Friday night we went to a sing-a-long & bonfire at Crosby Field. It was pretty darn cold out then, too. When we got home I watched the UB Bulls game, but fell asleep before the final… go Bulls!

Saturday morning was a holiday breakfast at the kids school, which included crafts & games. Then I worked some more, then got ready to go out with Laura. We went out to dinner, tried to do some shopping (we went to 3 stores, and none had the toy I was looking for), then went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert at HSBC Arena. What an amazing show! I got lots of good ideas for next year’s Christmas lights

I was back to work after the show, and got to witness a rarity… a thunderstorm with snow! At first, I thought my light display blew-up. It was pretty impressive, but didn’t drop too much snow.

Sunday started like any other Sunday, heading to Church; Jason made it interesting with a stomach bug (I won’t get into the details, but let’s just say puke freezes at 20° in about 5 minutes). When we got home, I decided to get my Christmas shopping done.. an hour later and orders placed with Amazon & others, I was done… I love shopping online BTW – Amazon had the toy I was looking for the other day.

Sunday night finished with dinner at the Bishop’s, where we had a 2005 Hardys Oomoo Unwooded Chardonnay. I finally found a white wine that I like! I think this was my 5th bottle of white that I’ve tried; the others were either too fruity & syrupy or too dry. Then my father-in-law broke out The Glenlivet and threatened to disown me if I didn’t like it. Wow… I have to get some of this. Very smooth. I was under pressure to like it, but it really was good stuff.

So this morning, with the alarm clock to the other side of my bedroom, which forced me to get out of bed to turn it off, I actually got up at 5AM to go to the gym. If the alarm was still right next to me, there’s no way I was going to get up… it was only 17° out this morning, and since we don’t heat our bedroom, getting out of bed to turn off the alarm was shocking. But I got up & made it to the gym! Hopefully I can finish up at a reasonable time tonight & make it 2 days in a row!

Now I’m sitting here… waiting for some keywords to process. Yeah, back to work.

The kids have both started school. Becca cried a bit the first couple days on the bus, but she’s doing great now.

Jason is doing good in school so far this year. He’s also in soccer, Cub Scouts and started viola lessons. Yeah, for some reason, he wanted to play the viola this year.

Becca lost 2 teeth & the tooth fairy had to make 2 trips to our house in the past couple weeks. She started ballet this week with a few of her friends from school. Laura is also starting a Daisy troop for her to get started in Girl Scouts. She is also playing soccer (she’s a Timbit!), although he’s a bit nervous at games.

Morgan is taking ballet with Becca. She and Laura take long walks almost daily, and seem to be at the library 2-3 times each week.

Laura is busy organizing the new Daisy troop with Becca and her friends. She’s also lugging the kids all around town to all of their various events.

I’ve been working with the Cub Scouts & getting the year started. And working – a lot. I also found out earlier this month that I don’t have an eardrum in my left ear anymore. Instead of getting a replacement from a cadaver, I’m going to wait to see what modern medicine can offer in 5-10 years. Oh, and I start going to a new gym on Monday – can’t wait. It’s so nice… there’s TVs in the locker rooms, along with leather benches and wooden lockers. If that’s the locker room, imagine the rest of the gym! I’ve been doing 5-mile runs once / week (in addition to my weight-lifting workouts) to get ready for the Turkey Trot.

I think I’m going to try to get the pool closed this weekend, since it’s getting pretty cold at night and the solar heater isn’t keeping it warm enough to go in (especially when the hot tub is SO inviting).

We’ve got a camping trip scheduled for later this month, then we take a deep breath for October, which is going to be a whirlwind month (birthdays, wedding, lots w/ Scouts, and a Bills party at the end of the month).

If you were looking for something related to affiliate marketing, this isn’t it. Remember I have an RSS feed strictly for those things (if you don’t want to read about my family & other random thoughts). I’m open to topic suggestions, too, especially if it’s from a programming (PHP) angle (although next may be part 2 of the geo-targeting post).

Dad’s Retirement
My Dad retired last week. Not retired like he thinks I am (I work from home) but really retired. Like golfing every day retired. Keeping the nice people at NetFlix busy retired. Really retired. Of course the GM shareholders found out and started dumping GM’s stock.

Kiva
My Kiva loan (tortilla production in Honduras) was repaid the other day, and I reinvested it – this time in a chicken operation in Tanzania. Like the first loan, I should get my money back in 10 months when I’ll pick another operation to loan the money to.

Wicked
Steve took Laura and I to dinner & Wicked last week. I tried reading the book, but after about 1-1/2 hours, I was only about 8 pages in, and gave up. Some things I just can’t read. Anyway, the play was great – excellent storyline. I’d say there were a few songs they could’ve cut out, and Shea’s could have turned on the A/C – it was HOT in there! But we had a great time.

