July 30, 2000 - I just finished a stretch at work. The weather has been great, hi 70's/low 80's, and the outlook is more of the same next week. Mary Ann and her parents went to "Covington Days" today and had some fun just hanging in our little town. I talked with Rob at work and we plan to hook up in a couple weeks and do some backpacking. I'm really bummed in that Dave blew out his ankle and is down for the rest of the summer. We had plans to do a lot of hikes and that has now gone to the wayside. I'm hoping we can go to the coast in August. They are having a kite festival in Long Beach in the middle of August that I'd like to attend. Mary Ann is on our other computer trying HomeGrocer.com for the first time. I think this is going to get ugly <8^)
July 27, 2000 - Dave, David, and I visited Zephen at Boy Scout's summer camp yesterday. The camp is called "Camp Parsons", and is out on the Olympic peninsula. We spent the day flying kites and looking around the camp. Sailing, sailboarding, waterskiimg, skin diving, rock climbing, shooting, archery, swimming ... these are just a few of the activities available to the boys. Zephen's having a good time. Dave wanted to take a look at the camp in that David's troop is going there in a few weeks. Mary Ann and I visited with Nancy and Dave Tuesday night and had a lot of fun. I've pretty much bailed on my weight loss program for now .... I plan to maintain my present weight and start losing more weight in a month or two. The picture below is of some friends who strolled into Camp Parson as we walked around.
July 25, 2000 - Well, my birthday was great. Mary Ann and I went out to a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant and enjoyed each other's company immeasurably. On Sunday, I dropped Zephen off for his Boy Scout Camp and Mary Ann, Marla, Robert, and I went to the Bartell Drugs picnic. We had a lot of fun and it was good spending time with them. The weather was perfect for a picnic, mid-70's and sunny. Needless to say, my weight loss program hit a big roadblock for two days. Marla gave me several pictures from the reunion and they are now on the reunion page , so, check 'em out. I plan to go up to Zephen's camp tomorrow. I promised to instruct the boys on stunt kite flying and sailboarding, and thought I'd make a day trip of it. Mary Ann and I will be changing the aquarium water this morning. I'm still trying to find a 36" light fixture with an external ballast so that I can add a second light. I'm going to shop around today and see if I can find one. Thanks, Sis, for a fun day on Sunday and for the birthday presents.
July 22, 2000 - Happy birthday to meeeeeee .... If you don't know, it's my 40th birthday today!!! Mary Ann got me a really cool piece of live rock and a new fish for the saltwater aquarium. She also picked up some watches at her work on clearance, so I now have two new Timex watches. Zephen will be going to boy scout summer camp tomorrow and is looking forward to it. I did talk with Marla, and her and Robert will definitely go to the Bartell Drugs picnic with us tomorrow. It should be a lot of fun. Work yesterday was busy. In 12.5 hours, I got about 30 minutes of break time with no lunch. I am so looking forward to a couple of days off. The weather should be pretty good for the picnic in that it has been in the 70's and 80's all week. Mary Ann's getting up, so, gotta go.
July 17, 2000 - I just finished working the weekend and am looking forward to a few days off. Heather left to Florida Friday night to spend five weeks with her father, Michael. Her flight went well and we're hoping she has fun. Zephen will go visit Michael when Heather returns. The weather was spectacular this weekend. I only wish I had the opportunity to enjoy it, but I didn't. Marla emailed me and I'm glad to say that she and Robert will go to the Bartell Drugs picnic next weekend. We're looking forward to spending some time with them (plus I can finally give her her birthday gift). Speaking of birthdays .... my 40th is next Saturday. We don't have any plans, nor do I really desire to do anything special, but we will go to the picnic on Sunday. Zephen leaves for boy scout summer camp either next Sunday or Monday, so he may not even be going to the picnic. I'll find out at the boy scout meeting tonight what the full plan is. Marla sent me an email recounting the Teegardin Family Reunion, so check it out . If anyone else who attended wishes to give their account of the festivities, please email it to me and I'll post it as well. Dave's court case was interesting. I took several pictures of the damage to the tank with some special magnifying lens filters. They displayed the damage to the tank quite vividly and I believe they had an impact on both the judge and the owner of the pet store. The judge gave them a 30 day continuance and Dave and the store owner sat down together for about 30 minutes and I believe hashed out a deal.
