Recently in Personal Category

  Ben is home. He had run away. He called his parents and had them come get him yesterday.

  Our friends, the Thomson's, 15 year old son Ben has gone missing. He was last seen yesterday at the skate park in Merrimack. He was last seen riding a blue Trek mountain bike. If you have any information, please call 673-0409 or 566-3292.

  The other night, I was checking my credit card charges online when I noticed a charge for over $400 at a stop & Shop in New York. As I live in NH and I haven't been traveling I knew this wasn't my charge. The next charge was over $100 at a Spencers in NY. I immediately called my credit card company who looked up my account and responded with "Your card number is one on a list that was possibly stolen from an online merchant. Do we have your permission to close the account". Um.. YES! Close it NOW. So, now I am waiting for my new card to come in the mail. Then I will have to deal with changing it in all those places that automatically billed that card every month. What a pain!

  I received a check from IWON today for $1000. It's nice to know that they really do pay out the winnings! Thanks IWON!

  We went to Falmouth Maine for a soccer tournament last weekend. Lauren played in three games. They lost all three but the other teams were much larger. Lauren is 9 but she plays on a U11 team. One of the opposing teams players (#27) was taller than I am. She must have been over 6 feet tall! All in all, though, it was a great weekend. The weather was perfect and the girls had a blast!

  Time just seems to get away from me sometimes. I don't get in here to blog often enough. It's hard to keep up with a nine year old!

  My friend Lynn was in town for the first time in 8 years. We had a chance to meet up for dinner. It was nice to see her. It has been far too long! It was also great to meet her husband Gary. He seems like a great guy! Unfortunately, Lynn's son Tanner decided to stay with his Grandparents so I didn't to see him.

  I also won again on IWON. This time it was a $10 gift certificate to gifts.com. I have received this one but I need to write to them about the $5 gift certificate that I won a while ago and never received. It probably got caught up in my Spam email.
  IWON also confirmed that they have received my paperwork and it's now in the hands of their accounting department to cut the check.

  Well, this time IWON a little bigger prize. While playing on IWON last night I won $1000. However, it seems odd to me that it didn't show up on the "winners" page. So we'll see if it ever actually shows up. So far I have won:
$5 Amazon Gift Certificate - received
$5 Gifts.com Gift Certificate - waiting to receive it
$1000 - waiting to receive it

  We went away last weekend to celebrate both Marianne's birthday and our anniversary. We stayed at Dockside Guest Quarters in York, ME. Our room had a sliding glass door that led out to a small deck. From the deck, it was less than 30 feet to the water. It was GREAT! Here are a couple of pictures from our weekend.

  I also went back to Works of Heart and asked her to make a bouquet of flowers that was like the ones we had at our wedding. I gave them to Marianne today to celebrate our anniversary.

  It's been a fantastic first year! I'm looking forward to Many Many More!

  Marianne and I did a little hiking in Tucker Brook Town Forest today. It was a nice hike on a beautiful day. We haven't had a lot of nice days this summer so it was great to get out. Here's a picture of Tucker Falls...

  I have found that there are pros and cons between hiking in New Hampshire and hiking in Maryland. In Maryland, you have a chance of running into a rattle snake. You won't find any rattle snakes in NH. In New Hampshire, you are guaranteed to get bitten by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes aren't that bad in Maryland.

  Marianne and I went geocaching in the Hitchner Town Forest yesterday. It's only a couple of miles away from our house but I never knew it existed. That's one of the reasons I love geocaching. It's a great way to get introduced to new locations.
  This was Marianne's first time geocaching. She really enjoyed it.
  It's nice to get out in the woods and enjoy nature. We saw quite a bit of wild life while we were out yesterday. We saw a big frog, a lot of tiny toads and a couple of small snakes.

  My new GPS, a Garmin GPSMap 76csx, worked great! It is much faster to lock on and much more accurate than my old Magellan Meridian Platinum.

  We were in a store today when I saw a book. The title was "Homeschooling for Dummies". Really? I mean, I've read a couple of the "for Dummies" books before but am I the only one who thinks that's a really bad title?

  I won on IWON. This time it was a $5 gift card to gifts.com. I've never been to gifts.com. I wonder what they sell...

  Movabletype 4.2 was released today. I have completed the upgrade. The speed improvements were immediately noticeable!

  Marianne gave me tickets to the American Idol concert for my birthday again this year. The only difference from last year is she included 3 tickets so Lauren could come too. We went to the concert last Sunday and it was GREAT! It was like going to 10 different concerts at once because each of the top 10 contestants came out a did a few songs each. We had a great time!

