Joining the ranks

I have had a cell phone now for 3 years. In all this time I have not had text messaging or any other type of messaging (picture or video) Whit and I have been on her parents family plan with Verizon. It really helps as far as cost, but we had no options on our plan because they didn't want to pay for them (not that I blame them). But this past weekend The decided to renew and upgrade their plan. I now have all the types of messaging. The only thing they didn't get was a data plan. So now I have joined the ranks of the many who message with their phones.

As a consequence of the renewal we were able to get new phones for the upgrade price. We went to the Verizon store to look at what phones we could get and their costs. The salesman was nice to point out some good features and problems with some of the phones. We were poised to purchase our phones but we couldn't because of some account access problems. It was a good thing too. As we had decided to get the phones the salesman started pressuring us to buy things we didn't want. He started bring accessories over that we didn't ask for and was strongly encouraging us to purchase the insurance for our phones. We left and didn't go back. We instead went to Bestbuy. What a different experience. They were helpful, answered all our questions and the phones were cheaper. They didn't pressure us to buy other things either. So now for the main event: Which phones did we buy?



Whitney got the new LG Chocolate. It has an extra 1GB of memory for songs. It is a flip phone instead of the original chocolate which was slide. My brother Steven has the original chocolate and I didn't like the interface at all. This one is much better and most importantly, Whitney likes it.



I went a little more modern. I got the LG Dare which has a touch screen. It is awesome. The touch interface works really well and the menus seem easy to navigate and find what you are looking for. It also has a 3.2 megapixel camera. It is a sweet phone. So for those of you who want to talk or text me, just leave your number (if you know i don't have it already) and we can get started.

A flood of good times?

This is a story that starts a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Ever since my family moved into our new house, when I was five, we have had problems with flooding. This is not flooding from tons of rain but mostly from mistakes in watering the lawn, flowers, and garden. It didn't matter too much as the floor was cement and we had most of our possessions out of the way. Now that we have finished half the basement it has become a bigger problem. It involves taking out carpet and replacing carpet pad and the like.

My Mom has had a knack for flooding the basement several times a year. She turns on the hose to water her flowers and forgets it is on. This happened earlier this year and while I was not here, I heard it was really bad.

I guess you could call me my mother's son. While watering the yard and trying to water the garden, I opened a valve to get a better flow. Unbeknownst to me, the tap by the window well was wide open. It was about an hour before anyone knew. Whitney sent Autumn and the neighbor girls down the basement to play. They came back up announcing that it was all wet. Whit ran to tell me, I was outside, I went running to the window. That is when I found the faucet. After turning it off and rushing to get a bucket with a rope, I bucketed out the water from the window well. It was 2/3 of the way up the window. Whit ran to a rental place to get a carpet cleaning vacuum which sucked better than any shop vac I have ever seen. Scott called friends family and neighbors to come and help us. It took 4-5 hours before we were done cleaning up. At first the water would seep over the top of your shoes when you would step on the carpet in the bedroom. It was really muddy too. But we got it all cleaned up and now we are trying to get it really dry. We will have to replace the carpet pad in the bedroom. This happened on Saturday.

On Monday one of the neighbors that help us clean up called and asked for our help to clean up their basement flood. We thought that it might be a prank they were trying to play on us. So, in the spirit of good fun we decided to dress the part. Here is a picture:





There really was a little flood, but they thought it was hilarious. I hope you do to.