Hannah Eileen Salcher

More sad news...

Our "niece's" daughter lost her battle with MPS-1 disorder on Saturday at only 17 months.

Hannah Eileen Salcher
7 July 2007 - 27 December 2008

...or I'll shoot the car

Here's a fun commercial for the Audi R8:

Benno Martin Freund

Sadly, my father-in-law lost his battle with cancer this morning. Please keep our family in your prayers.

Benno Martin Freund
20 July 1932 - 6 December 2008

Misc. Musings

Interesting website:
howobamagotelected.com

Something I just found:
paperbackswap.com

Sunday

So the weekend is over already. Time surely flies by when you least expect it to...or maybe it does it all the time.

How is everyone today? Me? Not so great really. Not only did the Bears lose, but both of my fantasy football teams are falling apart at the seams. Of course it doesn't help that I'm selecting the wrong players to put in my lineup, but that's an entire other conversation.

We went to see Grace's ophthalmologist yesterday and my fears were warranted as he decided to have Grace wear a patch on her good eye for 6 hours a day until when we go back in March of next year. Surprisingly she was excited about this and wanted to put one on right away; but it only lasted a few hours as before we were even home she was complaining and wanting to take it off.

In her defense though she isn't feeling well and has a horrible cough. Hopefully she will feel better tomorrow or she might not get to go to school. We don't want her whole kindergarten class getting sick. This is her last week before Thanksgiving break next week so hopefully we won't miss any days this week. Especially since she enjoys school so much.

I tried to buy a new study bible this weekend but bought the wrong one. I needed the hardcover version to put in a book cover and accidentally bought the leather bound version. So I'll have to return that one and get the right one. The biggest difference is the cost as the leather version is about twice the cost of the hardback version. I suppose I should be a little more observant.

Wow - I really stink at keeping up with this blog

Here we are in mid-November already. Thanksgiving is just under two weeks away and the baby will be here in just over two months. My how time flies.

Things have been going as usual around here lately. Nothing out of the ordinary really. We still haven't painted or even really prepared the babies room. We have selected the paint colors and I will be starting on that shortly. Then there is the matter of the bed that's currently in the room. We need to let it go so we have room for the babies things in there. It doesn't bode well for our future visitors but we'll figure something out for them when the time comes I suppose.

For Halloween Grace was a cowgirl. Here is a photo:



She was pretty darned cute. She did quite a bit of trick-or-treating this year and likewise got quite a bit of candy. For some reason she really likes to eat it. Ha-ha. Of course her parents would never eat any of it...

Since our town celebrated Halloween with trick-or-treating on Halloween day this year instead of on the Sunday after like it has always been since we've lived here, we had considerably fewer trick-or-treaters as well. I didn't count the number of trick-or-treaters this year but we bought much less candy than we normally do and still had some left over. It's a little disappointing but at the same time it's alright because we didn't have to buy as much candy and it didn't interrupt the Bears game. :-)

Also, for one of possibly several reasons our pumpkins were not smashed this year. It could be that since we now have our own police force that the hoodlums decided to abandon their previous mischievous ways. It also may be that the kids that have done this in the past are simply older now and don't find joy in it - or are possibly away at school now. No matter the reason, I stood watch over our pumpkins until 5 am on Halloween night ensuring that we didn't lose any pumpkins. I tried to stay up the next night, but for obvious reasons I couldn't really stay awake.

So a crisis was averted and Grace had a great Halloween. Certainly better than last year when she had her eye surgery. Speaking of which, Grace has a follow-up with her eye surgeon/doctor tomorrow morning. Hopefully her lazy eye is still strong and not wandering. At the last visit the doctor said that her lazy eye was showing signs of returning and he was considering patching again but that he'd give her a few months to see how it does. I think his biggest concern was that possibly she wasn't wearing her glasses as often as she should, but she wears them pretty much exclusively all day long. Personally I'm worried about this since I know she wears her glasses all day. Hopefully it won't be an issue, but we'll find out in about 12 hours.

I can't really say much about the election except that I was disappointed that Senator John McCain lost. But at the same time I must say I'm impressed so far with how President-elect Obama has carried himself and how he's assembling his staff and just in general going about his current task of preparing for the transition to the presidency. That's not to say I'm not worried. A democrat as liberal as he is, to me, is very scary in the white house. And the signs we're seeing now with the gay marriage activist's not only picketing in San Francisco, but attacking an elderly christian woman holding a cross. That's unacceptable. The bill (proposition 8) in California was defeated and there isn't anything anyone can do to change that right now. They can bring about a new proposal in the future but for now the issue is moot.

Personally I don't feel gay marriage is a civil right that is provided for in the constitution. The constitution doesn't mention this at all and so therefore they have no right (in my opinion) to demand this as a civil right.

If you aren't familiar with the underlying reasons behind this picketing let me enlighten you. This is the beginning of the all-new and much improved culture war in America since the liberals now have someone in power at the highest level of government. This is their (secular progressives) calling to try and put into law their radical liberal ideas and it's beginning before President-elect Obama is even in official power. These are some of the things they are going to try and get enacted during the president-elect's tenure:

gay marriage (obviously)
limiting gun possession
legalizing narcotics
unrestricted abortion
revocation of the patriot act

It could also include socialistic ideas such as sharing of wealth and more of our freedom and capitalistic ideas being overturned. The very ideals that our country was founded on.

Did you hear about the ad campaign being put on the sides of buses in Washington, DC? These are anti-God or anti-Christian ads. Here is one of them:



Is this another secular progressive move? Who knows, but personally I take offense to this.

Alright, that's enough for today. Until next time...

Free VM software TODAY ONLY

Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CODEWEAVERS' SOFTWARE FREE FOR DOWNLOAD THANKS TO GEORGE W. BUSH AND FALLING GAS PRICES

Giveaway Triggered in CodeWeaver's Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge; "We take full responsibility for global economic collapse," says CEO

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (October 27, 2008) – The catastrophic cratering of the global economy, falling gas prices and President George W. Bush's recent executive activities have indirectly prompted Saint Paul gadfly software developers CodeWeavers, Inc., to provide free software for every American on Oct. 28, company officials reluctantly announced today.

In July, CodeWeavers – whose software lets Mac OS X and Linux users run Windows programs without having to Microsoft for a Windows OS license – launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge (lameduck.codeweavers.com) to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.

The goals focused on President Bush making specific positive accomplishments in areas such as the economy, home values, the stock market, the war on terror and other key issues. Specifically, one goal called for President Bush to help down bring average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon.

On Monday, Oct. 14, gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did just that.

"That morning, I was filling my tank at Big Steve's Gas Palace in St. Paul," said Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers. "I had just finished my morning corn dog and 64-ounce Dr. Pepper when I looked at the pump and noticed gas was at $2.79. I screamed ‘Woohoo,' then I yelled ‘Oh, crap!' as I realized every American can now have my software for free. Kind of upsets my fourth quarter revenue projections..."

White admits this is not how he foresaw the Challenge unfolding.

"I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?" White said. "On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it's free software for all!"

How to Get the Free Software
On Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, any one visiting the CodeWeavers' Web site (www.codeweavers.com) will be given a deal code that will entitle them to one free copy of CodeWeavers' award-winning CrossOver software. Each copy comes complete with support.

"I realize that by giving away all my software, I've caused horrific damage to my company's bottom line," White said. "In fact, our vice president of sales wretched Starbucks all over his shirt when he learned the news. But, I figure, the way the economy is going, in a few months everyone might be out on the streets, wearing potato sacks and standing in line for squirrel soup, so why not?"

White also noted that if other Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge goals are met, CodeWeavers will once again provide free software. Goals include:

* Return the stock market to it's 2008 high
* Reduce the average price of a gallon of milk to $3.50
* Create at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year
* Return the median home price to its Jan. 1, 2008 level
* Bring Osama Bin-Laden to justice

About CodeWeavers

Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers today focuses on the development of Wine: the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Mac OS X and Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the UK and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

Obama

Just in case you didn't know, redistribution of wealth is SOCIALISM.

From wikipedia:
Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.

Additionally raising taxes for some won't help the economy.

Just my 2¢

hello

Sorry for the time away...we've been extremely busy. Not that being busy is some kind of great excuse, but anyway, I digress...

Things are going well here. We've been getting ready for Halloween; Grace is going to be a cowgirl this year. I will post pictures after the fact but it's a really cute costume.

