Clover is learning how to play guitar.

Thing are going well. It has dawned on me that although I have been pretty posty lately, I have not been very newsy.
I have organized the news into six different sections, kind of like a newspaper. So here is a table of contents. I hope this update is adequate.
-Clover
-Kristin
-Work
-Writing
-Stuff
-Wrap up

Clover bear my little princess.
Clover is growing to say the least. We are going in to the doctors office next Tuesday for her nine month checkup. That means that her cells have been dividing for over 18 months now. Oh man, that is a long time. She has 6 brand spanking new teeth, bringing the total up to... six. I can see two more that will probably pop out in the next couple weeks or so. *side note: I wonder if the reason that time seems to go faster when you get older is because when you are two years old, one year is literally half of your life. When you are fifty years old, one year is like the equivalent of two pennies to the dollar... not that much time... if your life time tuned into a dollar I mean. end note.* Clover loves hanging out with her cousin Penelope, eating solid food, grapes especially, crawling around, pulling thing out of things, blowing raspberries, eating raspberries, and pretty much tons of stuff that it was hard to imagine her even being able to comprehend, let alone do, just a couple of months ago.

Kristin is my busy little queen bee.
She is currently in the process of becoming a certified child care provider. She somehow manages to clean the house and pack my lunch and do the dishes and prepare breakfast and watch four kids and stay beautiful every single day. Well... not every single day... She only watches one child over the weekend... but everything else, all day every day. She has really embraced the mountains and the weather associated with a move to Utah. This fall she has canned a copious amount of salsa and peaches and everything she can manage to get at a farmers market. She sold our T.V. About 2 months ago, and has not turned back. It has been awesome to see what sort of thing she has going on now instead of staying current on whats on. Not to say that she was a couch potato, because she by no means ever has been. She just does different things now to kill time... like sewing a new outfit for Clover or canning peaches or going for a walk or something like that.

Work... is called work because I get paid to be there.
I truly enjoy my job. I truly enjoy having the bosses that I have. I feel like I have grown as a person over the last six months (wow it has only been that long really) in ways that I could not have in a different situation. Wow. That was really deep captain obvious. I guess that I really appreciate the lessons that I learn for and through work are easily applicable to my life in general. I feel like I am a better manager both at work and at life than I was a year ago. I am excited to see what is in store for me over the next few years with this company, because I know that it will be nothing but great. Sometimes I miss what I refer to as my “past life” or “where I came from,” (I use these terms to reference habits of policy and whatnot that I have been taught and how I apply them to my new job) but never really enough to even think about wanting to go back.

Writing is something that I choose to go to bed instead of to do sometimes.
I wrote down my two jokes. I have written a few little lyrics, but nothing that I could really put down... except part of a verse a version of a song that I listened to a lot as a kid, and would like to pay tribute to through my own style... and just haven't finished writing it yet... yep nothing really ready to put down yet. Unity by OPIV. Anyway. I also would like to note that my contributions to the idiotbook have increased by 250% since May. That is quantifiable, measurable (kind of redundant?) progress. Yesssss. (feel free to join me in my drawer pull during the yesssss part.)

Stuff that is about stuff... that is on my mind?
I feel like I should mention that when I put three dots... I am actually thinking, and I feel like of those who have talked to me in real life have noticed that I tend to pause sometimes... especially when I am thinking. I leave the dots in because I feel like it helps keep the book a little more conversational and less technical... and kind of because I feel like they belong. I am sure that most, if not all, of my English teachers would object and have me edit it so that I don't do three dots like a hundred times in each paragraph... but this neither their book or an assignment. I know that my wife gets kind of grumpy sometimes when we are talking and I pause to think. I wonder if I do it because at work I am the one who is trained to act quickly, and since I have to always be thinking and flying by the seat of my pants as part of my job, I choose to take my time over pretty much everything I can when I am not on the clock and being expected to keep up the pace. Hmm. Maybe. I dunno.
I went to a barbecue last Sunday with my sister and some of her friends. It was a trip. It kind of made me realize how antisocial I was for some... maybe even a large part... of my life. I mean I have always known it, but sometimes things happen that just kind of drive it home. Here I was hanging out with people that I went to school with, and sometimes hung outwith outside of school, and I didn't even know their names, even though some had managed to find me and recognize my child by her pictures on facebook. It kind of makes me wonder if I just used my work position as an excuse for some underlying issues about making and having friends. I did make a point, however, to include myself in some of the conversations as well as the overall game playing and barbecue fun in general as opposed to just hang out by the 'cue and cook while the festivities go on around me.

