January 25, 2008

Friday, January 25, 2008 4:17:54 AM

Yesterday was my 10th anniversary it is hard to believe that it has already come and gone. The day was spent organizing the trailer. I was pleased to get most of the pieces of a trailer office setup. I didn’t get as far as I would have liked but I solved some problems that were bugging me. The software problem isn’t solved. We may wind up just taking a bunch because I don’t see how we are going to have time to solve the software issue today. It is so hard to inventory what it is we are going to want.

I’m still not sure what to do about UPS’s. My dad recommended one and I know that it is better too have one however we have four different places that we power electronic equipment in the new office plan. I think having four would be cumbersome and expensive. I also don’t want to run wires all over the place. With that said having electronics failures would be cumbersome and expensive. I’m not sure if you need a UPS with a laptop anyway because I would think the battery on the laptop would serve the same function anyway. So maybe for the printer and the external hard drive … I’ll look online and see what I can find on the topic.

In the suburban we are planning to use canvas to cover the back door when we need to vent the air conditioner. We will use Velcro to stick the canvas to the back of the suburban. I was thrilled to look at my AC unit. I think it will work just great the way I want to use it. It even has a remote control so I should be able to control it from the front seat. When I first saw it I was hoping I would be able to control it from the trailer however it looks like the controller works by infrared so I don’t think it will work from the trailer. All the same it will be extremely convenient to use from the front seat. Even without a desk getting the heat controlled in the car will go a long way in improving the utility of the car. I was also pleased to see that if we don’t run anything else it looks like our generator is powerful enough to run both air conditioners concurrently. I don’t expect to need to run them both at the same time for because I anticipate that the portable air conditioner in the car should be powerful enough to pull down the temperature in very short interval of time. The main question left is about how adversely affected it is by the poor insulation of the canvas and windows of the car. With that said there was some material at the fabric store which looked like it would make a great insulator for the windows. I may go back and pick some up to use as a window cover. I just realized that our Velcro trick might work just as well on the windows as the back door. We should only need four small pieces on each corner for each window.

Lexie and I got baby sitters so that we could go out to celebrate our anniversary. By 5PM we when we started we were both exhausted but it was still nice to be out together. We went to the Texas Roadhouse restaurant in town for ribs. It is nice to know places that make good ribs and this is one of them. The question for the future of course is how often we will be able to afford them. As part of the routine at the Texas Roadhouse there were a couple of times the employees broke out into a line dance. Lexie and I both had a queer feeling watching them and remembering how we used to dance like that and how we didn’t really need to be embarrassed for them. It was a bit of a reminder that we aren’t 17 anymore. With that said we are hoping to do more dancing, it was just odd to see someone else doing public dancing. I don’t think we are going to be dancing in public.

After dinner we went back to outer limits. It was a bit embarrassing because we had been there the day before with the kids’ un-birthday party so it seemed like we were very obviously in “didn’t get to play enough” mode. Well, OK so we were! The motorcycle racing game was a lot of fun but the real surprises were a skating and boxing game that we found. In the skating game the player would stand on a skateboard and turn and kick it to do tricks. The game was quite a work out. The boxing game had some gloves that would detect motion. I was surprised how much energy it took to swing in mid air and dodge. I beat the first player pretty handily but didn’t do so well on the second player. I am sure that the game increases the difficulty level significantly between the first and second level however the other issue was I was just too tired to dodge. It will be nice when I can get myself settled into a better exercise routine.

After outer limits we went to Joann’s fabric store where we picked up the Velcro and canvas we will need to outfit the car. I was really excited about the strength of the Velcro. Lexie threw up in the parking lot at Joann’s, well in a bag in the parking lot. She wanted a drink so we went to Wal-Green drug for drinks. I haven’t had a Welch’s grape juice in quite I while I really liked it. I don’t want to drink much juice as I work to improve my fitness level but when I do I may drink more grape juice.