I'm already on the prowl looking out for the mischievous pumpkin smashers that appear each year and smash everyone's pumpkins here in our subdivision. Last year I was very close to catching them. If they come around this year, I won't be close, I'll catch them. I'm tired of wasting my money each year on our pumpkins only to have them be destroyed by some kids in the neighborhood with nothing better to do. Not only is it the money we lose but it's devastating to Grace because we work hard going to the pumpkin farm and pick out just the right pumpkins. Then she colors them and we put them out on the porch as our Halloween decorations. When she has seen that her pumpkins have been missing in the previous years she has been very disappointed. I'm tired of seeing her little disappointed face.

Enough of Halloween...this also means we're approaching the end of the year. Can you believe it? It's hard to believe there is only about 66 days left in the year? WOW! Which means it's only around 90 days until our new baby will be here. WOW! Guess we should start getting ready for that huh?

We did do some house planning today by finally coming up with a plan for our kitchen. If you'll recall we closed in the wall between the kitchen and the family room downstairs so that we could put cabinets on that wall in the kitchen. We went to my favorite store and saw a kitchen planner and between her ideas and our ideas we hammered out a plan that I think will fix most of our problems. As we had originally envisioned we'll put a pantry on our new wall. That wall will also get lower cabinets with a counter on top of them and upper cabinets above that. The wall with the stove and refrigerator remains unchanged and the other wall will change by moving the sink under the window (thank you!) and moving the dishwasher over at the same time between the sink and the sliding door. This opens up the area to the left of the sink for more counter space.

So with all of these changes we'll gain more counter space and a lot more cabinet space. And our kitchen should actually hold our food and cooking utensils and devices. Plus I was impressed with the total price for all the cabinets in the kitchen; much less than I expected, not that we have that much money...

As far as the playset and landscaping are concerned, my "expert" analysis was correct as the landscaping company came the next day and took away six inches of soil so that we could put in the playset and mulch. It took 2 1/2 days to put the playset up and then it took another day to put the mulch in. It will probably end up taking more time and effort to remove the old playset. Not because it was well constructed or well put-together. But the years it had been there made it more difficult to take apart plus there was the cement on the bottom that had to be broken up. I've done all of that and moved the cement pieces behind the shed to hide them. Now comes the problem of disposing of the pressure-treated lumber that made up the old playset.

I made it a point to call our disposal company and specifically ask how they would like me to handle getting rid of this wood. They asked how much I had and I tried to describe as best I could over the phone. After this they stated to just put it out with my regular pickup and the driver should take it. They didn't so I called back. They said they'd have the driver return on Friday (Wednesday is our normal pickup day) and pick it up. The next day she calls back and said the driver stated it was not a small playset, but a LARGE playset and that it couldn't possibly be picked up with our normal garbage pickup. Are you kidding me? A LARGE playset? It's not even an entire playset! It's just the tower portion of a small playset to begin with. I didn't even put the whole thing out because I couldn't have anything longer than 5 feet and I didn't have the time to cut those pieces down.

Anyway, it all boils down to the fact that they want $15 to pick it up our old playset. Expensive - not at all. A relative bargain when you consider my other options: 1-800-got-junk would probably charge over $200 to do this, although they would also remove the cement that the garbage company won't take, and if I take it to the dump myself they have a minimum charge no matter how much you bring there and while I don't remember what that charge is, I know it's significantly higher than $15. If you think about the garbage company not taking cement, it really doesn't make sense, they won't take cement and they specifically told me to take it to the dump myself. However, where does our garbage go? The dump maybe???? Anyway, maybe it's just a weight issue with carrying cement along with all the other garbage.

So I've played along, but I'm going to document photographically everything that I'm putting out this week for my $15. Which I will be putting everything out for that extra charge. And I will share my documentation with the office staff so that they know exactly how much the driver is considering "excessive" for a regular pickup. My contention here is that the driver didn't want to pick it up and just said it was too much for a regular pickup and/or they just want more money from me. Whether I get my $15 back...who knows, but it's worth a shot. Why waste $15 just because I might have a lazy garbage driver.

Grace's birthday turned out great. We decided to have a horse-themed party here at the house instead of the actual horse farm in exchange for inviting more people to her party. So we invited 15 kids to the party. It turned out really well; almost everyone came and I think they all had a great time. I know Grace had a great time! Which reminds me...we have to get those thank-you's out.

miscellaneous observations

I just found this article about DNA testing on dog poop that isn't picked up. I've wanted to do this for the neighbors that don't pick up after their dog in my yard.

The next thing I found was this article about the new Chevy Volt. Wow that sounds really cool. It would be perfect for me - except that it's a car instead of an SUV so I wouldn't be able to carry as much cargo as I'm carrying in my Escape. But otherwise it would be perfect because I don't hardly ever drive over 40 miles at a time. If they can get this thing going and then other manufacturers follow suit...

Around here things have been pretty typical. We're recovering from a LOT of rain. Personally here at our house we got about 9 inches of rain over the last week or so. It's unfortunately delayed the landscaper from coming out and finishing preparing the area where we're going to put the new playset for Grace. I'm hoping they come tomorrow as in my "expert" opinion the soil should be dry enough to dig now: we'll see. What I do know is my patience is growing thin with them. They have already been out and did all the work, it just wasn't the work we had agreed to. So now that have to come back and finish it but it just keeps raining.

We're struggling to decide what to do for Grace's 6th birthday party. We want to do something special considering this will be her last birthday without a sibling. We've been considering doing a party at a local horse riding place but for the cost it just doesn't give you a lot in return. So we're not sure right now what we're doing.

If this is true...

...then it should make the election a slam dunk for Senator John McCain.

Here is the article from the New York Post: Sen. Barack Obama...Wants a Delay In Negotiations For Removal

What the article basically states (if you don't want to read it) is that Senator Barack Obama's trip to Iraq in July was a secret meeting in which he demanded (not requested) that they break off negotiations with the Bush administration about troop withdrawal until after the election was over. Seems he doesn't want the Bush administration to look good in any way and wants the situation in Iraq to look as bad as possible so that his platform still has legs to stand on. The Iraqi's are worried that if Obama is elected president that he will purposefully try to ruin their country to try and prove that the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptively striking other countries before they strike at us is a bad idea.

This is definitely not "new" politics; sounds more like the same old type of politics that no one appreciates and this country does not need. Speaking of politics, don't expect to hear of this at all from the mainstream media since they're so much in the bag for Obama, they will do everything they can to hide this story.

Explain these gas prices again...

Explain why gas prices have shot up in the last week from $3.67 a gallon to $4.35 a gallon when this was released today:

Oil refiners in Texas and Louisiana prepared to restart plants. Ike caused minimal damage to facilities in an area that supplies about half of the fuel and crude used in the eastern half of the U.S. Crude oil fell to a seven-month low and gasoline futures fell.

We'd better see gas prices falling soon - this is ridiculous. I'm so tired of prices rising because of speculation and supposed short supply being forecast. These aren't actual conditions they are made-up "market" type conditions and don't reflect the current conditions the oil companies are facing it's only what they "might" face in the coming weeks. Since when does a supply and demand commodity like oil have prices rise on speculation that conditions may change? The current price should be what it cost the oil company to purchase the crude oil and the actual cost of refining it into gasoline plus their markup and of course the city and state tax added on top of that.

Crude prices are around $100 a gallon as opposed to over $200 a gallon only a month or two ago and yet gasoline prices have really not fallen.



While I'm on my rant I'll complain about the airline industry as well. Not only are ticket prices going up, but they're (some are) increasing the prices for bags you check. I don't care if gasoline prices remain around $4.50 a gallon it will still be cheaper to drive somewhere (assuming you can actually drive there) than to fly. I completely understand that the airline industry has seen a downturn in their profits and probably overall ridership as well, but increasing your overall ticket prices as well as adding these crazy extra fees is just going to push ridership down more.

Just my two cents. Thanks for listening...

What Makes a Great President

I read this article in Parade magazine that comes in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday's today and I thought everyone that votes should really read it.

The Secrets of America's Great Presidents

I found it very enlightening and it made the candidate that I'm planning to vote for stand out even more.

Super Busy

Wow was this a busy week! Monday I had my fantasy football draft and then Julie and Grace came home. Grace then had school all the rest of the week as well as her dance and gymnastics. Julie's Aunt came back here on Wednesday and left on Saturday. So she came with us to see her brother (Julie's Dad) on Friday night. We were enjoying talking so we got home late on Friday night. Then yesterday Aunt Pat went home and Grace had her first soccer game of the season for this fall.