Wrap up in a speech class would typically start out with the phrase “in summary.”
Things are going well. Work is going great. My family is doing awesome. Kristin is happy and healthy. Clover is as smiley as ever and even now makes noise like dadadada when I walk into the room. I am still kind of a regular flosser and have lost about 40 pounds over the last six months. I am not sure if my hair is starting to thin out or not... more on that later... it is kind of like a sailboat... sometimes it works sometimes It doesn't... I even wrote a few articles for LMC next month. Life is good.

-p

wearing pajama poncho and a colander

Most of the funny stuff I do is off the cuff... at least I think it's funny... anyway... Back in the day I worked with a guy that did stand up comedy for fun. I went to a couple of his shows. I always thought it would be hard to do stand up because I would have to pre-plan my jokes and make it entertaining and I would not have somebody to play off of unless I get an act together and so many other things... an my head just kind of explodes.
Since working with Mr. Brockett, I started to work putting a set together just as a side side project on the side. Over the last 3 years, I have put together two jokes. I think that they are pretty funny, they both could still use a little polishing though. My goal it to participate in an open mic night before the end of February. I will keep you posted. I just wanted to let you know so that when I do something and am like "that should go into the book," you could be like "That should go into your show!" And remind me that my side project on the side of projects is no longer that obscure.

My new favorite 800 calorie snack.

Ingredients:
tortilla
peanut butter
nutella
banana
Optional ingredients:
Hot Sauce.

Step 1: Spread peanut butter on one half of one side of tortilla.
Step 2: Spread nutella on other half but same side of tortilla.
If you are doing it right up to this point, it should look like this:


Step 3: Cut banana into thin slices, and spread on top of nutella.
Due to the degree of difficult for this next step, here is another illustration for caparison:


Optional Step 4: put hot sauce on top of bananas.
Step 4 or 5 depending on option: Carefully fold peanut butter side over onto banana/nutella side without making any messes or your wife will make you clean them up and you won't be very happy about it.

Step 5 or 6: Eat in style similar to that used when eating a giant soft taco or quesadilla.

We had been dating for just over a month.

“Just tell her that we are the type of family that puts the “fun” into funerals.” -my mom... on convincing my girlfriend to drive me up to my grandfather's funeral and meeting my family for the first time ever.

Maybe one day I will dedicate it. I don't know though.

I have had many people tell me over the years that I should write a book about the stuff that I do/ have done/ am doing/ think about/ life in general... I always imagined sitting down and writing a memoir or something... I didn't really realize until the last couple weeks that I have over the last couple years been able to reply that the idiot book is alive and well. I have been thinking about it over the last week or so, after posting my intention once already, I have decided that I should plan it a little better, and maybe aside from tho occasional story in my idiot book, I should write a book for myself first before I share it with the world.

So, that is the plan. I am not quite sure how it is going to happen,but it will sure enough.

-p

Her hair wasn't pink or short when we met.

in fact it was blond, and down to her belt when it was braided.

So... Last night I was telling my people at work a little bit about myself, and I thought I should write it down.

When I was dating my wife, I worked as a “road striper” (technical term... I painted the lines in parking lots) and she worked at Starbucks. That is how we met. One day she was taking my order and asked: “Would you like anything else today?”

“Why yes, how about a hot date?”

“Ummm... I don't really have any girlfriends I could hook you up with right now, maybe some other time.”

“Ummm... Okay I guess.”

