Email Forwarding

I am sure that there are many of you out there on the interwebs that know of someone who is afraid of the "magic machine" aka the computer. They haven't, and don't plan to, catch up with the times. Ever.

For me? Well, I have several of those in my life, but my poor dad is the basis for this blog post. He is not like a lot of other magic machine phobes out there - he is totally cool with buying stuff online with his credit card, and entering in somewhat personal information when necessary...He just makes me do it.

I would say that 10 of my hours a week are spent "using that thing" to look stuff up - old cars - tools - car parts - his account balance - the weather report (10 day weather reports are his favorite). I have set up emails and accounts for him and just use passwords I am familiar with because I am the only one who checks them.

To lessen my burden I bought my parents a desktop a year and a half ago for their anniversary. Normally wouldn't have splurged to get them a machine that was nicer than the one I had - hell we didn't even have a home pc at the time, but I thought it was well worth them trying to hack running their own "online errands" as I like to call them now. The family elected my 18yr old niece to school them on the interwebs in her free time. I assume a lot of the lessons fell to the wayside and the only thing either of my parents retained from those lessons was this: www.Facebook.com -> log in -> semi navigate ->?the end?

*insert a mental image of me hitting my head against the wall here*

Now that my dad is becoming more active in communicating with his old war buddies my job has gotten increasingly more difficult. The influx of howdy do emails is astounding. When I set his email account up way back when I had it forwarded to my personal email account. Because? In the beginning he may have gotten an email a month, nothing that warranted a daily log in on my part. I would print it off and he could read it and toss it in the trash or whatever. He gets tons now, and I religiously print the long winded things unless they are old dirty man joke fwds...those typically get trashed. creepers.

Dad has seen me log into his gmail account, he knows what the format looks like. He knows (I think) that my gmail account looks shockingly similar.

For some ungodly reason dad does not understand how email forwarding works. He constantly comes into my office and looks over my shoulder and asks "Do I have any emails?" I usually reply "Nope not today dad" and yet he still stares at the screen, and I can only assume he wants to watch me log out of my email and immediately into his to show him that no he does not have a new email. Alas - thanks to gmail and email forwarding those are timely and unnecessary steps so I don't do them. I just go about my work. Then as he continues to stand there he usually will start to read all of my available subject lines (maybe he doesn't hear me? trust me? who knows).

Sometimes I can hear him read off my subject lines. And now that I am 6 months pregnant boy does he get a mouth full sometimes! As he reads off my whattoexpect.com weekly emails

"Breastfeeding vs. Bottlefeeding... Oh..." - yea dad, you wanna read that? I could use your advice! hahahahah Silly dad.

Some other good subject lines I know he has read: You and Your Hormones . Swelling and Edema. Hemorrhoid Relief (personal fave) lol.

He really should just trust me shouldn't he?

Proud of my Baby's Daddy

Ya ya so the title suggests I am on the ghetto side. But really I am super freakin' impressed and proud of Mr. Jones. He always said that he would quit being foolish with his weight and health when we got pregnant. He wanted to be the healthiest dad possible for a few reasons, but mainly to set a good example for our kiddo, and to have the energy to keep up with the little dear.

We found out in May that we did in fact have a bun in the oven, and boom the race was on. I didn't know how serious he was, or what his goal weight would be. But he was damn determined to lose what he could.

He went from 285 to 216. UhMAZing. Those size 44 waist pants? Try a 34 now. He feels great, he looks great, and couldn't be happier.

I was going to make something short and sweet about this to post on my facebook page. Like a "my husband rocks because..." type post. I got to reading around the junked up mess that is my news feed and saw that something like that would not do him justice. I think that the people who constantly post how awesome their husbands/ boyfriends/ etc are... is slightly comical. Do you need the constant affirmation that your man is awesome because he put the toilet seat lid down? He brought you a cookie/ fed you dinner/ did your dishes/ gave up his man card and went shopping with you? I guess I should be happy -er for how "blessed" everyone is (I see that word about 10,000 times a day on the news feed , oh and this one "I love my life" over and over and over. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty happy with my circle of peeps, but good god I don't have to inform 500+ people all damn day about how much better my life is than theirs. Maybe a facebook hiatus is in my near future. Or a spree to hide people. Hmmm...

