This snowskate thing rocks!

What would I do without digital cable and the whole record/pause/rewind/fast forward abilities of it? It's funny because we own a VCR and that used to be how I made sure I never missed a show I wanted to see. Only one show at a time though so some got tossed aside. Not anymore. I record every god damn thing on TV with the DVR then decide at a later date if I want to view it or erase it and the VCR sits lonely in a box in the basement. I mean really, I can't miss Lost now can I?

Yay, more snow! Mau got a snowskate for Xmas but it arrived late due to shipping issues, on the first day the big snow was gone. He was pissed but now it's getting some use. We took Kali to the tennis courts to run and the snowskate worked great besides Kali wanting to attack it every time you jump on it. We took her for a short walk today and it turned into an hour long snowskate session. Believe it or not, I was pulling off 50-50 grinds on a tree branch we threw down in the woods. It was awesome. When Skylar was told of this he said "Oh mom does those all the time.". I do? Ok sure, I do do those all the time. Sky had a school snow day Friday so plenty of sledding got accomplished. I love Winter as long as it snows.

After winning or placing in the last few poker nights, I finally got knocked out. I bought back in to be knocked out again. Usually Ed goes out first so it was definitely his time to win. Some of these games get pretty intense like last night's when Mau & I were going head to head for 1st place. It satisfies my gambling addiction without costing me much. I sure wish Dementia still lived here...I would think she would be down for some good poker action.

We won all 3 games plus the overall point in league this week. We played the nice guys so it was fun. We won a game last week but somehow it got counted as a loss...bastards (whoever puts in the stats there).

Edro's 15 seconds of fame

Edr0 was on the news last Monday because of the benefit at Thai Express. We went in there to get food and it was over an hour wait. I have never seen it that busy in there. We went over to the Dynasty and talked with Lisa to waste time. Skylar decided to donate more of his allowance to the tsunami victims.

We bowled a couple games over at the fancy alley. The lanes are so different from what I'm used to bowling on. My hook shot is no good there so I had to adjust my style slightly to get into the pocket. Skylar hit his second highest game though...a 94. His style works perfectly over there, making me think I should have stuck him in a league there instead.

The car had another issue but this one we were able to fix ourselves. We could see what hose was busted but only a dealer had them. Until we made it to the dealer, the car smelled terrible when you ran the heat...like something toxic, emissions of some sort I guess. Once Mau replaced the one hose, it still smelled and he noticed the connecting one broke as well so back to the dealer to get that one. The smell is gone now so it must be fixed. For once, a problem solved for under $500. Wow, that's something.

We went down to Louisville on Saturday for a Kung Fu tournament. Sky took 3rd in forms and got a medal in sparring. A medal means he competed but didn't place. He should have after watching the video we took of the fight. He blocked all her kicks but she got the point anyways. He didn't get the points for any of his kicks to her. I didn't understand it until I found out the girl's teacher was the judge. I thought Sky fought really well...he was really pumped up but started crying after the fight was over saying he was a "failure". We assured him he was anything but. One of his teammates took 2nd on forms and a karate kid took 1st, as usual. It's a karate tournament and always the same karate judges. The one judge was different but she was about 15, chewing gum the whole time and staring off into space instead of watching the competitors. She did score the Kung Fu higher than anything else so it wasn't all bad. I can't wait until he's 8 and in a different ring so he gets some different judges.

We got our asses kicked in league this week. They had us playing the leading team instead of the blind and the one guy has a low average but bowls much better than you would think so it screwed us. We bowled like shit too, which didn't help. We did win one though.

We're coming up...

We had a 6 person $5 buy-in poker game on Friday night with Juan, the usual people and a friend of Ed's. Mau took 1st place, Juan took 2nd and I took 3rd.

It turns out we won all 3 games in league last Sunday plus the overall point, pulling us up in rankings slightly. Last night we also won all 4 against the #1 ranking team (kick ass!). We are coming up from being the last place losers to hovering around the middle. We are not even half way into the season so we might end on a decent note. We play a vacant spot next week so we should do alright there too. Skylar bowled an 82, 83 and an 84 in his league picking up a few strikes and spares. He's definitely improved a lot in the few months he's been bowling.

We were watching a show on the tsunamis yesterday and they showed all these homeless pets wandering around. Skylar busts out crying. I wasn't much help as I was crying too (Gee, I wonder where he gets all the emotions?). He wanted to know how he could help the children and animals so he has decided to give part of his allowance he's been saving to the Thai Red Cross. Ed's work (the Thai job...he also works at a Chinese restaurant now) is donating all profits they make today and holding a benefit so we will go drop off the money. Ed said we needed to donate the poker winnings we took from him too.

Damn car...

We had a good time on New Year's Eve. We went bowling with Keith & Mary Jo for a couple of hours. Skylar saw one of the girls on his bowling team there and her parents. They did the glow-in-the-dark bowl so that was fun and I bowled a 150...not bad when I couldn't see the arrows on the lanes. We went to Steve & Shawntee's after that and ate good food and hung out pretty late. Got to try out the new CS on HL2. It looked really good. I still need to get my free copy of it.

New Year's day night Steve, Shawntee, Edr0 and Ted came by for a $5 buy in poker game. Shawntee, being new to the game cleaned up winning 1st place. It was cool to have that big of a game going on.

They didn't have the sheets at bowling Sunday because the league computer was down so we bowled without handicaps and they'll figure them out this week. We bowled really well and might have won all 3 games and possibly the overall point. We'll see next week. Mau and I both bowled our highest league games so far...I bowled a 159 and Mau a 178. Not too shabby I must say.

Dementia helped me remember the winter storm of 98. That was the year the car got stuck and I found a picture of Sky in one of those baby warmer suits in a ton of snow. I also remember walking over to Dementia's with baby Sky and pushing the stroller through the crazy snow. She recalled walking up to Subway and not being able to see 3 feet in front of her.

The car has once again made finances more than sketchy. It's not bad enough I have taxes looming and no real light at the end of the tunnel in hopes of paying them, now the car decided to have muffler issues. It sounded like a dragster for a few days. I know living here with all the salt in the winter doesn't help and I knew something along these lines was coming but previous issues similar to this have always been in the $100 range. No, not with a Jetta. Every possible repair on this fucking thing is through the roof. Nearly $500 to fix it today, making the total around $6000 that has been put into this car in the past year and I believe the blue book value is less than that. Hmmm, could have paid my taxes with that $6000, ironic huh? There is still one more repair in the next 3 weeks or it will not pass the Echeck and I have no clue how much that will cost yet my guess would be in the $500 range since that's what every other repair runs typically. First we have to get a diagnostic on it to see what the emissions issue is. I wish I could just dismantle the "check engine" light and see if it would pass. Never buy a German car. I love the thing to death but it's one pricey motherfucker. I need to find a car that I actually like the looks of but you don't have to sell your first born to fix...does one exist? Without going American? I know, I'm asking a lot here.