HA HA

Each morning I enjoy reading the local paper with a nice hot cup of coffee. If I'm lucky I get to do this in a relatively quiet dining room, if I get up before Katie, who for some reason just can't seem to relate to my little indulgence.

The design of the Akron Beacon Journal is great...Section A is World and National news, B is Local, C is Sports and Business, and D is Entertainment. Which works great for me because I love reading the comics last. Sort of like saving the cherry from your ice cream sundae until the end. The Sunday paper of course is an exception, given all the ads and such. On that day its either the comics I read last, or the Best Buy circular depending on how I feel...but either way its still a treat!

I've had several "favorite" comics over the years, Bloom County(which morphed into Outland then Opus), Calvin and Hobbes, and Foxtrot. Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean(by local artist Tom Batiuk(rhymes with attic)) have been must-reads for me also. Funky having drawn national attention recently for having one of its main characters die in the strip has been one of the few comics that show age progression of its characters instead of being "frozen" in time...I mean come on shouldn't PJ be out of that sleeper by now??

My current favorite strip is Get Fuzzy, which just works on so many levels for me. Its not for everyone, because admittedly the first few times I read it I didn't get it, but in keeping at it I found it to be well worth my time. A recent addition to the Beacon is Pearls Before Swine which is sort of a thought-out "Far Side" in my eyes and can be quite acerbic at times.

And in closing I offer up today's strip.

Growing Up

This weekend my son Alex came home for a visit from school. He is enrolled in the Transportation Technology program at Owens Community College in Toledo Ohio. This is his first time away from home, and the trips home every other weekend help keep the homesickness to a minimum.

Not having one iota of knowledge on how to be a Father when he was born, I just sort of went about it the best way I knew how and on more than one occasion fell way short of the goal as he was growing up. But the one thing that remained constant was my hope that when he grew up, he would not make the mistakes I did, and have more good times than bad.

In playing sports Alex has always been exceptional, with soccer being his best. But it doesn't matter if we are shooting hoops in my driveway or ending up at the local bowling alley to have some fun, this kid can just pick up whatever it is and do it great.

When he was turning 16 and the time came to want to drive, he went out and got 2 summer jobs to buy his first car. His full-time job was working in the maintenance department in the Township he lived in, and the second job, which was part-time he bussed tables at a local restaurant. At the end of the summer he was the owner of a 1995 Nissan Sentra SE-R and took great pride that he bought and paid for it on his own. That vehicle served him well, but making the drive from Brimfield to Toledo every other week was starting to take its toll, and it was recently passed on to his brother Kevin, who just turned 16 this summer and will be embarking on his own quest for employment soon to be able to support whatever teenagers these days call important.

So the question at hand was what does a 20 year old college student do when they need a new form of transportation but don't have all the cash to secure said wheels? In addition to going to school, Alex also works for the school in their maintenance department and has enough of an income to pay his rent and have spending money. So during his time home last month, he went to his bank, talked to the loan department and was told that given his income to expense ratio he could get a loan for a vehicle at payments that wouldn't break his bank.

With that knowledge in hand, he quickly went to work to find a vehicle in that price range that he liked. At the end of the search he took a liking to a 1998 Chevy S-10 4X4 ZR-2 pickup. I was a little skeptical given the asking price compared to what I was finding online for similarly equipped vehicles, but to give him credit Alex did a thorough job looking the vehicle over and then negotiating price. Most importantly, he is happy with the purchase and when I had the chance to look the truck over this weekend, I think he did an outstanding job.

As I watched him drive away from my place Sunday night, I thought to myself "20 years old, away in college, working at the same time and just took on his first installment loan". I know I wasn't at that point 22 years ago, so I guess in wanting your child to do better than you did in life, so far that boy is above the bar.

As you can see from the picture, I took it while it was raining and I'm sure those were raindrops on my face as I walked back to my house.

Birthday Pictures

Well, it was that time again. Off we went to our local photography studio to have Katie's birthday pictures taken. Our studio of choice is called Picture People and they are conveniently located in the mall right up the road from where we live.

Since we were there last, they have made major improvements in the way they take the pictures and then display the proofs. Before, the cameras were mounted on mobile poles which limited how you could pose and the photographers range of shots were pretty standard. They now use digital cameras and get right down level with the subject.

They used to take the pictures and tell you to come back in an hour when they would have about 5 sets of pictures ready for viewing. Usually an 8x10, (2) 5x7s, and a sheet of wallet sized pictures per set. You could mix and match to make up a set, but it always seemed that the really good ones that you wanted an extra 8x10 of had to be reprinted which made the waiting times longer. All in all a fairly wasteful thing in my eyes because while I'm sure there were people with kids who thought "Oh no, if I don't buy all these they will throw away pictures of my dear sweet baby" the majority of customers weren't that flush with cash. I mean come on, this isn't Olan Mills we are talking about here.

Now however, since the process is all digital, you return after about 15 minutes and sit down in front of a huge Dell flat panel monitor and you can pick and choose the pictures you want, the suitable sizes, and an assortment of effects can be applied. Of course the standard set is still one 8x10, two 5x7, and the sheet of wallets. But for the inevitable "Oh, so-and-so HAS to have this one in a (insert size), the wait time is decreased.

Shrewd marketers they are, they still trot out one or two pictures in frames they hope to sell at what I'm sure is a HUGE mark-up.

Which brings us to the picture at the top of this post. They brought it out in a really nice frame, complete with a mat, and its called the Gallery piece, and the picture is actually 10x20 instead of the 10x13 we opted for. When we saw it, we knew that one was a keeper but figured we could do the matting and framing ourselves. That project has yet to take shape, but the picture is currently hanging nicely on our dining room wall.

If I do have one negative thing to say about the studio, it would be that apparently the only taste they have is in their mouths. Last year we entered Katie in the 2 year old category for the chains "Cutest Kid" contest and each store picked a finalist from the previous weeks sitting to be submitted to the headquarters for further judging. I'm convinced the stores decision was solely based on who bought the biggest set of pictures, because I saw the finalist's picture for that week and there was no way she was cuter than Katie. Not that I'm biased or anything....