and I'm not referencing disney w/ the title. Babies R' Us is wall to wall baby gear. And once you walk into the USA Baby store on Dale Mabry in Tampa, you are thankful for Toys R' Us getting into the baby thing. USA Baby has alot of exclusive stuff but oh my, they are priced towards the upper Tamponian (i borrowed that word) crowd. Every crib in the store seemed to be high priced and covered w/ crib sets that were also high priced. We walked in and walked out, and the only thing that would have kept us there longer is if they had a free seminar on burping babies properly.
I know I can be late to the party, but I've recently jumped on the my friend Alex's forum on all things good found on his site copelandmedia.com. It's called networking for inspiration.
Shawana and I played host for the weekend for my sister and mother. It was a great time at doing nothing. Thanks to Circuit City and their merchandise card, we got the Lord of the Rings trilogy pack. Shawana has never seen it, and I'm talking about all 3 movies so she was in for a treat. We started sometime after a scrumptious biscuits and gravy, Forest Lake Academy style(of course) breakfast. Sharifa and I have seen the films multiple times and know the times of best napping, but Shawana endured the whole experience and I felt she was moved.
My mom went to church and joined us sometime close to the end of the first one, so she got to enjoy most of the series also. I even got a chance to show off my one true "omar recipe"
A long time ago, I had got curious on the whole Queer eye for the straight guy show. They have gotten so much hype and news, that natuarally I had to check it out. I don't watch it regularly, or even at all. Actually the only episode I watched inspired my one dish. The simple pasta torta or simply linguini, meat, and cheese baked to golden perfection. The torta they made was all vegetarian and thats just not going to fly for my taste. So I modified the recipe like a good chef and used some ingredients from a couple of other torta recipes to create my own pasta bake.
For my mom and my sister this was a real treat. They always accuse me of being a microwave chef. If it cooks in the microwave then its edible, which is the truth, but not really good tasting. My sister even busted my balls about how I would make scrambled eggs in the microwave. I have grown past that, but they don't normally see me in the kitchen chopping up veggies and working the stove. But I plan to only make my signature dish stronger before I venture out into my own cook book. I always seem to be light on the salt.
So we started our baby registry Monday online w/ Babies R' Us and Target. Its just so easy to sit at the computer and randomnly pick out items we would enjoy seeing our twins dressed in or play with. And then to have more fun, we went to the store to check out items you can't get online. We walked around Toys R' Us looking like "those type" of parents. We were definitely newbies and it was cool, because of the other parents in the store that saw us and gave advice. There is a plethora of cool items and its easy to get carried away until you remember the times 2 factor. For everything you want to get you have to price it x 2. Things add up quick and then we start the rationalizing of "we don't really need that." Yeah.
Well this weekend is going to cool, I'm going to start my search of all great jazz music. I want the boys to know all types of music, and that consists of jazz and whatever I make dammit.
I'll be glad for several things when they happen. I'll be super glad when my company's website has 50,000 subscribers. I'll be happy when my sound card works, and I'll be fucking glad when my desk space gets moved so I don't have to sit next to Tiny Tara, the office assistant.
She is from the New York/New Jersey area and Italian like Denise, our office secreatary. So they get together fine. Which means they are always talking on the phone about office shit and nonsense. But her laugh is super annoying, especially today when the crappy music from above is playing again. Oh yeah, add that to the list of things I'll be glad about when my desk moves.
I know its Wednesday and the work week is half over, but I'm sure you'll be interested to know the events of the last few days and a bit of the weekend. If not, then exactly why are you still reading this.. hmm.
Anyway a few words to start w/ about I, Robot. The new film w/ Will Smith and a whole bunch of 3D graphics. I read a fine article on VFX World about the studios behind the Special FX. I'm a big fan of good 3D work and I though the movie was pretty good. Except for the Will Smith nude scene and I'll leave that alone. Seriously. But in all honesty, Shawana and I enjoyed the movie and I'm no super movie critic so I don't care about that character development crap.
So on to the good stuff. My cousin Genny, currently from Jacksonville, pulled together a good bunch of my mom's family and friends together for a surprise birthday party for my mom and my sister, but I dropped the ball on keeping it a secret from Sharifa (it wasn't my fault completely). So I was ordered to keep my mom away from my aunt's house while people were arriving. That was fairly easy because we spent most of sunday at Home Depot. My brother Hebron came down from Maryland w/ one of his friends, Grimes. His last name is Grimes and its a carribean thing to call people by their sir names. Anyways, Grimes is a good electrician and was helping Hebron w/ fixing stuff in my mom's house. My mom has a new stove and dishwasher and ceiling fans all around the house. It was great to see her so excited about getting all this stuff put into the house by professionals. Because if I were responsible in doing it, I know I wouldn't want to be the one to flip the power switch once it was installed.
