It is really a shame because being on the tail-end of this long run, her birthday never gets the attention that its preceding holidays do… By the time we reach the end of March, we are all ‘partied’ out. (My tongue is planted firmly in cheek as our parties are deemed sub-mild at best) Usually, she might get a couple of cards, and a hand-made gift or a book, and maybe some fast-food out or Victoria might make something for dinner.

…The sad thing is? Though I fully recognize that Amy is the true unsung hero of our family and deserves all the credit and more – This year, her birthday celebration will most likely remain the same.

Why, you ask? (and I’m so glad you did)

Next year will be Amy’s – umm… strike that – Next year, Amy will be celebrating a milestone birthday and, hopefully, will be having a celebration deserving of such a milestone. Soooo, if I do go all out this year, I would be hard pressed to do even better next year. I’m just too lazy not creative nor resourceful enough to pull that off.

So having said all that (and knowing that she’ll be reading this later on today), I want to wish my wonderfully lovely wife and best friend a very, very Happy  Birthday. You know I’d be lost without you…..

In case anyone else is out there reading this, the automatic upgrade feature within WordPress will stall if you are using  < php5. The same holds true with trying to auto-upgrade some of the plugins.

I know it’s been really quiet here, but lots of stuff has been happening…. like the Summer – for instance…. and Will’s Birthday… Oh, and my older sister Mel got engaged too….
Those are just the highlights. There were other things that happened, and hopefully I will get around to posting them… or at least, posting more often. We’ll see how that goes.

As you can probably guess, It is one of the most eagerly anticipated days in our household. Victoria has been done with college for a couple of weeks now(hard to believe she’ll be a Junior), but Amy and the boys are counting down the hours.

Me? Well, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing… Don’t get me wrong – I love the fact that the everyone gets to take a break from the stress of school. I love the fact that Amy can get out of “Teacher Mode” for a few weeks. I love that Amy, Victoria, and the boys will have more time to spend together as a family… I just wish I could join them. The first week of summer vacation is always hard on me. I absolutely dread having to get up and leave my family behind as I go to work. I feel as if I don’t spend enough time with them as it is.

Ah, well… I gripe about this every year. I know, I should just get over it.

You really should be commended for all that you do: from being the always-dependable Mom, to the hard-working and dedicated teacher, to the caring and loving wife. I know that I am truly blessed to have found you, and I pat myself on the back every day for being sly enough to trick you into marrying me am very lucky that you decided that I was the one with whom you wanted to share the rest of your life.

Happy Anniversary, Amy…

~DBP

• My Dad’s Birthday
• Valentine’s Day
• Brian’s Birthday
• Our Wedding Anniversary
• Amy’s Birthday

Oh, and you can throw my little sister’s birthday in there as well….

Anyhoo, back to the subject at hand. I am brand new to the whole Guitar Hero franchise, though I’ve been wanting to play it since the first one came out(this is the first version that is available for the Wii). So, being wet behind the ears, I decided to wuss out and start the game on easy. The game has a great song list that can be played in four modes: Easy-utilizes only 3 of the five finger buttons, Medium -adds more notes to the note chart and includes a fourth button, Hard-includes the fifth button and the note combinations are harder still, Expert-just insanely fast note combinations and lots of advanced techniques. See here for a more thorough rundown of the game.

It took some time to get used to the controller, but once I got the hang of it, I cruised through the first 2 concerts with no problems. In fact, I finished the whole game on easy in less than 1 week… scoring at least four or five (out of five) stars on each song(but one… more on that later)!(*patting self on shoulder*) Medium difficulty is a completely different story however. I find myself practicing a song over and over and I can barely get 4 stars on most of them. Strange how adding just one more button to a note chart just changes the whole complexity of a song.

Speaking of complex songs… Slayer’s Raining Blood is one of the songs you can choose to play in the last set of the game. OMG!!! Even on easy, I got booed off of the stage 3 or 4 times before completing it with only 3 stars. The song is just wicked hard and pretty fast. I haven’t even tried it on medium… and probably won’t. the other 3 songs on the set(you need to complete 3 out of 4 songs in the set to advance) are just easier for me to play.