Since I was regular, and I loved chances to see that really pretty barista, I was a regular at her store. After about a week of her taking my order and not making any new friends to hook me up with she explained to me:

“Look, I am not going to go out and make a friend just so I can get you a date. You are on your own with this one man.”

“Oh. Okay... Ummm, hey, I was thinking, would you mind being my hot date?”

*blushing wildly* “Sure I guess, would you like my number?”

That day was July 5^th, 2005. We went on a date that night, and have been hanging literally everyday since then. For our first date, we went to The Barbecue Pit at the intersection of Garfield and La Mesa Blvd. She was to nervous to eat much of her dinner, so I cleaned both of our plates, seeing as how I was bouncing my rent check in order to take her out. We spent a little bit of time in her car (I rode scooter at the time, and so she willingly picked me up for our date) and listened to the song that was stuck in my head during dinner, “Haunted Cat House”, by the Nekromantix. We went to the store and bought “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and went back to my house to watch it. We were both so tired that we fell asleep about halfway through the movie and didn't wake up until my alarm went of the next morning.

Ohh man. What a date.

Clover arm pumping a job well done.

I taught Clover how to jump on the bed yesterday. Now I can stand her on any bed and hold her hands and she starts jumping and kicking and breathing in her really excited way. It is super cute and really cracks me up.

The way I know that I taught her how to do this, and it is not just me swinging my baby around by her lil' ol' arms, is because... at night... when she is in bed... and it is her bedtime... she stands herself up and while holding the bars to her crib for support, she jumps on her bed. When I walk into the room to see what t he ruckus is, it is my little monkey jumping on the bed. I know that she knows that I taught this to her because when she sees me walk in she smiles so big that her pacifier falls out... because she is jumping and showing me what she learned.

Maybe next time I will teach her how to write cursive to keep her busy instead of how to jump on the bed.

On strange eating habits.

“I couldn't even imagine eating things from such a wide range. Banana's and hot sauce? That's way to far out there for me. I would maybe think about mixing something like bananas and grapes, but that about as crazy I could ever go.” -t.

Clover praying for me to wake up.

Another day come and gone. Today I was in a management meeting and we were talking about work... of course. Anyway, One of the guys was talking about interviews, and how one of his interviewees was explaining about how they just wanted to be able to make a difference. The point was brought up about how every day so many people come through our doors, and we have an opportunity to make each one of their days. I was almost jumping out of my seat when he was talking about this because that is pretty much the primary reason that I work in the field that I do, because I love to make people's days. I get paid to make your day. That is how I see my job. It is pretty awesome to know for a fact that the Director of Operations for my company is on the same page as I am... and not just from an email or voice recording that I should read or listen to when I find time, but the fact that he felt the need to explain how he felt in a company wide meeting. Pretty cool stuff.
Enough about work.

I love my little Clover Bear. She is just melting my heart without even trying. I know she needs to sleep. I know her sleeping pattern is the bane of my wife's existence right now. I also know that I love having the chance to see her bright little eyes, albeit very sleepy eyes, when I get home. I also know that I love to see my wifey's smiley face when I come home and Clover is sleeping like a... baby? Maybe not our baby, but more like a baby in fairy tales.
We have a minivan. We bought it about two weeks ago. I sold the old green car, and bought a minivan. Oh man. Talk about growing up. I don't even know how to explain how it feels. The day we brought it home, I was backing out of my parent's driveway, in the van, full of kids, all four of them, Kristin was sitting shotgun. My parents were standing in the driveway waving good bye, just like in the movies. I couldn't help but stop and laugh at trying to imagine what was going through their heads... was it like a dream come true for them, Pete has finally grown up enough to not only warrant, but actually utilize a minivan? I know for a fact there was no way they could have been holding their breath waiting for it to happen. But I couldn't help but imagine what must have been going through their heads. Maybe I will ask next time I see them.

