We were out in the side yard for a short afternoon break Boy was feeling the grass and the dog was running around. Just a nice little family break. We decided it was time to grab some dinner so we came inside to freshen up and get ready to go. A few minutes later I hear Janey say “We can’t go out there!!!”.

I went to the window to see what she was talking about and there were thousands of bees swarming our yard. I mean thousands… tons. it looked like a crazy horror movie.

So… to make a long story short, I was referred to a local bee keeper who was only too happy to come and get the colony that was trying to make my tree home.

Here’s a video of the action.

This was only the first basket of bees they pulled out of the tree. I’d say there was at least two more baskets full. Just crazy.

My blackbird.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Don’t despair, those wonderful beautiful women you’re dreaming about are out there. The ones that are almost completely normal, but have a hint of geek so they totally understand you.

This breathtaking one? Oh, she’s mine. That’s right, she married this geek right here.

Photo credit: Ashley

Hard to believe, I know. All I’m saying is: don’t give up. Follow the rainbow and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a smart, beautiful, wonderful, geeky & talented gal too.

and also… I love you Janey.

But the house training.

Overall, since we’re home all the time, she does great. But tonight. …oh tonight.

Let’s just do this the quick way.

• She shat in the house
• She rolled in it
• I ran her outside after inadvertently bare handing a handful of shit on her back
• Found that it was raining outside, but decided to hold my ground in the name of training
• Wiped dog shit on my pants
• Got very wet, and got her very wet… went inside after a short staring contest
• Kept the dog as still as possible while I cleaned remaining dog shit off the floor
• Bathed the dog (her first bath) as quietly as I could since the baby is asleep
• Got very wet again, this time with stinky dog shit water splashed by a very nervous pup
• Toweled the dog dry as best I could
• Excited pup (clearly happy to be alive after the bath) ran around like a bat out of hell waking wife and baby
• Wet dog smell permeates the entire house
• Finally get pup calmed down and chewing a bone while I throw shitty clothes in the washer
• Wash hands 4 times with two different kinds of soap

And now I’m sitting in my office, mostly dry pup asleep at my side. Doors are closed and windows are wide open. Hoping to keep the wet dog smell in here (and out these windows).

Everyone in the Jessen house is happy tonight.

** Edit – Photographic evidence **

Meet Nanna.

She’s a German Shepherd/Lab mix. So she’ll fetch a frisbee and bite the ass of anyone who pissed us off.

Welcome home Nanna!

It was a fun time as usual, but entirely too long to be away from Janey & Gavin. Missed them terribly. I was quite happy to hear Janey met a cool new friend to help pass the time.

I’ll write more about my Florida adventures later, which will include descriptions of the crazy flu I contracted on the way back home. Not sure when I’ll get to that… don’t hold your breath.

Nope, not going to write about all that today, because I have something WAY cooler to write about: Victrola!

My whole young life, my dad has been an avid listener of talk radio. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, there was always an radio on AM blasting the news of the day or opinion of whoever was at the mic. Incidentally, this habit has been passed to his son. While I did complain as a young lad, I’ve been a talk radio listener since high school.

Surprisingly, weekends (at least in my memory) were wonderful for talk radio. Instead of news and politics, we heard gardening shows, Car Talk, and if we were lucky enough to be listening Sunday evening, old time radio dramas. I have great memories of hanging with my dad in the garage while he changed the oil on his fleet of vehicles, the AM radio blasting so loud you could have heard it down the block. And it’s that radio in the garage that’ll connect our story for today.

The radio that has lived in my dads garage for the entirety of my 27 years on this planet was housed in an old wood cabinet. It had two record players set on pullout tracks. It’s always looked old. It looked old when I was tiny and used to pull at the record player arm until it broke off. What’d I know. It was a radio, and I wanted to play with it.

Fast-forward now to yesterday when Janey & I were visiting my parent’s house. My dad asked if we’d like to take that old radio cabinet home with us. It looked to be perfect size for a changing table for our little poop machine. He made sure to let us know that the radio still works perfectly, it’s just been sitting in the garage forever, so the cabinet looked pretty crappy.

As we cleaned up the cabinet to get it loaded, I just got so damned excited. It’s an old (I don’t know how old) Victrola cabinet with 2 built in turntables and one 12″ speaker behind a fabric panel. The inside of the cabinet is pristine save a bit of dust, the outside was pretty hashed. It was really just as I remembered it with a few more sub-freezing winters under it’s belt. The veneer would just crumble to the touch. But it’s built like a tank and I was sure I could give it a second life.

We got it back to my little workshop, and I went to town on it. At first scraping by hand, being very gentle… and later borrowing a vibratory sander from my brother in law to work out some real rough spots.

In the end, I got the whole thing stripped revealing a cabinet made of beautiful solid wood. My next job is to get this sucker stained and she’ll look like a million bucks.

Here’s a few more photos of work as it was happening.

I’m so excited to shine her up and let her come join us in the house!

I’ve got some business travel coming up, which will be my first time away from my little family since Gavin joined us. My stomach has been turning circles for at least a week over this. I haven’t event left yet, and I already miss them.

I’m so happy that our boy has got Janey. I have enjoyed being her friend, boyfriend, fiance, and husband so much. I feel like I’m the only person in the world who’s really had the chance to experience the enormous amount of love she’s got in her heart. I’m excited that Gavin gets to enjoy it now. She is really one hell of a mother. Second to none. That boy is in good hands.

That’s about all I’ve got for tonight. …guess I better get back to work.

I’m calling it a night after nearly 16 straight hours of work. There’s a lot that sucks about that, but the worst part is how crappy it feels to not be any help to my wife and boy.

So now, well after midnight, I want to do something… anything that might make life a little better.

I started doing some dishes and all it did was make enough noise to make a clearly frustrating night just that much more frustrating for Janey.

Laundry? No, that’s just as noisy, and I’d have to go into the bedroom to get it.

Damn. Just feeling like garbage right now.

Love you guys. Thankfullly, deadlines like this don’t happen every day. I’m still here.

(from my iPhone)

Today is the day Gavin gets his first round of immunizations.

My wonderful wife has been doing a bunch of research on the subject and, true to form, found that she doesn’t like the ‘normal’ way of doing things. And this time I totally agree with her.

We’re going in to the doctor in the morning with an alternate schedule for our little guy’s shots. If the Doc is cool with our way, it’s needles for the boy. Either way it kind of sucks for him, but we’re trying to make it suck a little less.

Janey’s going to cry. She had tears in her eyes just talking about shot day.

That’s about it for now.

(BTW – totally posting from my iPhone)