So as the evening came we went around the corner to my aunt's house and my mom noticed unfamiliar vehicles in the driveway. She quickly went from surprise to complete joy when we walked in and she found out who all showed up. The list is long, but I should have pics up soon. It's always great to see the Hall's side get together. Overall a fantastic time happened and we ended up getting home real late but like charity, it was for a good cause.
Other highlights was seeing my cousins and their kids. They are all under 4 and full of energy. I'll soon understand the pain of chasing my sons around. Everybody knows that Shawana is carrying twins and it was exciting to hear horror stories and words of encourangement. Plus advice on child raising is always a plus. Which got us motivated to hit them up for baby shower gifts.
Yes, HAPPY birthday Sharifa. Yeah, it was kinda weird growing up in the house. Only 2 days ago my mom's birthday passed. So much love and birthday wishes to my sister Reefer, and wish for many more!
I just want to give a little shout out to Rey-Rey and Steve. Alright big stupid joke.. But Happy Birthday Mom and a wish for many more!
Damn, being rich and domesticated must be nice. She will only serve 5 months, and most likely in a plush women's prison. I bet if I tried that shit w/ $500 worth of stock, I'd quickly see my butt in a "Federal pound me up the ass prison." Ha - Office Space is still funny. Well that sure helped calm me down.
On a better note, we are heading up to Ocala this weekend to celebrate my Mom's and Sister's birthday. I actually got my mom a real present this year. Which is very rare. Happy Birthday Mom! Happy Birthday Sharifa!
I detest waiting on hold. I use At&t for wireless service and I recently got rid of my beloved Motorola V60. I got a cool new LG phone w/ the internet and picture downloads and all of those cool (and now so annoying) ring tones. The big deal is now I'm on the AT&T/Cingular GSM network. So I've got great signal in places I didn't before and mediocre coverage in some of my previous hot spots. However inside my mom's house remains to be a dead zone for service, but thats beside the point.
So I'm on hold today trying to figure out my new bill. My old account was digital like my new one, but apparently these are handled by 2 seperate groups and they don't communicate w/ each other. I'm finding out that I made payments to my new account which didn't cover some charges left on my old account. Those bastards couldn't realize that I had changed service within the company.
Enough of that heartache because its handled. However to clear all of this up, I had to sit on hold for at least 20 minutes. And that was more than one time of doing it. I got fed up 3 times already because of AT&T's customer service. When you call they have the usual hold music and randomly placed message that your call is important, sorry very important, so please continue to hold and waste your life away. The music is mostly crappy, but my biggest gripe is the static in the line. It pauses the music, like if you're listening to the radio while on a road trip and the signal is fading.
Ooh, this is fucking annoying. All this money spent on wireless technology and they can't drop static out of their own hold music. Ridiculous
This tuesday awakens even brighter than any previous day. Yesterday we had another ultrasound and the twins are big enough now to see what sex they are. They are both boys! Hooray, even better news is that the pregnancy is going perfect so far. The boys are growing healthy and together. It was so exciting to be able to see them again, they were moving their feet and waving their hands. We thought we were feeling them move, but the nurse assured us that it was probably too soon and at 20 weeks we should feel the kicks. They moved quite abit during the ultrasound and shawana wasn't feeling them.
Anyway Shawana and I are both excited about the twins' development. We could see their brains, stomachs, spinal chords, toes and everything else. I'm still on the fact spreading mission so stay tuned.
And to my future sons - I wish you the best, and I shall provide you the rest.
Today we find out the sexes of our twins, I mean in a few hours. The clock is moving slow today because I'm leaving at 3 to start the forever journey from Dunedin to Bayfront in St. Pete. Its seems like forever between doctor visits. I'm still hoping for a boy and a girl, the done deal as it were. Shawana has a strong motherly feeling that there are two boys. Either way it turns out, i just hope for healthy children, w/ my good looks of course.
Over the weekend Shawana and I went up to Ocala so I could fix my mom's printer, plus to catch up w/ Alex and get him some software he needs for his current freelance projects. That was the plan when we started out Saturday, but while on the Interstate, Sharifa calls and says the printer is working fine, which is cool because I know computers but I tend to get frustrated fixing problems. Then Alex called and said they had a flat on the camaro, so he didn't know when it'd be fixed, but I told him no rush, we would just chill or something.
When we got into Ocala, Shawana saw Toys R' Us and said we should just go there to check out toys. It took some pushing from her to keep me from heading to toys for myself. I'm a kid, I know this. Turns out they have a healthy supply of baby gear. We quickly found the double stroller and infant car seats we are going to get.(yeah, we are registering and I'm looking at you) We've looked online at Target, Wal-mart and such, but this was the first time for us to check out the stuff and practice w/ them. This salesman Lester who has 2 kids and one on the way was very helpful in showing us the prime products they had to offer. Graco is the brand of choice in the baby world, and I'm not going to argue about that.
