April Showers

As a writer, I have come to recognize a blinking cursor as possibly the most uninspiring object on the planet. If you have no subject to start with but still happen to sit down at a computer to stare at a blank word document for a little while, you can almost bet that the next 70 words to grace the screen will be on par with a prize horse's rear.

..but let me get back to you on that. I have some real issues to talk about.

This morning I've been busy taking inventory of all of the fun things Amelia, Zach and I can do once it stops snowing. It appears, yet again, that the proverbial carrot of spring dangled in front of us over the last two weeks was only a carrot shaped object and not the genuine article.
It all started to go downhill yesterday, which was, of course, the day I promised Nadine I would take the truck down for an oil change and walk the tots back home for their naps. Like Tony Montaña as seen on TBS, all I have in this world are my eyeballs and my word and I don't break them for nobody, so, naturally, I had to make good on my promise. After breakfast, we packed up the stroller with some warm blankets, drove down to Lüber Alles auto shop, dropped off the truck, and began our journey back to the house. As the 40 something degree wind blown rain whipped across Zach, Amelia, and I, one of us mentioned that it really wasn't the best day to be doing somethings like this and we should probably jog...no, sprint...back to the house as quickly as possible. I forgot to mention that our home is atop the steepest hill in Central Ohio (Hey, I already know that this area is flat because of an ancient glacier, don't ruin my story) and it can feel even steeper when you're running full bore with cold wet wind in your face. After what felt like an hour of maximum physical exertion I finally arrived at our doorstep. Soaking, numb, and wheezing, I unloaded a smiling Zach and Amelia from their seats and stepped inside my warm living room to do some jumping jacks...just kidding, I laid on the floor panting like a loyal couch potato dog who just spent the day keeping pace with his marathon running owner. A minute or so later, I saw Amelia over by the window start to laugh at something outside and heard what sounded like a bag of marbles in the dryer. I popped up and scooted to the window to see what all the racket was. We had missed being caught in a hail storm by just a few minutes.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for some pilgrims.

aprilshowers> mayflowers> pilgrims







Zach's favorite place.



Act II

Amelia had a diaper to be changed and Mr. Steve was just the one to change it. As he unfastened the onesie snap, he most curiously discovered that she had a small cube of cheese stuck into her bellybutton.

'At lunch she told me she was full and couldn't eat any more. I shouldn't have made her eat that last one', he thought to himself.


Your guess of how or why she put it there is as good as mine.

"Ich bein ein rock star"- Robbie Williams (who ironically is not a rock star)

An interesting phenomena it is that if you take care of two babies normally and one stays home, it suddenly feels as if caring for the other is as easy as a take-n-bake pie. Yep, it's just me and Amelia today on the home front. Lucky little Zach gets to hassle dad at home today while dad tries to squeeze in a teleconference here and an pie chart there. Pie, pie, pie. Oh and, by the way, Ryan, go get Zach away from the fireplace. I'm pretty sure that's where he is right now.

Amelia is going to assist me in writing some songs today while we sit outside and jam acoustic style. I just recently switched into a new band and, as of yet, we have no full compositions completed. Fortunately all three of us have some really great ideas for songs and seem to have very compatible musical styles. In my experience, finding band mates that you gel with is much more difficult than getting the songs together once you discover the right people. You will be informed of any developments, I'm sure, but don't count on any Sonny and Cher covers.

May the road rise with ye.

Dr. Steve's Daycare

The reality of the myriad spring projects is becoming hard to ignore. Our already hideous yellow paint is starting to peel off in sheets like a molting gila monster. Even after several great rain days the lawn is still composed of only several oasisses surrounded by vast desert expanse. The garage door requires a team of weightlifters to open. I haven't made a trip to Lowe's in over four months.
On top of that I have been in Ohio hibernation our entire long winter, often becoming severely winded by merely laying on the floor. Something needed to change...and that something did.
Ever since the weather took a turn for the better I have been getting out at least once a day to jog, throw a frizbee, play hyper dash, or throw around the awesome Gator football Elijah got from his Opi down in Tampa. A pleasant side effect to all of this outing is I've found the spring projects to no longer seem to be quite as impossible as they did they first day the weather peaked above 55 degrees. So maybe it's not a matter of tackling all those big projects right now, but instead tackling a six year old with a football first to help in the longer run.