  Well, I received the $5 amazon gift certificate from IWON. I finally wrote them because I hadn't received it. They said they had issued it. That's quite possible as I receive A LOT of spam and I don't always look at everything that ends up in the spam folder. So, without any hassle, they reissued it. Thanks for the prize and the great customer service IWON!

  Marianne and I spent Saturday in the lakes region of NH. We stopped at Weirs beach and decided to take a 2 hour tour on the Sophie C. The Sophie C is a US Mail Boat on Lake Winnipesaukee. So we actually went to several of the islands and delivered mail. They also bring something even more important on board. They bring ice cream to sell to the people on the islands!

  Take a look at the beautiful view!

  I have always been pretty good about backing up my desktop. My laptop, however, never gets backed up. I occasionally copy important files over to my desktop, but that's it. So, after a virus and a bad sector on the hard drive made the laptop start acting up, I had to rebuild from scratch. I decided it was time to have a single backup solution that works for all of my machines. So, I bought an HP EX475 Windows Home Server. So far, I'm very happy with it. It just sits in my basement with a gigabit network connection and my machines automatically backup every night. I've only found 1 gotcha so far. It says it allows remote access to your home machines, which it does... as long as you are running Vista Ultimate. If you are running any other version of Vista, you can't remote in.

  Anyone who eats at the Uno's Chicago Grill at 593 Amherst St. in Nashua, NH tomorrow, June 14th, please bring one of these certificates. If you do, they will donate 20% of the bill to the Animal Rescue League of NH.

  I play games on IWON quite a bit but other than free spins or coins, I've never really won anything. But today, I did! I won a $5 Amazon.com gift certificate. Yeah! Of course, they say it will be delivered in 5 - 6 weeks. Why does it take that long to send a gift certificate that should come electronically?

  When I lived in Maryland, I put my house up for sale just 2 weeks before my neighbor did (March 2007). The Realtor I used had also talked to my neighbor and when he gave them his estimate of what their house was worth, they basically threw him out of the house. They thought it was worth SO much more. I, however, listened to him and followed his suggestions. The result?
  I sold my house, TWICE (the first set of buyers never showed up to closing), by July 2007. I was asking $400,000. My house sold for $400,000 with $10,000 given back at closing to help with closing costs.
  My neighbors house sold in February of 2008. They had finally put it on the market for $425,000 (which was still less than they really wanted for it). It sold for $347,500. I have no idea if that was final or if they also gave back at closing.
  Maybe, just maybe, if they had listened to the Realtor they would have done better. Their house was larger than mine. I never did see the inside but I'm told it was in good shape. Of course, the houses were both put on the market right as the housing market became a buyers market so having it take 10 months to sell meant that the prices were in the free fall of todays market. I am SO glad I listened and didn't try to get greedy.

  Last weekend, we took Lauren to get her ears pierced. check it out...

Just the actual piercing
The full 4+ minute video

  The last week of February, we took our first family vacation. We went to Disney World. We had a GREAT time even though the last couple of days we had to deal with being sick. Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/2008DisneyTrip

  The new closet space and office are done. The builder finished on Thursday. It's the one good thing that happened this week! I just finished posting the pictures of the finished space. You can see them at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Construction.

  We started this week with Lauren playing with her friend on Monday evening. Lauren got on her friends shoulders and when she went to get down she was dropped on the couch. Her arm went through the cushions and her elbow slammed into the frame. After a call to a nurse, Motrin and over an hour of ice she was still crying and claiming it was hurting worse. So, we went to the Emergency Room. They took x-rays and found it was just a bad bruise. So, she has been wearing a sling and declaring "oh, my arm hurts" constantly.
  Then, on Wednesday, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning with some sort of flu bug. I spent the day with all of the usual bad things that come along with that. I was out of work Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully, this was my off Friday week so I didn't need to work today.
  Let's hope things go better next week!

