Blog entries for 2007
Didn't get what I wanted for Christmas. Oh wait, yes I did. I actually ordered it myself. Since we have so many remotes for our electronics, we figured we had 8 remotes plugged into our old Sony Universal remote. Pretty much maxed it out. Had the PS3/DVD using the control for the Tape. An MP3 player using the CD, DVD using DVD, cable for cable, Receiver using AMP, TV for TV, a multi changer that was used for the PS3, PS2, Wii and MP3 player was using the MD setting. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah, the VCR. But this was set aside incase we needed the VCR. So, I bought a fancy new one - Logitech Harmony 890 (with the IR remote). This not only allows me to have each of these with their own settings, but only one button. At one point, I just needed to press DVD to control the DVD. Or press Cable to control Cable. Not any more. With our HD TV, and HDMI and PS3 and others, it has gotten pretty convoluted.
Here's a scenario. I want to go from Cable to watch Blu Ray movies on the PS3. Press the TV button, then the Input to change from HDMI1 to HDMI2. Press the MD button and change the multi changer to PS3 (if it was on another setting). Turn on the PS3. Press the Tape button for PS3 control (yes, since it's BluRay, I had to buy a USB adapter to convert play/pause/stop/left/right etc. so I can control from the Sony/Harmony remote). Anyway, I also press AMP to change from Video 1 (cable) to Video 3 (game - or BR DVD). With the new Harmony remote, I press Activities, BR DVD and it does all this for me.
Gary let us know that their visit to Cirque Du Soleil was wonderful. The girls had a great time. Jeff's family headed east this Christmas so we'll find out when they get back how everything went.
Azucena just informed me that Bashful is attacking the TV. She has been recording these sunrise shows on Discovery HD. They look incredibly great. Well, this episode has lots of birds sounding off and Bashful is pawing the TV and in attack mode.
So what is with the weather doing 40 degrees on Monday, 80 on Tuesday and 40 again today? Not as bad as Oklahoma, though, right? 1 million without power. Ouch. Hope where ever you are located, you have decent weather. My condolences if you are in Oklahoma.
Watched Down Periscope last night. Even the non HD dvd's look better with an HD dvd player.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the passing of Azucena's mother. On Halloween, we usually pick her up for trick or treating. This year, Azucena was out of town, so we left her with the nursing home and I did all the tricking by myself. Did a good job of scaring some kids, and a few adults. One kid took off running and screaming around the corner to her house. Poor thing didn't even get any candy. Anyway, Azucena's mom was on dialysis and did her usual cleansing on this day, then had dinner. Complained of a headache and went to bed. An hour or so later, the staff came by and found her non responsive, so they called the paramedics and had her transported to the hospital right next door. It turns out she probably had a brain aneurysm. She was pretty much gone by the time the staff came around. We were able to get her family in town and the next day at 7pm (appx 24 hours), they pulled the plug and she passed away at 7:30. Put up a good fight, though. She and Azucena would meet me for lunch somewhere each Sunday after church. She was always saying stuff like: "You look wonderful, Angel", or "You have beautiful teeth, Angel/Hijo". She was also fun to tease. She could also sit in her chair and for hours just call for the cats, who always ignored her. We'll miss her, but most of all will be Azucena who visited her at least 2 times a week.
Ahh, what has changed. Much in the last few weeks alone. Azucena decided she wanted a Blu Ray dvd player, so she bought a Playstation 3. WooHoo, got 5 free movies. Now to compliment the blue ray, she decided she wanted a TV that does HD real high quality. She found one and agreed to put it off for a year. That lasted for a week. Best Buy had a buy she couldn't ignore. Jim and Evelyn agreed to take our old tv off our hands. It was a 57" rear projection. The new one is bigger, but a 52" Sony LCD. Bigger because it has about 2 inches of frame around the screen that doubles as a speaker. Then we had to get a nice stand for the TV. So we found one on Sunday. Next is getting a receiver to handle all the new fangled gadgets. That too can wait for about a year. Yeah Right. Watch us have one by end of next week, or end of year. Good thing all of this is on a no interest plan. The all in one remote we use is pretty much maxed out, so we might need to get a high end one soon. Putting the PS3 on the remote was a challenge since the PS3 is bluetooth and the remote is infra red. Plus her car needed brakes real bad, so that's another chuck of important stuff that was really needed, not like the tv and such.
