First blog post

I thought it was time I started blogging so that far-away family and friends can keep up with our day-to-day happens/turmoil/etc.

The days of driving the Freestyle are officially over. I only have about 16 miles left before I reach the magical number (24,000 miles) and will have to start paying by the mile since it's a lease. The dealership is only around 10 miles away, so that isn't a problem. Good news is that we're turning it in on Friday (2 days), bad news is I haven't really done anything except take Grace to her activities for the last two weeks. I'm getting a little stir crazy with not being able to go anywhere.

And you'd think that since the weather's been nice and gas prices are so high (lowest by me is $3.57 as of today) that I'd be able to ride my bicycle, but I had a flat on Monday. I built it up all morning with Grace after school and we came home and the front tire was as flat as a pancake. So I thought: no problem, just air it up. Ha-ha-ha - no, didn't help. Gaping hole in the tube. And I can't drive anywhere to get it fixed. No places close enough to walk to, so I'll just wait until I can use another car to get it fixed. Well, my neighbor let me borrow his car today and I thought I'd go and get the tire fixed while Grace was in school (her last day of preschool until the fall.) But the bike shop we go to - M&M Bikes in Mundelein - didn't open until 11:00am which is when Grace gets out of school. So I went to the library while Grace was in school and then her and I went to the bike shop after school and got it fixed. Turns out it was a spoke that put the gaping hole in the tube as the inner protector that covers the spoke holes had shifted and allowed the spoke to touch the tube - bummer!

So anyway, I now have two tires that work and my bike is ready to go. I'm planning on using it tomorrow (Thursday) to go somewhere, just because I have to go somewhere. I can't stay at home all day. But I do have things to do at home. I need to cut the grass as we're hosting our "Somewhat Annual Memorial Day Picnic" on Sunday and I want the yard to look good. Probably should pull some weeds in the flower beds too. Also need to get to cleaning the house and we still haven't planned the food we're going to serve and therefore can't tell anyone what to bring yet. Good news is the RSVP's have been coming in pretty darn strong and no "no's" yet.

I'm trying to learn ASP.net 2.0 and since I only have Windows XP Home on my computer, I don't have and can't install IIS which allows you to run ASP.net files (basically a web server.) So I've been using the Cassini Web Server that Microsoft provides on the asp.net website but it doesn't do everything that IIS does. So I've been playing with Windows Server 2003 on a spare computer and trying to figure everything out so that I can run IIS on there and have access to all of it's features. I'll let you know. Hopefully my brother-in-law can help as he uses Windows Server 2003 all day at work. I was talking to him tonight and maybe he can help me a little at our picnic on Sunday! I'm actually kind of excited - learning can be fun!

Alright, this will have to be enough for my first post as it's late and I need some sleep.