Out of Prison

Yesterday I was a part of a concert/worship service with my band JoyousNoiz. We took a trip up to Fox Lake Federal Corrections Facility to host a worship service for the inmates that were gathered there. We played our songs and a friend of ours, Jeff, got up and gave a sermon. We then closed out with a couple more songs. Afterward, we gathered up our gear and headed out. Our next stop was Redgranite Federal Correctional Institution, an hour and a half away, for another worship service!

I thought that the music was great at both shows. It was also the debut performance for me off a song that Geno rewrote for me. Geno rewrote the lyric to Guns & Roses' "Sweet Child Of Mine" to be "Sweet Lord Of Mine." This gave me the chance to channel my inner Axel Rose and rock out. The guys loved it! It really got them jumping!

Jeff's message, as always, was very good. He took the story of Esau and Jacob from Genesis and related to modern life. He was able to make all the inmates take a look at themselves and contemplate who they are in relation to the perfect "God designed ideal." He conveyed the message that no matter what any of us have done in the past, or what we have been through, Christ has paved the way for us to live with him and be exactly what God has planned us to be, not what WE planned to be for God.

God was definitely in the Big House last night. It really drives home that if God was present inside a prison, he must certainly be present everywhere else. Every time I have done a prison ministry before, I've felt it, and it has gotten more intense as my personal walk with Jesus has brought me closer to God then ever before. I pray that all the men at the services last night felt the same way!

Water Tower Fun!

The City of Madison Water Utility was cleaning out the water tower that is right by our house yesterday. It was a gorgeous day and there was water flowing down the road like a mighty river! So Tommy and I donned our crocs and decided to go wading up and down the road.

At first the water was very cold, but we quickly got used to it and had a blast playing in the water. We were sure to watch for cars. But I taught Tommy how to splash and run in the water! We followed the "river" to its source at the water tower and then followed it to where it ended and went down the storm drain, to which Tommy said, "Bye, bye water!" We then played in the water some more before nap time. It was a blast!!!

A Fine Day Off

'Twas a good day today. To start out with, Melissa let me sleep in this morning, I will be returning the favor for her in the morning. Secondly, I got the chance to spend the whole day with my family.

We decided to take a little trip out to Columbus to visit a friend who is in the hospital with a collapsed lung. It sucks to see him basically confined to a bed with a chest tube, but it was good to spend time with him. I think having visitors lifted his spirits, also watching Tommy play on the sofa that they had in the room also entertained him. We brought him a "Get Well Soon" card and I lent him a Spider-Man graphic novel, knowing that he likes comic books.

After the visit, we had lunch at the Columbus Family Restaurant. The food was really good, and made Tommy sleep the entire way back to Madison. He was even willing to continue his nap once we got home. While he napped, Melissa played one of her games on the computer and I read some comic books that I later reviewed and posted on my other blog, "Papa D's Comic Books."

When Tommy finally awoke from his slumber, he wanted to watch his new favorite movie, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Again. For the third time today. He really loves that movie! At least there are worse things that he could want to watch, like Barney or the Teletubbies, neither of which he likes. Thank God!

Now the little guy is back in bed for night night. Melissa's reading, I'm blogging and thinking about possibly going out to the garage for a cigar. Jury's still out on that verdict, but all in all, it has been a very relaxing day off.

A little "Me" time!

Earlier, Melissa granted me a little bit of "Me" time. I don't really use it much, but today I decided to do so. I used my time to reorganize my comic book collection. I've been reading quite a few of them recently, and they're not exactly easy to get to, so when I'm done reading, I've been putting them in a pile, waiting to go back into the boxes.

While at work the other day, I grabbed some empty shipping boxes that were from the Pop-Tart 16 packs. These boxes are the perfect size for comic books. They're not too big, so moving them around is a lot easier than moving the long boxes traditionally used for comic book storage. But finally I have them all sorted out and alphabetized by title! (I do have a little bit of OCD, and yes, I am a geek!) My collection now fits comfortably into four Pop-Tart boxes, and even has a bit of room to grow before I need to get another box.

The Zoo

I would have posted this yesterday, but I was far too tired. Melissa and I took Tommy to the Henry Vilas Zoo yesterday. Melissa's father had told them that he would pick them up sometime before noon and take them to the zoo, which would give me time to get a good day's sleep. When 12:00 rolled around, we still hadn't heard anything from him. Melissa was upset, feeling that she had been stood up. So I decided to fore go the nap and take them to the zoo myself, seeing as how Tommy was so excited to go.

