In honor of the May 3rd tornado of 1999, we decided to have another one! Last night, a high F2/low F3 tornado formed in southern Oklahoma City, destroying many houses and businesses in its path. The strangest part of the whole thing was, this tornado followed almost the exact same path that the May 3rd tornado took four years ago. Hardest hit were Moore, southern OKC, and particularly the GM plant which appears to have been completely wiped out. Fortunately, the twister didn’t come anywhere near where any of us our our families live.

37,000 people without electricity. 150+ injured. 300 homes destroyed, another 1,500 damaged. Hard to believe this damage is from wind.

The picture last week was “Prego” … as in, Prego-nant. As in, Susan. As in, due date, tentatively December 31st, 2003.

What a busy, busy weekend!

Susan, Mason and I had three busy days in a row. Friday, after getting home from work, we filled up Mason’s new swimming pool and let him play in that for a bit.

Saturday was “Garage Sale Day” — the day where everyone in Sun Valley has a garage sale! It’s more of a social gathering than anything else. People who used to live there (and some that still live there) make the rounds, showing off kids and talking about old times.

After going to probably close to 40 garage sales, we headed out to Onion Burger Day in El Reno — I know, what are the odds? On Onion Burger Day, people go to El Reno to enjoy the classic car show and, well, Onion Burgers! Me, mom and dad did both, looking at all the cars and enjoying an oniony snack.

All of us were pretty sore by Sunday morning, but that didn’t stop us from trying to build a fence! I promised Susan we would try, so after Mason went to go visit his grandma for a bit, we went to Lowes and picked up a hundred buck’s worth of lattice, stakes, screws, nails, and railing. After about four hours of effort, it’s about … 30% done.

There’s a reason for posting this. See if you can figure it out. E-Mail me if you do.

Ok, I’ve got my next major project narrowed done to one of the following:

Convert the upstairs room to a dedicated media room (ie: a movie theater). Convert the shed into a club house for Mason. Put up a fence in the backyard to keep Mason out of the pool and the pond. Fix the liner on the pool. Fix the filer on the pond. Take ownership of Andy’s broken S-10 and rebuild it.

Decisions, decisions.

Lately, the GP32 (the little handheld computer/console I recently bought) has taken over my life. Who knew playing old Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 games would be so much fun? I’ve written some programs, made some movies … just been spending more time than I should be on the darn toy. Maybe if I would put it down long enough, I’d have some more time to finish some of these projects.

Friday was dad’s 55th birthday. I picked him up an RC plane, something he’s wanted (at least he said he did) for a few years now. Went to Outback but Mason decided he was NOT sitting through dinner, so after wrestling with him, Susan eventually left with Mason and I stayed with Dad. Saturday, we headed down to Redrock to meet some friends from work, and again, Mason was a handfull. I’m starting to think that’s what kids do (go figure!). Mason just went on a seek and destroy mission, searching out anything that could possibly hurt or kill him. After about an hour of trying to keep him away from dogs and the open fire, we headed back home.

Sometimes I wish we got two weekends, so I could use the second weekend to recouperate from my first one.

No, not Christmas — NBA Playoffs! Professional basketball almost every night of the week for the next month or so. Doesn’t get any better than this. Final four prediction: Nets vs Sixers (East), Lakers vs. Kings (West). My hope is that it’s the Kings vs. the Sixers in the finals, but we’ll have to wait and see if Sacramento can tromp the Lakers in the semi’s.

Got the Easter pix up this morning. Mason spent the morning at our house, playing with plastic eggs and crying because we wouldn’t let him go up the stairs. For lunch, we went to Susan’s sisters for a nice cookout and more Easter festivities. Unfortunately, my camera’s batteries died, so I don’t have any pictures of that. After an afternoon of napping, the three of us headed out to my mom’s, for more food and holiday fun. Mason liked the Easter candy, but he liked playing in the fish pond just as much.

If you loved him on CNN, you’ll love the Iraqi Foreign Minister’s quotes here, captured on the web, at http://www.WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com. Read quotes like, “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”, “We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.”, and “They are not in Najaf. They are nowhere. They are on the moon. They are snakes in the desert!” here.

Apply this rule: AFTER the message arrives.
Where the SUBJECT LINE contains: ‘viagra’ or ‘penis’ or ‘sex’ or ‘refinance’ or ‘diploma’ or ‘lowest rates’ or ‘Zion’ or ‘screensaver’ or ‘Screen Saver’ or ‘health care’ or ‘Advertising’
or
Where the MESSAGE BODY contains ‘pharmacy’ or ‘friendship’ or ‘screen saver’ or ‘descrambler’ or ‘Zaire’ or ‘refinance’ or ‘good health’ or ‘screensaver’ or ‘viagra’ or ‘confidential’ or ‘penis’ or ‘digital cable’ or ‘steak knives’ or ‘pornographic’ or ‘find out how today’ or ‘get yours today’ or ‘click here’ or ‘interest rate’ or ‘push here’ or ‘mortgage’ or ‘Zion’
Delete it

I have a vision of what hell must be like. I’ll be sitting at a computer with free e-mail, and every single e-mail coming in will either help me get out of debt, sell me a cable descrambler, or increase my penis size. How in the world I got on these lists, I have no idea. This morning when I came in I had 14 new e-mails, with 13 being spam. I’ve been setting little rules all along to help weed out the messages, but it only works for a while. So, I’ve started blocking major spam e-mailers. Hotmail.com, Netscape.com, and Earthlink.com are all blocked now. If I didn’t have family members using AOL and Juno, they would be on the list too. I got an e-mail yesterday trying to sell me steak knives. Don’t those guys walk door to door anymore?

Last night Mason and I went to Primo’s with Melanie, a friend of mine from high school. We had a lot of fun! Mason had macaroni and cheese and some of their cheese bread, and was in heaven! When it was time to go, a waiter said, “bye bye!” which set Mason off. “Bye bye!” he said. Then some people next to us heard him and said, “bye bye!” Then Mason said, “bye bye!” Over and over — I’ll bet the kid got out thirty “bye bye”s before we made it out the door, with half of the restaurant saying “bye bye!” to him and waving. Quite the scene.

Mason fought sleep and watched all of Shrek again last night. Susan and I have different theories on bedtime. She thinks Mason should go to bed at 9pm — a habit that always has him waking up in the middle of the night. I let him stay up until 10pm or so, which causes him to sleep through the night — makes sense to me! Last night, everytime I tried to put him in bed he cried because Shrek was still on, so I kind of tricked him by fast forwarding everytime he turned his head away. Mason loves watching movies this way. He thinks Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is a ten minute movie about a boy who Pod races until Darth Maul shows up and has a lightsaber fight with two other guys. The end. He also thinks Return of the Jedi is a 10 minute flick about a guy who meets Jabba the Hutt, has a big outdoor battle, and then meets some Ewoks and has another big outdoor battle. The end. Come to think of it, I should edit some of these movies down on video tape and just include the action. As if his attention span isn’t short enough already …