The Dr. Steve show you just read was written in front of a live studio audience.


The Zach man's back.
Zach had been out sick the last couple of days fighting a nostril bug of sorts but fortunately he seems to be feeling much better; so it is for an entirely different reason which I pity him today. Ever since Zach leaned how to crawl, the two babies have been competing over who gets the coolest toys. Having suffered at the prying hands of both her big brother and my former pupil, Fred, Amelia is finally seeing the opportunity to exact revenge for every toy that had ever been taken from her. Fortunately the referee of her thievery game is a distraction specialist much like that of a rodeo clown (perhaps I missed my calling) and can quell even the most heated debates over squishy bowling pins and such.

Warning Label

There is a warning label on each of the tubes down at the world wide web factory warning folks to never use the internets for more than 20 minutes at a time when it is 78 degrees and sunny after a long brutal Ohio winter unless of course you own a laptop and are sitting outside with it.

...or, at least, there should be.




Have a springy weekend.

All rock and no talk at WMSD 102.4 FM

Zacho Polo

I am a paparazzo. Zach is an a-list celebrety. In an all too familiar scene, the media hound is attempting to snap photos of America's favorite and as usual he crawls over immediately and places his hand over the lens to calmly request, "No pictures please.". Well, actually it comes out as, "Dadadadadadadadadada", but I'm pretty sure it means the same thing.
Our newest crawler is busy making up for lost time like a recently graduated college student who, after having eaten ramen noodles for the last 4 (to 6) years, finally sits down to a viking sized feast with the main course being a genetically hybrid lobster-cow. He began by investigating Amelia's dolls in their toy tram for a little while, decided that may not be his thing, and went straight for the toy shelf. After pulling all the bottom shelf toys out onto the floor and lifting them into his mouth to see how they taste, he set off yet again to pursue the cat. Hagbard, of course, wanted only to go outside and no part of the hair pulling that Zachary offered. I obliged him for the sake of us all. With all of the excitement surrounding his newfound ability comes the inevitable problem of not wanting to stop and just take a rest. After resisting slumber in his pack n' play as long as he could, he realized that a couple of z's might not be the worst thing and succumbed to the sandman's beckoning.

eight nine is enough

A former employer of mine once asserted the "fact" that men are unable to watch children alone because they just don't have the same patience level that women have. As you already know, I have respectfully chosen to disagree with him, not out of spite mind you, but instead because after knowing myself for almost a full twenty years now, I have come to the realization that I possess the patience of a lobotomized tortoise. Certainly, you say, everyone has a breaking point to where their patience runs out and they just snap. To those, I say, let us put this to the acid test by inviting nine young boys ages five to six on a cold and rainy Saturday for Elijah's birthday party to see if the case holds true for me.

Ok, lets tally up the score here; hmmm, five break downs, three of which resulted in tears...the decibel level of a Shuttle launch at ground zero... screams piercing enough to shatter diamonds... all delightfully enhanced by a chocolate cake shaped like a giant blue Lego, and yet Mr. Steve and Mrs. Nadine's sanity steadfastedly remains.

Yes, Nadine and I hosted the party of a lifetime this past Saturday in celebration of our little man's sixth birthday. Fortunately all the kids were very respectful and at least tried to use their inside voices when reminded to do so. They all seemed to have a good time and got a chance to play some really fun games with one another. One such game was sent to Elijah from his Auntie Stephanie in NC and was called Hyper Dash. The kids loved it and it gave them a chance to run around like crazy monkeys for a little while. Another of the the crowd favorites was a contest to see who could get the most clothespins into a jar while dropping them from bellybutton height. With the way the kids would holler at every falling clothespin, you would have thought they were watching Tiger Woods attempting to make up lost ground in the final day of the Master's Tournament at Augusta (I know it's a weak analogy but I'm attempting to be topical...typically.)

