Where the H__ is Matt (update)

For some reason his site seems to be down but you can find his videos on youtube. Just go to youtube and search for "where the h__ is matt" only fill in the missing letters, and his videos will pop up.

But eventually check out his website because his story is kind of interesting. He has three - 20 minute or so videos of a lecture that he gave and I was able to listen to those as well and he talks about how all of this came to be and then his trip around the world filming his videos, pretty cool.

Attitude

A number of years ago, I had a boss that had this posted on his office door. I thought it pretty much hit the nail on the head. I was cleaning out some papers and came across a copy of it that I had made and tucked away with my "keep, don't pitch" papers so I thought I'd share it.

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

Charles Swindoll

Where the H__ is Matt?

If you haven't seen this guy's videos, you really need to check them out. The one from 2008 is really great! I've been checking out his website and his videos off and on all day, can you tell we weren't very busy at work? LOL

Sarah received an invitation to a party with a link to his 2008 video and it said that the party would probably be a lot like this video but they were pretty sure that that guy Matt wouldn't be there. It was pretty funny once you viewed the video.

Enjoy

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/videos.shtml

Vacations

I have a love - hate relationship with vacations. You look forward to them for so long and then all of a sudden they're over. I find myself getting a little depressed towards the end of a vacation because I know that things will soon be back to the same old routine. But all in all vacations are a wonderful thing. When we're home it seems like all of us are constantly moving in different directions and rarely are we all in the same place for very long. So in addition to visiting fun, interesting and sometimes new places, vacations away from home are just as much about spending much needed time with family. Our latest vacation to the Williamsburg, VA area was wonderful. We were able to enjoy this vacation with Sandy and her family as well. We have spent numerous winter ski vacations with Sandy and Bartee in the past but we hadn't had the opportunity to do so for some time. With their move west and the addition of Sanjay and Priya to the family it just hasn't been as easy as it once was.

It was great and I just hope it won't be so long until the next group vacation.

My greatest memory from this trip was the fact that I was able to rekindle my love of roller coasters. Back in the day ... some 30 years ago, I loved coasters, but I haven't riden one for probably about 20 years. But with the persistant coaxing of Sandy, Bartee and Sarah I decided to give it a try. Wow - I'm so glad I did! I loved it. Thanks guys! I even road the Griffon with it's 90 degree, 200 foot drop, which when I saw that coaster in testing last spring I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would ever, ever be a rider. Here's a couple of pictures of Sarah and Bartee on the Griffon. They are in the back row, the 1st and 2nd seats from the left. This picture was taken just after the pause at the top of the first drop ... yes they let you dangle for a few seconds, looking straight down at the ground before they send you flying.

What's even more amazing is the fact that Jenny rode the Big Bad Wolf, The Lock Ness Monster, Apollo's Chariot as well as Griffon! Jenny has never, ever been a coaster rider but she did it! She's actually pretty terrified of coasters. Here's a picture of her on a log ride at Hershey Park from 8 years ago and you've never seen a more frighten face in your life. I was so proud of her! She was about in tears before we left the Griffon station due to her fear, but she hung in there and I really think she like it, but when we got off I asked her if she was ready to get back in line for another ride and she immediately said NO. A friend sent her a pretty funny text message when she go off off Griffon. Here's the text - "Haha watch it chica. You have just barely killed the chicken in you. It's still running around. It's head's just cut off" LOL. Maybe on our next trip to an amusement park she can put the chicken to rest for good. Here's a couple of more pics from our vacation - One from Apollo's Chariot and the other from the Log Flume.

The Apple IIc is Alive and Well!

When I started this blog I mentioned that I had started a journal of sorts on my very first computer, an Apple IIc, back in 1989 after the birth of Sarah. It has no hard drive, just some RAM memory that you have to load info into from floppy disc's so that the computer knows what to do. Well, I uncover it the other night and put in the Appleworks program disc and it worked like a champ! Imagine, I bought it in 1987 and it STILL works better than any of the computers that have resided in my house since. Gotta Love Apple! Maybe I'll dig out my old external floppy drive that I had and then I wouldn't even need to perform the disc switches.

I found the "Journal" file and loaded it up and I was surprised to see I actually had entries until sometime in 1993. So in addition to info about Sarah I have entries pertaining to Jenny as well. I was hoping to be able to print out the file but all of the ribbons that I had for the Immagewriter printer (the Apple printer) had dried out. My next step is to sit down in front of the computer with Sarah's laptop and retype what I had written on the Apple. I'll then be able to send it to my desktop and work with it there.

