Putt-Putt Day

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The plane didn’t actually land until 10:30 last night. The girls were tired, but everyone was in good spirits. We picked up my bags and headed back to the house.

We had two showings of the house today between 10 – noon, so we took off and played putt-putt. Isabelle was pretty funny playing. She would take her first hit and then run after the ball, pick it up and then drop it in hole. She would then put her hands up and say, “Yea!” At the front of the course there is a little pin and you can purchase food for some baby allagators. We couldn’t pass up that deal so we let the girls feed them.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Twitter. It’s basically an online social network where you post short posts of what you are doing right then at 140 characters max. I’ll start posting periodic posts there and I’ve also added it to the left sidebar on Frenchville. You can think of Twitter as mini-blog posts so you can answer the question, what is Jason up to between posts on Frenchville.

Blogging from 20,000 feet

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I’m heading back to Orlando this evening to spend time with Jennifer and the girls. I first went back two weeks ago for Easter and Jennifer’s mom was so kind to purchase this trip’s ticket for me after she got one of the Southwest “Ding” alerts and got a pretty good deal on the tickets. It was raining in Houston so my flight was delayed almost two hours. The flight was supposed to take off at 5:10, but we didn’t board the plane until 6:30. Then, we sat on the runway waiting to take off for another 30-45 minutes. You have to love the timeliness of airline travel. Well, now I probably won’t get into Orlando until 10:00. Jennifer probably won’t be in all that great of a mood since she will have to have been lugging the cranky/tired kids around the airport. At least I did have the forethought to call her and give her a heads up that the flight was going to be late. We’ll see when I arrive.

Standing on a Soap Dish

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The biggest issue Jennifer has had with having to watch the kids all by herself culminated this evening with a stunt pulled by Abby. While taking a shower she decided it would be cool to stand on top of the soap dish. Although still a little girl, soap dishes were probably not stress tested with seven-year-olds standing on top of them. The result: the soap dish came crashing down and put a nice hole in the tub. Basically the kids are either messing up the house faster than she can clean it, or repair it in this case. Jennifer was so furious that she had to walk away to keep her cool. She ended up grounding Abby for the rest of the week: no television and she couldn’t go next door and play with her friend. She tried to explain to Abby the cost of repairing things and how no one will want to buy the house if it’s damaged. Abby went to her room and came back out with the money she had been saving up from the Tooth Fairy and Easter, around $50, and offered it to Jennifer to repair the tub. Jennifer told her to keep her money. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope for Abby after all.

Welcome and Now Get to Work

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It’s been a while since I’ve written because I’ve been busy at work. I started on this new project right when they were trying to get a demo out to their publisher. So, I’ve been putting in a lot of hours in order to get that out the door. It’s been fine since the girls are all back in Orlando, but it gets tiring after a while. Well, we delivered it on Monday and today was the first time in a while that I got to go home at 6:00. (Yea!)

Last weekend Abby got her ears pierced. I guess she’s a “big girl” now. She’s very happy and has been very good about turning and cleaning the earring studs. She was really brave and they pierced both sides at once, which was a pretty good idea since she might not have wanted to do the second ear once the first ear was pierced.

One thing I’ve noticed since being away from the girls is that I’m getting more read. I just finished Stephen King’s Cell in just three weeks. This is something that would have normally taken me 2 – 3 months. It was actually a pretty good novel, which might have also been part of me reading it so fast.

Shopping for Health Insurance

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This week our television was finally fixed. So, it was down and out for a whole month. As I mentioned before, this does not bode well for us buying a Mitsubishi ever again. Another company had to come out and fix the problem that the other company couldn’t diagnose. This time it worked. Jennifer is glad to finally have a television down stairs. She was having to wait until after the girls went to bed and sneak up and watch their television at night.

One thing that you miss when you go back to working for a small company is really good health insurance. The company I’m working for now is pretty small, only about 60 employees, and as such, the monthly charge on their health insurance was quite high. Because of this, I shopped around and found one that we are going to try out. It continues to be with UnitedHealthcare, which is the provider we had for EA. We had to go with them because they have doctors both in Florida and Texas. We really don’t go to the doctor that much, so this one has a low monthly cost, but you have to pay for the visits in full up to the deductible. I played around with some scenarios and this one ended up being the best for our average case. We figure if it ends up costing more than we expected, we could just switch next year. The difference between the monthly savings and deducible are within a few hundred dollars, so I figured it was a safer bet to go with this insurance. We’ll see.

Exploration

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Today was a day of exploration for me. First, I went to the 11:00 service at First United Methodist Sugar Land. This is the church we are thinking of joining when the whole family is here. I signed up Isabelle for their pre-school just last week. The service was okay. The minister was good, a good southern preacher who draws you in with his stories. However, this service was a contemporary service and I’m not so keen on that type of service. It appears that the 9:00 service is a traditional one and I’m going to try that out next week. One thing I thought was interesting was that they had a church podcast. I dialed it in for my Zune and I figured I would try it out.

