Travel Pete's Journal: Basements, Kids & Mental Health

Initial Corrections

Max has begun correcting us!

It's a bit disconcerting, have a 2-year-old point out your identification and recognition failures.

A couple weeks ago, while shopping for furniture, we found th kids' play area and Kathy was telling Max to sit on a large plastic shoe seat thing. Max replied, "Actually, it's like a shoe, it's a boot."

He was right. It was designed to look like an old Mother Hubbard boot!

Niiice.

Then, yesterday afternoon we were playing out front after picking Max up from daycare down the street. Well, another of the kids was being picked up and driving by. I said, "Max, there's Parker's car and Parker's mom, wave to her!"

Max didn't wave, and they drove by. I was wondering what was up, but Maxwell clarified the issue for me. "Daddy, that's not Parker."

He was right. Again. Parker is our next door neighbor (5 years old) and Patrick is the kid who was being picked up from daycare! So, I meant Patrick, not Parker. Max apparently was listening a little too closely...

Sheesh. Need to start taking my daily vitamin again.

Speaking of which, Max wanted his vitamin today, so I gave it to him, and said I was going to have my vitamin. Of course, I grabbed my Lipitor medicine instead and he said, "not going to have medicine, have vitamin."

Sharp as a tack.

Next he'll be saying, "Silly Daddy, Trix are for kids!" And you know what? He'd be right about that too.

Sicky on vacation

I thought, okay, I have some time today before we leave for Santa Fe tomorrow, so maybe I'll write an entry.

Unfortunately, I've emptied more tissue boxes before 9am than most people do all year, so I'm going to sit back, nurse my cold (when I'd rather be nursing a cold beer) and watch a little soccer if I can find someone who paid the $180 to receive the Euro2004 tournament...

Okay, okay, one short entry

We're fixing the house up so we can enjoy it while we're still here (alive, that is). We heard too many stories about people fixing up their house to sell it, then wondering why they didn't do it earlier so they could have enjoyed it!

As you know, we recently got the house painted on the outside, as well as the main family and front living rooms inside.

After redecorating the family room and moving some furniture (paintings, tables, lamps, etc.) we are discovering that we don't have enough furniture for the whole house as we expand into rooms we've previously left to themselves.

The front living room, for example, was empty yesterday morning except for a makeshift book cabinet and a fresh coat of paint.

We discovered a cool little interactive tool for designing your room on the web to help you visualize things.

Now, we have a couple of new chairs to anchor the design effort and need to add tables, lighting, bookshelves, ottomans, rugs, paintings, pictures, mirrors, etc. to cozy the room up.

Big, black, leather chairs. We love them, but they are bold, and the room will have to be as well, methinks.

Here's a couple pix of the two chairs and an extra chair I couldn't say no to, but which probably won't fit in the front living room...

After shopping at 9 furniture stores over two weekends, we decided on these two chairs from SofaMart of all places... We still need to add an ottoman and, well, everything else.

Here's the Port chair that I got at the same time for $125, couldn't pass up the good deal and the credit card was already warmed up. It's a stiff, green cloth chair that's a bit funky and I, well, I just like it. It'll probably end up in the loft as it probably ain't none gonna fit in the cozy Parisian Library we're developing for the front living room.

Fine. TWO new entries!

I spent yesterday sneezing my sick head off and enjoying the outdoors with my cool nephew Shawn. We finished a front patio project that's been hanging around like this bad cold. (sneeze) (cough) Basically, I removed all the river rock from a 4'x12' area so we could lay down flagstone and have it as a seating area with chairs now that Max likes to play out front more. (achoo)

There we go again, expanding parts of the house we use so now we need more furniture to fill it! Sheesh... (sneeze, sneeze)

Here's lookin' out towards the front, with our new chairs (that had been gracing the back kitchen patio). We used buff-colored flagstone ($.15/lb) from a local nursery and red crush fine stone (like a powder, very fine) for leveling and to fill in between the rocks.

Here's another view which shows the details a bit better. Took Shawn and I most of the day to finish, but we like the results!

Vacation lull...

I'm finishing some projects before taking a short vacation for the rest of this week.

See you next week!

Cheers,

BilFish

It's footy time! Rapids v Dallas Burn match report

This entry is late because I spent much of today at the Colorado Rapids Media Copa 2004... their attempt to butter me up so I write more favorable articles about them.

It probably worked, as it was quite a good time. We got to play on the amazing Invesco Field at Mile High pitch and use the regulation MLS balls, reallly, realllllly nice stuff.

