I know I haven’t posted anything yet about my diet routine. Sorry, still been kinda busy. I can report that I’ve lost 9 pounds so far since the first of August. Yay me!
One of the things that kept me busy recently was a family reunion organized by my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Don. Every family member in the state was there, and aunts and uncles from Texas and Nevada even made it. Everyone had a great time. Photos are in the photo gallery:
1 comment August 19th, 2006
Here are some pictures of the new place:
It looks like we will sign the mountains of paperwork and get the keys next Tuesday!
1 comment May 11th, 2006
Husband eats 50-year-old chicken
I read the text of this story last week somewhere else, but it wasn’t until I saw the photo that I felt I must share this with you. Click the link above to see it.
It is mildly interesting that you can buy a whole chicken in a can in England. It is slightly more interesting that this couple saved a can of chicken from their wedding day, and only vaguely more interesting still that he kept his vow, so to speak, to eat the chicken on their 50th anniversary. What really tickled me, however, is the photo accompanying the story.
It’s not so much that he looks like he’s about to fall down. It’s not even the fact that he looks like he was just woken from a deep sleep, and came straight from bed, grudgingly, for the photo shoot. It looks like he’s still wearing a robe over his pajamas, even.
No, it’s the look on the wife’s face behind him that cracks me up every time I see it. “You old coot, you’re embarrasing yourself, and me, in front of the whole world.”
3 comments February 27th, 2006
Yesterday, we drove by the house in Redondo Beach where I lived when I met Kathy. At one point (on November 13, 1985 to be exact), a section of the sidewalk in front was replaced, and we carved our initials in the wet cement. Take a look (click to open up a larger 450K picture):
In case you can’t make it out, it says:
BH {heart} KS
JH 11/13/85
GH
BH is me. KS is Kathy. JH and GH are brothers Josh and Gabe.
We also stopped for lunch at In -N- Out burger. For anyone who has never been to Southern California, and who doesn’t know about In -N- Out, I can only describe it as the best hamburger in the world, ever. The picture below is so typical of Los Angeles (click to open up a larger 450K picture):
1 comment December 21st, 2005
Just before I left work today, Kathy called to tell me that Lexi had a concert at school tonight, and that I should rush home so I’d be able to make it. Apparently, the kids in music class at Lexi’s school have been working with the great Michael Allen Harrison for the last several weeks, writing songs based on the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go, and this was the first I’d heard of it. Actually, the other day, Lexi was singing a song I’d never heard before, and I asked her what the song was. She said “It’s a song I’ve been singing with Michael Allen Harrison.” I thought it was cute that she was singing along with the radio; little did I know that she had been actually truly singing it with him in person.
It was an amazing concert, and I have a new appreciation and respect for all that this amazing musician does. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery.
3 comments October 25th, 2005
Several of my blogging buddies have been playing what I have dubbed the Google Images Game recently. I decided to join in the fun. Here are the rules: Go to Google Images, and do a search for the following:
-Name of the town where you grew up
-Name of the town where you live now
-Your name
-Your grandmother’s name
-Your favorite food
-Your favorite drink
-Your favorite song
-Your favorite smell
Then you post the first image that Google found, and also your favorite image. Here are my results:
I grew up in Gresham. First image:
My favorite images (tie):
I currently live in Beaverton. First image:
My favorite image:
My name is Bill Hayes. First image:
My favorite images (tie):
My Grandma’s name was Marty Hayes. First image:
Favorite image:
My favorite food is lasagne. First image:
Favorite image (tie):
My favorite drink is Diet Pepsi. First image:
Favorite image:
My favorite song is The Power of Love. First image:
Favorite image:
My favorite smell is Avon Soft Musk perfume. First image:
Favorite image:
By the way, check out this unrelated, but most awesome Google Images game.
2 comments October 21st, 2005
So Billy was doing something, I don’t remember what now, that was really getting on Kathy’s and my nerves. Lexi did her best to diffuse the situation by writing a note to help us remember that it’s not all that bad.
It worked:
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3 comments October 15th, 2005
I have a new photo gallery on line. I’m still tweaking it a bit, and getting it to fit with the look of this site. All the pictures from the old photo gallery software are here, though. One of the main reasons I changed to a different photo gallery is to have the ability for anyone to leave comments on each photo.
Click the link at the top left of this site to check it out, and be sure to leave a bunch of comments!
