We were down in Murrieta, California for a little vacation.  We both had a couple of days off from work, so we thought that we would go down there for a visit.  Some of our close friends had moved there and we hadn’t had a chance to visit them.

Before we went on the trip, I purchased a new GPS.  You know, one of those gadgets that let you leave your map at home.

Well, it should be like that in theory…

We reached the outskirts of Murrieta, and pulled over to the side of the road for a break.  Well, it was more of a diaper change as our baby had a bit of an accident on the trip.  After cleaning up the mess, we jumped back in the car, and the GPS just wouldn’t work.

Well, it sort of worked.  It would show us the city of Murrieta, but nothing else.

We were in a pickle and pulled over at the nearest service station.  There, a clerk was nice enough to give us a copy of the RAAS that had Murrieta maps in it.

Thankfully we made it to our friend’s house.  If it wasn’t for that great magazine, I don’t know what we would have done.

For the longest time, I have been nagging my parents to get me some pictures of their parents to put on my wall.  You see, family history is very important to me and I wanted to share my family history with my children.  I thought that having a picture of my grandparents would be a good first step in accomplishing that goal.

But, sometimes parents can be just as bad as children for forgetting to do things.  I think I had been asking them for well over two years to get me some framed pictures for the wall, but I just wasn’t getting them.

I had a nice surprise at my last birthday though.  There were some large, wrapped, rectangular presents just for me.  I unwrapped them to find pictures of my grandparents.

But these were not ordinary pictures – my parents had put the photos onto canvas to create family heirlooms of my grandparents.  It will be a gift that I can pass down to them when they are old enough.

I am so happy to see photographs of my grandparents on my wall – I miss them so much…

I find it really frustrating when your flight is canceled.  Sure, that doesn’t happen to me very often, but I just happened to get stuck while on vacation a few weeks ago.

What really bothers me is that when you do get stuck, usually you don’t have anything to do.  Most people get something to eat or drink, or read a magazine, but I found myself without much of anything to do.

Luckily for me, two weeks prior, I had read some iPhone news in a popular mobile magazine.  I skipped over the iPhone accessories to the games section.  I had not even realized that there were games that I could download to my iPhone.

I was so thankful that I had read the magazine and downloaded some iPhone games onto my phone.  Sure, staying over at the airport sucked, but at least I had some sort of distraction -at least for a little while.

While I was working as a night auditor at a hotel, I had the pleasure of becoming good friends with an older gentleman that was immigrating to Canada from England. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met and I was rooting for him all the way the day he went to do his Canadian immigration interview.

I thought that Canada needed more people like this and when he went to do the Canadian Citizenship test, I was on pins and needles waiting for the results. He, of course, is a very smart man and I need not have worried. He probably did better than I would have.

The last obstacle we had to overcome was his G1 practice test. This was especially important because he makes his living by driving trucks. I think he was more nervous about this one than he was the immigration one. But, the day he got his official Saskatchewan driver’s license was a day we celebrated. I am so proud to call him my friend.

I was at my cousin’s house one day, as he was participating in a mobile forum. It was the first I had ever heard of forums and I became very interested in them. I made it my mission to find one on gaming.

After a bit of searching, I found a gaming forum and I was surprised at the things that I was learning and the conversations I was able to participate in. I am a pretty big gamer, and besides the computer, I own about six different gaming systems. It sounds lame and I don’t spend all day every day playing games, but it is a part of my life.

Someone suggested a gadget India website in one of the forum posts and I learned that it was a way to acquire games at a dirt cheap prices. With the recommendation from the forum, I placed an order – if the game works properly, I can see myself ordering many more.

Just a few months ago, my son who was six asked me for an Xbox 360 for his birthday present.  Now, I know very little about video game systems, so that seemed like a good idea.

Now the day before I was going out to buy it, I had a funny feeling in my gut.  Something just wasn’t right.  So, I decided to go online and see what kind of Xbox 360 games were available.  Boy was I in for a surprise.

What I found out was not good.  Not good at all.  You see, pretty much all the games I saw were for adults, involved shooting and had blood in them.  Now, my son at six just shouldn’t be seeing these things – it might mess him up for later on in his life.

