Sunny Sacramento

Can you believe that it's not quite spring yet but the high today in Sacramento was 78 degrees? We took advantage by utilizing our roller blades! The truck stop parking lot is huge and there weren't many trucks parked yet, and it felt great to get the blood pumping and our muscles used!





Driving near Lincoln, NE the other day brought a challenge: we blew a tire! Ben was in the back sleeping and all was going well with my driving and then, POP! I look in my side mirror to see smoke coming from the driver's side front axle of the trailer tires. I immediately put on my four-way flashers, slowed down, and pulled off to the side of the road. Ben woke up and checked out the damage:

Five hours and many phone calls later, we drove away with a brand new tire and were on our way!

When we were on our last home-time, we looked into getting an up-graded laptop to use while out on the road (our present one was a 2000 model!). After a Craigslist search, we found a place in town that refurbishes "older" computers and resells them for a relatively inexpensive price. We made a purchase on an HP 4-year old laptop and are so thrilled with it! It moves with great speed, plays dvds and has awesome picture quality. Adding to that, we adjusted our cell phone plan a bit to allow my BlackBerry to be used as a modem for internet service on the computer as well! That means I can now update the blog on a real computer using more than just my thumbs to type!

We have some other really great news*, but in Ben's introductory contribution to our blog (stay tuned, hopefully it will happen in the next week), he will be the one to share!

*Mom, if you're reading this, no, the other really great news is not that we're pregnant. We're still waiting.

In other other news, we have named our little coffee/tea french press: Pierre. Our whole brood of coffee/tea related items was joined by "Stan Jr.", a smaller green thermos, gifted to me by Becky and Michelle for my birthday. Having names for them all may seem strange, but it certainly helps both of us to know what the other is talking about in reference to them.

Speaking of my birthday, I had a great day! We originally planned on getting a group together to go on a ski trip up to Mt. Hoodoo, but time and money did not permit that little adventure. Rather, we had friends over for a dinner night on Friday and a brunch on Saturday! Thank you to Adam, Kathy, Eric, Justin, Pat, Carolyn, Matthew, Sharon, Michelle W, Michelle O, Becky, Eric, Ray, Breanna and Jill for helping me celebrate! And thanks for the chocolate! :-)

In other news, we are (still) in Sacramento, picking up a load early in the morning and heading to the Seattle area. Then we'll head out to the east side of Pittsburgh! We look forward to being in that "familiar" territory, even though we'll be in that region just next month for my comps. Speaking of, please keep my studying efforts in your prayers! This is just one of three last steps to completing my masters degree, but is by far the largest chunk...

Have a beautiful weekend, and Happy Spring! St. Joseph, pray for us!

Peace,
deb & Ben