And the Saga continues.....

A while back I reported about how our AC unit was out and required a replacement part, it will never end. Synopsis in case you haven't been paying attention. AC unit goes out on Memorial Weekend. Repair guy comes out and says we have a burnt coil (which should have been caught by the guy who looked at it before we bought the house). The repair guy sumbits a price quote to the warranty company for a new coil that is actually here in town. Warranty company doesn't like his quote and attempts to get the coil cheaper.

This where the latest clusterf*&^k happens. Jenny starts calling the warranty company once a week and then once a day as it's been a month without AC. After finally talking to someone at the Warranty company who will actually help Jen, they tell her that the paperwork is in purchasing. It's been approved, but it's in purchasing and the part should ship in 2 - 3 days. After another week we call and find out that the paperwork has just LEFT purchasing but the part should be here in 2 -3 days. Wait longer and then another call. Part was ordered but not there is a problem at the factory with the part and they won't ship the part. Finally the vice president of the warranty company gets on the phone with the factory and tells them to ship the damn part and he wants it overnighted. Another couple of days of waiting and no one has any idea where the part is or if it even shipped out. People are so freaking lazy.

Which brings us to today: Jenny calls me and tells me the repair guy is at the house, and then she asks if I want the the bad news or the bad news. I said "bad news please". The factory sent us the wrong part. WTMFH????, "but" Jenny quickly adds the repair guy is going to do a little wheeling and dealing at his supplier to get us the part we need. (you know the part that we could have had a month ago) so we should have AC by this weekend. "What else?" I ask sheepishly. The repair guy was looking at the furnace while messing with the coil and noticed huge cracks in the heat condenser. One, he is surprised our carbon monoxide detectors weren't going off, and two, damage like this usually requires a TOTAL furnace replacement. Thank God for the warranty, but still bites that we have to replace a furnace in a 10 year old house... and that's only IF the warranty company will pay for it. God I love home ownership.

Don't worry Carrie, it's just us. I am sure your new home will be fine....

I am not that Sleepy

I read this story the other day. I know I can be a pretty sound sleeper, but I think I would have noticed this...

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Fateh Mohammad, a prison inmate in Pakistan, says he woke up last weekend with a glass lightbulb in his anus. Wednesday night, doctors brought Mohammad's misery to an end after a one-and-a-half hour operation to remove the object.
"Thanks Allah, now I feel comfort. Today, I had my breakfast. I was just drinking water, nothing else," Mohammad, a grey-beared man in his mid-40s, told Reuters from a hospital bed in the southern central city of Multan. "We had to take it out intact," said Dr. Farrukh Aftab at Nishtar Hospital. "Had it been broken inside, it would be a very very complicated situation."
Mohammad, who is serving a four-year sentence for making liquor, prohibited for Muslims, said he was shocked when he was first told the cause of his discomfort. He swears he didn't know the bulb was there. "When I woke up I felt a pain in my lower abdomen, but later in hospital, they told me this," Mohammad said. "I don't know who did this to me. Police or other prisoners."
The doctor treating Mohammad said he'd never encountered anything like it before, and doubted the felon's story that someone had drugged him and inserted the bulb while he was comatose.

Vacation 3 Brain cells 0

Saturday - Day 3 - My son must have known we went to bed at 2:30am because he picked this day to get up at 6:00am. We quickly pick him up so we don't wake the other people or his brother sleeping next to us. After feeding him, he decides that 3.5 hours of sleep for us is enough and he is up and wants to make a lot of noise. Jen and I decide to take turns taking him for walks down the monster hallways to keep him entertained and to allow everyone else to get some sleep. On my turn down the hallway I really wasn't expecting to see too much activity at this hour, but there was a dance competition in the area so there were a ton of little girls with glitter everywhere. I did find a place that sold Krispy Kreme doughnuts so we ended up buying a dozen for everyone when Jenny took her turn down the hall. The funny part is that when she was bringing the doughnuts back to the room, Andrew was giggling and laughing down the hall and someone commented to Jen that even at that age, he loves Krispy Kreme (maybe a call down to corporate for that story). So after everyone wakes up we have another day of waterparks and whatnot. It's actually a kinda nice day (it had been cold outside) so we ventured outside to more pools and waterparks. They had just opened the new section to the outdoor pool that morning so there was even more stuff to do outside, which was great since inside was so crowded. So another day of swimming, sunning, eating, and playing.

