Denver

It's late but I wanted to at least let everyone know that we made it just fine down to Denver.

We went to the Omaha Zoo on Sunday and then drove down here on Monday. Today we went to the Air Force Academy and the Garden of the Gods. And we also stopped by Pikes Peak to look in the gift shop. Tomorrow will be a slower day as Julie starts her convention with an introductory class and some other activities before the actual convention gets underway on Thursday.

We aren't going to be able to take a U.S. Mint tour as they're all booked up. But we have a list of other things we were considering. For some reason my laptop (with Windows Vista) doesn't recognize USB drives so I can't post any pictures except from my cell phone and those just aren't that good so I won't bother.

The condo we're in is really nice. It's not the nicest condo complex, but it's clean and the pool looks nice (we're planning to swim tomorrow!) The condo itself is quite large with plenty of room for the four of us. We have yet to cook a meal, but hopefully with a slower pace tomorrow that will change.

There is a Chinese restaurant only three blocks from here called Mings Dynasty that is REALLY good. It's probably the best Chinese food I've ever had. There is a Target, Whole Foods, Dairy Queen, and other things close-by too. So we're in a good location.

I've got to get some sleep before the sun shines through the skylight.

We made it

Got into Omaha just before 7pm.

Getting close to Des Moines

It took forever to post this picture (also had to stop on the side of the road to take the picture because the sign is small and my phone camera isn't the best) because the Verizon network wasn't available. Guess those commercials don't apply to central Iowa.

On the road again after lunch

Finally finished eating and are back to driving again.

Made it to IA

First rest stop in Davenport, Iowa. Stopped to eat lunch.

Dekalb

We've made it to Dekalb.

Departure

Finally leaving on our trip.

We'll keep you posted

We're just about ready to go. I'll be sending updates as we drive tomorrow with my phone so you can keep track of where we are. I'll be a bloggin' later. Must get sleep...

Preparation for Vacation

Now that vacation is close, pretty much everything I'm doing is vacation related. I did some laundry today and the dishes that can't go in the dishwasher. Also picked up the house a bit. It never stays that way, but at least you can walk through the living room now. We tested out the laptop case (ProKase) on a trip to Culvers for dinner. It worked quite well actually, we just need to determine a way to secure the laptop to the case so it doesn't fall off while we are driving.

We have a lot to do tomorrow. I'll have to write more later.

6 1/2 hours of waiting

Today was supposed to be fairly routine. Take the car for a service appointment, have "A" come over and watch Grace, possibly have Grace's friend from down the street come over too and all the while maybe I could get a little painting done around the house. Then at 5 we were babysitting the neighbor across the streets 1 year old for a few hours while they went to see Cirque Shanghai at Navy Pier.

I had a 9am appointment which obviously we were late too because I'm just late for everything in the morning because Grace just doesn't want to move at all. We got there at 9:30, told them what I wanted done and then went to the waiting room, where we stayed until 4pm. Mind you I didn't have time to eat breakfast before we went, but I brought food for Grace to eat. So she had breakfast and a snack and then some candy that they give out at the dealership. Then at some point in the afternoon she started to get hungry. I know it was after 1pm. Finally at 3pm our salesperson stopped by and asked if we needed to run anywhere and get anything. She asked if we wanted a loaner. I said we already have one at home. I also felt it was too late to go and get lunch considering it was almost time for dinner.

So we hit the vending machine and got some "great" selections to fill our tummies; read: carbohydrates. Luckily the car was ready "only" an hour later. Fortunately they didn't charge us too much for all the diagnostics they had to do. I installed the remote start system myself back in March and had a couple of issues I couldn't get to work properly. So they were going through every connection to see if I had done anything wrong. They did find one mistake; I had wired the hot side of the drivers door unlock relay to the ground and the ground to the hot. So that would explain why the drivers door wasn't unlocking unless you unlocked all the doors. The second major issue was that you would start the car remotely and it would start just fine but only run for about 2 seconds and then shut off. If this solves the problem then it turns out that I had run the initial programming of the computer with the engine cold and it learned that the engine ran a particular way. So then if you try to start it when the engine is warm it thinks something is wrong and turns it off. Lets hope that was it; it certainly sounds like it could be. Here is a picture of all the wires I had to connect:



So I believe the Montego is pretty much ready for vacation now. It needs a good bath and a tire pressure check. We did get the laptop case in the mail yesterday and I have to say it is pretty cool, but I'm not so certain it will work. The laptop is like right in your face almost, especially for Grace since her car seat makes her closer to the seat in front of her anyway. So then I tried it behind the drivers seat and I'm not so sure that'll work either because then you have to turn the laptop to face Grace and the angle is weird and I'm not sure she'll be able to see the screen. Plus it will put the laptop right in front of the passenger sitting there - almost making you claustrophobic because it does take up quite a bit of space. We'll have to see what Julie thinks when she sees it tomorrow.

