Mishmash Musings

Like most kids his age, my five-year-old son has a very short attention span. It could be from all the video games he plays, or it could just be that age, ya know? At any rate, it’s very hard to get him to sit still for more than 30 minutes at a time — unless he’s playing PS2 or Wii.

I mean, he can’t even watch full-length DVD movies in one sitting. Toy Story, The Lion King, The Incredibles, Cars, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo… all of these films took multiple sittings to get through.

My question is, is this normal for 5-year-olds? I have a couple of friends who say they love DVDs because their kids just plop right down in front of the TV and are occupied for hours.

Obviously, I don’t want my boy to be a zoned-out zombie staring slack-jawed at the television all day, but I’m just worried that his attention span might be shorter than other kids his age. Unfortunately, this is a really difficult thing to gauge.

I guess I’ll have to keep doing research on the subject and polling others about their children’s habits.

We’re nearing the end of the month (EOM), which means there are a bunch of accounting tasks I have to tend to. Since the IRS considers me self-employed, I must keep meticulous records of all the financial transactions related to my freelance writing business, including how much I’ve earned, how much I’ve been paid, how much I expect to be paid, and how much I’ve spent on related expenses.

Along with a huge stack of receipts, I’ve got about seven Excel spreadsheets open, as well as a couple of Word documents. I’m definitely stretching my computer memory to the max here! But I find that it’s a lot easier to keep a running total for the year (updated monthly) than to try to figure everything out on April 14.

All of this accounting work is very tedious, and is a very boring way to spend a Sunday night. I wish I had the funds to hire an assistant for this stuff!

I just read over on MSNBC that a teenage boy was decapitated at the Six Flags over Georgia amusement park in Austell, GA. Though details are still sketchy at this point, preliminary reports indicate that the boy hopped a fence at the Batman ride, and was struck by the coaster as it passed by.

Some witnesses seemed to think the teenager was trying to retrieve an item that he lost, while others thought he was just trying to touch the ride as the cars went past. In any event, he was decapitated.

The boy’s family was at the park with him, but it’s unclear as to whether or not they were near the victim when this happened.

What a terribly gruesome story this is. I can’t imagine heading out to a theme park for a fun day with the family only to have something like this happen. Wow….

I really hope there’s a better explanation for why the kid hopped the fence than the two given in the early reports. Because if there isn’t, well, what a waste, ya know?

My cousin just called to ask me if I’d go apartment hunting with her this weekend. I’m going to be busy, but I recommended that she check out the place I lived in about 10 years ago. The complex was brand new back then, so it should still be in pretty good shape even after all this time.

What I liked about the place was that the apartments looked like townhouses, and even had attached garages and everything. All of the units had washers and dryers right in them, were on the second floor (above the garage), and were very quiet. I even remember the little things, like how the kitchen faucets in all the units had pull-out spray guns on the side that made cleaning the sink a lot easier. Oh, and did I mention that this apartment complex was in a great location, just minutes away from the mall and tons of restaurants?

We paid $1,000+ per month for a 1-bedroom back then, so I’m almost afraid to ask what rent is now. But still, I think it’s worth checking out! It would be cool if my cousin ended up there!

As many of you know, I have an outside-the-home consulting gig that usually takes up a few hours of my time every week. On occasion, however, I have to put in substantially more time than usual to help keep things at that business running smoothly.

This is one of those times.

For the next month (4 weeks), I’m slated to work 4-5 hours per day, 5 days a week. I have tried reworking other employees’ schedules to reduce the need for my presence, but so far haven’t had any luck. That 20-25 hour work week was the best I could come up with.

At any rate, between that job and my family, I will have very little time for blogging, so don’t be surprised if you see only a handful of updates for the next month. I’m not abandoning this blog; just taking a bit of a break. Hopefully, I’ll be back to a regular posting schedule by August!

Instead of having to check back every day, why not take this opportunity to subscribe to my feed? That way it won’t be as much of an effort for you to keep up!

I don’t listen to the radio very much these days because I’ve always got my iPod plugged in when I’m driving. I’d much rather listen to music or books that I like instead of sitting through songs that some random producer decides to play. And don’t even get me started on the commercials. I can’t stand radio commercials!

But the one radio program that I can stomach is the quiz show “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” from NPR. The show comes out once a week and lasts for about 50 minutes. I always download the podcast so I can listen at my own convenience, and let me tell you, I’m hooked!

