Departure

Finally leaving on our trip.

We'll keep you posted

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

Preparation for Vacation

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

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

6 1/2 hours of waiting

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

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

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



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

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

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

At sessler ford

How i'm passing the time.

Paint

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



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

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

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

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

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

Keys in Cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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