We went and had a good time! Tommy got to see his favorite exhibit, the seals, but the were napping in the water and not very exciting to watch. He also got to see the tiger! The tiger was doing a constant pace, pacing pridefully next to the glass. Tommy stood on the ledge right next to the glass and exclaimed, "Wwwhhooww!" every time the tiger walked past. At the tigers shoulder, it was taller than Tommy by a good four inches, and Tommy is not used to kitties, especially kitties that are bigger than him, so he was definitely in awe! We also got to see the giraffe, grizzley bear, black bear, bird exhibit and the rhinos.

Tommy heard the whistle of the zoo's train ride, and began saying, "Choo! Choo!" over and over again, so we had to go on the train ride. The first time that Tommy took the train, he was very scared, but now he was excited and pumped up through the whole ride! After the train ride, he played on the play equipment for a while, going down slides and in general just running crazy like an asylum's patient. He had a great time! When it was time to go, we walked past the penguins on our way out. He got a kick out of them!

Tired little man made it home without falling asleep, though for the last couple of miles, Melissa had to talk to him and shake his feet. It wouldn't be so bad if he falls asleep in the car, except that if he falls asleep in the car, even for two minutes, he thinks that it is his nap for the day and refuses to sleep until bedtime at 9:00. Luckily he stayed awake until we got home and got a good nap in his crib after getting home.

Back to Melissa's dad. We saw him later that evening at Topp's Hideaway when we went for karaoke. It was then that he told us he had been playing poker with his friends the night before, and ended up staying awake until 7:00 am, and he missed his alarm. Whether that's true or not, what he really missed was a good time with his grandson.

R.I.P. Big Joe.

Rough night at work last night. We had a lot to get done, and we were down a very important team member. Big Joe. Big Joe died. Big Joe was strong, a hard worker and quite a reliable asset to the company. Big Joe was our pallet stacker, and he will be missed.

For the past couple of weeks, we have noticed that Big Joe has been smelling slightly of burnt rubber on the big heavy loads. However, last night, we were noticing the smell more frequently and even on the small loads the smell was there.

Finally, he had had enough. When I was using Big Joe to put a pallet of water on top of the steel bin, I noticed that smoke was billowing from the machine! With the water all the way up in the air, I had to continue the lift and get the water put away, for I knew that this would be the last lift he would perform for the evening. To be on the safe side, James came over with the fire extinguisher. Good thing was, he didn't have to use the extinguisher, but we quickly moved Big Joe to his parked position and performed a lock-out/tag-out on him.

With Big Joe dead and gone, we did struggle for the rest of the evening to work around all the items that we needed to put up in the steel but couldn't. Hopefully, management will be able to get Joe either fixed or repaired quite soon, because without him, the backroom just can't run smoothly.

Just a small rant.

I am starting to get sick of the way things are going at work. We have this new back room program going on in which all freight that gets worked throughout the night needs to be binned by the end of the shift. The only problem is that there is only two of us in the back room doing this. And that's on a good night! The two of us have to do picks at the start of the night, which usually takes us about 2-3 hours into the shift. Then as people get done with their freight, they bring back the overstock. They start out bringing it back on carts, a little bit at a time as they get done with it. When they finish the department though, most of the time they leave the rest of the overstock on the floor, and then it all comes back later on through out the night.

What boggles my mind is that management knows that there are 6-14 people working freight on the floor, yet they think that only 2 can process the overstock and get it binned in a backroom known for it's cramped quarters and clutter everywhere. If that's not enough, we are expected to clean up after previous shifts! Merchandise left lying around by others, defective merchandise that needs to be taken to claims, not to mention rearranging previously binned product to make room for the new product to be binned. It is simply ridiculous. Daily, Ben and I work our tails to the bone and walk away from the shift with our back room looking like nothing was done.

I think that we need at least one, preferably two additional people in the backroom to do all of this processing, or at least when an associate is done with their department, THEY should be the ones to bin their own overstock. That would free us up to do all the other backroom processing that needs to go on, arranging of pallets in the upper steel, purging and auditing of bins, processing exceptions and the like. Sorry about the rant, but I felt that I needed to get that off of my chest.

A Day at Great Grandma's

Today we went to my Grandmother's house so that Tommy could see his Great Grandma. We all gathered out there for my Dad's birthday dinner, which was spaghetti and meatballs. Tommy ate like a horse. He especially liked desert, which was dirt cake. Dirt cake is a combination of pudding, whipped cream and ground Oreos all mixed together to look like dirt. Grandma even throws some gummy worms in there for effect. It's really good.

