Almost Saw This Wreck in Houston

Posted on February 10, 2005 by peeps

This past weekend, we went down to Galveston for Rae’s grandparent’s 50th Anniversary party. We got to see Rae and Marshall and most of Rae’s friends and family. The party was a good time and we ate LOTS of good food. We all watched the Super Bowl on Sunday while piggin out on pig.

Monday morning we all got up and got ready to leave town. We were taking Rae to the Airport and Marshall to a friend’s house in Houston. We got a call from some friends that left just a bit before us saying that the ramp at the ferry back to Galveston was broken and it would be at least an hour before it was fixed. No big deal, we would go a bit out of our way and take a different route to go around the bay. We had plenty of time…or so we thought!

We got into Houston (and it decided to pour on us) and we decided to take 610 towards Houston Hobby Airport (per Marshall’s instructions) instead of Beltway 8. We were making good time despite the rain when we see a cop drive by with his lights on, a electronic billboard saying there is a wreck ahead, and the sudden flood of brakelights.

It turns out, a big rig had just wrecked and burst into flames. The sky was black and smoke covered the entire highway interchange. Luckily, we were right by an exit and we were able to quickly bypass it to get Rae to the airport 45 minnutes before her flight was to leave.

Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful drive home. I hope to have pictures up in the next couple days from the party. Stay tuned!

EDIT: I have added the pictures from the weekend! It sure was a good time for all. Thanks Moss family for letting us be a part of it.

- peeps

State of the Union Honors Byron Norwood

Posted on February 2, 2005 by peeps

Sara called us tonight about 9pm to see if we were watching the State of the Union Address. As the bad Americans we are, we were not watching. She called to tell us that President Bush honored our late friend and former schoolmate, Byron Norwood in the State of the Union Address.

I can’t believe we missed it, but MSNBC had the full text up minutes after the Address.

Below is the excerpt from the speech that mentions Byron:

Right now, Americans in uniform are serving at posts across the world, often taking great risks on my orders. We have given them training and equipment; and they have given us an example of idealism and character that makes every American proud. The volunteers of our military are unrelenting in battle, unwavering in loyalty, unmatched in honor and decency, and every day they are making our nation more secure. Some of our servicemen and women have survived terrible injuries, and this grateful country will do everything we can to help them recover. And we have said farewell to some very good men and women, who died for our freedom, and whose memory this nation will honor forever.

One name we honor is Marine Corps Sergeant Byron Norwood of Pflugerville, Texas, who was killed during the assault on Fallujah. His mom, Janet, sent me a letter and told me how much Byron loved being a Marine, and how proud he was to be on the front line against terror. She wrote, “When Byron was home the last time, I said that I wanted to protect him like I had since he was born. He just hugged me and said: ‘You’ve done your job, mom. Now it’s my turn to protect you.’” Ladies and gentlemen, with grateful hearts, we honor freedom’s defenders, and our military families, represented here this evening by Sergeant Norwood’s mom and dad, Janet and Bill Norwood.

What an honor for him and his family to be honored so publicly by the leader of our country!

EDIT: MSNBC posted video clips of portions of the Address. There is one video that highlights the section I posted above. Click here to see the video of President Bush honoring Byron Norwood (Click on the “Honoring Soldiers” link – IE required).

- peeps

Finally, Our Bed Has a Frame!

Posted on January 31, 2005 by peeps

After about 3-4 years of having a bed without even a frame, we now have a complete set of new bedroom furniture. We purchase the furniture at The Roomstore. We got a dresser and mirror, TV armoire, 2 nightstands, and a king bed frame (at the price of a queen…shhh).

It turns out that there was a number wrong on our receipt, so when the time came for delivery, the delivery man had a king bed frame on his truck. Since we didn’t pay for it, we couln’t turn down a $200 upgrade.

This of course meant we had to go out on Saturday and buy a new matress and box spring. Unfortunatley, Sleep Experts was unable to do same-day delivery so we had to sleep on the couches for another night. We also had to go out and pick out some king-sized sheets since we had none.

Well, the first night’s sleep in the “new” bedroom was kinda rough. It was almost like sleeping in a hotel’s strange bed since it was all new.

Tonight we should sleep like babies!

Click here to see full size pictures of the furniture…

The really funny thing is that the bed is SOOO high, that Tasha has to run and jump just to get into it

We are going to have to get a bench to put at the foot of the bed so we can put on our shoes and socks now that the bed isn’t on the ground!

- peeps

My Obligatory “Use Firefox, Not IE” Rant!

Posted on January 27, 2005 by peeps

Well, if you have visited in the past couple days, you have noticed that I added a navigation menu at the top of the page instead of having the navigation links on the right side of the page with the other links. This is done via CSS, plain ‘ol HTML and a bit of code by a WordPress developer called “Intelligent Menus” to highlight the current page. I spent about 3 evenings and lunch hours researching the best way to do this and how to format it the way I want (note that I use Firefox as my default browser). I finally got it formatted the way I wanted and relaxed a bit.

All was good.

That is until I opened up my site for a browser compatibility check and realized that Internet Explorer (IE) does not display the top border on the tabs!

I spent another 3-4 hours trying to fix this to no avail. I will prrobably have to end up creating background images for the tabs and telling the CSS to apply the correct image for the tabs.

Keep in mind that nothing is fancy about the code. It is standard CSS and HTML and IE cannot display it properly! It works in Firefox and Opera, why not IE!

So I take this opportunity to try to introduce everyone to Firefox. Download it now and have a proper viewing experience at philpeeps.com

- peeps