Ugh. Another Camry vs. Deer collision...

I thought the average driver didn't usually hit more than one or two deer in his/her lifetime. I have used up my allotment of deer crashes in just 20 months.

We hit this one, which appeared to be larger than the first, on M-45 while we were heading home from the hospital on Saturday (4/26/08) after visiting with Evan. Abby has accepted responsibility for this one, since she fell asleep on the way home and wasn't on her normal deer patrol. It did startle her though, as my squeeze of her hand and standing on the brakes awoke her pretty quickly.

This one didn't do as much damage as the last one, and the car was still drivable, since the inverter radiator wasn't punctured this time. I think I managed to slow down more for this one than I did for Bambi last time.

It should be going in for repairs on Monday (5/5/08), and I already have a check for nearly $3000 from the insurance company.

Introducing Evan Connor

I am a little late with this post, but things have been pretty busy here.

Our son Evan was born on April 19th at 12:20 pm. He weighed in at 8lbs 12oz, and measured 20 inches long.

The delivery was somewhat stressful, as Abby was induced on Thursday April 17th at about 11pm. Things progressed very slowly until about 12:30 on Saturday morning when the doctor broke her bag of water. She got an epidural at about 3:00 am, and slept for several hours after it took effect. Later in the morning, the epidural wore off, and her labor was getting very painful. She was only dilated about 5 cm at this point, so we decided to proceed with a C-section.

It also turned out that Evan was born with a Group B Strep infection, so they had to admit him into the children's hospital on Sunday evening. He finally came home 8 days later, on Monday April 28th.

Things are pretty crazy around here now, but Evan makes us smile every day!

New tech toy - "for the baby"

This was a bit of a splurge purchase, but I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D80 DSLR camera and a pair of lenses. I got a Nikon 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 VR lens and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens. (The photos below don't show these lenses - they show the kit lens which I didn't purchase).

I love the zoom range and VR capability of the big lens, but it is slower glass, so I picked up the 50mm 1.8 too, since it is faster (better for low light conditions) and relatively inexpensive. I also got the Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash for the faster recycle time (compared to the built in flash), and the higher power and range.

Of course, this is all for the soon to arrive baby! This gives me no excuse not to take lots of baby photos and share them online.

On that note, I still can't believe fatherhood is nearly here! Just two more days until the due date, but I have a feeling he is still comfortable in there, and doesn't mind making a late arrival. For Abby, his arrival can't come soon enough, though!

Thats all for now - I have another post coming soon, but it will wait for a day or two (or more if we get "sidetracked")!

The New Baby-Hauler

We finally got our car shopping out of the way this weekend, and replaced Abby's 2005 Honda Accord Coupe with a 2008 Honda Accord Sedan.

She is excited to get a new car, and to have this task out of the way. We didn't want to have to screw around with putting a car seat in the back of a 2-door car!

She made a concession since they had a sale going on at a local dealer, and we picked up a black on black EX-L with Navigation. The new car is a 4-cylinder instead of a V6 (which is what her coupe had). It isn't quite as powerful, but we saved a few bucks, and got to keep the Nav system that she is used to having.

I'll take a real photo of it soon, but the one above will have to do for now.

It's time for another update...

Well - I figure I would update a month earlier than my typical 6-month schedule....

My biggest news update is that my wife and I are expecting a baby boy in April! She updates her blog all the time, so if this is news to you, you are out of the loop! We are both excited and scared all at the same time. We initially weren't going to find out the sex of the baby, but changed our minds at the last minute. Now we are struggling with the search for a name! We had plenty of girl names in mind, but not many boy names...

I don't really have any technology updates this time - I have added a few games to the PS3 library, but that's about it. I play a lot of Tiger Wood PGA Tour '08 lately...

Our Mitubishi TV has died, too. Best Buy is coming out to look at it next week. It looks like we will be able to take advantage of the extended warranty we got on this thing, after all. We just had a new bulb put in it in August (under the same warranty), and just 4 months later the TV won't turn on any more. I've done some reading online, and there seems to be a rash of bad power supplies in these TV's. The capacitors on the circuit boards swell up and fail, and I suspect that this is what has happened to this TV. I would open up the TV myself and replace these capacitors myself, but since it is still under warranty, I figure I will let someone else do it! I just hope it doesn't take months to get it fixed.

That's all for this update. Maybe, if you are lucky, I will update in April, but things might be kind of hectic around here!

I suck at blogging

Yeah, I haven't posted anything new in over 7 months. How lame is that? Abby posts something almost daily, and at the rate I am going, I am lucky to post something twice a year.

Maybe it is because I don't really care about celebrities as much as Abby does. We have gotten a few new toys since my last blog.

New additions:

• A new PS3 and a couple of games. I still don't have any Blu-Ray movies for it, but Traci did bring over one that she rented on Netflix (Mission Impossible: 3). It looked pretty good in 1080p! I have noticed that Blockbuster is actually stocking Blu-Ray movies now, so local rentals are finally an option.
• A new iPhone. I can thank Abby for deciding (rather suddenly) that she wanted one. We showed up at the Grand Rapids Apple Store about 2 hours after the initial launch - the lines were all gone, and we walked right in. She got one, and I pondered whether I should get one for all of about 30 seconds before I plunked down the credit card. I am glad I did - it is a pretty slick device, and to me it has lived up to the hype.
  

In the meantime, Abby's ankle recuperation process is progressing much better than it did after the previous surgery. She was off work for about 4 months, but has gone back now. This probably isn't news to anyone reading this, since you probably read Abby's blog anyway. If not, check it out - justabby.net.

We are also looking forward to our 10th anniversary this month, and we are going to Vegas and treating ourselves. I just wish time would go faster so we could get back out there!

That's all for now - see you again in 6 months...