After dinner, Tommy showed everyone his collection of Hot Wheels. Keep in mind that all Hot Wheels must be lined up at all time. I think that he has a small case of OCD when it comes to the cars. Unfortunately, I now have to head off to work after having a huge dinner from Grandma, who I swear uses sleeping pills and salt for seasoning. It's always good food, but leaves everyone longing for a soft pillow!

Setting up a new blog

The other day I was sitting out on the porch reading a comic book. In the back of my mind though I must have been thinking about my newest hobby, blogging. Part of my mind thought that it wouldn't be too difficult to set up a new blog that chronicles the comic books that I read. I now know how to blog and I have a digital camera, lets combine two of my hobbies! Yay!

Here is a link to my new blog called Papa D's Comic Books. I hope that you enjoy it!

Lazy Dayz

Last night at work we had a picnic style lunch. We won a safety competition for our division and the company rewarded us with a cookout lunch. We had burgers, brats, chicken and hot dogs. I handled the cooking for the overnight crew, and no one complained, so I think I did a good job. I enjoyed my meal, maybe a little too much, because after eating the big meal I felt very lethargic at work. Needless to say, I don't think we accomplished what we could.

Came home and went straight to bed knowing that we were going to have lunch today with my Mom for her birthday. It too was quite good. We went to Glass Nickel Pizza Co. for lunch and had pizza. Very good. The visit was nice too.

After lunch, I was still tired after not having a whole heck of a lot of sleep in the morning, so I took another nap. Melissa woke me up in time to make dinner for Tommy before his bed time. I know, I know, lots of sleeping going on! But that's good. We haven't had a lazy day like this in a long time.

After putting Tommy down to bed, we went outside to the backyard where Mom had started her birthday fire. She had the radio playing WOLX (oldies). It was very relaxing sitting there with a cigar and a beer chatting about whatever and just being in the moment. I think that everyone needs time like that in their lives.

Looking forward to going to Prison

Not something that you hear uttered everyday, but it's true. I'm looking forward to Sunday August 30th when I'm going to prison. It's easy for me to jest about this topic, because I then get to leave about two hours later. My band JoyousNoiz is playing a worship service at Fox Lake Federal Correctional Institutution on the 30th at 2:00 in the afternoon. We will then be going up to the Redgranite Federal Correctional Facility for a worship service at 6:30 pm.

JoyousNoiz is a band that was founded by Geno, our guitar player, who at several points throughout his life has been incarcerated at various penetentiaries. He has begun to follow the straight and narrow after being held this last time. He has finally found Jesus, and a purpose to his life.

Gifted with an incredible talent for playing music and songwriting, Geno is now using his talent to minister the word of God to those who he had previously been locked up with. He wants his former inmates to know that true with true faith in the love of the Lord can change your life, and that walking with Jesus can truely set you free, even if you are behind bars.

Geno's story is inspiring and he is taking the steps every day to continue his walk with Jesus. This is why we in JoyousNoiz are looking forward to going to prison on the 30th. We hope and pray that our presence and our message of faith in Jesus Christ will reach the hungry ears of someone who truely needs to feel God's endless love in their life.

Tommy heating things up!

This afternoon Tommy was being a complete pest, climbing to the top of the back of the couch, depositing toys into the parrot's cage and poking the poor bird with various objects. It's simply a miracle that this ornery bird hasn't snapped and bit him yet, he bites everyone else who even goes near him but just lets Tommy get away with whatever. Anyway, I decided to take Tommy for a walk to work off some energy so that he would be ready to take a nap.

Normally our walk just goes around the block that we live on and Tommy looks at all the cars as they go past and tells me what color they are, however today, we started off trying to do two blocks. When we got to the corner a couple of blocks away, we saw that the doors down at the fire department were wide open. I asked Tommy if he wanted to go take a look at the fire engines. He then squealed with delight and started jumping around like an idiot, so we walked on down to the fire department.

When we go there, Tommy was enthralled by the huge fire trucks. He starred at them in awe. As he was looking wide-eyed at the red trucks, a fire fighter named David came out and said hi to Tommy and asked him if he wanted to take a closer look. David gave us a tour of the facility and let Tommy climb into any truck he wanted! He had a blast. After the tour and looking inside all the trucks, it was time to go. We thanked David for the tour and the whole way home, Tommy kept looking back toward the fire station saying, "Truck! Truck!"

