Today, while I was at work, Joe Richmond from Auto Electronics & Accessories came by and installed my remote starter. I was really satisfied with the work that Joe performed and I loved the fact that he came to me to perform the work. I was able to go out and show him where the truck was parked and hand him the keys and go back in to work while he installed it. When he was done he called me and I went back out and got my new key fob (that controls my locks and the remote starter and replaces the factory key fob, plus the new fob is smaller than the factory one) and he showed me how it works. The distance seems to be pretty good too, so I shouldn’t have any issue starting the truck in the morning at my apartment. I would recommend Joe to anyone looking to have a remote starter installed in their vehicle. Now all I have to do is save up some money and pick out the iPod dock I want to get.
Kylie’s Sick
Tiffany decided to take Kylie to the doctor today because she didn’t look right this morning and has had a fever off and on for a day now. When I met them up at the doctor’s office Kylie, as usual, appeared to be just fine. She was happy and playing and jumping around, but I knew she wasn’t feeling well by her eyes. When Kylie doesn’t feel well here eyes lose there shine and appear to get kind of dull and glazed. This is the main thing that made Tiffany think Kylie wasn’t well and needed to go to the doctor in the first place. Once Kylie was called in they checked her weight (42 pounds) and took her temperature (99.9) and then we waited for the nurse practitioner. When she came in and saw Kylie she asked us what was wrong and Tiffany said “I think Kylie has Strep.” The nurse was shocked and said “This Kylie? You think she has Strep?” After checking Kylie’s ears (which thankfully were clean) she checked Kylie’s throat and said that it was in fact very red, she told us she would need to take a throat swab but was considering having someone else come do it because Kylie was so sweet and happy that she didn’t want to b the one to upset her. We told her that she didn’t have to worry about it because Kylie would do the swab with out issue because she was good with all that type of stuff. So the nurse finally decided she would do it and when she was done Kylie said “That wasn’t bad at all” which made us all laugh. After a few minutes the nurse came back and said “I wouldn’t believe this if I didn’t see the test results myself, but Kylie has Strep.” Tiffany just smirked because she knew Kylie had it to begin with. We started her medication tonight and hopefully in a few days she will be feeling much better.
The Envoy Has Arrived
I turned in my 2006 Dodge Dakota today. The lease is up the first of December, but I have already made my last payment and have already found the new used vehicle I am going to purchase so rather than missing the opportunity to purchase the vehicle I want I decided to turn the Dakota in early. In order to make sure the turn it went well I had the dealer (Cueter Chrysler Jeep) look at it the other day. They found some scrapes and scratches on the front bumper (looks like someone scrapped up against my bumper at one point in time) that could have cost me a penalty to turn it in. So I decided to have my insurance company look at it today and they found me not to be at fault for the damage, and seeing as I have broad form collision coverage on the vehicle, I do not have to pay my deductible to have it fixed. Turns out that there was about $300 worth of damage to the bumper, I am just happy that I do not have to pay anything for it. I do, however, need to make one final payment of $450.50 to Chrysler just to turn the Dakota back in to them, which is more than my truck payment was ($330.00) for the lease.
After spending the afternoon at the insurance companies adjustment office to get the quote and check for the damage to the bumper I went to Cueter to turn in the Dakota, sign off on the ending mileage (27, 622) and present the repair quote and check to their body shop. While this was going on Melissa was nice enough to remove my plate from the truck and then we were able to go get my new truck.
I now own (am buying) a Silver 2006 GMC Envoy 4×4 from Jim Bradley in Ann Arbor. This vehicle has everything I was looking for in an SUV:
- 4 wheel drive
- step ups for Kylie
- tow package with trailer wiring
- remote key-less entry
In addition I still have everything the Dakota had (including adjustable lumbar support, and fog lights), plus I got a few additional features that are just an added bonus:
- Moon roof
- Roof rack
- Auto rearview mirror dimming
- Heated sideview mirrors
I am also having them install one of the other two things I was really looking for; a remote starter. The only other thing I want to eventually add is an iPod dock so I can directly attach my iPod to the stereo. The starting mileage (24,204) is even lower than what I had on the Dakota.
All in all I am really happy with my decision to purchase this vehicle. Even with the added things that I got with it, my monthly payment only went up by $6.88 a month (total purchase price of $19,300), not to bad I think. I am hoping to be able to pay it off sooner than the 6 years I have financed it for as well. The one down side is that I couldn’t get the extended warranty, hopefully nothing goes terribly wrong with it. 🙂
Just found some more
Pictures that needed to be added into Kylie’s gallery. These can be found in the August 2009 album (08-15-2009 and 08-29-2009) and the October 2009 album (10-12-2009). The ones from the August 29th are the first few of many to come from the day of the Renaissance Festival, these first few happen to be of us having break fast at IHOP before going to the festival. I have no idea when I am going to get to those pictures as the ones I took are still on my camera and I have not even looked at the ones from Melissa’s camera yet (though she has at least gotten hers off her camera). In any event this has been a very productive week in terms of things getting done on the site. Guess I hit some type of web work flourish, it’s been kind of nice…
Two More
Just finished adding two more (older) videos of Kylie to the videos page; they are 2008-12-05 7:21 PM and 2009-01-13 6:57 PM. These are in avi format because I needed to rotate them landscape view to portrait view. They load a little differently than the others, but converting them back to mpg format could result in quality loss, and seeing as they were taken on a cell phone that is already pretty low.
One Point Two
Weighed in this morning at 284.6 for a loss of 1.2 pounds this week. Nothing staggering but it’s always better to lose than to gain. I still need to be more active, but apparently I am doing better. It’s still encouraging to know that I can get back on track if I am more vigilant about what I eat and taking advantage of little exercise I have the ability to get.
A Few Videos
I added a few older videos tonight and they can be find on the videos page. For simplicity the new ones that got added are:
There are at least 3 others that I have to post as well, but i need to figure out how to rotate a video 90 degrees so they are viewable at the proper angle.
More Pictures
I just added more pictures to Kylie’s Year 5 Gallery. Now all the pictures that I currently have for the month of September are up and ready for viewing. I still have to go through all the pictures we took when we went to the Renaissance Festival (I haven’t even gotten them off the camera yet 🙁 ) I also have some videos to try and upload and some more audio files as well (not necessarily voice mails as now I can record conversations with Kylie too).
Post Time
I finally got around to adding a small tweak that I have been meaning to implement for a long time now; the post time. Now under each post title it shows the time the post was written in addition to the date and the categories that the post was filled under. The rest of the post information (i.e. comments and tags) are still displayed as normal. I should also note that some time ago the post print function moved from the main view and is now only seen on in the individual post page (which is accessible for any post by clicking on the post title).
I Was Really Behind
I am finally getting around to catching up on website related work. New pictures have long been overdue and I discovered that not only do I have new recent photos I have some new ones going all the way back to May! Here are the new pictures that went into Kylie’s Year 4 gallery:
And here are the new pictures that went into Kylie’s Year 5 gallery:
There are still more to come, but I have already been working on this for many hours today. Hopefully I will get the rest up soon, as I also have a few videos to go up as well.