The View From Drew

 Happy Father's Day to all my fellow Livejournal members.  I recently lost my grandfather at the age of 94.  He was my last living grandparent.  I was lucky enough to see him one last time two years ago and the boys had a chance to meet him.  He sat there and marvelled at how eneergetic they were.  (Too energetic in Mikey's case.  My grandfather got very nervous as the one-and-half year old started doing tumbles on Grandpa's hard wood floor.)  I never had great-grandparents and I never got to meet my father's mother, so this was very special to me.

Happy Father's Day, Pa!

In the photo is my aunt, Sister Joan; my niece, Katelyn; my mother, Phyllis; and my grandfather, Patrick.

I give you Eliza Dushku...No, I don't!  She's all mine! 

I got the bloody driver to work and was able to transfer the pictures from my camera to the laptop.  Here is the group picture from the The Quality of Leadership panel at Shore Leave last month.  Here are nine of the thirteen people who were involved with contributing to the book.  Seated from left to right are neadods , kradical , tiggerallyn , and terri_osborne .  Standing from left to right are puppetmaker40 , peterdavidblog , me, nightwolfwriter , and jmswallow . 

I will post more pictures shortly, but I wanted to get this one up here and on the Big Finish page on Facebook.

I don't post pictures of myself too often as I think I take a terrible picture.  But as the dust settles, the battle now over, and I pack my bag to leave for the summer, I thought I'd post this one taken by the president of the writer's club.  There's some pictures of my students behind me as well as our late principal, Monsignor Monaghan.  There's also a birthday card jafinnola made and had the students sign for my 40th birthday and a school baseball cap.  There's a caricature of me teaching as rendered by one of my students and my reunion id with my graduation picture on it.  There's me as a Wii character and a couple of slogan signs, including, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."  It's not been the best of years, what with the drama among the teachers (and they say the kids are bad) and the fact that we still don't have a contract with our supposedly benevolent archdiocese, but as our current principal said, we did right by our students.  I sure tried.

Spent the Sunday before St. Patrick's at my sister Bridget's house with the family.  My niece, Katelyn, took some pictures of me with Mikey and two of his cousins.  It's something that they will all be turning two in a few short months.  Time flies.  My brother Denis and sister Bridget are expecting additions to their families in the next few months, so that will bring the grandchildren total to ten for my parents.

I haven't posted any in ages, but here are a few recent pictures of the family

I'm a little behind on posting about the vacation.

We were well settled in our apartment now.  We all agreed it was like coming home.  Towards the end of the week, the landlord let us look at the other apartments and while the three bedroom with loft was nice looking, you had to climb way too many stairs to get to it.

It was a little awkward getting up with Mikey at five in the morning and having no place to hide with him as Sue's mother slept in the living room and Eddie had the front room.  I simply sat in a folding chair in our bedroom and fed Mikey quietly.

We made our to the beach, looking like the opening credits to the show, Yes Dear.  Sue's mom guided the stroller.  Sue had the bag with towels and blanket and I was carrying Mikey's beach bubble and our tent.  The tent is very cool.  It's collapsible and pops open with ease.  It was great as the sun became too much for the fair skinned boy that is me after a while.  Mikey and I hid under it.  He is looking more and more like me, complete with fair skin.

This year, Eddie saw several people being buried in the sand and decided he wanted to as well.  We buried him up to his chest.  He loved it.

The only real problem with the beach was that the water was still a little too cold and there were jelly fish all over the place.  We didn't go out as far as we wanted to and were skeeved when we saw the jelly fish in the sand.

That evening was the first of several BBQ's at the apartment.  There's a community grill in the back.  My one problem there is that some people don't clean up after themselves.  I guess they expect the landlord to do it.  We had hamburgers and corn on the cob.  Eddie loves it when I grill and I'm happy to do it when I see him eat well.

We then went for a walk on the boardwalk.  The next day was going to be a return trip to the water park.  Eddie was excited.

To those who celebrate, enjoy the day. There will be no top ten list this week because of the holiday. Instead I leave you with a number of images of the family and a few other things of interest.

( Pictures that need to be hidden, not because they're bad, but because there are a lot. And kids, this is how you spell a lot. It is not one word as I see in so many journals. Thus endeth the lesson for today )

While I'm posting pics...

( Here are a few of the boys )

This weekend I had the pleasure of watching the best man from my wedding celebrate his wedding nuptials. We lost touch with each other over the years and only recently reconnected. Sue and I always joked though that he would show up at our door at the age of forty and introduce us to his bride. We were off by a year. It felt a little weird not being there for him the way he was for me, but I was happy to be there to share in his day with his lovely bride.

( Images ahead )

Look at That Face! I've been quiet lately. Mostly, it has to do with Michael. It's funny. Sue and I thought we were prepared for what another presence in our lives meant, but then there is the reality. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but when you had a pattern down with one child, a second one REALLY disrupts it. Between that and winding down the school year, I've barely been on-line, not responded to much email or much of what my friends on LJ have posted. Michael is doing well though. He continues to fill out and we've had a few good nights recently where he slept for nearly five hours straight. Last night was a little rough. He decided he wanted awake time at one in the morning! I'm going to try to do some catching up this weekend as I have a five day break ahead of me, which is nice. After that, there's only eight more class days until finals. Sweet.

I don't know if you've ever done it in the past, but if you should ever go into teaching costume design, I've got your first student.

( Read more... )

And for the rest of you, since I've never posted one, but I've mentioned her before, here's Ginger, our cat. She's fifteen years old on August 31st.

( Read more... )

From kradical

List 10 fictional characters that you would have sex with, then tag five friends:

1) Rogue (from the X-Men - I'll never forget that drawing I saw of Rogue at a convention of her lying in a field of hay with only her jacket on, unbuttoned.)
2) Jamie Summers (The Bionic Woman)
3) Faith (Eliza Dushku from Buffy - Oh, let's be honest, it's Eliza I want. She can be anybody she wants to be. I'm there.)
4) Janie (Their Eyes Were Watching God, but don't tell the kids in school)
5) Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell of Deep Space Nine)
6) Charley Pollard (India Fisher of the Big Finish Doctor Who series.)
( Love the India! )
7) Solitaire (Jane Seymour of Live and Let Die)
8) Mary Jane Watson - (Spider-Man)
9) Dayna Mellanby - (Josette Simon from Blake's 7)
10) Domenica Corsi (from the SCE series.)

Tag! jafinnola, jon_p, lonemagpie, marinarusalka, and mkopelke - you're it!

Every once in awhile, a critter of one type or another passes through the backyard. We have seen two gophers, several deer, a number of birds, a baby chipmunk (which makes a morning visit to our cat Ginger and the two of them have an animated conversation through the glass door from Eddie's playroom. One of these days I'm going to capture that on camera.) and this rabbit. He stood perfectly still as I approached him the other day and allowed me to take a picture before scampering off.