So then if you remember what we were doing this evening from above, you know we had a dilemma. We were supposed to babysit for our friends at 5pm and I wasn't certain when I'd be home. So I called Julie and asked her to leave work early so that at least one of us would be here before 5pm. As it turns out I beat her home by about 1 minute. Then since I wasn't home all day I had to go back out and get dinner because I wasn't home to cook. So that was my day...basically a waste of time except we did get Julie's car in tip-top shape for the trip. So now tomorrow I'll have to work on the house and get stuff ready for vacation. Grace didn't get to play with anyone today except the baby we were babysitting. So I'm guessing she'll need extra playtime tomorrow.

Well again I'm super sleepy so I'll write more tomorrow.

At sessler ford

How i'm passing the time.

Paint

Today is Tuesday so we had gymnastics this morning. Grace woke up around 7:30 and we were only 5 minutes late this morning. While she was working at the gym I ran to Menards to return something we didn't need and then went to pick up Grace's dance pictures. They are adorable! Here is a scan of it:



After that I played around on my laptop for a while to see what else I needed to figure out. I was actually able to turn a "feature" off that was annoying. Then we ran by Radio Shack to return something also. Then we came home and Grace played for a while, we had lunch and then she played all afternoon at her friend across the street's house. While she was there I started painting.

I got some of the shelves for the bookcase primed. Then I was working on our "Paint Organizer." It is a little notebook that lets you write down everything about the way your whole house is painted. It's pretty cool, got it from the paint store. It's made by Rubbermaid.

Then the wallpaper person stopped by. She gave us an estimate that was just a little more than I expected, but to put wallpaper on a ceiling, sounds great! The tile guy called me back today. Sounds like he wants me to get the old tile taken out and the floor repaired before we go on vacation so that he can stop over while we're on vacation and set the tile for us. So I need to get another estimate for the wallpapering and start working on other things in the family room like putting up the wallpaper on the lower portion of the walls, painting, puttying and priming the shelf I put on the ledge, painting the room, installing recessed lighting, making the cornices, having the drapes made and other things I'm probably forgetting.

After dinner which was burgers on the grill (and they were REALLY good tonight BTW) I came down and started painting parts of the bookcase I made. I got all of the face frames painted, the crown molding painted and part of one bookcase section. So we can get a pretty good idea for how it's going to look. And we both like it! Yea! And I painted one area of the room in the three colors we picked out. It looks really cool too. After I get a second coat on it and get the shelf primed and painted I'll take a picture and post that for everyone to see. Ditto for the bookcase although it's already primed and parts are already painted. Maybe we can actually have this family room looking like a room pretty soon! That will be really nice! And it'll be nice to finally be done with these darn bookcases. That's a project that has just lingered. I'm so excited to have the paint to get it finished and see how it looks and how well it will work out for us. It's fun to see an idea from your head come to fruition, but when it takes this long, it's nice just to finally be done with it and cross it off the list!

Well this isn't the most comprehensive blog posting to date, or the best written, but I'm really tired. I'll get more thoughts down tomorrow.

Keys in Cars

Went to bed late last night because I was installing all the updates Toshiba provided on their website on the laptop. I was rebooting between each update to ensure nothing crazy happened and botched the whole system. I forgot to mention the other day that when I went online to register the laptop on Toshiba's website that under "occupation" they actually had an option for "stay at home parent." I was impressed with that! After doing the updates I remembered that I had left the old tile for the entryway in Julie's car and that I needed to take it out. So I went and did that. It crossed my mind at that point that I might have left the keys to "my" car in her console, but I quickly dismissed it thinking I had already taken them out.

