I never realized how stupid I was until I tried to install car seats and set up a Pack N’ Play for the first time. This isn’t the longest post in history, but it is more of an honest confession. Seriously, there is no way that Pack N’ Play will ever get packed away again. Don’t even get me started on the child seat bases. I have installed the bases in both cars, but I don’t understand how it will stay put.
A detailed look at the boring life of Kevin Seise
End of the Year Wrap Up
What a long crazy year this has been. I have not really kept up with the blogging since work decided to kick my ass, my car decided to crap out, and my wife decided to get knocked up. Sadly, I suspect that this time next year I will be considering these the “good old days”. The wife and I are excited and nervous about the prospect.
This coming year, I plan to make some more frequent updates to this site. I have dumped Facebook and will be coming here to post most of my updates. The privacy issues of Facebook have forced me to give up hope of keeping my info private and under my control. At least on this site, the permissions will not keep changing.
I have helped my sister in law setup her own blog and probably need to put a plug here to redirect to Playground Talk. Check it out if you are looking for information on local playgrounds and places to take the kids.
I managed to swim a little over 100 miles this year despite my best efforts. The Sussex County YMCA hours have been pretty rough to work with on my work schedule. Hopefully this coming year will be better. I am renewing my U.S. Master Swimmer memership and just replaced my headphones from H2O Audio. Of course, Apple decided to change up the iPod Shuffle and my next headphone replacement will have to include a new iPod also.
Got some kayaking in over the summer and managed to drop about 20 pounds before putting the winter weight back on. The fact that a tree fell on our house during Hurricane Irene and I wasted most of my free time cleaning up after that was not helpful.
Oh, and I almost forgot! Santa was very good to me! I got a bunch of stuff, but the most impressive was an Official Red Ryder Carbine 650 Air Rifle which my loving wife gave me! I have not even shot my eye out yet!
Sadly, we lost one of the three cats. Of course, it was the wrong one. Scarface succombed to Feline Parva (AKA Distemper). Unfortunately, Stoopid Cat is still alive and kicking. I have requested to take him out and dress him up as a coyote this coming week during the start of Coyote hunting season in New Jersey. Wife doesn’t seem thrilled with the idea. What a Party Pooper.
Site Updates
I am working to cleanup the Photo Album page for this site. The old photo album had a bunch of old photos and was lacking the wonderful depth of content I felt it deserved. I am working to create a new gallery and will put it up soon.
Oh, and I am working to keep the spammers out again. I deleted the old gallery because I had about 3,000 spammers listed as registered users. Luckily, they never actually finished the registration process, but it made filtering out the real users impossible.
Switched to Debian
In 2005, I wiped my home computer of all traces of anything Microsoft. I completely switched away from Windows to Linux. I will never go back. Since that time, I have added a few systems and converted my wife to Linux. She has been using it on her laptop for a few years now and we have never had a single virus or computer problem which wasn’t some sort of hardware issue or user error.
One of the key things about using Linux is figuring out which “distribution” to use. The one I chose was Ubuntu which at the time was the latest and greatest version with the most chatter and followers. One of the key features was the ease of installation and use. Since I got into Linux around 2003, I have tried several other distributions (Mandrake, Puppy, Knoppix, Fedora, OpenSuse, Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Gentoo) and It really is amazing to see what Ubuntu has accomplished.
Unfortunately, Ubuntu’s drive to keep it fresh and stay on the cutting edge has made it a little bit unpredictable. Some of the new features have wiped out old features which worked really well. So I looked around and have decided to switch. Debian Linux is one of the oldest versions out there and is entirely community maintained. That means, instead of a single company making decisions on what goes into the operating system, the user base and volunteer developers all work together and decide what should be included and how it should be configured. Development is slow and release dates can be unpredictable but in the Linux world, Debian is the undisputed king of stability.
Cat might have to die!
Our stupid cat has decided to start peeing on my stuff. The various local shelters are telling us that they can’t take anymore cats because the housing collapse has caused too many people to give up their pets. We took him to the vet today and were given a few meds to try and if that doesn’t work, the little bastard is going OUTSIDE!
Pregnant!
On July 20, 2011, I got home from a long hto day of work. My wife had been home for the day preparing for a little romantic getaway we had planned for Amish Country. She surprised me with the news that she was pregnant. The funny thing about that…. we weren’t supposed to be able to have kids.
Vacation was overshadowed by the inevitable “holy shit we’re pregnant” discussion. The wife was in full panic mode, but I was sort of enjoying the whole thing. That was, until we discovered morning sickness on day 2 of vacation. She sort of attributed it to the prenatal vitamins though. It wasn’t really that bad apparently.
