Favorite Quote of the day

"Just because you're better than me doesn't mean you can be all superior."

Busy day today. I have to do some computer workage. Then I have to unload a little pellet stove and get it upstairs (only weighs about 250 pounds) and try to install a screen/storm door. All before 6pm tonight when I have an engagement w/ some nerdly guys to play games but all the people I know are probably bailing on it. Cool huh?

But, Forrest has started school this week and is doing well.

Although, I'm worried about his hearing as well as vision. He might be color blind and seems to have poor vision in one eye (his left). He also failed a hearing test on one of his ears.


As distasteful as it is, due to the increase in medical premiums putting normal private insurance out of our grasp, we put the kids on CHIP/Medicaid. Interestingly enough, we only have to earn another $18k more before we don't qualify anymore. I don't see that as being a danger anytime soon. The good news for the kids is that they will be able to get better care now. Ironically enough, it's harder to get kids vaccinated if they have private insurance. I took Titus in a couple months ago to the local clinic to get vaccinated. They told us that they couldn't vaccinate Titus because we had private insurance. Sad huh?

weary

just keeping my head down and trudging along. these are the best years of my life so i am told.

sigh. where is a midget when you need one?

first post from my phone. we will see if it works or disappears into the annals of history that never was and never will be.

Taking Chance

I'm 35 minutes into this movie and my eyes have emitted more saline laced fluid during that time than in all of the past year.

If you ever watch this movie, make sure you can do it in one sitting in peace.

Fascinating

I was informed by my boss that there was a report/comment (not sure if plural) made that I wasn't at my desk enough. I didn't realize that I had to spend a certain percentage of time @ my desk. I work in the datacenter, the lab, with users, and occasionally take lunch and <gasp> visit the restroom.


What on earth do you do with a comment like that? My boss is happy with me, but apparently somebody higher up isn't? I need to go watch Office Space again.

Favorite quote of the day

"Man up Fargo"


I can see using this on my kids when they're crying. And my wife using it on me when I'm whining.

Life in the Grant Ballard house

Soooo, what's been going on here recently? Well, last week we took the first vacation of the year to go visit my parents. My brother Forrest was visiting with his family and I needed some mechanical help so it seemed an opportune moment. Since we had to take two vehicles, for once space wasn't a problemn. Although spending money on gas for 600 miles of travel is very distasteful. So, we embarked on the 150 mile trip to Fairfield. With road construction in Boise and in Elmore county and a lunch stop in Mt. Home, it only took four hours. Four hours. argh! Thankfully, when we got there Forrest and his wife graciously gave us two of the three bedrooms available. But Rebekah still had to sleep with the girls which wouldn't have been so bad, but Liberty woke up every few hours screaming for some odd reason. So, needless to say between that and the babies, Rebekah didn't get a lot of sleep. So, we cut our trip short and headed home on Saturday afternoon. We made it to the Gaskill reunion which will be the absolute last thing of that type we do until our children are much older.

As far as I am concerned, my big focus is on becoming less of a big fat slug. Blood tests showed that I was 60% slug and well on my way to becoming king of slugville (yes, it's a real city. It's 5 miles from Richfield). So, since I don't have any time I have parlayed (I like that word) my lunch hour into a frantic workout session at a gym. So far it's been good. I think i'm down to 59% slug easily. maybe even 58%.

Well, since our health care premiums went up so much we're not sure what to do. I think we qualify for government assistance, but that sticks in my craw. I'm trying to decide which is more important: my conservative principals or my children's health. In health related news, we took the babies to Caldwell to get immunized. A couple days and bad fevers later, they're doing well. Trinity is playing with some toys (the first time ever) and Clell is doing great. Both of them are doing fine on the growth chart.

The girls, well, are girls. screechy, whiny, cute, and adorable. All at the same time.

