I find myself asking this question from time to time through my life and it happened to come up again a few weeks ago during a conversation with a friend of mine. I’m married with kids and he is married without kids. He is planning on having a road trip to Chicago with his buddies and told his wife to hang out with her friends for the weekend. To me this is not the way I would have asked. It looks like he is putting his friends before his family.
It is totally opposite from me. I put my family before my friends, but is it because I have kids and he doesn’t or is it the age difference between us. He is 6 years younger than me. I also had seen where people put their jobs ahead of their families, but never their friends before family. I know my answer will always be family before friends and my job. I will always have my family as friends and jobs come and go as I have seen in the past.
A few weekends ago my family and I went fishing at a fishing contest. It only lasted a few hours, but my son had a blast. I taught him how to cast his fishing poll that my parents bought him last summer. This is my first attempt to teach him the fundamentals of fishing. I also took him to the store to buy fishing supplies to catch bluegills with.
All of my fishing supplies are for bass fishing or for bottom fishing for catfish. I let him help me pick out stuff and teach him what they are for from hooks to sinkers to bobbers. We got back home and he practice casting some more and he was getting really good at it. I then set up his fishing pole for the contest and then all four of us headed for it.
Due to the amount of people there, I had to cast his pole into the water for him so he didn’t hit anybody else around us. I taught him how he had to be patient and wait for the bobber to go under the water.
It was fun trying to teach a 5 year old patience. I also show him how to unhook the fish after catching the first one. He didn’t want anything to do with the fish after it was on the bank. He didn’t want to touch it either. He had fun just being around the pond and around me. My wife fished with him for a while too.
After we were done fishing, we caught four bluegills, lost a sinker, and lost two hooks. This wasn’t bad for our first time out as a family fishing. He even told me several times later that day that he had fun fishing. I believe he had fun because we were doing something as a family instead of fishing. I even had fun teaching him how to fish and watching his reactions around the pond.
My 7 month old slept most of the time except for about 20 minutes because he was hungry. My wife had fun just watching us having fun.
A few posts ago I told everyone that I have learned a new term called a Foodie. This is a term that has been around for a while now. After thinking about this term, I decided to become a partial Foodie myself.
I’m also going to give the restaurants that I visit a rating based on 0 to 5 stars. The higher the number of stars, the better the rating and the review is. I’m going to base the rating on 10 different categories.
The categories are as follows: Food Presentation, Food Cooked Correctly, Food Taste, Service Attitude, Service Time, Bathroom Cleanliness, Restaurant Cleanliness, Parking, Waiting Time, and the most important are Pest Control from a customer point of view. Each category will get a rating of 0 to 5 points for a total of 50 points for all 10 categories. The points will then determined how many stars the restaurant will receive from me.
I will voice my unbiased opinion about the restaurant and why I gave it the rating that I did. I hope to help individuals and businesses see if they are doing a good job with customers or just don’t care about what the customers want.
If there is a restaurant that you like me to go to, then just email me or tell me about it on my website. Just remember that I live in the state of Iowa and I’m limited to how far I can travel right now. But I have traveled in over half of the states in the USA since I was a kid.
As of September 1st, I will not be supporting Stat Traq anymore. This is due to a couple of reasons. The first reason is that my family comes first over the internet. I like to code, but I love spending time with my family.
The other reason is that I don’t get any donations for the effort that I spend maintaining this plugin. I took on this plugin because I thought it would be a challenge to make it a better plugin and a better statistic tracker for wordpress.
I will reconsider supporting Stat Traq if I start receiving some donations for my effort on it and if I start getting some free time to work with it this fall. If someone else would like to start maintaining it, you are welcome to it. If you do start maintaining it, please send me an email so I can tell everyone where to get it from.
That is a fair question for everyone that is married. I’m planning on taking my wife out to dinner without the kids and just enjoy being with her. I always take this time of the year to remember the good things about us. She means everything to me. I’m just trying to find that perfect gift that she would use or wear day in and day out. How do you celebrate your wedding anniversary? Let me know.
The Iowa Hawkeyes will start playing football in 10 days and it is time for my predictions for the season. I have 2 different predictions that I will list on here. One is the loyal Hawkeye fan that I am and the other one is a realistic prediction. Here we go.
My first prediction is based on my loyal Hawkeye fan side that wants them to win.
W Maine
W Florida International
W Iowa State
L At Pittsburgh
W Northwestern
L At Michigan State
W At Indiana
W Wisconsin
W At Illinois
L Penn State
W Purdue
W At Minnesota
Conference Record 6-2
Non Conference Record 3-1
Overall Record 9-3
I have the Hawkeyes winning 3 out of the 4 non conference games they have this year. I think Pittsburgh will be a little too much for the Hawkeyes this year. I have them only losing the Michigan St and Penn State due to being 2 powerhouses this year in the Big Ten. I have Iowa going to 1 of the top 3 or 4 bowls games for the Big Ten Conference.
Now here is my realistic prediction for this season.
W Maine
W Florida International
W Iowa State
L At Pittsburgh
W Northwestern
L At Michigan State
W At Indiana
L Wisconsin
L At Illinois
L Penn State
W Purdue
W At Minnesota
Conference Record 4-4
Non Conference Record 3-1
Overall Record 7-5
I just don’t think the Hawkeyes are going to be stronger enough on offense this year. I will think they still will have issues with Pittsburgh as well as Michigan State, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Penn State. I have Iowa finishing this season as 7 wins and 5 loses and barely making it to one of the lower 3 bowl games the Big ten play. I don’t think this will be our dream season as the nightmare from the last two seasons will still haunt us this season.
The key players that will make this a break and make season is the Offensive line, Running Backs, and the Quarterback dealing with pressure and not getting sacked all of the time. All he has to do is just throw the ball out of bounce at least by a receiver instead of losing 5 to 20 yards on the sack.
Here is the schedule for the Iowa Hawkeyes for the 2008 season.
Aug. 30 Maine
Sep. 6 Florida Int’l
Sep. 13 Iowa State
Sep. 20 at Pittsburgh
Sep. 27 Northwestern
Oct. 4 at Michigan State
Oct. 11 at Indiana
Oct. 18 Wisconsin
Nov. 1 at Illinois
Nov. 8 Penn State
Nov. 15 Purdue
Nov. 22 at Minnesota
Good Luck and GO HAWKS!!!!
I was out mowing my backyard yesterday and I run across a little snake. I really mean run across. I was suprised that I didn’t hurt it. So I decided to catch it and show it to my 5 year old son who is interested in things like this. After catching the snake, it decided to throw up a part of a worm so it could be faster and try to get away from me. Here is a couple pictures of the snake I caught and the size compareison to the worm it thrown up.
After I showed my son and finish mowing my backyard, I decided to turn the snake loose by my fence. This way the snake can catch some of the spiders that I have around my house.
This is a question that I have been wondering about for a couple years. Now I’m asking the viewers of my blog to give me some feedback on this question.
This is the first time since 2006 that a I got Iowa Hawkeyes Football tickets to see them in Iowa City. Last year I didn’t have a chance to get tickets because the tickets sold out before I had a chance to get them. Tickets are hard to buy since Iowa had the two 10 win seasons a few years ago.
I get to go to the Homecoming game this year. The Friday night before is the homecoming parade and activities that is part of homecoming week. Iowa City is a blast during this week of activities. Now I just need to have a babysitter for my kids.
