Tag / Weather

by Greg

Relocation

I had to relocate my office today. My computers were finally overheating (one shut down a couple times while it was working) and so I figured I should give them a rest. I shut down most everything, and transferred my mail to my laptop so I could work off of that. It really didn’t work that well… but I’m up and running now. 🙂

It’s kinda cool though. I have all my files here, and am listening to a podcast from my computer upstairs (streaming to this one) and even brought down my candle. (I like candles.)

So… hopefully my computer and I can be a bit more productive down here…

by Greg

5 Reasons

Summer BugsYou might know that I really, really don’t like summer… and that’s mainly due to the hot, sticky weather. Ick. Just really not for me. But this past week of warmness reminded me that there are at least 5 more reasons to not like summer…

  • Ants
  • Mosquitos
  • Flies
  • Alien Bugs
  • Spiders (except that they eat the other things

See… once the weather warms up, the creatures come out!!!! We’re INFESTED with ants. The other day, Jen found a giant pile of them around a dirty SOCK. A SOCK. You have to be a lot more careful in the summer, cause any food on the counter or on the floor or in the sink or even IN THE TRASH CAN will bring out the bugs!!!!!

I’m not a fan of summer.

But I do like seeing our raspberries coming back to life. That’s pretty cool. 🙂

by Greg

Tuesday Tidbits

  • NFL Draft
    This past weekend was the NFL draft, as I mentioned here previously. This year, the crazy part was the Bills drafted pretty much as they were expected to! How crazy is that? Last year everyone was flipping out over the insane picks the Bills made… this year, everyone is much happier. (Last year, all the picks made the team, and made significant contributions to the team… what does that mean for this year?) 🙂 Anyhoo… I wrote an overview of it yesterday at my Buffalo Bills Review site. (It’s also on the Bills website, but that’s a crazier link… you can get there from the BBR site…) (PLUS, there are some fun videos on the BBR site…) 🙂
  • Sabres Update
    The Buffalo Sabres lost in double overtime on Sunday. We almost missed it due to the confusing side of TiVo. Long story. But, thankfully we did not. 🙂 Well, sorta thankfully… Game four is tonight… look for the Sabres to take a commanding 3-1 lead heading back to Buffalo for Game 5 Friday night.
  • Macs
    Lots of interest in Macs lately. Been seeing lots of folks who previously have had no interest in the Mac OS switching over to the wonderful world of Apple. If you’re tired of spyware, virus protection, strange error messages, and would like to just enjoy using your computer – Apple has a great section of their site you can check out: apple.com/getamac. It has tons of reasons to buy a Mac, and answers to questions about switching. AND, all those fun commercials with Justin Long and John Hodgman. 🙂

    If you’re interested, I would love to help you pick out the best computer for you. I can even get some discounts too, so definitely let me know if you’re interested. If you don’t need discounts, just click here: bwd-graphics.com/apple. Just enter my Agent ID at checkout. Thanks! 🙂

  • BEAUTIFUL weather
    I don’t really like summer… at all. But, I am loving the recent couple days. Beautiful blue sky, sunny days, green grass, budding flowers… and only in the 60s!! That’s perfect, if you ask me. 🙂
  • Visits
    Grammy & Grandpa are coming to visit this weekend (that would be my parents). We’re looking forward to it. Have lots planned for the short three day visit. Grandma & Grandpa W (Jen’s parents) might be joining us for Friday night too. The boys play baseball on Friday. That would be so fun to have both grandparents there! 🙂 We’re looking forward to seeing them again…
  • Busy…
    I’m feeling busy, but not seeing the return in $$$ at the moment. That is a frustrating place to be. Hopefully that will change in the month of May. Lots of new business on the horizon… perhaps I’ll have to start nudging this week. 🙂
  • Vacation!
    One more thing on my mind of late… VACATION! We already have a week of vacation planned in California in late October – JUST ME AND JEN! But my parents have graciously offered to help us have a family vacation also this year, and the only time we can do that is THIS MONTH. 🙂 I’m not complaining! We’ll be vacating to a favorite vacation destination in the Poconos two weeks from Saturday! Can’t wait! 🙂
  • We’re Still Singing…
    Because of that newly scheduled vacation… we had to REschedule a concert we are doing this month. They were gracious enough to move the date out one week, and we’re looking forward to our evening with them. Now you can hear us at Impact Theater here in Palmyra on May 25th, at 7:30pm. It’s free, but you have to make reservations.