Went to bed and then Julie woke me up to say goodbye and it crossed my mind again when I heard her starting her car. So I jumped out of bed and ran down to look where I keep my keys and they weren't there. So I look outside and she's gone already. I think "I'll just call her cell phone and she'll turn around." Yea well that's all fine and dandy if she has the phone on. It wasn't on. So I'm assuming now that I'll be stuck at home today. I had a doctors appointment this morning just to check my weight loss progress and then I wanted to take "my" car back to the dealer since it has never run very well so they could take a look at it. Then after "A" came over and we had lunch we needed to go and pick up the new tile. So I'm thinking the only thing that really matters in this list is the doctor's appointment. I go back to bed and decided to just call the doctor when I wake up and reschedule.

Well you remember how tired Grace was yesterday. I thought that maybe she'd wake up around 8 or 9 at the latest. Well Julie calls around 9 just to let me know where she put my keys. She had gotten half-way to work and noticed the keys in the console and came all the way back to drop them off for me. How sweet is that? She's the best; super late for work, but the best none-the-less. So we talked for a few minutes and then I got up and got moving. After I was all dressed and ready to go it was actually time to go too and Grace still wasn't up. I had to wake her up at 9:40 and my appointment was at 10. So we were a few minutes late but they were running a few minutes late I think because we still had to wait a few minutes before they called me in.

The appointment itself went very well. I still need to exercise more, but at least he can tell I have been exercising and trying to work on my weight. But for the blood tests Julie and I had for our new life insurance quotes I had some liver functions that were elevated. He was concerned about that and wants to retest in about 6-8 weeks. He said my recent illness (bronchitis I think) is probably to blame. So that was good news overall and I left the office pretty pleased.

Then we ran over to the Ford Store. They looked at me like I was stupid when I told them how the car was running. Especially when they took it back into a bay and started it and it sounded fine. I guess I need to videotape it in the morning when I start it. I can't leave it overnight as I need to drive places. My cousin was shaking his head and said "well at least if it blows up you can say you expressed your concern."

That was a waste of time, but at least I did enter my official "might be a problem here" complaint. Then we came home and had lunch. "A" came over and Grace was really excited to see her. They played for a while and then we ran and got the new tile. My salesman was leaving as we got there, so I just went in and waited for someone to help...and waited...and waited. I wasn't impressed; especially when someone finally did help me they didn't really seem like they wanted to. I tried to ask if they carry the carpet we want just to see how much it would cost and he was like "I don't know if we carry that or not, I guess I could go look." I just said never mind.

But when I got the tile home and put a few pieces down on the floor, it looks great! It was a good idea to get different tile because this tile IMHO looks much nicer than the old tile. We just love it. Can't wait to have it put in!

For some reason my computer was acting up today. It was really sluggish and wouldn't connect to any IM service. It wouldn't open any pictures in my emails and eventually wouldn't respond to anything. Finally later this evening I rebooted for a second time and it appears to be working normally now. But in the meantime since it wasn't really working I was using my new laptop. Well I was about to type in a new address in my browser and all of a sudden the laptop just turned off. I wasn't able to revive it AT ALL. It wouldn't work plugged in, didn't work with the battery, it just didn't work at all. So after dinner I ran over to Circuit City and they exchanged it for a new one. It was the power regulator where you connect the power cord to the back. It for some reason failed. Hopefully it won't happen again. I don't want to make this a regular occurrence. They even switched out the hard-drives so I don't have to do all that work again installing all the updates.

For dinner tonight we grilled some pizzas we got from Market Day. They were really good. I had never considered grilling a pizza before. It really added to the flavor.

Tomorrow a wallpaperer is coming over to give us an estimate for putting up the wallpaper on the ceiling in the family room. Hopefully she does it; the first wallpaperer I called didn't do ceilings. I had called an electrician I know through Grace's gymnastics class about putting in some recessed lighting in the Family Room before we put up the wallpaper and paint it. I'm thinking it will be 100 times easier before the wallpaper goes up to take care of that. He never called me back, so I called a relative and he said to call him after we're back from vacation and we can setup a time. That'll be nice too to have because the lighting down in the family room isn't all that great. Speaking of gymnastics, Grace has class tomorrow and I'm supposed to pick up her dance pictures if I don't forget while she's in her gymnastics class.

So how do you feel when you're ignored in a store like I was today? I find it very demeaning. You can't be in business for just your regular customers and forget everyone else. If I wasn't there to only pickup my order, I would have walked out. I just don't have the patience for that anymore. My time is too important to spend waiting for someone else to acknowledge my existence.

