So the process for the day job that I worked all weekend tending to finished at 11:45pm last night. Technically I had 15 minutes of a weekend. No fair, do-over.

I don’t sleep much anyway, but taking away the few hours I actually do slumber and denying me any time to relax, well that’s a recipe for delving deep into down-ness . It’s a bit like turning up the intensity on the microscope on everything bad in my life. It makes the kids seem 801 miles away instead of 800. It makes the bike rides seem further apart. I swear every where I walk is uphill and in lots of snow too.

But during this weekend of toil, I was reminded of a lot of good things. My neighbor stopped by with a pair of Eagles pre-season tickets for this Friday. Another buddy stopped off with some movies for me to watch and dropped off some Biofreeze for my aching knee and shoulder. Sunday I decided I had to get out and Yogi was pouting from his lack of swimmingitudeness. So I grabbed the leash and I rode my bike (well on the way there it’s usually a Yogi-drawn coast) over to his favorite swimming spot.

This decision to do something for myself seemed to trigger a little joyalanche of good stuff. Yogi had a blast swimming his furry little heart content. Meanwhile I walked along the banks with my camera trying to catch a shot of these really bright green frogs. I finally got one to stay still. Yogi and I headed home after an hour or so and pulled up to see my neighbor Heather walking out my front door. She had just dropped off two plates of fried chicken, orzo salad, corn, and some fresh Jersey tomatoes (which if you haven’t heard are the best) in my fridge. Then my cell rang and LarryMac had my new road bike ready for me to pick-up. I got home from Larry’s and got a quick iChat with Van and Viv. Then I got back to work while munching on my dinner and watching the Phils play a great game to recapture second place. My son…I mean Ryan Howard hit a nice Earl Weaver and J-Roll provided me with more fodder for my on-going argument that he should at least receive some votes for NL MVP.

• Attack of the Giant Negroes – so sad, and this wasn’t that long ago relatively speaking.
• Karl Rove Resigns – bye Satan
• God Bless Rick Ankiel – stories like this guy help me keep getting up

My shoulder survived the two volleyball games last night, well sort of…I’m heading home after lunch to ice my shoulder. We won the first match, but ran up against the top seed and lost in the second one. We had them pinned down in the second game 19 – 7 but allowed them back into it and ended up losing the game. Endurance caught up with us. We were short a player playing 5 against 6 for two matches (the first going a full three games).

I got a bunch of work done last night, but I’m too tired to write about it…you know, blah blah website this….invoice that… I really need sleep.

Watched Hot Fuzz last night, what a great flick – thanks to Dorky Dad for the recommendation, I needed that!

• How to Make Perfect Bacon
• Panoramic Camera
• Stormtroopers in Love

When Viv and I get on iChat for a web cam call, it’s about 5 minutes of unmitigated silly. She made me go get my son’s drum machine toy from the play room so I could kick out some jams for her and she could get her proverbial groove on. I got my son’s wooden painted snake (he made during camp) out of his room and tried to convince her it was a real blue and yellow snake. She just giggled at me and told me, “Daddy you’re so sill-lah.”

I miss my pumpkin so much. I haven’t seen Bubs much, he’s up at my mother-law’s lake house getting some time in with his Nana before school starts next Monday. I need some time with the boy. Well, it’s not really time, but it’s the only kind of time I can have these days. Just as long as he knows his Daddy loves him.

I had a meeting with an author yesterday that needs a pretty basic site for the release of his new book. He’s not quite ready yet, but that will be a nice small project to cleanse my nerdy pallet. I’ve got a meeting with an old client this morning for a custom Active Directory import tool. I got a couple changes done for the Battleship New Jersey website and I got EasyPopulate installed  for the curtain rods OS Commerce website. I’m freaking exhausted this morning, I need to take a day off soon.

Speaking of exhausted…I’ve got two volleyball games tonight. My formerly dislocated shoulder is aching a bit after simply reaching for a ball on Tuesday night. I meant to ice it last night but got busy and forgot. I have to do that tonight or all the yoga and push-ups in the world won’t keep it attached.

• HTTP Error Comics
• The Stray Shopping Cart Project
• Industrial Scars

I took a shorter soggy 3.5 mile ride this morning which felt awesome. I sprinted the whole way, keeping my speed well above 15 MPH the whole way. I actually really liked riding in the rain, the roads in the lakes are pretty safe and the sound of the rain on the lakes combined with the earthy smell of wet soil was very cool.

I talked to Viv last night, she invited me to come to a spider museum in Georgia. A spider museum sounds a lot like a pet store charging admission to me, but I’d take a date to the spider museum with my angel any day.

Well, the other team didn’t show up last night for the volleyball game. We did play a pickup game or two since we had the court for an hour.

More movie reivews: Citizen Kane -even without considering when this film was made (1941), it’s amazing. 300 – gorgeous imagery, great battle scenes, I want to put on a crimson robe, bronze helmet and go attack something now, this movie kept me up late last night.

I found a nice plug-in for OS Commerce to help one of my clients out, EasyPopulate – which is a nifty way to download your inventory to a CSV, work it over in your favorite spreadsheet application, then re-upload it and viola, you’re done. I got some work done on the Battleship New Jersey site (more to go too), worked on the new client site (if you’re wondering why I never mention what that is, there’s an NDA in place and can’t reveal the product until launch).

• Underfire – images from the Vietnam War
• The Icelandic Coastline – now there’s this and Bjork as my top reasons to like Iceland.
• Nicktoons Animation Festival
• Rusty vs. The Lake Creature – a new comic by yours truly (for Van and Viv)
• 27 Fish You’ve Never Caught

I uploaded two videos from Rusty’s less then impressive swimming debut mentioned yesterday. Rusty Ain’t Going In and Rusty Ain’t Staying In.

I talked to Viv and Van last night, boy I miss them. Dana gave me some good news that we will adjust the kids time with me so they can be here for the canoe carnival next summer. That means a lot to me, I really appreciated that. Viv asked me to repeat one of our little Daddy-daughter things about 800 times on the phone…

Do you know who loves you?”
“Daddy!”
“Do you know how much?”
“BIG!”
“Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re so wonderful.”

I’ve been remiss in mentioning the films I’ve been watching lately. Last Days – it was done by Gus Van Sant and it was based on Kurt Cobain’s last days before Hemingwaying out, which you would think Van Sant + Kobain would equal great, but no. It was sublime crap. Children of Men – disturbing, but very good. Michael Caine’s death scene was hilarious though, now considering my last words to be “pull my finger”. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead – another Clive Owen film, decent, but even the English accents couldn’t hide that this was the exact same plot as Next of Kin. The Last King of Scotland – not quite as good as I had hoped, but Forest Whitaker was amazing as Idi Amin.

I’ve got my first of three volleyball games this week tonight. I’m starting to feel a lot better physically. The 5-8 mile bike rides every morning before work have helped, but I think the key has been getting back to doing the 100 push-ups/200 crunches a day plus yoga at night. My back isn’t hurting and I’m generally feeling better now. I will probably take a 3 mile run with Yogi tomorrow morning or the next day. I’m waiting on some new running shoes that a buddy who works for Nike is sending me (for free! how much does that rock?).

I did some work on a few of my client projects last night. I’ve got two new clients that I have meetings scheduled with this week. They are smaller jobs, but it’s always good to keep stuff coming in the funnel.

• Turn on your puke light
• Vick Dog Chew Toy
• Minesweeper the Movie