Our updates for all of you

No, not us. But for a week starting tomorrow we're a "Nielsen" TV rating family! We got a call last month asking if we'd be interested. I said sure! Why not! So yesterday we got the booklets to fill out and then send back. It might be interesting since the majority of TV shows we normally watch are not on or in continual re-runs from the writers strike. I've read that some will be back in April or May for a few shows, while others won't be on again until next fall now. So, I know that everybody wants to get what they believe is 'their piece of the pie'. But with many articles being written about more and more people turning away from "traditional" network programming, I'd kinda think that the just ended strike would have been the worst thing possible! Other news, well our weather has remained pretty stable- cold! In talking with Laura yesterday, in her area of Iowa they're dealing with snow and cold like we'd had last month. She ...

And yes they are. Just doing the thing called life as luckily, nothing of real note going on around here. I'm guessing that the real snows of winter '07 - '08 are finished. The temps have been up to the right at 40's in the day and around 32 at night. We've had some periods of rain and even some sunny days so we just worry that it will go warm fast instead of gradually which would cause a good deal of flooding in our area as well as guaranteed flooding in our basement room. There are still mountains of snow piled up all over the north end of the state. Although its starting to 'disappear' there are places around the house that are still four feet deep with snow. Other things to update. Laura's information from her husbands family in Las Vegas to her family in Iowa was a little off. But in the big picture of life one isn't that much better than the other, she'd had a mild stroke, not a heart attack as Laura, and we, had been told. Like I said thou...

We've been pretty busy here the past week. Still lots of snow and still snowing right now! I've been busy driving, I was at it from 7:45 am yesterday until 12:30 am this morning because I took the High School Jazz Band to a concert down in CDA at the College. I watched them during the practice session. Well at least they TRIED! Pretty bad, which is a little sad. I think that some of the 13 members attitudes of "at least its getting us out of school for the day" are to blame. Last school year I took the Jr High to a similar concert, it was kind of embarrassing, but they also tried! And that's one of the things about the schools up here. They still have the opportunities to try at the districts expense. Golf, Archery, Ski trips this time of year for all grades, Bowling, all kinds of activities that have long been extinct from the old California schools our kids attended. Stacy has been putting in many days of long hours still getting her 'charges' in the sys...

And I thought it was going to be another winter like last year, enough snow to make it seem 'wintery', but not so much to be a problem. We'd had only a little bit of snow until Christmas, way less than last year. Now it has been made up in "piles". The North West has been on the national news because of all the snow. It was said a record 13 inches in Spokane in a two day period. It snowed here about the same amount. On Saturday I was down in Spirit Lake to take the high school basket ball team to a game. It wound up being an all day event with many teams also playing, so while I was in the bus and watched my DVD's as the teams played, I also watched all the snow falling and wondered how it was going to work out getting back. By the time we all were finally leaving it had been heavily snowing for over eight hours. I estimated over five inches on the bus and cars and all over the parking lot. It was a nerve racking trip home. Although the road and highway depart...

Yes it is cold outside! It was 9 below zero this morning and 5 below yesterday morning. Its been warming into the low to mid teens for daytime highs, it's 16 outside right now. Since its been so cold the past three days Stacy said they needed to be movie days. No arguments from me! The four hour version of "Dances with Wolves" yesterday and "3:10 to Yuma" Sunday. From Netflix, "Live Free or Die Hard" on Saturday. Also catching up on some programing recorded the last couple of weeks on the DVD recorder/hard drive we have from RCA. Its been mostly clear with no new snow predicted until the weekend. The local paper said the official, so far, total is 65 inches of snow. There are spots on our place with almost 4 feet deep sections. As I'd said in the last update, Stacy is very happy about the 'karma' of having her new job start on the same date as her last one. Now Laura has told us that her badge number is number 71 which was Stacy's rad...

TWO weeks! Boy time can fly! Well first off there was some significance to Stacy's start date of January 4th that I had forgotten to mention in the last update. She was very happy in the pure coincidence of her new start work date of Jan. 4th, 2008. That is because she'd started for animal control on Jan. 4th, 1988. Stacy was very happy over all the coincidences and the expectations of how that job had turned out for her and us, and how she's expecting this job to be. So now that she's been at it for two weeks today, she loves it! She has been putting in a lot of overtime to get her office all current and organized. We got her first middle of the night call last early Saturday when three of her 'kids' were where they weren't supposed to be, drinking, and got pulled over (you can hum "Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what ya gonna do" now). We'd figured she'd get those kind of night calls in the spring/summer, didn't expect one in the 'dead o...

Its been either rainy or snowy all day long so its been a great day to be on the computer! ............ All day! Got caught up with C-Net TV on-line, listened to a couple of pod casts from Leo Laporte (computer guy), and gave up trying to get new pictures up onto my flickr site. I'd been posting albums on Picasa Web Albums, but had some people tell me that they couldn't see the photos very clearly due to the reduction in quality for upload. I'd read about flickr as a good photo site, checked it out, and got started on it. It's through Yahoo (sorry Google), in addition to the much better photo quality, there are also literally hundreds of thousands of photos to view way beyond my so far, 35. Flickr has a link to send to family and friends but it is to join and not just to view the pictures so I didn't want to use that. As soon as I can get which address is the best to use I'll post it here and you, you know who you are, can check it out! Today is Stacy's fi...