I like your Shooooooes

I was taking Drew to school today and we pulled up behind one of her classmates. His mom was getting out of her truck to get him and his little sister out of the passenger side and Drew says to me “That’s Nick's mom.”

As I’m getting out of the car and proceed to get Drew unbuckled from the car seat she says, “Come on Dad!!! We gotta go!”

“Really?”, I asked. What’s the rush?

“Just come on.”, she says.

We are now walking at a fast pace AROUND Nick, his mom and his sister.

“I can run”, Drew says. “I’m feeling much better today.”

“No, I think we’ll walk.” But we walk very briskly to the back of the school for her class. Drew points out several other classmates along the way, but we seem to be in a race to get to the door.

I manage to get a hug AND a kiss out of her today. A feat that is no small miracle, when normally she usually runs right for the sign in board and then for the tables with her friends. But today, we seem to be lingering by the classroom door.

I sign her in and she says goodbye and heads off for her day.

On my way out, I pass Nick, his mom and his little sister. Mom is saying something about how Drew has already made it to class because little sister is taking her time. She’s cute as a button with little curls and singing to herself and taking in the scenery without a care in the world.

As I pass by I tell her that I like her shoes and she says to me “And I like your Shooooooooooes!”, with a big old grin and without missing a beat to her little tune. Her mom and I crack up and I head back to the car.

I call Tina to tell her that our “Package” has been delivered as I do every morning after dropping Drew off at school and tell her my story. As I do, I remember the previous night’s conversation with our daughter about her friends in class. Not one girls name was mentioned. All boys.

Tina turned to me and said, “We’re gonna have our hands full with this one”.

To which Drew replied, “You sure are.”

This Sunday, I’m going shopping for that shotgun and I’m signing Mooch up for Teenage Boy Chew-toy Training.

Mission: Impoochable

Cue the Peter Gunn theme music. Exterior: Night.

We had our Chocolate Lab Mooch for about 2 years now. He’s always been pretty normal, but we recently adopted a sister for him, Belle, who is a Yellow Lab about 6 months old. Since then, he’s changed.

Not in a bad way. He’s become more playful. Like a puppy I guess you could say. He plays with Belle constantly and looks like a lost pup himself when it’s time for her to go back into her crate for awhile. The most significant change though, has been recently when we let them out in the backyard.

Belle is just a puppy. She’s in a hurry to get everywhere and everything is interesting. She darts out the back door and flies through the yard like a kid with a sugar rush on Mountain Dew and Red Bull mixers. Her tongue hangs out the side of her mouth, ears pulled back for “aerodynamic styling” and she chases and barks at the neighborhood cats, or the grass if no cats are around.

Mooch however, has gone from being his simple humdrum self to Mr. Lab. Mr. Mooch Lab, K-9 Special Ops. We’ve established that his coat is chocolate, so it goes without saying that in the black of night, he’s no where to be found. But even during the daylight hours, the dog pulls off some amazing “stealth” ability. Mooch walks the perimeter of the house, never the middle of the yard. That would give away his position. Instead of just walking on the outside of the bushes, he weaves his way in and out of them. Presumably to throw off anyone following him.

Much to my dismay, we must also be at war with whatever “threat” is out there, because he and Belle have dug trenches to hunker down in when weaving through the bushes just isn’t enough. I keep filling them in and he keeps digging them out.

All I can picture in my head during working hours is him and Belle in some sort of covert ops meetings during the day, running CAT scans on my computer while I’m at work.

Amelia Island

Off on another business trip. This time, not so far from home. We're staying at Ameila Island, which is just East of Jacksonville. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. If you've ever been to Jacksonville, you might understand. That all changed when we pulled up to the Ritz-Carlton Resort.

The hotel itself has no parking what so ever. It's valet or you don't drive here. The place is the very meaning of swank. The room is huge and overlooks the beach. The bed is nothing but goosedown and you literally are swallowed up by it. The bathroom is as big as most hotel bedrooms, all marble and has his and her sinks.

Each night, Room Attendants turn down the bed, leave a fresh rose, water and chocolates. The atmosphere here is amazing. Private beach access and they even have attendants there as well, waiting with towels, a bar and an open playground for the kids.

The first night here I walked out to the beach and spent about an hour just watching the sun set and the waves roll in. It's much cooler here than in Orlando. They have beach chairs set up with umbrellas and I immediately thought of Kenny Chesney's "Old Blue Chair" as I sat in one to relax. The water here is much cleaner than I would have thought for it being so close to Jacksonville and is much nicer even than Daytona, New Symyrna or Cocoa.

