The Blog of Bert Jones

First person to tell me where and from who you can hear that line wins a…a…something from me!

Over a month since I posted anything…I am such a slacker.

Well, not really, just been really busy.

I started Col­lege. I am going for my bachelor’s degree in graphic design. I am in my second course of the year. Not easy stuff! I am learning about the neo-classic and romantic age of art his­tory. Then onto realism and impres­sionism! I even have to do a studio piece! EEK!

Let’s see, what else has been going on…

I have scaled back how much I do for the PRC board. Just too much drama and crap to work with, that I just don’t care any­more. As soon as I can, I want to move my family out, even if it is to a tra­di­tional house.

Riley is growing so fast! He says Ma-ma and Da-da really well and all the time. It is so cute! He still loves to dance!

Well, I really can’t think of any­thing else at the moment. I a ust brain dead.

In my iPod right now:

• Downtown…Niki Harris (that chick in the commercial)
• Wel­come to the 60s…Hairspray (Broadway orig­inal cast)
• How does it feel…Dolly Parton
• My Love…Justine Tim­ber­lake (I know…I know…)

Well, it has been quite awhile since I wrote last. And, I guess, a lot has hap­pened that has kept me busy.

Let’s start youngest to oldest.

Riley is get­ting pretty big. He can stand him­self up on things. He crawls VERY fast. The roomba is his friend. He will sneak over there and turn it on when­ever he can.

He is also get­ting in a lot of his teeth. He also gives this great big cheesy grin. Matter of fact, it is the same cheesy grin that Dominic and Mikayla had when they were younger. The one where they scrunch up their whole face and all you see is a big toothy grin. I love it. I could stare at that face the rest of my life and be content.

He also loves the com­puter even more now. He will play pogo with grandma or Amy, or watch me play WoW.

He still takes his naps with me in the after­noon when Amy sneaks him in bed with me. I never know he is there until he wakes me up. If Amy gets him before I wake up, then they come in around 2:30 and wake me up. There is nothing better than having your baby boy sit­ting next to you on the bed, gently pat­ting your back to wake you up and going “da da da da”

Mikayla is just like her mother. All atti­tude. But cute atti­tude. And she is still my baby girl and still a little princess.

She is still in dance. Unfor­tu­nately we don’t know for how long she will be able to stay in dance. She is cur­rently in Pre-Comp. But after that she would go into a com­pe­ti­tion line. Trouble is, it is EXPENSIVE! So far this year I think comp line has paid about $400 in dues, and that is just since Sep­tember! They still have more to go!

Dominic is doing pretty well in school. He still will have his moments where he likes to screw around and not pay atten­tion, but we are working on those. He and I have nightly talks. Some­times we talk about what­ever he wants to talk about and some­times we talk about what I want to talk about and some­times it is to talk about serious mat­ters (like behaving).

Courtney is doing great in school. Smart as ever, still in the Tal­ented and Gifted Pro­gram at school. She does have this knack for turning in home­work late. So we are working on that one.

My mom is doing pretty well. She is known around here is the beddie-time grandma. It is her job to put Riley to sleep at night. I think the record is 2 sec­onds. She lit­er­ally picked him up, he rolled over to look at her and out he went. He seems to sleep better at night if grams puts him to bed. Some­times though she has to wear him out by playing pogo with him or watch some TV. It is there spe­cial bonding time together.

Amy is busy as ever. It is Girl Scout cookie season and being the Ser­vice Unit Cookie Coör­di­nator for the entire Cen­ten­nial Ser­vice Unit (60 troops this year). It is her job to make sure everyone gets their troops order in on time, train the “cookie moms”, and orga­nize all the paper­work. I helped her out this year by putting together a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion for her to use, so she could make sure that all the trainees (in three dif­ferent training ses­sions) got the same information.

I am doing so-so. Working third shift does take its toll. I am always tired. I feel like I never get any­thing accom­plished at home. I still am on the Board at our coöper­a­tive. And still the Communications/Marketing Com­mittee Chair­person and Com­mittee Rela­tions Advisor. Not easy work, I am con­stantly busy.

I have been going back and forth with the deci­sion if I want to run to be on the board again this Feb­ruary, or not. And if I want to stay involved in my com­mittee or not.

