Filed under: life
This time tomorrow we should be 3hrs/22min into our first long-distance trip with Garrett, as we head to Illinois for a quick visit with family and a few friends. I think we’ve spent only a few hours in the car with Garrett at any one time, and now that he’s 6 months old we feel like he’s a bit more durable for a longer trip. Without a kid it is a 5-5.5 hour trip. We’ll see how this goes…
Traveling with someone always wracks me with anxiety. When I travel alone, I’m fine because I can be as efficient as possible. But throw in someone as close to me as my wife, and it’s another story altogether. Add in the factor that we’re in a bit of a marital funk, and this is shaping up to be an interesting trip indeed.
The main objective of the trip is to introduce Garrett to several people. This will be the first time my grandparents meet him, and with my grandma in a nursing home, it’s not going to be the scenario I had envisioned where he meets them and hangs out at their house. I’m blessed to have grandparents whom are still alive, and more so that I knew both sets of my grandparents quite well growing up. Aging is a bitch, though, and it’s catching up to my grandma.
Garrett will also meet his cousin for the first time. She is a couple of years older than he, and I think it’s going to be interesting to have both grandkids at my parents house together at the same time. Then Garrett travels further north to meet a boy born about 1 month after him, the son of my brotha Tobie. We head back to Cincy on Thursday.
In other news…
Business is in a bit of a lull for a moment. Had two projects put on hold last week, which sorta messed up some planning. That’s the stinger about being a self-financed small business: Cashflow rules the day. Without operating capital to run on when things are in between, it’s an interesting ride. But we’re measuring out success – for the time being – by the fact that we are not financed by a bank or investor. We’ll probably need to align ourselves with such services eventually for growth – buying office space, etc., but at this leg it’s nice to not have a bank as a boss.
My father in-law brought up a good point to my wife as we talked about us possibly selling our house to take advantage of this very good buyers market. He said that if one of the Dems win the White House, capital gains taxes will increase. So under an Obama/Clinton administration, when you sell your home and make a profit from the sale, they want more of your money. Simple as that.
Finally got the fire pit out and flaming Saturday evening. For now we’re burning the remnants of what the drought of last summer gave us on our trees. Since we have around 21 smallish landscaping trees, it’s a lot of brush, quick-burn stuff. But fire is fire, and there’s something fantastic about it.
The rainy days of last week meant that in the evenings we spent a lot of time at Hulu.com watching Arrested Development. I’ll admit – it’s more “my show” than my wife’s. I just love absurd, dry, over-the-top, deadpan humor. Will Arnet – aka GOB – is my favorite. I love that he’s on 30 Rock now, too – he’s perfect for Baldwin’s character. My favorite Arrested Development scene is GOB’s sexual harassment speech to the Bluth employees. There’s just something about beeping out words that makes me laugh hysterically.
Now I’m off to God’s country…
