Our Little Ballerina

Last night I took Gracie to her next to last ballet class of the year. I think she is really going to miss going. The classes are only 30 minutes long, but ballet is right up her alley. In case some of you readers aren't aware, Grace is a bit of a princess. That said, she lives to recreate moments like dancing at the ball with Prince Charming from Cinderella or gliding across the waters of Barbie's Swan Lake. This past weekend we had to take her in to get her pictures taken wearing her outfit that they will be in during their recital in a couple of weeks. She looks completely beautiful in her red, orange and purple.

Ballet is the kind of activity I can see Gracie doing for awhile. One thing we have noticed is that she is very good at ballet compared to other girls her age. I think part of that is because she practices on her own. She loves to dance and sing. I hope she keeps with this activity for a long time because it makes me proud to see her out there spinning and twirling around, her arms out to her sides or over her head. She flits around the dance floor at practice like a little butterfly. I love watching her. I think I will be disappointed when class is all done because she was made to dance.

Her recital is coming up on June 7th (sorry Danielle, I'm going to have to miss your graduation party). I'm really looking forward to seeing her dance put all together. I've been staying out of the studio when I drop her off, part out of the dance teachers request, part because I want to be surprised when I see her. I will try to take my camera and fild a video so I can post it here for everyone to see. Hopefully I can capture it all.

I am so grateful that I get to spend so much time with my kids, watching them be active, watching them grow up. I feel bad for my parents who split time with us because of their separation, knowing that even the few days that they missed with us would be forever lost. I hate going even one day without seeing my kids. In fact, I am anxious to get home every day after work just so I can get a running hug and kiss from Gracie. There is nothing more wonderful in life than the complete and uncompromising love of a small child. I know my friend Howard Tanner can support this statement as he enjoys his first child after 39 years of wishing for, but never having one.

Anyway, I just thought I would share a few lines about Gracie and her dancing. I wish (and hope) each of you will have a chance to see her sometime. Maybe this weekend she can give a little show...

Corpse Submission 4

And the story continues...

To him this was a great accomplishment and while he normally used the women he dated and then moved on, this was different. There was a lot to gain from being around Amy. She was beautiful, but beyond that she had a charisma that made people take notice. She was the perfect accessory for Jonathon and while he didn’t consider her a trophy wife that was exactly what she was. She would do the one thing he wanted her to: she would make him look even better.

He also found that she had other things to offer. She was a motivated student and had plans of her own, wanting to go into physical therapy. She came from an affluent family herself, so she had an appreciation for money. She understood the importance of hard work, being well taught by her parents and that appealed to Jonathon. The most important trait however was as much a bane as it was a boon.

Amy was madly in love with Jonathon and this simply annoyed the hell out of him. On the other hand, this infatuation made her completely subservient to him. He knew better than to openly exploit this however. He knew he could make demands of her (like the time he made her cancel her vacation to the Bahamas with her parents in order for her go to his five year high school reunion with him) and while she whined and fussed about it, she always gave in to his demands.

She was also very accepting of Jonathon’s career. She knew that he was serious about making a good living and openly accepted it. This made it easy for Jonathon to have women on the side because he could use his job as an excuse whenever he needed to and Amy never questioned him.

The relationship with Amy worked out well and Jonathon found that he could certainly live with the arrangement. He lived sixty miles away from her so his independence was never really in jeopardy yet she was close enough to him that he could go down and see her when he felt like it.

Everything worked out well as Jonathon graduated and got his job as a design engineer. He worked while Amy went to school while she wished they could spend more time together, he insisted that their relationship could not get in the way of her education. She cried when he suggested they take some time off because he felt that with him moving back down to Detroit, that he would take up too much of his time.

This simply cemented Amy’s dedication to Jonathon. He made her a deal: he would visit her on weekends but during the week he would concentrate on his job and she would concentrate on school. “I am not a selfish person, Amy,” he remembered telling her, “I love you so much, but I could never come between you and your career. I know how much it means to you.”

