Relationships are hard work!

I think every married person can relate to the fact that Holidays bring stress. All the house rules are changed, life becomes a whirlwind of turmoil. Everyone feels stretched out because their attentions are pulled to different family and friends. Schedules are made, adjusted, crumpled up, burnt, thrown out the window, remade, given up on, and then we change everything at the last possible moment. Okay, so Holidays are stressful! I think we can all see that.

What seems to overwhelm us is when tragedy falls upon us during the Holidays. Just after Thanksgiving our grandmother became enemic and we sent her to the hospital. Then after many differing opinions of what was wrong with her, she was shuffled off to a rehab/convalescent center. Her level of care skyrocketed out of control, leaving us feeling helpless. She is now staying there under long term care.

All of this happened before Christmas, meanwhile our family stood stunned realizing that not only had our lives been severely altered by this with no warning, but we had no chance to carry out any of our usual stressful plans for the Christmas season. We barely put up a tree with lights and a train around it without any ornaments. We put up outdoor lights before the @#$# hit the fan. When Nana (our grandmother) was sent to the rehab\convalescent center, we decided that we should remove carpeting to make life easier for a wheelchair in the house. Then we had plumbing problems and had to redo the flooring in the kitchen.

As you can tell, our lives have been hectic. It has been one disaster after another, and we still are trying to piece our lives back together again. This has left deep scars on each of us, and created tension that is hard to live with. I think we are starting to get a little clear of our troubled times, but we still have not had time to cope with all the changes, and I think we all feel robbed of all the Holiday cheer.

My wife and two children (young adults) have been real troopers through all of this, and we would not have made it through all of it without the tremendous teamwork they have provided. I am now realizing that I have let myself become hardened by situations and have not been dealing with the emotional needs of my family. I am currently trying to work through this, and am reading "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus".

I have only begun reading the book, but have already noticed many ways that I have failed in my communications with my wife and family. It has been a real wake up call to me that I am realizing how easy it is to assume everything is just fine until someone complains. I hope that I will grow to be a better, more understanding husband and father.

Our heart is an important muscle, and it needs to be exercised regularly. I have been so busy with my mind that I have neglected my heart. I guess that my new year's resolution is to exercise more regularly, by loving my family more fully. I hope that if you have read this you will agree with me that this is a good idea.

The Birthday of Love in my life

Well, hello all! It has been awhile since my last blog. I wanted to make a special blog today, because it is a VERY special day in my life! Today is my 22nd Anniversary of being with the love of my life, Lili! It seems that my life was just on hold before I met her, and I only half felt with my heart until then. My wonderful Lili has been the inspiration in my life, setting my passion on fire! When I accomplish things, I feel that I am contributing to our lives together. Without her it would feel shallow and empty.

I suppose this sounds very "co-dependent" to most people, I just feel very old-fashioned about it! What is wrong with wanting to care for and support the woman in your life? What has happened to chivalry? What has happened to romance and love in our society. It has become bastardized by the concept of dating in a time management stressful environment that our society has created! We have to deal with our personal schedules and chores, as well as all of our relatives and friends' schedules. Not to mention with all the womens' lib changes in our society, men are told that they cannot be the gentleman who opens doors and holds chairs for women, supposedly that belittles women and treats them as "less than" a man. Never mind the fact that the purpose of those actions was meant to show that the woman was "worthy" of a man's adoration.

Yes, I suppose that at some point men decided to think of women as a possession to earn and show as a trophy, but that was not at the heart of a true gentleman's actions. I don't want to go on anymore about this though, I want to talk about my feelings for my wife. I adore her for who she is, with every aspect of her character. She is artistic, the best cook I have ever met, the most caring mother of two children, the most thoughtful daughter and granddaughter to her parents and grandmother, and the most loving wife I could ever hope for!

I thank God that he led me to meet my wife. I thank God for being with us through the good times and the bad. Without God, I know our love would not have lasted. It brings tears to my eyes to think of all the times that the world has brought us hardship, and all the times that we have seen others lose the love in their lives. I can only hope and pray that God will continue to keep our hearts together and nurture our love for each other.

Happy Anniversary Lili,
with love from your Bulldog!

Family, you know it's bad when....

This is about my family and how upsetting they can be sometimes. Let me start by saying it has NOTHING to do with my wife or children whom I love dearly. NO, I'm talking about the crazy-making people! Like my parents and my wife's parents and my parents family.