The boys have watched me play the early parts of the game and both have taken an interest in playing it. I let them both play through the tutorial, and though both of them completed it, Will seemed to have a tougher time since his little fingers are having troubles spanning the 3 buttons needed to play in easy mode. But, he fought through A LOT of frustration and continued to practice the songs in the first set…. and as of this past weekend, he had completed both the first and second sets on easy. I have to say that I was quite proud of his determination. He never gave up even though I saw times where he stomped off crying in frustration, and others when he looked ready to throw the guitar controller into the TV. To see him pass the first few songs after all of the practice. The look on his face was worth it.

I’m not sure how much further in the game I am going to let him go. The last few parts of the game are more mature themed than I think he should be a part of. The final stage is actually in Hell and you have to play “Devil went down to Georgia” against a caricature of the red man himself in order to complete the game. I’ll probably end up letting him play up to set 6 or so and then have him move up to the next level. I just think that some of that stuff might frighten him a little.
[tags]holidays, GH3, wii[/tags]

As far as my actual birthday activities… well, the boys had a dance at their school so Amy and I took them to that and we stayed for the duration. I don’t know about you, but what is the point of having a dance at an elementary school? I mean at that age, don’t all boys think all girls have cooties at that age and vice versa? And second, why play a slow song at a dance at an elementary school? Who really expects the kids to slow dance?

However, both boys seemed to have a great time, just running around the gym with their school-buddies. Who knew?

Anyways, afterwards, we came home and I was treated to a surprise ice-cream birthday cake! Now that was excellent! When I was a little kid, my parents used to get us all ice cream cakes for our birthdays. At some time in the past, I had told Amy this and she and Victoria conspired together to get me one this year. What a wonderful treat!

[tags]birthday[/tags]

Around the end of last month(the 25th to be exact), I was finally able to treat my wonderful wife to her long-awaited Christmas present – 2 tickets to see Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson at the Winston-Salem stop of their 2Worlds 2Voices tour. OK – well, she got the tickets on Christmas Day, but the Concert wasn’t until January 25th.

Anyway, we – along with our friends Philip and Jen, took off that Friday morning on what turned out to be one of the best and most relaxing weekends that Amy and I have had in a very long time. We hitched a ride with Philip and Jen to Winston-Salem detouring through Cheraw so Philip’s parents could watch over Peyton, Philip and Jen’s daughter, while we were gone. While in Cheraw, we had lunch at Philip’s cousin’s restaurant – a nice country buffet with chicken and dumplin’s!!!! MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!! Afterwards, we hop back in the car and spend the rest of the trip getting more acquainted with our weekend fun co-conspirators. You see, Philip and have I worked together for a little over a year now… in fact, his cube is directly opposite mine.We are in the same department, the same group, and we share more than a few of the same projects. He is also one of my break and lunch buddies. I am very confident when I say that Philip and I get along together pretty well…. despite me being 10 years his senior(inside joke… sorry, Philip, I couldn’t resist). However, getting along at work, and spending a weekend together along with spouses outside of the work environment is a completely different dynamic altogether. You take the work environment out of the picture, and two more personalities and combine it with a fairly long drive… you can see where there is potential for things to fall apart.

Luckily, that never happened. The four of us seemed to hit it off rather well. In fact, so much so, that I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw my wife so relaxed and just… enjoying the moment. But more on that later….

Once in Winston-Salem, we got our hotel rooms, unpacked and got ready for the evening. We had a great adventure looking for a place to eat our pre-concert meal, and after lots of driving around and, “What about…[insert restaurant name here]?” we finally decided that the IHOP right beside our hotel was our best bet. The restaurant was packed! And almost everyone there was heading across the street to the concert after dinner. No matter though, the under-staffed establishment(There were only 2 waitresses) was still able to serve some great food in a surprisingly timely manner. When the food was gone, we decided to clear out and make our way through the cold to the venue in hopes of beating the lines. Once inside, we made our way to our seats. We were on row CC-floor level, basically 29 rows back from the stage. Close enough to get a good view and be on the floor level, yet far enough away not to get our ears blown out.(That’s a good thing when you reach my age… my hearing is leaving me without any extra help!).

