Family Update 2/6/08
February 6, 2008
As usual, the family seems to be extremely busy once again.
To a certain extent, its driven by the upcoming Showstoppers Dance Competition coming up in a few weeks in Phoenix. The kids have been having extra rehearsals and extra practices at home. I can’t remember how many dances they will be doing this year, but its a boat load. Suzanne will also be kicking in a song and dance number this year to New York, New York. Mr Papa will, as usual, be in the audience. Luckily, this year, I will have my laptop with me. I can only hope for a wi-fi connection at the competition place. We will spend the weekend in Phoenix for the competition.
Construction finally began today on our driveway. We have a dirt road that leads from the county maintained road up to the house. After every monsoon season, we get a pretty deep ditch that we have to drive over from the water rushing along the road. We usually just pay someone to come out and grate it back to level. This year, we decided to try to do something a little more permanent. We are having a small concrete section put in from the road for several feet up our dirt drive. It will be sloped enough that water from the monsoon rains should just harmlessly flow down it. At least thats the hope and plan. One of our neighbors/friends is in the construction business, so we are getting a good deal on it.
The kids were a bit bummed that the snow storm missed us this past weekend. We usually get a couple of storms a year where we get some accumulation. This year, we have yet to get one. The mountains are plenty covered and actually lower elevations closer to Tucson actually got some accumulation. The storm either died out or blew East of us and pretty much didn’t give us any moisture. Not much time left in the Winter for snow this year. Oh, the kids weren’t too upset since they still had a delayed start of school on the day following the night the storm was supposed to hit.
The Qwest DSL continues to chug along nicely after one week. I figure I will give it a month and then cancel my wireless provider. I don’t look forward to that, but it will have to be done. Since we live so far out in the country, Qwest only offers 2 speeds to the area. A bare minimum speed and their silver plan at 1.5M. Their platinum plan is 7M but they say I am too far from the central office. My line tests good for 6M, but they don’t have such a plan, so I am stuck with 1.5M. Stuck isn’t fair, since its better than I have ever had before. I am just bandwidth greedy.
Family and Vacation Update
January 4, 2008
Unfortunately, my extended holiday vacation is drawing to a close. The last day I worked was Dec 6 and I have been on vacation since. This is the longest vacation in my career that I have taken from work. I will be back in the office on Monday.
My company has a “use it or lose it” policy on its vacation time given to employees. We can carry a maximum of five days of personal time off to the next year. Business conditions made it hard for me to take any time off the last third of the year, so I had a bunch of time to burn or lose. I normally plan to take off three weeks around the end of the year. This year it was four. I had originally been thinking about going back this past Wednesday and ensuring the maximum carry over time off, but the kids were off school so I extended.
I cannot count the number of board games and video games that we as a family have played over the last month. We have also caught up a bunch movies. I was also able to give Cruise Talk Central a new face lift and put in some serious hours on developing the next version of an internet forum application that I contribute to.
All in all, it has been a wonderful vacation. The time with Suzanne and the kids has been well spent. They have also had some time off from the dance studio. I think they were a bit burnt out on that and needed the time off. Next week, we all get back in the swing of it as the kids also start back at school.
The upcoming year will also be a busy one for us. it starts with Showstopper Regional Dance competition in February. In March, we head off to the San Antonio area of Texas for a Pechuls family reunion. June has us traveling to Michigan for a Klasen family reunion. When July rolls around, its off to Anaheim or the Showstopper National Dance competition. Currently, the rest of the year is clear for us from a travel standpoint. Just might have to consider booking a cruise to fill that gap.
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