• The pro is that I get a say in what hap­pens where I live, I get to be a part of some­thing grand (in its begin­nings too!).
• The con is that it takes up so much of my time, some of my neigh­bor­hood friend­ships have dete­ri­o­rated, I get frus­trated with the in fighting and drama.

So I try to figure out if it is really worth it. I know that there is no one else who could do the jobs I do. No one is as orga­nized as a sec­re­tary as I am. No one has the skills (let alone the design pro­grams) to do the cre­ative work that I do to try and make this park more professional.

It is also hard being in the ‘public eye’, since I am such a pri­vate person.

I hate not having free time and being lazy, like I used to be. Every waking moment is filled with things to do.

But any­ways. Enough of that.

Not sure what else I should write. I want to write more, but finding the time is exhausting. I have so many things I want to do. Lose weight, eat right, write more, home projects, office projects. The list goes on and on and on.

In my iPod:

• Aquarius — 25^th Annvier­sary Edition
• Take Me Out - Franz Ferdidnand
• Vaca­tion — Connie Francis
• Eldest — Audio­book (Eragon Book 2)
• Hurt — Christina Aquilera

Okay, so I have my 15 min­utes of fame coming up this weekend.

As most of you know, I am vol­un­teering my time on the Board of Direc­tors and as the Communications/Marketing Chair­person for the Com­mu­nity that I live in.

Our lender is hosting a radio pro­gram this Sunday from 3–4 pm on KFAI raido wave project and they have chosen to inter­view me for a 10 minute seg­ment about Man­u­fac­tured Housing Coop­er­a­tives and how it has change dour neigh­bor­hood and my per­sonal experience.

I am VERY ner­vous about being on the radio LIVE! So keep me in your thoughts.

Also, I will be fea­tured in an article (in the ARTS sec­tion) of the Wall Street Journal regarding Male Scrap­bookers in such a female-dominated arena.

My consultant’s hus­band was con­tacted by the reporter and she was looking for an un-vested per­spec­tive, so they con­tacted me. I had two-phone calls and numerous emails back and forth with the reporter and I even shipped off two of my albums to them to do a photo-shoot of! (Yes, I know, I am ner­vous that they are not in my hands…)

So I am excited about all this and just wanted to share it with you all.

Also, Riley is on the verge of CRAWLING!!!! He walks pretty good if you hold his hands and he LOVES to jump in his jumper! He really, really wants to crawl, but he doesn’t realize he has to move his hands for­ward too! So he ends up doing a sort of ‘belly-flop’ instead of moving anywhere.

I will post photos soon!

For those of you who know me, you should now that part of the song from Space Ghost

So, it has been awhile since I last wrote. And actu­ally I didn’t write any­thing, just posted some videos.

I am not that crazy about my job. I don’t know if it is the 3^rd shift, the lack of work, or both.

1. I am tired all the time.
2. There is barely any work at work. So it is hard to stay awake.
3. I have so much going on in my life.

Basi­cally we had 3 people out of 5 resign from the Coöper­a­tive Board I am on. Which means I am the only res­i­dent board member left. So everyone comes to me with their stuff.

Not only am I the Sec­re­tary, Communciations/Marketing Chair­person, Com­mittee Rela­tions Advisor; but now I am also the interim Pres­i­dent (of sorts) to keep day-to-day oper­a­tions going and keep in touch with management.

We also are plan­ning an open house for the end of the month! A lot of work!

So much to do, and I have such little time.

I wish I could just quit my job, but I need to money. I do need to find some­thing during the day, and full time. That may make it easier.

Amy may be starting her own cake busi­nesses. That would be very cool!

Okay, back to work… sort of.

That is from a Made­laine Pay­roux song that I have…

I haven’t had a chance to sit down and post, but I am installing Win­dows XP on a com­puter, so I have some time (19 min­utes to be exact).

It has been crazy around here. We received our tax refunds, so we have been shopping.

We pur­chased the baby items that we still need. I pur­chased a bigger flat screen mon­itor for my design work and a new dig­ital camera that is Pro­fes­sional grade. It has detach­able lenses, a sep­a­rate flash and can take pic­tures in RAW format.