The show started off with a comedy routine from Melissa Peterman, probably most well known for her role as the zany Barbra Jean from Reba’s self-titled sitcom on the WB CW channel. Melissa was absolutely hilarious! She is a very talented comedian and deserves a longer opening act. It later occurred to me that if you were merely a Kelly Clarkson fan and had never watched the sitcom Reba, some of the material may just zoom over your head… but hey – this was a Reba concert after all…

The actual concert itself was… well let’s just say, color me impressed. Both singers took turns singing their hits – alternating verses in on some songs, singing backup and/or harmony on others. Both are absolute phenoms. Reba was the absolute(but very humble) Country Superstar, and Kelly was the powerful voice wrapped in such a tiny package. I’m not a big follower of American Idol, but I keep up with the eventual winners of each season and I seriously believe that Kelly, along with Carrie Underwood, is probably one of the most talented to have come out of that show. It was great to see(and hear) Reba rockin’ to some of Kelly’s up-tempo songs as well as listening to Kelly cover some of Reba’s country classics. In a nutshell, the whole production was well planned and well put together. If you are a fan of either, and the tour is playing in a city or town near you, go and see it, you will not be disappointed. In fact here are a few highlights of the show. You can listen in and decide for yourself.

The next day, we all decided to take a walk around Old Salem. Old Salem is basically part of the town that is a living testament to the lives and people of the original settlement in the late 1700’s. We spent the first part of day walking the streets, looking at shops, and visiting the Winkler Bakery. All I can say is – you need to go here. The breads, the sugar cake, the sweet rolls, the strudel, the thin cookies… simply amazing! I can definitely tell you that we purchased more than our share of baked goods there, and not one morsel was wasted. The scent of all of the wonderful breads and sweets, must’ve gotten us all hungry, so we headed a little further down the street to the Old Salem Tavern for lunch. What can I say? The experience at the tavern was wonderful. The food, the company,the atmosphere, the conversation…. everything just fit.

Unfortunately, it was getting late in the day – we still had a long drive back, and Philip(one of work’s resident “Mac Heads”) wanted to stop by the Apple store at the Southpoint mall in Durham. We had a great time perusing the mall, window shopping, and drooling over all of the different Apple products. Amy even got me the Zack and Wiki game for the Wii! Unfortunately, it was two days before the new MacBook Air was put on display. That was the one product I really wanted to try out. Anyway, we wrapped up our shopping and started making our way back to South Carolina.

The trip home was true to form as our whole adventure thus far. Plenty of conversation, this was the Saturday of the SC Democratic Caucus and the news of Obama’s win in SC sparked a lot of conversation, which led to conversation about local politics, which led to some rather funny anecdotes, which led to some extremely funny jokes…. you get the picture. Next thing you know, we were back in Conway to pick up our car from Philip and Jen’s house… said our rather lengthy good-byes – I had gotten a call from work about a problem(yeah… thanks, Jay) and needed to turn my attention on it… plus i realized just how tired our friends were… Philip had driven the whole trip and I never offered to help out…. I’m SOOOoooo ignorant when it comes to those things. Anyway… we said our good-byes and made it back home.

All in all, this was the best trip that Amy and I have had in a quite while. We were able to step away from the “real world” for a couple of days and relax and enjoy the moment. This trip was also special to me(us) because – well… my wife and I aren’t the most social couple in the world. Between work and kids, we haven’t had much time for true socializing. Hell, we have to finagle all we can just to have time for the two of us. And because of this we don’t have very many friends… well, to clarify, we don’t have many “shared” friends. I have my work friends and she has her work friends, but rarely do the twain ever meet. That weekend – well it just seemed like everything just fell into place…. and that, my friends, is a very good thing. I look forward to doing it again sometime soon…

Wow… if you made it all the way to the end of this post, you are absolutely nuts… but I thank you for letting me share our adventure with you. If you are still awake, make sure to check out the pix that Jen took of our trip.

[tags]philip, jen, reba, kelly, concert, apple, wii, politics, old salem, IHOP, winston-salem, melissa peterman, road trip, socializing, southpoint mall[/tags]