Anyway, here's my efforts that allow me to do the fun stuff like Copa Media. It's the Match Report describing the Rapids v Burn home game. I'll kill the suspense by telling you it was a 1-1 non-thriller.

American Soccer News:Rapids v Dallas June 19, 2004 Score: 1-1 draw.

However, the article is good and the coach snapped at me during inteviews, always good for press, I guess!

Cheers,

BilFish

Bathroom Fans

Why do some people turn the bathroom fan on only as they exit?

What is it? Do they enjoy the sound and smell of their own bowel movement?

Do they need the silence to think?

What is it?

In-Law update

Clearly, it's always of interest when much of your wife's family chooses to homestead out West.

Brother-in-law, Sister-in-law, niece, nephew, Mother-in-law and a couple of dogs (they sold the horses).

Two homes, lots of people, certainly you never know what's going to result from all this.

I'm here to report: Steady as she sails. So far, so good.

Yep, I've been enjoying having everyone around. From just driving over to hang out with the Fam, to planning soccer games and enjoying dinners together it's been a gas so far.

I've always enjoyed just hanging out and b.s.ing with my friends and family, and this goes a long way towards that. They are all great folks, really nice and hard working and just plain ol' friendly.

So, there ya go. Maybe family's a good thing after all!

100 Entries!

If this were a TV show, I'd be throwing a party.

But it's not. I'm sorry about that.

What it is, is my 100th entry in this journal I started in February. It's been really wonderful to find my writing roots again, and find the sticktoitiveness necessary to get 100 entries out.

Yea me.

Back to regular programming tomorrow.

Cheers,

BilFish

Baby Talk

Max was a bit tired this morning, and whining a bit, truth be told. He wanted Momma to go downstairs with him, wanted Momma to get him chocolate milk, wanted Momma to put on Baby TV, wanted Momma... etc...

Momma, of course, needed to get ready for workie work. Still, she's very adroit and accommodated most of his requests. Finally, close to 7am, she really needed to get ready and Max really needed to watch more Baby on TV (Baby Einstein videos).

Daddy rolled out of bed and was trying to figure out what Max wanted.

"gowannaasdfoostairsandtvandawefebabyshow." Max had his boppy in his mouth, and was mumbling up a storm.

So, I took the pacifier out and asked him to say it again.

"wannagoownsaldtairasandseebabysdadfd."

Ahhh! It wasn't the boppy at all! Maxwell was just mumbling up a storm.

Sometimes, a boppy is just a boppy.

Inside Painting

It turns out there's an even easier way to paint a room. Hire somebody and have them do it for you!

We're glad we finally did for the living and family rooms and main entryway. It took professionals about 2.5 days to finish, probably 5 workdays total, with some biggggg ladders (we've got 20 foot ceilings).

Here's the result in the family room. We're going to totally redecorate the living room and will show you when we're done.

We repainted in a soft, sandy sort of color called French Sonnet. Really nice, warm stuff, but not slap-you-in-the-face like some of our other rooms.

We also reunited some of the furniture Stroh built for me, so now the entertainment center, the coffee table and the side table are together again, and we brought in two lamps to warm things up. Success!

Max helps to show off the warmer color better in this picture, as well as the extra polish to the room that the side table and lamp add. Not to mention a place to hold my drink. We also moved a large framed photograph of Vaduz Castle (found this online, diff. angle than my picture in the room) in Liechtenstein, transferred from the staircase wall to the family room. The composition of this picture is great, it's one of my faves!

We used a second color to accent the insets in the tall fireplace wall, the color was called, uhhh, West Warwick. It's kind of a soft caramel peach, a bit like a brown version of a candy Circus Peanut, and similar but less orange than our kitchen, so there's nice continuity when looking from the kitchen to the family room.

Politically Incorrect fly swatter

In my own small way.

I just killed a bug in the house with the latest issue of "Endangered Earth" which is produced by the Center for Biological Diversity and printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink, probably. Now with a smudge of blood.

Sorry 'bout that.

Bad BilFish, bad.

Soccer preview: Rapids v D.C. United

I apologize to all you non-soccer fans out there who read this journal, but I've had a banner week writing soccer articles, to the tune of 5,500 words worth, lots of interest, and the whole bit. I certainly never expected all this.

My third piece is entitled Rapid Replay and is a preview of the Colorado Rapids going to face D.C. United tomorrow in Washington to attempt to get back on track after two sad losses and no scoring in over 200 minutes of play.

