TechyDad

As you probably read on TheAngelForever.com, we saw Toy Story 3 on Sunday. It was a powerful movie and it is quite amazing how Pixar keeps topping themselves. I keep thinking "There’s no way they’ll beat this" and then they go and beat it. I won’t spoil anything but I don’t think that it’s a spoiler to mention that the movie is about Andy going to college and what happens to his once-beloved toys when he goes. The toys long for playtime and Andy just keeps them in a toy chest, forgotten and unplayed with.

A few days ago, I looked through my office. I have quite a collection of toys, momentos, pictures and other assorted items that I’ve collected over the years. Most of them have some sort of sentiment attached to them. Let’s go on a tour, shall we?

Starting from the left and heading right is the head of Dilbert’s boss. This is actually a "silly slammer." You hit it and it says things like "I’m the boss. It doesn’t have to make sense!" Then there’s Tigger and Pluto from our Disney World honeymoon. Behind them is Humphrey the Bear who was given to us by a Disney World tour guide upon finding out we were newlyweds on our honeymoon. Behind him is a canner penguin from a trip to Montreal we took prior to being married. Behind that is a Long Island Ducks rubber duckie. The Ducks are a baseball team near where my parents live.

Moving on we find the characters from Lilo and Stitch, another Disney movie I loved. Behind them is a Homer Simpson Pez dispenser, Mickey in a car, Dilbert and Dogbert. After them is a stuffed Hershey bar from when we visited Hershey, PA. The photos are B at our wedding and B and I with Mickey on our honeymoon. Finally, there’s the M&M guys from a trip to the M&Ms store in Las Vegas just before finding out B was pregnant with NHL.

Here we have a Mickey/Minnie wedding couple. You can wind them up and they dance. We got them at Disney during our honeymoon. Then there’s Winnie the Pooh in a cow costume. He was handed to us with Humphrey. In the back is Dr. Evil and Mini-Me along with Dr. Evil’s cat. Next to them is a box with Thing 1 and Thing 2. Besides being Dr. Seuss characters, they are also one of our nicknames for the boys. B and the boys gave me this. In the front are various snowglobes and momentos from trips to Mystic Seaport, Boston, Sesame Place, Hershey and Niagra Falls. There’s also a Disney World photo holder from our last Disney Trip (currently sans photo) and a Yoda/Darth Vader mirror toy. (You look in one end and it’s Yoda, look in the other and it’s Vader.)

That crystal and the little "eye guys" are from our trip to Howe Caverns while B was pregnant with NHL. Behind them is a penguin keepsake from our trip to Montreal. Next to them are my Farscape guys: John Crichton, Zhaan, Scorpious (with shrunken Hynerian head), Chianna, and D’Argo. They’re joined by Gandalf and Shrek. Quite the combination, huh?

Not pictured (mainly because he hasn’t been dusted in far too long) is a Spiderman toy perched on a Gargoyle affixed to my wall.  A web head covered in cobwebs is irony not laziness, right?

On top of my computer resides an Easy Button, Super Grover and Oscar from our trip to Sesame Place, a talking C-3PO that I picked up from a going-out-of-business KB Toys, Photographer Goofy from last year’s Disney World trip and a couple of DRDs who wandered away from the other Farscape guys.

 

Finally, there’s the front of my desk where I have my "Judge Me By My Size" Yoda from our most recent Disney World trip, the first photo of B that she sent me (along with the note she wrote me after we were engaged) and a pinscreen.

And that concludes my tour of my office toys/momentos. Getting back to Toy Story 3, I can’t help but wonder, when I shut the lights off at night, do my toys come alive and have parties?

I still remember the first time I met B. It was just after Yom Kippur ended and I signed into the Yahoo chat rooms. I had planned on simply killing time until going to sleep. I was soon contacted by “The Angel Forever”, though. A message in my profile (one that I only added a few weeks prior), had gotten her attention and we began to talk. The more I talked with her, the more I knew there was something special about her.