The boys are doing well. Forrest is excited to start school w/ the Idaho Virtual Academy. titus feels a bit left out. Titus really wants to go visit Grandpa again. It's about all he talks about sometimes. As Rebekah and I were heading back from the Dr. on thursday we went through Parma and saw they were having a double header of the Transformers. I'm pretty lazy (see slug in the dictionary) and thought that I should take Forrest. But I hate to leave Titus out. So, we went on the coldest night of the summer I think. But it went well.

Sooo, long boring blog post but I figured I should do something. I'm not sure if there's anybody who reads this blog who isn't on facebook anymore. I will keep the blog going but I may start posting the pictures on facebook exclusively. Not sure. But my phone takes pretty good pictures and I can now upload them to facebook easily. Still pondering. In the meantime, stay classy America.

Fairfield Bound

FYI, if anybody is curious Rebekah and I will be heading to Fairfield tomorrow. Oh, and we're bringing the rest of the family too. So, if anybody wants to visit just swing by. Or you could call if you want us to beat the kids into submission first. The girls usually take a nap in the early to mid afternoon. With the babies who knows. Not sure how long we'll be there though so act fast!


BTW, I don't really beat my children but since anything on the Internet can be used against me in the court of public opinion I want everybody to know that only verbal admonishments combined with positive reinforcement are applied to my children.

After our benefits meeting

Sung to the tune of "I feel pretty" from "West Side Story"

I feel bitter,
Oh so bitter,
I feel bitter, and angry, and dour...


Not really. just trying to figure out where to find an extra $120 a month.

I'm not bitter, honest!

So, we get some bad news today. They're raising our insurance premiums a chunk. I think I have an idea how bad it's going to be and it's basically going to put health insurance out of our price range. the thought of not having insurance is pretty scary, but even though insurance covered our babies births we still owe over $5k. I think I'm resigned to having medical bills forever.

one of my favorite quotes

"All I know for sure is that I don't know."

--Grant C. Ballard
Genius Extraordinaire
Hubris Maximus

I have had this conversation with my boss before.

The very least you can do...

If you are a born-again Christian is NOT interfere with others who want to serve God. If you're feeling generous, you might try loving people too. Hey, if a crabby punk like me can love people, I don't see why you smiley people out there can't. Just sayin.

BTW, if this statement confuses you then get saved. If it angers you, either grow up or get right.


If you're a midget, then please come here. I have a present for you.

Quote of the Day

overheard in conversation today:

"We were definitely women but...."

Zombies

Who wouldn't want their very own domesticated zombie. I'm watching Fido via Netflix (on demand or whatever) which has a plugin for my media center (Windows Vista). This is tre cool because if I'm bored I can just find a movie or a TV show and watch it from the comfort of my easy chair (which actually is a lazy boy) with full remote control functionality. BTW, so far this movie is hilarious. It's showing kids about 10 training in school to shoot zombies in the head. It's set in the 50s or early 60s. Of course, you'd have to have the ability to laugh @ zombies. Unless they're midget zombies. Those things haunt my dreams.

Anyhoo, today our fam spent a bunch of time outside. The carport was a disaster (we have a large carport) and so we decided to clean it out. My wife graciously agreed to help in between feeding babies and stuff. First we started by taking everything out of the carport. Then we had to clean all the leaves and dust/dirt out. Rebekah did most of that. My wife did all of that with a little help (hiderance) from Titus. I went ahead and boarded up 8 feet by 4 feet holes on the other side that used to have lattice work there. Of course, in this heat my strength was sapped incredibly fast. Of course, I'm captain obvious and couldn't figure why my stamina was so lacking (I mean, more than usual). Rebekah egged me into getting into our kiddie pool (which she was wading in). After I finished one of my tasks I aquiesced in order to avoid a fight, i mean a beating, I mean a spirited debate. It actually was quite refreshing. I finally sat down (man would that have been a funny picture. humiliating, but funny) and leaned back against the back of the whale's neck. Yeah, it's a blow up whale. Soooo, a long day. Finally, late in the day Rebekah bailed as the kids were mutinying. I was wrestling with trying to fix a DIY bench that was a monstrosity of neither form nor function. I finally ended up tossing out most of the original creation and reinforcing the bench. Of course, this made it freakin' heavy. And the only person around to help me was little old Titus. But he did a darn good job, even if that thing was so heavy it could have hurt him. Once it fell on my head and conked me pretty darn good. I finally built legs and with little Titus' help I was able to finally get a sturdy bench. Although when I showed it to Forrest he was unimpressed and seemed to think (well, he told me as much) that it wasn't sturdy at all. At which point I picked him up and stood him on the bench. Then I grabbed Titus and put him up there too. Sometimes actions speak louder than words, because that seemed to put lie to his theory that it was still weak and wobbly. It's amazing how a 5 year old can be such a little know-it-all. It's not like we put up with it.

