Race for the Cure

Today was the Race for the Cure event downtown. My thrid time particpating. What made this year special was my mom participating too. It is such a moving experience and to be there with a survior makes it even more special. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my dear Aunt Linda Gail. Sorry, I know you hate it, but that is what I know and love you as! I wish you all the best and I love you!

Congratulations and Welcome!

Two of my nieces recently made their fist communion. I feel privledged to be a part of their special day and to see them grow in their relationship with God. It makes me think of when Elijah's day will be here and how soon it will be.

If you can, please do

I received the TKE magazine recently. It had the TKE Foundation report in it. It looks like we are about $1,500 away from Gary's scholarship reaching the minimum amount to start awarding to college students. If you feel like donating, please do. All donations are 100% tax deductible. You can give as little at $10.00 and can make a donation online or by mail. Online, choose "Chapter Scholarship Funds". There is a spot to make a notation - reference "Gary Dysarz Memorial Scholarship - Rho Tau Chapter". All online donations give you a receipt that you can print for tax records. If you are not comfortable donating online, you can mail in a donation to the following address:

TKE Educational Foundation
8645 Founders Road
Indianapolis, IN 46268

Make the same reference as online: "Gary Dysarz Memorial Scholarship - Rho Tau Chapter"

I greatly appreciate any donation you are able to make. I also understand if you are not in a position to make a donation at this time. I started this scholarship shortly after Gary passed and have been waiting awhile to see it mature and be awarded.

Another May Birthday Wish

Happy birthday to Keith. I hope your day is great.

Congratulations Andrew & David!

Congratulations to my nephews Andrew & David. They earned their black belts in karate. Their dojo had a very nice dinner and presentation for family and friends to be apart of. I'm very proud of both of them.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms out there. I hope all have a nice day filled with everything that makes you happy.

The Little Man

As much as it makes me sad to write it, my little man is growing up! He's almost done with his first official school year. He went to the dentist on Saturday and was such a grown up -- he got x-rays, he's starting to get a loose tooth, and he let me put sealants on the two adult molars he has. A big change from a year ago!

Also, the big news . . . he joined the Cub Scouts! He'll be a Tiger Cub in the fall. Today we went and got his shirt and baseball hat. He looks so grown up!

The Latest

Well, I picked up my car today. Other than it stinking like sealant (whatever they used to instal it was a very strong chemical. I ended up cracking the windows in the rain to get fresh air on the way home. As I was leaving the dealership, I hear "don't forget about that survey." Oh, I won't forget about the survey and the time wasted on Monday, and the overall experience I had. I can't wait for that survey to come!

Frustration, Part 5

Today I had a call that my radio is on back order and it will take 1-2 weeks to get it and to come and get the car. Good thing I was in a meeting and didn't get that message right away. By the time I listened to that message and was steaming mad, the next message was from the service rep saying that they were able to order direct from the manufactuer and will have a new radio in on Friday. Another night with the loaner, feeling like I'm sitting on the ground and getting 22.8 MPG.

Frustration, Part 4

I took in the car today and got the loaner -- a Mercury Milan. Nice with a ton of options, including Sync, but no instructions on how to work it. Not to mention it only averages 22.8 MPG. I guess having a hybrid I've become a snob on MPG.

At the end of the day they called to tell me that they have to order me a radio and it should be in tomorrow. I get to keep the loaner overnight.

Fustration, Part 3

Today I drove the car to work and everything seemed fine. Until I left work! I came out to see the lovely Mercury logo. Guess what -- I was standing outside the car! UGH! I got into the car and called the dealership. I was nice, but it was very apparent that my patience was gone. My service rep is desparately trying to get me in right away and have a loaner. He says "I have Thursday." Really, because I'm pretty sure my battery will be dead by that point. Yeah. So, he tells me to come in tomorrow morning and he'll work something out so that I have a car. Guess I'm getting a new radio. Better not jack up my satellite subscription. That's all I have to say.

Wish me luck. Oh, and today is my wedding anniversary. Hard to believe 8 years. What a happy day back then. Miss you Gary!