Newest Tile

Hello everyone! Today was a fairly relaxing day for us. Grace was at her Aunt's house for most of the day, so we got to sleep in a little this morning. Then we went to the tile store to pick out some new tile that would work better in our entryway. We found a good one! Here is the picture:




Unfortunately, or fortunately, we really can't use a border strip with these tiles, so it will just be a straight tile job. That's good because it will be less expensive, but not so good because we really liked some of the borders we saw. So the details are that this tile is also porcelain and is 12" x 12". I'll need to return the old tile to Lowe's as soon as possible because if I don't I'll end up waiting too long and not be able to return it.

After that we went to the shoe store. I got some new shoes and Julie got some new work shoes. At first I dropped Julie off and ran by the bike store to drop off a poster and some fliers for a bike race we're going to next month. It's called Rolling on the River. You should check it out. It should be a lot of fun. We're planning to go and camp there and are volunteering to help out.

Then we stopped at Best Buy on the way home because I had seen a laptop holder in their ad this week that I may have been able to modify and use in the car. But after we actually saw it we both agreed that it wasn't going to work and that we'll have to just wait and see how the other case we ordered works out.

After a quick lunch and my Aunt bringing Grace home, we headed to my sister's house for some cake and ice cream. They were having a little get-together for my BIL and their daughter's birthdays. Just minutes after getting in the car to drive over there, Grace fell fast asleep and I got a quick picture of her.



Isn't she just adorable? We think so but we are biased. She had a great time at the party with her cousins and we had a good time too talking with everyone. My BIL's father got a new bike recently and so we were talking about biking a lot. My BIL got himself an iPhone for his birthday present. I got to check it out and play with it. WOW is it ever cool. Julie got to talk on it and said the sound quality and reception was good. It's just really cool! If they'd just do the next step and add the few features it's missing (which I didn't know about until today) it might be a must buy for me. But for now considering the price and the fact that our cell phone contracts with Verizon aren't up until late March, it's not feasible for us to even consider it.

For those that are interested, the things it's missing are: GPS capability; It has built-in mapping functions but no GPS so you can't use it for directions from your current location, etc. There is no chat client, only text messaging. You can't personalize the main menu the way you want it, although it might not be necessary. You can't use it as a modem for your laptop. The largest capacity you can buy for the iPod functions is 8 Gb which would be plenty for me for the music I like to carry, but if you want to carry movies or TV shows to watch that's pretty useless. The user interface, while VERY slick, is a little confusing at first. There is only one navigation button and it takes you to the main menu every time you press it. So if you are surfing the internet, it leaves that application running and takes you back to the main menu. I found myself clicking a lot to get to something different. You can't edit or do anything with office documents like Word or Excel files. It doesn't have a To-Do list and it requires a 2-year contract even though you've thrown $500+ on the phone itself. Please note this doesn't mean I don't like it. I REALLY like it, I'm just pointing out the things I noticed that it didn't have that I WISH it did.

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that we finally bought an indoor bike trainer to use in the winter or on bad weather days. We of course don't really have room to use it in the exercise area of our basement yet, but we will. I'm really excited to finally have one. I've been wanting one for years and it was finally just the right price so we got it. I've got it put together already but haven't tried it out yet. It's a rim-drive model because since I have a mountain bike that's the only type of trainer I can use. Julie has a hybrid (part mountain bike, part road bike) and so she could have used pretty much any trainer, but I needed the rim drive one.

I also forgot to mention that we went and picked out paint colors for our family room yesterday! Can you hardly believe it? I'm really excited about that too. The medium color is the upper portion of the walls. The lightest color is for the trim and the darker color is for the bottom of the walls which will have a special textured wallpaper hung first. They only had one gallon of the black paint for the ceiling so we'll have to go back and get the second gallon later. But that's alright because we still have to install some recessed lighting and hang the wallpaper on the ceiling before we can paint it anyway. Here is how they look together:



So this means I can finally paint the bookcase I made and we can start using it! YEA! And our room will start to look the way we want it too instead of "builder beige." I'm so very sick of that color! I swear every room in our house was that color when we moved in. It has got to go! No more builder beige!

Well, that'll have to be enough for today as I'm falling asleep now. Goodnight!

Sorry

Hello there everyone. I've been a little busy and so haven't been blogging lately. Don't think that I'm stopping because I'm not, just took a break for awhile. So what's been happening...lots I suppose.