Some of my comic books...

Home from work this morning and I've found that I am bored. Looking on the desk that I'm sitting at, I see the bag filled with old comic books of mine that I found at my Dad's house and I see my digital camera. Putting one item with the other, I've decided to take some pictures of my "lost" treasures and post them here!


I also found a box of "X-Men Series II" trading cards. I remember having so much fun looking at and sorting all of my comic book cards when I was a kid, however, I have absolutely no recollection of this series! So it was a pretty cool trip to find them and look through them. I took a couple pictures of them as well, including the only hologram I have in the set, Magneto.

Changes.

My mom has decided to switch computer desks with Melissa and I. So now we sit at a big wrap-around desk that is a corner unit with all sorts of desk space for the desktop computer that we have. She has taken over the sewing desk that we were using. Sure it does have less desk space, but she does have a laptop computer anyway. Also, if she decides that she would like to do some sewing, all she has to do is fold up her laptop and the table is ready to sew away. I personally think that it is a good idea.

Dad's Birthday

Yesterday was my Dad's 51st birthday! Luckily I actually had the day off. Melissa and I decided to take him and my grandma out for dinner wherever he wanted and he chose to go to Pizza Hut. So we waited for Tommy to wake up from his nap and called Dad when we were on our way. We met them at Pizza Hut around 5:45. It was a good time. Talking, reminiscing, playing with Tommy all in good company with good food.

During the course of the dinner conversation, my Dad mentioned his sofa, which he was trying to fix. The plastic leg cracked off the sofa when we had tried to move it a couple weeks ago. He had bought the right parts to get it rigged so that he could use it again, but it involved getting down on his knees to work on it while it was on the floor. Unfortunately, he has horrible knees and is unable to get down to work on it. I told him that after dinner we would go out to his house to fix it.

When we had got there, the repair took maybe three minutes, but I was glad that we had gone out there. Tommy had a blast. He's got a large area to run and he enjoys playing with my old toys that Dad had saved, in particular a blue diesel truck with trailer. Tommy loved it! He pushed it around for hours.

As I was looking for some more toys for Tommy to play with in the closet, I found a stack of comic books that I had thought were lost when I was younger. That was quite a pleasant surprise. I had gone out there before to get my box of comic books a while back, and upon looking through them, I realized that all my Captain America and Spider-Man books were missing. There they were. I'm pretty sure that my previous collection is all complete now. I know that there are some that I'm missing, but it is all together possible that I traded them with a friend and don't remember. It's always fun to take a little trip down memory lane!

Feelin' good.

A pleasant surprise at Walmart today. Melissa and I walked through the doors of the Supercenter in Monona. Instantly we were relieved by the cool wall of air-conditioned heaven that slammed us in the face like the cool side of a pillow. This air was also accompanied by the rich scent of the baking bread at the Subway just off to the right. It smelled delicious!

We resisted the urge to stop at Subway and continued up the escalator and did our grocery shopping. As we were finishing the grocery shopping, Melissa took Tommy off to the toy section to look for a new Hot Wheels car because he was so good. This allowed me the opportunity to run over to men's ware and grab a pack of tank top shirts.

While I was walking through the clothing department, I noticed a rack of clearanced denim shorts for $5 a pair! I knew that I was needing some for work, but I didn't think that I would be able to find any that would fit me. But I looked at the rack anyway. I found a bunch of 38's as well as 34's. "Great," I thought, "only stuff for thin guys." The biggest I could find was a 42" waist.

I used to be a 42", but I haven't been able to fit those since before Tommy was born. Since Tommy was born, I'd been buying 46" pants. Now granted I have lost some weight, but I didn't know about my waist size. I thought that I would try on the 42's anyway. I went into the fitting room and to my amazement, they fit perfectly, and with even a little bit of slack! Yay! I told myself that I would be willing to start buying new clothes again once I had dropped myself down to a 42" waist again. Granted, I'm still fat, but this is where I'm comfortable so for me, this is good news!

Being Nau-Ti.

Once again I had a Friday night off. Melissa and I decided to go out for a little bit. We didn't know what we were going to do or where. So we first decided to take advantage of being without child and went over to the church to do some taping. I've been having quite a few people asking me to post something of me singing on the internet, so we decided to get a jump on that.