  We had a great weekend! One of the presents I gave to Marianne for Christmas was a night away at the Wentworth by the Sea. We were scheduled to go on December 27th, but due to health issues, we ended up pushing it back to this weekend. We left Saturday morning and went to Portsmouth, NH. We spent a good part of the day just wandering through the little shops. We had lunch at the Portsmouth Brewery and went to the Mainely Gourmet Chocolate Shop around the corner for dessert. We then went to check in at the Wentworth.
  The guy at the front desk asked if this was our first time there. We said no but on our previous stay we had stayed in the Marina Suites. He asked if we would like to upgrade to the Marina Suites for our stay this time. Marianne jokingly replied "not unless it's free". He said yes, it would be a complimentary upgrade! So we ended up getting a room that costs almost $800 a night for a standard room rate of $179!! So we could sit and watch the water and the boats right from the suite.
  After we checked out on Sunday morning, we went back to Portsmouth. We had seen a show on TV a week or so ago where Rachel Ray went through Portsmouth and one of the places she ate was Muddy River. So we went there for lunch. The food was very good. Unfortunately, I ate too much and spent the rest of the day feeling over stuffed.
  Sunday night, we watched the Super Bowl (along with 40 million other people). Unfortunately, the Patriots lost. I knew that their decision to go for the TD on a 4th and 13 was going to come back to bite them. If they had taken the field goal, they would have at least been tied at the end and had a chance in overtime.

  I got the bill for my ER trip back in December. I think they were trying to give me a heart attack so I would come back again! MY portion, after insurance, is almost $600. The total bill was over $2000. That's absolutely insane! I told Marianne that the next time I'm having chest pain, I'd rather just keel over and die than pay that again!

  I have updated Movabletype to version 4.1. Now I have to figure out what's different. I see the create entry screen has changed. It will take a while to find out what else is new. In order to take advantage of everything you have to update your templates and that's more work than I'm up for right now...

We had dinner at Elisha's tonight. They are giving 20% of tonight's proceeds to the Jaiden Tlapa fund.

We are having some new closet space and an office (dubbed the "man cave") built out over our garage. You can see pictures of the construction underway at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Construction

I left NH right out of High School and went in the military. It was 1989 and I was 18 years old. I moved back to NH just a little over 6 months ago. I now live in Milford. Just before Christmas, an 8 year old girl that went to Kindergarten and played soccer with my step-daughter Lauren had a terrible accident. Jaiden Tlapa was pulled into a snow blower. She was fighting for her life at Boston Children's Hospital. Yesterday, on the Ribbons For Jaiden blog at http://jaident.blogspot.com, it was announced that she lost her battle. It was a sad day for Milford and the rest of the world as well. You see, I first heard about what happened the next day from my wife. The word was spreading quickly through the "network of mom's". Everyone that heard about it was touched, even those who had never met Jaiden. Before I knew it, Ribbons were showing up in support. People were wearing them. They were on mailboxes, cars and even the Milford Fire Engines. Prayer vigils were held and well attended. Local businesses have signs up expressing their "prayers for Jaiden". Before long, fund raisers were started to help pay for the care. Just last Sunday, the Milford Fire Station held a waffle breakfast that served over 600 people and raised over $5000.
Jaiden's death is a tragedy. I start to tear up every time I see the picture of her playing soccer. But in the light of looking for something positive from her death, she brought this community together like I have never seen it. I'm proud to be part of a community that comes together like this. A community that is there to support their own, even if they don't know you personally. I'm happy to be back in NH. I'm happy to be home...

Update: You can see some picture of the waffle breakfast at http://fire.milfordnh.info/Recent%20Events.htm

I received an email from an old co-worker recently. He pointed me to a web site about how to make money from blogging. I did a little poking around and found a few sites that talked about making a six figure salary from blogging. However, they were very generic. I decided to start an experiment. I have created a new site at http://www.canicashin.com to document all of the steps taken and whether any money was earned. Check it out!

  I was woken up at 5 yesterday morning with chest pains. I have had them like this before and they are usually just gas. One good burp will usually take them away. So, I pressed on with my day trying my best to ignore them. Burps came and went but the pain persisted. By 3:30 in the afternoon, I finally gave up and had Marianne take me to the ER. They took blood, ran tests and took x-rays. Everything is fine. They think it was just my acid reflux acting up. I let out a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to kick the bucket and last night I slept very well.
  I must say, when you walk in to the ER and say you've been having chest pains, things start happening fast! They didn't even wait for me to finish what I was saying before they were up and getting the doctor. Once the EKG was done and looked fine, then things slowed down while we just sat around and waited on the results of the blood tests. All in all, we were there for a couple of hours.

