brother doesn't really enjoy them either. Oh well....$7 well spent.

The outing included the usual suspects, starting on the left and working around: My beautiful wife, Ben and Carrie, myself, Meredith and Dan (who are getting married soon) and Chris.

It was quite a pleasant afternoon. I can't say I regret moving out of Orange, but I do miss hanging out in the circle.

Yesterday Carrie came down and she and Shannon went to Lake Mission Viejo. There's nothing like getting a call when you are at work from your wife telling you, "Carrie and I are laying out at the lake right now, and I love you for moving us to Mission Viejo, but now I am never going to want to live more than a hop, skip and a jump from the lake."

On the fourth we spent the day with Shannon's

family hanging out by the pool drinking mango

pina coladas (really just pina coladas made using Malibu mango rum instead of light rum). Her brother Sean has a new puppy and he is a blast to play with. He is not quite used to the water yet, but has plenty of energy on land.

In the evening we had a few people down and watched fireworks from our driveway. One more benefit of living near the lake.

That's the update for now. As usual life is great and we couldn't be more fortunate than to have loving family and friends to hang out with.

Rob and Shannon

As usual...

Well as usual it has been a really long time since our last post.

I woke up at around 5 AM this morning to a couple of rambunctious cats. Not remembering whether I had fed them last night, and still in kind of a haze I stumbled down the hall and pored some of their diet food into their bowl.

Suddenly I knew I was up, and as usual there was no way I was getting back to sleep. If I even tried I would more than likely just toss and turn and keep Shannon awake. So I checked my email. Glancing at my chat section I noticed the following people showing as online: Rob Heaton, Susan Mack and Richard Lagrand. Hmmmm, I wonder which side of the family my early morning genes come from...

So at any rate, I got up and worked some more on the side yard, trying to get an area cleared out to plant our Orange tree.

Monday was my brother Jeff's birthday and we all went to Lucille's to celebrate. As usual the nephews were very cute. Here's a couple of pictures from a different night at a restaurant:

Life has really been pretty great recently. So far we have managed to be relatively unaffected by the downturn in the economy. We had feared for a while that Shannon's school might go under and she would be out of work, but she just found out she will be signing her contract for next year on Wednesday which is definitely a relief.

As far as my work goes, I love it. I really enjoy everything about the job from the work I do, to the people I work with. I have a good mix of projects; some fairly mindless like proof reading, and some more exciting that keep me busy all day long.

I've started to lose interest in one of my favorite

games recently, which I am sure my cats and wife will be grateful for. They are making a fundamental change to the game that kind of bugs me, but also I just don't enjoy it as much anymore.

I am sure some people will think, "He's finally grown out of it" which is a mentality that really irks me. I have had two conversations in the past week along those lines. One with my co-worker Sarah, and one with my mother in law.

Sandee (my mother in law) mentioned how she can't understand how someone could sit playing a video game for more than an hour, and how she felt video games were for kids; a mentality that prevails amongst the pre-atari generations. After some chatting she did admit that this was likely a bias because she had not grown up with games, and since she had only ever really seen kids play them, she labels them "childish." Keep in mind 90 year olds still love gathering around a Scrabble board or playing a rousing game of hearts. "But that's different, there is a social aspect to those games" you might cry. If you do, you clearly don't understand modern "video games."

With Sarah the conversation centered more around various forms of recreation. In the end I pointed out that essentially some of the most intelligent people I know use video games as an escape device similar to how many people use books. We talked about how most people would perceive someone who reads books in their spare time--as opposed to playing video games-- would likely be considered intelligent. To me, that conclusion is ridiculous. Reading a grocery store romance novel seems no better an indicator of intelligence than matching gems in bejeweled. But the reality is, most people don't distinguish one video game from another. They are simply all "video games." To me this is like lumping Shakespeare in with Stephenie Meyer. At any rate, it was actually a really good conversation with a lot of good points made on both sides.

