The best compliment...

I had dinner with the Captain last night. He was in town for a quick overnight, and I met him after work. Juice was planning on joining us too, but the meeting she was in ran really long, so she ended up just going home.

The Captain and I started off sitting at the bar, since we were waiting for Juice, and as we were ogling the bartenders, a waitress at the other end of the bar caught my eye. Just something about her.

"Dude...you know who she looks like?" I asked the Captain. "You remember Shelly? That girl I dated before I moved down here? Looks just like her. Check it out." I pulled out my phone and pulled up Shelly's facebook account.

"That's amazing. That girl could be her twin."

"Yeah, I know. You know, I had this kid my first year of teaching - her name was Crystal - that looked just like her. It was weird, because here I was teaching 6th grade, but this kid in my class looked just like my ex girlfriend. It was crazy. I even brought in a picture of Shelly one day and showed it to one of Crystal's friends, and asked her who it looked like, and her friend even said it looked like Crystal."

Then my mind caught up with the conversation...we were a few beers in at this point.

"You know what...Crystal, let's see, that was in 1997, so she graduated from high school in 2004, which means she'd be about, what? Twenty-three or twenty-four now? That waitress is about the right age, huh?"

"Yeah man. Ask the bartender."

"Hey Erin," I called to the bartender who had been waiting on us. "What's the girl's name down there at the register?"

"Crystal."

The Captain and I exchanged a look of utter disbelief.

"Can you have her come down here?"

And wouldn't you know it...12 years after my first year of teaching, I ran into a student I had that first year. Crystal came down and gave me a big hug, told us that she had just gotten married and had been roommates with one of the other students I had that first year of teaching. I caught her up on what I was doing, and my family, etc. It was great to see her again after all of these years.

And guess what Crystal is going to school for?

She's going to be a teacher.

When we finished with dinner, I gave her my email address and told her if she ever needed any help, advice, anything with education, to drop me a line.

Duck and cover

Our newest addition has been jabbing Juice from the inside for the past few days, but it seems like ever time Juice wants me to feel, the kid decides that there's been enough fun and games for the time being and goes back to sleep, or whatever fetuses do in there.

Juice has been a lot different this time around than she was with Peanut. The loving, calm, reserved woman during her first pregnancy has been replaced with this critical, cynical, sniping person. At least she recognizes it. At least most of it in not aimed in my direction. She swears that the child must be a male this time because of the 180 degree difference.

We'll find out for sure in 4 weeks.

Broke me out of my Monday funk

So, I have to work today. And because it's a "work day" meaning that there aren't any students, it's boring as hell for me. As I was stumbling across the Internet this morning, I came across this.

And it made me blow soda out of my nose, and all over my monitor. Which is why I'm sharing it with you.

Happy Monday.

Maybe she is starting to get it...

When I went into Peanut's room this morning at 6:15 to wake her up...

"No Dada, I still tired."

"Well, Mommy and Daddy were still tired when you came into our room at 7 AM all weekend to wake us up."

"NO! I not wake you up! I still tired."

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"No. I awake now. I want a cereal bar."

Yes, hi there. I'm still here.

Sorry about that little break there.

I was in Austin a few days this week for a conference, and while I was able to blog using my new iPod touch, I was not blogging here. I was doing professional things, talking profession to professional people, blogging on my professional blog.

Peanut also managed to catch what's been going around this week. Luckily, her ickiness only lasted one day, while everyone else's seems to be lasting several days. I think we dodged a bullet.

I picked her up from the sitter's on Wednesday and she looked wiped out. Didn't say a word the entire way home. Didn't want to go outside to play. Sat on the couch like a veggie watching Curious George, and looked like she'd rather be in bed.

When my parents came over, she did go outside for a bit. She told my mom that she needed to go potty, and when my mom picked her up to take her inside, she hurled all over the deck. The new deck.

We took her temperature when we got her inside and it was 103. We gave her ibuprofen, and her fever broke almost immediately. She acted like she was feeling much better, and we put her to bed with the expectation that she might wake up when her fever came back.

When she walked into our room at 3 AM, she didn't act sick at all.

"Daddy, I done takin' a nap!"

And for the next 90 minutes, I tried to convince her that she needed to go back to bed.

I finally got back to sleep at 5 AM, and the alarm went off at 5:30. Snooze. Snooze. Snooze. Snooze. Snooze. Snooze. And guess who was back in our room at 6:30?

"Dada, I done westing."

I can't wait until she learns about sleeping in.

Things I am happy about today.

My sister has started blogging about the things she's in love with on Mondays and I thought I'd give it a shot today.

1) Sunshine. I cannot say enough about loving sunshine in the winter. Even though San Antonio desperately needs rain, I love a perfectly cloudless day. Bonus points if it's warm enough to wear a t-shirt.

2) Along those same lines, getting sunburned in January/February. We took my Dad's boat out on one of the area lakes yesterday, and I did not wear sunscreen or a baseball cap, because, really? It's February. Who thinks about those things in February.

3) Spending time with my family. Yesterday was a family day in every sense of the word. We had a wonderful floating picnic, Dad caught a fish (and Peanut petted it, which is way more than Juice will ever do), and we spent the evening with Juice's family watching the Super Bowl. Which brings me to...

4) Sporting events that live up to the hype. There have been too many "big games" that turned out to be big flops. Last night's Super Bowl was by far one of the most exciting and entertaining sporting events I've witnessed in my life. And I didn't even really care who won. It's games like that that make me a fan of sports.

5) The words, "Daddy, I need to go potty." Enough said.

6) Last but not least, catching up with old friends. I have been spending a lot of time of Facebook lately, and Juice was surprised to find that I had over 100 friends the other day. It's been great finding out what all of my high school buds have been up to in the almost 20 years since we graduated. I even found a friend that I went to high school with who lives just up the street from me. Imagine that! Move 1000 miles from home, and have someone you hung with in high school just a few blocks away. Ain't technology great?