Sunday - Day 4 - We woke up kinda early and much to my surprise, everyone else was up also. Keith was spearheading the effort to get packed up and outta the room which surprised me. It was fun to pack everything up, separate everything in the kitchen, try and find a luggage cart, and not step on kids eating breakfast. Finding a cart is a whole story in itself, but at least we can say we found a couple. After packing up the cars and checking out, one last blast at the waterpark. It's a nice feature that you can still use the waterpark after you checkout. We all ate at a Perkins down the road and then headed for home around 3:00 or so. I was ahead of Keith, but not soon down the road he goes flying past me with Jeff soundly asleep riding shotgun. I found out later that Keith missed the exit for 69 off the toll road so he had a nice extra tour of north Indiana. The ride for us went pretty smooth where the kids slept most of the time. Andrew fussed after a while but calmed down when we stopped at toll booths to pay tolls and get tickets so we wonder if he gets car sick. Home in 3 hours. Unpack. Collapse on the couch.. I need a vacation

Vacation Part Deux

Friday - Day 2 - Kinda lazy start to the day with everyone getting up around 9 or so (except our kids who were up by 7:45). We decided to try out the dry play area in the morning, have lunch, and then down to the waterpark. We ate breakfast and loaded up the kids for the mile long walk down to the play area/arcade only to find out that the kids needed socks to play there. Jenny took the long walk back up to the room to get William socks. We could have bought socks out of a vending machine next to the play area, but it seemed silly when we had socks in the room. So we put Williams socks on only to find out that the room with all the "soft" balls scares him because of a big thing in the middle of the room that makes a whooshing noise whenever the button was pushed, but I finally convinced him to go into the room. OK I carried him into the room. I am looking around at all the stuff and see that in an upper area there are these bazookas that shoot these "soft" balls, whereupon I catch one of these "soft" balls directly in the nose square in my face. That freakin' hurt. So after messing around there, including a paniced search for William when he walked away from us, we ate lunch and then back to the waterpark for the rest of the day. During vacation, after the kids were in bed the grownups would play games. Thursday night's game was this tetris type of board game that I wasn't too interested in and didn't play. That and I was real tired. Then Friday night Jeff and Paula inroduced us to a card game called Phase 10. It was a pretty fun game that went on and on and on (kinda like the hallways). Upon playing one game for hours we finally called it a draw between Jeff and Keith and headed to bed around 2:30am.

I need a vacation from my vacation

Well, overall I have to say that Geekfest 2006 was pretty successful I think. I think everyone had a good time and we all left friends. No major conflicts (besides the cheese incident) and only minor meltdowns by kids on some occasions. I am not sure about everyone else, but I did A LOT of walking all starting from parking the car to the room which was at least a mile one way. My days were spent walking around with William as he went everywhere in the waterpark and never stood still. A quick trip down to the lobby of the resort had to be at least half a mile walk. Even after all that walking I got to come back to work on Monday and work on collating Real Estate and Homes which involved 8 hours more of, you guessed it, walking... so I am freaking tired. I figured I better write some stuff down before I forget about the weekend.

Thursday: Morning rush to get kids ready, food packed, and the car loaded. After all was said and done I was attempting to leave around 10:00, so 10:45 was actually doing pretty good. The traffic wasn't too bad and the kids did pretty well on the way over. Andrew was entertained watching William playing with his cars. After we got on the Toll Road, we decided to stop and feed Andrew since he was getting a little fussy. Unfortunately, once we got into Ohio we had to go almost 40 miles to the first travel plaza (I didn't want to get off the toll road). We pulled off and this place was basicly a 1970's throw back (which is probably the last time it was cleaned or updated). There was another plaza another 30 miles down the road, but I don't think Andrew would have made it that far. So we got out and went inside for lunch. According to the sign there was a Nathans, a Uno's, and a Cinnebon at this location... that was false advertising. The offered AN item that those places might have offered. It was just one big room with cold and hot cases where the display for Uno's was just a small personal pizza in a hot case. So we grabbed a pizza and chocolate milk for William and two sandwiches (the kind you would find in a gas station.. just wrapped in plastic) for us .. $17. Yes we had a ton of food in the back of the Jeep, but that would have entailed tearing out half the stuff I just packed up. We ate quickly trying not to touch anything and keep William from crawling on the disgusting floor. I thought we had just done a quick stop, but we ended up being there for almost an hour. Calling Keith when we got back on the road I found out that they were ahead of us a couple of miles and were just getting ready to pull off for something to eat also. I had overhead people talking at the travel plaza that Chicago was getting nailed with a storm, and in talking to Keith, he said that Fort Wayne was getting nailed too so I knew we were just ahead of a storm. Down the road, we saw the other travel plazas in Ohio, and they all looked like they were really nice, and redone. Leave it to us to pick the worst travel plaza in Ohio. We arrived at the Kalahari and checked in. It was a very nice place and better than I expected. The lobby was so cool with a very African theme. We decided to check out the room before unloading the truck. I was a bit worried about the room since photo's can be deceiving and we were putting 14 people into this room, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was big and roomy where we all fit very comfortably. I called Keith again and found out that they stopped at a sit down restaurant and were just leaving Toledo in the rain storm that I had heard about. I quickly ran down and unloaded our car since I knew it was comming, and by the time I got back up to the room it was pouring rain. Unfortunately Keith got stuck in the middle and was able to go about 40 miles an hour so it took him a bit longer to get there. After Keith and his group got there I was pretty much staying out of the way while Lori and Jenny tried to put the kitchen together and then I heard "crash". 10 minutes into vacation and already we broke a bowl, but luckily it wasn't a sign of things to come, it was basically just getting a bad thing out of the way early. We went to the pool and met up with the Quinmores later in the day and spent the rest of the day unpacking and setting up the kitchen with all of the food everyone had brought and visiting.