So sad.

Even sadder, I broke the news this morning that John Spencer, beloved Scottish captain and striker of the Colorado Rapids, is probably playing his final season here in the U.S. before returning home to England.

As always, my version is up online at BilFish's Rapids Minisite where you can select the Rapid Replay article for June 11, 2004.

It Finally Happened...

Despite carefully not leaving a forwarding address, our relatives finally tracked us down here in wonderful Colorado.

Yep.

The In-Laws have relocated from Illinois and moved in this weekend. Not to the house, phew, but to the same damn town! Sheesh...

And next week, the Mom-in-Law unit arrives on our dusty shores.

Gonna be a red-letter day in my journal, that's for sure.

Actually, and don't spread this around too much, I'm looking forward to having more family around, I think it'll be quite a kick and we all seem to get along pretty well. With my family well-ensconced in Arizona and Florida, it'll at least cut down on travel planning as we can skip the Chicago-Rockford leg of our holiday travel each year!

I'll check back periodically to let you know how it's going. The move went well, and there was plenty of beer.

I'm Blushing Part II (Plagiarism!)

If plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery... then color me ecstatic!

I can't help but note that major Denver newspaper The Rocky Mountain News lifted the headline from my exposé in a bald-faced manner for their follow-up article.

If they take their article offline, here's the headline: Club or country demands tug at Rapids. My headline published two days ago is: For Club or Country.

I was the first to come up with that idea in my questions for star National Team player Pablo Mastroeni. He liked it and ran with it, and apparently so do the Rocky.

Sheesh, where's the byline credit? Well, I'll take it as a sign that maybe I should become a copy editor again and start writing headlines.

It's not the first time the Rocky Mountain News has lifted (I hesitate only briefly before saying "plagiarized") my work. One of their writers has also lifted, verbatim, one of my quotes from Joe Cannon in an article two days after I published my version (and he wasn't standing next to me "getting the same quote" either, as I'd chased Joe down as he was leaving the stadium).

Glad to see I'm producing print-quality work.

I'm blushing!

But clearly not too cool to post kind words about myself or too proud to toot my own horn, donchaknow.

Toot. Toot.

I wrote an investigative report (see yesterday's blog entry) and it was well-received in the soccer community. I'm really happy about that, I really enjoyed the opportunity to work on the piece, and have to thank my editors at American Soccer News for supporting my efforts in the face of, let's just say, reticence to having a reporter poking around too much.

One example is at Matchnight.com (a leading soccer news and analysis website).

It's no secret that I would like a career in writing, but sports writing? As I said to my Dad, "I don't recall growing up and saying I wanted to cover sports. Mostly I wanted to play sports." He agreed.

But it turns out I enjoy the challenge of a well-written journalistic piece combined with the creative options available to sports writers.

Here's a copy of the Matchnight guy's blog entry (use the above link to point to the actual post).

Looking at the Mastroeni call-up fiasco...
Posted by: Dr. Chuck Pearson
08:11 PM ET / 05:11 PM PT

...WITHOUT the obligatory Hankinson-kicking! BilFish of CybERRRRRRRR American Soccer News really hits the home run here with the news AND analysis AND interviews.

Sorry for such a big quote, but it's an even bigger article, and you should definitely RTWT (Read The Whole Thing):

The initial request by Arena for Mastroeni to appear at the U.S. camp on Monday, June 7, came early last week, probably Memorial Day, Monday May 31.

Friday morning, Hankinson, on behalf of Mastroeni, called Arena to discuss the Rapids' request. It was during this call that Hankinson was told of Arena's decision regarding the request...

This piece has quotes from simply an epic number of parties, including Hankinson himself as well as Gansler and Spencer, and FULL INTERVIEWS with Mastroeni and Wolff. It's really an awesome piece of journalism. Props to 'em.

Been busy!

With three articles totaling 5500 words, my in-laws moving in this past weekend and not being able to put my kid in daycare, it's been a hectic, late-night kind of week for this hobbyist... :-)

Sorry that I haven't posted for a couple days, but I've been pretty busy. There was some crazy stuff going on between the US Men's National Team for soccer and Major League Soccer club the Colorado Rapids.

I won't bore you with the details, as they can be found on American Soccer News: For Club or Country main page for now.

Essentially, instead of one preview article for the upcoming Rapids game, I found myself with two previews (each about 1500 words) and a special investigative report on the strange situation mentioned above (2500 words) for a very busy few days at the typewriter.