You know it's bad when you find yourself watching movies about how a person's family can get under their skin and insult and infuriate them all the time, and you're thinking "Hey that is just like my family! ...when they are trying to be nice!" I mean really! It feels like they have some kind of competition going for how badly they can ruin our lives. We have yet to get through ANY holiday unscathed! Either we do not spend enough time with someone, or don't help them with things that are not our responsibility, or they just can't stop the diarrhea of the mouth that naturally splashes over every inch of our lives.

The women of our families are part of a secret society for the early death of all male members of the family (Can't Understand Normal Thinking). This society is closely related to Nag Your Husband To The Grave, but they seem to have more members because they use the excuse that they are not aware of their actions, and people seem to believe them! Of course, many of the men in my family (that have already met their expiration date) were no saints, they seemed to either drink themselves oblivious to life around them or try to have sex with any female in the vicinity (usually at family functions), regardless of their relation.

OK, so somehow I grew up around horrifying people and somehow I pretended to ignore their actions as much as possible! Seems like I could use some therapy, doesn't it? Well, several of these wonderful male examples in my family have died of cancer which led me to the conclusion that they were cursed by their wives and family, or that their own actions finally caught up with them! Maybe a little of both.

If I were a psychologist, I would be doing a case study about my family functions, how the stereo-typical males were drinking to excess, being abusive, and/or molesting family members. Meanwhile the hens were busy with the pecking order, picking apart any hen that turned its back for a moment, and generally driving the men to bad behavior!

It seems that every year after our children were born, our family would find some way to ruin my wife's Mothers' Day. It was quite something to see how their manipulations and callousness could rip the fabric of our family to ribbons. It seems that somehow there was always some female family member whose motherhood was so very important that it should cancel out all others! Nobody seems to understand that sometimes you should spend special time with your immediate family like your own spouse and children. I guess that they just Can't Understand Normal Thinking!

Now add to this the lying, manipulating, backbiting, etc. Rumors that circulate between people you already don't like, portraying your loved ones as awful hurtful people that do not resemble the real person in any way possible. Then watch as different plans are hatched by different parts of the family to try to destroy your marriage! Watch in utter amazement as lies and hatred try to drown you in pain and hurt and try to say words don't hurt! Then despite all of that prove them all wrong and succeed on your own just to be ignored by your family and treated as an outcast, only talked about behind your back!

This just isn't bad enough yet, is it? Now we should try to help our family that is in trouble, because THEY WON'T THANK US! No, they will just learn to walk on you more and expect things that they have no right to expect from us! Oh, and when we do go the extra mile to fix a person's problem, they have to find some way to say that they don't like the way we did it since we were approaching it in the most reasonable way possible! Well, I am starting to foam at the mouth now, so I better stop blogging for now...

My first cigar, an all time favorite!

Most cigar lovers will be able to fondly remember their first cigar that they tried. Sometimes, it brings a sense of nostalgia to think about it. Often, it makes you want to recapture the moment. But what can you do when the brand you started with goes out of business? My first cigar was a Casa de Nicaragua. I had been smoking pipe tobacco up until then, and had tried a few flavored cigars which I don't really count as real cigars since the flavoring masks the natural wonderfulness of a true hand-rolled cigar. My wife wanted to give me a special present, so she took me to our local cigar shop. She had the man in the shop help select a box of cigars for me. It happened to be Casa de Nicaragua. We moved to another city and the box was stored away in our garage. By the time I opened the box again it had been about a year. That year had worked some magic on my cigars, they had aged wonderfully in our garage! They were smooth, mild, and full of wonderful creamy cigar flavor. Pleasant from start to finish! Well by the time I finished that box, I was hooked and have been smoking cigars regularly ever since. For several years I was able to get the Casa de Nicaragua in several big ring sizes - Presidente, Gigante, and Viagigante. The large ring size seemed to help guarantee the smoothness and the well balanced flavor of the cigars. The only problem was that some boxes had problems with the cigars unraveling or plugging. Well, they finally stopped selling them. Luckily, I had already learned the joy of trying samples of different brands. The variety of flavors is a journey to be taken by a cigar smoker. It is a shame that I will not be able to return to my Casa de Nicaragua cigars, but I will fondly reminisce about them as I try new cigars. If you are a cigar lover, tell me about your first cigar.

What do I enjoy with my cigar?

