Waiting here in the doctor's office with the kids while the wife is having an "adult" conversation with the doctor is driving me crazy. Alex was initially getting on my nerves because he was climbing all over the furniture, and making demands like, "I'm thirsty" because he just wanted to try the water cooler. Honestly, the first thing that tempered my bitchiness was when we first stepped into the office. There's no reception, just a waiting area and a bunch of rooms. Its basically like a house that was converted for office use, so the waiting room is also the living room, and the bedrooms are offices. Anyway, stepping in, and the aroma of burnt coffee and a weightlifter's sweaty belt comes to mind. It isn't a pleasant whiff whatsoever. Now I've became horridly accustomed to the smell, but the freezing temp is inching me closer to irrational irritation. We've been waiting for 35 minutes now. I just broke out the handheld games for them are the batteries are also dead for both of them. Nice.

Anyhow, after this freezing debacle, we're going to my first company picnic. There was one last year but I didn't go.

As for the rest of the day, I'm planning to watch "Predator" on Blu Ray later tonight, and continue with Battlefield Bad Company, I was really starting to enjoy myself with that game. Its got a nice sandbox feel to it, minimal loading, and very destructible enviroments. I was grenading a house to obilivion wall by wall yesterday. Next gen games sure are juicy.

Firefox is hot.

Couldn't think of anything witty, so the immortal words of Paris Hilton came to mind. Anyway.

The other day, my wife saw Alex crawling over to another boy in Martial Arts class and spanked the boy on his butt, so she brought that up to him in the car. He denied it, saying that he didn't do it. Since we're his parents, we can usually tell if he's just denying to just get out of trouble or he's denying it because it simply isn't the truth to him. In this case it seemed to be the latter.

"But I didn't hit him," he said.

"Then how come I saw you go over there and spank him?" inquired Mommy.

"Maybe your glasses were dirty," offered the boy.

We thought it was pretty funny. But he sincerely didn't think he did anything wrong, so there might be more to that. I was going to twitter or blog about something else he said, but it fell out of my head.

Which leads me to wonder if Twitter archives all my posts permanently, like Google does? It would be nice, though archiving the Tweets will be a bit more challenging than Blogger. I think all the posts are somewhat disposable reading anyway, really.

My newest toy is something I've been waiting for a while, a laptop lap companion, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be. Basically it's a contoured type dealy you place between your laptop and your lap so that your balls don't cook under the building heat from the battery. The iBook does get a little toasty and usually I just put a kids' hardcover book for that. But I was at Costco and for about 20 bucks, there was a Belkin one with a USB fan built it, so despite my horrible luck with the brand (Belkin 2, Me 0), I got it anyway. Figured even if the fan broke, all I really neat is that hunk of plastic and that shouldn't break. Knock knock. But I was feeling around under the thing to get the hinge to pop up and stuck my finger in the fan. All my swearing did was make my wife laugh harder.

I might have made a pretty good call with an upcoming gadget. I was going to purchase a used iPod touch from a co-worker of my good friend Kenneth in Singapore, along with a book explaining how to avoid unnecessarily long run on sentences. It was a fair enough price, but the rumor mill on the web is ablaze with possibly a vast iPod refresh for the Nano as well as a cheaper iPod touch, so I'm holding out for that. Should be in the next few weeks, which is just as well because I'm seeing a lot of overtime for the next few weeks. If everything goes accordingly.

Am using Firefox now and I'm liking it. Although none of my bookmarks are really set up, having the Twitter on the address bar and the Piclens is really handy, and it does RSS feeds as well, which is something Camino doesn't. Oh well, maybe I'll just mosey on over slowly.

Someone at work remarked, "You keep a blog?" and I've been wondering why I do. This overwhelming need to share my personal life on the web, even though I'm really not interesting enough to do so. I'm not sure, really. It's an outlet I suppose. Sometimes I feel as if it spoils what little social life I have, since people generally already know new news before I get to talk to them personally. Good thing my posts aren't that regular then, eh?

Happy 4th Birthday, Zoe!

