Fall 2003 Family Update

Well the summer has gone by and although we have been busy, there is a lot that has happened and I feel compelled to tell you about it. And by the way, no more apologies for my not doing these updates I'm a busy man and you will understand why by the end of this update. :)

Towards the end of June my longtime friend Jeff was moving from Arizona to New Hampshire. During his cross country move he and another friend of ours Doug stopped off at my place for a rest. During the visit we got on the conversation of the civil war and started talking about all of the history that we have here in Tennessee. The Battle of Thompson's Station took place just 4 miles north of my office and it is here that James J. Hinds was fatally wounded in 1863. Doug was reading up on the subject and this whole civil war stuff was of great interest to him, so after our dinner out I took him to some of the local civil war tour stops. I bring this up because of the history that surrounds this area and to add that we have a Civil War Battle Re-enactment coming up on October 25th. Many re-enactments of this nature are held on the Rippavilla Plantation and this year it is the Battle of Stones River which occurred in Murfreesboro, TN. These are done in the most professional way where you can walk through the campsites listen to the battle planning conversations and watch the battle as though it were happening for real. I am looking very forward to this event this year.

The weather we had this summer was fantastic, plenty of rain and mild temperatures made being outside a nice activity. There may have been 2 weeks out of this summer that temperatures would have got up in to the 90's and humidity made for a sweltering day. But that was surprisingly short lived compared to years past where that would have been the norm by mid July. All of this made everything around here very green as the photo's on this website will display. And not once during this summer did I even need to consider watering the lawn on my own.

So now that autumn has arrived the leaves are beginning to turn and we should be seeing some very colorful changes. As this happens I will take some pictures and post them on the site for you folks in the desert to see. The pictures below show the beginnings of change from my back yard.

I can't remember if I had told anyone but last year the school system decided to go to year round schooling. I have no big issue with this and in some ways like the way it works as it gives a few more breaks during the year even though they will be shorter in duration than a full summer break. In any case school started on July 31st with their first two week break starting on October 6th and running through the 19th. I decided to take my vacation during this time so that Terri could continue to work and pay for all my toys I want.

As I stated in the June update that since we were not going to go anywhere on our vacation this year that we decided to update (remodel) our bedroom. (see the June update for details) Well I was not finished and during the course of the summer bought a few more items to ease the pain of staying home. I decided I needed a new monitor for my computer to start with as the 19" monitor I was using did not match the color of my computer. It is white and my computer is black so I had to get a 19" monitor that was black. Terri opted for other small items like diamond earrings and DVD's. Now those who know us, know that we are a technology family which some may say are a bit obsessive with computers and other such things. It's always interesting to see the expression on people faces when they ask how many computers we have and I answer with "you mean the ones we are currently using or that we just have?" FYI for those who don't know is currently using: 5PC's, 2 laptops, and 1 Server. Currently have: 10 or 12 I think I had not kept count. Did I mention we are family of 3 now. Oh, I almost forgot, the refrigerator in the garage died and I had to buy a new one of those too. Need that to keep the Diet Coke cold and Schwan foods frozen.

During this time I had been hinting that we would have to plan on doing something with our big screen TV in the living room as it was beginning to show it's age. But what was most interesting is that my wife started hinting to me by looking at and pointing out the LCD panel TV's in ads and so forth. So I took that as she was serious about shopping for a new TV and the discussion went something like this.

"Well we currently have a 52 inch Magnavox and although it is 13 years old we could take it in to a shop and have it maintenance'd at an estimated cost of about $600. Or we could look at these LCD panels but the cost of that is a minimum of $3000 and they start out at a 42 inch display size in letterbox format. I just can't see the justification of spending that much money on a unit that would be smaller than the one we have. However I did see that Best Buy has a 54 inch big screen on sale for $1200 and I think that would be fine for me." Terri looked at me and said "well I guess we could look and see what they have." That means we are going shopping woo hoo.

