How can a Monday ever be a good day? When its 11:59 pm so its really close to Tuesday? When you are SOO tired that you forget its Monday? When you find that MegaMillions ticket you lost?

Well those are all pretty good but not what I was getting at.

Monday can be a great day if you have a whole bunch of singularly unique things that make you say “Hey! Monday is a damn fine day!” (< - note the use of interjection, school house rock for me)

I am, of course, talking about THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

So it is a day of Firsts.

Garrett is doing his First day of First Grade! He has the same teacher he had over the summer. That is good because he can be a little bit of a surprise. Let me give you an idea.

Garrett (uninitiated) teacher - OK class lets all find our seats and sit down, Garrett please find your seat.

Garrett - I need to find a female pikachu, that Inu will like.

Garrett (uninitiated) teacher - Oh that is very nice, but you need to sit at your desk.

Garrett - Inu has a friend named Blu. I am a pirate. WELCOME TO PORT ROYALE!

Garrett (uninitiated) teacher - Garrett please use your inside voice and sit over here by me.

Garrett - Jupiter has 2 storms that are red and moons. Does Saturn have one ring or lots of rings?

Garrett (uninitiated) teacher - Please sit down.

Garrett - Charlette is in her house but Lawrence is big, and E'koppo is small.

Garrett (uninitiated) teacher - [feints]

And so it goes. We did give him a wiggle seat, which I think are made to be clever replacements for those hemorrhoid pillows. But I saw a few crying kids on the way to school and Garrett was trying to tell them that its OK and then he started to speak JAWA to them. JAWA or any derived Star Wars Language makes all terrified children stop in their little tracks. He is genuinely happy to go to school. And that to me is amazing.

The Next First is Samantha first day of the FIFTH grade. I sit and stare at the baby picture on my desk and think "Oh Crap I am late for another appointment!" but I also think "oh crap Samantha is growing up". She didn't get the teacher she wanted but she is still pretty excited about going back to school. And that does lead into the the next First.

Samantha's First day as Captain of the Safety at Sargent Shriver Elementary School. Oh she is jumping up and down excited about this. I am so incredibly proud of her. She went to safety patrol camp over the summer and only one other girl from Shiver did. So they are both officers. But Samantha is CAPTAIN. Oh I will be re-framing the doors to get her swelled head in the house. I am joking (gasp). She also got her old post, where she knows everyone and she really like the crossing guard. So all is right in the world for Samantha.

The last First I have for today is I rode my Bike to work today. I was hemming and hawing about it. But I asked the kids if I should, and Samantha immediately said YES, and Garrett immediately said "Inu Come, sit Inu, Stay". After I posed the question to Garrett directly he jumped up and down and said "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah". He helped me walk my bike to school. We dropped Samantha off at her post, went to the kiddie coral at the back of the school. He held onto the bike the whole time.

So I shot off like a blur of out of shape Irishman. Well ok, at the speed I was moving there was no blur, I was quite in focus, and still out of shape. The advantage of walking the kids to school with my bike is it puts me about 1/4 mile closer to work. And going to work is almost flat or down hill. I would like to point out that means my ride home tonight will be mostly flat and uphill. I rode on Beech drive, not on the bike path like I always used to do. It does make a world of difference.

I have ridden my bike to work before. When we lived in Twinbrook I was doing it a few times a week, and that was about 3-4 miles further. But since I tore my knee up last year, I have not been able to get myself back in the saddle. But with the MS 50 walk coming up I need to get some endurance in my legs. The flat out peddling on the road will either kill me or...not. I wasnt organized, I forgot my camelbak, and I forgot my camera. So no pictures of the kids at school or me peddling along. I will try to remedy that tomorrow.

All in all, I feel real good. I rode down to California Tortilla for lunch and got a salad. I figure I deserve a few extra calories for that ride. I did walk up the stairs when I first got to work and my legs felt like lead. But walked it off and feel good.

Maybe Ill get to a Hjalti level (in a few years) and maybe Ill join the Team Greykell bike team too. I really don’t think I have been sufficiently masochistic to myself lately.

Well there is always tomorrow.

peace and chain grease

I haven’t had much time lately to read up on anything. Wow now thats a surprise. I have had even less time to write posts. Well OK, when I remember things like writing blog posts, it is usually in the cars driving to or from work. The chance that the thought will actually become a true piece of electronic media is “Slim to None, and Slim left town”.

But spurred on by 2 critical events, I endeavor to write. First, Dave Baker has posted e-mails twice in recent memory from Iraq, yes apocalyptic I know. And this being from a POS base that has almost NO internet access. Makes me feel like a Luddite.
Second, my computer died at work, and I lost ALL my bookmarks, my FTP programs, my editors, etc. I have my computer back, all shiny new apps and junk. These are the old familiar programs that made my job easier….OH NO…these are the latest and greatest. These newest of the new do more to slow me down than my busted foot did. And give me headaches to boot (I rarely got headaches before now).

So loosing my bookmarks was more sad than anything else. I hadn’t realized how many links I had to everyones pages, online comics, tech news, geek junk, video crap, and maybe one or 2 WORK LINKS! I thought I had exported these at one time, but it appears I had not.

A quick side note: The Phrase “DO as I say, not as I do” means a lot to all the budding editors I have told “you will be very sad if you do not back up your material”. I am a horrible patient.

So in trying to rebuild my bookmark list I ported over my laptop’s set of bookmarks which had nowhere near the number of links but it did have… VG CATS. So in the quiet lag while compounds are mixing to be administered to my special friends, I got read a few comics. And I came across this one that made me laugh:

If you can think of any good URL’s that I need to rebuild my sad collection, send them to me. I may even try to remember my Live Journal page…..yeah

Peace and plumber grease