Side note: One of the points I made was that if you spend 3 hours fishing and don't catch anything, it is looked upon far more favorably than if you spend 3 hours chatting with 24 people from other parts of the world while playing a video game. Another co-worker mentioned an old saying; "Fishing is the only activity where you can spend hours trying to outsmart the dumbest animal in the world, and consistently lose." And yes, I love fishing too.

So needless to say I will not be done with games any time soon.

Last night we started to really lay out the Haunted House for this year, and as soon as we get the side yard done, I need to get to work on it. It is really going to be something this year, so if you can make it out I really encourage it. We plan on hosting it once again to benefit the Orange County Food Bank by asking visitors to bring canned food.

That's all for now, hopefully not another long stretch before I post again. Happy Fourth of July!

Callback

So I FINALLY got a call back from the Dr. doing the Keratoconus study. They have been approved to start screening patients and want me to forward my documentation which I will do in the next couple of days here.

I guess they review the documentation and then call me in if I have been approved as a candidate.

At any rate, exciting :)

And...we're back.

So we had a little hiatus from posting there as the holidays got busy and we both got sick. I had Bronchitis just before Christmas which cleared up pretty quickly, but Shannon and I are both fighting a cold right now. 

I have never really had this traditional cold where your head feels like a baloon and you are stuffed up and have kind of a dry cough. The good news is that it broke last night and today I feel a lot better. Shannon however may be in for a long night as yesterday was my worst day and she is about a day behind me.

I think we probably caught it camping at San Clemente for New Year's. I know some people think being cold has nothing to do with catching a cold, but it is too convenient that we were camping in freezing weather and both got sick. 

The San Clemente campsites are really something. They are WAY better than San Onofre.

Shannon and I have some New Year's resolutions we are really going to try to keep. We have 3 goals each and then 3 family goals.

Shannon's Goals:

Grade all papers within 4 days except for major assignments.

Exercise 1 hour 3 days a week.

Pack lunches for Mon, Wed, Fri.

Robert's Goals:

Practice Piano 30 minutes a day at least 3 days a week.

Exercise 1 hour 3 days a week.

Pack lunches for Tue. and Thur.

Family Goals:

Buy a house or save $10,000 towards a down payment.

Attend church at least twice a month.

Each clean 20 minutes/day

I am sure to many they will not sound terribly ambitious, but if we did these things I think we would get on track for some bigger things in 2010.

Less Than a Week to Halloween

So it is officially 4 days to Halloween. Yeah!!!! Unfortunately, we still have quite a bit to do. I have today off of work (festival clean-up day, so the whole school is out) and Robert has Friday off. This works out well because today I am cleaning the house and finishing a few things that I still had to do to be ready for Halloween. On Friday, Rob is going to do the final set-up, etc. Hopefully, there won't be much to do on Friday.
So here is what we have done so far. Graveyard: Most of the tombstones are painted, but a few need final touches. Rob practiced the light show over the weekend and it looks awesome! I can't wait!!! Doll Room: I think it still needs a lot of work. The room is tarped and wallpapered, but that is it. Vampire Lair: Our 3 coffin doorways look very cool. One of the coffins has hanging black tarp in it so that you can't see through to the other side. The other 2 coffins still need this. Luckily, it is a very easy job that I can do tonight while watching T.V. The rest of the room still needs to be tarped, but Robert is doing that on Friday. Cornfield: I'm taking a break from painting scarecrow faces, but will finish after typing. Torture Chamber: Anthony and Granddad did an amazing job on the electric chair. It looks very realistic and has lots of noise and smoke to go along with the show. Spider Room: Anthony is still working on a pulley system (or something?) to make our HUGE spider go up and down. This room also has lots of other spiders of all sizes, spider eggs, and two skeletons wrapped up in spiderwebs. It is looking really good so far. Village: The village is done. This is still special since it was Rob's and my first Halloween project together. I really like how it looks this year and am going to have to con Robert into finding a way to store it.
Though I am excited that Halloween is almost here, I can't think what Robert and I are going to do with our time afterwards. We might have to become couch potatoes until next August, when we start getting ready again.

The Way I see it.