Later last night my Sister came over with her two girls and we attempted to have our family movie night, but the DVD player didn't cooperate. It ended up being a Jon and Kate plus 8 marathon. So Grace was up late last night too and then we got up fairly early today to get to church and she has just been super crabby for most of the day. At church I wasn't sure we were even going to make it into the building. She was throwing such a fit. But we made it through and for most of the day she really wasn't so bad but then again tonight around dinner time she just lost it again. Now she's in bed though and I'm sure she'll be back to normal by the morning.

Looks like I'm going to win both of my fantasy football games today. I've already won the Fox Sports league I'm in and as long as Adam Vinatieri doesn't score another 13 points in the fourth quarter for the Colts I'll win my other league too. It's a better start than last year. I had probably the worst fantasy season ever last year so it feels good to have a strong start.

School Rocks

Grace has only gone to school for two days now but each time she gets off the bus she can't say it any more excitedly about how good her day was. She absolutely loves school and enjoys every minute of it I think. She was so excited to go on Friday (her second day) we had to go to the bus stop 15 minutes before the bus was coming. She just couldn't stand to be in the house when the bus would be coming "soon." I'm imagining the excitement wearing off at some point, but hopefully she'll enjoy her whole year.

We've been getting handout after handout each day (all two of them.) One of the things we got yesterday was called "Parent Information Exchange." It's a form that we have to fill out and return to the teacher and one of the questions on there is "Three goals for your child's school success this year." I'm not sure what to put for that. In fact most of the questions on this sheet are very thought provoking and neither Julie nor I were absolutely certain how to answer them.

We've already had to read through several things including the Student Handbook which is like 47 pages long. We've already gotten our first fundraiser package which is to sell entertainment books. If you need one let me know. We can order you one for pretty much any area of the country. I can't imagine how this will work out when she's in higher grades in future years.

School is pretty good from my perspective as well. I got a few things taken care of yesterday while Grace was in school and it will be nice to have this time every weekday. It's especially nice considering it's basically twice as much time as I had for the previous two years where Grace was in preschool. It was two hours but it took 20 minutes to get there and 20 minutes to get back so it was a lot of wasted time in the car.

Today Grace, Julie and my Aunt went to Michigan to see my Grandpa. They were going to see how he was doing. He's been having problems being dizzy and just with his general health I think. They'll be back on Monday and I'm holding down the fort while they're gone.

Today was the first Wisconsin Badger game of the season...and they won...Yeah! In my opinion their first challenging game will be on September the 27th when they play Michigan. They haven't looked so good yet. Let's hope they continue that trend.

It's raining but we're on our way...

Wouldn't you know that just an hour before Grace was supposed to go to school today it started raining. It's not raining hard - more of a hard sprinkle, but enough to annoy. So she got off on the bus just fine. She seemed really happy (as you can see in the picture.) I can't wait until she gets home to see how she likes it!

Ready for our first day of Kindergarten


Getting on the bus


Home (and happy) after school


I'll explain more later; but when she got off the bus she said it was her best day ever!

Kindergarten is tomorrow!

Yesterday we didn't do much really. Grace had a play-date with her friends down the street and I was trying to get caught up around the house a bit. In the morning we went to my favorite store; all together now...Lowes, and got some weed killer and some electrical stuff. After that we went to the Oberweis store for some milk.

After that we had lunch with two of Julie's sisters; our last lunch before Grace starts school :-( and Grace had her play-date. While she was playing with her friends I sprayed all the weeds in the cracks between the bricks and so those pesky weeds will be dead...SOON! Yea!

After picking Grace up we went up to register her for gymnastics for this year. When we got back we had dinner and that's pretty much our day. Today was a little different although we weren't particularly busy today either. Grace's kindergarten open house was this morning. She got to go and finally meet her teacher Mrs. Fitzharris. She had a little "treasure hunt" we had to complete together which was basically finding her locker and finding the office and then finding her classroom again. And finding the bathroom and putting her supplies in the bins and checking her birthday and address and just simple things that will make tomorrow easier for her. I think she enjoyed it and I think it helped her too.

After that we came home and I started cleaning the house as we have a visitor her for the night; Julie's Aunt from Omaha is here for the night tonight and then she'll be back again next week. We had still not put everything away from having removed it from the office and the family room when we were painting everything. Unfortunately when we got everything out we liked how open the rooms felt and honestly didn't want to put it back in those rooms.

So anyway I got a lot of those things put away and cleaned the house up. Then this evening was dance class. Grace is in a new dance class this year and she's pretty excited. She was supposed to move up to this class last year but it conflicted with her gymnastics class. Since she's moving up in her gymnastics to the next level this year (to the pre-team level) it allows her to also move up to a new level in dance. As a side note she's also signed up for soccer this fall too. She did it last fall and loved it and has been wanting to do it again ever since, but we didn't get her signed up for the spring and thought we'd sign her up during the summer. Yeah, they don't have soccer in the summer for little league. So here we are signing up again this fall. Oops!

So she had her first dance class tonight and I think she did pretty good. I think she'll do better next week because she knows more of what to expect now and it is different. It's much more intense and pretty advanced but I think she held her own this week. We'll see how she does next week. Next week she also starts her new gymnastics class but she's been practicing with the competitive team all summer so that should be pretty easy I think. Plus she'll be back to a two hour class instead of three.

Now the real challenge will be fitting all of this in with school. Granted her school is really only about 2 and a half hours long each day, but she does have it every day now instead of only three days a week for preschool. And I think she will have some actual homework now as well and then there's the whole scheduling thing that we need to adjust to. Her school will be during her normal lunchtime and I'm guessing the easiest way to deal with that is to eat breakfast earlier and then have lunch just before getting on the bus. I had talked to her friends parents who went to afternoon kindergarten last year and that's what they did. But it's a big change especially considering Grace has never been an early riser and eating breakfast much earlier than we have been will basically mean she's going to need to get up earlier. So I foresee that being our biggest challenge as we enter this new year.

Oh so getting back to today, we came home from dance class and Julie was just leaving to go to a Arbonne party at my Dad's house and that really upset Grace since she wasn't going to get to see her Mom tonight. But right after we got home her Aunt Pat got here and then we had dinner and then we talked to Aunt Pat for a bit before getting ready for bed. Just as we were finishing up our prayers Julie came home and Grace was pretty excited about that. She still had a little difficulty going to sleep tonight, but not nearly as bad as last night. I think it might have taken her over a half an hour to fall asleep last night.

Oh speaking of Grace being anxious I actually caught her being shy today. We were at the kindergarten open house and this other girl walks up and asks if she can do the same activity that Grace was doing and she didn't say a word. I was shocked! Honestly she's usually the one that will go and ask someone else to do things and play with her and when they say no or something she'll come and tell me and I say just find someone else. So it was very interesting. Maybe all those no's from the past are catching up to her.

So now the day is finally arriving. I hope she does really good tomorrow and has a fun day. I think she will. We'll see.

School is coming...

We're in full "get ready for school" mode now. Grace and I had to take a quick run to Staples today to get a couple of supplies she still needed. I was silly and let her pick out a pink 3-ring binder and the list specifically states "white." So we exchanged that and got the markers they had listed incorrectly on the supply list and some colored pencils they didn't have on the supply list before the revised list came out. I hope everyone else reads the revised supply list. School starts on Thursday and we got the revised list on Saturday.

Oh and speaking of our school district, I read in last weeks Sunday paper about how our school district is in heavy long-term debt. The article is about paying for the special needs school that is being built in Gurnee to support the special needs children of our county. What it basically says is that we're in such a debt-laden situation as it is we don't know how we'll come up with $1.1 Million to pay our share to help build this new school. Here is the article if you'd like to read it. So I guess I'll try to get involved in the school district as well; at least to find out what's going on. For all the money we pay in real estate taxes that goes to this school district ($2,386 this year) that is just ridiculous. In fact this amount is more than we pay to the high school district.

Anyway, we're getting ready for school (back on topic--sorry.) Grace is excited but she also says she's scared because she won't know anyone. I can understand being afraid of the unknown (I think we all are) but she's such a friendly outgoing kid it's just hard to believe she's afraid of meeting new people and making new friends. That's the one thing she's always been good at. I think we need to work on her self-esteem a little...or maybe it's just what I said before: the fear of the unknown.

We had a nice relaxing weekend this last weekend. We went to church on Saturday night so we didn't have to get up at any particular time on Sunday morning. Sunday I mowed the grass...which is news because it's been dry and hot here so the grass hasn't been growing much. So it's been some time since I last mowed, but I got it done yesterday evening. While I was doing that Grace and Julie went to our friends house for a good luck/going away "party" for their granddaughter whom is going to Children's Hospital for treatment for her condition (can't remember what it was exactly except that it has to do with her skull and the rate at which it's growing--she's only just turned one.) Her treatment was going to begin with chemotherapy and then stem-cell transplants. Bless her little heart--I truly hope and pray that she pulls through.

