Wed 14 Sep 2005
We’re off to Wildwood without the kids for the first time. Looking forward to a couple of days of unbridled fun with 10,000 of New Jerseys most selfless people.
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Tue 5 Apr 2005
We have lived in the Historic District of Hope for about the last 15 years. That Home is now up for sale and we have been able to move to a slightly more secluded spot with plenty of room for Mary, the kids, the dog and me.
We love the community where we live and both of the kids are doing great in the schoool system here. We are all very active in the comunity and it really is a wonderfully safe and secure place to raise a family.
There are some pictures here
Thu 5 Aug 2004
I haven’t posted in well over 2 weeks. The first few days things were just boring and there wasn’t anything worth posting. However for the past eleven (11) days I’ve been thnking about what to post about my dad. I’m still thinking about it, actually, because there are so many things I could say. For right now lets clarify that he died on the 24th of July, 2004. His death was completely unexpected, unanticipated and will have a long term impact on my life and outlook on everything.
My mom passed away about 19 months ago, and during the time in between I tried to get closer to my father. I wanted to become his friend as well as his son. For reasons beyond my understanding this did not happen and instead we wound up farther apart than we ever were. I know that my mom’s death affected him more than he ever let on, and even though he was in generally good health, and had no problem taking care of himself, I think maybe he became lost in trying to deal with the way things happened.
My father and I never had more than a minimal Father/Son relationship and we never became friends as adults. This may be in part because of his upbringing and beliefs, I’ll never know for sure. I’ll always love him, I’ll miss him also, but you should know that I missed him while he was alive as well because we had no real relationship, and I wanted one.
Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll probably write about a few of the following things, and why they were so. It might be today or maybe over the coming days and weeks. Whether anyone will care about or read them I can’t say.
- My dad was billiant, one the smartest people most people ever met
- I have primarily good memories of my dad from childhood and bad ones from my adult life
- He loved me but he could never accept me as an adult, and so I couldn’t like him.
- He had more people he called family than anyone I ever knew, but the word family had no significant meaning to him
- I hadn’t spoken with my dad in six (6) months, and why I am still ok with that
Sun 11 Jul 2004
Our new Kitty is named Bailey. He is a cameo dollface persian. He is absolutely the funniest cat. Our other two just kind of tolerate him, but he won’t stop thinking that their tails are his toys. Here a few shots from when we first got him.
The breeder still has a few from the litter that are available.
Sat 5 Jun 2004
Today we published katies 1st version of KatieSays.com here. We think its pretty cool for her first try. Tell us what you think.
Here’s a cool guitar that katie wants.
Wed 3 Dec 2003
This was my all of our first Thanksgiving without my mom around. We new it was going to be a very busy weekend and rather than have dad drive all the way to NJ for one day we loaded up the car for us to go there instead. Dad has always been the Thanksgiving cook, and in 40 years of holidays the only person he’s ever let in the kitchen to help him (to any extent) has been me. Somehow I know how he works, what he needs done, and when to get out of the way (most of the time) so he only finds it mildly irritating to have me in the kitchen . This year we had all kinds of new dishes ranging from a Wild rice and cranberry/apple dressing to molasses and horseradish candied sweet potatoes All told it takes about 20 man hours in the kitchen to make dinner and another 5 to clean up afterward. Here is all of us (except me) around the table.
and here’s the fresh mince pie that I made (dad made the filling and it was his favorite part of the meal
On friday it was off to Philadelphia for the Eastern regional Oireachtas (pronounced Oractas). There were thousands of girls, boys and parents there. And it was quite an experience.