Yes, it's my birthday today, my wife's on Sept 5th, and Gracies's is Sept 8th. We gave Grace a new electric guitar and amp for an early surprise birthday present. We really caught her off guard and surprised her completely. Hopefully I'll get some video out here soon of that.

2009 School year, for some it's finding the right building where your class is, for others some involvement in the services provided for students. All in all, we begin a new school year. There is excitement in the air!!!

Well, it's almost that time again, Fantasy Football time. Hard to believe it is this close. It's a lot of fun and another way for me to hear from family and friends. And the friendly competition is very enjoyable too. The (Smack) talk is a blast too. Some of the guys are so creative, they should write material for comedians. Jonah won last year, and has bragging rights, but everybody will be gunning for him this year.

 

Let the games begin

Got one entry room painted and trimmed, had to take out old wall heater and patch the wall, then repaint ceiling, trim and walls. We put down new no-glue linoleum. We decided to take the old indoor/outdoor carpet off the steps and we are going to paint them now, have to do the ceiling and walls going up the stairs first though.

 

Oh the fun of owning an old house!

It's a little stressfull for sure, this is something you do about once every 5 years, so it's not like something you work on all the time, therefore you have to do a lot of homework to get all your ducks in a row. I worked hours on Sunday just to get mine prepped.

 

ADprep, forestprep, gpprep, native vs mixed mode server environments, suspended patches, NTDSUtil, dcdiag, etc. etc. whew!!!! rough weekend!!!

I had an account on Facebook years ago, when MySpace was still the most popular but I forgot my password and when I tried to have them reset it I never got the message from them, I checked the email account they had and all my spam filters, but nothing, so I had to use another account to set it up.

 

Well, I'm back in the "in crowd" again I guess. Some say it's addictive, we'll see.

We watched Inkheart the movie this weekend, and it was pretty good. A good family movie with a lot of suspense and action. The concept was certain people (called Silvertongues) could read characters out of books. Sometimes by the time they discover the talent it's too late.

Grace wants to learn to play the guitar, so she is saving up her money for a decent electric guitar and amp. Things should be a bit more noisy around the house after that.

Battlefield 1943 has been released for PS3 and Xbox 360, I downloaded it early this week and started playing. Pretty good game for $15, the more I play it the better I like it too. My almost 14 yr old daughter likes it too. We crank up the surround sound and the sound effects are awesome. We mostly like flying the planes, but I do it all. I still like sniping a lot if I'm flag capping or helping the team push to victory. Yeah, I'm impressed, especially for the price. I hope this is a new wave of good quality games at reasonable prices.

We made the journey to St. Louis this weekend and Jake and Katie are officially married now. It was a beautiful ceremony and fun reception. Things went really well. They are a special couple, we wish them so very much happiness and good fortune. There are pictures in my slideshow section, but they are only from a point and shoot camera, the lighting was low, so some are a little dark.

Well, it took me 4 hours to weed it my yard, and in the heat, I almost lost 4 lbs doing it. I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of the Irises, they look terrible in the summer and it's so hard to keep the weeds away from them.

 

We almost have the remodeling done on the apartment for Jake and Katie to live in after they are married July 11. It looks better than it ever has. We put new flooring and baseboards down. Repaired a few other things too. I'll try to put some before and after photos on here soon.

 

Man Sunday goes by fast when you stay busy all day, Whew! It's all good though!!

 

Getting good things accomplished is a great feeling.

I'm looking forward to Battlefield 1943, after playing BF Bad Company and experiencing the destructive environments, 1943 should be pretty cool. I love the planes of that era. And the price $15 is fantastic. Very interesting indeed!!

Well that time of the year, clean the servers and the computer labs up, throw away old stuff, patch everything up to date. Install new hardward and software and get ready for the next school year. Get training if possible, etc. etc.

We are a proud family this week, Tony graduated with his Masters in Teaching last week, as you can see, we have pics in the photo album. He perservered, he never gave up, although it was hard sometimes to juggle all of lifes busy tasks, he hung in there and won the prize. I know it will serve him well. Can't help but mention, his softball team won the conference this year and went to  State for the first time in school history. Congrats Tony for an incredible year for you!!!

Well Sunday the 26th, we got the garden planted, Lots of tomatoes, zuchini, yellow straight and crook necked squash, cucumbers, radishes, bell peppers and today I finished it off with 4 rows of okra, just beat the rain by a little, lol. Whew! my lower back was sure sore after all that tilling and pulling up the rows with a hoe. It'll be worth it in a few months if all goes well.

We are getting too much rain to get the garden ready, but that's ok because it has been too cool for it to grow well. I had a flat on the lawm mower and now my grass is getting too high with all this rain, it's a vicious cycle.

Well, Here it is April 6 and we expect a possible Freeze tonight, This could set me back on my planting dates, I'll miss this months window to plant by the light of the moon per the Farmers Almanac. Oh well, have to roll with the flow.

Word is Cablevision will be offering the HD lineups by the end of March, oh yeah! I can't wait, even the news is better in HD. We relish the technology improvements as they slowly made their way to smaller areas of Arkansas. Sometimes I crave the cutting edge accesss of the big city, but when I see the traffic I come back down to earth and am so thankful for small town arkansas. I then remember patience truly is a virtue.

ARRGGGhhhhh!!! They must still be testing, they took the HD channels away. :(

 

Wow, and it looked sooooo much better. Well maybe they are preparing to offer the customers something with an HD package soon, I sure hope so.