Hi everyone, I have been reading the comments and I like them. Some are relevant, and some are not. I have turned them off for now so Ican read the ones I have and maybe comment on a few. When I turn them back on, soon, i think I will delete them as I read them so that you know that both you and I know that you read the comment and I will respond to the ones I can. We just got back from LA. We went out for Tina DiJoseph and Glenn Caron's wedding reception. Glenn is the creator of Medium. We had a great time and got to see many of our friends. I got a chance to spend a little more time with Jake Weber (me on TV). A little surreal, but he is such a great guy I get over it quickly. best, Joe

Sorry for the absense. I really have no excuse. I should do this every morning. I will give you a tidbit of things I need to update. We had our annual halloween party. Every year we have a themed halloween masquerade party. Everyone must wear a costume. I will post some pictures, check back soon. This year the theme was superheroes. Allison and I were Superman and Super girl. Other updates: Our oldest daughter is in 7th grade and has made the 8th grade cheerleading line. Our middle child and I have started a robot club, we will be competing in the first lego league robot competition. Our youngest has switched from figure skating to gymnastics. I think she still prefers figure skating, but gymnastics is much more accessible so she gets more practice time. Allison is working on her third book. I have read the first chapter and it is great. Sorry, I can't release details. I am building antisipation. I am still woking on the flywheel at Honeywell for an Air Force program and coming to terms with my life. thanks for stopping by, my best, Joe DuBois p.s. my Buckeye football team beat Michigan (our rivals) today to maintain our lead in the conference. p.p.s Yeah, we won!!

I wish I updated this more often. Allison is talking to Adrianne Curry (Knight) on the phone right now so I have a few minutes to write a few thoughts down. I have to admit that I have gotten caught up in life. Our kids are back in school and I am working at least part time. Aurora is in gymnastics and doing really well in school. I am always amazed at who she is. She is turning into a teenager way too fast. Every father of a daughter can understand that some part of you doesn't want them to grow up. Fallon is still smart and headstrong. It is a dangerous combination if you become disinterested in the subjects at school. This means that she has to have a little extra help after school learining spanish. She is also in Juniors (Girl Scouts) so that she can go on the camping trip and sell cookies. She is very talented at selling. She is also very interested in robots. The official story is that I have started a robot team to help motivate Fallon to get good grades. She has to keep up the grades to stay on the team. Secretly, I am also really excited to coach the team. I have designed and built my share of autonomous machines. I am quite excited to help a younger generation learn what I know. We will be competing in the first lego league (www.firstlegoleague.com/us). I will let you know how it goes, what out team name is and maybe even a picture or the robot. Fallon also has a beautiful singing voice, but she has decided that she is too busy to be in choir this semester. Sophia is a doll. She is the baby, and always will be. She is in Brownies (Girl Scouts), Drama and ice skating. I love taking her ice skating because I have many fond memories of skating with my dad. Also, Allison was a champion at figure roller skating (it was the eighties) and so I can see a lot of Allison in Sophia when she slips around the rink. When it comes to ice skating, I will be on an adult ice hockey team this season. I can't wait, but I am a little nervous because it has been 18 years since I have competed in hockey. I am not worried about skills, it is the physical stamina. Hockey is a real workout! I think if I start running and loose a few pounds, I'll be a.o.k. That is all for now. Joe p.s. My Buckeye football team has gotten a good start for the year. Go Bucks!

Please check out Allison's charities web page (www.allisondubois.com/charities.html). We would like to raise awareness for the charities that we have a connection with. The first charity that we are sponsoring is our godson. As Allison wrote in her first book in the chapter "Baby Boy", our godson was born with undersized kidneys and a distressed bladder. Even now at the age of 5, his kidneys are smaller than a newborn's. His parents are wonderful people who are our good friends. Jim supervises the renovation of condominiums and Stacey watches children to help make ends meet. Their insurance will not cover all the expenses of the transplants and they do not have the means to cover the rest. Our community is coming together to help out, but replacing two kidneys and a bladder is an extensive task. Please consider helping a little boy, as he says, "be like other boys". Joe

I have noticed from some of the comments that some people reading this do not know that there is a television show that was inspired by my wife's life. The television show is called MEDIUM and is shown across the world. Patricia Arquette plays Allison DuBois and Jake Weber plays her husband, Joe DuBois. Joe DuBois is played acurately on the show. He is an aerospace engineer, I am an aerospace engineer. His wife is a medium who works with the DA, so is mine. I think that Jake does a great job, I am loving and a bit intelectually arrogant. I like to think the Joe DuBois on the show is comprised of my best parts. There are areas that I would like to improve in myself that are not shown on the show, like how I can be emotionally cold at times even though I don't want to be. Joe