So today congress had their first chance to sit down with an executive of a failed financial institution and lambast him with their accusations of misappropriation of funds and lying to investors. KPCC which is the local NPR station said that if anyone had comments they could post on the KPCC blog. I got to thinking, I think I should post my comments, but in a forum someone might actually read them and respond.

The way I see it, at the root of the financial crisis is one major disease that caused three major symptoms.

The effects of greed have been advised of since ancient times. The bible warned in Luke 12:15, "Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." I think this ancient wisdom can be seen in a different light in today's environment.

So who was greedy? Who was the one who caused this all? Well despite Democrats efforts to pin this on the Bush administration, or Congress' efforts to pin it on the compensation for executives, the answer is that practically everybody is to blame for the financial crisis. How you might ask? Well let's look at the groups one by one:

Mortage Investors - In the lending industry large packages of loans are assembled and sold off in packages to various investors. Fannie Mae is one of the investors who purchases these loans in bulk and resells in even larger packages with insurance should the loans default. The interest that could accumulate on these large packages of loans is the vehicle for the greed of the mortgage investors.

Mortgage Lenders - One of the key elements in the equation for any mortage investor is risk vs. return. Fannie Mae long ago set the industry standard that essentially a mortgage payment should be no more than 38% of the gross household income, and that total household debt obligations should not exceed 45%. These ratios are still fairly standard for Fannie Mae mortgages. Because this standard is so honored in the industry very few Mortgage Investors would agree to any change in the ratios without serious rate increases. In a bid to get a larger piece of the pie Lenders sold investors on a "Lite-Doc" option in which homeowners without verifiable income could essential state their income. The lenders decision to allow this practice and the investors failure to keep it under control is another major cause of the decline. Borrowers could now essentially lie about their income to get a larger house that they would likely not be able to afford.

Borrowers - Borrowers took on large debt obligations that they were unable to afford. This is the same problem we see with credit cards. Personal responsibility for using credit irresponsibly always falls on the consumer. However, because the consumer votes, blame will always appear to fall elsewhere. The bottom line is that borrowers signed loan documents for a house they could not afford and in most cases, lied about their income to do so.

Brokers - Mortgage Brokers are charged with the responsibility of providing access to money. They do not, as some people believe, represent their borrower's best interest. They do however make a commission based on the borrower's decisions. If I told you I was going to sell you a car from a dealership, handle the paperwork and take a percentage of the sales price of the car as well as charge a bunch of fees you would say no way. This is exactly what most brokers did. Their motivation (greed) was not to get the best loan for the borrower, but to get the loan that made the most money for them. I should note that not all brokers were guilty here as with the other categories as well.

The disease of greed caused Deceit of investors and consumers, Inflated housing prices, Uncalculated Risk taking. Hence the crisis we are in today.

My sympathy doesn't go out to the borrowers losing their home because they thought they could afford a million dollar home on $50,000 of income, or who failed to educate themselves about the mortgage process. Nor does it go out to the banks who willfully took a greater risk to get a greater return. Or to the brokers who are now broke because they spent all the money they earned decieving borrowers. My heart goes out to the homeowners who purchased a home they could afford only to see the housing prices crash the following year.

These people are what I would call the silent victims of the crisis. Why are they silent? Because they bought homes they could AFFORD and even with the dip in housing prices they can still afford to make their payments. So they sit and wait watching the value of their investment go ever lower, praying that the greed of others will not drag the world market into such a recession that their job and therefore home might also be in jeopardy.

At any rate, those are my thoughts on the crisis. Perhaps not very eloquently conveyed, but my lunch hour is ending so it will have t do.

RIP Bob Halsey

So this weekend Shannon's grandfather Bob Halsey succombed to his battle with cancer. It has been about 5 months since he was diagnosed and before passing he did all he could to ensure that his wife of 40 years would be in a place where she would be surrounded by friends and church members.

His remains will be cremated and taken to West Virginia to be buried in the "Losh Plot." This is the family plot for Freddie's side of the family.