The young boys were not the only ones thoroughly impressed by the clothespins in the jar game. Amelia, convinced that the game held some deeper message explaining the purpose of human existence, has not let the plastic mayonnaise container and wooden fasteners out of her sight since the contest ended. Every few steps she will dump the pins out of the jar onto the floor only to pick them up and place them right back in, one by one. Once she has collected them all, she stands up and sets off in search of the next great place to empty and refill her jar. (Come to think of it, she may be much wiser than I originally thought. Her modern day parable of Sisyphus may be the most poignant and insightful allegory ever presented to this fine institution. Bravo, Amelia. Bravo.)

Feelings of utter amusement were not the only kind spawned here today over the jar, though.
Mr. Zachers, upon seeing Amelia continually wandering around the house plopping her jar down on the carpet became somewhat jealous today and decided that he'd had quite enough of her showing him up. After airing a couple brief grievances Zach popped up on his skinny little fours, crawled over to the jar, and got it for himself. Wait, what? Did you just say...?

That, I did. Zach is, of today, a crawler.







...and on Friday, Amelia and I went to COSI where I took this self portrait. Fun with Fun-house mirrors.

Crash of the Titan

This morning I have been conducting some research pertaining to human interaction with computers and some of the overall ramifications of prolonged usage. In particular, I've discovered today a threshold exists wherein if a subject's hard drive becomes corrupted slowing the processes down to a crawl, the subject will begin to avoid entirely the computer in which it is housed. The subject in question is me. The hard drive in question is reluctantly assisting the subject in writing this blog after an excruciating ten minute delay to get an explorer window open. I've tried defragging, dumping data, deleting, and putting a diaper on it but my laptop just does not seem to be getting any better. It may be time to take old yeller out to the woodshed. I figured I would share this with you in case Mr. Steve mysteriously disappears in the coming days.

In the meantime enjoy this video as if it were the last (Again, with the effect driven over-dramatization. What is it with this guy?)

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

When I was but a boy, my mother would often get on my case about not leaving a note when I go off somewhere. Almost 30 years later it appears my manners have not much improved, but, at the very least, I will always report on where I've been after the fact.

Well, nothing much happened in the last week and a half...oh yeah, Amelia turned one on the last of March and we had a rocking party with a ducky cake, thirty of Amelia's best friends, and a video up-link from Tampa, Florida so that Amelia's Omi could be there too . Hmm..was there anything else? No, not really...well actually, there was also that trip to San Francisco where we met up with our cousins Igrid, Eric and their beautiful daughter Anya, played in a Pro/Am tournament at an incredible course designed by Greg Norman with the PGA Nationwide Tour's number three player on the money list , cruised around the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz, watched some sea lions barking at each other in disputes over prime real estate, stayed in a posh hotel owned by football legend John Madden, took a first class tour of the wine making operations and fermentation caves of Wente Vineyards, tasted each of the finest wines of said vineyard normally only available to their club members, watched some of the Wine Country Golf Classic Tournament from the Nationwide sky box, drove around aimlessly while attempting to find the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, hiked among the sequoias of Muir Woods (thanks, Liz!) and came face to face with a mountain lion who had made a cave of a giant hollow redwood next to the path, walked to the pacific ocean along the Tennessee Valley trail and saw a migrating whale swim by the cliff we were standing on, stayed our last night in San Francisco's first environmentally friendly hotel, and met up with a long time friend, Chris, who I hadn't seen in over ten years to catch up on old times. You know... just a typical week.

Yes, really. Nadine won a trip through her work, Nationwide, which made this trip possible. Basically we were treated like a king and queen for a week and got to revel in the fact that it was all free to us. Thank you, Nationwide. We are on our side...resting.

Zach and Amelia are so happy to see each other again after a whole week of being apart. I think both of them enjoy the company of tykes their own age. Amelia especially appreciates being the actor rather than the actee which never seems to be the case when big brother is around. Don't get me wrong, he is a very gentile and kind soul, but his energy level output competes with that of the sun.
Since Zach wasn't able to attend Amelia's b-day soirée as he was already off having a great time with his cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandmother, he is just now discovering the spoils of the festivities. One toy in particular he is especially fond of is a wooden toy alligator that wobbles when you pull its string. He appears to have some supernatural connection with the Gator as if it is somehow an oracle advising him of which University he has become destined to attend.

Go Gators.

Welcome back.