One of the great things about finding out when we did was that we were out of town and didn’t have any time to tell our families. On August 13, we are visiting the Gendron side of the family and the following week we are visiting the Seise side. Somehow, we will have kept it quiet for a month before telling the Seise side. I am saving these posts for until after the announcement.
We are working to switch the house around and create a nursery while clearing out the old stuff.
System Crashed and Rebuilt
My computer crashed and burned. I burned out the motherboard and video cards I think. I rebuilt it and hit a major issue with getting it back online. I found this link which really helped.
On debian, the files under udev are different, but I found the right file and followed the directions.
Amish Getaway
The wife and I decided to do the first couples getaway we have ever done. We decided to head out to Amish Country in southeast Pennsylvania. The Amish part moved a little too slow, but Hershey Park and Chocolate World saved the day!
We started out on Thursday and did a nice drive down the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Once we hit the Lehigh Valley, we headed southwest and got our first encounter with farmland in a heat wave. It was over 100 degrees and instead of the faint aroma of maure rolling across the hills, we got the rancid cow patties baking in the hot sun next to the fresh asphalt. Not all that pleasant.
On the way to the 1825 Inn, we stopped in Lititz PA, at the Lititz Pretzel Factory. We used to come here periodically as kids, and I remember it being fun, plus, the wife loves pretzels. We stopped in during the peak of the afternoon heat. Luckily, but sadly, they stopped baking in this facility back in 2006. We still got to try our hand at pretzel twisting and got to experience the insane heat of the bakery in the summer.
After the pretzel factory, we headed over to the Bird In Hand Farmers Market. We wandered around the market and checked out the goods. We also hit the “antique” store attached to the farmers market. After passing on some of the “Made in China” antiques, we decided to roll over to the Bed and Breakfast. Upon arrival in Hershey, we were hit by the really pleasant aroma of chocolate blowing down the Hershey Highway. It was nice.
The B&B was beautiful. We were greeted by the standin Innkeeper, Jane. There were fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting. We got the Amish room with a nice kingsized tempurpedic mattress. Highly recommend it. The B&B is just three miles north of downtown Hershey, PA.
We hit up dinner and decided to hit Hershey Chocolate World for dessert. It was not bad at all. It was a pretty nice ending to the day and a nice introduction to the area.
The second day of vacation was Hershey Park. Colleen held up pretty well. The offcial temperature was around 103, but the heat index was well over 110. The water rides were mobbed. We saw three roller coasters break down including one that was stuck in the middle of a loop. Colleen spent about 30 minutes watching the rescue crews try to figure out how to get folks down. We hit the zoo which was disappointing since the animals appeared burned out. The whole experience was really pretty good despite the insane heat. It was great for people watching too! Dinner was a traditional amish feast at Houlihans…. stupid vegetarian diet. We were feeling pretty wiped, so we went back to the B&B and called it a night.
Day three was a trip to the Amish country. We hit the tourist trap Amish Village, did some shopping in a legit Amish wood working store, and grabbed some Whoopie Pies at the Bird In Hand Bakery . Since it was still 97 degrees, we swung over to the Indian Echo Caverns and hid out in the nice 52 degree caves for a while. Once again, we headed out for dinner at “What If…” in Hershey. Very impressive little restaurant in the basement of a Howard Johnson. The crab alfredo was amazing. The Insalata Pizza was also really good.
Sunday was an unintentionally early departure. Apparently, the Amish are a fairly religious folk, and they shut down operations on Sundays. We packed up and moseyed home along the back roads. We did find a covered bridge, but it wasn’t very photogenic.
It’s nice to be home, and the weather seems to be breaking and cooling down a bit.
It’s Officially a Year!
Today marks the one year anniversary of my quitting smoking! Over the course of the past year, a ton of stuff has happened, and I have been remiss in keeping this blog updated. I will be posting more in the future. Keep your eyes on it!
Chantix was the way I quit, but recently saw some studies that show that Chantix can lead to elevated risk of heart diseases. Well, so far, my heart is still going. We will see. My swimming was going fine, and I expect it to return to relative normalcy after the summer. The YMCA messed around with the schedule for the summer months. Right now, I am sticking with Kayaking. I was impressed that Colleen joined me for a treck through the Monksville Reservoir. It is worth checking out.
Still chugging away
I am still swimming and am only about 15.5 miles short of my 200 mile goal for the year. I am doing about 2.5 miles three days per week. Well, most of the time. I do have work and a life. The lung issue has been acting up this week, but it seems to help to take Zyrtec with the inhaler that the Doc gave me (Serevent Diskus).
I am down about 10 pounds since August and have quit smoking completely. Yes, I still get some cravings when I am sitting in my car in traffic. It is easily controllable though. Although I quit smoking, I don’t feel any different. The question occasionally comes up about feeling better, but I really don’t feel any different.
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