So it's off to Best Buy we go to look at TV's, and see how well that 54 inch set will fit into my living room. Once there we go to looking at the LCD plasma's and both agreed that however nice they are they are just a bit to expensive yet for what you get. We then looked at the one that they had on sale for $1200 and although nice and quite workable it just was lacking something. While we were looking we couldn't help but to keep glancing at a Samsung TV they had running and decided to take a look. To make a long story short just as I have done before any consideration for my budgeted expense has been blown right out window and my thoughts about the wide screen TV's changed as we continued to look. We did go to some other stores and looked at their TV's but nothing kept our interest like this Samsung did. Through all of this shopping I had one requirement and that was that the TV screen had to be equal to the size of my current TV in the 4:3 format which is 52 inches. That being said any wide screen TV had to equal to mine in a 4:3 format which left us really on one size. So what did we end up getting you asked? A Samsung 65 inch wide screen high definition TV.

Admittedly before we did the shopping I had already done a bunch or research on the differences in the TV's of all types and there was a good reason to go with this unit. This one offers a number of features that will become important as time goes by so if you happen to be in the market for a new TV do your homework so that you get the best value.

Ok having bought this TV brought on another shall we say small problem. Where am I going to put it? As I have said before we do not have a large house and to be honest for a few years our living room was really a computer center. I decided I did not want it to look like that anymore and had been clearing out these items. However there was one item that was going to be a pain so I have avoided doing anything with it and it belongs to my wife so one must be careful how you approach such topics. That item was my wife's computer armoire which is big and bulky plus it weighs a ton (at least to me) I discussed this item with my wife and agreed to move this behemoth to our computer room, and it was an all day project. without going in to detail I will show you a before and after picture so that you get an idea of the work.


My old TV sitting at an angle. To the right is where the armoire sits.	My new TV after moving the armoire and rearranging the wall	My wife's armoire as it sits today in the computer room.	The armoire with the doors open which is why this takes up so much space.

House Chores

I have had those house chores to do and since I have been on vacation I have been expected to do something. So I have done some chores and they are listed below.

Mowed the yard (My job anyway, never let the wife get on the mower until you explain to her that you have to lower the blade deck before you start cutting the grass.)
Painted the deck (removed the outdoor carpet that was on it and went back to the wood floor) The color reminds me of homes in Arizona. (Sunstone)
Sealed the driveway (My back is not that great and I even told Terri that I just wanted to cry when I got this done. This job really hurt)
Put a floor in under the house. (This is actually a continuation of my sump pump activity that I started last year I think. It is currently a 10 foot by 20 foot area and I will add more as time permits.)
Painted the floor under the house ( Matthew wanted to paint something so it seemed fitting, don't comment on the color as the paint was cheap and Matthew had fun.) We will link to pictures of this.
Washed the house (This is in process as I was originally going to use a pressure washer to do this but am finding that they don't clean all the buildup off either. That leaves me back to the brush and solution to use. I did opt to buy a extension pole that would reach to the top of the house. this should help.)

The Family

The family is doing great, Chris still lives with his dad in Virginia and is apparently getting his paperwork together to join the Air Force. Chris is in his senior year in high school now and only needs to take a couple of classes a day to fulfill his requirements.

Terri is doing well although she has had some issues with her hand going completely numb and giving her sharp stabbing pains. Doctor says it is Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and at this point has given her a brace to wear and cortisone shots. Hopefully this will work for the next few years at least. Ultimately it will require surgery when it gets to bad but nobody can really say how long that will be at this point.

Matthew has been doing well this school year and continues to impress us with his social growth. His writing skills are a bit rough but then again so were mine. Matthew and I have been doing projects together during his fall school break like building that floor under the house and painting it. He really enjoys building wood as he calls it (hammering nails into wood) and we have been enjoying playing our games on the computer and of course the Nintendo 64. Yes Christmas holds a Playstation 2 for us we'll just have to wait a bit longer. Another fun thing for Matthew while on break has been his new clubhouse courtesy of the box the TV came in. Yes we have pictures.

Matthew looking out the clubhouse window

I (Tim) have been doing just fine outside my back hurting me when I exercise and my knees have been giving me some problems. I haven't even reached 40 yet and I am beginning to break down. Maybe if I exercised more I might make a difference hmm. Work has kept me very busy and there has been and will be more travel before the year is out to get these accounts up to speed.

And for all of us watching the new big screen TV has taken up our time as we can't think of any better way to see Spongebob Squarepants do his stuff. This is a family highlight and not to be missed. We can't wait until Finding Nemo comes out on DVD.

There is more but Terri told me to save some stuff for the Christmas letter so I shall close for now.

Tim