New apartment

Check out our new place.  The first pic is the empty kitchen: job #1 is to install the cabinets and sink and oven.

Aaron says lately:
"Mommy - Watch out don't crash the udder cars!"  "OK - Aaron - thanks for reminding me"
"Mommy - you are like a bridge!"  (my feet are on the sofa table)
"It's like a hamburger!"  (folding his egg sandwich in half)
"Bellas is a nice dog"
Aaron loves taking photos lately.
He says "OK Daddy, Mommy and Timmy.  Say cheese!  Timmy - say cheese!  Timmy - say cheese!!!"
"OK - one more."
"OK, Mommy, Daddy and Timmy - I gotta fix it!"  Then he opens and closes the camera and takes another photo.  He repeats these same exact phrases every time he takes a photo. :)

Timmy says:
"Skylanders!"
"Wanna play in Mario in my Super Computer?!"  (he especially likes this game at Linden Park, which has a large roofed slide.
A kid was scared of the Easter Bunny at the Bunny Brunch.  I said "Timmy - are you afraid of the Easter Bunny?"  He said "I like the Easter Bunny.  He's filled with love in his heart."  (I think he got this from watching Care Bears at Machas)

I luv the internet.

Must I say more?  OK, I'll expand on that thought a little bit.  I have a nice HP laptop which is nearly 3 years old.  Ancient as far as computers go, but should still have a lot of life in it.  Well, KT turned it on the other day and we just got the black screen of death.  Booooo!  With the enormous and quite depressing cost of moving abroad, I did not look forward to forking out more of our hard-earned life savings for a replacement.  Booo again.  So I'm doing everything I can think of to fix the dumb thing, and I found a way to "pull the codes", to borrow a common car term, and find out what the computer thought that the problem was.  It was the cpu.  To replace it would be borderline the cost of a new laptop.  Boooo again.  Out of desperation, I googled "hp tx2 bad cpu" and read through pages of disgruntled people complaining about the same thing that I was experiencing.  It looked like the site moderator must have been very busy keeping everything clean.  

Anyway, I stumbled on some awesomely-crazy soul who had a brilliant idea: I took the whole thing apart, stripped all components off of the motherboard that I could, and put it in the oven.  How awesome is that?  I put the dumb thing in the @#$#%# oven!  325 for 8 minutes.  Wrapped in foil no less.  If it weren't for the smell of overheated solder, I would have been tempted to take a bite to make sure it was done all the way through.  I put it back together, and sure enough it started up again.  Oh, and I said a little prayer before turning it on.  Nerves were rather high at that point.  

Well, to make sense of it all, here's the "scientific explanation."  The cooling system is inadequate in this model, and the cpu overheats easily.  When that happens, the solder can get soft and some of the components can lose contact with the circuit board.  So baking it softens the solder again, and I guess you just hope that things set right this time.  They did.

So, to PrototypeNM1, that anonymous hero prowling the back alleys of tech forums, I salute you.  Go Prototype NM1, go.

I still think my kids are practically just babies (at ages 2 and 4..haha), but then I was browing these photos from Christmas 2009.  Aaron was 6 months old, and Timmy had just turned 2.  

Wook how widdow dey awwww!!!

Timmy looks JUST like Aaron did this year to me!  Especially because he always wore this same shirt.

Little Boys

While KT spent the Saturday working on the big problem of how to move to a different country without spending your life savings, I took the boys out and did some "guy stuff".  Very fun, but as a guy used to sitting at a computer most of the day and only getting up once every 3 hours or so to go to the bathroom, it was a little taxing.

Of course, there were extreme sports involved.  By the way, I want to draw your attention to the classic coat that Aaron's sportin.  An 80's classic, if there ever was one.  Apparently this was my coat as a kid, and my mom saved it for us.  It's pretty sweet!, I must've had a pretty keen fashion sense back then.  I don't know what's happen to me since.

Surprisingly, they really liked posing for pictures.  I know it's not the manliest of things, but it'll serve them well on their wedding day when custom forces them to parade a round in front of a photographer all day.  Aaron has been using our old camera, so he doesn't mind posing, then he makes us pose so that  he can get the same shot.

Again, a little posing.  It has been unseasonable warm here in Cleveland, and the plants are coming out much earlier than normal.  This little stretch of forest was just blanketed with these dense, low-lying plants.

What's manlier than yelling to the world how awesome you are?   

The term "guy stuff" must always at least partially refer to throwing rocks.  For the younglings and those of us not prone to vandalism, the desired target is water.  Water reacts explosively enough to make us feel like we are the sources of great, powerful destruction while keeping us out of jail.  If we are lucky, the target will never graduate to the much more satisfying but permanently destructive glass windows.

Oh, and while they were at it, Aaron had to stop for a second to call his "friend dog Bester" and let him know that rocks were being thrown.  I think Bester even got a heartfelt invitation to join in the fun, but as far as I know it was never accepted.

What would be a good rock throwing session without a stick that resembled something more useful?  For one of the first times in little boy history, said stick was not mistaken for a gun and used to shoot up close family members.  This one was a merely a peaceable hammer.  

Another sign of a good time is the betterment of their honorable fencing skills through a little friendly sparring.  Someday, they will have grand duels to the death over fair maidens and insults to their honer, and they'll sure be glad that they wisely trained for the future during these early years.  

Finally, when the jousting mood elevates and the battle becomes rather heated, the inevitability of someone "losing an eye" leads to the tyrannical confiscation of all weapons by the reigning authority.  With no weapons of less-than-mass destruction at hand, the little ones turn to the more intimate, albeit archaic, mode of dispute-settling originating from their early ancestors: wrestling.  One recent evolution in their carrying out of this activity involves new goal beyond just expending pent-up little boy energy: winning.  They are now strenuously striving to be the victor on top, which requires them to shame their opponent by "riding him like a pony."  The humiliated loser must endure this barbaric practice of being diminished to a mere beast of burden.

I secretly hope that this mode of taunting endures the maturation process and becomes a part of their adult personas.  I can picture Aaron someday in a crowded conference room full of men and women smartly dressed in their business attire.  Aaron and his team has just won out the bid for the years biggest account over Johnson's team, and everyone is celebrating.  As Johnson turns to leave the boardroom with heavy hands and his head held low, Aaron suddenly solidifies his victory by jumping on Johnson's back, and yelling "I ride you like a pony".  Glorious!

The future of human space exploration...

If we ever get back to space...