Hijacked

For a while now when I search for something on Yahoo or Google my search gets hijacked once I click on an intended website. For example, tonight I was going to research the demongraphic of buyers who've bought Pontiac G6s. When the Yahoo page comes up I click on one of the offerings and as I am going to that sight my computer gets hijacked. I ended up on Edmunds.com, a car buying and car selling website. Same thing happened when I typed in Major League Baseball. I go to click on MLB.com and then I'm switched to a site that sells baseball equipment.

How do I fix this or get rid of this issue? I've attempted to download Mozilla or Firefox, but kept getting hijacked. I'm currently trying to download Spybot.com. We shall see.

Long tiring day. One tough hour long work out followed up with about 3 hours of yardwork for a friend. I'm sore and stiff already. Should sleep well tonight.

By the way, I posted on my www.cravetheword.blogspot.com site tonight.

Jackpot

I felt like I hit the jackpot today. With my wife gone I was planning to take my 2 kids to a Jr. league hockey game tonight FOR FREE! Last night my daughter told me that I was going to have to get her a babysitter because she didn't want to go. Well, she got her way. A co-worker of mine asked if she'd like to spend the night with her daughter who is in the same class. SURE! I had already thought about this and expressed this desire with B from work.

So tonight my son and I went to the gym for a quick workout. Amazingly he didn't resist. I paid $5 for parking and parked right next to the indoor arena. Our FREE ticket included a hot dog(7 weight watcher points), chips (3 points) and a Dr. Pepper product. We stayed for 2 periods, bought a $2 foam puck souvenir and headed out. My son stayed up until 10:30pm, but went to bed right away. It was nice having just one kid to entertain.

Tomorrow could be busy: trip to trash dump, help a friend spruce up her property to put her house up for sale, entertain my 2 kids.

Tonight was a fun night!

Mowing Season

Mowing season officially opened for me tonight. The last 2 Sundays I tested out my equipment on my yard, but tonight I mowed for money. On days like this I'll load up my truck early in the morning so I can just head straight to mowing when school is out. The only real tester was on my first lawn when I ran out of gas for my weedeater. I brought what I thought was the gas/oil mix for my weedeater, but it didn't work. I cut my first lawn short and went to pick up my son from daycare.

I stopped and got gas as well as some 2 cycle oil. The new mix was exactly what my weedeater needed. I mowed 3 lawns all told tonight and I gave each lawn the spring treatment with weed and feed and ant killer.

My kids were with me and they did pretty well. After hitting a Sonic drive thru we got home at 8:30. So much for the new 7:45 start to bed time. As of 9:30 both were sleeping well. I showered up and will watch basketball and The Apprentice.

The wife is out of town so I've got kid duty all weekend.

Ink Refill

I am a VERY last minute type of person and when we run out of ink I'm no different. About 2 weeks ago our Epson printer ran out of ink. The whole Epson deal to me is a scam. I have 4 cartridges to purchase anytime one runs out. We tried to replace just one and no such luck. The black, blue, yellow and red cartridges run about $70 total so that is one reason I hold off on buying.

This weekend my mom visited and Friday she mentioned that at 4pm she'd need to print her boarding passes for her Southwest Airlines trip back to St. Louis. Immediately I knew it was time to get new ink. I've noticed a place nearby that's realitively new that refills ink cartridges. They are called Rapid Ink Refill. Early Friday morning on our excursion to yard sales I stopped by to see what the deal was.

I was greeted by a friendly, elderly lady and immediately I informed her that I was a first timer. I showed her my cartridges and she quickly grabbed the replaces from the wall. I didn't know if mine would be refilled and how long it would take so I was please to know that I'd have my product as soon as I walked out the door.

Great experience because the cost to me with a $3 teacher discount was just $27 with tax. Saved about $40. The lady informed me that my cartridges weren't completely empty. She said the little computer chip on the bottom was actually a page counter and it estimates how many pages it could print. That means many people don't get their money's worth when they buy cartridges, especially from Espon.

So when you run out of ink go ahead and check out one of those ink refill places. As long as these last a while, it will be well worth it!