I have to say I'm impressed and will probably be bringing the wife back as soon as we can, although it's pretty pricey. I'll post pics soon

Los Angeles

Pretty uneventful flight. Aside from the usual California delays we seem to be having due to some midwestern storm activity, everything else seems to be going OK. Right landing gear was acting up a bit, but eventually seemed to cooperate and we landed with no issues.

No headaches this time. I don't know what the deal is with that. I swear it must just be piss poor plane pressurization or something. We'll just call it the Four P's for short.

I'm staying at the Renaissance Hotel, Los Angeles, just down the road from the airport. I thought it would be a restless night, but I can't hear the planes over the TV in the room next to me.

Tomorrow ends this round trip West Coast journey and I couldn't be more glad to get home to my family. Although I'll be short several kids this weekend, which wasn't the plan. Haven't seen them in awhile and they start school soon so that kinda sucks, but my oldest is devising a plan that might work to our advantage...Go Krittabug!

Of all the legs of this trip, I'm excited mostly about this one. Tomorrow I'll be at our EA Mobile studios as well as our EALA studios. While we'll be cramming a crap load of meetings and visiting into one day that should have been more like 2, similar to our other visits, it will be one of the most productive days for me this whole trip. Not to mention, it's another set of studios I've not yet seen, especially with EA Mobile. But most of all, when it's all said and done, I get to board a plane that will take me home to my family.

Hopefully, the next time I'm writing in this thing, it will be from my own home and not at the desk of some strange hotel room...

San Francisco

Arrived very late from Vancouver. Flight was delayed due to problems with origination flight from San Francisco. I get very bad headaches on some flights and I don't know why. Never been able to figure it out and the best the Doc's can tell me is that it's due to pressure. I have to assume that that has something to do with it because my boss said he could see his water bottle crushing with the pressure in the plane. I had no problems from Orlando to Vancouver, but from Vancouver to San Fran, was the same old story.

I'll admit the headache wasn't as bad as previous ones, but it was there just the same. I just hope the flight to LA tomorrow isn't that bad and the flight home to Orlando as well.

I've been to San Fran before on business and with Tina, my wife. Beautiful city and probably one of the most clean that I've ever seen. We'd hoped to have some time to visit the Muir woods just outside of Redwood City which is one of the more famous Redwood Forests in California, but we've had so many meetings and ran so late, by the time we got to dinner, the sun was setting and the park was closing so it wasn't meant to be.

Speaking of dinner, it's the first time I've drank in a long time. The guys from work insisted that I join them in a round of Tequila and so I obliged being that is was one of our groups first times drinking Tequila ever. One round led to another and we finished dinner and headed back to the hotel.

At the hotel we decided to visit the bar and not quite call it a night. We talked about work and non-work related stuff and I decided that 8 AM was coming too early for me so I turned in for the night ahead of everyone else. The discussions had turned to politics and religion and that was a key sign it was time for me to leave anyway.

I'm looking forward to wrapping this trip up Friday. I want to go home and see my family and get life back to normal.

Vancouver

I'm traveling for work. West Coast round trip visit and we're starting off in Vancouver. We arrived yesterday, my Birthday, and we're leaving tomorrow around 6 PM PST to head for San Francisco. We'll stay there 2 days and then hit LA for 1 day Friday and leave on a red eye that night at 10:45 to come home.

Vancouver is in Canada, for those of you who failed Geography. It's still on the West Coast though, and nestled between a beautiful mountain range and a Sea Coast, much like the Bay of San Francisco.

We have one of the largest and in my opinion most beautiful EA campus' Worldwide located in Vancouver. The architechture of the building is just stunning, the amenities are without a doubt awesome and the location is breathtaking. It's truly a creative atmosphere when you can look out your window and see mountain ranges surrounding your office building in the distance.

We had dinner tonight at a place called Grouse Mountain, named after a local bird that resembles a pheasent. It's one of the tallest points in Vancouver and is a popular Ski area during the winter months. There is a restaurant there that we decided to eat at this evening that over looks all of Vancouver from your dining area is gorgeous. After dinner we took a ski lift down the mountain and back up, even though there was no snow to ski with. There was snow in a bank to the side of a run off ditch however. The temperature was around 45 degrees on the Ski lift in the shade, which was most of the way down.

Tomorrow we depart for San Francisco as I mentioned. We hope to be able to get to the Redwood Forests if time permits. We'll see what happens.