  Last year, I spent Christmas at the hospital. My mother had to have an emergency appendectomy. This year, we were hoping things would be better. While my mother is fine this year, there has been a whole string of other bad news.
  My sister in law, Pam, has a father in law who is not doing well. They are not sure if he is going to make it.
  My brother in law, Greg, has a father in law who is also not expected to make it.
  Marianne's Grandmother had a mild stroke just before Christmas. She is still at the hospital but appears to be doing quite well. She will need some therapy but is expected to pull through just fine.
  My friend Lynn had a tonsillectomy on the 26th. They are hoping that will relieve her problem of not being able to breath. All of her tests came out normal so they are not sure why she is having problems. Her tonsils were just one possible solution. I haven't heard yet how the surgery went so I am just praying that she is doing fine. I doubt she is in a position to talk on the phone right now.
  I feel bad for everyone going through hard times right now and their families, but the one really bad thing that just makes my heart ache is what happened to Jaiden Tlapa. Jaiden is an 8 year old girl that went to kindergarten with my step-daughter Lauren. Her and Lauren also play soccer together. On Thursday, December 20th, Jaiden had an accident with a snow blower. She is now at Boston Children's Hospital in ICU. There have been some breakthrough moments where she has moved and opened her eyes but she still has a very long road ahead of her. We are keeping her and her family in our thoughts and prayers. If you would like to read more or leave your well wishes, you can do so on the Ribbons for Jaiden Blog.

  We had our first snow fall yesterday. It wasn't a lot. Just enough to cover the ground and send the kids scurrying outside to attempt to build a snowman. It was also enough to let everyone know that winter is here and the holiday season is upon us.
  This will be my first holiday season as a married man. I now have a lovely wife, Marianne, and step-daughter, Lauren, to share the holiday with. I have not only the family I was born into but also a family brought together by Love. As such, I feel very lucky!
  I also find it sad that there are others out there who feel more alone or unloved at this time of year than at any other. Having spent 9 years in the military deployed around the world, I know what that feels like.
  Jen Lemen has reposted her experience from a trip to Trader Joes at this time last year. Jen has a beautiful soul and I think this is a glowing example of how her random acts of kindness help to make this world a better place. I think we all need to take this story to heart. Remember as you're out doing your shopping and you're getting frustrated with the traffic and the crowds that there are others out there who have it worse than you do. Try to spread a little holiday cheer instead of screaming at that person that just took your parking spot. Put on a smile and give a friendly greeting to a stranger you pass in the store. You never know how your kindness may affect others.
  I have just one more example to share with you of kindness and helping others. This Story off of the Official Google Blog tells of a couple of their employees who helped others bring their bundles of joy into this world.

  May you all have a wonderful holiday season!

  I decided to take the Mustang out for a ride on Friday. While I was out I stopped at the Country Store (a hardware store). When I came out I found that someone hit my car in the parking lot. Of course, they didn't leave a note either. There's a crease by the drivers side rear tire now. Of course, I dumped collision and comprehensive insurance on it quite a while ago so I guess it's just going to stay that way....

  How many times have you heard "It's the little things that count". Well, according to this article about Wal-Mart working with Cleantech, Wal-Mart has "Saved $1M a year on energy costs by removing the light bulbs from employee coke machines in the back rooms". It doesn't get much simpler than that!

  If I've learned one thing in the last few months, it's that having kids makes a HUGE difference in your amount of free time! I used to live alone and come home after work to a quiet house where I did what I want when I wanted to do it. Now, I often don't even go right home after work. Instead, I head straight to the soccer field to watch Lauren's practice. Heck, it took me over a month to get around to posting the blog entry on the flowers for the wedding. There are definitely times when I miss quiet time. All in all though, I wouldn't have it any other way.

  The flowers for our wedding were absolutely beautiful! They were done by Works of Heart in Milford, NH. We gave her a general idea of what we liked and creative rights to "make something that looks nice". They aren't open on Sundays but still came in on Sunday so we could pick up our flowers. They did a very nice job for a good price and they were very accommodating.

  I would like to say Thank You to my new Mother-In-Law for the beautiful wedding cake. Denise makes the BEST cakes! Have you ever had one of those fancy cakes only to find that it looks nice but doesn't taste very good? If you did, Denise did NOT make that one! Her cakes look AND taste great! If you're looking for a cake for any occasion, check out Tastefully Wright.

  Ok, so it took a while for me to get around to blogging it, but I'm Married! On 9/9/2007, Marianne and I were Married at the Wentworth by the Sea. Everything went so well. We were worried about the rain, but even it held off JUST long enough!
  You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Wedding.