In his final days Bob was cared for by caregivers from the St. Joseph's medical group in Yorba Linda, and the family was very happy with the care they recieved. The caregivers took great care of Bob who bonded with one of the caregivers named Paul. Paul spent many hours ensuring that Bob had 24 hour care. The caregivers also took the time to prepare and counsel Freddie for the transition, a service that we are eternally grateful for as it appears to have really softened the blow of losing her companion.

Service date/time are TBD and will occur at Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton, CA.

Keeping in line with Freddie's desires we request that flowers not be sent, however we are sure cards/correspondence will be greatly appreciated.

Here is the address for Shannon's Parents:

Tom and Sandee McGinty
107 E. Palm Circle
Placentia, CA 92870

Cards may be sent here addressed to Freddie Halsey to be forwarded on.

We offer our prayer that Bob transition easily and swiftly into the care of his father in heaven and that his positive effect on this earth be felt into eternity. For his wife and loving companion we pray that she continue her days with joy and comfort provided by her friends, family and church. We are so grateful that Bob was able to attend our wedding and also his family reunion before his passing, and that we have so many great memories of our time with him.

So this weekend has started off pretty rocky. My Papa Bob passed away a little before 4 o'clock in the morning today. I was very fortunate to have spent quite a few hours with him and my grandma last night, and was able to say goodbye. We thought that there was 2 or 3 days left, but it ended up only being a matter of hours after hospice informed us. However, I look upon that as a blessing. It was a lot easier on the ones who loved him that it happened this way. He had the good fortune to be able to die at home in his own bed. Before yesterday, he was even able to get out of bed and go sit in the rocking chair when company was over. Though he was mostly non-responsive due to the amount of morphine that he was being given, you could tell that he was still thinking and hearing when people talked to him. We all knew that he had comes to terms with dying and was ready to go home to heaven. It is especially in times like this that I am so grateful for my religious values and beliefs. I can't imagine how incredibly difficult this would be if I didn't believe that my grandpa is now in a better place, a place that my family and I will one day be reunited with him in. Though it is difficult to lose someone who meant so much to me, I am thankful that he passed away with the dignity that he did and that he is no longer experiencing suffering or pain. He will always be a special person in my life, and I will forever cherish the memories that I have of him.

More research

So I spent my lunch hour doing some more research on Keratoconus and the possible treatments including the treatment TLC recommended the INTACs. Basically most research shows that the INTACS procedure significantly improves vision in 2 out of 3 patients, but the procedure for the most part does not significantly reduce the chance that the condition will worsen.

In my research I stumbled upon a treatment known as C3-R which essentially is a treatment to help strengthen the corneal structure. More information can be found here: http://www.keratoconusinserts.com/cornea.html.

While still in the clinical trial phase in the U.S. the treatment has been carried out for many years in Europe and India with good results. After plowing through site after site I found the actual clinical trial authorization information from the FDA and it contained a list of sites in the U.S. where the trials will be conducted including one in San Diego.

I contacted that site, who had since passed the trial rights onto another group whom I contacted. I am now number 4 on their waiting list for patients to be seen. Apparently they cannot begin to see patients until their "IBR" authorization comes through. It sounds like they haven't worked out all the legal kinks in conducting the trials yet. The lady was really nice and I think she will contact me one way or another to let me know the progress.

I really hope I am a candidate as this procedure looks like it at least halts progression of the condition and in many patients reverses the effects actually strengthening the cornea.

Yup, it's THAT bad...

So the picture to the left is bit deceptive, this is not actually MY eye. My eye is much worse. This is a topograph of a person with the same condition I have, just not as severe.

I went to a consultation this morning with TLC to see if I was a candidate for Laser Eye surgery. After some testing they sat me down with a doctor who informed me that I have Keratoconus. It is a condition that affects 1 in 1000 people and basically results in the cornea or lens of the eye getting more and more conical shaped as time goes on. The link to the wikipedia page is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus and there is a great picture of a guy's eye. It was a bit too gross to put on here so if you want to go look at it you can.

Essentially the topograph above shows that the cornea is largely normal in the upper portion of the eye, but drops off steeply towards the bottom of the lens. The doctors said they like to be able to draw a line across the center of the eye and see about as much color on the top as the bottom. My topograph had virtually no color in the upper portion and a bunch of red and pink in the bottom portion.

