Yesterday was Karin’s 14th birthday. We’re going to have a party for her this weekend. She had a friend spend the night last night and seemed to have a good birthday. What with all of her friends stopping by throughout the day.

Progress reports came out on Friday. I finally saw them on Sunday…. Things are not looking good for the girls. I’ll post something more on that in a day or so.

Went to see my brother yesterday, he’s had his eyes done and no longer needs glasses. He’s very happy. He also presented me with a check from my grandfather’s life insurance policy. That was unexpected. Not simply because of the amount, but also because I really hadn’t expected anything to come of it. Apparently the estate is still being settled and there may be more coming. It seems very strange to me. Makes me realize that I need to work on the memorial for my grandfather.

I’m having ear problems, haven’t been able to hear out of my left ear for three days now. Going to have to go to the doctor about that tomorrow.

Friday progress reports were issued by the schools. Surprise of surprises…. the girls didn’t show Tasha or myself theirs. Now the question becomes how long will we have to wait to see them? And how bad will it be? You know that it isn’t going to be good. You don’t hide your progress report from your parents unless there’s something you don’t want them to see. So I can only assume that things haven’t improved from the last report card. My big fear is that things have gotten worse. Hell, the school has already sent a letter to us, just to let us know that Karin has 2 options; pass all her classes or repeat the eighth grade. The worst part is that the girls don’t seem to care. They’re smart, they could do better. They simply choose to not do the work and to not turn in the work that they do complete. What is a step-parent to do?

In other child related news, I had a chat with Kirra the other day. Seems she was skipping school and got caught this time. So I had to pick her up from detention. Gave me a chance to lay it all out for her. I hope that she actually listened to what I was saying, because she stared out the window and refused to participate in the conversation. Here’s the gist of what I told her. School is your job. You chores are your rent. If you can’t do your job and your rent doesn’t get paid, don’t plan on staying around after graduation. I also told her that I think she’s retreating from growing up instead of embracing it, and that she should really start looking at her future. She graduates in 28 months, that’s going to go by real fast. Of course she ignored me. I hope she pulls her shit together because her mother and I are at our wits end.

Here’s some big news that I’m sure no one else will care about. I finally got remote access to my PC working. Now I can get to it from anywhere. This is so cool. Also, I got my music server working through the magic that is edna. This is great. I’ve got to send some major kudos out to Denis for helping me accomplish these two feats. Ah, the simple pleasures in life are the sweetest.

In other news, I put up six more 200 word reviews on the xbox page. Check them out.

Well, it took forever but after carrying them around in the car for three weeks I finally put the Christmas Thank You cards in the mail today. It is amazing how fast time flies. I really have to get better at this whole correspondence-with-my-relatives thing.

I’ve been making alot of behind the scenes changes here on the website, most of which will be unveiled in the next week or so. This page, and the rest of the log, are in a partial state of remodel right now. That’ll be fixed as soon as I get a chance to edit the rest of the templates for these pages. Please be paitent. Soon there will be a unified look to the whole site.

Just wanted to send out a little birthday greeting to my baby sister. She’s turning 31 today. Not that she’ll read this.