Well, I'd better head out. We are shopping for a family for Christmas. We've been doing this Just Because Christmas thingie from her church. And every year, we get 2 or 3 bikes. Where is all this money coming from?
P.S., if you ever do high quality HD with TV and Cable and DVD, you'll probably not want to go back. It's da bomb!!!
Ok, I was going to let this die, but Azucena says I need to keep it up. So here is the latest.
Sadly, while we were on our vacation to Cheesehead land, we lost several fish including most of the babies. Baby Randy and baby Azucena were the only new ones in this family to survive. I'd try again to bring new life into the aquarium, but I'd hate for them to be fishbait. Maybe soon.
I should have a bunch more to say, but I'll let you think I have something important. I'll try to start filling in pretty soon.
We have a new addition to the house, baby Kym. That makes 3 new additions in the last few months. These are mickey mouse platys. We are hoping for more to come.
Been a wet few months. Lots of fireworks were rained out, but several that were moved to the weekend were able to get off the ground. We also got to see a record number of ball games this year. My work had a party at the Dell Diamond last month and Jim was my escort. Then last Saturday, Azucena and I went to her company outing. Then Sunday, Dell had given thank you tickets to TML so I took Kym as my date. Not too bad. Only one win in all that, though. Fireworks on Saturday.
Yes, we are practically done with the house renovating. We just need to quit finding things to replace. We now have a new washer/dryer and had to "remodel" the room they went in since we couldn't open the doors all the way. So we took the doors down and put curtains. Looks pretty good too.
Azucena just got back from a trip to DC. She'll be on a few more trips this month and all next month. We'll also be going to a Rockstead reunion in Wisconsin in August. We may try to visit my dad around Thanksgiving. Suppose to plan on Vegas early November for one of Azucena's work trips. Can't get out of that, I guess.
YEAH!!!!! Our house repairs are pretty much complete. Just minor stuff like sealing the tile grout before the cats ruin it (which Bashful is already trying to do) and touch up on the paint. It is looking much better and very nice. Ya'll are invited to our House Warming All Over Again party. No date is set yet, but will be once we get this and the furniture set. Oh and lets not forget we need to "dust" the whole house. Everything has a layer of something on it, except that which we were able to keep locked away or under plastic.
Jim and Evelyn deserve lot of thanks for helping us load and unload our furniture and putting our toilets/sink back together. I'll need Jeff's help on the sink since it wants to leak some and we've got it as tight as we dare to.
Kym also deserves a lot of thanks because she helped with the loading and putting up with our dogs this whole time. Papas is a handle just by himself, but she had our two and her two and it sounds like they all pretty much got along. Oh, she stopped by to bless us with our color choice (well, concur with Azucena and remind me I'll like it regardless of my current opinion). It's a shame we don't have before/after pictures, but think of seafoam green rug and linoleum, now Continental Slate from Daltile. Looks good. Really Good. We've also redone the downstairs bathroom fixtures.
I'd thank Jeff, but he was able to time his trips out of state on both loading and unloading days. He gets some thanks though, for not electrocuting himself while fixing a lighting problem. I'll have other stuff for him later on.
Azucena has been busy working away on her church dvd and their web site. I guess she made sure she is listed first in the web page (see movie matinee), and no, I didn't see anything on the web site about their dvd.
It has been a very wet month. Almost messed up our plans for everything.
