We all met at Outback and had a nice diner. I had a good time and I think the boys did too. It’s late and I have to pack. Tomorrow is going to suck – it is had going from having the boys with me to not having them there. I’ll be glad when it’s over.
Syria just called the house again to see if all the kids have left. I told her none had been picked up yet.
“Okay,” she said. “Let me know when they are gone.”
So, I am going to meet her boyfriend tonight. She really seems to want me to meet him. All I have been told about him up to this point is that he has just bought a house. That seems to be his defining characteristic. Up to now she has only mentioned him to me as “a friend”. I don’t know why she likes to dance around stuff and make thinks overly dramatic. That’s just her I guess.
She has spend the last two nights at his house and left me with the boys having company both nights. All stuff she set up before this weekend. It was nothing I couldn’t handle but I didn’t appreciate her putting the onus on me when they were her plans and she invited me up here. I mentioned it to her and she snapped back with “This is the kids life. They have friends over. You wanted to come up here – this is what happens.” I didn’t want to come up. She asked me several times. “I really wish you would come up here for their birthdays.” So I did.
The morning after last nights big sleep over one of the boys was missing $20 that he nievely left on the arm of a chair under his PSP. It was a big drama and the kid was understandable upset about loosing $20. I made a search of the ‘house’ and all cloths that the boys had worn at paintball and Syria had washed last night. No money. I’m not sure what I am going to do. I was thinking of just giving him a twenty but, I’m not sure if I should.
In the process of tracking down the missing money I asked Aaron to call his mother on her cell to see if she had found any money in the laundry. She didn’t answer her cell but called right back less than a minute later. I told her what was going on and asked if she had found any money. She had not, which I expected. If she had found money floating in the dryer full of the kids’ clothes she would have found the owner then. I said okay and thanked her. She asked me how everything was going. I said it was fine. She then asked if Outback was okay for the resturaunt to meet George. I said that was fine with me. She paused and said, “Wait. You didnt’ bring any dressy clothes. I said I brought a nice shirt. She said, with her boyfriend right there, “I saw your shirt.. it isn’t dressy. I said you don’t need to dress up for Outback. I heard her mumble something to George and George reponded. She then said to me, “George is a pretty laid back guy. He wears jeans.”
She’s plaing games with me again. She is trying to make it seem I have to fit into this new situation. She doesn’t seem to realize that I am already a member of this family – have been since it’s inception 
I’m going to pause this for just a moment to tell you that Sryia just called. She asked me if all the kids have left yet. I said no. “When are they leaving?” she asked. I did not know. “Do you want me to call you when the coas is clear?” I said sarcastically. “Yea, call me when they are gone” Then she shouts away from the phone “George!” “George, wait! I’m not leaving yet!”
Geeze – I guess she’s going to hold up his day too.
Back to our story:
The kid who lost the twenty just announced that his Nintendo GameBoy SP is not missing. It was last seen on the bunk bed but can not be found there now. Thinking it may have fallen between the bed and the wall I scoot one end of the bed away from the wall. A bit to far I guess as the back side the the bed comes away from the supports. Crap! Now I am going to have to move everything to get the bed away from the wall to fix it. I hope she has tools. I know she has a little power screwdriver so fixing it shouldn’t be bad. Good news is that Scott found the SP under the mattress while I was moving everything. So now the kid is only down twenty bucks.
I have a big mess to go clean and none of the kids have been picked up yet.
For the boys birthday party we went painballing today. It was a ton of fun!! I couldn’t get any pictures while we were playing but I’ll post what I do have when I get home on Monday or Tuesday. It’s late, and I have six kids sleeping over so I’ll have to post about how much paintball rocks later.
Syria just left to spend the night at her boyfriend’s house. She said she will be back in the morning so we can go out shopping (she has the car and I didn’t rent one because she said she would drive us where ever we wanted to go when she invited me up here).
I am sitting in the terminal typing this post on my Treo. There are already several people here and we still have an hour and a half to wait. I was reading a book when a very attractive woman sitting across from me asked me to watch her laptop while she ran to the bathroom. She was very pleasant and I thought about chatting with her but she has been on her cell and computer the entire time. From what I could glean from her cell conversation she is in marketing or web design. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she will be next to me on the plane.
Today my son turns 12!!
Plus, I get to see him tonight! Well, very late tonight. I am flying up there in 9 hours and 14 minutes. That will make today a very long day but very worth it.
I tried to call Aaron before school to wish him a happy birthday but couldn’t get anyone to answer. I feel bad that I didn’t get to talk to him before school. I will try him again after school. I get in to Kansas at 11:30 tonight so I don’t think the boys will be meeting me at the airport – but they might.
In two days and six hours I leave to visit my boys – woohoo! I can’t wait. It is all I have been thinking about since last weekend. Yesterday the boys’ mother called me to give me the expected weather conditions up there… 30′s at night and 50′s during the day. I’m glad she told me, I was going to pack just a light jacket. I hope to come back with pleanty of pictures and videos to post!