    So…. we’ll see ya out there! 🙂

by Greg

Campbells of the Woods

Well, not really the woods so much, but we sure did spend a LOT of time outdoors this weekend!!!

I had really two goals this weekend. I wanted to clean out our van, which was just disgusting after a whole winter of not being cleaned. Then, I hoped we could get all the sticks and other random junk out of our yard. We have about a quarter acre, so it’s not a huge task, but it did take some effort.

Add to those tasks the goal of having burgers on the grill for Saturday and Sunday’s evening meal (hopefully with friends!) and we had a full weekend!

  • The Van
    Saturday morning began relatively early for a Saturday. I was outside around 9am getting to work on the van. I had to take out all the seats and worked for about 30 minutes just pulling out all the stuff so that I could get in there with the ShopVac. It was really nasty. I think I finished around 12:30pm with all the cleaning… so a good three and a half hours to clean just the inside of our van. Whew!
  • The Back Yard
    Meanwhile, Jen and the kids picked up sticks and raked up the rest of the junk in our back yard. Jen really does not like any sort of yard work, so it was a struggle for her, but she helped a LOT. We stopped for lunch around 1pm or so (a nice Sub from Breen’s, with carrots and potato chips… very summer-y) and took a break till around 3pm when Grandma arrived and the boys and I ended up back outside to finish the back yard job. I must say, they did a great job sticking to it, and we finished in pretty good time! The yard looked great, and my boys helped make it that!
  • Cookout #1
    I mentioned Grandma came over… she took the kids to the park for a while and then we all shared a fun summer meal from the grill. We had some fantastic burgers, including a Greek Burger (tomatoes, onions, greek dressing and feta cheese) among others. We even had a few stragglers join us… 🙂 Our neighbor and his dad were hanging out outside as I was coming in and out from the grill, and so I offered them a burger 🙂 (One of my favorite things to do is provide food for people…)
  • The Front & Side Yard
    Sunday morning we got a bit of a later start (had waffles for breakfast!) but that was OK, cause the front and side yards are a lot smaller job. We all went out and picked up the piles like the day before, and Mom & Ian worked under the porch, clearing out a bunch of junk that has collected under there over the past four years. We finished up pretty quickly and then headed inside to get lunch ready…
  • Picnic In The Park
    As we were working outside, I thought it was such a nice day that we should go up to the park and have a picnic in the park! Everyone agreed, so we started packing up our sandwiches for the trip. When I got all the sandwiches made, and the other food collected I said, “Where’s our picnic basket??” I forgot we didn’t have one anymore… So a few seconds later, Kirstie comes around the corner holding a little basket she had emptied of its contents saying, “Here’s a basket, Dad!” 🙂 Very cute!

    So we rounded up everything and walked just around the corner to our Village Park. It was just us! They hadn’t set up the picnic tables yet (!!) so we ate on the steps of the pavillion at the center of the park. The kids were kinda distracted by eating outside, but I thought it was fun still anyway 🙂 We stayed and played in the park for at least an hour afterwards. Swings, slides, that spinny thing. Ian fell off of that once. Not good. But Ian also made some fantastic catches of football passes from Dad! It was definitely a highlight of my day! 🙂

  • Relaxing Afternoon
    When we got back, the girls took their nap, and the boys and Dad watched the rest of Around The World In 80 Days that we had started a week or two ago. It’s THREE HOURS! But we did finish, and we liked it. After that we watched the third period of the NJ Devils vs Tampa Bay Lightning series. Well, I napped for a good bit of that… but I was in the room. 🙂 The Devils won, so the Sabres will now play the Rangers in round two. That’s cool…
  • Cookout #2
    To finish off the weekend, our friends the Stupins came to join us for cookout #2. This was a bit more adventurous for some reason. When I put the burgers on the grill, on low flame… the fire just erupted! The flames were shooting out of everywhere on the grill at least 2 feet in the air!!! Somehow, the burgers were still edible, but man that was crazy!!!