  It's been over 3 years since I wrote this review of my Alienware experience. You might wonder why I don't take the review down as being outdated. Well, I'll tell you why. If you do a google search for "alienware review", my review is the very first hit. As such, that page gets quite a bit of traffic. To this day, I still get emails from people who won't buy from Alienware because of my review. I also get emails from others who continue to have terrible experiences with them. One reader recently wrote me about her experience with their support. She wrote a letter to them. It read:

So I moved. Then I called July 8 & 9 to talk w/ support. I went through all procedures as they instructed me. They determined that two parts were needed and said they would be there in 2 - 4 business days. I PLEADED with the technician to send the parts overnight AT MY EXPENSE. He REFUSED. He said that could install the parts myself to expedite things and that I was to call when they arrived. Two days later the non-essiential part arrived but the essential one did not.

On July 13 I called again. The essential part had not yet shipped. This technician said I would need a repair person to install the part (the story had changed, here). Again, he refused to ship the part overnight - even though it was Alienware's error that it had not shipped out on time, and even though I was wiling to pay for the shipping. It was to arrive in 2 - 4 MORE business days. I called again on July 18. The part had finally shipped. It arrived here July 19 (note ELEVEN DAYS AFTER IT WAS DETERMINED WHAT PART I NEEDED I RECEIVED A PART). This was a violation of the 2 - 4 day rule...

All of this time I could not operate my business for lack of a computer. But guess what.. IT WAS THE WRONG PART THAT ARRIVED! The computer repair man came to install it on July 20 and said he didn't even think that was the part that would fix the computer, even if it were the right one.

I called support again. They insisted that I MAIL THE COMPUTER TO THEM TO REPAIR! After refusing weeks prior! At this point I'm already over two weeks without a working computer with no hope in site. I WAS FORCED BY THIS CIRCUMSTANCE TO BUY ANOTHER COMPUTER SO THAT I COULD OPERATE MY BUSINESS. THIS COST ME OVER $4,000. You can be sure that what I bought was NOT an Alienware system!

I then had to take my Alienware computer to a local shop to have a back-up disc made because I did not trust the company to take care of this for me. This cost me my time and $100. I sent the computer in for repair (more time...). I received it back from repair on August 6. This was 32 days after my initial call for support. I don't even know if it works yet. I haven't had time to try it!

Alienware has let me down in a BIG way. I am bitterly disappointed with this terrible excuse for service. I got so behind on work that I lost a long-term client and several good-sized projects. I am still working night and day to catch up. They have cost me thousands of dollars, multiple hours, and acute frustration. Alienware has lost my business. I believe that they owe me both an apology and monetary compensation for poor service. They did not keep their word. They have not provided the service spelled out in the warranty I purchased.

When I wrote to Alienware Customer Service they offered no compensation whatsoever.

I had multiple problems with this computer and service prior to this incident. This was just the last straw. I will never buy another Alienware computer again.

Thanks for listening,
Kathleen

  On Saturday the 18th, Marianne and I went to my sister Debbie's house for a graduation party for my niece Jen. Congrats Jen!

  We went to the town hall this morning and got the marriage certificate. One of the things I didn't know was that the form asks for you mother and fathers place of birth. Now, I do genealogy and I have that information but I certainly didn't have it with me. So our certificate has Unknown in those fields. So, if you are going to go get a marriage certificate, find that out before you go!

  So, now that the word has gotten out that we are getting married and not everyone is invited, people are hurt, upset and just plain pissed off. Why can't people just be happy for us???? We want to be married and we want to do it on September 9th. There is no way we can have 50 - 100 people and do it in that time frame. Heck, we're having to jump through hoops just to get Marianne's dress altered in time. We'll have a party later to celebrate and everyone will be invited.
  I pulled up my "MyYahoo" page which has my horoscope on it. They are usually way off, but today's is fitting:

You'll be dealing with some short-tempered people today,
and one of them might get moody if they don't get exactly what they want.
Luckily, you're not in charge of giving it to them,
despite what they may think.
So don't take on the burden of trying to make them happy.
If they choose to throw a fit or sulk in a corner, that is their choice.
Sure, it might make your job a bit tougher,
but wasting energy on someone who's choosing to be miserable
is never a good idea.

  Well, Marianne and I decided we didn't want to wait anymore. Besides that, trying to find the right place and coordinate everything was getting to be too much. So, we decided that on September 9th (our anniversary), we are "eloping" with just our parents. We are going to go to the Wentworth by the Sea. We may have a party sometime next summer to celebrate. We haven't even decided when or where we are going to have a honeymoon. We just know that we are going to get married on September 9th 2007.

