Father's Day

I simply have to share how my Father's Day was on Sunday.
Life, for everyone, has it's ups and downs, and no one that I know of is immune to that kind of thing in their lives. Everyone deals with their own, and obviously there's lots of levels of intensity to that. This past year has had plenty of that roller coaster ride... some highs and definitely some lows. But we live to take care of each other, and give our children as wonderful, safe and loving life that we can.
Well Sunday was Father's Day, and I normally sleep in on Saturdays (Maureen sleeps in on Sundays), but we switched this weekend at her request. So somewhere around 8:30, I heard the typical sounds of the rabid housebound kids, my 6-year old girl and 3-year old boy. Then as I headed towards a shower, I smelled the unmistakable, wondrous, heavenly scents of... bacon.

awww yeah

So I eventually head downstairs, and am greeted with screams from my kids the likes of which most dogs would go, "Damn, that's high."
Maureen and the kids come out of the office, and close the doors, which is suspicious in it's own right, and shuffle me into the kitchen. "Breakfast is almost done" I'm told, and my daughter is already giving me self-made cards. My son mumbles something sounding like "pee pee" and runs into the living room. So my daughter then proceeds to read her card to me, and it's actually a poem that SHE wrote! My six year old wrote me a poem, does this happen?? I was amazed. So after she beams when I'm telling her how much I love it, she pulls out a picture that she drew for me.
Now she's a little artist, actress and all around director. Not in any order, and they are not exclusive, mind you. She's even taking art classes every Saturday, and we go through more crayons, markers, glitter, paper, glue and pencils than most old-school Disney Imagineers. Well in her hand is one of her best works yet, and I can't tell you how it made me smile and laugh. It was a crayon picture of her, holding the guitar from Guitar Hero 3 (complete with the exact order of colored keys on the neck), big smile (including missing tooth), red shoes with yellow stars on them, and the coup de grace, her one hand is giving the typical rock and roll devil horns. Epic!
My son runs up and roars at me, then sprints off to the other room to either kick a basketball or torment our blind dog.

Next Maureen and my daughter give me a gift bag, which contains not one, but two shirts from one of my favorite podcasts, Extra Life Radio by Scott Johnson. I've become a big fan of the show, and geek out with it each week. I'm very happy with the shirts, let me tell you, plus all four of us are going to the Phillies game this coming Saturday... Maureen's not one for keeping secrets, and told me about the Phillies game a couple months ago when she originally bought the tickets. :) It's going to be a blast, as it'll be the kids' first game.
So then I'm ushered towards the office, and they tell me to sit down in front of the computer monitor, and anyone that knows me knows I'm already smiling. Maureen turns on the monitor, and on it is a drawing, and I recognize the artwork as Scott Johnson's (yes, same one as above... he does web comics, too!) Then I saw the name at the top was "GlutHound", which is my normal gaming handle! Long story as to how it was created, but it goes back a number of years, and I won't need to go into it here.
Basically what I'm looking at on the screen is my own superhero that Maureen commissioned Scott Johnson to do! How absolutely geeky cool is that? It's not just an computer graphic either, it's a print that will be coming in a couple days that I can hang in the office! Well, GlutHound's costume is midnight green (the Eagles' colors, thankyouverymuch), wears a cape, and he has a Guitar Hero guitar slung over his back, an iPod hanging at his waist, earphones and a podcasting microphone, and holding a football... and did I mention he's a super hero? How absolutely awesome is that?

Yeah, I geeked out about it big time... then my son came in, demanded chocolate milk repeatedly, and we ventured into the kitchen.
We had breakfast, a really good breakfast casserole, which Maureen details out nicely in her blog here. The rest of the day we had fun, hung out, I finished up (finally) the PC game Call of Duty 4, which I haven't played in a few months, then we went out to dinner. Dinner was at a place called The Pop Shop in Collingswood, NJ. The place was a blast... 1960's era flavored sodas, breakfast food anytime, unbelievable shakes and sundaes, and super kid friendly.

I tell you, it was my best Father's Day yet... next to that first year back in 2002 when I held my four month old daughter in my arms and realized that day was forever changed for me.

Two New Projects

The EaglesFanCast has been going along well, but it's the off-season for football, so it's been slow. Been working on two new projects, both podcasts / blogs. The first one relates to a "creative" blog I share with a good friend. It's called "Horatio and Cornelius". It's gone through many, many iterations for almost ten years. I won't bore you with it's history just yet. It's now morphing into a full-blown podcast, with Eric and I writing stories, nay, adventures... which will be made into podcast productions. We're moving to blog to it's own website, which is almost done. It's slow going, because the writing is slow. We hope to have that live in about a month... stay tuned.
My second project is something that I've been trying to get off the ground with my wife, Maureen. She has Celiac Disease, as I've mentioned before. I've proposed to her on a number of occasions that she could help others with this, in podcast form. I've learned a lot from EaglesFanCast for the past ten months, and tried to instill that confidence into her. Well finally this past week, she's decided to go for it. The blog is now online, and it's called Hold the Gluten. The podcast will be called the same, and if things go well, she'll be speaking into the mic, solo, mind you (I'll just be doing the production work for it) within a couple weeks. Again, STAY TUNED!