Welcome to the Kirby family

Ok - Yes, I am a sucker. Anytime an infomercial comes on TV, I always end up believing that this is the greatest product invented, and that I have to have one. Fortunately, my lack of motivation of actually picking up the phone and ordering something usually wins. Except for that one late, lonely night that I ended up ordering the Double CD set of 80's Monster Ballads - although it is a rockin' album.

Well, as cliche as this is going to sound, I had a vacuum salesman come to the door last week. Actually it was a woman, who said that they are doing a promotion and will vacuum and shampoo one room in my house for free. This is a promotion, and there is no obligation to buy anything - they just want to spread the word about their product and cleaning services. Then Joe, a really nice college guy looking to start his own business comes in and cleans the stairs. This vacuum is amazing!! In hind sight, amazing might be exaggerating a little, but it is a really good and multi-functional vacuum, shampooer, sweeper, and hardwood floor buffer. So 3 hours, a trip to go pick up Bear at the kennel, and $1600 later, I was welcomed to the Kirby brand family. Scott wasn't at all surprised when I told him I bought a vacuum (I have been eying the Dyson for months) but when he heard how much it cost - I could hear his eyes pop out of his head. Oh well, maybe this will be the motivation I need to try to have a sparkling clean house!

This darn PC

Ok - so when I bought this thing, I thought it was the coolest damn thing on earth. I would load all of my pictures on here, be able to edit videos that I take with the digital camcorder, store all of my MP3 files and learn to use my ipod... Endless possibilties, right?

Last week, the thing crashes. I am not doing a single thing - it' is basically just sitting there with the desktop up and no applicatons running. All of a sudden, I hear a pop and the thing turns off. Then it magically starts up again, then before Windows even boots up, it shuts itself off then starts back up again. I watch in horror as this cycle continues 5-6 more times. Then I turn it off, let it rest for a little bit, and try again. The cycle starts over.

I had to completely do a recovery on the harddrive, meaning that I lost all my pictures (which of course I deleted off my camera when I transfered them to the PC), and didn't have a back-up. Thanks to Brian who helped me find a way to get all the music that I had on the iPod back onto the PC - but still - I am pissed!

I have learned the lesson of backing up. The stupid eMachine didn't even do this in the 4 years that I owned it. Hmmmmmm....

Coronado - an island or peninsula?

This past weekend Scott and I decided to take a weekend for ourselves and have a little getaway. Scott was out in the field all week, and I was out most of the week in DC. We had to kennel the dog, and decided to let him stay the weekend and enjoy ourselves.

We went to Coronado Island for the weekend (which is really a peninsula). I cashed in tons of points and got us a nice room at the Marriott resort and spa for the weekend. It was right on the water (bay side, not beach side), and backed up to a trail that allowed us to walk along the water, walk to restaurants and bars, and a little shopping area. I booked us both appointments at the spa - thinking that Scott could use a massage after a strenuous and sleepless week in the field. Little did we know that the masseuse would be a large lady who liked to use elbows on his back. The poor thing looked more weary coming out of the massage than going into it!

All in all, a very nice weekend, and the dog got to spend a week at doggie camp. He was very well behaved the night we brought him home - but now he's back to his usual antics. We did get him into a 6 week group training course that starts this Saturday - so we'll see how that goes!

And they go round and round

I had another great time this trip back to DC (although the monthly meetings are starting to get old and pointless, and this flight is way too long to do every month). I came in a couple of days early to stay with Tricia, go to a Nascar race, see my family, and go out to dinner with friends. Other then the work stuff, it was a very productive coupel of days!

The Nascar race was in Dover, Delaware - the Monster Mile. Tricia was able to get great tickets, which allowed us to go into the pit area and our seats were in the suite. Nothing beats watching the race from an air conditioned room with free food and beer! So this Nascar experience was completely different from any other race I had been to. There was no tailgating, there was no paying $20 to park in someone's lawn and then walk a mile to the track, and there was no sitting in the sun wishing the race was 100 laps instead of 400. I still think the greatest part of the race is the flyover by the airforce planes. Another very neat part was being in pit row. We were there for the first part of the race, and were there when they yelled "start your engines"! We stayed there for about 20 laps or so, and got to see a tire change from right behind the stands.

Here are a couple of pics, and thanks to everyone for another great trip home (yes, VA is still what I call home).