Thankfully, I came across some Wii game reviews, and they seemed more promising.  Their games were family friendly, and I could get a lot of games geared to my son’s age.  So my choice was clear:  I was going to buy a Nintendo Wii.

I am so happy that I was able to avoid a potential big mistake in my parenting – thankfully, the Internet was available to help me make the right choice.

I know it is not the end of the year yet, but hey, why not talk about my memorable moments for the past year.  Sure, something may come up in the few weeks that are left, but I could talk about them, if they do happen.

The first and worst thing to happen to me this past year was getting my wisdom teeth out.  I don’t know if you have ever done that, but it is perhaps the worst sound I have ever heard.  What really freaked me out was when the dentist put his foot on the chair so that he would have more leverage to heave on my tooth – it left me a little traumatized.

My favorite moment was Valentines day.  It was that day that I received and iPod and some iPod Shuffle accessories.  The sound was awesome and the stereo speakers for iPod I received were a wonderful companion to my afternoon workouts.

I just would like to mention my most unbelievable of this year as well regarding my grandmother.  You see, she gave me a call one day and asked if I could help her transfer her iPod to PC.  Did I mention that grandma is 84?  Who would have thought she would have bought one, but she did for her daily walks.

Well, the year has been very good to me with no tragedies as of yet (knock on wood).  I can’t wait to see what next year has in store for me.

My sister just went through an ordeal that just about ruined her life.  You see, she ran up a lot of credit card debt while in college to keep up with her need to shop.  Not long after getting out of college and starting her career, she moved out of my parents house.

Guess what she did?

She went shopping again.  This time for bigger ticket items such as furniture, a television, and of course clothes.  She thought things were going good until her credit cards started to come up as declined.  Pretty soon they were all over their limits, and she couldn’t make the minimum payments on all of them.

A few months into this, she started getting phone calls.  And more phone calls.  She was about to follow in my brother’s footsteps and have to go bankrupt.

Luckily, she received a phone call one day from a company that offered credit card negotiation services.  After talking to the salesperson, she decided that she would signup to their debt negotiation program.

They were able to get her some credit and bill consolidation help and reduce her monthly payments.  They also gave her some classes on responsible credit use.

Now, just two years later, she is debt free.  I think that she has learned her lesson from being on the edge of bankruptcy and is thankful for the help she received to get out of debt.

Now, most people take their library for granted.  We assume it is always there, and to be honest, quite a few people don’t use it.  But for those of us who do, it is definitely a blessing.

In fact, just this week a friend of mine passed away and I was given the honor of giving the eulogy at the funeral.  Thing is – I have never written one and I had no idea how it was supposed to go.

So, I went over to the local library and found some books on how to write a eulogy.  Inside these books I was able to see some eulogy samples and find some great eulogy quotes I could incorporate into what I was writing.

I have started with a simple outline of what I want to write as I have over twenty years of friendship to draw upon when writing the eulogy.  As sad as I am to see Bill pass away, I am happy as he was in great pain with the Cancer he had.

Thankfully the library was able to help me out with what I needed to know.  We are definitely lucky to have a library in our community – if you have one in yours be thankful.

A little while ago, we had to install a couple of stair chair lifts in our house.  You see, my son had back surgery and was bound to a wheelchair – no more walking while he healed.

It didn’t seem that it would be too bad as we needed only straight stair lifts, but I was floored when I found out what our cost was going to be.  It sure seemed expensive – we really only needed it temporarily.

I inquired about the resale value we could expect and I was not too pleased with the results.  I checked out the used market for stair lifts, but I couldn’t find any.  One of my friends suggested renting stair lifts – they had done it before and they found the pricing very reasonable.

So, I called a few places to inquire about renting stair lifts.  Over the phone, I learned that the price was very reasonable and that they could come out in the next couple of days to install it.

Now that the stair lift is installed, my son can get around the house with ease.  As soon as he is mobile, we can just give them a call, and they will remove it.  I am so thankful that it was available – otherwise I don’t know what we would have done.