The questions are funny and help me brush up on current events across the country and around the world. Plus, I like the “Not My Job” segment where a celebrity comes on to answer questions totally unrelated to their area of expertise. For example, this week’s guest is Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, and though I haven’t listened to the show yet, I can guarantee that he won’t be answering questions about politics!

Anyway, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is a pretty cool program. If you like quiz shows, then you should definitely check it out!

I had another orthodontist appointment today, as I’m on a three-week checkup schedule instead of the usual four. I guess it’s because I’m nearing the end of my treatment and the doc wants to monitor my progress very closely.

Nothing eventful happened today, as we’re just basically waiting for one tooth to move into place. It’s the upper eyetooth (canine) on the right side, which somehow got pushed too far in during treatment, making it slightly out of line with the rest of my upper teeth. My ortho doesn’t think it’s a big deal, and practically rolled his eyes when I said I wasn’t happy with the alignment yet, but he agreed to give it three more weeks.

Of course, I noticed that he penciled in a removal appointment already. Well, it’s not a firm date yet, but he does have it in the file that my next appointment (July 11) will be just final checkup and then immediately after that, I have to schedule a removal date. So I guess he’s anxious to get me out of my braces and into retainers ASAP.

If you’d told me six months ago that my orthodontist would be pushing for removal and I’d be the one holding things up, I would’ve thought you were crazy. It’s funny how things work out though, isn’t it? I guess I’m a little scared to take my braces off because this is my second time having them on and I want to make absolutely sure that my teeth are perfect so I don’t have to go through this ordeal again.

Things have been reallly slow this month (freelance writing-wise), so I’ve been spending the past few days catching up on several administrative tasks I needed to take care of. I did everything from organize my tax receipts to clean up my computer hard drive and straighten out my desk drawers. Since things are still slow today, I’m going to start going through my old posts to remove dead links and maybe delete stuff altogether to make things a bit less cluttered.

I hate that I’m not making any money, but I guess the silver lining is that I’ve got some extra time to take care of other tasks that had been piling up for a while.

I know there’s still plenty of basketball left to play (it’s still the 3rd quarter), but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the Celts will take the win and the 2008 NBA Championship. They’re currently up by 31 points, 84-53, and the Lakers look like they’ve got nothing left in the tank. Sure, anything can happen in sports, but a 31-point comeback on the road with a championship on the line? No way!

I don’t like Boston sports teams, so I’m not exactly thrilled about the Celtics being the new NBA champs. Then again, I hardly even care about basketball at all — meaning I’m not going to lie awake tonight wondering what could have been if only….

Anyway, congrats to the Celtics and their fans!

We’re not that big on formal entertaining around here. Whenever we invite people to come over, it’s usually for a night of pizza and beer, or a barbecue out on the deck. We never have elegant dinner parties or anything like that — which I guess is one of the reasons that I’m uncomfortable attending such things.

For example, Jerry has several co-workers who host fancy dinners a couple times per year. They go all out with nice table settings, fine china, centerpieces, and of course gourmet food. Heck, Jerry’s immediate supervisor even has one of those little wine refrigerators set up on the sideboard so he can pick the perfect bottle for the meal.

Although the food is usually excellent at these formal dinners, I can never fully enjoy myself. I hate getting all dressed up, and I worry about spilling something on my most expensive clothes. And I also notice that the conversation becomes more stilted and boring at these types of events too.

I guess I’m just too lowbrow to appreciate the finer things in life!

I just got done setting up my estimated tax payment for the second quarter of 2008. I didn’t realize that payments couldn’t be made on the same day, so I actually had to schedule the payment for tomorrow, making me one day late — and therefore subject to extra fees. Oh, well.

Anyway, I had wanted to go through all of my receipts and financial statements from the year in order to make a more accurate estimate of how much I owe in taxes, but I didn’t get around to doing all that in time. As a result, I just made a $250 payment, which is probably too much. That’s okay, though. I’ll just have to make sure I go through all of the paperwork before the 3Q payment and make up for any overages then.

And yeah, $250 is quite low as far as estimated taxes go. But I haven’t been making much money the past few months, so there hasn’t actually been much income to report….

I’ve been watching the U.S. Open off and on all afternoon and am surprised to see that Rocco Mediate is leading Tiger Woods and Lee Westwood by one shot. Mediate has played through 17 holes, while Woods and Westwood have played 16.

Mediate has looked good today, his Callaway irons and putter are definitely getting the job done. But Woods has eagled the 18th hole a couple times during this tournament already, so things are far from over.

It should be an exciting finish coming up. I don’t really care who wins — I just love all the drama here!