More later......

Summer Nights

Saturday night..... Midnight....Tiki torches lit.... cold beer in hand....

Welcome to Summer

I am sitting out on the deck here at midnight on Saturday primarily since our Mother F*^%$ing air conditioner still isn't fixed and it's cooler out here than inside the house. My weatherbug in on my laptop says its 79 degrees outside, but luckily there is a cool breeze blowing too so it's not too bad outside and hopefully it will cool down the house too. I have in indoor/outdoor thermometer that says that it was 92 degrees outside this afternoon and 82 degrees inside the house. So we spent most of the day outside with William's inflatable pool so I can actually say I was Poolside this afternoon :). It's kind of nice just chillin outside tonight with the tiki's lit and exploring the internet at the same time. It would be nice to have a dsl, but dialup will work (neighbors wireless signal must be encrypted, dang). I am working on backing up pictures and music to CD so in case anything happens to our laptop during vacation we won't be toally SOL. Burning my music files I forgot what cool stuff I downloaded. Most of it is pretty obscure stuff or should I just say older and not quite mainstream. Currently listening to Weird Al and I think the Gap band is next "you dropped a bomb on me". Nope I was wrong, it was "3 am eternal" by KLF.... hell yeah.... I am not busting a move on the deck, but I am sure that the neighbors are looking outside at me wondering what the heck I am doing but oh well, deal with it. Not like I am going to take a pee off the deck or something, at least not yet. Dang I just checked and it's still 81 degrees in the house and 80 outside. Looks like a clothing optional night going to bed tonight. (I know you probably didn't really want to know that.) "dream police" by cheap trick.. weee.. Ok now I am just rambling.

Cute

I saw a sign at an animal hospital last night

Don't Litter

Spay your Pet

cute

Andrew

I will take a moment from the usual sillyness of this blog to write about Andrew. Monday we drove Andrew down to Riley's childrens hopital to get his eye checked out. Ever since he was born he has had a problem with his left eye moving in conjunction with his right eye. Specialists in fort wayne have looked at it but weren't really sure what it was so we decided to take him down to Riley's. We found out that Andrew has a rare problem where one of the muscles around his eye is either contracted and won't release or it's just like a piece of leather and won't allow movement, so it is pulling his eye down all the time. Even though the doctor at Riley's said he only sees one case of this a year.. at least he has seen it. So we have to keep putting a patch on his left eye for a couple of hours a day and then back down in September for another checkup. More than likely he will have Surgury in October to probably cut that muscle or move it to another place around his eye. It's a good news/bad news kinda thing. It's good to know Andrew's eyes have total vision and after this surgury his eyes should track together or at least pretty close. Another good point is that the surgury is outpatient so we should be back home that night rather than spending a night in the hospital. Bad news is that Andrew's eye will never be able to look straight up in his left eye because of this muscle. I know it could be alot worse news, but it still sucks that stuff like that happens to kids. But one thing at a time. He is a very happy baby and a real cutie, all we can do is the best we can. Next step is to have William tested in July on why his speach is delayed. damn.

Wunderbar

Saturday we packed up the whole family to meet grandma down at germanfest. I was dreading the idea of going down there with the parking nightmare, the crowds, the crappy weather along with other stuff.

The other stuff is the fact that I detest fairs and festivals. When I worked in radio we had to go to all of these events every year. Nowadays radio stations don't "camp out" at most events, they maybe just show up for a couple hours for one day, but back when I worked for WOWO we would spend days at these events. Three Rivers festival was the worst. We would park the Sunshine Studio at Freiman Square for 5 days and spend every waking moment in the RV or walking around giving out balloons. I guess 8 years of doing that burnt me out on fairs and festivals.