The babies are doing well. The hot temperatures have forced us to turn on the swamp cooler which makes the babies' bedroom too cold. So, they're adjusting to life sleeping in other locations. They'll probably be nomads when they're older. The girls are doing great. They have their own pink sunglasses and run around like little debutantes. I've been watching Buffy the Vampire slayer (by the great Joss Whedon of Serenity/Firefly fame) and the theme song is very rocky and they dance to it. It's cute now, but they'll have GPS locators on them when they're older and no dancing allowed.

From the movie------------------->Oh dang, Fido's restraining collar got broken. He's on a flesh eating rampage now. Oh, I guess it was just flaky. He only ate Mrs. Henderson before it turned back on.

Well, we're having some interesting times in our church. Pray for our church and our pastor. Since we're so small, any little wave is felt pretty bad.

Works is going well. The company hasn't done a mass layoff since February which is nice. They've just been sniping. One here, two there. Tough breaks, but it's a hard knock life (or so Annie says). They're still not in the black, but they hope to break even this year. speaking of work, I need to go remove some virtual serial ports. l8r g8r

funny comment

Rebekah is playing "Boom Blox" on the Wii while feeding Trinity. This is a game where you have to hurl the wii-mote like you're throwing a ball. Great game. Created by Stephen Spielberg. We found it for $21.49 on amazon I think. Rebekah has played this more than any Wii game yet I think. And it's her Wii!

Now she's trash talking me. Maybe farmtown on facebook isn't so bad...

:)

From New Plymouth with Love

from Rebekah

"I was sitting here (when I should be going to bed) and wondering when Forrest's schoolwork stuff is going to be sent out. So I went online and looked again at his courses and stuff like that.  These are going to be his subjects this year:  Health, History, Language Arts, Math, Phonics, Physical Education w/Lessons, and Technology.  I really am excited for him to be starting school.  I am planning to add my own Bible course to that grouping, but that will be an after-breakfast thing and all the kids (babies excluded) will be in on it.  The person who's idea I'm adapting for Bible time said that they did one verse a day, just discussing what it meant, and also added a character quality in there...the character quality part lasting all week.  And after they were done talking, all of them took a few minutes to pray.  The girls know what "let's pray" means, even if all they ever say is "Dear Jesus, mumble-mumble-mumble, Amen!"
My Mother (bless her heart) taught all of us kids character qualities when we were growing up and I'm very grateful for that...I want to do the same with my kids.  My thinking in training them is to name a quality, like honesty, and then talk about how we can be honest, what the opposite of honesty would entail, and then we can work really hard at being honest in everything all week long.  Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts that they'd like to share with me??  Really, I'm open for anything.  :-)

We've been working on chores every day.  It was quite a workout for me at first but then I realized that if I let the boys mark off their own chores as they did them, they were more excited to do them.  Titus especially...he loves doing his chores and asks me for more.  He's also been helping Grant a lot outside and Grant said he's been great...as great as a 4yr. old with limited skills can be.  He can be quite a pill at times too (like complaining all through church, every single service), but he's a sweet little guy.  Forrest is helpful the majority of the time but he hasn't learned to handle disappointment very well.  The crying is a little hard to take sometimes.  :-/    And the girls....well, they're 2 and into EVERYTHING.  They are talking very well though.  The babies...Trinity has been sleeping through the night for a few weeks now and Clell wakes up just once or twice.  He's such a guzzler though that it only takes him about 5 minutes to drink his bottle, and then he burps and goes back to sleep.  It takes a total of 10 minutes most of the time.  They still don't go to sleep at night very early but we're getting there.  I have to remind myself over and over that they are only 2 months...be patient!  :-)

How's Grant?  The big hairy guy is as cute and lovable as ever!   :-)

Love,
Rebekah"

Oh, what a night.

