Our Night at Madonna Inn

My wife and I got to get away for a night at Madonna Inn - Mi-ma (my wife's mother) generously watched the boys last night and part of this morning. We stayed at 'Country Gentleman' - a room filled with wood and leather furniture, fireplace, king size bed and two twin beds upstairs. Yes, upstairs. We were pleasantly surprised to find that our room was more like a house! It was fun to look around like a kid snooping in someone's fancy mansion.

Each wall was either old fashioned brick, duck and pheasant wall paper, thick wood paneling - or any combination thereof. Any large space of wall had a painting that fit the theme of the room perfectly. Two Large screen LCD TVs finished the wall décor.

The fireplace was very large, open in the front and one side, with a copper hearth. The fireplace put out a surprising amount of heat for running on gas.

The L-shaped leather couch was large enough to sit two families with a creative coffee table in the shape of a bellow (the air pump you use to blow into a fireplace). This is an older picture of how it looked before it was remodeled - the layout is simailar, but the wallpaper, funiture, curtains, and carpet have all been changed.

The shower tub was tiled - one wall had these small one inch copper tiles that totally made me smile - they always find a way to sneak in copper in places you would never expect.

Overall our stay was extremely relaxing. We started the evening off with dinner at the steakhouse, went up to the pool, tried out one of the hot tubs and visited with a little bit of chocolate. The room was extremely quiet - combined with a full belly of steak - I have never slept so deep.

I am writing this on my laptop IN the room right now. They have wireless access - my wireless card shows two bars!

The only disappointing thing is that today is now Thursday and I will be going back to work right after breakfast!

Helping people

So I got the opportunity to help someone out there on the internet. they noticed I wrote an article for a software program they use and his install CD was broken by his three-year-old. Support would not send him an install CD so he asked if I would be kind enough to send him a copy.

This of course is not breaking iny licensing agreements - the REAL license is ownign the box WITH the install Key. So I sent hime a copy of the CD and he asked if there was some way he could repay me back. Really I was not prepared for this. I wasn't going to send an invoice or anything for being kind - then I remembered all the things that get stuck in my head that I never have time to do, Here is what I sent him:

Things are crazy busy for me –
Here is an idea of two things I have never had time to do – feel free to choose one:

1) Please go to the focus on the family website and buy the CD pack for the greatest of 2007.
2) Send a copy of the book: Business by the Book – from crown.org
3) Another story is that I just got back in the office this morning after a meeting and saw that our office got another letter from the child we sponsor through food for the hungry. I realized that if I can have this kind of effect on someone for only $28 per month – I should sponsor another one. So it would be great if you could sponsor one yourself. It has been such a great blessing for myself and our office – I would love to pass it on.
So I have no idea who this guy is and no idea what he will think of the suggestions I gave. This definitely gives me something to look forward to!

Busted Truck

So on Moving day the O/D (Overdrive light) on our 2002 Ford Explorer start flashing rapidly and it shifts funny.

I had the mechanic who is a neighbor to our office diagnose it and the solenoid on it is toast. The parts alone are $355. What a bummer. He mentioned that since the vehicle has such low mileage I could call Ford customer service and ask about some financial assistance. So I called, 1-800-521-4140 and spoke with a support rep there.

She said they 'might' help me, but I wouild first have to tow it to an authorized Ford dealership who would need to diagnose it. I already spent $140 on the diagnosis. Theoretically speaking, if I paid to get it towed to the dealership, paid for an additional diagnosis, factored in the more expensive labor for repairs at the dealership and Ford gave me that parts for free, I would break even with the estimate of letting my local mechanic take care of the problem.

Talk about frustrating. So for the past 5 days, we have only one vehicle and I have left my wife stranded at our house with 2 busy kids! I just pray this $800 I need to spend is the last of our car problems for a while.

Moved in!

What a blessing to be in our new house! We spent two weeks before moving in painting, packing, and tearing down the aviary. Moving in has been just as hard! But we count all our blessings, especially those friends that helped us out with packing, moving, or baby sitting. Thanks to you all!

San Francisco

Well over the weekend Travis, my business partner, and I drove up to a client to give their computer network a thorough inspection. That night we stayed at Travis' friend's place in downtown San Francisco. This two bedroom apartment on the third floor rents for $3800 - I am just trying to get a house - this is literally twice our house payment!

There is something appealing when youa re driving to locations that are considered exotic. I get this same feeling when driving through Hollywood and Vegas. And then you get there, you are slapped with reality.

I remembered as a kid going through Vegas, and my parents were trying to distract my little brother from seeing the postcard sized advertisements for Porn and Prostitutes.

My First Snow Cave

Going to the snow this weekend with my family allowed me to fullfill a childhood desire, to build a snow cave. While my brother and I were trying various ways to actually create a snow shelter, I kept thinking about a recent Popular Mechanics article where the authors took a 3 day survival class out in the dessert. It said the first three days are when the majority of lost people are found. During these three days, the state of mind of the lost person usually determines if they survive or not.

Back to the snow cave: It took us about 2 and a half hours to build one, and we cheated - we had a shovel. Having no experience we learned alot and I would like ot think that I would do well in the first 72 hours.

First we decided to build it against a hill. This would make it easier providing one of the walls. We dug out a hole and then compacted the snow around the hole terracing it as you would if you were laying a foundation for bricks.

Then I began to compact snow away from the shelter and used the shovel to cut out compacted snow bricks. This sounded like a good idea, but the snow was very dry and the bricks kept breaking in half. Also this still did not address how we would be able to 'lean' the walls in the center and have them arch like the ice bricks in an igloo. After we built the walls up about four feet, it really became obvious that arched walls would not work.

Version 2.0 - my brother thought that we could still use our walls would then fill it with snow until we had a nice mound. Then we could compact the snow on the top and dig it out. This worked good, as we had plenty of snow uphill to shovel - but I was looking for something faster.

I climbed to the top of the hill and we built a large snowball. We rolled it around until it was about 4 feet in diameter (and weight a few hundred pounds!) and rolled that down the hill. It grew to 5 feet in diameter and delivered a ton of snow (it also broke down some of the walls we made previously).

A few more minutes of moving snow boulders and shoveling loose snow created quite the mound. Digging out out was the easiest part.

After we finished, we found ourselves scared to allow my kids to go in. There was easily a few hundred pounds of snow that made up the roof. My brother walked along the top to test how easy it would colapse and it held up.

In the end, our shelter was about 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall. Of course, you still need something to keep you dry since the floor is all snow and ice.

After our challenge, I decided to search the internet for recommendations on building a snow shelter. I found a video of someone in Finland doing the same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jNFy0MKyqY

Other Snow Shelter links:
http://wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/shelter/snow/index.html

Cubby Bear

My son is in Cubbies, that is his age group in our Church's AWANA program. Each Tuesday night, the teacher draws a child's name and that child gets to take Cubby Bare home for the week. Well we left him in Bakersfield on our way home from my uncle's funeral (http://www.gjfreepress.com/article/20071109/OBITUARIES/71108014). My mother-in-law mailed him back to us, but with this holiday coming up, AWANA does not start for another week, so Jacob gets to have Cubby Bear for three weeks.

Anyway, cubby bear comes with a little journal that kids use to write what they did, and parents help out by taking photographs. Since we have Cubby Bear for three weeks, I helped make some eleborate pictures of Cubby's Amazing adventures.

As you can see, Cubby has been travelling to Europe and Egypt. Meanwhile I have been teaching my 4 year old how to use PhotoShop.