Fantasy Island
The next day, we went to Fantasy Island with the Fitzpatricks. This was the kids first day of summer vacation, so we wanted to treat them. I think we were last at Fantasy Island 2 years ago. The park was practically empty! After a long day on the rides & such, we went to Friendly’s for dinner. What a deal – 5 of us ate, with ice cream, for under $40. Can’t beat that!

Canada Day
Finally, yesterday we went to the Buffalo Yacht Club to watch the Canada Day fireworks at Ft. Erie. The club was closed, but we managed to get in anyways and had the balcony to ourselves.

Rebecca graduated from Pre-K today – congratulations!!! After the first day, I didn’t think we’d ever make it. Her class sang 4 songs for us, then received their diplomas. Only one of the songs made me tear up a bit (not as much as my mom!). Then we went to Pizza Hut!


Jason goes in for a few hours tomorrow, then the kids are done ’til September! We have so much planned for this summer – it’s going to be busy, but we’re going to have a great time!

We had plans to open the pool, so Saturday morning I was out in the yard at 6:30 to get started on things. Aside from a backwards check-valve causing a minor flood as the filter pumped the pool water onto my lawn, things went pretty well. I shocked the pool & got the solar heater installed, set the winter cover over the swing set to dry, and was pretty much done in time to take the kids to the monthly Home Depot workshop.

It was so nice on Saturday that they decided to hold the workshop outside! In the parking lot! In the direct sun! Man, it felt like it was well over 100 degrees out there. We quickly (very quickly) got the project done & went inside. I picked up a few things for future projects and we were home in 45 minutes. Just thinking about being out there makes me sweat.

Laura & the kids went to Art Alive at the Albright Knox while I stayed home & finished up the pool and got started on the hot tub. The hot tub was emptied, cleaned, filter cleaned, and fresh water put in. I can’t wait to get in there tonight! Being in the sun all that time made us all sleepy, so we were able to sneak in a quick nap before friends came over for dinner.

After dinner we drove down to Penn Dixie to look at the stars, the moon, and Saturn. We also saw the International Space Station zoom overhead. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty amazing. It looks like a really, really high plane going super fast. The Space Station travels at 17,000 miles / hour. Hopefully we’ll be able to see it tonight, too (at 9:47 here in Buffalo).

Sunday morning we were all up early and headed up to the cottage to have fun & get some work done. I was up on the roof with my father-in-law (who I still insist on calling Mr. Bishop, although my mother-in-law is “Mom”), finishing the front of the garage roof. That went pretty well, despite the hot temperatures. Hauling 90 lb. rolls of roofing up a ladder is much easier this year now that I’m in better shape. The hardest part is remembering where NOT to step, as we haven’t done the back side of the garage yet, and that’s where we were bringing the supplies up from.

When we were done roofing, Jason was out playing in the water and almost floated back to Dunkirk in his raft, and I had to run after him (fully dressed, mind you) before he was swept out too far. I think I went out about 150 yards – but the water was still only chest deep. Lake Erie, by the way, is still pretty darn cold these days! As soon as I got to him, Jason said, “I know… I’m dead.” How can I be mad at him when I get a response like that??? And besides, any 9-year old boy gets in situations like that. I’m just glad he’s OK.

Coming home from the cottage is always an adventure, but we pulled right into customs (no line on a Sunday night!) and got though after answering hardly any questions at all (just “Citizenship?” and “Anything to declare?”). It helps having the packet of paperwork all neatly presented for customs.

Then there was Monday… boy, was it HOT. And there’s no A/C in my office yet, and my office is in the attic. Well, I wasn’t very effective at work yesterday. It was just miserable. I took some time to get in the air conditioned car and headed to Best Buy to buy a new camera. Ours is dying, and with Rebecca’s pre-K graduation coming up, I didn’t want to take chances. I’ll write a review on the camera soon – so far, I like it.

This morning I signed on to the computer, checked email, etc. then turned off IM, email and all other distractions. I worked ’til lunch, ate and quickly checked in, then back to work ’til 4:30 before checking in one more time for the day. I had a SUPER productive day today and can’t wait to try this again tomorrow. Some things still take time, like working in PHP, then realizing I need a header, so going to Photoshop and making it, then editing the CSS to display it, then back to the PHP task I was originally working on, but I feel like I got a lot done today.

OK – this is a long post. Quickly – the vegetable garden is coming along very nicely and we’ve already harvested some spinach for a salad the other evening. I think Laura is getting some of the lettuce out today. Fresh picked spinach tastes far superior to the stuff you get in stores!

This long post is proof I need to blog more often. I’ll try to get 1 more in this week!

Miley:

Rebecca:

It’s hard finding a photo of Rebecca not showing off her beautiful teeth, but what do you think? Rebecca thought they look similar, and she loves the idea that she looks like Hannah Montana!