The funny part was that, since I didn't have daycare for my kid, I had to conduct some of my "important investigative" interviews with players and coaches on the phone while Max tugged on my shirt and said "I grab Daddy's shirt" or bumped his head on the dresser and started crying or wanted more cookies... The conversations must have sounded a bit absurd, and it was absolutely useless trying to concentrate!

Anyway, busy busy!

Oh, I mentioned previews. The Rapids play the Kansas City Wizards tomorrow night.

As always, I put up versions on my Rapids MiniSite in case the published web version ever goes offline.

Blog Marketing

I've been told I should communicate more directly with those of you who read the blog regularly. It makes everyone feel good.

"Hi. Welcome to the blog."

Cheers,

BilFish

Okay, fine, I'll write a bit more. Really, if you've been following along, you know that I can't help but write more — usually a lot more.

So, here's a quick BilFish BlogOgraphy.

Known as the BilFish since high school. One wife of my life, Kathy (or Fuzzy as I tend to call her) (or Kate as my family says because she didn't give me her real name when we met); one dog, not the light of my life some days; one boy who does light the days up; and another boy on the way.

I keep the BilFish moniker because it also remains one of my stupidest marketing failures. Nobody can spell it. They either think it's spelled "billfish" or they actually think my last name is Fish. So, stupid all around, especially with the advent of a Web that demands accuracy in typing. And I've never been able to pick up billfish.com so people can never find my website.

I work at home — leastwise, that's what I like to say. I'm working on becoming a writer. That takes practice, I hear, which is why I started the web journal. I've desired to write for a while and Movable Type helped make it happen. It's good to get out there with regular prose, the "threat" of a deadline and the whole bit.

This has already led to my being invited to cover the Colorado Rapids MLS soccer team for an online newspaper, American Soccer News.

I've created the BilFish Soccer Minisite with the articles I've written to date. This has been a fantastic way to build up some volume of material while facing real-world deadlines and the knowledge that the readers expect timely, accurate, high-quality reporting.

It's been great interviewing top soccer players, such as Scottish International John Spencer or US Men's National Team regular Pablo Mastroeni. Great stuff.

Otherwise, I take care of son Maxwell, and at a little over 2 years of age that takes more work as he becomes more lively and challenging, knowing exactly what he wants. Daddy get this, Daddy do that. A born supervisor!

I've got a bunch of in-laws moving out this summer, so that should keep us busy, as well as a foreign exchange student for a month in July, so we're planning a low-key but exciting Summer Season.

Otherwise, I'm just happy to get the feedback from everyone, it's great talking with you and I enjoy the dialogue.

Without further adieu, back to the writing.

Outwit, Outlast, Outplay your 2 year old

Try it, it's fun!

I can still outwit my little guy Maxwell, although I fear the days may be numbered for the following technique.

First, tell him a (potentially unrelated) fact. Then, tell him why he should do what you want him to do.

For example:

Let's say Max wants to take a bath. But you don't want him to. Try this conversation.

I say, "Max, you ate dinner last night, right?
Max says, "Yeahhh."

Dad: "See, so you're okay. It's Dad's turn to take a shower."

Max says, "Uhhh, okay."

Works great. If the fact is related, so much the better. But it's not necessary.

Vacation without Pictures!?!?!?

Apples without sauce?
Crépes without Nutella?
Peanut without butter?

R WE NUTS!?!?!?

Nope. Just forgot to bring both the digital and video cameras with us for our one-day overnight excursion to Vail this weekend.

We figured to return to the Mountains for a relaxed, sun-filled weekend of hikes, mini-putt-putt-goofy-golf, Gondola rides to the mountaintop, and more.

What we got was 30F degree temperatures, an inch and a half of rain, followed by 5 inches of wet snow. Memorial Day, sheesh. In Colorado, it ain't no picnic!

But the hot tub was nice!

So, if we didn't have cameras, how do I bring you the following pix? The Magic of Picture Phones! These are from my Nokia 3650. I'd link you to a web page on the phone, but I don't really like it that much, I just wanted the bluetooth connection and wire-free headset. And the adulation of the crowds as they see how impressive-looking my cellie is!

Vail. Memorial Day 2004. 5 inches of snow out our window. Mmmm....

Vail. Memorial Day 2004. Walking to Sunday Brunch. Fuzzy & Max pose in front of somebody's Stupid Utility-less Vehicle.