This afternoon there was a PTO popsicle welcome at her school and we went. Grace was anxious to meet her new teacher but there was no guarantee that she'd be there and of course she wasn't. So Grace was pretty upset about that. What did happen was one of those stay-at-home-dad moments where the moms treat you like you're just there because you got out of work earlier than the mom or something. I was looking at things to sign up for to help the PTO out and one of the things was a bake sale. The lady that was behind the table said "you could help with the bake sale if you like to bake" and then a loud belly laugh. I just walked away. Julie said I should have told her I do the cooking; but obviously I didn't.

So that's been our last few days. I'll get this posted and get to bed. We have a busy week ahead of us.

Summer sure goes fast...

Well, it's near the end of August already and Grace will be starting Kindergarten next Thursday. Can you hardly believe it? She really is growing up fast. Everyone tells you that when you have a child and I have to say in the beginning I didn't really believe them because in the beginning it's not so easy and the days seem so long when you don't get much sleep, etc. But as she gets older and is into more activities, time really seems to be going faster.

Julie had the last week off as we tried to shoehorn in everything we hadn't gotten done over the summer that we wanted to do. We went to the Rolling on the River ride on Friday the 15th. We went on Friday to volunteer and get things ready for Saturday. We ended up camping at Jellystone and I have to say it's great if you have kids. It's very kid friendly with numerous kid-oriented activities and a really nice campground. It really is worth the premium price to stay there. We started out with the intention of camping at a retreat center for free. We also went with the thought that we were going to stuff goodie bags and then I was going to do route sign checking. When we got there which was only about 20 minutes after they were supposed to start stuffing the goodie bags, they were already done. So we helped set up the expo center a little and then they asked us to drive the 100 mile route to make sure the signs were easy to follow. Since we needed to set up our tent for the night we decided to start driving the route and when we got to the retreat center we'd set up our tent. The retreat center which was about half-way through the 100-mile route was also a rest stop. We get there and the camping is in a soccer field. And we can't put our tent close to the outside of the field because that's where they're going to drive the hay ride later that evening. We weren't so excited about this setup so we decided to go to Jellystone. It wasn't free, but like I said; well worth it. After we set up the campsite we finished driving the route which prevented me from cooking dinner. And it was so late at this point that restaurants are closing; we ended up eating at a family restaurant which was quite good.

Then Saturday was more volunteering and the ride itself. We started the route a little late because we were helping out at a rest stop. Turns out the port-a-potties weren't delivered to this location. And the winery (which was where this rest stop was) was several hundred yards away from the road. So if a rider wanted to use the facilities they were going to have to ride or walk quite a distance. At first they just moved the entire rest stop up by the winery building. Then they decided (logically) to keep the rest stop by the road and if anyone needed the facilities they would need to go up to the winery itself.

The problem we were helping with was that you came around a corner and the corn was high and the rest stop was off the road a few yards and you couldn't really see it until you were practically past it especially if you were riding fast. Some of these riders were easily riding 20+ mph because they got to this rest stop pretty fast--like 1-1 1/2 hours to go 27+ miles. So we were here to direct the riders into the rest stop since they couldn't really see it while they were riding by. Grace really got into this and was yelling out "Rest Stop" as each rider was getting close.



After we were there a few hours our replacement arrived and then we headed back to the start/finish line to start our ride. I think we started our ride around 11 am or so and it had obviously warmed up a bit. It wasn't a hot day, but with the sun beating down on the black pavement it was quite warm. And by this time Grace was getting tired because we got up early and she kind of went to bed late the night before. So Grace was hitting a wall and with Julie being pregnant the beginning of the ride wasn't so pretty. Grace was complaining that she wanted to hook her bike up to Julie's and Julie saying no and we weren't even to the road yet. So when we finally got to the road Julie let her hook her bike up.



If you're wondering what I'm talking about when I say hook up her bike to Julie's, I'm talking about the Trail Gator. It's a really cool idea that in my opinion works exactly as advertised. Some people on Amazon have complained about it, but we had no problems...except what I mentioned about the hot pavement, the pregnant wife and the tired and cranky child. Oh and did I mention the hills? Yea they don't call it "rolling" on the river for nothing. There are quite a few hills and some are quite steep as well. As soon as we left the fairgrounds and turned onto the road there's a big hill. Julie was like you've got to be kidding me. So anyway, Julie and Grace made it somewhere between 6 and 7 miles and I ended up doing the whole 15 miles.



We stayed Saturday night because we had planned to go canoing on Sunday but we ended up taking a little too long to pack up and missed canoing. On Monday we went downtown Chicago to the American Girl store and had their lunch with Graced. She brought Josefina with her and it was a complete surprise. We took the train and the bus and then walked around the corner and there was the store. I think she was really surprised because she was very excited. The food was really good and there was a lot of it. Just a warning to other fathers; you will be one of the only men in the room. After lunch we ended up buying Grace a couple things and then we stopped at Garrett's Popcorn on the way back to the train station. Man do they make good popcorn.

Then on Tuesday we went to gymnastics for only an hour but at least Julie got to come and see Grace do stuff she's never seen before like her back handspring. Then we drove down to Marriott's Lincolnshire Theater for the play "The Princess and the Pea." After that it was lunch at Red Robin - I love that place.

Wednesday we went to Great America (Six Flags for the younger folks) with one of Julie's sisters and a cousin and their 4 kids. It was a lot of fun and a pretty much perfect day to go there as they weren't that busy and the weather was good.

Yesterday we just relaxed and went swimming at one of Julie's other sisters houses. Before that we all went to lunch. Today Julie had to go to work and Grace and I have just been hanging out as it's been raining off and on and we're both tired after a busy week. And no plans as of now for the weekend sound really good too.

Rolling on the River Ride 2008

Once again this year we're planning to go to the Rolling on the River Ride which is a bike ride that benefits Illinois' environment. You may recall us doing this last year; we camped and tried my new Escape out with the roof carrier holding our bikes.

This year we're going again and we're also riding...15 miles. All three of us are doing this and as a requirement for riding we each have to raise money as a donation to the three nonprofit charity organizations that are sponsoring the event and that help Illinois' environment: Prairie Rivers Network, Illinois Environmental Council Education Fund and Illinois Stewardship Alliance.

Why these charities?
Experience-Each group has more than 30 years of experience in Illinois

Scope-Each group works throughout the state

Effectiveness-Recognized as leaders in their fields. Efficiently run, professionally staffed organizations.

Mission--Collectively their missions address the key environmental concerns in Illinois today including global warming, air and water quality, water supply, protecting the parks, rivers and other natural spaces we all enjoy, and developing policies for healthier food production and more economically sustainable food markets.

Please note that all donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.

Here is each of our donation pages. Please help us out!

Steve
Julie
Grace

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for considering donating.

Ah, carpet

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to show you because we have moved all the furniture around and my PC isn't plugged in. However, our family room is really coming together now.

Back in March just before Easter we finished putting the lights up and I think around Memorial day we put the drywall up for the ceiling and the "new" wall that we closed in. Then we hired a mudding and taping drywall guy to finish it up so it looked nice. Then we hired a wallpaper person to put the wallpaper on the ceiling. During all of this I managed to paint the entire room (four different colors) and put up wallpaper on the lower sections of the wall and we actually got shades for the windows. Oh the humanity.

We had to order the carpet and then after it came in we scheduled the install which ended up being today. Yeah! So now that we have carpet all that's left is the drapes and the cornices. I'll be making the cornices myself so the only thing we have to get done is having the drapes made. Surprisingly this is proving to be a difficult task. Where does one find a person that will work with velvet? We want to have red velvet drapes in here to make it look like a theater and then cornices above that for more color and contrast.

I'll get some pictures up of the family room in the next few days. Gotta go as my laptop battery is dying.

Please add your signature to this petition

Please read the story on the Daily Herald website and if you feel the same as I do, add your name to the petition.

Wow, forgot how to write...

Apparently I have completely forgotten how to write in my blog. Sorry about that. In my defense things have been quite hectic around here.