Julie's Aunt stayed with us for the last week. Grace had a wonderful time with her. We'll be heading out towards her house next week on vacation as we're driving to Colorado. We'll be staying at her house and then she'll be coming with us too! So Grace and I will have someone to sightsee with while Julie is busy stamping at the Stampin' Up convention.

My niece had a birthday and Grace got to go to her birthday party last Saturday. She had another birthday party for a friend of hers from gymnastics on Sunday so Grace was booked last weekend. We took Julie's Aunt up to the Milwaukee airport on Sunday also as she was going up to northern Wisconsin to see her son and grandchildren. Then we picked her back up on Wednesday. Tuesday was really busy; Grace had her gymnastics and then we went shopping for a little while and had lunch. Then she had a swimming party at a friends house. Then in the evening was our village's board meeting. Then on Friday Grace and I got adjustments at the chiropractor. Grace didn't hardly need any adjustments, but I did - mostly in my lower back which is not where I normally need adjustments.

We have been trying to decide what to buy so that Grace can watch movies in the car on our vacation next week. We were looking at the personal DVD players and had picked one out that had a super long battery life (12 hours) but before we could buy it, Julie says "what about a laptop?" So we stopped buying the DVD player and I started researching. We ended up getting a laptop for only $150 more than a DVD player. And this way I'll be able to check my email, surf and blog while we're away from home. The only problem we're having is deciding how to secure the laptop in the car as we're driving. We did find a laptop bag that attaches to the seat in the car, but it's only available online and we couldn't look at it before buying it. So when it comes this week we'll take a look at it and see if it's what we were looking for. The other option I found was an "extra" screen that attaches to the headrest. It's actually designed for the personal DVD players so that you would have two screens in the car, but I thought we could just hook the laptop up to the screen and then the laptop could be in the console or wherever. That'll be our second option I think if the bag we ordered isn't what we want.

Along with the laptop, we got a free printer, wireless router (that I'll use as a switch since we already have a wireless router), and anti-spyware software. The printer we got wasn't all that, so I took it back and "upgraded" to the next model which just happened to be on sale for the same price, so it didn't cost anything. So our office equipment is looking a little fresher and vacation will be so much easier! Thank you Circuit City!

Still no word on the new car. We were informed that it had been "submitted to plant" remember, but no updates since then, so I'm assuming it hasn't even made it to the assembly line yet. Darn that Mayor Bloomberg! As far as the Libertyville Lincoln Mercury deal; we are still waiting on the dealership to make a decision. Visa has decided to refund the money, but the dealership could refuse and that would put everything right back where we started.

I got the grass mowed this evening. Grace went for a sleep-over at her Aunt's house in Vernon Hills. She was over at our house picking up some stamping stuff and asked if we'd like that. We answered yes obviously. She's down right now because they laid her off at her job. Grace will be glad to cheer her up.

DirecTV activated the HD receiver my BIL ordered on eBay with no problems, so now my in-laws have hi-def DirecTV. I think they like it, but it's only been a day. I think they need more time to know for sure.

So now our focus turns to vacation and getting everything ready for that. It'll be a big undertaking, but it should also be a lot of fun. Our chiropractor said this morning that he's driven this trip and it's a pretty easy drive and quite beautiful after you get out of Nebraska (no offense Luvy!)

I'll need to make sure Julie's car is ready for the trip since we weren't planning to take it. We keep up with our routine maintenance, but this trip isn't routine so I'll have to be extra diligent with it before we go.

I've been eying some servers on eBay. Don't think Julie would like me buying anything like that, but if it's within my weekly "allowance" it'll be alright. I've found some older IBM servers that have been going for some pretty low amounts but will suit us just fine considering we only have 3-5 (depending on the day) computers in our house. And I've been buying Grace some games for her Leapster that we got her for our trip. Now I need to go through the house and find stuff to sell!

Alright, that's enough for now. We need to eat dinner. I will be blogging again tomorrow.

Fridays and DirecTV again

The week is over and today was a little busy; picked up Julie's Aunt from the airport which took a little longer than expected. First Grace and I hit traffic on 294 southbound the last 5 miles before 190. It wasn't exactly stop and go, but it wasn't much better. I think it took us at least 20 minutes to go those 5 miles. Then we get up to the arrival area and we're waiting for the luggage to come and Grace HAS to go to the bathroom. So we had to park and walk all the way inside to a bathroom. And of course this is when my Aunt's luggage finally shows up. It took an hour from when the plane landed to when the luggage came out.