    We had fun just playing in our yard (they have three young girls, our kids’ age) after dinner for a while. We were also joined bu our neighbors. It was a nice way to spend the evening.

  • Ice Cream!!!
    But we weren’t done! Everyone else had to go home around 8pm (bedtime??? crazy!) but we decided to head up to Chill & Grill to top off the weekend with some ice cream!!!! Well, as we were just leaving our house, we saw our babysitter heading home on her bike, and invited her to join us for some ice cream! She agreed, and we had a nice walk up there. (She rode slowly on her bike…) BUT THEN… as we got closer, we noticed there was no line out the door at Chill & Grill… and the OPEN sign was not lit!!!! It wasn’t closing time yet… so what’s the deal????

    We went up to the door and the sign said they were “out of inventory”!!!! NO!!!!!!! We just walked about a mile for their ice cream and they were all out!!!!!! 🙁

    So, Kristin went home (the babysitter) and we ended up getting some ice cream bars from Breen’s (which is just across the street) and eating them at the employee’s picnic table behind their store. 🙂 Not quite the same, but still kinda fun.

  • Late Night Hockey
    We were pretty exhausted when we got home, but we watched the end of the first period of the Detroit / Calgary game and then put most of the kids in bed. Ian got a special treat of some late night hockey watching with Mom & Dad. But at the end of the second period, Mom couldn’t even make it anymore so… just Dad remained.

    I had to take care of the financial things (paying bills, balancing check books etc) so I did that as I watched… and watched. 🙂 The game went into a second overtime period before they could decide it. Unfortunately, Detroit won and ended the series. I was at least hoping for a game seven. Calgary pretty much gave all they could though. Detroit is just better. Will be interesting if Buffalo faces them in the final.

And that was our crazy weekend. We definitely enjoyed every last moment of it. I have the tiredness and the SUNBURN to prove it!

I think I’ll have some more iced tea now. 🙂

by Greg

Rainy Days and Mondays

So, after I posted the previous post this morning, about losing that article and stuff, I remembered that really the day has not started that well in other ways… I was just feeling “down” in the shower and I remembered that first, my regular morning walk had been interrupted by a thunderstorm. I had to turn back early. Like… at the end of my block. 🙂 I decided to do a quick trip around our block, but that’s less than the 2.6 miles I usually get to walk.

Then, when I got back I went down into my basement – ON OUR COOL NEW CARPET FROM GOD! – and after a few seconds I started smelling POO!!!! And I thought to myself, “I do NOT smell POO!!!!” But, unfortunately, I had failed to avoid some warm steamy pile of dog droppings somewhere on our block and… now it was on several spots of our “new” carpet 🙁 I got out the cleaning stuff and spent 10 minutes or so scrubbing.

So, after reflecting on the events of the past 8 hours or so… I understood why I just feel “down” today. And as I was showering, the song below came to my head… thought I’d include a clip. 🙂 It’s my sister, Tara, about a dozen years ago or so… on a little Demo tape we made that is now out of circulation.

If you saw the cover, you’d know why it was out of circulation. 🙂

Hope your day is going well, even on a Rainy Monday. 🙂

(PS… when I first tried to publish this post, Blogger told me I could NOT! Thankfully, the back button saved the content. We’ll see when I actually get to post here. Perhaps I should go back to bed?) 🙂 🙂 🙂

by Greg

Getting Warmer…

It's getting warmer...I am very different from most other people. Many of you reading this website know that already, as you know me outside of my blog. But for those of you who might just be passing by, or only know me from my blog (hmm… you may still be able to know that I’m a bit “different” from that…) I think the following will prove to you just how different I am.