Most con­sumers have never heard of a RAW format. Well, let me tell you it is nice. It lit­er­ally holds all the infor­ma­tion that the camera has about that pic­ture. From the aper­ture, to the ISO set­ting used, to the Expo­sure, every­thing. And it keeps the Red, Green and Blue chan­nels (what make up a color photo) sep­a­rate, so that in editing the photo, I am able to do a lot more.

Basi­cally, when I open one of these for­mats in my pho­to­shop, this little menu comes up that lets me change the expo­sure, aper­ture, etc. And save those changes, without actu­ally changing the file. Then I can open it up with those changes and save it as some­thing else, yet still keep the orig­inal file untouched.

Very handy for all the stuff I do. See the pic­ture above, I even feel more artisitc in my pho­tographing now!

We also pur­chased an Air­port Express. It is a little router, that con­nects to my wire­less internet and allows me to play music over the net­work to my sur­round sound, and it lets me hook up a printer to it so that I can use the printer without it having to be con­nected to a computer.

Amy received a laptop, so that she can be more mobile with her vol­un­teering. It really helps now that she is on a strict bedrest.

Oh, I should men­tion that…

Well, it turns out that Riley was breech last week, so we needed him to turn. Well he did, but he kept going and now he is sideways.

On top of that, since he is side­ways his is pushing her pelvic bones apart, and that is where she was having prob­lems before, due to her fall when she was preg­nant with Courtney. She wasn’t able to barely walk, and now he is putting even more pres­sure on it, she says it feels like she is being ripped in two.

So the doc­tors said she MUST stay in bed or sit in a reclined posi­tion. So she has to stay that way for two weeks and hope that he turns the cor­rect way, or else they will schedule her for a cesarean.

I am now offi­cially done vol­un­teering as the Sec­re­tary for the Board of Direc­tors for my Com­mu­nity. I am now just the Communications/Marketing Chair­person. So I still have a lot of projects to do (Hand­books, poli­cies, forms, web­site, flyers, etc.) but it is more fun and more relaxed than being the sec­re­tary. I HAD to have the min­utes done before the next meeting. Most of the items I do now, just have a due date of SOON.

I am also still working with Best Buy. But not as much. I do have to go in their offices to do some work for a few days, I think next week. So I don’t know how we are get­ting the kids to school.

Not much else is going on. We are just taking it easy until Riley is born. I am a little ner­vous. It has been so long since we had Mikayla (5 years!)

Til next time,

Big Daddy

Okay, if you can’t tell, that is my ver­sion of the “Where have all the Cowboy’s Gone” by that one chick singer.

So, update!

The board meeting went pretty okay on Sunday. Some people that I was really pissed at, actu­ally held some decorum, and smoothed out the wrin­kles that I had with them.

So we are okay now. There are still some things I am not too happy about, but I am happy enough that I don’t have to be Sec­re­tary any­more. I can con­cen­trate on the projects that I have to do for the community.

Oh, our refund money is here!!!!! I am going SHOPPING!…No wait, BUYING!!!

Well, talk about living in the ‘Days of Our Lives’. I swear to god, I so am in Salem right now. Where the hell is Mar­lena? I need a shrink right now.

I am not going to bore you with details. But my park is ‘resident-owned’ and I was on the interim board as the sec­re­tary. We just had our offi­cial elec­tions, and OH THE DRAMA! THE HORROR!

I am so frus­trated right now. So much crap and I just can’t stand it anymore.

So how the hell is your week? Wanna trade? Thank god I have World of War­craft that I can just veg out in and not worry about it. Just run here, do this quest, kill this mon­ster, and then log out.

I filed our taxes, and as soon as the money is here, my honky-ass is GOING SHOPPING! I need the release! And some new gizmos.

Anways. I think I may try and buy me some Lam­br­usco wine. My friend Melinda tells me I will like it, so I think I will buy some and try and feel good. Not drunk, mind you! Just a little happy. I don’t drink. So this would be the first drop of alcohol since guys weekend in 2004.

Drinking alcohol just doesn’t appeal to me, but I could see myself having a glass of wine with dinner or at night. Just one. I am not a lush. (UPDATE: I never did go get any wine or any­thing. I played World of War­craft so late, that the liquor store was closed!)

Cur­rently in my Playlist:

• Shakira
• Dolly
• Sheryl Crow (again)
• Allison Krauss