thinking about my doorbell...

it's true i don't get around much anymore but i did get a chance to go to the white stripes show on friday night at the orpheum in downtown mpls. jack and meg did their thing to the approval of a full house. showed up late, only saw about an hour but a very good live show.
coming up this week....

fall softball (tonight)

first soccer practice (thursday night)

state fair (friday)

labor day weekend! (yay)

what i have done since i returned from vacation...

half-hearted attempt to get back into "work mode"

found out i am coaching my daughters u10 fall soccer league team

added an atom formatted xml site feed to my website - (see "what is a sitefeed?" ...won't go in to the details here) under my "navigate" section to the left of this post

that's all i've got for the time being. tomorrow is friday. yay.

we're baaaaaaack...

after a 10 hour, 600 mi trip on friday, we arrived home at about 6:00 pm. we had a really good time in st. louis and despite off and on rain, we did manage to get all of our to-do's in. thursday, six flags day, started off in a downpour of rain and then about an hour after we arrived, the sun came out and it got extrememly hot and muggy. this worked out great because we spent the second half of the day at the waterpark. i have one more set of photo's to post, to complete the series but it's not a huge priority right now. in the next couple of days, i'll get'em up. the thing i might miss the most right now is the free cable tv and high-speed internet access! how sad is that? going to the twins game tonight (thats 2 mlb games in 4 days). still off on monday and then back to business as usual. more later!

last update from the road...

tomorrow morning we head back to minneapolis...we've had a great time and it's gone by way too fast. enjoyed the cardinals game last night. after a wet start today it turned sunny and hot and we salvaged our six flags theme\water park day. have more pics to post but they will have to wait until i get back. long drive ahead. more later!

"i don't care if i ever get back"...

took a few minutes to post yesterdays pics (day 3) here. today we attempted to find an open waterpark. little did we know that school has already started for most kids around here so they are all closed or open only on weekends. doh! drove to collinsville, il (about 13 mi) and to fenton, mo (about 20 mi), no luck anywhere. luckily, the kids seemed content to go back to the hotel pool. we have revised tomorrows plans to include not only six flags, but also the waterpark they have there. so, tomorrow will be the big day, we are going non-stop. tonight is MY big event, the cardinals baseball game. they are sold out yet again, but fortunately i got the tickets on-line months ago. things are starting to wind down a bit but still much to do before we head back friday. more later...

lions, tigers, and bears...

good news. the weather is improving. saw sun this afternoon for the first time. the morning was spent at the "world famous" st. louis zoo. took a ton of pics which i will post later as i am too tired (and lazy) to do it now. we took a 1 hour mississippi river boat cruise this afternoon and i have some good pics from that as well. after that we headed down to laclede's landing and ate dinner at the "ol spaghetti factory (always a favorite). tomorrow we find a water park and then a cardinals baseball game tomorrow night. we are slowly scratching off all of our "to-do's". more later...

never trust a 10 day forecast...

what happened to hot and humid? ok, well it is humid. far from hot though as temps have been unseasonably cool. nobody brought jackets or even long sleeve shirts. we are apparently caught in between a mid-west jetstream where it is cool to the north, warm to the south and just plain rainy over us. supposed to move out in a day or two but until then, just plain rainy...oh well! didn't stop us from heading down to the arch\riverfront area this morning. zoo plans were scrapped until a better, dryer day.
have a few pics posted here. another update in a day or two...

so far so good...

we arrived in st. louis this afternoon about 2:30. as i stated earlier, we stayed in hannibal, mo last night and got out this morning and saw some of the sights. i was about to dive head first into the mississippi river when luckily, i spotted the sign above (whew, close one). after we checked in to our hotel we headed to union station, had dinner and checked out some of the stores. tomorrow the weather is suposed to improve so i think the plan is to head to the zoo. more later...

are we there yet?

ok, bags are packed, car is loaded...the "bye-pod" is sealed (cartop carrier). all that's left now is to attempt to get on the road by 8 am. if it were up to the wife and i, we'd be leaving by 6. however, trying to get 3 kids up, ready, and breakfasted that early is pretty much impossible. have about an 8 hour trek tomorrow. stopping in legendary hannibal, mo on night one. hope to get there in time to let the kids swim before dark. after that, it's a trip down to my 'ol hometown of louisiana, mo where i spent much of my childhood. the plan is to check out the old house on nebraska street, maybe head down to the mississippi riverfront area, cruise down georgia street, and then take the remaining 2 hour jaunt into st. louie. next week we have planned (in no particular order) a day at six flags mid-america, st. louis zoo, a cards game at busch (wednesday night), union station, the arch and riverfront, etc..should be a fun week. if all goes as planned, i will be reporting on location, in a couple of days(assuming that the broad-band connection works as it should). that's all for now...more later!