The really crappy thing about the condition is that contacts and glasses don't really help the situation as it is the Cornea that is the problem, not the eye itself. So at any rate it looks like there are 3 real options:

1) Continue to wear contacts, but switch to RGP or rigid contacts that would be hard and force the cornea more into shape. This would be a temporary fix and it is likely the cornea will get worse.

2) Implant INTACs into my eye under the cornea. As TLC performs this procedure this is obviously their proposed option. Essentially slits would be made into the cornea and little pieces of plastic would be inserted to stretch the cornea into shape.

3) Ignore the problem in which case my vision will deteriorate further and further until eventually I can barely see out of my right eye and I would need a corneal transplant or as my co-worker so eloquently put it, I would need "dead guy eye" put in.

The third option is very non-appealing to me. To the point where I would almost prefer to not have vision in my right eye. The contact option doesn't sound too bad, but it also sounds like it would be a daily inconvenience.

The second option is still somewhat experimental, but has had good results. So at any rate, I need to do a lot more research, and will probably ask to get a second opinion before I go forward. As my two greatest fears in life are to go blind or to lose my hearing, I am going to put in some serious leg-work before I make a decision on this one.

My boss brought up that because it is an actual condition the INTACs might be covered by insurance, which I will have to look into. The doctor said that with the INTACs AND glasses, they think the could give me close to 20/20 vision in my right eye, which would be a miracle.

At any rate, depressing news, but nothing compared to what others suffer through.

What a weekend!

So it was a pretty great weekend including a trip to Disneyland and stay at the Grand Californian Hotel. Shannon and I also got annual passes that will allow us to go to Disneyland during the week should we ever find a weekday we can both have off. We went with my Dad and Jody and Jeff and Abbey and their little ones. It was great watching the little nephews run around and have a good time.

I got to go on Space Mountain with my little newphew Noah who was going on it for the first time. It was fun to watch someone experience it for the first time and to think back to when I used to ride Space Mountain as a kid. Disneyland has changed so much since then.

We also got to see 3 of our 4 living grandpas. Shannon's grandfather is in his final weeks of a battle with cancer and is on some pretty heavy medication which is always difficult on family members. Because of the stress and his need for constant care her grandmother had let her needs slip not taking her medication and losing most of her appetite. It is a pretty rough transition for the whole family. I was happy to see that Freddie (the grandmother) was back on her medication and was in good mental condition though she was of course very distraught. Bob (the grandfather) perked up a bit when he noticed we were there and is still communicating suprisngly well in between his sleeping.

On the other side it was my Mom's father's birthday this weekend so we went down to San Diego to celebrate. Unfortunately Shannon andI have both not been feeling too well so we left kind of early. We decided it must just be something Shannon caught from her kids as the school year just started and this class is much more "touchy" than last year's. So at any rate, our visit in San Diego was short, but it was great to see all the family and especially the triplet cousins. They are walking around and starting to talk which is great to see.

So it was a pretty busy weekend leaving little time to work on our Village or on the Haunted House. Hopefully we will have some time to crank on both of those this week.

A new day, a new cell phone

So I decided after only a year to replace my cell phone. It is getting to the point that it is so unreliable due to battery life that I may miss some important calls. I can't in good conscience tell people they can reach me on my cell phone, which is pretty pathetic. So I should be getting my new Samsung "Alias" in the mail in the next couple days and will post up a review when I do.

It took quite a while to get the brain started up this morning as it often does after a three day weekend. Not to help the situation, I am really trying to kick coffee and soda, so no wake up juice for me.

Shannon starts her first day of school today and I am excited to see how it went. She has a much smaller class this year which does not bode well for her school's future, but it should make the year a little bit easierfor her. The school has a new principal which will likely cause a few growing pains. Somehow I have a feeling it will be harder than the other teachers than on Shannon. She is very organized, plans well, implements well and has no problems making it to places on time and properly dressed as some teachers do.