Got side tracked sorry - aside from all that I am blessed this and that bullshit. All I have to say is this - Dude, my man lost like a whole person in weight just so he could be the best daddy he could be to help me and the little one out (and she isn't even here yet). And yours brought you a pumpkin to carve? ha. ha. ha. If Brett has already put in this much effort I can't imagine what an awesome dad he is going to be.

Trying to be Diplomatic - But it hurts!!!

As you can tell from an earlier post. I am now the director of PGI. So far so good I believe. We are all still enjoying ourselves, and getting a few investigations down for the books. I want my main objective as director to be to motivate and facilitate a lot of the ideas we have all been pushing for for years. We are a close knit crew, and we all want the same things so it is a breeze working with everyone.

But- there is something else I get to do. I am the contact for the southeast that fans from all over the country who watch Ghost Lab can find via the Everyday Paranormal website. Which is fine and cool. I appreciate the support for their show - and it is neat that they want to reach out to me.

BUT. Of course there is a but right? I can't for the life of me figure out why 99.9% of the emails that come in arrive in my inbox in such sad shape. Sad shape? Yes, sad shape.

Maybe it is just because I am used to emailing people for work related things, but even with new acquaintances I always ALWAYS proofread my emails before clicking the send button. It is polite and courteous to send a nicely constructed note to someone - especially if you have never met them before.

Alas, some of the emails that come into my inbox are so jumbled up and incoherent that I don't even know what they are asking of me half the time. The spelling and grammatical errors could make Agadore Spartacus cringe (who is my 8 lb Maltese if anyone didn't know). And if they are accompanied by an attachment, I know without a doubt that when my server finally finishes downloading the 2,000,000,000 KB size image that I could use for a roadside billboard that it will almost always be of dust orbs. Almost always. I then get to explain (as scientifically as possible) that they have snapped a shot of dust, water droplets, or some other airborne particle. And then I get to explain that it might not be a dead woman in a white dress after all.

But then what? Then I am the bitch that told them their ghost photo wasn't real. And that part sucks, but I guess it is in the job description. I hate to be that bad guy and I really don't want to complain - if anything emails like these motivate me to educate others about our field. Unfortunately it looks like we might have our hands full.

Fun facts for Adeline

The other day Mr. Jones and I were riding around in his old Ford truck listening to Alan Jackson's Home which reminded me of our first place. We had turned one of dad's barn/garages into our first home. Call that weird, call that white trash (don't worry my MIL did too), but it was awesome - and we made it work. Now we have a REAL house for the baby. But I think she will get a kick out of the fact that her mommy and daddy's first house was a barn.

So I was trying to think of a list of other weird, wacky, and funny things she might like to know at some point.

-Maybe when she get's older and asks how we met, or how the first dates went I can tell her that after I met daddy - and attempted for 2 months to be asked out on a date I was about to give up because it was becoming obvious that he was in fact...gay. He dressed nicely, he talked oddly, he worked in a tanning salon. And that is all I have to say about that!

-We moved into "the barn" together after dating for only 2 months. Because daddy got kicked out and mommy didn't want to see him go back to Canada.

-We got engaged the night that we went to see Horton Hears a Who - and then went to Ihop for whocakes and other Seuss inspired goodies. Thus the reason her first room is Dr. Seuss themed.

-We thought grandpa Jones was going to have a heart attack in the restaurant when we told him we were having a baby. We got to tell great grandma that we were having her first great grandbaby on her 90th birthday.

-For the first few months of pregnancy, we (along with most of the family) swore that we were having a boy. Boy were we wrong.

Of course there are tons of other tid bits she will learn about us but for now that list will do.