I really felt like this little conversation belongs in the book... a little bit of background... it is salsa season. Both the tomatoes and the peppers in my parents garden are ripening. My wife has gone over and made and canned salsa with my mom a couple of times now. One day about a week or so ago, I got a text from work asking me to stop and get chips and salsa on the way to work. I brought some of the fresh salsa and chips. The whole quart jar was devoured in less than 5 minutes, and one of the people actually asked me to call my wife and tell her that it was the best salsa that they had ever had, bar the stuff that they made with their husband, but that was purely for sentimental reasons... based on flavor, the stuff I brought was number one. The next day I came in with my lunch packed, and everyone was enjoying a Friday breakfast, and before the door even shut, someone asked if I brought more salsa. I took out the stuff that my wife packed in my lunch and put it on a table. The scene after that reminded me of puppies looking for a spot to nurse. Sooooo, I asked my wifey to make a bunch of pints next time she was canning so that I could bring them to work and give them away.
I did that today. All the jars were claimed promptly.
One of my guys took his jar to the back and opened it and started drinking it from the jar. Yes, drinking it right from the jar.
-“Hey guy, do you need some chips or something?”
-“No, the thing I like about your wife's salsa is that you can drink it down and it don't burn or nothin'.”
-“Holy crap dude. I gotta write that down.”
-“What? To bring more salsa tomorrow?”
I had to walk away because he was dead serious. I couldn't handle it. I love this guy. He is just too funny without even trying. Ohhh man.

I am wear my poncho for my pajamas.

Tuesday Morning. I have really come to enjoy Tuesdays more now than ever. With my job, it is my other day off. Yeah, I have fixed schedule. Ohhh man it is so cool. It is the first time in about 10 years that I have had a job that allows me to plan around my days off more than a week or two in advance. I have always liked Tuesdays though. It has been my experience in the service industry that Tuesday nights are consistently the slowest nights of the week, and the day time is kind of the same... just slower than any other day. I have never understood why, however I have many times used this insider information to my advantage. I like not having to fight with people when shopping or going to the movies or eating out. I also like the way places like On The Boardwalk have double token nights on Tuesdays. What does that mean? $5 will get you $10 worth of “Time Crisis 4.” Yeah I know! Awesome, huh? However, the reason I seem to like Tuesdays more than ever before is because now I get to hang out all morning and day before I decide to hit the town... I guess IF I decide to hit the town and Clover and Kristin are agreeable with the idea. Yep, Tuesday has long since been my favorite Friday, but now it is like my favorite Friday and Saturday all mixed into one. Now if only I could convince it to get twice as long too. I look forward to today as being a wonderful opportunity to get a few thing on my to do list done as well as spend some quality time with my wife and her charges during the day. It has kind of been a treat to see her dive in to work at her job the way I do at mine. During the day she juggles 3-4 kids depending on the day. On top of here Penelope and Clover gig, she gets to hang out with Kelton when he gets home from school, as well as watch our little cousin Mason a few days a week. It amazes me the way she can just handle it. I don't know if they all feel the same way as I do about Tuesday, but I don't care, I look forward to Tuesday, and seeing all their happy little faces and everything.

Hooray for Tuesday, the most underrated day of the week... in my opinion... I even forgot to mention about how shows its diversity by filling in for Monday today too.

Happy Tuesday.

Taking my life back.

From what? I'm not sure yet.. Perhaps when I stop relinquishing control, I will find out.
I feel like I have been disconnected for quite while, living in the space between work and sleep, finding those precious moments in between when I get to see my precious family. I have been escaping reality through books, and not really spending my time doing things that I value highly. I am tired of mentioning that I have a blog, but haven't posted on it since I can't remember when. I am tired of feeling out of touch. I am tired of thinking about stuff that I should post but never do.
It has been a pretty busy couple... few... many months. I have been working plenty and am fitting in really well at Zupas. I really enjoy working for this company, and cannot wait to see what the future holds.
Clover bear is growing right up. I love her guts, and treasure the time that I get to hang out with her. I never get tired of seeing her smiley little face.
Anyway, glad I'm back, hope to stay.
-p