Melissa video taped me singing a song that I wrote called "Drive (By My Side)." We had to do it a couple of times to make sure that the sound was balanced from where she was recording. Now the only thing that I need to worry about is how to transfer it to the computer and getting it uploaded to my Facebook. That could take a while, because I have no idea how to get it transferred to the computer.

Either way, after the third take, I think it was, we decided to head out and hang out at a bar somewhere to relax from the stresses of the week. We drove down the road hoping to go to the Jade Monkey, but when we got there, we couldn't find a parking spot. Seeing as how they were very busy we decided to move on and try some other place.

After a little discussion we thought it might be fun to go check out the Nau-Ti-Gal, a nice little seafood restaurant/bar out in Westport positioned right on the Yahara River. I used to run a karaoke show out there on Friday nights and it was a good time, so we thought we'd stop in and see how they've been.

When we got there, we saw that the karaoke show was still going. The drunken-yuppie dinner crowd was still there with a guy and his girl singing very poor sounding renditions of George Michael tunes as their hoity-toity friend looked on with faked enthusiasm. That's not what bothered me. I can deal with bad singers and drunks, that's the whole point of karaoke is to have fun. But what bothered me was the fact that these two were the ONLY people singing in the bar!

Melissa and I ordered a pitcher of Spotted Cow. When the bartender placed the pitcher on the bar, we also asked for an ashtray and were told that the bar didn't allow smoking since last August. Great, this visit isn't turning out so well and was about to get even worse. When we turned around to find a seat and a song book, we saw my old boss, Hoffy walk in. He was one that I did not want to see. He had come in to fix a problem with the equipment that his DJ wasn't smart enough to fix (by the way, all he had to do was plug in the video).

Hoffy then decided to sit and chat with Melissa and I. It was pretty tough to fake pleasantries, but we got through it and even managed to each pick a song out of the song book. We handed in our song slips and waited for the Wham? duet to sing their next two songs and then we got to sing. However when I got up to sing my song, the DJ hit play and then left to go to the bathroom without even making sure the microphone was set to the right level. Quite professional. Luckily I still knew how to operate the equipment and reached over the sound board and turned the mic down.

Since our pitcher wasn't done, we decided to stick around and do a couple more songs, when a regular from one of my old shows came out. For the life of me I can't remember his name and he never mentioned it during our conversation, which was very much one way. Not that I didn't want to talk to him, he just wouldn't shut up to let me talk. But that's alright.

It seems that he has moved to Chicago to be with his girlfriend and is back up in town for the weekend. It also sounds like in September he and his girlfriend will be moving to Florida, and he was so happy to see me at the Nau-Ti-Gal last night because it brought back memories and somehow gave him closure on moving away from the midwest, making him so much more at ease about moving from his comfort zone and leaving everything behind. I'm glad that I could be of help.

I do have to say that I kinda feel the same way as my faschnickered pal from the Nau-Ti-Gal. Last night I got to get a glimpse of where I would be if I hadn't left the karaoke company. To be honest, I do miss the bar and the staff at the Nau-Ti-Gal, they've always been good to me. But I don't miss the drama of my former boss and a lot of the clientelle, I'm much happier with the path I have chosen to take.

Date-night at Topp's!

Last night Melissa and I went out to Topp's Hideaway in Windsor. A good friend of mine hosts a karaoke show there every Wednesday and we try to get out there when we can. It wasn't quite as busy as it normally is but there was a good laid back crowd.

I've been having a lot of people asking me to post some video of myself singing, which wouldn't be a problem if I had a camcorder. But, I don't. However, I was able to borrow one from my friend Paula. So we took the camcorder with us to Topp's with us hoping to get some video of me singing that I could post. Melissa filmed me singing "Walking In Memphis," but there wasn't enough light in the bar to be able to see what the video is of. I think the audio came out alright, but I'm not 100% sure. Now comes the task of importing it to the computer (which I don't know how to do.) It has a USB interface, but it is a DV Tape based camcorder, we'll have to see what happens.

After shooting the video, we stuck around until the end of the evening. Melissa sang a few songs including "Independance Day" and "Torn." I also tried a couple that I'm not used to doing. I did an ok job on "Stacy's Mom," but when I tried "Maria, Maria," by Santana, I kinda sucked rocks. Relief to me that I think most people in the bar were too drunk to care, or maybe drunk enough to think that it was actually pretty good.

Got the chance to hang out with some old friends that we hadn't seen in a while. Sadly some of the people who are usually there were not (we missed you Mal) or left early due to having to work early (we missed you too, Sammy). But all in all, we had a very relaxing evening.