Add comment September 30th, 2005
Well, they are finally all done. There are a lot of pictures for you all to enjoy in the photo gallery. Now maybe I can finally catch up with all the posts required by law from when a bunch of people recently tagged me. Patience…
Add comment September 7th, 2005
I have almost all the vacation pictures ready in the photo gallery. For lack of a better system, I have them organized by day. As of now, it is complete through day 13. Actually uploading the photos is trivial, but I want to have a caption for each one, which is proving to be a bit more time consuming than I thought it would. Day 14, which I hope to have ready sometime tomorrow, will have all the pictures from our trip through Yellowstone National Park. I took over 180 pictures that day, and I’m going to upload 70 of them for your viewing pleasure, plus I have five photos from Day 15, the very last day of our vacation, including the aftermath of a very scary and potentially deadly highway incident (don’t worry, we’re all fine).
I’m also going to have a bunch of posts soon about more specific things on the trip, general observations, as well as things we learned about long car trips, kind of like a how-to guide for family vacations via automobile. What worked and what didn’t, ya know?
This was an epic journey for us (5450 miles in 15 days through nine states to visit several family members, three national parks, and a seemingly endless parade of tourist traps), and I don’t know when (or if) we’ll ever be able to do it again. It was a lot more expensive than I’d planned (we spent $687.50 just in gasoline), but I would gladly do it again if given the chance, and if I had it to do over, I would change very little.
4 comments September 6th, 2005
The picnic was loads of fun! OK, so not a lot of people showed up. I know that Breanna and Rebecca Marie had health issues that prevented their appearance, but why no one else? Feel free to leave explanations as comments to this post. I mean, I wasn’t even able to give away all the wide-screen plasma TVs and Sony PSPs that I had as door prizes! OK, so there were no high-end door prizes. Actually, there were no prizes at all, even for the winners of the two games I had available for everyone to play. I’m not sure who won “Guess The Blogger” (thanks RM for the most amazing artwork), but I’m pretty sure I speak for all of us in attendance when I say that Stephanie was the winner of the “How Many Words Can You Create From The Letters In Blogger Picnic” game, based solely on being the first one to write down “boner”.
Even though we couldn’t setup a live webcam (no wi-fi within range in the area), Gabe and I were still able to geek out. Each of us used our Blackberry to leave a comment on the previous picnic update post while we were munching on chips and yelling at our kids to stop leaving the cooler open.
Is there a second Blogger Picnic in the future? I’m not sure. There was a lot of preparation that went into this, just for almost no one to show up. Summer’s winding down, anyway, so if I am going to try to plan another get-together, it will probably have to be something indoors. I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted if anything comes to mind.
Still, even though there was a very low turn out, it’s always a party when the two Hayes families and Justin and Stephanie get together, so of course we had a blast. There’s a whole bunch of pictures in the Photo Gallery, just click on Blogger Picnic.
2 comments July 31st, 2005
We attended Lexi’s Mini Olympics gymastics event today. Of course, I had the camera with me, and took a bunch of shots. Unfortunately, it was a pretty big auditorium, so the flash wasn’t effective at all. Pictures taken with the flash on are way too dark, and very grainy after using Photoshop to lighten them up. When I turned the flash off, the camera’s exposure time is lengthened enough to let in plenty of light, but that made them blurry from the gymnasts’ motion. Oh well, take a look at the pictures anyway. They’re in the Photo Gallery.
3 comments June 25th, 2005
Matt and I made a trek to Grocery Outlet recently.
As always, I had the cell phone camera ready.
As always, I found weird food to photo.
As always, I’m going to share those photos with you.
Here is the first. It is some sort of high-fiber breakfast cereal called “Good Friends”. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this product’s target audience is old people. What makes this weird is something that the marketing people decided not only needed to be noted, but had to be featured prominently on the front of the box, with a bright yellow attention-drawing swoosh underneath it. Click the picture to see a close-up:
Yummy.
1 comment June 1st, 2005
Two of my company’s laptops were recently stolen. After a brief investigation, it was determined who stole them (an employee and two accomplices), they were arrested, and the laptops were recovered.
You all know that I revel in making fun of the stupid. So it is with immense pleasure that I point out how dumb it is to think that you can bypass a computer’s logon screen by disassembling the computer.
I am not making this up. Here is proof:
My group was then responsible for putting the laptop back together and making it work again. With a few parts purchased to replace those damaged during disassembly, it was a success.
P.S. - Big announcement about the blogger picnic soon, either later today or first thing tomorrow. Be sure to check back!
5 comments May 31st, 2005
I saw the cleanup of a pretty bad wreck a week ago or so. I flipped open the handy cell phone camera and snapped a picture as I drove by:
It wasn’t until I emailed the picture to my computer and saw the picture full-size that I realized that the totalled car was a Farmers insurance company car:
Irony at its finest!
