With all of the stuff I’ve been up to lately, doing a bit of writ­ing has fallen by the way­side. Work on the house is still incom­plete, but has slowed down because what remains isn’t crit­i­cal quite yet. Once all of the paint­ing is com­plete, and I’ve man­aged to get all of the doors rehung, there will be pictures.

I’ve gone to see The Dark Knight, which was the first time since Abra­ham graced us with his pres­ence that Deb­bie and I man­aged to get out alone. I went to the zoo, where the boy and I became an exhibit to all of the women around when Deb­bie went to the restroom. I went to Whiskey Island on Fri­day after­noon for a pic­nic, took a walk by myself to get some alone time with nature, watched swal­low bug-​catching, a swallow-​heckling ori­ole, and played with a ground­hog for a lit­tle while.

Last Mon­day my office was one of the three County offices raided by the FBI and IRS-​CID as a part of their inves­ti­ga­tion into cor­rup­tion by County offi­cials. Appar­ently they came over the inter­com and told folks to go to the can­teen [which is what every­where else is called a lunch room]. The design room keeps the over­head speaker turned off because we’d rather not lis­ten to the best in soft rock from the 80s, 90s and now, so I didn’t hear the announce­ment. I hap­pened to be both on my com­puter and on the phone, both no-​nos, when the FBI knocked on the door. I’d already man­aged to tell Deb­bie every­thing she needed to know to get the scan­ner at home work­ing though, so it was no big deal.

I went to the can­teen, where every­one else was, and filled out a sheet that asked for basic infor­ma­tion and job duties, and then got to take the rest of the day off.

When my mom rolled up here for the 4^th of July, we planted a tree for Abra­ham. I had a tree planted for me when I was born as well. I even wrote about it for Young Authors, so you can read that here. Although that pic­ture is from a month ago, Abra­ham is already much big­ger, I’d say near 12 pounds. He’s started smil­ing and chuck­ling a lit­tle, and I can actu­ally sort of play with him now. The only rough part is that when I’m at work he’s in his best mood, so when I come home I get to inter­act with him for the part of the day when he’s at his worst. It gets frus­trat­ing at times.

I got sea­son tick­ets to the Notre Dame foot­ball games this year, blessed be my mono­gram. I don’t know that I’ll be able to get to more than one of them, however.

The weather has been won­der­ful, and today looks as if it will con­tinue that pat­tern. Din­ner is a daily choice between eat­ing on the porch or watch­ing some old school Mup­pet Show episodes. I recently dis­cov­ered that I can get Mr. Wiz­ard on DVD as well. Abraham’s going to talk to folks at school about these crazy shows that aren’t on TV any­more and no-​one is going to know what he’s talk­ing about except his teachers.

I haven’t been to a rock and roll show in for­ever. It hurts.