Not a whole lot going on lately!
I mean, Stacy and I do have some big news for us. Oldest daughter Sandy has cashed in her copious air miles from all her on the job flights (like the one she's on right now to Florida, and she just told me on the phone that she gets back to L.A. tonight then flies out to India on Saturday!) for tickets for Stacy and me, to, in late November, go with her and Erik to Germany for 10 days!
Now this will be the first time for me to be off the Continent, I've been to Canada quite a few times now but never someplace over a 10 hours flight away!
I think this will be Sandy and Erik's forth or fifth trip over, and Stacy had spent about one year there over a couple of years span in her teens.
So at only four months away Stacy's in full trip prep mode! We're counting on Sandy's suggestions as well as all the information available on-line to try to make it the best possible experience. Although Sandy has said that knowledge of the German language isn't a real necessity, and I also have been told that from a friend that's from Germany and tries to visit her parents every year there, Stacy and I are still planning on learning some words and phrases. After attempting to get some words/phrases down, I'm thinking the best phrase for me to learn is how "I don't speak German!"
We got a couple of computer programs, have the demo disk for Rosetta Stone I'd gotten a couple of years ago, and have actually found that quite a lot is available on learning the language on You-Tube! I'm picking up and can recognize quite a few of the words, but it's the sentence structure that is throwing me off. And I always thought some of our language was weird!
If you want to see and hear some funny stuff though, check out learning to speak Australian slang on You-Tube. I was checking yesterday about other languages that have videos on You-Tube, and came across this topic. Yeah, some aren't very good but a couple were really funny!
The Germany trip is around and encompasses the time of Thanksgiving, before that trip is a 4 day one to Missouri at the beginning of November and before that trip is a week and a half for a relatives wedding in Wyoming immediately followed by a four day Juvenile Justice Conference at Idaho Falls in September. At least we can use the our trailer for the September trip.
Busy rest of 2009 for us!!!!
Other stuff,
well if you hadn't noticed Summer is plugging along. Seems to be hot just about all over the North West. The last couple of days it's been hotter in Seattle than it is out here! I saw it was 102 to 108 there yesterday, broke many records. I saw a story on North West Cable News, www.nwcn.com, about people waiting in line, some from 1:00 am!, for a shipment of portable air conditioners! "Cooling Stations" are being opened since so many homes and places don't have air conditioning or cooling since it 'never' gets that hot over there! I think though, that since these records keep getting broken almost every year, maybe if I lived there I'd buy a cooler! And our old area has been at or over 100 degrees for the last two weeks.
Last August when Stacy and I went out to visit Mike and Brenda's then new house, it was very hot, then the hottest weekend of the year, even that wasn't THIS hot though, and that home didn't have a/c! Their newest new house does though!
Locally the last couple of days have gotten less humid (nice) and not too hot, around 90 in the daytime and still getting to the low 50's at night (very nice!). About 5 days of some heavy Thunderstorms which have been making us nervous after all that happened with the near hit we had, but the rain has been good out of it. Only thing anybody can guess about the lightning that fried some of our stuff is that maybe we had a tree hit but close enough to the HughesNet and Direct TV dishes to have some of the energy transferred through the cables into the house to damage the electronics.
The final damages? Luckily the dishes themselves were not damaged, but
One of the phone lines in the house was the only line visibly damaged by heat, that line also fried our
answering machine and a cordless phone that was plugged into it!
What was really weird and nobody can explain, is how the power plugs to all those devices with separate ones weren't damaged. Neither were any but the one of the phone lines damaged, the same with the computer cables, none of those were damaged! The Direct TV receiver was toast but nothing else, and all were plugged into the same surge protected box, was damaged (thank goodness!!!).
But then EVERYTHING was plugged into surge protected, grounded, supposedly immune from lightning damaged connections! How did it happen???
I guess we'll never know! We just hope it doesn't happen again!!!
Till next time, Tad
I mean, Stacy and I do have some big news for us. Oldest daughter Sandy has cashed in her copious air miles from all her on the job flights (like the one she's on right now to Florida, and she just told me on the phone that she gets back to L.A. tonight then flies out to India on Saturday!) for tickets for Stacy and me, to, in late November, go with her and Erik to Germany for 10 days!
