Hey Hey Hey! So its been a while since I posted. I guess once we returned from Carol Stream, things got hectic again. What happened? Lets see here. We participated in the annual Jackson School HOA garage sale. It was fabulous! I think we sold $3 - $4 of merchandise. The only thing of value that I personally sold was a Wok of mine. I had it for sale for $5. Some old women told me she wanted it for $3. I was like, "Hey, $5 isn't that much." She looked like I insulted her, so I sold it for $3. Yeah, sucker. Our house was pretty busy as we also hosted our neighbors garage sale. They were pretty popular, as they had around 3 Gap stores worth of clothes for sale. Yikes!

Lets see here. Matthew is growing like a weed. He's already in clothes that William was in when he was 9 months old. William continues to learn and develop his fine skills of disagreement. Lynn is doing great, still teaching swimming lessons.

Jason is focusing on the garage and yard this summer. He bought a workbench and is preparing the garage to... wait for it... park a car! I'm also trying to get an area where I can work on all my man stuff. As far as the yard goes, we have to do some landscaping in the front yard and the back yard... I guess both sides too. Lots of work this summer!

We've got some new pics of Lynn/William/Matthew taken by a professional photographer in a tulip farm. Check it out.

L,W,&M in Tulips

The three day weekend was a nice time. A bit too much rain, but what can you do? Its Oregon! Have to wait until after July 4th for the really good weather.

We're back from Carol Stream! We arrived yesterday afternoon. We had a great time in the Chicagoland area. I'll post some pics soon.

Step 2 of Jason's media transfer is now complete... we now have FiOS internet! (For those not-in-the-know, its Verizon's Fiber Optic Internet) Question... is it fast? Sure. Is it faster than Comcast? Ahh... Ehhh... probably not. Comcast (cable TV, Phone, Internet) have been loosing face value in my mind over the past year. Ever since we got rid of our Cable and stuck with the local channels (over cable), I've had a mind to drop Comcast. We tried their VOIP phone.. it was great until the intro price changed and added an extra $25/month. Yeah, pricey. So some dude stopped by our place and offered FiOS from Verizon and we took it.

The only complaint I have now is that they installed the biggest, ugliest box on the outside of our house... another box. Apparently when you get a service installed, they add a new box. When you get the service discontinued, they leave it there. I have a box from AT&T DSL, Comcast Cable, Old Verizon Phone, and now a new Verizon Internet box. They also drilled a hole through my wall and installed a big battery unit on the inside wall of my garage.. not the best place for it either. We'll see if we can do something about that later.

Tomorrow I embark for a flight to Chicagoland to head up Matthew's baptism. It'll be a few Horihan's and a bunch of Pedricks (and various derivatives and distillates of Pedricks). Should be a fun trip, although I think my short respite at home is the last bit of relaxation that I'll have in the foreseeable future.

Speaking of home alone, I was thinking about my weekend. I accomplished an enormous amount. I purchased both a Camelbak (as I had mentioned in a previous post) and a pressure washer. I completed a tough 6 mile hike, weeded my lawn, paid some bills, toured a John Deere dealership, purchased lawn chemicals, bought a metal cabinet for the garage, purchased a metal rack for more storage on the garage roof, and went to Church. On a normal weekend, I'd be happy to accomplish ONE of these tasks. The fact that I got all this done made me think about our government. Why do we seem to go nowhere? They all have families! Cripes! No wonder no big issues ever get debated. If we only could elect single people (men and women equally of course ;-)) I think we'd have lots of positive things happen. Anyways, point of story, single people get stuff done. No need to check home w/ the boss, point decisions. #1 is always you.

Hope all is well with all ya'll. Cheers!

Jason

Submission #2

Oh! I really meant "7 days in the future". How about today? Great! We enter day 5 of Jason's version of Home Alone. Its not as exciting as I was hoping for, but I'm still getting more sleep. Lynn is enjoying her time in Chicago, meeting lots of friends and relatives. I've managed to stay out of trouble here myself, going hiking and keeping spending to a minimum (notice how minimum has no reference... mu ha ha ha).

Today my group from work is going hiking in the Columbia river gorge. Hopefully things go well, as I hurt my knee on Saturday hiking in the very same area. It feels pretty good today, so we'll see what happens.

Did everyone get their taxes done? I received an email from TurboTax this AM saying that Uncle Sam had accepted my submission. Whew! Just doing your taxes with that software isn't enough... you have to submit them too! Who would have guessed?

Anyways, I need to get going. I bought a Camelbak water backpack and I love it! If you want to go on any sort of long hike, get one!


-Jason

Submission #1

Hi Everybody. I'm sorry to say that I haven't updated the web page in some time again. So for the next seven days, I'll be updating this guy every day! Yes, get your fill of Jason's excellent stories and tips for life. Not tonight though.. I'm beat! Tomorrow is a new day.