With Amy out of the way, Jonathon could concentrate on work and not worry about having a boat anchor like Amy holding him back.

It wasn’t until two years later that Charles Gant, an executive in logistics hinted to Jonathon that every successful businessman had a wife. It made a person look more stable, less power hungry. Gant was a thirty year employee and told Jonathon in confidence that he understood what he was doing, but that he was losing his identity.

“Find yourself a good woman and marry her,” Gant had told him in the elevator one morning. “A woman at home, a few pictures of the wife and kids on your desk, a coffee mug with ‘I love Daddy’ on it makes people think you are working hard for something other than yourself. Right now you seem to be motivated by nothing more than power. You need to quit being so damned mechanical and start showing the big wigs that there is a person under all that intensity.”

That evening Jonathon drove to her apartment, took Amy to a nice Greek restaurant in downtown Detroit and proposed to her. He had been so intent on taking the advice from Gant that he didn’t even buy a ring. He gave her the excuse that he wanted her engagement ring to be perfect and that they would go out that weekend and pick one out.

“I’ve loved you since the day I met you Amy, and I realized today just how sad my life really is. I’ve allowed my job to dictate how we should live our lives and I know you’ve been thinking the same thing. I accept that you want an education, and you want a career, but I need you, and I need you to make room in your busy life for me.” He had rehearsed that speech a dozen times before he recited it to her.

Amy simply nodded and cried. When he asked her to marry him she burst into tears and threw her arms around him, repeating, “Yes, yes, yes,” over and over again until he had to peel her arms out from around his neck.

Since that day he had been annoyed by her constant prattle about the wedding. “What colors should we have? I’ve always wanted traditional colors but I really love a pale pink. Would you be upset if my bride’s maids wore pink dresses? I wouldn’t ask the guys to have any pink in their tuxes, although a pink rose corsage would look really pretty. What do you think Jonathon?”

In the end he just gave in to whatever she wanted. This was her wedding and frankly he didn’t really care, he just wanted to get it over with. He knew he couldn’t tell her that though, so that’s how he found himself pulling in to her apartment complex tonight. She wanted him to be there when a friend of her mother came over and talked to them about wedding cakes. So rather than go to the bar to catch the Wings’ game, he was going over to Amy’s.

Corpse Submission 3

Here is the next installment of my current story: Corpse.

At 7:00 pm Jonathon told the team to knock off for the night, that they could have the rest of the night off (it was not unlike Jonathon to make his team work until eleven or twelve, berating anyone who complained about the hours). “Make sure you guys are in here on time tomorrow, I want to go over the aerodynamics first thing tomorrow morning,” he reminded them as they left. It wasn’t necessary as everyone in the office knew that if anyone was going to be late in the morning, it would be Jonathon. First thing in the morning simply meant whenever Jonathon showed up, typically thirty minutes to an hour after everyone else had gotten their morning coffee and started with the days’ work.

While Jonathon refused to recognize them as so, his team was a very talented group. He drove them hard to meet deadlines, go beyond the norm to address issues and make every draft of an assignment as polished and professional as the final product. Jonathon was the driving force, refusing to accept anything less. He was a perfectionist and demanded it of his team. Once the man locked on to a project he made it his, and his team was responsible for getting it done the way he wanted it.

To a fault, Jonathon also refused to give up on anything. Many times designers were given a target and if they were able to hit the target, great. If not, they literally went “back to the drawing board” and started over. Jonathon was undaunted in belief that every problem could be overcome. He truly believed that time and effort could win out in the end, every time. It was this ideal that caused the most consternation for his team. Jonathon had no problem forcing extra hours, including weekends in order to figure out a problem facing the team. Failure to figure out a problem was not an option. You don’t give up, you don’t give in; you only give it more thought and figure it out. No exceptions.