First of all, we had the foundation fixed on our house. It wasn't in bad shape, probably a 2 on a scale of 10, but we wanted it fixed up before we did other long term goals on the house. Only this required the rain to cooperate. Yes it did rain a bit on the 2nd day they were working on it, but only a bit. It also started raining some as they were finishing up on it and laying new concrete. The day after they were done, the rains came, and hard. Whew, done just in time. Some of the new concrete slabs look funky, but it all worked out.
Then we had someone come by and fix some woodwork to get ready for upstairs tile work. We asked him to come back and install some new doors we've been thinking about getting, which the tile people strongly recommend we get BEFORE the tile goes in. He was scheduled on Monday and it poured even worse than the previous rain storm. So he had to postpone until Tuesday. We had a front door put in and replaced the sliding glass door with french doors. Also we had him fix the cracks along the outside of the house and redo some window sills. Yeah, Jeff could have done the sills, but since he was there, we had him do those too. Doors look great and they shut real well too.
Kymie has been keeping our dogs for us, so we are much appreciated with her on that. Thanks to Jim for carting the french doors home since it wouldn't fit in or on the SUV and I didn't have a current insurance card to rent a truck. Kym's payment is lunch or dinner. Jim's payment is leaving the WII at his place so he can play and practice. The football game would be exceptional if it weren't for the bugs in it. Maybe next edition will be better.
All that's left is finish painting and tile work. Are we there yet???
Well, our birthdays have come and gone. Neither with much excitement. NOT!.
We had a great dinner on Sunday for my birthday at Fish Daddy's, then went home for cake and ice cream. For Azucena's, we had a little bowling party at Rockover Lanes as well as a very nice dinner that J&E cooked up. J&E, Herb and Betty and Kymie showed up. Then we played with Azucena's birthday present which she got the previous Sunday (yes, she got her birthday present on my birthday. Go figure. I won't mention who had the gall to do that, but she was married to him). Anyway, her present was the WII from Nintendo - she squealed pretty good when she opened it up. We created our on mini MII's and went to town. Bowled, played tennis, Bowled some more. Jim's dad, Herb got into it a lot more than we expected. His eyesight is going, so he doesn't get to do much any more, but with our Big Screen TV, he was able to see them pins fall. A lot of fun, the Wii's, more than I would have expected.
Changing subjects... as you know, since we plan to have foundation work done on our house, we have decided to repaint and tile the downstairs. We have selected all the paint colors we will use and have completed the stairwell and living room. Got the hard part out of the way. Plan on getting the dining room done this coming week, then the kitchen and we'll be done except for touch ups. Sesame, Pumpkin, Plum, oh my!
Been awhile, hasn't it. Fooled ya, thought I wasn't going to update it any more. Well, fooled me too.
Got an email from Montie Krumnow who lives in Hawthorne, NJ. She's married into the Krumnows from Huntsville, Texas (Monroe Robert Krumnow).
Everything is kind of wacky here in Central Texas, but I'm sure it's wacky elsewhere too. Weather is the most unusual we've had in ages. It was sleeting in Round Rock last week and it should do some hail damage this weekend. It snowed in Temple, which is not too far north of us. Cold enough to start another fire and turn on the heater.
Ok, so we have started the ball rolling on serious house repairs. We will be doing some foundation work at the end of May, which means that they will not only re-settle our house some, but poke holes in the concrete inside the house, which also means pulling up the rug. So, since Azucena is determined to lay tile downstairs, this looks like one of those back to back to back projects. As soon as they finish the foundation, we'll probably paint the walls. I'm for hot pink, but I doubt she'll go for it. Then after the painting is dry, we'll get someone to lay tile. We've put it off because of money and cause we didn't want to have to move the TV, fish tank, curio cabinet, and other stuff, but since we'll have to move them for the foundation work, so might as well get it all done at that time. We'll need a place to sleep/shower/romp - Kymie? J&E? The animals are a different story, but we'll figure it out.
