Adobe Flash, aka 'Adobe Crash'

I'll admit that I am not the brightest person when it comes to troubleshooting my computer problems. I can usually find some intelligent discussion on message boards by searching my problem on google, but often the solution is too complicated for me to understand, or I am not comfortable manually editing my registry scripts.

The thing that is frustrating me currently is Flash has stopped working on my Firefox browser. It just stopped working. I have not changed anything, updated anything, and I have not installed any new software either. Yesterday it worked, today it doesn't.

So I tried the "get latest version of flash" link, but it fails to install and recommends a manual install instead. I tried that and Flash installs without any problems. Restart Firefox and yep, you guessed it, it does the very same thing. So I did the google search and tried several of the recommended "fixes", none of which work for me.

I even uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it to see if my browser had somehow became corrupted. Nothing works. So now I am FORCED to use Internet Explorer, which I absolutely hate. I'm going to give up.

Memorial Day

I don't have very many memories of Grandpa Sears because he passed away when I was only eight years old. I do remember that we traveled home from Germany for Grandpa's funeral on the earliest military flight that was available. That, as I recall, was inside the luxurious accommodations of a military DC-10. In addition to the windowless fuselage with rear-facing seating, we were treated to a non-insulated 20-hour flight with several prisoners bound for the Fort Leavenworth federal penitentiary.

Mom was about 8 months pregnant at the time, and she was spending much of that long flight inside the DC-10's latrine vomiting. I remember wearing ear plugs to drown-out the sounds of the engines, but even with the plugs in place, sleep did not come easy to an eight-year-old boy worried about falling victim to an attack from an unrestrained federal inmate.

Grandpa is buried at the Morris Hill cemetery here in beautiful Boise, Idaho. Since I live the closest, it is my honor to visit his grave site and place some flowers in his memory.

Our Memorial Day weekend stay-cation

With gas prices nipping on the heels of $4 a gallon Tessie and I decided to bag our plans to go to Seattle this Memorial Day weekend. Instead we opted for a "stay-cation" as Tessie so cleverly named it. So what do you do when you are stuck in your hometown over a three day weekend?


Well fans, how about some arena football action? Boise has its own AFL team called the Boise Burn (shown here in smokin' hot orange uniforms.) The Burn is not quite as well known as the beloved Boise State University Broncos but hey, anytime you can watch football in the climate-controlled environment of a indoor arena you really should take advantage of it. The Burners lost the game, but it was a close one, down to the last seconds on the clock.













Tete Jaune's face is almost back to normal as you can see in these pictures of him with Sarah and Tessie at the game.


Sunday, in our efforts to round-out our weekend adventures while keeping tethered to our 50-mile gasoline-imposed-action-radius, we are going wake boarding at Arrow Rock Dam. Sunday night Tessie and Sarah are going to catch a Carrie Underwood concert at the Idaho Center in Nampa. I am planning to shoot some photos of my bus during that time in order to avoid any contact with county music lovin' folk'.

Curious George scares children at the library

I found out that Curious George was going to be visiting the Garden City library today. Piper is a big fan of anything monkey, so I thought it would be fun to take her to see him. After the librarian read a short C.G. story, the life-size monkey himself came in to greet the kids in a manner that would have made even the best costume-wearing Santa Clause proud.

Piper wanted nothing to do with the giant monkey. In fact, she openly resisted me when I tried to take her up to see the six-foot man in the f aux-fur suit. I had imagined getting some cute photos of her cuddled up to George but that wasn't going to happen. Finally I asked someone to snap this one photo of the three of us. Piper was so traumatized she wouldn't even look over at George. I guess it was a good thing that 'the man with the big yellow hat' didn't show up too. Way to go dad! It's special little moments like these that your kids will remember forever!

Watch out Lance Armstrong!

Isaac has been working on his biking skills lately. He can now ride pretty well without his training wheels, but is still having a hard time learning to start on his own. Today he was able to start out on his own five different times. If we keep working on it he should be ready to venture out on his own this summer.