We spent a good hour and a half there, and we were feeling more like confident parents when we left. The rest of the day was spent visiting old family friends. We invaded the Sias' house for a good while talking about anything and everything. For them this was really their first time to meet Shawana and vice versa. They have 2 grandfather clocks and they seemed to dong alot. We realized afterwards that we had spent over 5 hours there and we still had to see Alex and his family who had gotten his tire fixed earlier.
Seeing Amy & Alex's daughter Alice almost walking was simply amazing. Strike that, I did see her walk a few steps on ther own power. She's 14 months and precious. It simply brings home the father-to-be feeling. I feel proud to be a father.
I find my office to be a very strange place fore me. For some reason today they decided to turn on the outrageously priced, inter-office entertainment system. Its been a long time, probably close to 2 months that no music has played through the office. Which is mostly a good thing, because the station they pick is sooo easy listening, which isn't my type of work music. But its Friday and the office is mostly full of mid-aged ladies that get casual w/ dress and speech come the end of the work week. Like this morning I was walking from the other side back to my cubicle when I ran right smack into a conversation I would have loved to avoid. The main secretary and a few of the saleswomen were talking about underwear and thongs. I know now that one of the assistants was strutting around her diamond thonge today. Which is way too much information for me to handle. It took lots of my energy to keep from throwing my hot coffee into my ears to save myself. I passed through the crowd and they were joking w/ me about sharing way too much information. I quickly boomed out, "yeah, WAY too much information"
So now comes the slow and weary afternoon. I've been working steadily today and also worked on installing new fonts. It also feels good because the IT guy gave me back admin rights on my own machine. If you don't know what its like to not be able to save to your documents folder then be glad. It blows, but thats all fixed. I remember how much I dreaded opening PDFs, because I had Acrobat 5 reader installed, but there was a config. problem. So everytime it would go through the error messages and when I tried to install or fix the update the error about "you're not an admin" would pop-up and defeat my progress. Now if only I could get my soundcard activated. It would be sweet bliss in the office again, at least for 1.
Well this kick to start writing again was greatly influenced by Shawana and her friend Sherita. Sherita has been pushing Shawana to keep a journal through her pregnancy. Which is a really grand idea because how often does someone have their first pregnancy. And then add the factor of having twins right off the bat. The journal would give a history of events to the twins when they get older about what their mom went through during that time. I think its a pretty nifty idea. So I got Shawana a nice leather journal book so she could start. And I figured I'd put down the father perspective in the simplest way for me. Well that, and because my handwriting is terrible. So anyways, Shawana is excited to get that started. The first entry can be about last night's leftover hambuger helper. She doesn't get much morning sickness, which is very cool escpecially since she is carrying twins, but sometimes her body reacts badly to food.
Forget the facts that I haven't written to this log in awhile. There has been alot of good stuff happen in my life since I last shared. I'll get to that information later, but let's talk about today shalle we. Yeah, I got frustrated at my mom today. I grew up w/ computers and a crazy understanding of technology and that wasn't so much based on education or anything. I'm a curious person. I always like to try the "New Thing" So, yeah, I'm drawn to learning and I'm good at it. This is a good way to be, on the edge and such. I hope my kids are also like this, because that'll save me alot of time in educating them. "Don't touch the chainsaw little Omar, it cuts things" -something like that.
Anyways, I forget that not everybody is like me. I get frustrated easily because I believe everybody is in the know like I am, or at least they should be. My mom does pretty well as far as using a computer goes. She knows a good deal about using MS Word, she can check and write email. To me this is no biggie, but in comparison, say to like Shawana's mom its a UGE deal. (you know, so big its too big for the 'h') But God, I love my mom. This morning she was having a little spacing issue w/ the word doc she was working on. She has to make copies today so there's a tiny bit of a rush on it. I tell her to send me file and I'll work on it from my desk, send it back and that should be it. Well I was a little amazed when the email to me came quickly w/ the file attached and everything. Inside I'm doing 3 cheers for my mom. We work out the issues she was having w/ the doc over the phone and I send it back to her. Now hotmail isn't the best at getting an attachment downloaded, because its got to virus scan it and such. And working over computer problems over the phone isn't my forte because of the aforementioned frustrations. My mom is just saying the window disappeared and the file isn't there, while I'm trying to convince the file is saved but I don't know exactly where it is. Back and forth, sadly I'm upsetting my mom because I'm not doing a good job at keeping fully calm. I'm mostly calm, but my mom can tell I'm a little aggitated at this point, and thats only because I can't physically see the problem. Thank God, my sister came home and helped see what I could only have described to me over the phone. Everything's cool, just the file was saved like 6 times and it didn't really get told to my mother where it was. Must find some way to make make my Mom happy again. Good thing her birthday is coming up! Love You Mom!