My Father’s Day Weekend

It’s hard to believe that it has only been a year since I last posted. It seems like forever. So much has happened since last Father’s Day.

Most importantly, Da Boy got engaged. Soon our family will consist of Da Man & Da Woman, Da Girl & Da Other Boy, Da Boy & Da Other Girl.

Cool.

Da Other Girl is awesome. She is quite the artistic type. She can draw, she can write and I’m told that she can sing. I’ve never had the occassion to hear her sing since no one else in this family could carry a tune in a bucket, but hopefully someday she’ll sing for me. But even if she can’t really sing I am still in awe of her drawing and writing talents.

Anyway, watching them plan the wedding has been lots of fun.

Also, in the past year Da Girl graduated college. She was on the 12-year program to get her BA in Anthropology. But hey, she graduated! (cum laude no less). We are two for two.

Lot’s of other cool stuff happened in the last 12 month too, but I just want to talk about my Father’s Day Weekend. That’s right, this year I got a whole weekend instead of just a day.

Okay, I really don’t want to talk about it, I think I’ll just let you look at the photos and captions. You know, save a thousand words and all that (I guess it works out to 81,000 but who’s counting?).

 http://picasaweb.google.com/boshear/FatherSDayCampout

Enjoy.

 

 

The Year Of Mark

My daughter is quite the one with the funny.

This year for our annual Disneyland trip she decided to surprise Mark with custom made t-shirts in his honor.

For those of you who don’t know Mark let me explain that he is not one to draw attention to himself. He’s a great guy with a good sense of humor but he would just as soon not be in the spotlight.

So needless to say when he found out it was his year? Well, let’s just say he was less than enthused. But he took it like a champ. I think his first comment was “I just wish I had known 11 months ago”.

As for soaking in all the attention? He spent most of his time looking for rocks to crawl under. He kept his jacket on most of the day even though it wasn’t cold… he’s from Indiana for crissake, how could he be cold in SoCal?

At one point he asked for a black marker so he could add “EX-” in front of the word “Wife” on Jayare’s t-shirt.

As we strolled through Disneyland we could see almost everyone who passed us reading our shirts. Some of them read out loud and just laughed but about every five minutes some guy would say “Hi Mark!”

Since we had a wheelchair we got to go in the exit for most of the rides and get on sooner. When we went to Big Thunder Mountain we were waiting on the opposite side of the tracks from the “normal” folks waiting in line. It was a narrow space so we stood in single file facing the crowd. No one really seemed to notice us so I’m sure Mark was happy about that.

As the train was approaching we heard over the PA system “Everyone please watch out… this is the year of Mark”. LOL. Laugh? I thought I’d die.

After we finished the ride and left the platform we heard the PA system again in the distance “Mark has left the building…”

Then again as we walked through the park about every five minutes “Hi Mark, nice family you have there!”

As the day wore on several people ran up to us and said “We have been seeing you guys all over the park! We haven’t said anything but we have to know… why is it the year of Mark?” We had a hard time coming up with an answer to that. I tried several different answers throughout the day but I guess my best answer was “Well, we were all born into this family except Mark, he joined by choice so we figure he deserved it”.

The absolute funniest moment was at dinner. It had been a long day and we were all pretty much ready to just sit and relax and eat. We went to the Pizza Port which is like a cafeteria where you go pick what you want, pay for it and then find a table and eat. To our pleasant surprise, no one in the whole place said anything to us. We enjoyed our dinner while we discussed what we would do next. Once we were decided we stood up and headed toward the door. Just as we reached the door we heard the entire restaurant in unison yell “Goodbye Mark!”

LOL.

God it was a great day. I just can’t image what we could do next year to top it.

Adlib Poems

My brother had this great idea. There are five of us siblings. He suggested that each one of us write one line of a limerick. He suggested we go in order of age so me being the youngest I went first.

But also, there’s the thing. The thing that I have inside my head. The thing that makes me think in limericks all day long. So because of the thing  I was not able to wait for my beloved siblings to add their lines one at a time over the course of a week.

In order to prevent my head from exploding (it’s a self preservation thing). I wrote the first line and then the next four lines and posted it here where I was sure I could find it again and also sure that my new lines could remain a secret.

Then each time one of my siblings added a line I would retype the limerick with their line and then fill in the rest.

My brother finally added the last line to our adlib limerick. That’s the one at the bottom of this page.

It was fun. I hope we do it again.