It had been a short day at the office, not because there was nothing to do, but because Jonathon had promised Amy he would stop by this evening and spend some time with her. She was so demanding of him on the weekends that it infuriated him when she persisted on having him stop over at her place after work. He made note that he needed to have a talk with her about how things were going work once they got married. She needed to learn that he had to have his time and space. It wasn’t a whole lot for him to ask, or so he thought. There was nothing that frustrated him more than someone else dictating how he was going to spend his evening. She needed to understand that while he loved her, he had other things that he enjoyed doing and he wasn’t going to allow her to make demands that would keep him from doing them.

In actuality he didn’t have anything going on tonight. He was going to go to one of the local bars and watch the Red Wings game with his brother, but it had turned out that his brother couldn’t make it so it wasn’t a big deal. He wasn’t going to tell Amy that though. For all she knew he was still as pissed off now as he was on Sunday when she had insisted he swing by. He figured he could parlay this into something he wanted from her later on. Maybe he could use this to skip out on another boring meal with his future in-laws?

Amy would be considered a real catch for just about anyone but Jonathon. To him she simply served her purpose. She was beautiful, smart and independent, yet she was wholly infatuated with Jonathon. He had met her at a post game party when she was a freshman at the University of Michigan and he was a senior at GMI. He had never intended on starting a relationship with her. He had spent the night trying to get her to come back to his parent’s house with him and she had resisted. The farthest he got was having breakfast with her at 3:00am at a local greasy spoon before she gave him her phone number and made him promise to call her.

Normally he wouldn’t put that much of an effort into scoring with a girl, but Amy was different. She came across as the girl next door who was just starting to explore her adult life. That appealed to Jonathon’s sense of conquest and he decided then and there that he would have her.

It took six dates for Jonathon to finally attain his goal. She had given herself to him in the back seat of his Dad’s Cadillac and professed her love for him the same night. Jonathon had rolled his eyes as he was on top of her, thinking how sad it was that woman always had to relate love with sex. He didn’t feel any guilt telling her that he loved her too, knowing that this was just a game and he would do whatever it took to win the game.

Pictures of my Warmachine Models

I said that I would post a few pictures of my warmachine models. The only one I've got pictures of so far is a warjack called a juggernaut. He's in pretty rough shape. He isn't supposed to look like this but I modified him to make it look like her has went through hell. This particular model, including the time it took to modify, double prime, reconstruct his left hand, base him and paint him took about 20 hours. The pictures don't actually do him justice.

I would love to hear your comments.

Corpse Part 2

We continue with my story called Corpse. Comments are welcome...

Life was good for the twenty-five year old. He had a job that paid him six figures, a beautiful new condo in a great area outside the city and a gorgeous fiancé that was complete oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t the only woman who shared his affection. He truly believed that he was living the American dream and there wasn’t anyone who could stop him from taking it even further. He had worked his way to where he was and deserved every one of the accolades his position in professional and social life presented him.

Jonathon refused to accept that he was fast-tracked for success from the day he was born. His father owned a series of stamping plants in the eastern Michigan area and raised Jonathon and his brother Stephen in a palatial house in the upper-class suburb of Farmington Hills. Jonathon had been guaranteed a position in his father’s company, likely in purchasing or some mundane department but Jonathon had refused it. He had taken money for tuition (but that didn’t really count at least in Jonathon’s eyes) and went to college so he could began earning his fortune on his own.

Seeing his exit, Jonathon swerved across two lanes of traffic to get there. Ignoring the screech of brakes behind him, he turned off the highway onto the congested Detroit streets. Ten lights and fifteen minutes later he pulled into his marked parking spot in front of his building.

Stepping out of his car, he zipped up his brown leather jacket and smoothed down his pleated slacks. It had gotten chilly fast, realizing that just three weeks ago he had blown off two days in a row to play golf with at the country club with one of his associates. Jonathon hated winter, stating plainly that anything that forced him to slow down on the roads and put more clothes on “his ladies” was not for him.