Add comment May 27th, 2005
Want a sneak peak at your American Idol for the year 2015? Check out Lexi singing solo in front of her entire school, including students, teachers, faculty, and even parents! She played the part of the straw peddler, selling a bundle of straw to the first little piggy. She was amazing! Pictures are in the Photo Gallery.
1 comment May 26th, 2005
OK, my next several posts are going to be about photos I’ve recently taken. Pictures are worth 1000 words, right? And I’m a very busy and important person; I don’t have nearly enough time to write 1000 actual words, so there you go. Here is the first:
Several strange things to note:
1. My cell phone camera sure does distort the picture when it is up close like this. I mean, that is a 44 ounce cup being filled, but compared to my finger, it looks barely larger than a thimble.
2. The real reason I took this picture is the note on the Mountain Dew dispenser. Since when is “Thankyou” one word? Also, are they really remorseful or not? The question mark makes one wonder…
4 comments May 26th, 2005
I worked with a guy a few years ago who was quite a joker. He was a real riot. I thought it was all fun and games until he crossed the line: He kidnapped my favorite piece of desktop office equipment, my Swingline stapler, and held him for ransom. Here’s the story:
My office is near a small conference room that’s often used by others in the building. For some reason, this conference room’s stapler was always disappearing. When people in a meeting needed something stapled, they would invariably come to my desk and ask to borrow my stapler. I would let them take it back to the conference room with them, but would always make them promise to bring it back at the end of their meeting. If I was away from my office, people would sometimes just take it off my desk and then leave it in the conference room after their meeting was over.
Each morning when I would reach for my stapler to attach the new cover sheet to my TPS reports, it would be missing. I would have to wait until the current meeting was over and then scour the conferece room for my beloved Swingline. The whole time, I put up a pretty vocal fuss about all this (I never threatened to set the building on fire, however.)
So, as I’m going through my normal routine one morning, I discover that my stapler is not on my desk. I trudge over to the conference room to retrieve it, but it’s nowhere to be found there. When I get back to my desk, I find a ransom note sitting on my keyboard. It has also been delivered to my inbox as a Microsoft Word document attachment, sent from one of our anonymous mailboxes we use for testing. Here is a PDF file I created of the ransom note.
With the help of a trusted neutral co-worker, I dissected the Word document and discovered who had actually created it. As soon as he left his desk, I swooped in and took his Intel bunnysuit figure, and created my own ransom note, being careful to create it while logged in with a completely anonymous user name, so it couldn’t be traced back to me. Here is a copy of that ransom note in PDF format.
A trade was arranged, and he got his Intel bunnysuit figure back unharmed, and I got my Swingline stapler back, but he had been roughed up by his captors, and his injuries are evident. Oh the humanity!
He still works flawlessly, and I haven’t missed a TPS report deadline since then.
4 comments May 17th, 2005
Last December, we donated one of our cars to charity. My ‘92 Chevy Cavalier (you can see a few photos of it in the snow and ice here) had more than 190,000 miles on it, and the engine was finally starting to go. On the highway, it still ran OK and had plenty of power, but it was really hard to start (I had to crank it for more than 30 seconds before it would finally fire). Also, it idled really rough (though it never did stall at any stoplights or anything), and it was starting to spew steam out of the exhaust pipe.
I’ve been told I’m pretty good with computers and electronics (no comments from you, Gabe), but I’ve never been known for my mechanical ability. Still, I’ve read enough to know that steam coming from the exhaust pipe is bad. Like, you might as well start shopping for a new engine kind of bad. With a car this old and used, we didn’t want to go through the trouble. For the tiny amount we might get for selling the car (it had a reconstructed title, and I was going to remove the stereo before we did anything else), we didn’t want the hassle. So, we donated it to Goodwill.
We did a bit of research to see which would be the most deserving recipient, but no one seemed to want it. Even when we explained that the car still ran under its own power, they were all turned off by the age and the high miles. Goodwill, however, said that as long as we could get the car to one of their stores, they’d take it. So, mid-December, off to Goodwill it was.
Fast forward to late January. The family and I were driving down SE 82nd, and something in the corner of my eye caused me to whip the van around at the next intersection and drive back a block. There, sitting in a crappy used car lot, was my old car, being offered for sale. I got out of the van to check it out, and saw that my old car was virtually untouched. The dash still had a big hole with wires sticking out where my stereo used to be. The fabric on the driver’s seat was still torn. The carpet hadn’t even been vacuumed. I popped the hood and saw the same engine, unrepaired and still dirty and grimy. And the sticker on the windshield said they were asking $1900 for it.
