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Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Good bye, Mazda MPV van

About a month ago, Rachel was picking up Jan in the van. She left it in the driveway. It was halfway inbetween the two doors. The next morning Patrick was in a hurry and backed the Taurus into it, denting the doors on the left side. I took it to a body shop and thier estimate was around five thousand. The insurance company said this was more than the van was worth and totaled it. Searching around April found a Ford Explorer in Denver and we went down last weekend to get it. This morning someone picked up the van.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Dream or Real?

Last night I woke up rather voilently because I thought I heard someone banging on the front door then repeatly hitting the doorbell. It takes me more than a few seconds to get out of bed now because of the CPAP machine which had been knocked to the floor. April and I went to look out the front window and we did see a car. No one else heard the knock and Becca did not bark as she normally does when someone knocks. So was it real or not? I don't know.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

St Louis

I took a business trip to st. Louis this week. I arrived a day early and walked the Katey trail down by the Missouri river. It an old rail line converted in the 80's. Coming from Nebraska it was strange and wonderful to see so many trees.













Friday, September 12, 2014

Patrick Tennis

Patrick had a tennis match last weekend in Gering. It was nice weather. I took a few shots.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Phone

My Android phone just went dead in the middle of a call. I do not know why. I thought about opening it up and popping the battery out, but the case bent a lot when I tried and I was afraid I might break it. I brought it to the Verizon store and popping the battery is exactly what the guy did. I am eligible for an upgrade in December.

I watched a review of Amazon's Fire phone. The consensus is that it's a good for for 2010. Since this is 2014, not a lot of people are impressed. Apple released their AppleWatch (Iwatch?) this week. Again, not a whole lot to be impressed with.


Sunday, September 07, 2014

Living in the area

A friend on Facebook challenged people to come up with positive things about living in Scottsbluff. I did a list of lack of negatives from other areas:
The air is clear year around , not brown or grey. I've lived in places where you could see the air at certain times of the year. 
I've enver sat at an intersection and had the light cycle red-green-yellow-red three or four times before I was able to make it through. 
The local radio's traffic reports are really short. 
Nobody cares how much public transporation officials make. 
The local news does not have a segment telling you how many murders occured that day. 
Hurricane season is an abstract concept.
National news had not camped out here because a locally born celeberity did something stupid.


Friday, September 05, 2014

Sunshine

Rachel's tennis partner showed up at Rachel graduation celebration with an interesting gift: a small black-haired kitten. Rachel named it Sunshine by the end of the day. It’s a very happy kitten and it loved to curl up on my keyboard or in the cubby of the desk. Unfortunately Patrick is allergic and we had to give it away. No one was very happy about it.


I can’t understand someone giving a live animal to someone else without checking first.  




Wednesday, September 03, 2014

I never learn. Since April is out of town, the DVR is still recording lots of shows. I've been deleting a lot of them to keep it from running out of space. Oprahs, mainly. However, one caught my attention. It feature Michael Moore in a 'debate' with insurance industry advocates. In my view, Oprah's debates are one-sided toward whichever side she favors.

One question from a German Canadian national made me think. Why are American afraid of government? I've been turning this one over in my head. We are inundated by programs going broke, pork barrel spending,

Replace laptop screens

I actually managed to replace two broken laptop screens with new ones. Thomas found his cracked last year. I didn't do much about it because it could be hooked to an external monitor. Rachel left hers on the floor and it slid under the couch. When she went to use it it was broken when someone sat on the couch and pressed down on it. Her laptop is a chromebook so there was no external monitor port. I did some googling and found the instructions for taking it apart. I tried it and it worked. A quick search on Amazon located a replacement. I also replaced the screen on the other one a few weeks later. I did not send that one 2nd day so FedEx for some reason sent it to USPS. That added an extra day. In the end though both are working.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Tennis Pictures

A gathering of pictures from girls tennis.



























Thursday, May 15, 2014

Videos from Rachel's Graduation









Rachel's High School Graduation

The ceremony took place at the football field. It was hot.


Rachel with Susan

Thomas, Rachel, Patrick

The Family