Ah, the fun of it all. Temps around 29 - 31 degrees since Sunday night (wind chill down to the 18's). Colder here than Ohio and New Jersey. Looks like NJ is having some sort of warm wave, in the 50's and 60's (Dayton dropped 30 degrees yesterday and Mt. Laurel dropped 30 degrees today). Funny how Azucena and I traveled all the way to Ohio for ice and snow and found virtually none of it, but here in our own back yard 3 weeks later, we have plenty. How ironic too that because it's in our own back yard, we are told to stay home. So, Azucena and I have been home telecommuting for 3 days, well, mostly. She has enjoyed the days off some, but I've been checking back in with work, solving issues and getting work done that normally comes in via the web, so for me, it really isn't much different that if I were at work. For Azucena, same thing - she can get most of her work done via the internet, but she elected to treat it as days off, which her work officially did - paid too.
Tuesday, while letting Papas out front for the "pee on demand" trick he has going for us, Buddy got loose. When Buddy gets loose he's gone. We've always been able to find him except for the last two times and he's come back on his own (damn!, uh, Yeah!). But this time he heads out and after awhile we get a call. I had to climb in from the passenger side of the truck to go get him. The truck was iced too much on one side. Didn't really take long to clear the windshield, but I do like the side window vent. Cleared the ice right off the windows. But today, all sides are iced up. One coworker decided it wasn't worth coming in to work when she saw a neighbor spend 30 minutes using a knife around the edges of his doors to open them. Another coworker spend 2 hours de-icing only to decide the bridge she had to cross may be closed.
Some roads and overpasses were closes. Austin ran out of deicing material yesterday, so they basically pleaded with us to stay home. And when an accident occurred, the traffic announcer would say " See, I told you. But don't listen to us, go out on your own and see for yourself if travel is bad". We stayed home and saw for ourselves via the tv.
Dad is still enjoying his electronic setup. He got it off track the other day and came close to calling us, but we think the problem was hitting the channel button (taking it off channel 3 which just screws the whole setup) instead of the off button on the tv. He got it working on his own which is real good to hear. I just wish we had taken the effort to make mom's as simple.
Ok, we went over the river and through the woods to grandpa's house, or dad's house, or whatever (Dec 23 - 30). We had a great time, OK? Visited with his godgrandson and Uncle Dean/Aunt Honey, and Uncle Joe. Really, we had a great time. No snow, and none of this problem with frozen water we heard so much about. Right before we left to come back to Austin, Azucena and I splurged since we hadn't really splurged on dad before (not for Christmas). Gary had given him some dvd's that showed his pretty face on tv during a Philly's game, and Jeff's family had given him a book on Baseball stuff (yeah, it was a good gift, only it included a DVD of news reels). Well, since he had no dvd player, we felt it was our duty to get one for him. But since his pissass tv had no connections other than cable, we felt it was our duty to upgrade the darn thing. So, Thursday after breakfast, we shopped at Best Buy and picked out an Insignia TV and DVD/VHS player. We went to the National Museum of the Air Force after lunch. This is one big museum. It is free and you can easily spend a few days here. After the museum we to his apt and gave him his Happy New Years Gift (since we already gave him a Christmas Gift, we needed to make up a gift reason, right?). The expert set it up (ARO if you didn't know) and let him learn the controls. He did have one nice piece of equipment, a Bose Wave radio that we used for speakers. Minimal effort on his part to watch DVD or VHS or cable. Then we went to dinner. (he tried to invite his newfound girlfriend we hooked him up with (dining hostess from our hotel), but she didn't have transpo at that time. Oh wells. On Friday, on our way back home, we stopped by his place to work out a few kinks and it was like watching a kid in a candy shop. (Sorry your Buckeye's lost the ball game, but they really did play crappy, and YES, UT did beat Iowa - Hook Em.)
Sunday (1/7) we had a wonderful lunch with Angie, Li'l Doug, Marcus and Mom R at Dave & Busters. Played for a few hours and left with a few goodies. We revamped our loft so we picked up a fiber optic lamp from D&B to put in the room for decoration. Loft is looking might good after all the changes. It's the game room we always dreamed it would be. Just a bunch of years later than we wanted.