Family Update 5/4/2007
May 4, 2007
Times sure have been busy around Mr Papa’s World. It seems the kids continue to get busier and busier. And when they get busy, Suzanne and I get busy.
Savannah is still dancing 5 nights a week in Sierra Vista. Sean is dancing 3 nights, plus has baseball the other two nights and then again on Saturday. So, we are going every night. Last May, Suzanne and I both bought new cars. After one year, she has put about 30,000 miles on her car and I have put about 25,000 miles on my car. We are definitely racking up some miles.
Sean’s baseball team did not have a game last Saturday because of the horse races in Sonoita. The horse races are held at the county fairgrounds on the track. There is too much traffic at the fairground for the baseball field to be used. He did have a game on Wednesday, but he did not attend due to another commitment. I don’t know who won the game, but I suspect Sean’s team as they are easily the best team in the league.
The reason Sean didn’t go to the baseball game was because that same night was his school’s 2007 sports awards banquet and he really wanted to go to that. As Suzanne and Savannah were dancing, I took him to the banquet. I remember going to sports banquets all the time when I was growing up and playing sports. They were really nice events, catered at banquets. I don’t remember, but I suspect we had to pay an additional fee to go to the banquet.
With us living out in the country, this awards banquet was just a bit different. It was a pot luck. All the parents brought a dish. That said, it was still a nice event for the kids and they definitely had fun. The guest speaker for the banquet was a former Denver Broncos football player, Randy Robbins. He played for the Broncos for eight years and for the New England Patriots for one year. He was drafted in 1984 after playing college ball at the University of Arizona.
He gave a pretty nice speech for the kids. While on the Broncos, they went to the Super Bowl 3 times, winning twice. As a special treat for the kids, he brought his Super Bowl rings for the kids to look at. He also had a little plastic football that he signed at the event for the kids. Sean thoroughly enjoyed the night.
Tomorrow, Sean has a baseball game in the morning. It’s at 9:00 am, so with our 45 minute drive, we will have to rise fairly early. Later in the afternoon, the dance studio that Suzanne and the kids dance at will be performing in the park as part of the Cinco De Mayo celebration in Sierra Vista. They are all doing a bunch of dances. I think I get to do some video filming. Since it appears we will be in Sierra Vista all day, that means lunch and dinner out, which has the kids excited.
Next weekend, Suzanne has a singing gig at a birthday party. Yes, it’s a paying gig which is nice for a change. She has had some folks ask her singing at events lately, so she has made up some fliers and business cards that she has begun to hand out, so maybe some more gigs are on the horizon.
Our cruise to Alaska with members of my family is approaching soon. Today, Celebrity announced the formation of a new cruise line. This sounded pretty cool to us as we tend to like the smaller cruise ships. This new cruise line will be the luxury line. That leaves, Royal Caribbean, as the parent company of both, as the mass market line and Celebrity as the premium line. It also looks like our elite status in the Celebrity Captains Club carries over to the new Azamara Cruises.
We find this intriguing because our next cruise after Alaska is not yet booked and we have begun to do some research. Celebrity will also be announcing their 2008 – 2009 schedule for New Zealand and Australia on May 16th. We have been intrigued by the Hawaii to New Zealand cruise for a while and may just book this one. Response to the first set of cruises was so overwhelming with quick sellout, that Celebrity will be sending a larger ship, Celebrity Millenium, for the new seasons instead of the Celebrity Mercury. That’s good and bad as the bigger ship should mean more chance to book, but we really like the Mercury.
Perhaps this weekend, I will do some long needed work on the genealogy research. Of course, I have said that in the past.
Internet Finally Fixed
April 13, 2007
Today was a good day! Finally, my internet service appears to be back in solid operation. For the last couple of weeks, our internet connection has been dropping every five or ten minutes. It was only for 30 seconds to a minute, but it was very aggravating.
I have been working with my provider, Sunncast, to get it fixed but without much luck. Finally, tonight, he came over to the house with a network engineer and they were able to troubleshoot and fix the problem. They were concerned because some other subscribers in the area were reporting similar problems. They are planning an expansion but didn’t want to do it until they sorted out these problems.
Turns out that my wireless modem/radio to their stuff was resetting about every five minutes because it couldn’t communicate with the backup IP address for the main system. The IP that was loaded was invalid. How it got the invalid IP is still a mystery, but it appears that those of us with this issue were all installed about the same time, so it may have been an installation error. Even more funky is why did the problem just start coming up?
Anyways, the connection appears rock solid now and I can resume my normal internet life. I haven’t been able to play America’s Army lately because I couldn’t keep the connection constant.
Incidentally, the stupid elliptical trainer still isn’t working. It’s about to go back to Sears in pieces for a refund. Supposedly, they are coming to fix it early next week, but we have heard this twice before. This is all a Nordic Trac problem and nothing to do with Sears.
I am also hard at work on redesigning the Cruise Talk Central site. Traffic there has picked up quite a bit and it’s time to turn it more into a social site than a personal blog site. Hopefully, when I complete the redesign, folks will continue coming and participate in the discussions.
I have a lot of new features planned for the site. I will detail some of them in a future post as well as perhaps post a few snapshots of the work in progress.
Tomorrow, we will spend some time in Bisbee, AZ as Suzanne and the kids are performing some dances as part of the Boys and Girls Club telethon that is going on. While there, we will probably get dinner in the old copper mining town.
-
Subscribe via Email
Sign up to receive the latest Mr Papa's World site updates! -
Subscribe via RSS