Since I last wrote a lot of things have happened and I'll get to that but first I want to share something I read in the newspaper today. As a hybrid vehicle owner I find it an odd request. My intention here is not to offend anyone who happens to be blind because I certainly respect what you have to deal with on a daily basis, but again this seems like a strange request...here goes:

Advocates for the blind have asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set minimum sound standards for new cars and trucks, pointing to potential safety hazards for blind pedestrians who can't hear silent hybrids. The National Federation of the Blind says hybrids don't register among traffic sounds the blind use to determine when it's safe to cross the street. In one experiment, blindfolded listeners couldn't hear a 2006 Toyota Prius until it was about 11 feet away, compared with a 2004 Honda Accord, detected from about 36 feet.

I like that my hybrid is nearly silent at times and quite honestly I don't know of a way, barring putting a speaker on the car with engine sounds being played, of "creating" a sound that the blind can hear. Again, no offense to the blind, but it just seems like another thing we've found to complain about in our society. Usually it's noise producing things that get complaints though, not nearly silent vehicles that help the environment and my wallet.

Wednesday

We were surprisingly running a little late for dance class this morning and stopped at the McDonald's on the way for some breakfast. The drive-thru lane was anemically slow and then after we finally get our food I pull away to the Wal-Mart parking lot and stop to put jelly on Grace's biscuit. But there is no jelly in the bag. So we turned around and went back, ran inside to get our jelly and then came back to the car and I got the jelly on the biscuit so Grace could eat. Then we pulled out of the parking lot and got stopped by a freight train. So apparently we were supposed to be late to dance class because everything was working against us this morning.

We finally did make it and it's quite the coincidence that I decided to bring the camera today because they got their costumes for recital today. So they tried them on and did their two dances in them to try them out and see how they worked. They looked SO cute. Here's the picture:



After dance class one of Julie's sister's called and we had lunch with her and some of her kids since they didn't have school today (testing.) Grace was really excited about that. But since she had really just eaten breakfast she didn't hardly eat anything. Then Julie called and said she was taking a half day, so not long after we got home she did too. Grace was REALLY excited to see her Mom come home so early. So when she got home and had lunch and Grace had a snack, the two of them went for a bike ride and not long after that it was time to go to gymnastics.

At gymnastics I was starting to read my next book about Mark Felt who was Deep Throat but this one is penned by him mostly. This is all a result from having read Bob Woodward's book about Deep Throat so now I'm interested in Watergate and such. I wasn't so thrilled by what I've read so far from the LONG introduction where the author of the introduction says that basically he didn't trust Bob Woodward and that he wasn't a very good person. If you read his book about Mark Felt, I think you might feel differently as I do, but I guess to each his own.

After that we stopped at a new (to us) restaurant near Grace's gymnastics for dinner but it wasn't all that. We probably won't be going back. But by bribing Grace with ice cream we were at least able to get her to finish her grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. Then we ran and got her some ice cream at Dairy Queen because that's what she wanted and she sat right down and ate the whole ice cream cone without hardly saying a single word for like 20-30 minutes. It was kind of peaceful.

Then we came home and I forgot to stop at the library for a CD I had put on hold, so while Julie put Grace to bed I ran down there (unfortunately I had to drive or I wouldn't have made it before they closed) and picked it up. It's the music to Seussical the Musical. It's for Grace because she enjoyed the play when we saw it so much I thought she'd enjoy the music. I think she will.

Alright, I've got to clear an area in the basement so my Uncle and I can do electrical work tomorrow. Gotta go...

Happy Earth Day

I've got such exciting news. We have some friends that moved to Zimbabwe (which you may remember) and we wanted to send them some Christmas presents but true to our style we got them sent out a bit late near the end of January. They just got it TODAY. We had given up hope of them ever receiving it and ironically our friends emailed us just a few hours before getting the package and said that they thought that they would never receive it which is exactly the sad conclusion we had come to. Lo and behold they got it today. Julie and I are SO relieved that they got it. I'm super surprised that it took three months for it to get to them, but nonetheless happy they finally got it.

So today was Earth Day and all I really did to celebrate was ride my bike to the village board meeting tonight instead of driving. I slept late this morning which also says that Grace did too because she didn't wake me up. She's supposed to be to school at 9 am and I woke up at 8:30. So she was about 10 minutes late, but we made it. While she was at school I ran to get a few things from Lowe's and I went to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients we needed for dinner. Julie got her favorite meal tonight which is an italian sausage, mushroom and tomato pasta dish.

So I'm wondering what exactly would explain the gasoline prices right now. Does anyone really know? Are you as appalled as I am? I don't want to drive anywhere anymore and I'm driving a hybrid vehicle. And the way the prices are changing just astounds me; you go to bed and the price is $3.44/gal for regular unleaded. You wake up the next morning and it's $3.67/gallon? And then two days later it goes up to $3.74/gal. I don't understand and I don't know who is raking in all these millions of dollars, but it's at the point now where it is affecting the way I live my life. You do realize that the gas companies have had (brace yourself) record profits into the hundreds of millions of dollars since prices started to rise last year. I can only imagine what their profits are now. Just incredible and disgusting.

I really wish we'd stop relying on foreign oil for our gasoline consumption and use the oil we have but aren't using. And I wish the government would remove the restrictions stopping the gas companies in our own country from building more refineries that would reduce supply and demand issues. If the government really wanted to turn around the economy this would be a great first step.

You may have noticed my new "feature" in the column to the left which lists the book I'm currently reading, but the book I just finished is called "Real Change" by Newt Gingrich. If you're tired of bureaucracy and the current state of "politics" in our country, you need to read this book. I highly recommend it; it's amazing. Also see the website where they have created the red, white & blue platform - The Platform for the American People. Please read it - it's great for our country and it's something we all need to read and be a part of to make a difference.

It's definitely spring

This last week has been fairly normal. Monday was preschool story time at the library and Grace had a great time as usual. She just loves going there. I found out that there is another session after this one is over so I signed her up for that session in May so she'll have a week off and then start over for more story times. She was starting to get sick over the weekend and wasn't much better on Monday coughing a lot and just not feeling good. But of course if you ask her she felt fine.

Tuesday was preschool and she added sneezing to her repertoire of sickness symptoms. One of the hardest decisions I've found that as a parent you have to make is whether to take your child to the doctor. Not to say that sometimes it's obvious that you have to, but when it's a borderline sickness like this where it's basically a cold or maybe allergies, what good is a doctor visit except wasting money on your insurance deductible? Tuesday I chose to not go but rather to try and slow her down a little especially since on Wednesday she has dance class and gymnastics and she needs to be well rested for that.

Well with Grace, trying to slow her down is like trying to get your grass to grow during a drought without watering it. If you get her to slow down it isn't usually for long. She fights it -- which is actually good, she needs to be active but not when she's sick. So obviously she didn't rest much but she made it through the day. On Wednesday she was about the same but again made it through. So when Thursday came and she wasn't really any better I'm starting to think, take her to the doctor. So I ask Julie what she thinks and neither of us are sure whether to or not to take her there so again I don't take her.

Instead, I take her to school. Now just so you know I'm not a negligent parent, her symptoms aren't any worse, just not better. And she isn't exactly lying around not doing anything because she feels terrible, no she's up running around and complaining that she wants to play more is mad at me for trying to hold her back as I try to get her to rest since she has these symptoms. So anyway I take her to school and again she seems to be doing just fine except she's still coughing a lot and has a runny nose; the sneezing has pretty much gone away by now.

While she's in school, I run over to the in-laws house because my BIL has gotten a new (used) set-top box for DirecTV that needs to be installed since the box they had stopped working. I'm not sure if I mentioned this last week, but their old box died and so my BIL got a used box off of eBay and I went over to get it working for them. I called DirecTV and had them activate this box with the card we had ordered from them for $20 and had been using in the box that died. They didn't complain one bit and did exactly that, but this "new" box didn't work. So he ordered another one and had called me on either Tuesday or Wednesday to say the new one had come in and needed me to get this one activated.

So after I dropped Grace off at school on Thursday, I run over there and get everything ready and call DirecTV and the lady I got was completely the opposite of the person I had talked to the previous week. She can't activate this box with an old card, I need to order a new one. I'm saying that this is a card that I ordered from you for $20 and was just using a week ago AND that another representative had activated with another box just a few days ago. "I'm not supposed to do that sir," was the response I got. Well then why did this other representative do it? "I'm don't know why they would do that." Are you freaking kidding me? I'm just going crazy trying to comprehend why I'm being told this now and not last week. Why would different customer service rep's tell me completely different things only days apart? I know they don't like us buying used boxes on eBay because they want everyone to pay a monthly "rental" fee for leasing new boxes from them. They apparently don't want anyone to own equipment anymore.