So, yesterday and today have been fantastically warmer. It’s been up near 60ºF which stands in stark contrast to the previous two months of winter. It’s been cold and we’ve had snow on the ground for nearly two full months. I believe we’re at about 93 inches for the season. (Most, or all of that from maybe the middle of January until now.) I have posted here before how GREAT this winter has been for me!! I absolutely love snow! And I do enjoy the cold weather.

What I have noticed around me in this recent, drastic warm up is that EVERYONE (and I think I can safely say EVERYONE) is just in a good mood. Life is swell. Things couldn’t be better. Smiles on faces, whistles on lips… and all because it’s WARM again. People are out in their short sleeves, some in shorts. Everyone has been given a huge lift from this sudden warm up.

Except me. 🙂

I’m not saying I’m depressed or anything… but I almost have the opposite reaction! (It’s crazy, I know.) Like, I’m already missing winter. (And it might be coming back later this week!!) When I breathe the thicker, warmer air, a part of me is just slightly sad. When I see all of our great snow melting completely away… a part of me is sad.

I can’t help but smile and be happy when everyone around me is giddy about the weather… but my true, initial reaction and feeling is… just a touch of sadness!

I am truly the opposite of the world. 🙂

I need to move to Alaska, but Jen needs to not. So, we won’t. 🙂

The funny thing is… come fall, as soon as the temp drops down to the same place (in the fifties), then I am the one who is giddy and can hardly contain myself! The cold is coming! Snow is coming soon! So I do understand why everyone is giddy. Most folks enjoy the summer as much as I enjoy the fall and winter. And so, I will “rejoice with those who rejoice”.

(But secretly… I will be pining for October or November… when the weather gets back to “normal”.) 😉

by Greg

The Best Winter

This has been THE BEST winter! Especially following last year where there were maybe 4 or 5 days (TOTAL!!) where it snowed more than at least an inch. We just got another 8 inches or so last night and I guess more is on the way!!! YES!!!!

Seriously, I don’t know what it is, but big white, fluffy snow just makes me giddy! I was out shoveling today with my neighbor and I just had a constant smile on my face. I was all giddy inside! I love it!

I should snap a few photos and post them here. But for now, I’ll just say that since mid January… we’ve had winter the way it’s supposed to be!

So I say… “Bring it on!” 🙂

by Greg

SNOW!!! (And a few other things…)

Well, we finally have some snow. I’ll put some photos up here later. Probably four inches of the fluffy, lake effect white stuff. Love it!!!

Had a great concert last night again. Just a fun evening in general. Lots of friends came out for the event. Made some passersby dance and smile as they were walking by. A few more stopped to sing along for a while. Then we got to have dinner at the food court (a highlight for Jen & the kids) with lots of friends (a highlight for me). Our kids got their photo taken with Santa, which has become an annual tradition (this is the sixth straight year!), and we made a stop at the Apple Store!

We also got to see another friend who just last night started working at a store in the mall, that happened to be RIGHT where we were singing 🙂 That was fun.

Shwoo! I was tired this morning though. It’s been a rough week. Tons going on in the web work world (www?) and then a concert every night?!? Goodness. When we were doing music full time, and we had weeks like this, I was smart enough to know I needed to rest in the day time to be able to make it. Unfortunately, as things are right now, I do not have that luxury. So, my body just made me take it this morning and I slept until 10! I woke up at 8:30, but felt horrible, so I tried to catch a little more sleep, and I did! 🙂

Tonight we have another annual event with a church in the next town over. A dinner, and then a concert. The dinner is always great. We enjoy spending the evening with those folks. Looking forward to it.

Tomorrow wraps up the craziness with two concerts in one day. One at a nearby Christian bookstore, and the other at an even nearer by senior living center (nursing home). All the kids will join us at the latter event. They are usually a big hit there! 🙂

Alright… time to get back to work! Photos of our first real snow in 2006 coming soon…