a 1 day reprieve...

*correction - thirdthoughts has learned that the high on saturday was actually 43 degrees and not 36 as originally reported. so...what i said before...just more so.

i think our winter thaw has come and gone but today was a day to remember. the thermometer reached 36 degrees! a welcome change from the teens and lower that has been the norm for several weeks. temps drop off to the 20's tomorrow and teens for highs monday and tuesday but today was nothing short of fantastic. it was a tease for what is to come, a glimpse of spring to-be. i know we are weeks away from making a major break in terms of weather but sometimes you just need some hope. i was even able to get out and give the cars a much needed sponge bath, a trick i wrote about a couple of years ago here. anyone living in warmer climates, (or vacationing somewhere warm- you know who you are) please keep your comments to yourself. mid-30's in january is perfectly acceptable and cannot be considered cold unless you live on the sun.
to round things off, my daughters cub basketball team got it's first win in 8 tries. i know, i know, it's not all about winning but believe me, winning is a LOT more fun. the girls needed it bad, a nice confidence boost with a couple of games left to play.
will spend super sunday going to the learning festival at st. charles, then church, than catching the game at home with my peeps.

tmi...

apparently the comments section of this post has morphed into some sort of superbowl prediction messageboard. pittsburgh is the favorite, point spread is -7. i think warner has one more run in him and brings arizona their first superbowl victory. going with the underdog, arizona 24, pittsburgh 17

few substantial events have occurred between twitters and facebook updates but i'll attempt to re-cap the highlights for the record. thirdthoughts has learned that we have apparently elected a new president, i have sold 39 boxes of girl scout cookies to date, my xbox 360 has been replaced (all systems go so far), my work schedule has changed slightly and temporarily which involves me working odd-ball hours once a week for the next several weeks, i'm still struggling with how much information i want to tie to my facebook account, my daughters b squad basketball team continues to battle but lose, and arctic temps are proving that winter still means business in my part of the country.
that may be the longest sentence i have ever posted here.

"cookie go day"

not my kids, but the message is clear.

today is the long awaited, much anticipated "cookie go day". due to possible legal implications i cannot advertise directly on this site. things have apparently gotten a lot more political in the world of cookie selling, however, i think i can say without fear of reprimand that if you need to purchase a box of thin mints this year, i may know someone that can help.

anniversary sixteen!

today marks 16 years to the day that allie and i were married. i lot of things have changed in that time but we still love each other and have three great kids.
as a special suprise this year, the wife and i are going to acapulco to celebrate our anniversary!

my date with the rrod...

although a hardcore gamer i am not, (i lack the hand-eye coordination gamer gene that is inherited by our children's generation), i have come to know and love my xbox 360. purchased about 2 years ago, it was, and still is, the centerpiece of my downtime world. i have spent many a night after hours, plugging away at guitar hero, halo, call of duty, tiger woods, and mlb2k. i have even shown flashes of mediocrity at times while gaming online against the masses in multiplayer mode. as anyone who games at all knows the dreaded three flashing quadrants of red light means the end of gaming on your xbox, at least for awhile. i had this strike me this past friday night at a most inopportune time. i had just purchased a game for my son for his birthday and he had been begging me all night to play it. we finally had a chance just before his bedtime when the dreaded "red rings of death" reared it's ugly head. as unfortunate as this was, i couldn't help but wish this had happened to me, and not him. of course this gave me a prime teaching moment where i got to tell him that adversity builds character, blah, blah, blah. at any rate, my beloved box is en route to the texas "repair center", which my research suggests it will be replaced by a refurb, rather than repaired. all the same to me as long as this next one is fixed. the "rrod" issue has been a pain in the butt for microsoft and they have spent over a billion dollars, offering 3 year warranty extensions on anyone who has the general hardware fault. this has proved to be a LOT of folks. amongst my friends who own xboxes the failure rate is about 60%. the console is known to generate a lot of heat and it seems ms skimped on some heat sinks which cause the motherboard to warp over time, thus causing the ultimate failure. as someone who works in technology i can tell you that electronics can and do fail all of the time. it's never a pleasant experience, especially when it happens to you. that said, i am willing to accept this and assume all will be made right, and that hopefully i will get back a unit with the proper heat sinks, gpu, and better cooling system in place and be gaming again in a couple of weeks. if it happens a second time i may not be as forgiving.

owen turns 6!

updated! see the pics!

happy birthday buddy