We talked well into the night and many nights later. Soon we decided to swap photos of each other. I nervously opened the photo she sent and was greeted by this gorgeous woman.

I didn’t know if I was falling in love with B at that point, but I certainly did want to get to know her better. Over the next few months, we would meet in person and visit each other as often as possible. The more I knew B, the more I fell in love with her. Before long, it became apparent to me that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I came up to visit B one hot weekend early July. Her parents’ AC had broken and B had passed out on the floor. I snuck away and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. The next day, I had planned to take B out to a nice dinner and then for a walk around her block where I would propose. Unfortunately, the restaurant I wanted to take B to was closed. We searched for an alternative and settled on Friendly’s. Not the romantic dinner I envisioned, but we made it do. Then we went back to her house where she plopped down onto the couch because of the heat.

I told her I wanted to go for a walk with her and she declined. I all but dragged her outside. As we rounded the block, I imagined what I would say to her. I tried to work up the nerve to ask her to marry me. I saw her parents’ house getting closer and knew that I was running out of time. I walked in front of her, started to go down on one knee… and saw a swarm of ants right underneath us! I shifted over a foot or two and then dropped to one knee.

B started to tear up and she realized what I was doing. I told her how I wanted to spend every day of the rest of my life making her as happy as she has made me and asked her to marry me. She couldn’t speak but nodded yes. As we walked in, she said that this didn’t get me off the hook of asking her parents for permission. I told her about my little sneak off the night before and, as we walked in the house, she told her parents they were DEAD! (Apparently, they had already informed the rest of the family of the upcoming proposal. Good thing I didn’t lose my nerve!)

On our wedding day, I was truly greeted by an angel and had the great pleasure to call her my wife for the first time.

It always amazes me how, just when I think I can’t be more in love with B or find her more attractive, I’m proven wrong (in a very good way). Over the years, we have become parents, home owners, parents again. We’ve had high points and low points. Moments of great joy and moments of great sadness. We’ve argued and made up. We’ve had special moments and mundane moments. B is my wife, best friend, lover and mother of our two great kids. She’s also – despite her protests – incredibly sexy. (Yes you are, B!)

B, I love you with all of my heart. Thank you for 9 wonderful years of marriage and here’s to the many, many wonderful years ahead of us.

Six years ago, we celebrated Mother’s Day for the first time in the TechyDad-TheAngelForever household. We might have celebrated the year before when B was pregnant with NHL, but 2004 was our first real Mother’s Day. Since then, she’s proven time and time again what a great mother she is. There’s nobody I’d rather have by my side when raising our children. She’s an amazing woman and I treasure every moment we’re together. So, B, I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. NHL, JSL and I all love you very much. (Don’t worry, we’re going to tell her in person. Not going to rely on a blog post for that!)

And to all the other mother’s out there, I hope you have a great Mother’s Day too!

Earlier today, I tried to send a coded message to B via Twitter. I wrote:

Would it be too geeky to tell @TheAngelForever “Number 25 as expressed in binary on one’s hand then translated into ASL”? Yes, yes it would.

Unfortunately, B was too tired to figure out a puzzle. I even sent a hint:

Hint for @TheAngelForever, use this site to find out how to express the number 25 as binary on your hand: http://bit.ly/4vLQf0

After this, she continued to resist spending time on my little game as she was busy doing my laundry. Fair enough, I figured. Still, I wanted her to get the message even if I had to spell it out in a blog post…. so I will.

Let’s start with a photo of my hand:

Now, my puzzle first specified that you must express a binary number on your hand. Binary numbers are Base 2. This means that the digits go from 1, 2, 4, 8, etc instead of the 1, 10, 100, 1000 that Base 10 uses. So let’s label my hand with the number each finger would represent

Now that that’s done, we need to count 25 on my hand. This is relatively easy now. 25 = 16 + 8 + 1. So we’ll raise those digits and leave the others down. Like so:

Finally, my puzzle said to translate this into ASL. ASL stands for American Sign Language. The photo above might be 25 in binary, but in American Sign Language it has another meaning. This next image is meant as a direct message to B when she reads this post

Like I said, very geeky. But that’s me!

