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For those of you who do not know Jess accepted a teaching job in Cabell County. She will be teaching an Autism/MI class at Huntington High School this year. So like any good husband I made her take a first day of school picture. Congratulations grumps I am very proud of you.
July 24th is our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Yes it was just 10 short years ago that Jess and I were married on a dark and stormy afternoon in July. (See honey when the power went out during the wedding it wasn’t an omen) We have outlasted many TV shows, been through a couple of recessions, and survived many many things together. There have been several ups and downs, things we have not expected nor planned for but we have made it through it all.
To celebrate this momentous day (and the fact that I believe all betting pools on the length of our marriage have now expired) I will update the famous paragraph below as is tradition, post our yearly anniversary picture, and never take for granted the love that God has blessed us with.
Happy Anniversary Grumps I Love You.
So after 2 houses, 1 rental, the cars going to Graley’s Auto Body 13 times, 2 BA degrees, 1 MA degree, 6 computers, 2 beds, 3 TV’s, 9 DVD players, 11 jobs, 6 cars, 3 surgeries, 1 major wreck, taking in Petey & Phoebe, and finding a church home we’re still together so it must be love.
The first 10 years the movie . . .
As some of you may have heard Jess Graduated on Saturday with her Masters of Arts in Special Education with an Autism emphasis. She graduated Summa Cum Laude which is a fancy way of saying 4.0 GPA.
To say that I am proud of her would be an understatement. She completed the bulk of this degree while working full time and in the last few semesters recovering from the wreck and an unplanned surgery. At no point during this degree did she even get a B!
I am very proud of you sweets.
In an effort to offset some of the student loan expense DVD’s and Prints will be available in the gift shop for the rock bottom price of $199.95.
Autographed copies are just $299.95.
Greetings and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers
It has been a slow winter and spring for blogable happenings so this will be another short entry just to catch everyone up. (I could spend a bunch of time blogging about work but that would bore everyone and get me fired.)
Since my last entry we moved Nana up to Sandy’s house. Ricky, Jess, Sandy & I moved Nana on the February 21st into her newly completed Dungeon.
The only thing we need to get done in her room is install the closet door. Just have not had the time to get over there to do it. Besides that the dungeon is nicely fished out including two of Sandy’s flying monkeys standing guard on the other side of that door.
Jess has continued to do well since her surgery. She completed all her incomplete work from her Gall Bladder adventure and earned another A. If she pulls off another 4.0 semester this time she will have a perfect 4.0 average for her entire Masters program. (No pressure sweetheart) My walking brain box also aced the first part of her Praxis exam with minimal effort, she will take the second section later this month. Jess has also applied and been approved for graduation in the May. (Please no gifts unless they are $1000 or over) She will graduate with a MA in Special Education with an Autism emphasis, and also be considered “highly qualified” per no child left behind. We are currently exploring several avenues of employment for her including full time teaching.
In other Jessica news she has been released from her therapy and pain management regimen from the wreck. She is getting along very well and is managing on Advil only as needed. Her “pin-prick” migraine headaches from the wreck are still with us (they seem to come and go in sets) but not at the frequency that she has been dealing with for the past year.
In Jake news not much has been going on besides working a whole lot. The disaster put me behind on several things. That in addition to working very intensely with one of my customers (in the middle of no where) lately has left me pretty pooped out. My only major home project lately has been to send Comcast packing again. I signed up for their Cable internet service (we are a Direct TV family) because I needed the extra speed for work. The service then proceeded to go down 7 times in 60 days one time for 30 hours!
This is not just and ISP service this is my livelihood. I work out of a home office and my phone is VOIP so when I loose my internet I loose everything. I had Verizon DSL for 19 months and they never went down; it was slow but never went down. This is addition to at night when my cable node was full of users it actually got slower than my DSL. So I called Verizon and got my service back for $15 less a month then I was paying before I left so it did work out. I heard from an undisclosed secure source that FIOS may be coming to Huntington this year. Believe me if it would help I would string the Fiber to the house myself to get this service. We will just have to see what happens.
To relax in my free time I have been making frequent updates to Opinions by Jake (it really is cheaper than therapy) and I also have been making my own Video on Demand system. I have been taking all my DVD’s and converting them to an MP4 format and cataloging them in iTunes. That way when Jess buys me my Apple TV (hint number #573 honey) it will just all flow to what ever TV I wish in the house. This also has the added benefit of me being able to take several seasons of television and many many movies with me on the road on my work laptop with nothing else to carry. I know this is geeky but it really is relaxing to me.
That wraps up this short update from the Stapleton Mansion. Good Night and God Bless.
PS: Forgot to mention Jess killed her 8th DVD player in March. Believe me finding a 9th victim for the serial killer was no easy task.
Greetings and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers
Just a quick catch up entry. Not too many things have been going on at the Stapleton HQ. On January 15th Jess’s Dad & I began construction on the Nana Dungeon. Jess’s grandmother Nana had decided to move in with Jess’s mom several months ago, but it was only now we could start construction on her room. We took a part of Sandy’s unfinished basement and converted it into a bedroom/dungeon for the Nana. Moving takes place next weekend.
On January 27th my company located in Paducah, KY was involved in an Ice Storm Disaster. This required us to implement our complete disaster recovery plan and move to our alternate processing site.  For those of you familiar with banking, you know that this is big crap. From 01-27 to 02-10 I worked somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 hours. Needless to say, I was exhausted both mentally and physically. Jess can now attest that she heard my cell phone ring so much that she now hears it in her sleep. I used 2544 minutes of cell time during the disaster and for some reason the side of my head glows in the dark.
This is a picture just outside of our corporate HQ.
Look at that ice. Now imagine what it did to all the data and electric lines in the states that it went through. This storm went from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania but Paducah was considered the “epicenter”. It cut power to over 1.3 million. Some of the people I work with went up to 2 1/2 weeks without power. I may have had it bad but at least I had a warm home to be in and my after work life was fairly normal. The damage from this storm will take months to repair.
My work life began to return to normal somewhere around February 11th. I am now setting ready to embark of about 6 weeks of constant travel. Some long day trips and a lot of overnights. No rest for the weary.
On Saturday the 14th Jess & I spent our 12th Valentines Day together. Just to prove we still have that old spark we went to Wal-Mart to grocery shop then came home and watched some DVR & DVD. (see honey those young couples have nothing over on us) I will have to say that in addition to her flowers.