Then she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast so we stopped at Culver's for a snack and she had a late lunch. Then we headed over to our house so she could get settled into her room. Julie actually made it home in about an hour and we ended up getting over to her parents pretty early tonight. Had a great meal and my BIL and I played with the DirecTV HD box he got off of eBay.

Alright, so you remember everything I said yesterday about the HiDef receiver we have and maybe this one that my BIL just got being phased out in a few months. Well when I called DirecTV yesterday about ordering a new access card for this receiver I didn't know the model or any of the particulars about it, so they couldn't tell me if it was being phased out or not. So my BIL sent me the info about the model number and I called DirecTV earlier today to find out if it is one of the models being phased out. After waiting on hold for a few minutes, she comes back and says that all models are being phased out and only these 2 models (HR20-100 and HR20-700) are going to be compatible with the new channels being rolled out this fall. I said I thought the normal H20 model was compatible and she said yes it was too. Both of the models she mentioned are DVR models. So according to her, only three models will be compatible with the new channels when they roll-out in the fall. Plus we will need an additional new dish on the roof to receive the signal from the two new satellites that are broadcasting these signals.

Anyway, I called to find out whether this receiver was being phased out too (that my BIL bought) and yes it is since it isn't one of those other models. So I talked to my BIL and we decided that we'd try to get the access card anyway even though they told me I couldn't get one yesterday. So after dinner I called and the girl I got processed it as if nothing was wrong. Should have the card in a couple days and have no problems hopefully when we go to actually activate this new receiver. So we should be good with it for quite a while as I don't believe they will actually phase them out for another couple of years, they just won't be able to receive the new channels they will be offering. But only time will truly tell.

It was great to see Julie's Aunt today. We haven't seen her in several months. When we go on vacation later this month we'll be stopping at her house en-route to Colorado. Can't wait! Just wish we'd have our new car by then. But it's looking slimmer and slimmer that it might be a reality.

Hurray

As it stands right now, Visa has refunded our money from Libertyville Lincoln Mercury. Yea! The dispute representative at Visa is out of the office until next Tuesday so I can't confirm with her why they've done this. I'm not sure if the dealership has allowed this to happen or maybe they didn't file a rebuttal to the dispute in a timely fashion, or whether Visa just made this decision and the dealership had no choice. But as of now, we have our money and everything in the world is B-E-A-utiful!

Now as far as our new car, still no word from the factory. Also Ford has dropped all incentives for 2008 Escape Hybrids. If you want any 2007 vehicle: 0% financing. 2008 vehicle, nothing; Lucky me.

Grace didn't sleep in this morning and "A" went swimming with a friend so it was just Grace and I until the afternoon when her friend from across the street came over to play. While they were playing I finished putting up the shelf I've been working on. I also touched up the walls a bit from wear-and-tear (read: Grace) over the last couple of years. I started getting things ready for Julie's Aunt whom Grace and I are picking up from the airport tomorrow. She'll be staying with us for a few days. She won't be surprised at how clean and organized our house is, that's for sure. But at least she'll have a bed to sleep in and a roof over her head.

We ate out tonight to "celebrate" getting our money back from the dealership. Hopefully it will stand as is; who knows what will happen considering how stubborn they were with this case for so long. Only time will tell.

Commercial
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Roger: "Sorry? I have Comcast Digital Voice."
Voice over: "Your phone calls won't change, they'll just cost less."

I called DirecTV again today because we bought a second HiDef receiver and need an access card to use in it. Come to find out that the HiDef receiver we have now will be deprecated sometime soon and we'll need to buy yet another HiDef receiver. Just so you know, our receiver model is the H10. So if you have a DirecTV Model H10 HiDef receiver, you will need to buy a new receiver in the next few months. This is because they are changing their HiDef channel lineup in the fall and they are switching to Mpeg-4 encoding and the H10 HiDef model won't process Mpeg-4 audio. So now more expenses for us and how many other customers.

