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
Guy on phone: "Hello?"
Roger: "Hey, it's Roger again. This time I'm callin ya on my new Comcast Digital Voice Home Phone Service."
Guy on phone: "For the last time, tattoos are permanent."
Roger: "I know what you said before but I was talking on my OLD phone service."
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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.

Last Day of VBS

Well Grace got up early today at 7am and we obviously were late for VBS - Ha-Ha. Grace was in the slowest mood today as I couldn't get her to do anything in a timely manner. She got dressed pretty easily but breakfast was an afterthought as she couldn't be bothered to sit long enough to actually eat it; she ate about 2/3 of her cereal. Then we get in the car to leave and we actually will be on time, but the neighbor's dog is out. So I get out of the car and go to retrieve their dog and place him back in his yard/house. It takes him a few minutes to warm up to me so it took a few minutes longer than I wanted it to to get him back there. So we were a couple of minutes late to the church. We get there and she doesn't get out of the car, she just sits there. This was how the whole morning was with her. I finally get her out of the car and she's walking as slowly as she possibly can to go in - this kid is exhausted.

So I finally get her dropped off and get on my way to run some errands. I ran to T.J. Maxx to get some clothes and then to Target for a little light grocery shopping. Then over to the park district to register Grace from some summer classes. The photography one we really wanted her to be in has no one registered yet and they need 6 kids by next Friday. So I registered her anyway just in case more people sign up before it's canceled. But I did register her for a nature bugs class where she'll learn about all kinds of outside stuff that she's always interested in. That doesn't start until July and we'll be on vacation for one week of the class, but I know she'll have a good time in that class.

After that I ran to the Home Depot in Round Lake to get my weed trimmer attachment that I couldn't find anywhere. I looked it up online and was able to see that they had one there; saved a lot of driving around--including expensive gas. Also called the Ford Store today and come to find out my car hasn't even been put on the assembly line yet. So who knows when we'll actually get this silly car. We ordered it 6 weeks ago Wednesday. Like the sales person said, maybe we aren't meant to have this car.

Went and picked Grace up from VBS and came home to have lunch. She wasn't really interested in eating that either - mostly because her friend from around the corner was here for about an hour and a half. So she would rather have played with her instead of eat. They've only played a couple of times and she is a little younger than Grace, but they get along really well and they place nicely together. After she left we just kind of hung out and watched the Cubs game in Hi-Def. Man Hi-Def is really nice. If you don't have it, you need it. Actually you will need it in the next 5 years or so (I can't remember when exactly) as standard definition TV will be no more, they're phasing it out at some point in the future.

After that Grace went to swim at her friend across the street's house and I finally got serious about what to make for dinner. But it was really too late to do anything about dinner. We don't really have much except pork chops that are frozen solid and hamburgers with no buns to eat them with. I thought of making egg salad but we didn't have all the ingredients for that either. Obviously I should have decided this before my light grocery shopping or just decided on something while actually shopping. But for as hectic as the morning was we were lucky to get out of the house with any hope of getting their close to on-time. So I'm sure you know what's coming, we just went to pick something up for dinner. It didn't make Julie too happy, but it was dinner and it wasn't very expensive ($18 for five people) and it was taken care of. I'll do better next time - no really I will.

At least I got the other things she wanted me to do today done like giving a donation to her sister who is doing the Relay for Life tonight in Buffalo Grove and also finally registering Grace for those park district classes, plus washing Grace's new mattress pad and sheets as we are out of pull-ups and have decided not to buy any more. So she's likely to be wetting the bed fairly regularly for a while. Hopefully it won't take too long for her to recognize when she needs to go while she's sleeping.

So the weekend comes tomorrow and hopefully I can actually get some projects around the house done. Julie's talking about shopping in the morning, hopefully she'll take the loaner car as her car needs an oil change desperately. I will need to get up fairly early to do that so I have some shade as it's supposed to be in the mid-90's tomorrow. Julie has a workshop Saturday night and Sunday is Father's Day. Both articles are set to run in the newspapers this weekend and if I can, I'll put a link in here when I find out about them.