The day went by pretty typically. There were plenty of meetings and phone calls. Jonathon had made a point of berating Alex, one of the project engineers, in front of the rest of the team. Alex was a guy much like Jonathon, young, smart and very ambitious. Jonathon also knew that Alex was willing to do anything to move up. So, whenever any little mistake was made, Jonathon would rip loose into Alex, making sure that everyone knew who was boss, particularly Alex. Jonathon wanted Alex on the defensive, fighting for his job at all times rather than fighting for a new, higher spot on the food chain.

Jonathon also made sure that he had someone to back him up if necessary. That’s why he had decided to start an affair with Candace while he was still a design engineer. Candace was a thirty-eight year old, average looking project engineer that worked on the team. Her husband had left her for a twenty-something looker, leaving her with nothing but bitterness. Jonathon had struck while the irons were still hot, moving in on Candace and making her feel as if he completely understood her anger (when in fact he didn’t blame the guy for dumping her and moving on to a young hottie).

When Jonathon had finally taken Candace to bed during a business trip out to New York, she had felt some kind of satisfaction that she too had found the affection of a young, good looking toy. Jonathon had quickly turned that, telling Candace that he was engaged and had made a mistake. Candace felt crushed. She needed him and promised that she wouldn’t tell anyone if he would continue to see her on occasion. He agreed, explaining to her that he would make her life hell at work if she ever told anyone. Sure, it was sexual harassment, but Jonathon knew that Candace needed him beyond the professional level, that when Jeremy had left her, Candace was broken, her ego crushed. Jonathon soothed that ego, made her feel wonderful.

Candace went through her days yearning for the day when she and Jonathon could be alone together again and he knew it. She would stay quiet and while Jonathon didn’t find her all that attractive, Candace was good in bed and she would serve him where Jonathon needed her: at work.

Jonathon knew that if it ever came down to a fight against Alex, or anyone for that matter, that Candace would back him unequivocally. Candace may not be the greatest engineer, but she had worked in the same department for fifteen years and had a good reputation for being a good worker and an honest employee. She would back Jonathon and anyone who listened to what she said would take her seriously.

Suspend the Summer Fuel Tax!!!

John McCain and Hillary Clinton are just brilliant! Why haven't we thought about this in the first place? All we need to do is suspend the gas tax for the summer months and the whole world would be a better place. Wow, that was easy...

Okay, this is really bugging me. I saw an ad on television last night cutting on Barack Obama because he thinks its a bad idea to suspend the gas tax for the heavy driving season. Hillary is cutting on him because he wants Americans to keep paying this overwhelming tax. The commercial touts eight billion dollars spent on the gas tax that we could be saving. What the commercial fails to do is look at the real math. Let me tell you people, the math doesn't lie.

Let's say that all of the sudden my beat up Honda quit getting the mileage it is currently giving me and I need to start dropping 10 gallons of gas into it's tank each week. The current federal tax you pay on a gallon of gas is about 18 cents. That means that on that 10 gallon fill up I'm going to save a whopping $1.80. Over the 12 week summer driving season that comes out to be about $22.00 that I save. Frankly I don't think that this is a significant enough amount to justify voting for one person over another for President.

I want to take this a bit further. Let's say that America as a nation saves that same $8 billion. Now, don't you think that money is currently earmarked for something? You think that we are going to just not pay for the stuff that money is supposed to going to? No, we will pay for it somehow, even if that means deficit spending, which puts our country further in debt. More likely however is the fact that there would be some other tax that would kick in that would pry that same $8 billion out of our pockets.

Meanwhile the oil companies are going to be clapping and cheering because this will do nothing but put more cash in their pockets. Without regulation, the oil companies could easily bump gas prices up to fill the void left by the immediate savings from suspending the tax. Besides that, the oil companies are going to make more because we are now traveling more under the false belief that we now can because gas is cheaper.

The fact of the matter is that politicians who don't punch the oil companies right in the mouth are likely guilty of sneaking their hand into Uncle Exxon's front pocket for a few coins of their own. Listen to the ads on TV people. Listen to what they are saying. Tax cuts come with consequences. Don't let the sweet voice of a politician lull you into thinking that they have your best interest in mind.

