We finally have a laptop so I am hoping that means more posting to this silly little blog. I say that because now I can sit anywhere in the house and upload to the internet now that I also have a wireless network at home. I still wont be able to post from work but at least I'm not tied to the desktop in my office.

Several things are going on at the moment. It is nearing Sep/Oct which means deer season is almost upon us. This means working out in Crawford county planting food plots, fixing stands, cutting trails and shooting lanes. It also means trips to the range in the near future which is always time well spent.

My dad finally rented his house which is good, but two days moved in the renters flooded the first floor after the refrigerator blew a water line in the kitchen. Needless to say there is plenty of flooring damage and dad is not pleased. To make matters worse the insurance company is being absolutely horrible about the whole thing My dad has paid his premiums without missing a beat for nearly 25 years on that place and has NEVER had a claim. Now they are giving him grief about it because the contractor says one thing, the adjuster says another and the insurance company is trying to put the squeeze on him. It's ridiculous.

School also just started back and only two weeks in I have been in more fights than all of last year. The good news is I am back with one of my favorite administrators so it has been fun despite the chaos. All three of our boys (Josh, Jake and Joe) are at the same school this year. In fact, all four of the kids are there. This is Sarah Beth's last year of elementary school and I think I am going to be sick. I am not ready for the middle school years. Those are the ones Jen calls the island years because they all should be rounded up and sent to an island until they know how to act right!

Jen has moved to 2nd grade this year and she is loving it. She also has a great class of kids which helps. Last year's class was horrible and it made for a long school year. She is not doing the SST coordinator job anymore either so she has been really upbeat so far. It's still early in 08-09 but I think it will be a good year.

As always, I will try to post more but I don't think anyone is sitting at their computer biting their nails in anticipoation of my updates. If you are, get help.

M@tt

"Mother" Nature had her day!

First off, my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those who suffered loss during the storms in Middle Georgia this past weekend. Whether it was loss of life, home, property or even a car windshield, I hope the Lord grants you solace and peace during the coming days.

We were very lucky and had NO DAMAGE AT ALL from the weather. There were a few frightening moments early Sunday morning but we escaped unscathed. The kids even slept though the sirens, the power outage, the roaring wind and driving rain, everything. Even as I sat fully dressed holding a flashlight in the dark at the top of the stairs, ready to whisk them out of their beds should the need arise, they snored away, oblivious to the storm and my fear.

Unfortunately, some were not as lucky as us. Our power was only out for about an hour. Others are still in the dark tonight as I type this. Including some close friends of ours who had several trees in their front yard snap and take out a power line, a neighbor's mailbox and several other resident's trees and bushes! All I could do for them was trade my chainsaw for their daughter, my daughter's little buddy, and offer them my house for the night. Their oldest stayed with us but they toughed it out at home, sans electricity. Luckily it dried out and cooled off that evening.

Our schools were hit hard as well. Jennifer and the kids stayed home today while I went into to work and surveyed my school's situation (and that of several others). My school was relatively unharmed. Several others were not so fortunate and school will still be out tomorrow as well. Many BOE buildings are still without power and several have moderate to severe damage that may impact finals, end of course testing and possibly even the rest of the school year. One high school in particular may not be able to hold classes again this semester.

Hopefully we can get the last few days of school out of the way and head into the summer. This time of year is hectic enough without added chaos. At any rate, the storms did their damage, but it could have been much, much worse. $75 million dollars sounds bad, and that's the amount of monetary damage here in Macon, but as far as I know there were no fatalities in Bibb County. For that, we can be eternally grateful.

M@tt

This weekend I got a lot of things knocked off the “To Do” list. None of them particularly pressing but they needed finishing nonetheless.

Saturday 4/26/08 – I started out the morning by loading up the chipper/shredder and headed over to my f-i-l’s. I helped him shred a huge pile of junk in the back yard into a smaller pile of junk that he can now mulch into the yard with his rider. No big deal, took about an hour.

Then it was back to the house to load up the blower I had forgotten and then I headed over to our rental house. I mowed, edged, trimmed, cut and blew for about another hour. I probably could have spent a little more time there but it’s vacant and I really didn’t want to be there all day.

After I was finished at the rental I went to a friend’s whose yard also needed cutting. He is in flight school at Fort Rucker and I had actually promised to do it the previous week but my mower took a dump on me. The grass in the back was ridiculously high and I had to go over it several times. On the final go round I hit what I thought to be a stump and the machine cut off. Turned out to be a piece of hidden garden hose in all the debris that wrapped its way around the blades. I cut the pieces of hose out of the deck and attempted to restart, to no avail. As it was the end of the mowing anyway I pushed it to the trailer and loaded it up.