Long Overdue News Updates

OK, OK....

I am getting a lot of comments from people that say I never update this blog! You're right.

So this is for you, Tammy and Traci!

The Camry:
It's fixed. It took two weeks and about $4700 (thankfully billed to my insurance company), but it seems to be back to its original shape!

Abby:
She's still broken (her ankle, that is). As you probably know, she needs to have surgery again because it isn't healing properly. This will put her sideline her (again) for a full 12 weeks this time. Ouch (for her and for me)!

New Toys:

• A new flat panel LCD TV (this is technically Abby's) that we got for the bedroom, but it has since been moved to the living room in preparation for Abby's recovery from her surgery. It looks sort of small for the living room, so we might need to upgrade (wink).
• New furniture for the living room (also in preparation for Abby's recuperation).
• A Tivo Series 3 High Definition Media Recorder. I love Tivo, especially in HD (and with dual tuners)! I will have to post more on this in the future - maybe on my "normal" web page instead of in my blog.
• A 60Gb fifth generation iPod. This was a hand-me-down from Abby, because she wants a new iPod Shuffle. I think she's crazy, but hey, I will happily take it off her hands!
  

Ouch! The Camry Hybrid has been sidelined...

It's been a rough weekend for my barely month-old Camry Hybrid. A couple of deer ran out in front of me on Lakeshore Drive about a mile south of the house on my way to work Friday. I managed to hit the second deer square in the grille. The impact didn't look too bad, but the radiator was punctured by the broken grille pieces, and it made the car undriveable. I limped it back home, and got a ride to work from Abby. It was later towed to the body shop for repairs, and I got the initial estimate this morning - $4000! Ouch - I guess this is the reason for car insurance.

They rattled off a list of things in need of repair:

Hood
Blending both fenders
Front bumper cover
Right bracket
Horn
Emblem
Left headlamp assembly (I didn't notice any damage to this, but maybe it is hidden)
Radiator
Inverter Radiator
AC condenser

I am hoping that the insurance company approves the estimate quickly, and I get my baby back soon!

Here are a couple of pictures (click them for a full size photo):

A new tech-toy (sort of)

Well, now that the jetskis were sold, I didn't need a tow vehicle anymore, so it seemed like a good time to start thinking about a new vehicle.

The new 2007 Toyota Camry ads caught my attention (I think I first saw one during the Superbowl in High Def). Why don't they put all ads in HD? They might actually get people to pay more attention to them! (But I digress)...

When I found out about the Camry Hybrid, I really got interested. I liked the idea of driving a hybrid - mostly because I hate putting gas in my TrailBlazer every week or more. I wasn't particularly fond of the Toyota Prius, though, because of its styling (but its mileage rating is appealing - 60 city/51 hwy).

I started looking into them a little deeper online, and found a lot of useful forums - www.edmunds.com and www.greenhybrid.com are good places to start. I decided to place a refundable deposit at a local dealer in Holland, but they said that it could take several months to get one. I thought about it overnight, and ended up calling another dealer in Muskegon, and they felt they could get one a bit more quickly, so I gave them a refundable deposit too. I put a few calls in to other dealers in Lansing and Battle Creek, and ended up putting deposits with both of them too! $1000 total on deposit across 4 dealers was not something I wanted to do, but I didn't want to risk the possibility of not getting one before October 1st. If this happened, the federal tax credit of $2600 would be reduced to $1300.

After a couple of weeks of waiting, the Lansing dealer called and said they would have one (in the color I want and options I wanted - loaded) in about 3-4 weeks. I got all excited about this, and expected it to arrive around the middle of June. As that time approached, I had a hard time reaching my salesman, and when i finally did, he was unable to provide any kind of arrival date.

Around this same time my salesman from the Battle Creek dealer called, and said they were going to put in an allocation for one, and he was going to ask for one loaded in my color choices. I had previously told him that I had one lined up at another dealer, so the fact that he called and asked about this was a surprise. He said he looked at their system and didn't see ANY Camry Hybrids with Navigation allocated to a Michigan dealer. This was when I realized that the Lansing dealer was either lying or grossly misinformed. I told him to try to get one allocated. He ended up getting a silver one with nav allocated, but decided to try to work out a dealer trade to see if he could get one in Magnetic Gray or Blue Ribbon. One of the last dealers he tried (in Indiana) had a Gray one for his customer, and they actually wanted Silver! It worked out perfectly!

I got the call on July 11th, as we were getting ready to leave Abby's doctor appointment (she was getting her cast off - finally!!). We went home, picked up the TrailBlazer and headed for Battle Creek (in some VERY heavy rain). I managed to avoid rear-ending another car on the way there by mere inches - that could have made the trade-in process interesting...

I have now had it for 2 weeks, and I am loving this car. I love the styling - many people have said it looks European - even BMW-ish. It has so many tech toys built in - keyless (Smart-Key) entry and "ignition", a Nav system, bluetooth hands free communication with my cellphone, and the list goes on...

The best "tech" of this car, though, is Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive. What an engineering marvel - a 147hp gas engine, and a 40hp electric motor working in "synergy".

I think I actually am driving differently now - I keep striving for better mileage rather than always doing the "jackrabbit" starts. My first tank was about 32.7 mpg, but my second climbed to 37.7. My current tank is at exactly 40.0 mpg, about with about 5/8 tank left. I really hope to keep this one above 40!

Here are a couple of pictures:

Ouch! Abby has been sidelined...

Abby's early-summer plans have taken a major detour after breaking her ankle in a freak "wardrobe malfunction"...

Click the picture below for a larger version of her X-ray (after surgery):



It looks like she won't be able to make it to Nashville for the CMA Music Festival, but she is hoping to recover enough to make it to L.A. for the Kenny Chesney Concert.

Get better soon, baby!