Quentin caught a mullet and I don't mean the fish

We decided we needed a night out and thought Quentin was ready for date night experimentation. We didn't want to go to somewhere too nice in case there was a blow out or a temper tantrum that would disrupt a romantic evening for other couples so we decided on something casual. The good news is Quentin passed with flying colors including the wait we endured to get a table. The hilarious news is we witnessed a 40ish male busting out the most fantastic mullet of all time. Now with it being 2009 one would expect to see fewer mullets roaming the dining scene then say 1984 but with this being the south, and Florida at that, the mullet is a fairly common hip look. However, no one has seen a mullet like this since the sweet sweet 80s, which is when this guy must have started growing it because it went down to his mid back and he was not a small man. Think ZZ Top except the beard was on the back of his head. There could have been several squirrels, at least three birds and possibly a partridge in a pear tree hiding in this guy's mullet. We witnessed the mullet guy while we were waiting for our table near the hostess station. We were so over joyed to have mulletman sitting at a table across from us making our date night much more glamorous then the average date. If I was a little less respectful and had a decent camera on my too expensive phone I would've snapped a few shots for the blog. But in the end mulletman will only be seared into my memory for the foreseeable future. It made our evening and it was nice to get out of the house and remember how fun it is to interact with the population again. Working from home and having an infant means it's a serious challenge to work out the logistics of getting out of the house. (No one has applied for the nanny position to date so it's still open - wink, wink).

Today Quentin, Lucky and I had some man time to watch the Giants blow their shot at repeating as Super Bowl champs. Carrie decided to go shopping - imagine that, so I convinced the wife I could "handle" my son for a few hours and told her to go to the mall alone. Very dangerous I know especially without the distraction of Quentin crying cutting the trip short. I am happy to report that no 911 call was necessary and we appear to be able to still pay the mortgage so the shopping damage was minimal. I owe it all to that little diploma on the wall signifying my knowledge of everything there is to know about parenting for one child. Quentin slept like a baby (no originality needed) and I watched my playoff dreams of winning my football pool go down the tubes with Manning's play. At least no more Manning's will win a Super Bowl this year.

Quentin has been a pistol in the mornings. He gets up around 5ish to eat and that's it. He's all fired up from that point on. He just coos and coos and coos at the top of his lungs giggling and smiling all morning long. It took us months to train the dog to sleep in on the weekends. And apparently it's going to take months to train Quentin. I'm not looking for noon here but I am looking for something past dawn. You know, maybe get up after the sun rises!?! Well, at this stage Quentin isn't having it. He's up, which means that by mid-afternoon he's usually out for the count so Lucky and I enjoyed the game with Quentin sleeping relatively soundly through the NFL jungle. It appeared this Sunday everyone got what they wanted except elusive sleep. (By the way, when this kid smiles, even at dawn, you just sort of melt so you put up with not getting any sleep and smile about it, because you can't help yourself).

Speaking of crying I read in today's paper about saving for college. The blurb was under the heading, "Want to get more out of your money?" The question was how much money should you stash away for your child's future college tuition. Here is the not in touch with reality or the recent economic times answer this genius wrote, "A parent should expect to pay 2/3 of a child's education with the rest being paid for by loans. You should have $20,000 saved upon birth (not kidding this is word for word) with 18 years of saving to go the parent should contribute $818.25 a month to cover HALF of the projected costs." ..................oh, sorry I had to pick myself up off the floor from having my first heart attack. Umm, ya, that would be nearly $10K a year and add up to $176,742 + the $20,000 you magically had stashed for your unborn child bringing the total to $196,742, which wouldn't include interest and assuming an annual return of 8%, well let's just say it's well over $200,000. This is only going to cover half the costs? What is going on here? First, I don't want to correct financial genius here but I thought this was going to cover 2/3 of the costs so how did this mighty stash of cash only add up to 1/2 by the end? Well, I thought since we missed the boat I would inform the remainder of the public so they don't make our same mistake. For anyone who doesn't have children yet or would like to have children some day you might want to start working on that $20K. It looks like Quentin better hit the books and go the scholarship route because we just read the article today and are already $21,227.38 behind. Happy saving!