But these days I am finding that the older my boys get the more I am willing to deal with the thing that tick me off and go to a handful of these activities. Germanfest was one of these events that I found the least annoying. The family and I met grandma down there and actually had a pretty good time. I forgot how good the food was and it was worth dealing with the crap, (that and grandma was buying). Mom and I split a pitcher of beer that was pretty tasty and cold. My boys still don't really have an idea of the purpose of the event, but William loves to walk around an explore. After we ate and enjoyed some omm pahh pahh music we decided to walk to the wiener dog races at another part of the park. This was the first year for the event to be in the park and it was basically a disaster. Whoever planned this event should be fired. You couldn't see anything, the layout was horrible, and the radio presence was pretty sad, but that just the radio promotions geek in me talking. Upon heading back to our car to leave I decide to go back into the beer tent to go to the bathroom before we leave (you only rent beer). This 80 year old old man almost physically stops me at the entrance and says that it costs me $2 to go into the tent. It was free when we first showed up but turns to paid entrance I guess about the time I left until I came back. I decide that $2 just to pee isn't worth it. Overall I pretty good time, I think I might possibly be willing to try out some more events in the future.

WTF ??

I was leaving work yesterday. I got in my car and saw a girl laying out in the sun. Now I wouldn't be surprised to see this if I worked in a residential area, but I work in an industrial area that only has factories and businesses so this girl was laying out in the grass of the building next to ours. To make matters worse (or at least more strange) she was laying on the grass with her knees in the air and her skirt hiked up to her waist like she was airing it out (so to speak) and her shirt tucked up to her bra. I was thinking to myself, you have got to be kidding me!!! Unless she is the CEO of this company (or sleeping with him) how would you let an employee do that. Now I have known people go outside during lunches or breaks and maybe pull up their sleeves, or show a little bit of skin, but this was to the extreme. In talking to other employees today I found out that she was doing that most of the day yesterday. At least we know now that the neighboring companies employee's aren't shy.

Sorry guys, no pictures available.

I was "that guy"

I had a major embarrassment this weekend. Jen and I went to the movie theater Sunday to see "X-men III". (it's an okay movie) There are two things I hate the most in a movie theatre. One is people talking during the movie and the second is people on their cell phones. It drives me bonkers when a cell phone goes off during a movie or someone is talking behind me. Well, we get into the theatre on Sunday and it's not a big crowd so the fear of having "chatty cathy" next to us is pretty slim. The movie starts after4 commercials and 8 previews of crappy movies. During the movie MY cell phone rings (I forgot to put it on vibrate). Damn. I figure either something has happened at the in-laws (where the kids were) or it was my dad checking in. Not having caller ID or voicemail I panic and decide to answer it as quickly as possible to stop the freaking ringing. Of course just as I pull it off my belt and open it up it rings REAL LOUD. I talk as quietly as possible and find out it's my dad just seeing what we are up to. I try to get off the phone as fast as possible talking in a whisper. I am sure I was three shades of red as I quickly looked around to see if I bothered anyone in this half empty theatre with the ring, but luckily I didn't get any stares. I was "that guy" and it was so embarrassing. I know the necessary evil of having a phone with me "just in case", but next time I am putting my phone on vibrate even if we just talk about going to a movie. Forgive me everyone.....

ouch part 2

This is Jenny's ouch not mine.... Andrew got some new teeth....makes nursing him a whole lot harder......'nuff said.

ouch

I am in the process of pulling up a bunch of flagstone in our backyard. One: because the stones weren't done right and they are too low in the ground and they have grass overtaking them, and two: I don't want the kids tripping over these things or falling on them hurting themselves. So I am piling them up and making a stack on the one side of the yard. These rocks are assorted sizes and thicknesses. Most of them are a couple inches thick and around 14 inches across and weigh anywhere from 10 pounds to 100 pounds. I am carrying these rocks across the yard to the pile so it's quite the workout.

Anyway I am getting toward the end of what I want to get done for the night and come across a huge stone. Real big, real thick, and real freaking heavy. Now I probably could have carried this beast across the yard, but since I am not sure if I want to have anymore kids or not, I really didn't want to attempt that. So I decide to break the stone up with a sledgehammer. I clear out the family to the other side of a huge tree and proceed to take a HUGE swing at this stone and it breaks neatly into 4 pieces.... cool. So I get to another huge stone and decide to sledge it again. I decide to take a lesser swing since these things break pretty easy. I hit the stone and feel a piece hit my leg... ouch.. that hurt kinda. I look down to see a quarter size piece of stone sticking in my leg about 1/4 inch. It didn't really hurt, but it was strange seeing the rock in my leg. So I took it out and cleaned myself up. I decide that was enough for the night so I put away my tools and had dinner. I think I will wear jeans the next time I decide to sledgehammer anymore rock.

Anyone need some (possibly bloody) flagstone??