I finally went to bed about 9. AM. In the morning. Long story short, I got called last night by my boss blathering something about a site server going down and total data failure. So, for about 4 hours I babysat 4 kids and helped get things in motion for some disaster recovery.Then I proceeded to go into the office and work.  I won't bore you with the details as I am still tired, but 2 hard drives failed in a RAID 5 array (second time in less than a year this has happened) so we had to do a complete rebuild. The services (e-mail and stuff) are up, but the data is in transit. It's only 200gig! geez. Heck, copying it over a gigabit connection to a portable hard disk taking us an obscene amount of time. I finally bugged out a bit before 9 cause I was toast. I almost fell asleep coming home and when I opened my eyes I realized I was starting to veer into a lane occupied by a very large and intimidating Octopus. Huh? Oh, I mean semi-trailer. Or I guess a semi with a trailer. Not that the trailer really would matter much. anyway, I've gotten 6 or seven hours since then but still feel like I've been wrung through a wringer.

Family life:
It's all about me! Stop asking about the kids. just kidding.

children 1-6 are good
Wife 1 is good
Wife 2... woops. nevermind.

Rough nights

Have had a couple of rough nights due to the temps in the house being too high.Then I got a text on my new phone @ about 1:30 telling me something at work was broken. Tempting as it was to let it go, I got up since I wasn't sleeping anyway.

I need to get the siding on my carport finished today. So much home improvement stuff that really needs done. No idea how I'm gonna get it all done. Oh, that's right, I won't :)

That's poetry skipper

So, a fairly eventful past few days. On Saturday I dosed myself with Ginseng and Coffee and watched the kids for 2.5 hours (I know exactly how long it is when I have to watch the four oldest). Then I proceeded to prepare a "new-2-her computer" for Rebekah. I wandered outside and did a little surgery on my tire wells. Next, I figured out how many pieces of pipe I need for my irrigation system (3 1.25" along w/ 3 connecting pieces and one elbow). And then I stopped. And stared. It was mocking me. Repeatedly it had defeated my mental attempts to bend it to my will. "You don't have what it takes!" it screamed at me. At that point I decided maybe I'd had a little bit too much coffee. But still, there it stood, as it had for years, a constant reminder of my failure. What was it you ask, with curiosity burning in your heart? It was a 8x4 foot piece of siding for my carport! I had purchased 6 pieces four years ago to replaces some rotting pieces of OSB on the east side. The water from sprinklers (or something) hit it and anybody with any brains doesn't expose OSB to the elements. It's good for putting on the skeleton of houses, but then you put something on top of it for carpentry's sake! anyway, I had envisioned great things of putting up my special external siding along with windows to allow light in, but after this many years I was forced to acknowledge that I wans't going to get around to it with my busy schedule. So, away I went with my drill (with screwdriver bit) and started ripping off the OSB. It was a big job, but I had two sheets up before my wife saw it and she seemed pleased with the way it looked (she's a good liar though so it's hard to tell). The boys were doing good and helping out. Rebekah came out with the girls and all was good. And then Forrest had a wheelbarrow (big metal kind with stuff in it) tip over on his toe and smash it. The harmonious picture was gone. And so were my helpers.

life update:
no major deviation from previous update. I bought the "Force Unleashed" for the Wii for Forrest. That game will give you a bit of a work out. Anyway, I purchased his love for $20 bucks. Not a bad deal.