reality check

late last night i learned that my dad has colon cancer. gianna got home from cubbies with the kids and after we put them to bed she asked me if i knew about my dad. so i was rather blown away when she told me what was going on. my first reaction was "wait a minute, why didn't they tell me this!?!?" after going to bed a little concern crept in and i couldn't sleep last night. if you know anything about my family, you know that my mom is a serious cancer survivor (4x). there has never been too much ever mentioned about my dad since he is a healthy person. yeah, there are some minor issues, but nothing big like this.

after calling him this afternoon to talk, i feel better about the situation. basically my dad tells it like this: everyone gets polyp's in your colon, and most everyone will have one be cancer. with screening the doctors find them, cut them out, and put you back together.

to put it into other words, my dad will go into surgery on thursday next week. the cancer will be taken out and along with it 12 inches of his colon. from there he will have about a three month recovery time table. yikes.

i have never thought that my dad would be the one to have cancer. there is so much focus on my mom's side that i must say that i do neglect the medical stuff from my dad's side of the family. in three weeks i myself have to go get screened for cancer. i wasn't really thinking about it at all until today. i don't anticipate there to be anything wrong with me, although others may debate this fact, but there is that little bit of doubt that lingers in the back of my head.

this is all a little too sobering.

man! this is time consuming

over the past few days i have been setting up my wifi here at home. i wanted to be able to use the wii's internet feature. after much grief, it is done. the bummer is that you have to download the internet channel in order to use it!!! so after spending $5, we can finally surf the web from the wii. a disappointment that i already found is that adobe flash player doesn't work so we can't watch some videos. oh well. so for fun i decided to blog using the wii. not too bad other than typing one letter at a time using the remote. with that said i am going to quit now,

a major milestone

last week we all noticed that dane was really ramping up to start crawling. he would get up on his knees and think about moving. then he would slap his hands on the floor, rock back and forth, and then ultimately sit back down. oh well, nice try buddy. on occasion he would lean forward and then lay out flat on his stomach in a spread eagle fashion. it was really funny, and it moved him around.

a few days ago, i don't remember exactly which day (gianna wrote it down), dane made those first official crawling movements. it was only one or two paces, but hey it counts. and it is on video!! since then dane has gotten more bold and is beginning to scamper across the floor at an alarming speed. **sigh** we had to put the baby gates back up. so, once again we will discover what items around the house will need to be put away. an almost 9 month old doesn't have a sense of what he can or cannot touch, and everything must be licked. yuck.

i can only long for the days that i don't have to hear maya and brin yelling at the top of their lungs that they need to come up out of the basement. i don't think i will teach them how to open the gate.

jumping into the modern world of gaming

okay, so for the longest time i didn't really care about getting a new game system. i have my sega genesis from back in high school and roughly 60 games to go with it. quite a collection if you ask me. this past summer my family got together for vacation and we played the wii a lot. i had played a wii before and didn't really care, but this time it was fun. i think it was the most fun because gianna got into playing. (she doesn't play video games) it then became my mission to get a wii for our family. as gianna stated in her blog we bought a wii last friday. yippee!! it is an instant hit with the girls as they race their cows around the track knocking over scare crows. we had fun playing tennis last night and i am sure that it will continue for many times to come.

let us know of any great games out there that are worth playing.

what! you said its how cold?

okay, so its not this cold here, but it sure feels like it. we are projected to have the coldest night tonight since 2004. i think they said we are going to get to about -24 tonight. yikes!! one thing that is cool about it being this cold is that you can take a cup of boiling water and create an instant cloud by throwing the water up into the air. if you have never tried this before it is really kinda cool. all you need is subzero temps and a cup of hot water. it also helps to be bundled up a little bit too, but for those brave enough you can simply run outside throw the water and then run back inside.

hopefully the car will start tomorrow.

its times like this that i often wonder: was it really worth sacrificing my garage spot for the boat?

exhaustion

as some of you know, i was shipped off to the sister store of the company i work for. i would tell you the name, but i signed a paper that states i will not disclose my work place in a blog or other internet messaging site. stupid i know, but hey the rules are the rules. anyway, since i couldn't get any hours of work at the roseville location, i switched to the maplewood location for the season. because toys are much more popular at xmas than baby strollers, it was easy to get lots of work. i chose to work the overnight shifts. for the most part i really liked it, but it made quite an impact on home life. gianna and i didn't really see each other too much.
after thanksgiving the overnight crew was told that we could earn overtime and work as much as we desired. with the thought that i don't know what will happen in jan. or feb. i chose to begin my crazy, insane, and slightly deranged work schedule. i don't know exactly when it started but by xmas eve morning i had worked seventeen days (nights) straight. the last full week that i was there i think i had close to 60 hrs. i am thankful that i had the opportunity to work at the store, but i am glad to be back at the roseville location now. plus working during the day and sleeping next to a warm body at night is very nice.

the one that didn't get away

so two mondays ago i went fishing with a friend of mine. we took off from the cities and headed north about 45 min, and picked up phil's boat so that i wouldn't need to haul mine. we got on the water by about 5:30 pm. it should be just about perfect for the fish to be biting. we went into one of the bays on the lake (were i have had lots of success) and began casting for bass. dustin got a nice bass on his third cast. wow this was going to be a good evening. from that point on we never found another bass. after moving around a bit, the crappie and large blue gills began biting. okay so we didn't find any large mouth, but the fishing was still good and the pan fish were large enough to keep.

toward the end of the evening i decided to move the boat to the mouth of the bay and cast a rattle trap into the opening. i was hoping to find a northern cruising through the area. one big fish would be nice to see. keep in mind that the sun has already gone down and we don't have any lights on the boat. there is still daylight, but we are quickly running out of time. after casting for about 20 min and getting a few hits here and there i finally got a solid hit. while i was fighting the fish my thought was that this isn't a northern. it didn't feel right. it took a little while to bring him in and the fish at the end of the line was the best case scenario that a fisherman in minnesota could ask for. i caught a 4lb, 24 1/2in walleye!!!!! my fishing was complete!! needless to say, by this time i had so much adrenalin that we only managed to measure the fish and put it into the live basket. i wasn't going to take any chances on loosing the second largest walleye that i have ever caught.



without further ado: here is the fish.

ps - the walleye tasted really good!!