  Although it's only been 2 months since I left Maryland and moved to NH, it seems like a lifetime ago. I try to keep in touch with old friends and coworkers via phone, email and just reading their blogs and websites.
  Probably the biggest surprise to me was that my friend Kyrie got engaged and is now getting married in October! They now have a website setup at WeddingWindow.com
  Recently, Brian Levay took some fun shots at Dave Lemen for comments he made at a conference. Normally, I would have left Brian a comment on his blog but it apparently requires registration and has no "log in" link. So, I guess I'll just have to shoot for a trackback instead. Hey Brian, fix your blog comments!
  Meanwhile, it appears that Dave's wife, Jen Lemen, recently had a great time at the Blogher conference in Chicago.

  I would have blogged about this earlier, but my internet access died. I hate it when that happens! As of July 11, 2007 I am not longer a home owner. This set of buyers actually showed up for closing. As I am in NH now, I did closing by mail. I had to sign papers, get them notarized and FedEx them to the title company. All of that was still cheaper than a plane ticket, rental car and a day off from work. It feels great to have that done and over with!
  So, to celebrate, Marianne and I went out and traded in her 97 Accord for a new 2007 Honda Pilot yesterday. It's a nice vehicle! We still have to take it back to get some of the dealer installed accessories put on but we get to enjoy it in the mean time.

  My move is finally complete. I drove to NH yesterday and this time I'm not going back. No more dealing with airports every couple of weeks!

  I started this week with a second interview for a job with a different division of my company on Monday. On Tuesday, I got a new contract on my house (the original buyers never showed up for closing). On Wednesday I received and accepted the job offer that I interviewed for on Monday. My final day in my current office will be on June 1st.

  It seems like it took forever to get to this point and now it's all happening very fast. I can't wait! Next weekend I will be completing my move to NH...

  My Uncle Ty passed away recently. He was a long haul trucker and was found on the side of the road by another trucker. They performed CPR on him and brought him back to life. They were there when the ambulance took him to the hospital. While most people would have left it at that thinking their duties were done, they did not. They went to the hospital and stayed with him. They talked to him and bought him a small stuffed animal. They were with him until he died. I truly appreciate the kindness they showed him. Here is the letter they wrote:

This is Marjorie Boozer my husband drives for sammons trucking out of missoula montana sunday morning we came upon one of your drivers by the name of Henery Tyson Jr. truck no:6698 his truck was in a ditch and was running and i opened the door and henery was on the floor half in the front and half in the back. he was not breathing and was purple in color there was no pulse at all. i began cpr on him and after about 6 times of sets of 3 he began to breathe. the police got there and the ambulance got there and i moved out of the way for them to move him out of the truck. i went to the hospitol in hugo colorado where they had taken Mr Tyson. I thought he was going to be okay and i was happy that i was granted the honor of bringing him back.

after about an hour and half he started not breathing on his own again. i watch as they tried everything to bring him back. But he died. My heart was broken and still is. My name was the last name he heard. they told him just before he died that the lady semi truck driver that saved his life wanted to see him and he said okay. i walked in the room and went to stand by him to say hi and the next thing i know i was being told to leave. i watch thru the window and i seen that hospitol do everything possible to save him. his wife needs to know that Henery did not die in alot of pain. he went quitely there was no pain on his face and i kissed him on the forhead and gave him a ty monkey that i had bought him and put it in his arms tell his wife to please keep the monkey and put it in his casket for me from me and my husband if she would. if not for her to keep it. i am so sorry i tired he was with us for over an hour before he went home to be with Jesus. if she would like to talk with me give her my number please. hopefully i can go to his funeral. i would truly like to do that.

plus everyone needs to know what henery did he got his truck off the road without even turning his load over of damageing his truck. it was a 2 lane road and Mr Tyson made sure that no one would get hurt. he drove his truck off the road to saftly. This man is a hero in my eyes. he made sure no one could get hurt even though he was sick. he made sure of that. His wife needs and should know this. He was and is a great truck driver to have put others safety first.

marjorie boozer

Ronnie boozer

[Contact information removed]

My heart goes out to all that knew him.

  I just finished signing a contract for the sale of my house. Now I guess the next step is going to be the home inspection. Assuming everything goes well, settlement will be on May 21st.

  The real estate agents were showing my house from 6 - 8 pm tonight so I had to leave. I went to see the movie Wild Hogs. It was a good movie! It made me laugh and I've been so stressed out lately that I really needed that!! So, all in all, it turned out to be a good night.