July 12, 2000 - Rereading my daily from 7/8/2000, I realized what a computer geek I am. Just skip it unless you truly are curious about how much of a nerd I've become:^) My weight loss continues ... I'm down to 204# and think I can make my goal of 194# by August 1st. We're having a weight loss contest at work and I'm pretty sure I can win it. I'm down 16# since we started! I took Zephen out to Joel's house Monday (one of my friends from work). We took our computers and had a big LAN party with 4-5 people. It consisted of a couple of hours of computer gaming and was a lot of fun. Heather is going to Florida Saturday morning to spend 5 weeks with her dad. We finally convinced Michael to take the kids separately this year so that they could spend individual time with him and us. The kids will have some time away from each other and it gives us a break from the constant bickering. Zephen will go down in the middle of August. The Bartell Drugs picnic is coming up on July 23rd and Mary Ann and I are looking forward to going. Last year was a lot of fun and it is really is geared to kids. I'll give Marla a call and see if they would like to go with us this year. I'm sure Robert would love it. I received a couple more rafting pictures yesterday and just included them to my rafting page. If you haven't looked at them yet, please do. I need to work on the house a bit today and then the kids and I will be going up to Nancy and Dave's house tonight. I'm going to be a witness for Dave in small claims court early tomorrow morning and don't want to drive up in the early am. His new aquarium has stress fractures along the seams where the acrylic is bonded to the top and bottom. Because of this, the tank will probably begin leaking in 4-5 years. It was obviously a manufacturing flaw, but the fish store refuses to take it back. They claim it is from the product he cleans his tank with. Here's where I come in. I have his 13 year old 65 gallon acrylic tank that he CLEANED THE SAME WAY that has NO stress fractures. The store also initially said they would take the tank back, but the next day refused. It should be an interesting case.
July 8, 2000 - Mary Ann picked up an Anemone, a clown fish, and some hermit crabs for our tank today. They're pretty cool and we are slowly developing a community of fish. A week and a half ago, I purchased a barebones computer. I had enough extra hardware pieces to build another machine and I got a good deal on a tower, motherboard, CPU, and floppy drive, so I thought "what the heck". I've assembled a countless number of machines and have had little trouble in the past. Well, the chipset on the motherboard had some problems with some of my components. My computer froze anytime my graphics card wanted to do any 3D rendering. After updating drivers (downloaded from the Internet) for everything, doing a clean reinstall of windows, and swapping video cards and sound cards, I finally have 2 pretty decent machines running. A word to the wise ... if you buy a motherboard, make sure the chipset that controls the motherboard is Intel, NOT Via. The new machine proved to be incompatible with my real good soundcard and video card, and I believe it is the chipset (I confirmed this on-line).
July 5, 2000 - We had a great time at Nancy and Dave's this 4th of July. Mary Ann and the kids headed up on Sunday and I went up after work that evening. We had a nice visit over several days (although Mary Ann had to work Monday). Dave really goes all out on Independence Day. Being an ex-firefighter, he seems to have an attraction to things that go boom :^) Their son, David, had remarked that he likes the 4th of July more than Christmas, and he seems to be following his dad down that road of big bangs. Dave had purchased well over $800-1000 in fireworks on the Indian reservation west of Marysville, at a place called "Boom City". "Boom City" is a collection of about 300 firework stands that sell just about everything (except the big bombs like M-80's, although they were only made illegal this year). Dave annually puts on a big show in the middle of his cul-de-sac, and, as a consequence, a good party develops amongst several of their friends and neighbors, with everyone contributing to the firework stash. We had continuous fireworks from 9pm till midnight, culminating with about 130 or so mortar rounds. It definitely made for a tough day for me at work today. We got to bed around 1am and I went to work at 5 this morning. All in all, though, I would not have wanted to miss a minute of it. Thanks for a great 4th, Nancy and Dave !!!
June 2000
May 2000
April 2000
March 2000
February 2000
December 1999/January 2000
July 2000