The other thing I checked out was a Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant in Missouri City called Nyonya Grill. It was a family run joint, but was pretty good. It had the traditional Mongolian Bar-B-Q bar and grill with regular sauces that you mix to get the taste you like. It reminded me of the Hans Mongolian that we like over in Clear Lake.

Back in Orlando, Jennifer wrapped up the week long Hannah’s Closet consignment sale up at our church in Winter Park. Jennifer always helps out with the sale and they expressed their thanks and sorrow for seeing Jennifer moving back to Texas. It was a long hard week and I know Jennifer is exhausted. They are continuing to show the house on a regular basis, but no bites yet. We are still hopeful that they will be joining me in Texas real soon.

Still No Television

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Nineteen days without a TV and one thing is for certain: Mitsubishi has guaranteed that we will never buy one of their televisions again. They have the most incompetent service organization working for them in Visions Electronics. They told us (without ever coming to see the TV) that it was the bulb. We waited two weeks and guess what, it wasn’t the bulb. They plugged in the bulb and drove off. Within a few minutes, the television was shutting itself off again. They then said it must be a sensor (again without really looking at the TV to diagnose the problem) and said they would be back the next day. They never showed up. When Jennifer called them today: their phone had been disconnected. Mitsubishi, whether they know it or not, has this company representing them. I consider them an extension of their brand. And if they are that incompetent, then how am I supposed to have confidence in their company? Jennifer called Mitsubishi and complained. First they called Visions Electronics because I suppose they didn’t trust Jennifer when she said that their phone had been disconnected. They then put her in touch with another company which proceeded to tell us it was a fuse again without really coming to see the television. So, we are once again in a waiting game while the fuse is ordered. As stated before, will probably never order a Mitsubishi television again just based on their level of customer service.

One Week In

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I made it safe to Houston and just finished my first week at TimeGate Studios. It’s a whole new game and a whole new company to get used to. A lot to take in over the last week. It funny how you don’t really know what it means to miss someone until you have to do it for a long period of time. I really miss Jennifer, Abby, Emily, and Isabelle. I will be flying back to see them in a few weeks, but the time can’t pass fast enough. I know this has been though on Jennifer. The three little terrors nipping at her heels while she has to try and keep the house cleaned up just in case that last minute house hunter wants to jump in and see. It’s hard to say “no” because you know that person who just drops right in might be the ticket that sells our house in Orlando and reunites us. Anyway, next time to see us wish us luck, because it’s only been a week and I don’t know how we are going to last very long.

On the Road

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With the coming of a new job at TimeGate began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Today I hit the road back to Houston leaving behind Jennifer and the girls in Orlando. A man and his dog traveling the country side looking for a good cup of joe. Actually, me and Austin we were trying our fastest to get out of Florida and back to Texas. It was sad leaving everyone back in Orlando and I will miss them. Hopefully the house will sell soon for several reason beyond the obvious: being reunited with the family.

First, the house keeps breaking. No major breaks, just little annoyances, which keep digging me deeper in debt. We replaced the carpet and the blinds. Yesterday our kitchen faucet broke and we had to get a plumber out to install a new one. I tried to do it, but the connections were way up behind the sink and I couldn’t get the wrench to twist because of the tight quarters. At first we tried Roto Rooter, but once they got to our house and told us how much it was going to cost, Jennifer turned them away and called a local plumber. They fixed us up and it didn’t break the bank for something so simple.

Second, the neighbors are driving us crazy between our across the street neighbor, Jane, who pealed out backward from the bus stop today; and the old wind bag behind us who loves yelling at the girls telling them to be quiet. The Wind Bag decided to pay us a visit today to tell us what she thought of our kids. Now granted Emily can shriek at a pitch that can hit your spinal cord just right and make your eye twitch, but coming over to my house and complaining that the kids are too loud at 3:00 in the afternoon. What’s the home owners association going to do about that? Are they going to start advertising that our subdivision is not a family-friendly place to live? I doubt it. Wind Bag, go find a nice retirement community, there’s plenty of them. It’s Florida after all.

No TV Sunday

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Yesterday my new-ish 52″ DLP HDTV stopped turning on. The horror. I’ve had it for only seven months and it decided it didn’t want to be watched anymore. So, I spent some time on the phone with a customer service agent in India who proceeded to tell me that they couldn’t help me and I would have to call back on Monday. Sigh. Today then became “No TV Sunday” here at the French household. It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you aren’t watching TV. I was behind on all of our bills and calculating our budget, so I spent most of the day working on that.

Another event which happened today was the cleaning out of my office at EA. This up coming week is my last week and since we were already down in that area for church, I figured it would be efficient to pull the big Sequoia up to the building and get the remainder of my stuff. So, the five of us went up and collected the rest of the knick knacks up in my office and hauled it home. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m leaving yet. In about a week when I’m driving to Houston, maybe it will be real then.