This morning was the first ‘cold’ morning we’ve had this year. It felt great. I enjoy the cooler weather more than the hot humid summers.
This picture of Scott was taken thirteen years ago today:
Today my oldest son turns thirteen! I called him first thing this mornig to wish him a happy birthday. He had just woken up so he wasn’t fully into the birthday spirit yet. The big celibration will be a week from this Saturday when we will all be together. The boys are going to have a paint ball party were they can each invite two friends and have a sleep over. Should be a great time. I can not wait to get up there.
While Mike and I are waiting for the service tech to call back we tried to start the units again. This time it may be blowing cooled air. Or, we may just be so tired we think it’s working. Either way, we are still waiting for the call back.
It is now 1:32am.
I think now is a good time to talk about my Treo 650 cell phone. Actually, this is a good time for sleeping but, as that is an option not available to me at this moment I will go on about a frig’n cell phone.
My friend at work got a Treo 650 from one of his buddies for free. It was such a geektacular phone and sweet deal that he switched to SprintPCS service so he could use it. This is the same guy who runs SprintBlows.com, so you know how great this phone is. He was really taken with the phone and showed it to me. I had seen smartphones before and read about them, but until I had one in my hand I didn’t get just how geek-errific they were. I began to research the 650 online – helped by a link my friend gave me: www.treonauts.com. The more I read the more I liked.
I was, at that time, using a Samsung A900 phone AND a HP Ipaq 4155. And I was happy with them. I switched, initially, because I came across this super sweet deal with Sprint called the SERO (Sprint Employee Refural Offer) which offered 1000 minutes and unlimited data for only $30/month! I liked the phone because it was “Power Vision” enabled and slim and solid like the Razr. I used my Ipaq to keep my contacts and listen to MP3′s and watch videos and surf the net. I also used it for GPS, which I have come to love. It was all working fine for me. I got a lot of functionality from two devices.
But, that was before. Before I found Treo.
Treo smartphones run on the Palm operating system. My first PDA, called a Visor, ran the Palm OS so I was familier with it. But that was back in the grey scale days. Back when a color Palm PDA was way to pricey for me and not really worth the extra expence. So, I never became a huge fan of Palm pilots. I moved to Windows CE when it was time to upgrade.
Palms have come a long way, Baby!
By the way, it is now four minutes until 2:00am and the ono A/C unit we got running is cooling. The temp is now at 76 degrees. We may call the A/C company and tell them to just show up in the morning. I say ‘may’ cause it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and decisions are getting harder to make .
Back to the Treo. I thought about it for about two weeks before I made my decision. I figured with what I could make selling my Samsung phone and the older Nextel i730 I would more than cover a Treo if I got the right deal.
I’ll have to continue later. We are going home. The room is cool and I have to be back at 7:30am.
It’s 12:31am on Monday moring and i am sitting in my office waiting for a phone call. Today is supposed to be the start of a busy week at work. We have to print out tax bills for the 240,000+ property owners in our county. It’s not just printing bills; it’s printing them, bursting them, stuffing them and then mailing them. All that times 240,000. And my day was supposed to start at 7:30am, as usual. But not this Monday.
I was at home winding down for the night. I had been working on the software end of my carputer project and decided I had had enough for the night. I picked up my cell phone to plug it in for its nightly charge when I noticed I had recieved a call. I’m not sure how I missed it because it was right next to me at around 10:30pm when the call log shows it came in. I still have to get used to this new Treo 650 phone – I know I have not told you about it yet, but I will.
-Anyway…
The call log showed I had a message from our automated system at the office. It keeps tabs on the power and temperature in our server room. I checked the voice mail and heard that the temp inside the room was 80 degrees! That’s hot for a room that is supposed to be cooled to around 68 degrees. If you call this automated system it will give you the current status and let you listen to sounds in the room for 10 seconds. Since the message was over an hour old I called back and found the temp to be 79 degrees and the power was on. Immediately I thought that someone had come in in the intrem and taken care of it (I based this on the fact that the temperature had gone down – even just a little). Then I got to listen to the sounds in the room for 10 seconds. Nothing. Not a sound. This was bad. What I was waiting to hear was the sounds of the two A/C units cooling the room.
Nothing.
I had to go. It could have just been a power outage and the A/C units didn’t kick back on as they were supposed to. That would have been fine. A quick fix. But, as you probably surmised, that was not it. Nothing is cooling anything. The units have power and their LCD displays are telling me it’s hot in here but they refuse to do anything about it. I went outside to check the bank of fans and they were silent also. This is bad.
I called one of the guys from the office who knows a little more about these things than I do. He said to shut ‘em off and restart them. So I did. Nothing. He said he was on his way in. I called the A/C company to get someone out here. The nice woman said she would have the tech call me back.
Between the last paragraph and this one Mike, the guy I called, showed up. He walked into the server room and shut off and restarted the unites… and they fired up and started blowing air! But wait! Before we all get too excited let’s check the fans outside…
… well they are not turning. And the A/C units are not blowing cold air – just air. Still not good. So here we now sit. Waiting for a tech to call back.
To Be Continued…