Songs I Sing

I scoured through YouTube to listen to my all time favorites and the following is a list of sons I can't get enough of and I get charged from singing the lyrics EVERY time:

Asia-Heat of the Moment 1982
.38 Special-Second Chance
A-Ha-Take On Me(Great Video)
Peter Gabriel-Red Rain(Michael Stipe w/ Natalie Merchant is my fav)
Matchbox 20-3 am
Goo Goo Dolls-Slide
Benny Mardones-Into The Night
When In Rome-The Promise
Dwight Yoakum-Suspicious Minds
Dishwalla-Counting Blue Cars

More Later

Clean Shaven

Went to a place called Roosters to get my hair cut today. I had received a coupon in the mail and of course I was going to cash in on it. The first coupon I used in January was a for a free cut for my son. That was my first trip to this place. Like SportClips this place is geared towards men. They actually will serve you complimentary beer while you are there. Unlike SportClips this place has a decent standard for who they hire.

Today my coupon was for a free shave with a cut. My appointment was for 11am and I walked out 1 hour later feeling like I had cheated on my wife. The hair cut was typical. I then received a wash and a rinse followed with a conditioner and a rinse. Next was a gentle neck massage. My "barber" was indeed female and she was licensed to give straight razor shaves. This was a first for me. She did use a disposable razor on the neck and for trimming. She then gave me a neck and face massage as she put on skin conditioner. The event ended with a nice cold towel that would close up the pores.

What an experience. I felt guilty because my wife loves face and neck massage treatment. Not sure a shave would work for her though.

Other than that I went to see Vantage Point and it has rained all day. Some areas around here have already gotten 7 inches of rain and the creeks are overflowing.

Weekend Update

This is the first Spring Break since I can remember that I didn't leave town and visit St. Louis. This morning my wife headed out with our daugther on a camping expedition to Oklahoma. They invited a friend of my daughter and her mom who happens to teach at my school.

My first task of the day was detailing a Jeep Cj7. I still need to work off 2 details that I traded for a tree at Christmas. The hardest part was keeping my son busy. It was breezy so fortunately we both had jackets in the truck. My son managed to lock the doors to the truck and they keys were inside. A friend picked me up and I broke into my own house to get the back up pair.

I helped this friend mow the yard of the house he grew up in. His mom had been renting it out since 1984 when they moved into a bigger house. He said they paid $13,000 for it in 1972.

Afterwards my son and I played putt putt golf. This course has some really long, tricky holes. If I were golfing competitively, or should I say, if my wife were along, we might have needed to leave. A few day laborers were trimming the bushes around the course. At least 10 of the holes had SERIOUS debris: branches, extension cords, a bush trimmer, leaves and so on. My son didn't have a problem with it.

Maybe we should all have the worries of a 3 year old. Just the boys tonight!

Me Day

Dropped daughter off at school 8:00
Worked out 8:30-9:45
Took wife lunch 10:30
Went to movie 11:00
Washed truck 2:30
Picked daughter up 3:30

Beautiful day out. It was good to have a bit of mental health.

Indecisiveness and Appreciation.....

I don't know whether to say my appreciation first or talk about my indecisiveness? Oh well.

Appreciation:
We were car shopping with the kids Friday night and wanted to go back Saturday to try to finalize a deal and really didn't want to chase the kids around for another 3 hours. I called my good friend B and hinted at being able to leave the kids with him and his wife. He graciously agreed. I just want to say how nice it is to have such a friendship like this that allowed me to first impose, and second for him to accept. More often than not I fail to ask others for help for fear of being a burden on someone else. Since we don't have grandparents around it has gotten costly just to go out or hire someone to keep the kids while we do something like visit my heart doctor. I just appreciate what B did for me and hope my kids don't get strep since they were at his house for 3 hours Saturday.

Indecisiveness:
I don't really do well when given choices. Even when it comes to picking out a type of tortilla chip for our dinner Sunday night I struggled. My cheapness, or frugality, often makes decisions for me, but Sunday night I wanted a good chip to go with our chicken nachos. I held up 2 bags and let my son pick.