I’ve picked up 9 geocaches recently; one evening I went out with Becca and this deer thought we were going to feed it:

Then Friday night out with Ray & Theresa. Here are some photos from one of the caches we found:

Then Sunday I hit up Grand Island:

While on Grand Island, we placed Jason’s Cursed Pirate Booty – our first geocoin. I also picked up a few ticks, but got them off me before they buried in. Next time I’ll have to wear long pants. Finally we found a quickie on Monday while taking a break from a party & introducing a muggle to the sport of geocaching. It’s amazing how people don’t know about this, but are instantly hooked when they go out & do it.

It was a busy weekend with 3 parties & a parade; tonight Echo is coming over to spend a few days with us. Echo is one of my mom’s border collies and it adorable. When mom gets home, I may not answer the phone so Echo can stay with us longer!

The kids are excited about the school year ending in about 4 weeks. I’m excited about no more tuition payments!

The Lost finale is on tomorrow night, which I can’t wait for. It’s always a tough decision… do I watch in HD, or hook up the projector? Either way, I have to get the surround sound working. Then it’s back to no TV again – I got so much done last year when I gave it up.

Finally, I apologize to everyone in Buffalo for the recent cold & frost advisory last night. It’s all my fault because I packed up my sweaters for the summer. Now we’ll probably end up getting snow!

OK – off for a busy day of work – later!

Last time I was there you’d have to tie in each time, get it inspected, and your belayer would have to actually work to keep you up. Now you just quickly clip in and the belayer has a safety latch to keep you from falling to your death (or, at least from getting hurt). That gave us a lot more time to climb, instead of goofing around w/ strapping in.

I wasn’t too fond of being up so high – I have to get over that. There were a couple climbs I just couldn’t do because of the lack of places to grab onto. But, overall, I was quite happy w/ how I did. Jason was a maniac, flying up the walls (and sometimes flying off of them!).

Both Jason and Laura want to go back, and since it’s pretty cheap ($10 all day pass, $2 harness rental) I’m sure we’ll be going back soon.

Then on Sunday I decided to take a day to myself and work in the garden. 5-1/2 hours later I was done for the day. In that time, I dug 2 new beds, moved some retaining bricks, turned over the herb garden, harvested my compost from last year, and cleaned up the front lawn. I didn’t take any week 3 garden photos ’cause I thought the camera was broken – it’s dying, but still works. Won’t be long before it’s dead, though. Anyway, after the seeds exploded out of the ground, they seem to be slowing down now. I plan on moving the plants into the garden on Mother’s Day.

I’m in my final week of wingate testing at UB and I can’t wait to be done! Hopefully the report will be written up soon after and I can see if my time was worthwhile. Monday was a VO2 Max study, Wednesday (tomorrow) is a single wingate, and Friday is an endurance test. Then, Jason & I go camping for the weekend!

Anyway, back to work…

After we awoke and dressed, we all went to Reinstein Woods for some Earth Day celebrations. The kids did a few crafts, while I picked up materials on energy conservation, composting, and other “save the Earth” things. The only new thing I read about was a water garden, which basically takes runoff (from driveways, rooftops, etc) and directs it to a garden. Interesting concept, but I’ll stick with our rain barrel (which I’ve been using to water the garden since it rained last week – still 3/4 full). This was our first trip to Reinstein Woods, and we look forward to returning. Here’s a photo of Morgan getting a close look at a painted turtle:

We saw plenty of ducks, Canadian geese, a few minnows, and a beaver lodge. There’s a few beavers living there, according to one of the volunteers we asked. However, finding a turtle coming out of the pond and getting a close-up was the highlight of the trip.

When we got home, after a quick lunch, we took a siesta and avoided the crazy hot weather here in Buffalo. Then I did more work in the garden, while the kids played in the backyard and Laura worked in the kitchen. Saturday night I took care of tedious business things, like entering credit card charges into QuickBooks and paying contractors.

Sunday Andy and I went for a little 2-mile run, then extended the trip by walking a bit. We were walking along this trail by 2-mile creek and when we looked up, there were 3 deer standing less than 30′ from us. After contemplating what to do, we continued on the trail, getting closer to the deer until we passed them and continued on our way.

When I finally got home & cleaned up, I got to work on a project that I’m doing for Steve. The hardest part of some jobs is just gathering the information together – this job was particularly easy, but without the proper login information, I had to put it on my server, only to move it later. Instead of spending too much time looking for the passwords & URLs, I figured I’d just move it tomorrow.

Now it’s dinner @ the in-laws, then fighting w/ the kids to go to bed at a reasonable time, because it’s back to school for them tomorrow. As for me, I have a resting week at UB, only having to do 4, 30-second bouts on the wingate bike. Next week we’re tested again, then DONE. Thank goodness – this study is a long one!