He still needs to develop a graceful dismount technique as most times he ends up like this. Keep working on it Isaac!

What's that noise?

I kept hearing noises while cooking dinner on the BBQ. Tessie investigated and found these little tenants living in our water fountain.

Ahhhh, summer!

We had our first taste of hot weather this weekend. Tessie and I enjoyed some time BBQing with friends on Saturday then on Sunday TeteJaune and Sarah came over in time to eat dinner with all of us. We cooked chicken, shrimp, corn on the cob, asparagus and had garlic bread too. Everyone but me ate watermelon for dessert and I had some warm brownies. Yum.

Tess and I did some lazy sunbathing on floating lounge chairs in the pond. Tess got REALLY sunburned. Piper made some sandcastles and Ethan and Isaac built a sandy-replica of the Teton dam, which they had fun breaking again and again.

Ethan was fitted for braces a couple weeks ago. He got the top set of brackets and wires installed and will get the lowers on in a couple more months. He also got contacts recently and is starting to look more and more like a junior-high kid. I think he will have a great smile when the treatment is completed.

Piper has an ear infection. I've heard that soaking your ears in pond water diverted from the Boise River is a great way to clear that up. She has been a bit grouchy lately but will be in better spirits soon.

Happy 7th Birthday Isaac!

It is so hard to believe that little Isaac will be seven on the 12th of this month. We had a fun bowling party for him on the 10th.











Isaac invited some friends from school and some other friends that attend a year-round school. As usual Piper out-bowled all of us. Isaac got a lot of great gifts and really enjoyed himself. Tessie made cupcakes and we also ate bowling-alley pizza. Mmmmm bowling alley.

Plastic surgery, now used on more than just breasts!

Tessie is the coach of our co-ed softball team this year. So far we are undefeated but we have all made some personal sacrafices for our wins. TeteJaune recently took a softball to the cheekbone and was rushed to the emergency room for a CAT Scan. He shattered his cheekbone and broke his nose too. He was scheduled for a reconstructive surgery to take place one week later after the swelling went down. TeteJaune's injury meant that Tess and I spent our SECOND night in a row at a hospital.

Luckily his girlfriend Sarah works at a an Ear, Nose & Throat clinic here in town and TeteJaune was able to get a highly skilled plastic surgeon to do his work. He now has some metal plates and screws where his cheekbone was. He is healing nicely but has missed a lot of work since he is not allowed to drive, lift heavy objects or operate machinery.

Please keep him in your prayers, for those of you that pray. Those that don't pray can send money instead. Seriously, we love TeteJaune and wish him a speedy recovery. This is a picture taken from my camera phone (sorry for the poor quality) in the emergency room an hour after the accident. TeteJaune's first words to us were "did we win the game?"

Poor Sadie!

Sadie was badly injured while running near the river today. Luckily Tess was close by with a cell phone and I was able to drive out to get them. Sadie tore the skin on her chest almost to her belly. There was also a small tear in the muscle that protects her heart. Tessie and I had a sleepless night while the doctors operated. We brought her home about 2 am but we didn't sleep much because Sadie was crying all night.





On Friday the 9th Sadie had another scare. The swelling in her chest was too much to handle and the skin tore, ripping out some stitches. She went back in to the hospital for a second surgery to remove the dead skin and graft good skin over to close the wound. Luckily she had some excess skin on her chest to cover the gap. During the second surgery the doctor also removed two small tumors that had been forming on Sadie's eyelids. Poor girl!

These pictures were taken 14 days later. You can see the stitches and staples now that her bandages have been removed. Sadie has to wear this stupid Elizabethan Collar to keep her from biting and licking at the wound. She really hates it, and we hate making her wear it too.

Keeping up with everyone else.

I guess it is time to join in the blog-o-rama before Joe starts one too, making me the last computer-owning Page child to be blogging. Thanks for everyone's newsy posts, I like reading the blogs better than getting emails, which I try to save exclusively for penis-enlargement offers and Nigerian trust-fund windfalls.