This post is a day late thanks to a lot of Birthday excitement. And by “excitement”, I mean things going wrong left and right. The plan for B’s birthday was to drop the kids off at her parents’ house and then go out to eat. B had even decided that we would go to a nice Japanese steakhouse for her birthday meal.

Then the excitement arrived and our plans went out the window.

Read more…

Yes, I know that Wordless Wednesday posts are supposed to be, well, wordless, but I felt that this one needed some words.  After all, this is not only my "Wordless Wednesday" post, but also my "What I’m Thankful For" post.  Therefore, in no particular order:

My Wife

I’m thankful every day that B has been in my life.  She’s such a wonderful and caring person and I love everything about her.  She’ll deny it left and right, but she’s also incredibly sexy.  (Yes, you are B!)  I’m even more attracted to her today than I was the first moment I laid eyes on her.  (And trust me, I thought she was very attractive then also!)  I don’t know what I’d do without her in my life.  So thank you, B for being such a great wife and friend to me and such a great mother to our boys.  Speaking of our boys….

My Boys

I couldn’t have asked for two better kids.  Ok, there are times when they’re getting into trouble when I might think I could have , but still they are good kids.  NHL rarely gets into trouble at school and loves learning.  He enjoys spending time with me, B or just playing with JSL.  JSL loves helping people out.  He’ll actually get upset and shout "I help Dada!" if I don’t need his help.  He adores his older brother and loves spending time with him.  The little copycat looks to his brother constantly for cues on how to act and what to say.  (This does lead to us telling NHL to stop doing something and then immediately having to tell JSL to stop also…. cute though it may be!)  I’m so glad that they love each other and us so much.  Every day when I go to work, I wish that I could spend more time with them and every day when I’m packing up to leave, I look forward to seeing them soon.

My Mother

First off, I’m also thankful for my father, sister and other friends and relatives, but this year I’m particularly thankful for my mother.  Last week, she had a little accident.  And by little, I mean she almost died.  She was in her attic cleaning things up and fell.

Now, their attic isn’t exactly safe.  You get to it via a fold down ladder in the garage.  That staircase is about as old as I am (i.e. over 30 years old).  Once you get into the attic, you can’t just walk around.  The floor of the attic is thin enough that it can’t stand the weight of a person.  You need to balance on support beams which run all along the attic.  Years back, my father actually fell through the attic floor and got wedged in the hole he made.  His legs were dangling down in the garage, a sight which was scary then but funny in hindsight.

Anyway, my mother was up there cleaning near the ladder.  The details are a bit sketchy, but best I can make out, her foot somehow went through the thin flooring and she lost her balance.  She fell headfirst towards the ladder.  She hit her head on the ladder and skidded across the concrete garage floor.  Luckily, she wasn’t home alone.  A family friend was with her and called 911.

It could have been a lot worse.  She fell a total distance of about 9 feet (maybe more) onto a concrete floor.  She could easily have been dead.  Plus, she hit the ladder with her head so she could have snapped her neck and been paralyzed for the rest of her life.  In the end, she had a concussion (blacked out as she was headed for the ladder and came to on the ground), a couple of broken fingers, a torn up ear and scratches all over her face.  She’s very, *VERY* lucky!

She’s recovering slowly, but surely.  She’s still dizzy at times and needs to take it easy for awhile.  However, the doctors’ don’t think that any permanent damage was done.  I’m very thankful that my mother is alive and (relatively) well.