Have any of you heard about what happened in the Boulder High School in Colorado a couple of months ago? Personally I find it appalling. Here is a link to an article about it. You won't find an article in ANY mainstream newspaper because they don't want you to know about it. I can't believe anything they said was presented to any child and I'm really surprised that there isn't more community outrage over what transpired. Here is a transcript of the entire panel. These alleged experts were telling this assembly of students (which had mandatory attendance) that you should experiment with drugs and sex and same-sex sex, etc. Absolutely astounding that this goes on in our own country and even worse that hardly anyone is complaining about it. I don't get it.

Mon, Tue, Wed/Fourth of July

I've been a little busy with projects around the house and so I haven't written lately. Monday was depressing because of what my last post said. I've been hearing from more and more people that tell me they've sent emails to Dan Marks the owner of Libertyville Lincoln Mercury. So that makes me feel a little better. Thank you to everyone whom has done that! We had dinner at our friend across the street's house Monday night. They made buffalo that they bought from a vendor at the Grayslake Farmers Market. Wow was it really good! Very lean and tasty. We drank some beer and a lot of wine though and so it was good our "commute" was short because I couldn't have driven home. :-)

Tuesday was gymnastics and since Grace was up late Monday night she was really dragging at class. But I think most of the girls in her class were dragging. Miss Debb, her teacher, was trying to get all of them into it but they weren't responding very well. Grace did seem to kind of wake up about half way through the class. After that we just hung out for a while and then a guy that lives down the street stopped by. He is a tile-guy and was stopping to give us an estimate for putting the new tile in our entryway. He recommended that we get smaller tile. The tile we bought was 18" x 18" and he thought that 12" x 12" would fit better considering the size of our entryway. He also thought the edge piece we picked up was too small and would be lost with the trim piece we'll put over the transition from the tile to the hardwood. So we'll have to return this tile and find something more appropriate. He was over for about a half-hour and explained everything very well. I've heard absolutely nothing but good things about him and about his work plus he has 29 years of experience. So no matter the cost I'm sure he's worth it. He called later to tell us the price and it was more than I expected which is what another neighbor said to expect. But like I said, quality is what we're after and since it's the entryway and the first thing you see when you enter our house, I'd like it to be perfect.

Today was the 4th of July and we didn't really do much. I had finished painting a shelf I wanted to hang in the dining room to put my cactus's on, but I had a few difficulties hanging it so I'll have to make a quick trip to the hardware store tomorrow. Lets just say that hanging shelves on drywall isn't the easiest combination. We went to Julie's sister's house for a picnic this afternoon. We had a really fun time and Grace wouldn't hardly get out of the pool. She's going to sleep good tonight! Our lawyer was there and so we talked about our "issue" and now we have a new line of offense to start implementing.

So that is the last three days in a nutshell. We got a whole inch of rain last night. And it was humid today; hot and humid. Now we're hearing the nightly barrage of mortar rounds outside. I'm so glad fireworks are illegal here or else we might have to hear mortar rounds outside every night, ha-ha. As a veteran, I feel very strongly about my country and I'm glad to live here and I'm very happy we are a free country, etc., etc., etc. However, fireworks just don't do anything for me. Especially when we are in a drought and fire is not our friend and since the larger fireworks are illegal here. I just don't get it. I'm tired of everyone in this country only caring about themselves and not about anyone else or our country.

Speaking of our country, did you hear about Al Gore's son getting arrested today for driving his Toyota Prius at about 100 mph on the highway in California? And then they found drugs both illegal and prescription (and he didn't have a prescription for them.) Oops! Daddy's not gonna like that one.

And then in Wichita Kansas a woman was stabbed in a convenience store and people were stepping over her and taking photos with their cell phones instead of calling for help. She later died at the hospital. What is this country coming too? Do we care about ourselves so much that a person can lay dying and we'll stop to take a picture while picking up some Gatorade, and not help them? This is absolute disregard for human life. I guess I'm just old-fashioned since I believe in the old adage that you treat others how you'd like to be treated. That's what we try to teach Grace. That's what my parents taught me and that's also what the bible says. So why doesn't anyone do this any more? Are these the same people that are "horrified" at the number of civilians being killed in Iraq?

That's another issue I'm just sick of hearing about. U.S. troops are not killing civilians, and if they happen too it's not intentional, it's Al-Qaeda and the insurgents that are doing that along with killing our troops too. Does everyone really want Iraq to become another Vietnam just to prove how "wrong" President Bush was about this war? He won't be in office for much longer and I don't think "proving" anything about him, right or wrong, is going to improve our situation in Iraq or help us to select our next president. I don't blame President Bush at all for what has transpired and I think he did the right thing. Whether we should be there or not right now is no longer the point. The point now is what will happen if we just walk away without stability in the country. Granted the other side of the story is that stability will never come while we are there. But I personally feel it will be much worse without our presence.