Someone in Australia wants to know how I met Allison. The basics of the story are rather typical. Boy falls in love with girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy gets scared and messes things up only to figure it out in the nick of time, boy and girl get married. I had graduated from Ohio State University and moved out to Phoenix for a job. I had been working a couple of years when I heard on the radio that a local band would be playing that night. I gathered my friends and set off. This sounds pretty mundane, but the odd thing is that I had never been to this place before and the band was not hugely popular. Regardless, I was strangely drawn to attend, so I called the venue and asked how to get there because I had never been there before. It turned out to be near the local university, Arizona State. Once I was there I quickly noticed the beautiful redhead standing with a collection of suitors surrounding her. She was clearly not interested in them. It looked as if there was a spot light shining on her. It took me the rest of the night to try and talk to her. I was sitting in a booth and she was walking by. I caught her attention by tugging on her squorts (it was the early nineties). She turned to me and said, “If you touch me again, I will make your life a living hell”. How can you not love that kind of fire? We started dating a few months later and were married a year after that. I was young and in love, so it did not seem that unusual that she could finish my sentences or read my thoughts because that is how I knew it would be when I found the right woman for me. The hardest part for me, like many men, was taking the final step and making the marriage proposal. I had lost my father to pancreatic cancer six weeks before I first met Allison. I was close to my father and it hurt a lot to lose him. I was afraid to get close to anyone at that point because I was afraid I would lose them too. A bit irrational, but true. I brought Allison to San Francisco to propose to her. We were there for a long weekend. There were several perfect opportunities to ask for her hand, I let them all slip away. This really upset Allison. She knew I would ask her, but I had not. What did this mean? We ended up getting in a fight and she stormed off. I followed close behind pleading with her. As is usually the case with me, my timing is a little off. I finally got her to believe me that I did bring her to San Fran to propose marriage to her and that is was not a reaction to her being upset. I did drop to my knee and I said “will you marry me”. To this she replied, “Why should I?” That’s what I love about her, she does not compromise. I finally convinced her that I was sincere. The next day is when I proposed to her the way I had wanted to. I brought her to the pier. As I knelt down, I saw her in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. What a majestic and beautiful sight. The funny thing is that I did not consider how it would look to her. Given the geometry of the bay, if I’m on the pier looking at the bridge, she is looking at Alcatraz. She said yes anyway. The truth is that although she does amazing things, I love her because she owns my heart. I feel blessed to have her. Sometimes I feel that my whole purpose in life is to be her husband.

As you know, I am an aerospace engineer. I have spent 16 years working on satellites and satellite technologies. My most recent poject is IPACS. Engineers love acronyms. This one stands for Integrated Power and Attitude Control System. The funny thing is that the research is being conducted for the Air Force, and they don't call it IPACS, they call it FACETS. Either way, this is a fancy name for a flywheel that can both store electricity and steer a spacecraft. Kind of cool. I am quite excited because the project has been dormant for the last year and a half, but now has been revived. There was a false start a few months ago, but now, finally, it seems that we can really finish this project and raise the bar on the technology. If you are interested you can find out more information directly from the Air Force at http://www.vs.afrl.af.mil/Gallery/ Joe p.s. To my Dutch friends. My most recent work is in control systems and simulation. Like all engineering, this is a branch of applied mathematics. This branch is particularly strong in math. So strong that my primary softare tool is called MATLAB, short for Mathematics Laboratory. Also I have taken several graduate level classes in Mathematics, specifically in chaos theory. Hopefully this clears things up a little.

I started this entry as an update an update on our pug Eleanor, but then realized that I wanted to discuss all of our pets. We currently have four pets, 3 cats and a dog. Pets have been an important part of our lives. Animals in general are important to our lives, even the wild animals who visit us from time to time. Through our thirteen years of marriage we have had many pets. When we met I had two cats (Lefty and Blondie) and a black dog named Jake. After that we had a Japanese chin named Einstein, a boxer named John, a siamese named Sinbad, blue birds named Kiwi and Blueberry, and finally our current pets, a pug named Eleanor, a big orange tabby named Caeser, his slender niece named Stella and the newest member, a calico named Julia. All but two were saved or otherwise given to us in their adulthood. Eleanor had her first birthday and is a really great dog. She is not supposed to be able to swim, but she does. She is not a retriever, but she likes to play catch. She can't hold her pee for anyone but me. Actually, I just remember to take her out every other hour. I hear this is pretty common for pugs. Jake Weber, the actor who plays me on tv also owns a pug. We got Eleanor last September on the 3rd anniversary of Allison's Dad's passing. Allison took the loss of her dad pretty hard. I couldn't bear to see her be so sad. Even though she know's his soul survives, she misses hugging him in this world. Although having a puppy is hard work, I was glad to do it on the chance that it could cheer up my wife. It helped. Eleanor has one of those faces that you can't help but giggle when you see it. Here are pictures of Eleanor's first birthday.