I had wanted to blog about things before Zoe's birthday, but I'll just mash it all together and make a super post. Anyway, today was a day of purples, pinks, and princesses when Zoe's presents and cakes just overtook everything in the house. Abby Cadabby, who was previously unknown in this household, became a minor theme, along with Disney princesses, Barbie, and a whole lot of artsy tools. We had a family type gathering, with my brother and his family and my mother in law here to wish the Z a Happy Birthday. Zoe was pretty happy, seeing all these toys but the excitement value was carried mostly by Alex, who seemed more happy about the presents than Zoe did. Nonetheless, I think she had a ball. Now we just gotta figure out where to put all the new toys.

It's a little odd to think that it's been four years since Zoe was born. For some reason Alex always seems like he should be younger and Zoe should be older. Somewhere between their births they must've been some type of time distortion rip of some sort. The little girl sure does have some sass on her, she's always telling her brother what and what not to do, but she's also got some heart on her as well. Last night after I tucked her in, she told me she "was going to give me something special" and it was a hug and kiss. Somehow presenting that in that package made it something more than ordinary.

Zoe is something special for me, as well as my family. It's odd, since my mom's never had daughters, and my brother's never had a sister, so nobody knows how to shop for a girl. Luckily, though we were heavy on the artsy gifts and some princess stuff, there wasn't really anything to steer her into gender specific crap. Girls toys can be so oppressive sometimes, forcing little girls to concentrate on nothing but improving their looks and vanity-related tomfoolery. While boys are busy making war, girls are busy doing make up.

I'll get some photos up soon. Man, feel like this weekend I've done nothing much, and I think after this weekend I'll be okay to do some OT again. We've done a bit of overspending and I need to make up for it bad.

I lured yet another person into Rock Band, although I was expecting my brother to be into the drumming portion of the game. My sister in law ended up really digging the game, starting with the drums and then really digging the guitar. My brother tried it but didn't get much out of it. That, including Jay who was inquiring about purchasing a PS3 after I got him hooked on the drums, and my wife and it looks like we might have a band. Now I just have to figure out how to make Harmonix pay me for my efforts.

Watched "Hot Fuzz" yesterday and it was hilarious. I can see how it might've flown over the American audience, especially if they didn't quite gather that it was a dry spoof of sorts. It was a homage of buddy movies, and it was just a lot of fun to watch.

In other news, I did get my glasses fixed after a rather uninteresting snap early morning while I was cleaning my glasses. At first I thought my lens had just popped out, but then the sickening discovery that the frame had actually snapped. Lousy monkeys. Thankfully, the stupid Lenscrafters guy was too dismissive to sell my wife a replacement duplicate frame, and instead gave her a card for eyeglass repair shop in Bellevue. So instead of spending a couple C's on new frames, I got a weld job for about 50 bucks. However, due to some sketchy park job in some sketchy lot, they issued me a 25 dollar parking ticket which I intend to shove it up their lot. Those tossers issuing tickets to an empty lot. That's just annoying. Spoilt my day a little.

Well, that's about all that's about the Diego. I think Zoe's Princess Stories are about to end soon. Then I gotta get my hair cut and maybe a costume change, since I saw the worst photo ever taken of me by my wife. The WORST.



What the hell is wrong with my body? I had the budding chest of a 13 year old girl, the heightened gut of a fat guy falling from space, and it looks like the features of my face are trying to centralize themselves where my nose is. Damnit.

But here's prove that I'm not that hideous all the time. Different photo, same day.

Coyote

DSC_3905, originally uploaded by diegomcnamara.

The kids were having breakfast and I was talking to Alex while my wife was telling Zoe that something she said was rude, when she looked outside the patio window and said, "Whoa."

There it was, a coyote just strolling past at 10 in the morning. I grabbed my camera and walked after it, and managed to snap 2 bursts before it took off and ran.

So, this was significant because we suspected that our cat, Franklin, was taken by coyotes, and seeing how these nocturnal creatures are out in the daylight is something else, especially in a urban city.