Now this will be the first time for me to be off the Continent, I've been to Canada quite a few times now but never someplace over a 10 hours flight away!
I think this will be Sandy and Erik's forth or fifth trip over, and Stacy had spent about one year there over a couple of years span in her teens.
So at only four months away Stacy's in full trip prep mode! We're counting on Sandy's suggestions as well as all the information available on-line to try to make it the best possible experience. Although Sandy has said that knowledge of the German language isn't a real necessity, and I also have been told that from a friend that's from Germany and tries to visit her parents every year there, Stacy and I are still planning on learning some words and phrases. After attempting to get some words/phrases down, I'm thinking the best phrase for me to learn is how "I don't speak German!"
We got a couple of computer programs, have the demo disk for Rosetta Stone I'd gotten a couple of years ago, and have actually found that quite a lot is available on learning the language on You-Tube! I'm picking up and can recognize quite a few of the words, but it's the sentence structure that is throwing me off. And I always thought some of our language was weird!
If you want to see and hear some funny stuff though, check out learning to speak Australian slang on You-Tube. I was checking yesterday about other languages that have videos on You-Tube, and came across this topic. Yeah, some aren't very good but a couple were really funny!
The Germany trip is around and encompasses the time of Thanksgiving, before that trip is a 4 day one to Missouri at the beginning of November and before that trip is a week and a half for a relatives wedding in Wyoming immediately followed by a four day Juvenile Justice Conference at Idaho Falls in September. At least we can use the our trailer for the September trip.
Busy rest of 2009 for us!!!!
Other stuff,
well if you hadn't noticed Summer is plugging along. Seems to be hot just about all over the North West. The last couple of days it's been hotter in Seattle than it is out here! I saw it was 102 to 108 there yesterday, broke many records. I saw a story on North West Cable News, www.nwcn.com, about people waiting in line, some from 1:00 am!, for a shipment of portable air conditioners! "Cooling Stations" are being opened since so many homes and places don't have air conditioning or cooling since it 'never' gets that hot over there! I think though, that since these records keep getting broken almost every year, maybe if I lived there I'd buy a cooler! And our old area has been at or over 100 degrees for the last two weeks.
Last August when Stacy and I went out to visit Mike and Brenda's then new house, it was very hot, then the hottest weekend of the year, even that wasn't THIS hot though, and that home didn't have a/c! Their newest new house does though!
Locally the last couple of days have gotten less humid (nice) and not too hot, around 90 in the daytime and still getting to the low 50's at night (very nice!). About 5 days of some heavy Thunderstorms which have been making us nervous after all that happened with the near hit we had, but the rain has been good out of it. Only thing anybody can guess about the lightning that fried some of our stuff is that maybe we had a tree hit but close enough to the HughesNet and Direct TV dishes to have some of the energy transferred through the cables into the house to damage the electronics.
The final damages? Luckily the dishes themselves were not damaged, but
Our HushesNet Satellite Internet Receiver.
Our wired and wireless router, connected to the HughesNet.
Stacy's fathers Mac computer, connected to the router.
The wired switch box for other computers in the house, also connected to the router by 25 feet of
cable.
One of the two Direct TV receivers, the one in the living room closest to the computer connection.
Stacy's fathers Mac computer, connected to the router.
The wired switch box for other computers in the house, also connected to the router by 25 feet of
cable.
One of the two Direct TV receivers, the one in the living room closest to the computer connection.
answering machine and a cordless phone that was plugged into it!
What was really weird and nobody can explain, is how the power plugs to all those devices with separate ones weren't damaged. Neither were any but the one of the phone lines damaged, the same with the computer cables, none of those were damaged! The Direct TV receiver was toast but nothing else, and all were plugged into the same surge protected box, was damaged (thank goodness!!!).
But then EVERYTHING was plugged into surge protected, grounded, supposedly immune from lightning damaged connections! How did it happen???
I guess we'll never know! We just hope it doesn't happen again!!!
Till next time, Tad
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