We had a great weekend of mostly hanging around the house. We got some of the gardening done, took the Nova out for a drive and sold the Pontiac. I also got a chance to work on our halloween light show, and got about 30 seconds of the timeline for the first song done. Now that I know what I am doing I think I will be able to program more efficiently when I get back on it.

We also went to the blessing for Jeff's third child, Ryder. The blessing is a prayer by elder men in the church. It is not the equivalent of a baptism as Mormons have baptism later in life as well, but is performed while the child is an infant. It is amazing they already have three and all three are so calm and such good babies. With my luck my children will be little hellians, but I guess what goes around comes around right?

Too much to keep up...

Man all these social networking sites are hard to keep up with. I have become a slave to checking each site to make sure I haven't accidentally snubbed some old friend by not instantly approving a friend request they sent, or updated my profile to reflect my true current status. I found an application on Facebook that will allow me to simultaneously update Shannon and my blog heatonspace.blogspot.com, while also updating Facebook. I think my myspace may just have to fall by the way side and be an occasional check only type gig.

So what's going on...Well my team "Flabbercrombie and Cheech" dominated a Beerfest tournament at Nick's 30th birthday this weekend. We took 1st place in three out of four events and second in the other. This final crushing victory may signal my retirement from the plastic cup politics arena of drinking games. At some point in life you gotta stop consuming upwards of 2000 calories in one night if you want to maintain and/or lose any weight.

I am on a self improvement kick right now and am looking at options for improving my job credentials, physical fitness and mental state in general. Specifically I still need to satisfy my conditional requirements for my Real Estate Salesperson's license which I will probably do over the next week. I am also looking at some further education in the form of a Master's degree, a Law Degree or some other intrinsically valuable piece of paper.

We finally got an Autotrader add up for Shannon's previous car that we need to sell, and I got some more housework done this weekend. Shannon's tutoring has her working late Monday nights, so I think I am going to spend part of the extra time getting some things done at work and clocking some overtime in the process.

Recently an old friend found me on facebook and it has resulted in linking up with a whole group of friends I haven't talked to in forever which is awesome. I am looking forward to getting back in touch with some people and seeing what they are up to in life.

Back to School

Today I completed my first day back to school. I don't have kids until the Tuesday after Labor Day, but I do have to work for a week and a half before they ever show up. It seems like a long time considering that they have to pay us, but that's the schedule. Every year I forget what it is like to be in a stuffy classroom that does not have air conditioning. I get spoiled during the summer sitting at home, so when I go back I feel like I am dying of heat stroke. At least it tends to get cold pretty fast, and then instead I am freezing to death and teaching in a coat. Oh, well. At least I get 2 months in the summer off, 2 weeks for Christmas, 1 for Easter, and lots of Monday holidays. And it could be worse. I could teach in a place like Arizona without air conditioning or Wisconsin without a heating system.

I have also agreed to tutor 2 days a week on top of my regular work schedule. This means that Monday and Wednesday are going to be LONG days... but the extra money is nice.

And of course... Robert and I are still working on our Dept. 56 Halloween Village. We will definitely post pictures when everything is looking beautiful, I mean, spooky. I have no idea what we are going to talk about on this blog when Halloween is over. We definitely don't look forward to Christmas, or Easter, or July 4th as much as we do Halloween. We'll have to figure something out though. :)