So as I'm going crazy about this situation she says she's "noticed" that I qualify for a free upgrade to the new HD receiver and that she could also have it installed for free. And then I could use my old HD receiver (that I have currently disabled somehow with my whole wiring issue) that we're currently using on this TV and then we wouldn't have to order anything or pay for anything. So I agree to this and everything is OK now, but I don't get why talking to a different customer service rep provides different results. So we'll see what this install brings as far as getting the cable I couldn't get to work to start working. They are coming on Monday morning.

So after I cool off I go to get Grace and we had a pretty good day and we were finally able to go to bible study for a change this Thursday. The babysitter came over and since there were no cancellations for bible study we got to go. It was really good and as usual, it's always nice to get away without Grace for a little bit. It's nice to feel like an adult every once in a while. As far as bible study goes, it was very enlightening and enjoyable. We're studying the book of Peter or at least we're starting to now.

So on Friday I took our HD receiver to the in-laws house and got it set up and it worked just fine. I didn't need to wait until Monday because it doesn't work at our house anyway. So that made them happy. But since Grace still wasn't feeling much better, we canceled going back to their house Friday night for dinner because we don't want them getting sick. Today was my biggest day for feeling I "should" take her to the doctor mostly because she's not really any better and the weekend is coming up and if she ends up getting worse over the weekend our options will be limited as far as taking her to the doctor.

But again we decide not to take her as she hasn't gotten worse and she's really not "acting" sick at all, she just sounds sick. So we make it through Friday and then on Saturday Julie goes to yoga in the morning and Grace didn't really sleep in so the morning wasn't so good because she's never happy when it's the weekend and Mom isn't around. I actually think her coughing is a little better on Saturday, but she's now whining and complaining about everything, but of course still doesn't want to just sit around.

We had this painting company come over Saturday morning to give us an estimate for painting the outside of our house. The estimate was great and their references seemed really good and I've never heard anything bad about this company, so I'm 95% sure we'll go with them, but they aren't calling us to see what our decision is until Wednesday so we have a few days to decide still. Then Grace had a birthday party to go to; her friend from around the corner turned six so she went over there for several hours.

After that I finally got started on staining the new bookcase/toy box we bought Grace back in December when one of our favorite furniture stores was closing. They used to be called "Naked Furniture" and then they changed their name to "At Home Furniture." They sell unfinished furniture directly from the manufacturers. We bought a lot of Grace's bedroom furniture from there before she was born and we bought this piece to kind of go with that. It's not from the same collection as her dressers and night stand, but it is the same wood; ponderosa pine which we love. So anyway I was able to get the first coat finished and then Julie and Grace had gone to pick up dinner and they got back as I was finishing up. So then we had family movie night with dinner downstairs in the family room while watching "Air Bud: Spikes Back." Grace loved this movie. I think with this whole family movie night thing that Grace might finally be re-embracing movies again; we'll see.

So on Sunday we had church obviously and then later we went to a friends house for dinner. Julie was helping them make announcements for a family member whom had just had twins and Grace was playing with their kids and their Dad and I were hanging out watching sports and cooking, talking, etc. Everyone had a great time and hopefully we can continue to do things like that together.

So now it's Monday and this morning the DirecTV guys came over to install the new HD receiver down here in the family room. First thing, they were told they were upgrading, ie: replacing, an older box which they weren't. They were just installing the new box where the old one used to be. Once they figured that out they were pretty excited that all the wiring was already done. Except there was the little problem of it not working right, but I'll get to that in a minute. So they're scoping everything out and they start installing everything and they're wondering about all the wiring I've done but the guy that "got" to go up on the roof isn't having a great time because our roof is quite steep and he's not wanting to be left alone for fear of falling off the roof. He says if he falls he at least want someone to see him falling. I'm telling you these guys were really having fun and they made me laugh a lot.

So once the roof work was done; the new HD receivers provide more HD stations because they're accessing 2 additional satellites, so instead of "only" three satellites being brought in, it's now bringing in five satellite signals on the one "large" dish; they moved inside to determine how well everything inside the house was working. Not so well was the determination. Even the box up in our bedroom was not finding any signal so they started to work diagnosing the problem. I had already told them about how I had brought the line in to the attic from having been previously wrapped around the house and that ever since then the HD feed hadn't worked. It took them some time, but it was a couple of things. Something with a switch they installed and then the culprit for why the HD didn't work after I brought it into the attic. I feel like such an incapable coax cable installer after this one. It was completely my fault that this didn't work because when I brought that line that had been wrapped around the house into the attic and attached it to the cable that had been run down to the family room as the HD feed, I made a sloppy mistake/oversight on attaching the connector to the end of the cable.

How RG6 coax cabling works is it's got a central copper wire and then insulation and shielding around the outside where there is the stranded wire. When you use the stripping tool, it cuts the insulation off the very outside revealing the stranded wires and also trims the interior insulation to reveal the central copper wire. Once you put the connector on the end it covers the stranded wire so the only exposed wire remaining to the eye is the central copper wire. Well, there was one stray stranded wire that somehow got dislodged/disconnected from the rest of the stranded wires and was askew and when I put the connector on the end it was exposed on the outside of the connector and was touching (wrapped around even) the central copper wire which is obviously a BIG no-no. So it was this tiny little stray wire that caused all these problems. I've run how many hundred feet of this wire in my house and made many many of these connections and this had never happened to me before. So I can chalk this up to a learning experience because I certainly won't let that happen again.

Here is a picture of the culprit:


They were VERY impressed with all the wiring I had done and were especially excited at how easy everything was for them (except the whole connector issue.) So it took them some time, but they figured out my problem and everything works wonderfully. So for now everything is good in DirecTV-land and we're satisfied customers again. After this I told Grace that maybe we could ride our bikes to the library today since we needed to go to story time and it was such a nice day and gas prices are just out of control. But she ended up watching some show about organizing or something and wasn't ready to go until too late really because we drove and were still about 4 minutes late getting there. Next time we'll ride there...

When we got home from the library we had lunch and then were going to go for a bike ride, but I had mentioned to her that maybe we could take her training wheels off and see if she couldn't learn to ride her bike without the training wheels and she seems pretty excited about that. So we tried and she worked at it a bit, but I don't know all the right things to say and she wasn't really getting it I guess, so finally she just wanted her training wheels back on so that we could go for a bike ride. So we did that and she wanted to ride for like - ever. She wanted to go like 3 miles down the road to the new forest preserve but I stopped her from going that far and diverted her to the next subdivision and then surprisingly (not) and just as I predicted she was suddenly "so tired" and couldn't hardly go on, but we made it back home. I don't remember exactly, but I think we went close to 2 and a 1/4 miles in addition to the riding she had done earlier trying to ride without training wheels.

Then not long after we got back Julie was home and I hadn't prepared anything for dinner so we ended up going out for dinner which actually turned out to be a pretty enjoyable time. Grace is coughing considerably less now than she was and seems to be getting better. Unfortunately Julie isn't feeling very good now. She said when she got home that she should have called in sick today.

I've also been walking the dog each night now so that I can get some exercise and so that he can too, but mostly it really is for me. We've worked our way up to about 20-25 minutes now and I think we might have gone a little too much tonight because he got up to go to bed a looked REALLY stiff; poor guy. I'll see how he is in the morning. He seems so willing when we're actually walking...

Notre Dame Frozen Four

I can't say I'm a huge college hockey fan but my BIL is and Notre Dame made it to the frozen four this year but lost in the finals yesterday. I have to say Notre Dame did really well with most of their sports teams this year (except football.)

Anyway, Friday was a normal day with Grace going to school again. I was starting to clean up the house because my Mom was coming on Saturday for a few days visit on the way to a conference in Ohio. So I got the spare room pretty much all cleaned up and the only thing left for that room was cleaning the sheets so my Mom had a place to sleep. A short time later she called and said that she was affected by the American Airlines MD-80 maintenance issue and that she had verified with the airlines that there was a 99% probability that she wouldn't be flying on Saturday.

So that ended my cleaning spree and so Grace and I just hung out for the rest of the afternoon. Then I started completing some of my around-the-house wiring tasks. I finished running the cable line from the TV in the family room down to the basement. So now we can watch things recorded on TIVO on our television in the exercise area of the basement. I tried to connect the network cable to the area where we're moving the server in the basement, but the cable I pulled down there was too short to reach over to that area. I thought I could just tape additional wire onto the wire I had already pulled and use that to pull the new wire down there, but it doesn't let me pull it for some reason.