I love smoking a cigar in the afternoon or evening, and I usually have a drink and some kind of snack (treat) with it. This can be a little complex, because it is important to match the flavors so they don't clash. Let's start with the drink first. I usually have a Cafe Mocha latte from Starbucks. This matches most of my cigars well. Sometimes I might be in the mood for something strong and then I will get out the scotch. If I want something with a fruit flavor I get out a bottle of wine (Smoking Loon). On a hot afternoon I might have a beer, or a White Russian with ice. I don't drink alcohol often but it is nice with a cigar. Now for the snacks. I normally have a coffee cake with my coffee. If I don't have any coffee cake I might have some Scottish shortbread. If I am having alcohol, I might have a nice cheese like Huntsman cheese, or Jarlsberg. If you smoke cigars, let me know what you like to have with yours!

My wife Lili gave me Nookie!

My wife gave me a Barnes and Noble Nook ebook reader yesterday! It was awesome! And it was awesomely frustrating! In the past I have used my PSP game system to read books, but I had trouble with it because it would not work with some of the large books I have (techie books for learning about Microsoft servers and other things). It would crash the PSP when I tried to read them. Now, I have a hand held reader that will work! But life is never that simple, is it?

The technical specs for the Nook say that it can read any book that you buy and download from their website on the Nook. It also says that you can copy files from your computer to read. This is the main reason we bought it. They say that it can support three types of ebook files and some graphics and music files (not that I need that since I can use my iPhone or my PSP for graphics and music). The ebooks can be PDF, PDB, or EPUB.

Okay, now I downloaded a program called Calibre (free) that can convert almost any ebook format to almost any other. So I was able to quickly convert some TXT files that I had into EPUB. Those are working fine. I have a collection of PDF files (mostly tech books) that I tried to copy and use right away. This is when I entered the Trouble Zone! After copying a lot of my PDF files to my Nook I disconnected it from my computer full of anticipation and ready to start perusing my wealth of knowledge that I could hold conveniently in my hand. But, then I used the navigation menu to see my documents list and was surprised that it told me it was checking for files and then skipped back to the main display without providing my list of files!!!

I am very technically inclined, and when software doesn't work for me I take it personally and get to the bottom of it whatever it takes! Well, unfortunately for me, this would not be an easy path to go down. I browsed all over the Barnes & Noble website for any hint about this error, to no avail. I sent my web searching tendrils across the internet in hopes of any crumbs of information to answer my problem, to no avail! The best I got was some rather sketchy references that the Nook may have trouble with some of the formatting in PDF files. Possibly with large graphics, nothing specific though.

Not being one to quit, I tested what happened when I deleted different files and put them back. Trying to see which ones worked and which ones did not. I even checked the properties on the PDF files to see what was different with the ones that worked and the ones that did not. At first, I thought it might be that only ones that supported fast web view that were working, but then I found one that did not have fast web view that DID work! Then I thought that it was the PDF version, because the ones that worked were all 1.6, but then I found some that were 1.6 that did NOT work. The only semi-conclusion that I came to was that it has to be some of the graphics are too big to display on the Nook.

This is very frustrating, because that would mean that I would have to reformat all the PDF files that don't work. Luckily, the Calibre program can do that. It just means more maintenance. Now that I have worked around the problem, I am thoroughly enjoying the Nookie my Lili gave me! I have several fantasy novels and technical books on it. I even have the collected works of Robert Burns on it! It takes some work to gather the book files and reformat them, but it is VERY cool to have them on the Nook!

At first I was frustrated with the navigation on it because my book list is several pages and the navigation takes a second to move from one book on the list to another, but then I figured out that the page turning buttons on the side of the Nook can turn the pages of the book list! Much faster to navigate it now! I am now studying for a Microsoft certification (70-431) Installing SQL Server 2005.

Lili, thanks for the Nookie! Whoohoo!!!

Blog ya later!

Harlequin is rotting her brain!

My wife's grandmother lives with us because she needs care. We love her very much, but Harlequin is rotting her brain! She is addicted to reading the "Love Inspired" line of novels published by Harlequin. Granted, this is the tamest of the romance novel genre, they are christian romance novels, so at least she is not reading filthy, raunchy, romance novels! But, still, Harlequin IS rotting her brain. I know this because she has several behavioral problems we have noticed now. It is natural for an elderly woman to enjoy recounting stories of their past, but they are now becoming more epic and more romanticized than ever! We know, because we have heard the same stories for years now and only recently have they started to resemble the books she reads. Yes, they are the same stories about the same people and the same things are happening to the people, but now in vibrant and engaging detail. This is not all, because not only does she add the characters' inner monologues but she also refers to herself in the third person now. I guess the old adage about "garbage in, garbage out" makes a little more sense to us now. She is now starting to retell stories about our lives as well. She had a phone call from a relative and told the story about how I met my wife. It was hard to listen to because she changed so much of the story! This is why I am telling you that Harlequin is rotting her brain!