the countdown begins...

starting to get seriously amped up about getting out of here for a few days. two more work days left, off friday, leave saturday. still some loose ends to tie up at work and at home. hopefully it'll all come together as planned. checked the 10 day weather outlook in st. louis. it can be summed up in 2 words: hot + humid. fortunately, we're somewhat acclimated due to our current run of weather around here. maybe one more post (2 max) before we leave. probably will take the laptop as there is allegedly free high-speed at the hotel. look for an update or two from the road. more later...

the 80-20 rule...

there's a theory that 20% of people out there are respectful, decent people who are intelligent and have at the very least a desire to get-along with others in society and "play nice". the other 80% are morons, who think only of themselves and could care less about you, and take no responsibilty for their actions. it seems i ran into 2 idiots from that 80% yesterday afternoon. me, the wife, my kids and my neice were enjoying an afternoon swimming at a local beach when 2 afore mentioned morons thought it would be a good idea to throw a football around in the swimming area filled with people (mostly kids). now yesterday was hot...really hot and the swimming area was more crowded than it probably would be normally. the 2 morons could not toss the football, say 10-15 yards apart. they had to throw it as far as they could to each other (presumably to try an impress the girls?). anyway, the ball landed around us a couple of times. realizing that they were too stupid to stop, (or move somewhere else) we tried to move our crew out of the way. like a magnet, moron A and moron B drifted back into our area. invariably one of their errant throws ended up hitting my daughter on the shoulder and arm, causing her to cry. when this still didn't cause them to stop or move i decided to take it up with the lifeguard, who saw what was happening and told them to stop. well, dumb and dumber decided to confront me on the matter. "you know it was an accident, right?". yes, so? "accidents will happen". i know, now leave". moron A continued to stare me down and flip me the bird from the shore. i did not respond as i really wanted it to just end there. later on when i was done swimming, he approached me again and wanted to re-live the whole thing, again explaining that he had been going to that beach for years and sometimes accidents happen. i told him that their ball landed near us 3 times, they were too stupid to move somewhere else and that it took it hitting one of my kids before they were told to stop. the conversation ended with him telling me to "**** off", which i did not respond to. a very likeable person! sort of ruined the day for me, but hey. you can't really reason with a moron.

back to backing up...

you may recall a few months ago i had a major problem with my lacie 160 gb firewire drive. i had been using it as my primary storage space for my rather bloated digital music\itunes collection. you'll remember the disk suddenly failed to the point where i could no longer access the data the traditional way. jeff and myself put a lot of time into recovering the data and i was obliged to purchase a secondary internal ide 120 gb hard drive on my home pc to act as my new primary music storage location, thusly moving my lacie fw hd to role of backup. this system worked well for a number of weeks when suddenly i began getting errors when running my .bat file that backs up the data. i began seeing corrupt files and xcopy would not work right. running a chkdsk on the lacie revealed about 2k worth of bad sectors, which may not seem like a lot, but was enough to cause problems. i finally decided to ship the lacie back to the shop for repair\replacement and i recieved a tested refurb yesterday via federal express. i set up the drive last night, ran chkdsk (0 bad sectors!) formatted it to ntfs, (i tried fat32 but it would have stuck me with 5 32 gb partitions - yuck) and copied all 60 gb of data back over. so....after 10 days of running with no backup system in place (something i vowed i would never do after last time), i am back to backing up my music. i know i obsess over this stuff...i can't help it. more later...

s.o.s....an island of fun

met up with jeff and his peeps at the slice friday night. i hadn't thought to bring my digital cam but jeff had his and sent me a couple of pics which i have posted here, without his expressed written consent. as you can see the dress theme of the night on the price side appeared to be tie-dyed shirts.
other upcoming events this summer...

st. anthony parade (alaina marching with girls scouts) aug 5th
family vacation, aug 13-19
twins vs seattle aug 20th (ho-hum)
my fall softball league starts, aug-sept
my annual golf event (invitation only) TBD
allison & girls to chicago sept 9-11th

more later...