I even tried to pull it back towards the router and distribution box and the line wasn't budging that way either. So I suppose I'm stuck trying to run an additional line down to the basement for the server. That really stinks because I thought I was done pulling wires. Then there's the problem with the HDTV cable that doesn't work for some reason. It was part of the large bundle of wires I pulled originally from the distribution box to the TV in the Family Room and then pulled up from the distribution box up to the attic. All the other wires work fine but for some reason that one doesn't.

On Saturday I worked on the wiring going out to the garage. I'm taking everything out there just in case I ever need it. I got the wires all out there and an outlet in place. The cable is hooked up although I haven't tested it yet. I still need to hook up the phone and network lines and then test them. I also still haven't set up the other router I got yet which I'll be basically using as a switch. I'll need to move the new washing machine to install that now because I'll have to move a network cable from an outlet to this new router so the two routers are connected to allow more physical connections throughout the house.

Today was church and then we had a birthday party for our nephew who turned 16 today. That was pretty much our day and tomorrow Grace has her preschool story time at the library. She so looks forward to this each week. Julie actually asked at breakfast this morning when the story time program was over and Grace just about cried. She obviously won't be happy when this is over. I actually think next week is the last week. I guess we'll have to prepare her for that. She gets emotional about most everything. I've been told it's because she's a girl and that boys aren't like that. From what I've observed of other peoples children that are this age, I'd say that's about as accurate as you can be.

I've also got to finish our taxes as they're due on Tuesday. The sad part is we're expecting a return so we're allowing the government to keep our money for all this time without earning interest. So that will be my day tomorrow I suppose; taxes and the library.

Recovering from vacation

We were on vacation from the 1st through the 8th out in Arizona so we could visit with my Mom and step-Father and my Gramma. We were originally planning to drive because of the current costs of flying but Julie was able to find a sale on orbitz.com where we got the tickets for about the same price as just the gas to drive out there (and don't get me started about gas prices.) The only problem with our tickets was that we couldn't select our seats when we purchased them as they were allegedly to be assigned at check-in. Oh they were assigned at check-in alright as all of us got separate seats on the plane. Luckily on the flight out to Phoenix the airline representative that was printing our luggage tags was able to also change our seats so that Julie and Grace could sit together and my Aunt and I could also sit together. Unfortunately on the flight home we weren't so lucky.

So we got out there Tuesday around rush-hour time and rented a car. I made a wrong judgment call and went the wrong direction on I-10 and wasted about 20 minutes, but we finally made it to my Mom's house. On Wednesday we took Grace to the park and ate at In-N-Out Burger, Thursday we went to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Globe which is one of my favorite places. On Friday we went to the Goldfield Ghost Town by Apache Junction. We went here because it sounded interesting, but I wanted to go because I've been wanting to go back to Jerome, AZ which was a copper mining town. I loved it years ago when I went and have been wanting to go back and show Julie and Grace but it's several hours from my Mom's house and it's just a big time commitment when your five year old gets bored quickly. This place is considerably closer and worked out really well.

On Saturday Julie and I got to go out on a date where I ended up buying a new cell phone since we had the time without Grace. I got the LG ENv (VX9900) and so far I really like it. Then we ate at one of our favorite restaurants before going to see a movie. Unfortunately it took a little too long for me to buy the phone (there was a slight difficulty with the "network") and then we tried to eat quickly, but we ended up getting to the movie theater too late to see the movie we wanted to see, "21." So we ended up seeing "Leatherheads" which was a good movie, but it was just basically a sports oriented love story.

On Sunday we ate dinner at Organ Stop Pizza (I just love that place) and then on Monday we went to the Arizona Science Center which was really cool and Grace just loved it. And then it was time to come home on the next Tuesday so that was our vacation in a nutshell. You know me so you know I'll be going into more detail than this, but wanted to put an outline here to start with.

One of the funniest things that happened on the trip to Phoenix happened at O'Hare Airport when they were first calling passengers to begin boarding. As you may know, they of course call first class passengers at the beginning of the boarding process and Grace turns to Julie and asks "Mama, Am I first class?" It was just the cutest thing. The flight out went pretty darned well and the flight crew was pretty into the whole "April Fool's" thing and kept everything light. The captain comes on the speaker and says we'll be departing shortly but that they've had an equipment problem in that they can't fill the fuel tanks completely we will still be leaving on time but this will affect how long it takes to get to Phoenix because we'll need to stop in Springfield and Oklahoma City and Las Vegas en route and who knows when we'll finally make it there. There were other things he said during the trip, but that was my favorite.

When we got to Phoenix and had our luggage we headed out to the car rental area which is quite a ways from the airport. Julie nixed the idea of renting a Hertz Shelby Mustang so we stuck with an Escape which was adequate for our needs and gets considerably better fuel mileage. Actually I tried to upgrade to a Freestyle because it seats more people and is a larger car but they didn't have any so we got the Escape. We had a choice between gray and white; I chose gray. I only make bold decisions.

We went to the park on Wednesday where they have a sprinkler area. We've never seen the sprinkler area actually be open because we don't usually go to Arizona so late; normally we're there in March. To our surprise the sprinklers turned on about 15 minutes after we got there. We let Grace run around in the water a little bit even though she just had her regular clothes on. She was pretty happy about that. They were installing shades over the playground equipment so that was closed for the day, but when we went back a few days later it was really nice as it kept the equipment in the shade so it wasn't too hot for the kids to play on and it was nice for me too as I didn't have to stand in the sun and watch her to make sure she was alright.

The Arboretum on Wednesday was great; just perfect weather. This place is like the combination of a botanic garden of desert plants along a hiking trail. It's really fun and you can actually learn a few things. The gold mining ghost town was different. The train ride was fun and informative and the food we ate was good. We didn't have time to go down into the mine itself for a tour but we checked everything else out. We weren't very impressed with the shopping; the things that were available for purchase didn't really entice us to buy anything. Grace got to ride a full-size horse named "Candy" though and she thought that was just the best thing ever. They offered horseback rides in the desert for reasonable rates, but you have to be six to do it so we'll have to bring Grace back next year. They just put her up on the horse's back and let her around the corral for a few minutes. But she got the biggest kick out of it; especially with her new pick cowgirl hat that we had just bought her. That was one of the few things we found worthy of purchasing there.

At any rate that day was certainly a success and I'm sure Grace would rate it as one of her favorites of the entire trip. Organ Stop Pizza is one of her favorites as well and she had a wonderful time there on Sunday as well. If you've never been you really are missing out. The pizza isn't "to die for" but it is good and the Wurlitzer is just so cool. I would recommend sitting upstairs however. Normally they are really busy and we end up having to sit upstairs because all the seats in the lower section are already taken. But since we came later this year more of the "winter visitors" have left to avoid the hot weather and we could basically have sat anywhere we wanted too. Now this doesn't affect the overall experience sitting downstairs as opposed to upstairs, but I'll tell you this: when you sit upstairs you feel you are part of the music more for some reason. The low bass shakes the floor and you just feel more immersed in the music and I personally enjoy it more; just my two cents.

On Monday - our last day in Arizona - we went to the Arizona Science Center which my step-Father has been apparently been wanting to take Grace to for years; I don't think I knew that before now. Anyway, the sad part is that my step-Father had the day off but was sick and couldn't really go with us. We saw the movie "Grand Canyon Adventure 3D: River at Risk." I have to say that short of actually going to the grand canyon, this movie is almost like being there it was really cool. It was narrated by Robert Redford whom doesn't really do a whole lot for me, but it was nice. The premise is what we've done to the whole area of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon and the effect that has had on both of them. I have to say I knew that the Colorado wasn't what it used to be but I had absolutely no idea the extent to which we had affected the entire region because of mans doing. It all starts up at Lake Powell with the first dam of the Colorado, the Glen Canyon Dam. This stopped all of the silt, salt and other material that the water used to carve out the grand canyon to no longer flow down the river. Then after Hoover Dam was built for Las Vegas to have water the river really declined. Down by the U.S./Mexican border the river used to be 200 yards wide and provide the fisherman of the village there with a living. Now it is a stagnant stream with no fish or anything of value to them. It's an eye-opening movie that really everyone should see; I obviously liked it.