Rhode Island

So the weekend in Rhode Island was very good. We had lots of fun and spent more time hanging out with friends than I would have expected. The wedding was absolutely beautiful and Robert and I had a wonderful time dancing throughout the entire reception. I don't get that guy out on a dance floor very often, so I need to take advantage of the opportunities that I get.
Rob didn't mention all of the missing/forgotten items on the trip though... First, we forgot our garment bag that had his suit and my dress for the wedding. Luckily, Nick and Lisa were taking a red eye and went to our house to pick it up and then brought it with them to Cape Cod. The shuttle for the wedding was leaving at 5 p.m., so of course the boys started to get dressed at 4:45. Lo and behold, there was not any dress socks or tie in the garment bag. Robert was frantically searching and swearing that he did pack them. Then, he found a TSA notice in the same pocket of where his socks and tie were supposed to be. Guess TSA forgot to repack them. Rob didn't even pack any socks or anything in the suitcase, so he had to borrow white cotton socks from Nick and a pretty "interesting" yellow tie with baby blue flowers from a groomsman. On the plane ride home, I went to tighten my earrings and found that I was only wearing one. I don't think I could have went very long without noticing that an earring was missing, so it must have happened on that day at either the hotel or the airplane. We searched the airplane with some help from nearby passengers, so I don't think it happened on the plane. I guess we can chock the earring up as lost, which is too bad because I bought those earrings as a college graduation present to myself (and they weren't cheap) that matched a ring that parents had bought for me. Plus, sapphires are my favorite. Then, the camera thing... I don't think Rob and I should travel anymore. We have bad luck.

Grrrrrr....

What a frustrating day. Here's the list

Lost: Shannon's sapphire and diamond earring, missing somewhere along our Rhode Island trip. Digital Camera, left in the rental car on our Rhode Island trip. Company claims the car has been cleaned and it was not found however the car will be returned on Sunday and they will do a thorough search.

Late: Payment to Wells Fargo. McAfee mistakenly charged a renewal fee to an old credit card that I haven't used in years who had an old address resulting in a credit late that I will now have to spend hours getting removed from my credit report.

Reported: Downey reported some more bad news that sent the stock plummeting more than 20%. Fortunately I sold my stocks before the plummet and am waiting for the right moment to buy back in and ride the wave back up when people realize nothing has changed.

So anyway, all those things combined make for a rather frustrating morning, but I am really not in a bad mood. Things are going pretty well.

Shannon and I spent a good amount of time on the Halloween Village last night. For a while there our little hot wire device that we use to cut foam broke and I had to dissect it to repair it. If there happens to be any village enthusiasts out there I highly recommend NOT buying the Dept. 56 foam cutter. It is pretty cheaply made and comes with some limited options. We are going to get the one from hotwirefoamfactory.com which is supposed to be pretty sweet.

The one advantage that the one from dept 56 seems to have is a compact accuracy. The best way to describe it would be that while you would hold the foam factory hot wire like a ping pong paddle with your palm around the handle, you can hold the Dept 56 one like a pen so you get smoother squigglies, but we will have to experiment and see.

We were planning on heading to Havasu this weekend, but in an effort to save some money and get some time at home, we will be at home cleaning and working on Halloween stuff.

I might post later as if you can't tell I am in a chatty mood.

Phoenix ATC Delay

Well we are en route to our friend's wedding and we are sitting in the Phoenix airport. We have an ATC (Air Traffic Control) delay which means there is probably some pretty crappy weather on the other end. Gotta love the East Coast. I spoke with Ben (the groom) yesterday and he said the weather was pretty crappy. I really hope for their sakes that the weather improves before the wedding tomorrow. Rhode Island is a long way for us to go for a wedding, but as the lady sitting next to us on the plane put it, "Good friends are very hard to come by, belive me, I have been around 72 years and have very few."

Ben and Carrie called us yesterday and offered us a room at the actual wedding location for free for one night, so that will help out as well.

As usual Shannon is her cost-conscious self and has packed us a bagful of snacks and things for the plane. I am so used to business travel and just eating wherever I can that I never would have thought of it. The trip did get off to a bit of a rocky start when we got to the airport and realized we had left our garment bag at the house and had no time to retrieve it. Fortunately a couple we know is coming out on a red eye later on so they are going to stop by our house and grab it for us.

I am excited to be working on the halloween village again. The table is HUGE this year. Last year the whole village was 6'x4' and this year it will be 8'x5'. We wanted to build a table and base layers of foam big enough that we won't have to buy them again, so our village will likely be a little spacious this year.

Here is a link to our gallery of last years' village:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robheaton/HalloweenVillage2007

This year we would like to take more pictures of the various stages of completion. Time to wrap up and wait for the plane to leave. More to come from Rhode Island.