Okay, there. I've had my rant. As always, comments are welcome.

Book Attempt #2: Corpse Page 1

Okay, I failed my last attempt to write my story. The reason I didn't like it was that I really had a hard time getting into the storyline itself. This time I'm going to try continuing a story I've already started and really like. I'll post a bit of it on a daily basis for you to take a look at and give me your opinion. The story is called Corpse. I hope you like it.

PROLOGUE:

The body of Carol Hannity was found exactly one week after she had gone missing. There was no doubt when she was found that she was dead; her chest was a mush made so by countless stab wounds. Her staring eyes echoed the fear she had displayed in her last moments of life.

Like the two other victims before her, she was a single mom, living a quiet, yet stressful life in small town on the far outskirts of Chicago. The police found relatively few differences between this murder and that of Chloe Wilson and Audrey Babbit. Granted, all three were from different small burbs surrounding the city, but the rest was the same. They were taken from their small, unassuming homes in the middle of the night. All three had been divorced, left to raise there children on their own, during varying periods of time and all three were taken while their small children slept.

The deaths were violent: multiple stab wounds to the chest with a large knife. The first blade had been serrated, the other two smooth, but that was the only difference. It didn’t take long for the Chicago-land area to proclaim the presence of a serial killer who was stalking young single mothers.

The press was all over the matter and the police were trying, but getting nothing from their investigations. All they knew was that the killer had slaughtered three women in a span of six weeks and the constant fueling of the flames by the local media was making the pressure unbearable by the day. They needed a break, but without evidence there was absolutely nothing they could do but hope that the killer had made a mistake and given them the one thing they needed to find the trail.

It was November and it felt as if the oppression of winter had already set in. The city and its entire people within fifty miles found no solace even in their homes as the sounds of settling house, blowing wind or passing traffic set them on edge. It was going to be a long cold season, made so by the cloak of oppression brought on by the presence of the Windy City Ripper.

CHAPTER ONE:

I94 traffic was horrible, as it was every morning, as Jonathon G. Pitts drove his Chrysler Crossfire along his normal route into work. While it was a nuisance, it didn’t stop the young executive from gunning the engine and whipping in and out of the tightly packed cars. Countless times he flipped off the anonymous horn honker behind him as he pushed his way forward through the never-ending line of cars. He was immune to the glares he got as he quickly accelerated by his fellow Detroiters.

Like always, Jonathon was focused on one thing and no one else particularly mattered. He was what the white-collar world called a go getter and their blue-collar counter parts called an asshole. Part of that had to do with his upbringing and part from his perception that he was better than just about anyone. He owned the world and everyone else needed to pony up their rent or get off his planet.

Jonathon was an up-and-comer in the automotive industry. He had graduated from GMI/EMI (now Kettering University) and was a young hot shot in the engineering/design area as an intern for automotive industry during his collegiate years. It hadn’t taken long for Pitts to get a full-time offer following graduation.

He had bided his time, being cordial, making friends and learning as much as he could. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out who were the movers and shakers, allowing him to begin the slow, methodical process of ingratiating himself with the decision makers. By the time his third year was over, his relationship with the design manager was solid enough for Jonathon to begin his push for advancement.

An issue with a new product line led to tensions between the group supervisor and the design manager. The issue arose regarding some critical specifications that were not met by the design team. Jonathon had known all about the issue but failed to mention it to his boss, knowing well that there had been countless errors in the program and that the group supervisor was teetering on the edge. In the end, the supervisor requested a transfer out of the position.

Jonathon, always quick to make an impression, immediately recognized the mistake, and with little prodding, took control of the design team and pushed through changes that fixed the problem and allowed the project to meet the deadline by two days. The next day Jonathon was promoted, celebrating by purchasing the completely decked out Crossfire he now weaved in and out of traffic.