On our trip home we returned the car right on time and they bused us back to the airport where we learned of our fate for flying home - we all had separate seats again. The difference this time was that the lady printing our luggage tags wasn't able to help us at all. She said we would have to discuss it with the agents at the gate. As soon as we made it through security (my Aunt got flagged for her C-Pap machine) and got to our gate I went up and requested that at least one of us be able to sit with Grace because she couldn't travel alone. They couldn't do anything at the time but said they would try and would let us know. It didn't sound very promising. So we all had breakfast as we waited. Finally just prior to boarding they called me up and said that they couldn't do much except give me a different seat that hopefully someone on the plane would want to trade me for so that Grace and I could sit together. She actually called was calling it something like trade-bait; a seat someone might be interested in so that it would entice them into trading with me. But then at the last second two seats were available in the very last row so Grace and I were "lucky" enough to sit at the very back of the plane. We left late because the plane was late arriving from San Francisco I think; so we weren't able to board the plane on time which obviously left us to leave later than we were scheduled to.

The flight itself was mediocre at best. The flight crew wasn't saying hardly a thing to us. They never came on the speaker and welcomed us aboard, no mention of expected flying time or a possible arrival time which would have been nice considering we were leaving late. They never even came on to mention what our cruising altitude was or anything like that. The flight attendants weren't very friendly either; about as friendly as the lady in front of me reclining her seat before we even took off and they feigning that it was broken when we were preparing for landing so that she didn't have to put it in the upright position - "God forbid." So during both flights of this trip I wasn't able to use my computer at all because when the seat is reclined my laptop doesn't physically fit between me and the reclined seat-back in front of me without angling it such that the keyboard is practically vertical which makes typing a bit awkward. I was at least able to set it up in front of Grace so that she could watch her Strawberry Shortcake movie which made her quite happy; until the battery was dying, but at least she was able to enjoy it for a while.

About an hour outside of O'Hare we hit the weather system that we weren't looking forward to upon arriving home; rain, wind and general ugly weather. The turbulence was so bad that the flight attendants said that they would be collecting everything they had given out and that everything needed to be put away and we all needed to be in our seats for the remainder of the flight. I've never been on a flight where they've done that; so it was a little nerve wracking, but we made it just fine. The only problem, and the only time the captain spoke, was as we were making our approach to O'Hare the air traffic controllers apparently "lost" us on radar. The captain came on and said that we were just in our flight pattern following the plane in front of us at the prescribed distance but somehow they "lost" us on radar and were forcing us to circle and land from the south. This added about 20-30 minutes to our flight and put us on the ground around 2:45 instead of 2:15. The good news is that we made it before the real storm started between 4:30 and 5:30 with a lot of lightening and just pouring down rain. In fact the rain we've gotten has begun the flooding around here as that was the lead story on the local news tonight.

So anyway, we made it home in one piece with all of our luggage and made it home before the storm; so bottom line - good travel day. Will we use orbitz.com again? Yet to be determined. One good thing about the flight home was that I was able to finish the book I was reading: "The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat" by Bob Woodward. You may remember the last book I read was about President Ford: "Write It When I'm Gone" by Thomas M DeFrank and that piqued my interest in Watergate so I'm reading up on that now. This book was really good although not as good as Write It When I'm Gone. Now I've moved on to "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" by Newt Gingrich. I didn't know what I thought of this man until I started reading this book. Wow! this book is an eye opener so far and I've only read a handful of chapters. So far - highly recommended.

Yesterday Grace had dance class and gymnastics and we had lunch with two of Julie's sisters. I think Grace was really happy to be back in the routine of her normal week but she was really tired. She was still tired today for preschool, but she was better than yesterday. I was the busy one today; I ran some errands while Grace was in school and then afterwards we took my rear bumper cover to the repair shop to be painted. Then we came home for a few minutes and then headed to the eye doctor as I needed my annual checkup. It's been seven years since I had lasik surgery and everything is still looking great. After that we came home and crashed; the unintended consequence of which was that we ate dinner at like 7:30 - too late for Grace really but at least we got through the day and almost the week since tomorrow is Friday...yea! Hopefully in the next day or two we'll be over the whole two hour time difference we had gotten used to in Arizona and start eating at regular times and sleeping longer.

Sears Tool Sale

So last week was Spring Break around here and we didn't go anywhere because Julie had just gotten back from California. Since we didn't have any school or anything planned for the week, I loaded up Grace's schedule and I think she had a great week. Monday she played with her friend from across the street as her Dad was on Spring Break too.

Then on Tuesday she had a play date with her friend Kailei from school at our house. It was the first time they've played together and it went really well. They got along just perfectly. Then on Wednesday she played with her friend from around the corner and Thursday with another friend from school that she's been really close to but hasn't played with before outside of school. Her name is Nevina and they've been close for a very long time but for some reason have never been able to play before now. Then on Friday we went with our friends from down the street to see Seussical the Musical.

I don't know if you've seen it but it was really fun. Grace had a great time and was even dancing along in her seat. I think she might actually be interested in seeing Horton Hears a Who! now since that is the basic plot line for the show.

Then over the weekend we didn't do a whole lot. We're trying to clean the house up a bit so our house-sitter doesn't have to live in a filthy house. Today Grace and I had preschool story time at the library. I think she really enjoys going to this. She always looks forward to it. I'm guessing she'll be disappointed when this class is over. I'll have to keep my eyes open for future classes.

As far as the drywall contractors is concerned, the two estimates I've gotten are night and day. One was more than twice as much as the other. I'm waiting for a third contractor to be available so I can get an estimate from him but that will have to wait for us to come back from vacation.

So you are probably thinking that the subject of this post is about tools and wondering when I'm getting to that. Well, I got the greatest deal yesterday - even Julie was impressed with the deal I got. I'm taking this auto restoration class in May and I am going to need certain tools to do the class. One of them is a pneumatic cut-off tool. I got my Craftsman Club flyer in the mail last week and they had this cut-off tool on sale for 50% off. I couldn't believe it. The sale didn't start for a while so I was waiting to buy it until the weekend. Then I get an email from Sears saying that on Sunday night from 6pm to 9pm they were having a 10% Friends and Family sale. So I got it for 60% off and was pretty excited about it. Maybe not so exciting for you, but for me it was great.

Ready for drywall

Sorry again about not writing for almost a week. As you can imagine things were a little hectic with Julie gone and then there was Easter, etc., etc. So here's a rundown of the last six days. On Thursday my Uncle came over to help with the house again. Grace went to preschool and Uncle Bill and I got the exhaust fan ducting replaced and a new vent hood put outside which turned out to be a great idea because birds had taken up residence inside this ducting. This explains why the fan in the downstairs bathroom was basically useless. I still feel we need a new fan, but at least the fan we have should work better.

I drilled holes for conduit in the garage and installed the sub-panel for electric out there. Then we got all the electrical conduit in place and started pushing some wire. However we ran out of wire so we'll have to finish up on Friday. Thursday night I took Julie's brother to O'Hare Airport as he was heading out to sunny Arizona with some of his friends. They were going out for spring training to watch some Cubs games. So I didn't get to go to bible study again this week. Hopefully next week...

So on Friday Grace had preschool again and my Uncle came back to finish up the electrical work we had begun on Thursday. We pushed all the wire and got the new circuits working: one for the low-voltage distribution box I put in for my cable and telephone lines and for the new outlets in the kitchen and then another for the server that will be moving into the basement. There aren't any more spaces left in the breaker box for the garage sub-panel, so we'll have to add that when we expand the box to a 200 amp box. But the really good news is that the family room is officially ready for drywall! I'll talk to my BIL on Easter and see if he has time for us anytime soon.

Saturday we were re-acclimating to Julie being home and enjoying being together again so we didn't really do much. Sunday was Easter so obviously we went to church as did the rest of Lake County, WOW! We've never seen that many people at our church at one time before. Thank goodness we got there early - really early. Otherwise we would not have been sitting for the service.

After church we had some time for me to make some cinnamon bread and then head over to Julie's parents for Easter dinner. We were there and one of Julie's sister's and our BIL that will be helping me with the drywall in our family room was there. The rest of Julie's family is on vacation/spring break. So anyway I mentioned to my BIL that we were ready for drywall and he said that he couldn't do it until he gets things done at his own house. So now I'm searching for a drywall company to come and install this for us so we can move forward. I'm tired of not having a ceiling in my family room and we need this done now.

So starting today I've begun researching contractors and will be getting estimates soon. I'm anxious to get this room done so we can do other rooms in our house. We have so many ideas and so little time and money which is why we have been doing so much ourselves to save money. I just don't feel comfortable doing drywall on a ceiling myself if I want it to look nice. It wouldn't be a flat surface if I did it. I could probably get away with doing walls, but ceilings are (at least in my opinion) much more difficult.

That's about it for now. We're going on vacation ourselves soon so we'll be busy getting ready for that. But I'll try to update soon.