  My house is officially for sale. The listing has finally started finding it's way onto the web sites. Here are a couple of links to it:

[link removed. no longer valid.]
HomesDatabase.com

  I couldn't sleep last night so I decided it was a good time to update my website. For those of you who read my blog, it has now been merged into my main page. I hope you like the new look!

  For those of you who follow the blog with an RSS reader, please update the URL to http://www.mjonesweb.com/atom.xml (or index.rdf).

  This weekend I filled the Mustang with boxes (small ones, of course) and drove it to NH. The car is now a NH resident. On Thursday the 15th, my house officially goes on the market. Now I'm just hoping for a great job to come along!

  As you know, I'm a HUGE Mark Martin fan. Mark just missed winning the Daytona 500 by a nose! What a great race!!! It would have been better if Mark won though!!!

  Well, the free KFC Snacker sandwich that I won arrived today. Thankfully, it was a coupon!! :)

  Yesterday, I ordered a "box kit" of 20 medium sized boxes from moveout.com. It was $37.88 for the boxes with no shipping charge and no sales tax which works out to less than $1.90 per box. That seemed like a good deal to me. Based on the confirmation page I got when placing the order, I was a little skeptical on what I might actually get. There was no indication of how long the shipment might take. But, much to my surprise, they were waiting for me when I got home from work today. Ordered yesterday, delivered today! I can't ask for more than that!

  NASCAR lost two people this month to cancer. On Sunday, January 7th, Bobby Hamilton passed away at age 49 from neck cancer. Then, today, Benny Parsons died at age 65 from complications with the lung cancer that he spent the last year battling.
  I know people say that bad things tend to happen in three's, but let's hope the rest of the year goes better than this month!

  I went to KFC for dinner tonight and on the side of my drink cup was a code to plug in to a website for "your chance to win!". So I went ahead and filled it in and I won! This is the email I received:

Congratulations!

You are an instant winner in the Mountain Dew Ultimate Gamer's Sweeps!

Your prize (One (1) Complimentary KFC Snacker valued at .99) will be delivered to you in about 4-5 weeks.

Congrats on being an instant winner.

Your friends at
Mountain Dew and KFC

  EWWWWW! I REALLY hope that's a coupon!! :-) Otherwise, I don't want it!

Christmas

  Christmas day was anything but normal this year. Of course, there is a 7 year old in the house who is overly excited that Santa has visited. That meant that we were woken up at 4:18 am. We managed to delay going downstairs until around 5:00. All the presents were open by about 6:30. As it turns out, this was a good thing. Just before 7:00 I received a call that my Mother was at the Emergency room at Milford Medical Center. MMC is a small local center and they don’t open until 7 so they were waiting for it to open because she was having abdominal pain. By 8 I received another call that she needed a CT scan which is something MMC can’t do. So I went and picked her up and took her to a hospital in Nashua. There they determined that she had appendicitis and performed an emergency appendectomy. All went well and she is doing fine.
  It amazes me that they can go in laproscopically, remove an organ and send you home the next morning.
  So, we will be celebrating Christmas with my side of the family today. I guess that’s one way to spread out Christmas over an entire week but I’d rather do it with everyone healthy!

  I took today off from work because a contractor was supposed to be coming this afternoon to install a new sliding glass door. I got a call this morning from Lowes saying that when the contractor came to pick up the door, they noticed a large crack in the bottom of the door. So, now I have to wait while they order a new one (it's a special order door).
  Based on the time, and the fact that my back was bothering me, I decided not to go in to work and instead to work around the house. So I showered and then went to Target where I picked up some hardware to put up curtains in my bedroom. By the time I got home it was about time for lunch. So, I called my friend Sue to see if she wanted to do lunch. Her parents were in town and we decided to all meet at Bertucci's in Columbia. On my way there I was sitting at the light waiting to turn left into the plaza. My light (the left turn light) was red while the straight lanes had a green light. Well, about that time a woman decided to cross the road. She went in front of me and almost got hit by the car in the middle lane who managed to stop. She waved to them and started running across again and ran right into the side of a moving car. I watched as her body bounced into the air like a rag doll. I don't think her body had hit the ground before I had 911 on the line. They responded pretty quickly and ended up flying her out on the helicopter. It was quite a scene and a picture that I just can't seem to get out of my head.
   After all of that, I continued on to Bertucci's for a nice lunch. Now I'm home where I plan to hibernate for the rest of the day.