$1900 dollars!
7 comments May 9th, 2005
So my company participated in the Bring Your Child to Work Day last Thursday. Matt came with me, and we were treated to a tour of the Airport Fire Department at PDX. We watched as two giant fire engines shot water at each other with their huge water nozzles (the firefighters described it as a huge water gun fight). We also saw a presentation on wildlife that lives on the airport grounds. It was amazing.
I’ve implemented a new Photo Gallery on this site, and I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos of that day. Click here to see them.
Add comment May 3rd, 2005
Brother Gabe’s recent tale of injured child woe got me to thinking of all the times my kids have been hurt. So, I thought I’d compile a list for all the readers who may not have anything better to do than to read depressing things like this. Ready? Here we go:
Billy:
* Stitches in his lower lip, both inside his mouth and outside.
He was just learning to walk, and expressing his new found independence by refusing to hold our hand as we walked up the stairs to our second-floor apartment. He slipped, hit his mouth on the concrete step, and pierced his lip with his only two bottom teeth. The worst part was when the ER doc numbed his mouth in preperation for the stitches, and Billy, freaking out strapped down to a back board, started biting through his lip and causing even more damage.
* Stitches in the forehead.
Billy decided to do a Superman off the arm of the couch onto the edge of the coffee table. The lesson we learned? Coffee tables with sharp edges and pointy corners don’t go well with hyperactive two year-olds.
* Broke his big toe.
This happened in his yoga class this school year at Beaverton High. In his YOGA class.
Matt:
* Broke his collarbone.
He fell out of a tire swing when he was around two years old. He wasn’t talking yet, and so couldn’t explain his pain to us. It was only after we insisted on an x-ray at our second visit to the hospital that Kaiser finally agreed, and discovered the fracture. We have not had Kaiser since then.
* Broke the pinky toe on his right foot.
He stubbed it on the table as he was running in the living room back in November. Here are some gross pictures:
* Stitches in his forehead.
Billy pushed him down, but luckily the knob to the dresser drawer broke his fall by making solid contact with his head.
Lexi:
* Broke her pinky finger.
Billy shut his bedroom door not realizing that her finger was in the hinge side of the door. Later he mentioned that he wondered why the door didn’t shut easily and why he had to use so much force to shut it, and why Lexi was screaming the whole time.
5 comments April 12th, 2005
As reported earlier, we got another dog. This makes four (not counting the soon-to-be puppies waiting to burst forth from Lucy and Sissy’s bellies).
A friend of a friend knew of someone (no, this is not the makings of an urban legend) who could no longer take care of their pomeranian Heidi, and if they couldn’t find a good home for her, they were going to have to take Heidi to the pound. Hayes family to the rescue! Heidi’s previous owners were an elderly couple. The wife died recently, and the husband was going to be moving into a retirement home and couldn’t bring Heidi along.
She is eight years old, housebroken, and extremely mellow, very much UNlike our other three dogs, all purebred toy poodles, all on crack. At least, that’s what it seems like to me.
(Click the thumbnails for larger images)
3 comments March 30th, 2005
First, go to this page on Rebecca Marie’s site.
Then, click here.
7 comments March 28th, 2005
I don’t think I’ve ever been called the brightest bulb in the box. And, I’ll be the first to admit that as I get older, I’m getting even more and more dim. So it took me quite a while to realize that some of the anonymous postings on some of the articles recently may have been from former co-workers (whom I still very much consider friends). I’m going to take a couple guesses, and I’ll address you simply by your first initial:
B: Have there been any complaints about an odor problem at your new office?
S: I know that Super Bowl Sunday was a bust, but have you had any “good luck” since?
Let me know if I’m right by posting more comments to this article, and you can still post anonymously if you like.
Now, the reason for all this is because the aforementioned B and S will remember the “gallery of scary foods” that I keep on the shelf at my desk. In fact, S even contributed a much appreciated bag of dehydrated iced tea (”Sqwincher, the activity drink! Just add 1 gallon water! Makes 1 gallon tea!”).
So aaanywaaaay… I went to Grocery Outlet yesterday morning to buy some expired Pop-Tarts. I love this store, if for no other reason than the weird foods you can find there. I snapped pictures of two different canned goods that caught my eye. I did not purchase either item.
Eww. “Imitation abalone” sounds bad enough.
“Prepared from giant squid” sounds even worse.
8 comments March 4th, 2005
Whew. Almost a dozen first-graders were running around our house today during Lexi’s birthday party. Where do they get all that energy? And why can’t they hear how frickin’ loud they’re being?