Alright, that's enough ranting. Tomorrow will be here before long and I need some rest.

Illinos Attorney General Lisa Madigan

You hear on the news all the time about how Lisa Madigan goes after big business for the little guy. Well not in our case. I finally was able to talk to the representative from her Chicago office and she said the case has been closed and that there is nothing they can do.

Obviously I'm not so happy about this newest development, but I'm not about to give up either. I'll need to contact my lawyer now and see if she feels we have a case. I'm working diligently on the website I was going to create to help bring defamation to their business's name. I will also start placing ads in local papers telling people not to buy from them. Julie and I were also planning to go to the dealership with the last letter we sent to the Attorney General and have him read it and talk to us man-to-man. I'm not certain if the Attorney General ever forwarded it to the dealership and so we aren't sure if he's even read it. Plus he never responded to the first letter we sent him. So we're going to confront him face to face and see what happens. Anyone else have any ideas? Any help is appreciated.

Please keep my email campaign going. Please forward this text to everyone in your address book so they can email the dealership too. Have them email it to llmdan@aol.com - here is the text again:

I have recently been made aware of how a friend of mine, Mr. Steve Serres, was treated at your dealership Libertyville Lincoln Mercury Mr. Marks. I wanted to let you know that I am appalled at how my friend was treated and unless you return the $1,500 to him I plan to never do business with your dealership. Furthermore, I will make sure all of my family members, co-workers and friends are made aware of how you treated Mr. Serres and recommend that they never do business with you either. Please keep track of how many of these emails you receive and multiply it by how many family members, co-workers and friends you think each person might have. When you add all those numbers up, this will be how many customers at a minimum that will never do business with you; these are lost customers and lost revenue. And the more people that know the more your dealerships image will be tarnished. I look forward to hearing from Mr. Serres that his money has been returned.

Date (Shopping) Day

Julie and I were dropping Grace off at her Aunt's house so we could go out to lunch and out for a date, but it turned into more of a shopping trip than anything. We made it to Algonquin to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise which was just alright. It wasn't a special burger, but the strawberry lemonade was good and the onion strings were really good too. After that we wanted to run over to Lowe's to look around and pick out some paint colors for the upstairs bathroom.

First though we stopped at a home theater store and were looking at furniture. They really only had one brand Barcolounger. They obviously aren't new to the furniture business as they've been in that business for about 70 years, but they are new to the theater seating furniture business and their prices likewise show that as they are trying to regain some of their R&D dollars by charging so much for their product. So we probably will stick with the furniture we have already picked out but we did learn a few new things. If you get the power version of the theater chairs it will stop in the position you stop it in. If you have the manual version which generally operates just like a normal recliner, you only have a few positions it will stop in. So the power option is the way to go; something we had never considered.

We also discovered another option for a row of seating. It's a HUGE bean bag chair that would seat two adults and probably 3-4 kids. It looked really comfy and I think it'd be a great option. Plus when you don't need it you can store it somewhere else and have the extra room.

After that we headed over to Lowe's and found the tile section. We ended up buying new tile for our entryway. Not sure when I'll start installing it, but we got the tile. There was a matching border that went with it, but it was quite expensive and we aren't sure we want to spend the money, but after bringing it home and laying it on the floor to see how it looks, we REALLY like it and we just might end up going back to get more.

We also brought our picture from our trip to Michigan earlier this year where we were on the beach and got some great shots of the sky, the water, and the sand (and even Grace.) This was what we were looking for to pick colors to paint our upstairs bathroom and when we got there to the beach, we both knew that as long as the pictures translated the colors the way we saw them that it would be perfect. It did take us a few minutes, but the colors we picked are really close. I brought home some of the actual sand from the beach and we brought that with us too. So we have some really good colors picked out. I can't wait to work on that too! Here is the picture we based the colors on:



Here are the colors we selected:



Here is the new entry tile we bought and the one strip of the border we bought:



Here is the one sample I already painted for the ceiling of the family room:



I'll finish painting the other sample tomorrow and add that picture then.