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Ten years ago tomorrow, I was just getting back from Rosh Hashana services. I wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep, so I decided to log onto Yahoo Chat and talk with a few people. Little did I know that B was in the same chat room. Actually, B didn’t even know she was in the same chat room. She thought that the window was closed. When she saw it was open, and that I was signed in, she checked my profile. A change I made a few weeks back – adding the text “Nice Jewish Boy looking for Nice Jewish Girl” – led B to contact me. Right from our initial chatting, we clicked. I didn’t know at the time that I would fall in love and marry her, but I definitely knew that there was something special about this “Angel Forever.”

My Aloha Friday question is: Have you ever met anyone in person that you had first met online? Do you feel that meeting people online lets you get to know them better than meeting them in person?

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #4

Eight years ago today, I got married to the most wonderful woman in the world. From the first moment that I met her in a Yahoo chat room, I knew that there was something special about her. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but as I got to know her online, I knew for sure that I wanted to spend more time with her. (And we did, often talking online or on the phone late into the night.) The first day that we met in person was wonderful. Unlike with other women I had crushes on before, I wasn’t nervous around B. It was the strangest feeling. I was completely at ease. Everything I said or did felt completely natural.

As we dated, I quickly realized that I was falling head over heels in love with this wonderful woman. Every time I thought that I was the most in love that I could possibly be, B would say or do something (or simply look stunning like she usually does) and I’d find new levels of love to explore. I soon knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with B. I proposed to her one hot July evening after going for a walk around the block with her and we were married the following June.

Since then we’ve been through highs (the births of NHL & JSL), lows (NHL & JSL’s seizures and hospital trips), gone on wonderful vacations (Vegas, Disney World) and had some very stressful situations (first home purchase). Through it all, there has been no one that I’d rather have by my side than B. She is the most wonderful, amazing, and sexy (yes you are, B!) woman that a guy could ask for. She’s also an incredible mother I love her with all of my heart and still, to this day, am constantly finding new levels of love with her.

We just had a scary weekend.  We were at B’s parents house Saturday night celebrating Chanukah a night early.  Gifts were opened, kids were excited, a meal was eaten – so far, so good.  Then – before dessert was served – we took some more time to play with the kids.  JSL went chasing after B’s father and slipped on the kitchen floor (he was in his socks which apparently didn’t have enough traction).  He landed right on the back of his head.

B’s father brought him right to me as he screamed.  He’s hit his head quite a few times, so we first thought nothing of it and proceeded with dessert to try to distract him from the fall.  During dessert, he refused a chocolate covered pretzel.  (JSL refuse chocolate?  Something *must* be wrong!)  Then we noticed that he was extremely pale, started shaking, and was glassy eyed.  We called 911 with visions of his febrile seizure running through our heads.

The paramedics came and checked him out.  During the checkout, he didn’t complain at all.  (Another non-JSL-like reaction.)  They decided to take him to the hospital.  B ran to get his stuff.  Of course, they were coming in from the snowy outdoors and B didn’t notice the water they brought in.  She slid and jammed her finger and arm.

We headed to the hospital, B in the ambulance and me in the car.  NHL stayed with B’s parents.  I heard him complaining to them that he couldn’t sleep there tonight because he didn’t have his "buddies." I followed the ambulance across some pretty treacherous roads (unplowed narrow city roads with cars on both sides).

Finally, we got to the hospital.  I had to wait 10 minutes for them to get checked in so I could see B and JSL.  (Technically, I was a visitor since B was the one who came in with him.)  When I walked in, JSL seemed a bit better.  He actually requested his binky – something he hadn’t done the past hour.  (Another *HUGE* non-JSL behavior.  He’s a binky addict.)  He also walked around the ER, taking off away from me to see something that interested him.

They determined that he had a concussion and possibly a mini-seizure from the fall.  They told us to wake him up a few times during that night and the next one and take him in to see the doctor on Monday.  (B’s actually taking him tomorrow due to the weather.)  I’m hoping for a boring week this week.