2 Thursdays in a row I was offered FREE tickets to local pro sporting events. The first was 4 FREE hockey tickets to see the Dallas Stars. My wife would ask, "What do you want to do?" And I would say, "It doesn't matter, I'm indifferent." We finally went and enjoyed it. This Thursday a friend asked me to go see the Dallas Mavericks and it took my 5 minutes and a "let me talk to my wife and call you back" before I finally decided to go. One thing my wife said and it has stuck, "You'd talk yourself out of winning $1 Million. And it is practically true. I'd do much better back when Henry Ford gave his customers ONE color to pick from...BLACK.

A few of my nicknames that I was given during my Emotional Wellness training a few weeks ago was: Chose Not to Participate, Path of Least Resistance, Non-Confrontational. I don't have much emotional baggage, but I do probably rob myself of some joy by sitting out at times when I could participate and have fun. Imagine the process my brain has gone through since we started thinking about cars back in December.

I am so glad we got the car we did! No looking back!

A Brand New Car

We finally did it. If you think about something long enough and want it enough, it happens. Yesterday I received an email from a local dealer advertising 0% financing for 72 months. I saw the same ad as I drove by the dealership on my way to school. I convinced my wife to go and look at the Pontiac G6 last night. We took the kids and they did great compared to previous shopping experiences.

We drove a middle of the line V6 G6 and were quoted a few payments. We had decided not to do anything last night so we were ready to head out. I qualify for the GM employee discount since my dad retired from there. We were able to get a price of $17,500 on a car that listed at $22,000. Basically about $1000 less than someone who might come off the street without the discount. I was told we couldn't get the 0% with the GM discount.(OF COURSE)

The 2nd manager showed us the top model V6 GT that listed for an additional $5000, but he could sell it for only $1400 more than the middle model. We really liked this car. It was a car that they displayed at National Dealers Autoshows. It has everything except a sunroof. We went back this morning to look at it again and brought the title to the Neon.

They gave us an up front decent price on our Neon. The finance manager dropped the finance rate from 6.99% to 5.5% so he could put in a bumper to bumper 100,000 warranty and our payment just went up $8. Imagine how much our payment could have gone down had they given us the 5.5% up front. I guess he played the shell game with money that gave us a good deal and made a bit more for the dealership.

That said, 2008 Pontiac GT V6, Silver, Leather, anti-lock brakes, traction control, automatic with a stick shift option, 18 inch rims, tires filled with Nitrogen, heated seats, On Star(1 year), XM radio(3 months) and so on. And we didn't lease it so we can put miles on it driving to St. Louis. Can't do that with my truck anymore.

MAVS Game

Currently at the Dallas Mavericks game for FREE! A friend of mine, Toon, called and asked if I wanted to go to the game tonight. Keep in mind I almost wiped out in my truck on the way home since it was the 2nd day this week we had SNOW in the Dallas area. I thought about it and my wife finally said, "Just go before you talk yourself out of it." At the game I've spent $0 since we are being hosted by Compass Bank. Free drinks, cashews and fajitas. NICE!

AND, no lines at the bathroom. SWEET.

Very little traffic on the way in. My town got about 2-3 inches of snow. Downtown Dallas-0 snow.

Awesome experience.......for FREE! So ME!

Dora or Daddy?

Last night it was a bit past my son's bedtime and I had already started a 30 minute Dora segment on TV. Mommy said it was time for bed and my son wanted to finish watching Dora. I gave him the choice of watching Dora and going straight to bed, or come to bed now and daddy would play basketball with him. He's got 2 hoops hanging from his closet doors and about 1/2 the time we play ball before he goes to bed.

He insisted on both and I gave him my teacher choice of Love and Logic: Either pick one or you go to bed with nothing. I waited anxiously as he decided. He picked playing basketball with daddy. I was waiting to be rejected, but was affirmed when he decided to spend time with me playing hoops before going to bed. Special times indeed.

The set up is pretty cool. Grandma bought him a lighted hoop and a basketball with lit neon stripes. We play in the dark. I got outscored last night 4-2. He was really on last night. Bad thing is this winds him up a bit and our prayer time usually isn't enough to calm him down. He ends up coming out of his bed 2-3 times before calling it a night. By this time his "sis" has been sound asleep for about an hour. She's like her mommy, "Lights out" as soon as her head hits the pillow.