This is just a little note to keep everyone interested. Once my girls are back in school, I will be adding stories for the following topics: Yes that is Allison on VH1! Rest, Relaxation and Writing a book. Allison guest hosts the Pat McMahon Show in Phoenix Medical Miracle File: Growing a new bladder for our godson Allison's next book I just read a post asking a little more about my engineering work. I will elaborate soon. see you soon

One thing that I realized watching MEDIUM is that they never mention Allison's friends,other than the ones she has at the Distric Attorneys office. I want to let you know that Allison has friends and talks to them every day. I will tell you more soon. -Joe DuBois

With the final book signing in our hometown last Friday (June 9th) the tour is over and I get my wife back, well almost. Her hard work has paid off and her book is on the NY Times best seller list. She will probably be in demand more than ever now and of course she is always up to a million things like writing her next book. But the next few weeks is scheduled R&R. The kids are out of school, the weather is beautiful (104 F and sunny) and I will be swimming in the pool with the kids then grilling some burgers and enjoying and ice cold beer. I hope you can do the same. By the way, my birthday is tomorrow. For my birthday, Allison has arranged for us and a group of our friends to go to a dinner murder mystery theater. Kind of funny considering the line of work she is in. Strangely, the last time we went to one of these was when we were dating and I solved the mystery. Now I feel the pressure of haveing a good record of solving mysteries, everyone is looking at me to solve this one. Hopefully it takes the pressure of Allison for once. Joe

If anyone is reading, sorry for not posting lately. Allison has been out of town a lot promoting her new book and I have been home as Mr. Mom. Please don't misunderstand me, I love the kids. It is just that my schedule lately has left little time for posting to this blog. Although Allison has been away a lot, she made special time for Mother's day and Fallon's (our middle child) birthday. Fallon turned 9 this year and we had her class over our house for a party. The highlight was a balloon bender who orchestrated a play with the kids. The fantastic part is that all of the costumes were made of balloons. It was quite increadible. Allison was cast as a dragon, who at first seemed a little intimidating, then we come to find out that she is a mom. Allison was a great sport, and I have included a picture of her in her costume. I have also included a photo from Allison's tour. This is one of the events I was able to attend. It was a book signing held in Mesa Arizona. Over 900 people showed up. Everyone was very nice, they were even gracious enough to ask for my autograph. Allison is happy to conduct these events, but my concern is how tiring it is for her. I will be sure to confine her to Rest and Relaxation after the tour (no exceptions) Joe

Last September we got a new dog, Eleanor. There is a story about getting the dog that I will share some day. For now, Allison asked me to put a picture of Eleanor up. Here is a picture from last Sept. when we first brought her home.

We took our kids to San Diego for spring break. All in all, it was a good time. We went to Sea World and had a blast. The Shamu show was too crowded for Allison so I took the kids. It only took a day until Allison's editor found her and Allison had to finish some last minute details on her second book. No rest for Allison. While we were driving, Allison had a brain storm. She has the idea for her third book and she has already started on it. I love the concept, but I can't tell you about it because it is still a secret. One of the highlights for the trip was a short detour to Poway. Allison wanted to visit the Poway-Bernardo Mortuary is the subject of the reality show "Family Plots" on A&E. Allison is a big fan of the show and wanted to drop off a copy of her book for them. She was very excited that she was able to meet some of the cast. They gave Allison a signed photo which she has framed and hung on our wall of fame. ur wall of fame is a collection of photographs that Allison has collected of people that she has met and spent some time with. We are trying to get a lot of family time in because Allison is leaving for London soon and she will be travelling for her book tour for most of May.

Allison's Granmother went into the hospital last week. She is 89 years old, so it is always a concern when something happens. In this case, she had a hard time breathing, as she put it "it was as if I was hit in the chest with a board." She was rushed to the hospital righ away. At first we were concerned that she had a heart attack. It turned out that she had a pulmonary embolism, e.g. a blood clots in the lungs. As you can imagine, there are all sorts of complications that can occur. So far, the blood thining drugs are working to reduce the clot. She is doing well and has been moved from the hospital to an extended care facility. I learned a very unexpected lesson from this. This event in my life churned up a lot of emotions from the death of my father. I tried to console Allison. I tried to give her hope. Allison doesn't need hope, she needs understanding. Allison knows all about death and dieing, and knows that her grandmother is alive and with us right now. I found that I need to understand that it is emmotionally difficult on all of us, especially Allison who is very close to her grandmother.

We had a great time for Valentines Day. We went out with our favorite couple and had dinner at the Melting Pot. As the name suggests, it is a fondue place. I gave Allison a picture as a present. It is not any picture, but it is the picture from the day I proposed to her. We were in San Francisco in 1993 when I proposed. I scanned the picture onto our computer and superimposed a picture of me now. I told Allison it is because she will always look 21 years old to me. I have included the picture below. (This is the first entry and was originally written February 15th.)