Frustration, Part 2

Monday morning rolls around and fortunately the car did start. Although it was still rebooting. Annoying, but not nearly as nerve racking as the radio incident on Friday. I headed to the dealership after dropping off the little man at school. I have you know that they almost didn't believe what I was telling them. I invited to look into the car and see for themselves. Wow, amazing! Of course because I didn't have an appointment they didn't have a loaner for me. So, I got a ride home. Fortunately I had a laptop from work. They gave me the impression that they would look at it right away (don't want to wear out the battery after all). So, I waited until 11 a.m. to call. Guess what, they just started looking at it (wow, so much for looking at it when you pulled the car away at 8:20 a.m.). He tells me he should have an update for me in a couple of hours. I call work to let them know that I'll continue working from home. Thank goodness I have that flexibility right now. Time goes by and it gets to be 3 p.m. and I figure -- surely they know something by now. I call and I'm told that the tech just took it on a test drive. My service rep tells me he will call me back in 10 minutes. 12 minutes goes by and he calls me to tell me the service guy isn't back yet. WTF, did he go shopping? At about 3:50 p.m. my service rep calls me to tell me the car is ready. What happened? Well, evidently it was in demo mode (not buying it), and when they hooked it up for diagostic, it came up that it needed a restart or something. He went on a test drive to see if it would act up again and didn't. However, if the problem happens again, I get a new radio. Yippee.

So, a day was pretty much wasted to find out that they probably could have fixed it in a hour. I'm a happy camper, not. As I'm leaving, they tell me that I'll be getting a survey from Ford and they hope they met all my needs. I can't wait to get that survey.

Frustration

Let me start off with, I still love the car. However, I experienced an annoying malfunction on Friday. I stopped at the ATM to get some cash. While I was messing with the machine, my radio started going on/off, volume is going up/down. In the amount of time it take to request money, get money, get a receipt and get my card back, the thing did it at least 15 times. It also did it another 10 minutes. Just when I was about to pull into the first Lincoln/Mercury dealership I saw, it stopped. Everything was fine. Okay. Saturday was good, no issue. Sunday started out okay, but as I was leaving my third errand destination, the radio stopped working, but the computer part of the radio kept rebooting -- I would see the lovely Mercury log and then black screen, and then the logo, then black screen, etc. Amazingly, this continued well after the key was out of the ignition and the car was not running. How long will it do this? Would I be able to start the car in the morning? Guess it is time to take the car in.

To be continued . . .

Pub Crawl

Yesterday some of my coworkers and I were invited to one of our hotels in Dearborn to check out their new renovation. We were told that we would be going out after and we could also have a free room for night if needed. The hotel looks great by the way. After the tour, we were given t-shirts that indicated that the evening would be a pub crawl and on the back of the shirt was local evening establishments with a box for us to check off of our shirt as we visited.

On our third stop, we ran into my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and Gary's niece. (Small world). It was funny running into them. I have Lois in our group photo (on the rooftop of Cheli's).

Here's our list:
Bailey's
Biergarten
Cheli's
Crave
Double Olive
Golden Eagle Lounge
Howell's
Miller's
Post
Silky's
Venue

We didn't make all of them -- some wanted to charge a cover (no thanks), but I have quite a few check marks on my shirt! A good time!

Still loving the car

Over the winter months I noticed that my car was not getting the gas mileage I expected. It was still good, but I was beginning to wonder. Well, now that the weather has changed, there has been a significant change for the better. The other morning I hit the button to calculate my average MPG while on my way to work. I hit a few traffic jams, but by the time I got to work it said 42 MPG. Awesome! That made me really happy especially consider the price of gas right now. Today I checked again, and although it is down to 36 MPG, that is still a great number for an SUV. I'm loving my car!

Finally Spring!

Spring finally came to Michigan! It's about time. It's so nice to open the windows and turn off the heat! Hopefully it will stay awhile!

Happy Birthday Shelly

Happy birthday to dear childhood friend, Shelly! I hope you had a great drama-free day!

Yee-Haw!

Years ago we used to have themed "closing" days. These would be days where we would run with a theme for the day and try to get as many signed contracts as we could for the day. Yesterday we had one and it was a western them. Everyone put on cowboy hats and bandannas and we were treated to "Redneck Party Mix" as our musical entertainment. The office was also treated to a lunch catered by Famous Dave's. A rip roaring good time. I won one of the hourly prizes - a gift card to Target! Today I found out I had the top sales of the day - that prize includes a day off w/pay, a free room at one of our fabulous hotels and a nice dinner gift certificate! Yahoo!

Downtown Again!

Today I ventured downtown for a meeting with our convention bureau. It was the first time in their office and a long time since I've been on Fort Street. I can say that I feel much better venturing around with my GPS! Interesting observations, memorable experience, but overall worthwhile. If only I didn't have to go back to work after . . . oh well!