I then proceeded to edge and trim most of the yard. I didn’t get to the side patio as it is in need of more than just a quick cleanup. I will probably have to trim, pressure wash, round-up and then blow it off for it to be presentable. Oh yeah, they are trying to sell the house so I am on a deadline! All in all I was there about two hours. Luckily I didn’t have the mulching kit installed on my big machine or it would have taken even longer. Before leaving I tried one more time to start the mower and thankfully it turned over. I just spent $100 on it so I didn't want to have to put it back in the shop.

After checking on my friends wife and kids for a while I headed back to my house where a broken sprinkler head needed to be replaced. Of course, I didn’t have the right sized fittings in the shop so I had to make a trip to Lowe’s. No big deal as it is literally a block from the house. I got what I needed and replaced the head. I reconnected the water lines and replaced the sod around the sprinkler. It was almost like it never even happened. The head was even perfectly aligned on the new fitting and didn’t need to be adjusted.

As I watched the sprinklers for any more issues I decided to go ahead and get what I needed to put up a privacy fence on that side of the house. Back to Lowe’s for about $200 worth of lumber, cement and hardware. By now it was nearly 5:00 in the afternoon and I was getting hungry. I knew if I stopped to eat I wouldn’t get the posts set before dark and I wanted the cement to dry a while before the rains came that night. I pushed through and by 7:30 I had gotten all four of the posts set. Each post was eight feet, with two feet in the ground and an 80 lb bag of Quickcrete per hole. Probably overkill but hey, I don’t want to be redoing it anytime soon!

With the posts set, my yard watered, two other yards cut and my f-i-l happy I finally took a break and ate some dinner. I watched a little television with the wife and went to bed.

Sunday 4/27/08 – I was too sore to do anything but lay around the house all day! So, how did you spend your weekend?

M@tt

I finally watched "I am Legend" last night and I have to say, well...

I had a lot of expectations when I first saw trailers for this film. The last man on earth story intrigued me and I liked the casting of Will Smith in the role. Then, before seeing it, I learned it was a "zombie flick". The thought of another super virus gone bad gore fest made me want to puke but I saw it anyway due to my initial excitement about the film.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised, at first. The premise was fresh and smart. It wasn't just another "government doctors mistakenly unleash hell" free for all. The idea of the miracle cancer cure mutating was a new take on the genre, and was written very well. The life that Dr. Neville (Smith's character) was left to live was also a well written take on post apocalyptic living. Dozens of generators running the house and lab, recorded news casts with morning coffee, siphoning gas to run a brand new off the lot Mustang, hunting deer in downtown New York with an M16, even watching all the DVD’s in the rental store alphabetically. All very fresh and welcome ideas.

Then, came the let down. To put it simply, the "dark seekers" as the zombies are come to be known, were lame and poorly animated. Oh, they showed promise when you only heard them at night. The sounds of their horrific shrieking as they hunted for food while Dr. Neville and Sam (his dog) slept in the tub made for a terrorizing scene. Even when he first encountered them as “a hive” in an abandoned building they were ominous and fear instilling.

But then all the intrigue and wonderful subtly were ruined in one moment as they showed themselves on screen for the first time. Suddenly, the very real thought that all this could easily happen in real life was ripped away as the cheesy creatures began their onscreen antics. Poorly animated is an understatement. The idea of computer generating all the creatures is fine, if it can be done with some sense of realism. The creatures themselves are so unbelievable that they begin to detract from an otherwise visually stimulating film.

To make matters worse, the ending is anticlimactic and leaves the viewer unsatisfied. No spoilers here, suffice to say it was a roller coaster ride of let downs, and they just kept coming. Other than a few fresh ideas, some well written drama and novel concepts that were never expanded upon, “I am Legend” is a mediocre doomsday flick, nothing more.

M@tt

Well it's that time again, Spring. Everything is covered in a nice coat of lime green dust. I can't even leave my garage door up for thirty minutes or I come back to pollen covered bicycles and I can see my foot prints across the floor.

Anyway, with Spring comes yard work and I have been at it pretty hard. With the new house I have to start all over again in the yard and get it up to "Matt standards" as Jen like to say. She could care less. If it were up to her our yard would be AstroTurf because she sure ain't cutting it!

I also have a plethora of projects pending around the house as well. I stepped though the ceiling the other day while I was installing cable in Sadie's room. My foyer has a 2'x2' hole right next to the chandelier but at least now she can watch High School Musical 2 or Cheetah Girls 5 or whatever else it is she watches at 10:30 every night. That girl is rotten and I all I have is a hole in my ceiling to show for it.

Speaking of Sadie, she spent Easter in Hilton Head with her friend Mackenzie this year so it was just Jen and the boys this past weekend. Not only did Mak come home with Sadie but somehow we also ended up with her other friend Autumn Ray. There are now six children in our house for the next few days and I am thinking of cutting my spring break short to go back to work!

Anyway, Happy (late) Easter and I hope all is well with everyone reading this!

M@tt