I was going to write a rant over this story, how stupid it is and how nice it is of California to kick our automakers while their down. But it appears that WIRED magazine already did that for me...

http://blog.wired.com/cars/#1560246

  I went to NH again last weekend. It turned out to be a great weekend! On Saturday Marianne and I met up with Kathi, Mom, Larry and my Grandmother at the Wilton Legion where we had a tile dedicated to my Grandfather (who died before I was born) and presented it to my Grandmother.
  What Marianne and I thought was going to be a quiet Saturday night dinner with us, her Mom and Step-Dad and my Mom and Step-Dad turned out to actually be a surprise engagement party! So Saturday night we had a house full of people and it was great! I saw some relatives that I haven't seen in a long time and it was nice to catch up.
  Sunday was Lauren's birthday. We had a few presents in the morning and then had her birthday party at the Animal Rescue League in the afternoon. This is the second year in a row that Lauren has asked that donations to the Rescue League be made (money, kitty litter, whatever...) in lieu of birthday presents for her. I think that's pretty amazing for a 7 year old. It shows a good heart.
  I went right from the party to the airport. I was SO tired from the weekend but it was SO worth it!!

  Well, most of the people who actually care received this in email, but I figured I would post it here anyway.

As of Saturday, Marianne and I are engaged!!! I was going to write up a long email explaining our Incredible weekend, but Marianne has already done that much better than I ever could. So, I'm going to cheat and send everyone what she wrote! :) I have put up pictures of our weekend trip to Maine at:

http://groups.msn.com/MichaelSJonesPhotoAlbum/ourmainetrip.msnw

and I have put pictures of where I proposed here:

http://groups.msn.com/MichaelSJonesPhotoAlbum/theengagement.msnw

I hope you enjoy the pictures!!

Love,
Mike

PS. Here is the story...

==================================================================================================
Hello All:

What a weekend I had.....and all in a gloriously wonderful way....brace yourself, this is a long e-mail!

Keeping in mind that Mike and I's first dating anniversary was on Saturday, September 9th.

Since Mike had come up and spent the long labor day weekend with Lauren and I and is coming back up next weekend for her birthday, I had planned to do laundry, cleaning and getting together with close friends. In any event, that all changed on Thursday night....

It was @ 8:30pm and I was laying in bed with Lauren (putting her to sleep) and she was happily trying to teach me how to do duck sounds when I heard "HELLOOOOOOOOOO" echoing through the hallway. Mike had surprised me by flying up from Maryland to spend the weekend with me for our anniversary! I was in shock! He simply said, "You don't think I'd make you spend our anniversary alone, did you?" He whips a brochure out of his pocket saying pack your bags, we're leaving tomorrow for Maine. I of course came right back with "I can't, I have to work, etc." In any event, the planning for this event had been going on since June so my boss knew about it, both sets of parents, etc......as usual, I was the only clueless one!

In any event, Lauren went off to school and then to her dad's on Friday and Mike and I left in the morning for Maine. We stayed in an adorable cabin right near the entrance to Acadia National Park....his mom and step-dad had scoped it out for Mike in advance (thanks Brenda & Larry)! We spent Friday and Saturday cruising through Mountains, beaches, etc......way too beautiful to describe via e-mail!

The pinnacle of the weekend came on Saturday afternoon (our anniversary). We had climbed up to an area where you could see ocean, mountains and beach all around you. It was BEAUTIFUL! The sun was shining bright and Mike then proceeded to say "There's only one thing that could make this weekend better"....he then got down on one knee and proposed to me! Needless to say, you all need to start calling me Mrs. Jones:) Of course, I said, yes! He presented me with a GORGEOUS three stone leo diamond ring (past, present & future). We enjoyed our happy occasion for the rest of the weekend with lots of sight-seeing and smiling :) The more I talk to "the parents", the more I hear just how much planning went into making this weekend perfect.....and PERFECT, it was :)

Lauren took the news better than expected and proceeded to take out an old ring of my and "marry" Striker (our beagle). Whatever gets her through the news :) I overheard her explaining to the dogs this morning that her dad would still be there dad but that Mike was going to be their step-dad.

Gotta run and get some work done (if I can pry my eyes away from my rocks as I type today, that is:)

  I love this picture! I've been doing this at work a lot lately :)

  This is a funny video about the NSA wiretapping...

CNN.com - Chicken and egg debate unscrambled - May 26, 2006

A geneticist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer have finally figured out the answer to the great debate of which came first! :)