One other side note, in addition there was a file entitled "Sarah - Helpfull Hints". These were lists of instructions for various baby sitters, grandparents, and daddy that I left with folks when Sarah was in the care of someone other than myself. It was kind of funny to read over these. Even funnier was that Sandy was with me and she said she had done the same thing for her kids.

The Boat

It all began a couple of weeks ago when we received a phone call from the property manager at Deep Creek informing us that our boat had sunk!! How can that happen? Yeah I know, the Titanic sank but as I recall it hit an iceberg and last I checked, as cold as Deep Creek Lake is, I don't think there's any icebergs in the lake! Apparently it sank stern end down. The bow was sticking up out of the water, still attached to the dock. All that was missing was Johnny Depp standing on the point. As I understand it from the insurance folks, they are saying that the bildge filled up with water as a result of heavy rains over the weekend prior to the sinking. Again there's a cover on the boat and I really don't understand how or why this would happen. The boat is stored during the winter at the local marina and it had just been put in the water 2 weeks prior. I'm still not convinced that the marina may have possibly left out the plug when it was put in the water thus causing the bildge to fill. There's a plug to drain the bildge that you pull out when you trailer the boat. There's an automatic bildge pump that should run if water accumulates in the bildge but what they are saying is that the pump had run so much with the heavy rains (or the fact that the plug was out, oops did I say that) that it eventually killed the battery and then it wasn't running anymore. So ...... it sank.

To make a long story short - apparently the boat is repairable but at a hugh cost ... so we've found a used one, another Cobalt, 6" shorter and 4 years newer that Scott was very impressed with, that we can purchase for less than what the repairs would have cost on our boat, "The Titanic 2" as we've named it. Thank goodness for the insurance coverage - that will at least cover the replacement boat.

Catching Up

Ok - I know it's been a long time since I last posted so I'll try to catch up a little.

Sarah's home for the summer. She absolutely loved her 1st year in college. St. Mary's was a perfect match for her. She was a member SMUT (St. Mary's Ultimate Frisby Team), Helped extensively with the threater department and participated in the Orchestra as well as many other campus clubs. She's really matured into a very independent, responsible adult. She's working for Borders, she's one of the techs for the TJ marching band, and tutoring a middle school student this summer to keep busy and earn some spending money. It's kind of funny though, I'm starting to remember how it was to be out of my parent's house for a while and then move back in and having to respect my parents rules. Only this time I'm the parent. We're not having any big issues, but even though she's 19 and technically an adult, I still like to have an idea of where she is and when she'll be home and I don't think she quite feels that it's necessary all the time. She said to me one night, "what do you do when I'm at school?", and I told her, "in my mind when your at school, you're in bed every night by 10" LOL. I'm really thankful for cell phones. Most of the time I can get in touch with her if I need to. But then again the flip side to that is when she doesn't respond to the cell phone then I worry even more! Oh my :(

Jenny's been busy scoping out colleges. Her SAT scores as well as her HS grades are very good so I don't think she'll have a problem getting into most any college that she chooses. We visited Penn State and Virgina Tech last week and she was impressed with both. Her main interest at this point seems to be engineering. I think she's leaning towards Penn State as her first choice at this point. The school spirit in the community as well as the school itself is amazing. Jenny would probably try out to be part of the well known "Blue Band" at Penn State and I can't even imagine the memories that would be created from such an experience if she were to make it. In between college visits and Marching Band rehearsals she's continuing to work for 5 Guys on the creek. She had her senior pictures taken last week. She looked beautiful! Wow - It's so hard to believe that she'll be a senior in the fall.

Sam will be entering the 8th grade in the fall but for now he's just enjoying the summer. He and a friend, Danny, are pretty much joined at the hip lately. They've gone swimming almost every day when the weather is good. He played baseball again this past spring season and his team did very well. Sam was the lead off batter for the team and he even managed to hit a home run this season. There were several close games where Sam was instrumental in getting a hit and creating the go ahead run. For those of you that haven't seen Sam lately I think you'll be very surprised. He grew 3 inches and put on 6 lbs this past year ... and his voice is unbelievably low. He'll be starting football the end of July, another sport that he really enjoys. Scott played football back in the day so I think he's thrilled that Sam likes to play as well. Of course the parent in me is very concerned about injuries but I guess in the whole scheme of things the injuries are few and far between, hopefully.