Of all the presents Lexi got, I think this is the one I most want for myself. Not just a Barbie doll, but a Fairytopia Sparkle Fairy Barbie. Just being in the same room when this gift was opened made me feel pretty.
(And, yes, that is a green ribbon on my daughter’s head, thanks for asking.)
Add comment February 5th, 2005
He’s adorable! Here are a few pictures of him taken while his favorite Uncle Bill was holding him.
Add comment January 22nd, 2005
Jacob Aaron Hayes was born at 3:37 this afternoon. He weighed 8 pounds 3 ounces, and was 20 inches long.
Here are a few pictures taken with Gabe’s camera phone.
I’ll snap some more pictures tomorrow when we visit them.
Add comment January 21st, 2005
I turn 35 in two days. My oldest son starts high school next year. It’s weird though, I don’t feel old at all.
A lot of things have happened since the last update. On January 12th, just four days after the last update in fact, 12 people in the IT department were laid off, most from my division. 11 of the 14 people in my division were let go, and one person from another division was moved to ours.
Last Sunday, our dog Sissy had puppies again. Kathy was here to help with the delivery, and actually did a little bit of puppy CPR on one of the little things when it came out limp and unresponsive. All four made it, and they are doing fine. Here are some pictures:
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Add comment February 20th, 2004
We have been stuck at home since Tuesday afternoon. My office was closed at about 10:00 am, and I was able to leave at about 11:30 after helping make sure the nightly computer backups were still going to take place. My office was closed all day Wednesday and Thursday, and the whole city pretty much came to a standstill. It looks like the ice and snow may stay frozen again tonight, and I may be stuck home again tomorrow.
Here are some pictures from our house
Add comment January 8th, 2004
I scanned the kid’s recent school pictures, here they are. They are large in dimensions (about 700X900 pixels), but not too large in file size (the largest is 60K.) Enjoy.
Update 5/26/05: The pictures are now in the photo gallery.
Add comment November 28th, 2003
We’re moving next week-end. After plenty of thought and a long discussion with Kathy, we have decided to give up our manufactured home in Lafayette. We still owe more than $54,000 on it, and it is worth less than $38,000. Some of our new neighbors have cars that are more expensive than their houses. The gal across the street paid $30,000 for her house. Didn’t finance it, she wrote a check for $30,000. There’s no way we will be able to get out of this for a long time.
We started looking in Portland last week-end, and narrowed our search to places with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms or more, and that would allow us to keep our pets. We looked at two houses Sunday. We were almost immediately denied for the first one, and were waiting to hear back on the second one. Kathy found a place Tuesday in Beaverton, and went to look at it Wednesday night. She faxed the application to the owner Thursday morning, and Thursday afternoon we were approved. The second place we looked at in Portland called us on Friday to approve us. We decided to go with the house in Beaverton.
It has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, with a small office area between the two upstairs bedrooms. It has a fireplace, a huge fenced backyard, and an attached garage. 1700 square feet.
Here are a bunch of pictures (Kathy took them, so blame her for the fuzziness of some of them)
Add comment September 19th, 2003
The kids went back to school this week. Lexi started kindergarten. Here are a couple pictures
Add comment September 6th, 2003
Wow, long time since I’ve updated this page.
We went camping over 4th of July week-end. Left the house about 11:00 AM to meet my brother Gabe and his family at the campsite at about 12:30. At about 12:15, literally 2 miles from the campground, we were hit by a little old lady driving a Ford Taurus. She was trying to pull onto the highway from a little general store, and apparently didn’t see the bright black minivan with roof-top carrier and bike rack barreling toward her at 40 MPH. She pulled out quickly and hit us square on the right rear side of our van, sending us sliding sideways in the road. Bringing forth the knowledge gleaned from many years of watching Dukes of Hazard every Friday night, I was able to bring the slide under control quickly, and after Kathy and I determined everyone was OK, we exchanged information and called our respective insurance companies (is there any one left in America that doesn’t carry a cell phone with them at all times?)
Camping was great fun, we all had a blast.
The following week, we took the van to her insurance company’s adjuster. He stopped counting damage when he reached $3300. They estimated our van’s value at around $2900. Since the van still drove just fine (I had removed the bent piece of body trim that was rubbing the tire, replaced both rear tires with new rubber, and installed new glass and vacuumed out the shattered cubes of safety glass), we decided to keep it. After deducting their salvage value, and adding the DMV paperwork fees, her insurance company gave us a check for $2602.
Add comment August 3rd, 2003
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