One game that I like to play
Is thinkin’ up poems all day
It never gets old
Although I’ve been told
Writing is not my forte

One game that I like to play
Involves, scissors, paper and clay
I put the paper to bed
And the clay on my head
Then run with the sissors all day

One game that I like to play
Involves sissors, paper and clay
It’s so very hard
To play in the yard
’cause the paper keeps blowing away

One game that I like to play
Involves sissors, paper and clay
It’s so very hard
To catch me off guard
’cause homey jus’ don’t roll that way

One game that I like to play,
involves scissors, paper and clay.
But, it’s so very hard,
To catch me off guard,
So, whose line it is, anyway?

I didn’t do it…

I’m not in the habit of letting people do things for me but this time I guess it’s okay.

My blog has been moved from Blogspot to WordPress. Not that it matters to me, I forgot I had a blog.

My daughter, the coolest blogger in the world (hey, don’t take my word for ask her mother), was having issues with Blogspot (known as Blogger to most) so she wanted to move to WordPress.

She knew exactly how to move her blog over but was concerned that something would go wrong and she would lose everything.

Normally in a situation like that I would learn how to do what she wanted to do and do it myself to let her know it was going to be okay.

I was just about to go down that road when it occurred to me that she could just practice moving my blog over and then she would know exactly what to expect when she moved her own blog over.

It took her all of about 2 minutes and it worked perfectly.

Jayare is da bomb.

My Granddaughter

My Daughter

A moral dilemma?

Hardly.

But I just read an email where my sister asked my daughter “Doesn’t your dad have a blog too?”

I do/did have a blog at jerry.boshear.org. I haven’t updated it in ages and last I checked it was down for some reason (tech support is looking into it, has been for a while).

But the dilemma is this: Since I started this blog a few weeks ago, I haven’t told anyone about it. I haven’t made it a secret by any means but I also haven’t gone out of my way to tell anyone about it. I was hoping to just keep making entries until one of my family found it on their own.

But now someone has asked so at this point, if I don’t tell them about it I will feel like I am keeping a secret from my family (I understand the irony, it’s world wide web after all).

I am writing this entry to help me figure out what to do.

1. I could ignore the email since it wasn’t really written to me, I was just cc’d on it.

2. I could reply to the email and say something obscure like “Google Boshear”. Then I “technically” haven’t kept it a secret.

3. I could reply to the family and include a link to this blog.

4. I could send a private email to my sister telling her about it and explaining that I’m only telling her because she is my favorite.

When faced with major decisions such as this, the outcome of which could possibly change civilation as we know it, I always apply the WWJD rule (What Would Jerry Do?)

I think number three. Even if they read it I’ll probably stop writing before long and they will likely forget to check it after a few weeks (just like what happened with jerry.boshear.org)

As I said I was hoping one of my family members would find this blog on their own. I’ve tried to help them. I write enties while having coffee with my wife and I often read them to her. She probably thinks I’m posting in my other blog, but she hasn’t asked. I post comments to my daughter’s blog and we once discussed how you can click on the poster’s name to see their blog… I thought she would find this place for sure after that conversation…

Hey wait! Maybe they have ALL found it and they are just being like me?!?!

What Assholes!

Timing is everything

Several years ago Jennifer gave us a gift certificate for an automatic coffee maker. It was a great coffee maker with a 10 cup thermal carafe. We loved it.

Like most coffee makers these days it had a timer so you could set it to make the coffee right before you woke up (I guess that’s what the ‘automatic’ part means). That feature worked great… for a little while. Then something happened and the automatic coffee maker turned into an “alla-time” coffee maker. It would not shut off. Whenever it was plugged in it would try to make coffee.

We resorted to just leaving in unplugged. Cheryl would put the grounds and the water in the night before and then when I got up in the morning I would just plug it in to make coffee. Then I would go find something to do while I waited for the coffee to finish making.

We loved that pot so much we used it that way for several years. Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and buy a new one. We found one that’s pretty cool. We got it all set up and when my alarm went off at 4:30 the next morning I came out and discovered it hadn’t turned itself on yet. Cheryl had setup the timer the night before and at 4:30 in the morning I had no desire to figure out how to change it so I just pushed the button to start it manually. This became the new routine. I’d wake up, push the button to make the coffee and then go find something to do while I waited for the coffee to finish making.

After several months I decided to change the timer to go off at 4:15. I did that yesterday. Apparently, my internal timer is not ready for me to change my ways. This morning I woke up before my alarm and before the automatic coffee maker turned on so I am sitting here writing this as I wait for the coffee to finish making.