stacey ewing

Well, Gmail is back up and running this morning but it’s still sporadic- takes several tries for it to open an email or to send one. Right now, it has spent 3 minutes trying to delete an email. I’m sure as most peeps on the East coast get to work it will only flood the system more. I bet it crashes again…sigh. I love how they make it sound like only a handful of people were affected by the outage- I wonder what a “small group of accounts” actually means- 400, 4,000, 40,000, 400,000?? I suppose if it were the latter, that news would have made slashdot, no?

The account errors some of you have been experiencing are now resolved
for the vast majority of users. You may experience some delays in mail
delivery, although we expect these to be resolved shortly. A small
group of accounts, however, may continue to show errors, and we’ll be
watching these errors closely to ensure they’re fixed as soon as
possible. We apologize for the inconvenience today and appreciate your
patience.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain- Gmail’s been very helpful to me and it beats the university’s crappy email system any day.

Good news- Tim arrived home safe and sound last night. Mort met us at the door and he was so excited to see Tim- he just looked up at him like a little dog and let out a really long “mmmrrrrraaaaaaaaagh!” and immediately started rubbing against his legs- too funny. T is definitely sick so I loaded him up with a bunch of meds and poured hot tea down his throat and made him go to bed early. I hope “reentry” at work isn’t too tough for him today.

Gmail has been down since 7:30am. I’ve been using it for the last 2.5 years and this is the first time it’s left me in the lurch. It’s still frustrating though- I didn’t realize exactly how much I depended on it until today- all my contacts, calendar, work emails, notes to myself are all trapped in there. Supposedly they’re “on it:”

To clarify, the problem we are referring to in the previous post
concerns a percentage of our users seeing ‘Server Errors’ and ‘Oops’
messages when trying to log in to their Gmail accounts. We realize
that many of you depend on Gmail to communicate and assure you that
all hands are on deck to fix the error. While we do not have an exact
time until resolution to offer, this is currently our top priority and
we’ll continue to post updates as they become available.

I really hope it’s not too much longer!

Tim-tim comes home tonight. He’s been gone since last Tuesday so I can’t wait to see him. I talked to him last night to confirm flight stuff and the poor boy has a cold. I think he’s gonna need a vacation from his vacation!

I had a fun weekend. I took a quick trip down to Stuart to visit the crew. Rachel’s birthday was on Wednesday so it was a good excuse to get down there. Aaron & Janelle were also visiting from Texas so we planned a get-together BBQ at Aaron’s parents’ house.

It was a great time- Aaron’s mom set out so much food- I think everyone literally rolled out at the end of the night! :) Aaron’s brother Matthew, Rachel and her daughter Sammi, Wes, and Court joined us. Big hit were the 5 rescued kittens- they’re getting older now and are so much fun. Rachel’s daughter had a fantastic time following them around and petting them. Matthew also pulled out his latest toy- an old 3-wheeler- and let everyone take turns driving it around the yard.

I stayed the night with my brother Jay and we had a nice visit. I got to catch up on a few episodes of Eureka that night. I sometimes miss having tv but a couple cute shows still isn’t worth the brain drain. We had a nice breakfast the next morning and we watched a terrible Stan Lee movie, The Condor. It was totally laughable- talk about stereotyping the hispanic culture- it was terrible- embarrassing really! We started to watch a little bit of Appleseed (Appurushîdo) but then he had to get ready for work so he let me borrow it. I haven’t watched it yet but prolly will soon.

I left around 12:30 to meet Aaron, Janelle, & his parents at Shrimper’s for lunch. Aaron asked for seating near the water and they sat us right next to the water in the middle of the sun. Not quite what he had in mind but the hostess must’ve been having a “literal day.” :) The mgmt. wouldn’t put up the umbrella because it was too windy, so we sat out there and kinda fried- well, at least I did (y’all know how chalkasian I am!). The waitress wasn’t very nice- the wind kept blowing the nachos off Janelle’s plate which made the seagulls swarm. She came over and yelled at us several times for feeding the birds and didn’t believe us when we told her it was the wind. When she cleared Janelle’s plate, three chips flew off the plate and onto the ground- starting yet another seagull swarm. Surprised, she said, “Oh!” and then walked away. She came back later with the bill and told Janelle she’d deducted her drink from the total and apologized.

As we left the restaurant, I grabbed Janelle and told the fam that I was kidnapping her for a little ‘girl-time.’ We drove out to Shadowood Farm to see Sarah, Bob, and Emma. Bob was busy so we only got to say a quick “hello” but we had a little time to visit with Sarah and after awhile, Courtney dropped by and ate her lunch while we all got a chance to catch up. It was great!

After dropping Janelle back at the West Compound, I headed to PSL so I could shower and change- Rach & Glenn had invited Wes & I to Benihana’s. It was such a trip- I hadn’t been there since 1990 and let me tell ya- it hasn’t changed a bit (except that there weren’t any Japanese chefs). We had a really fun time!

After dinner, we met Aaron & Janelle back at Wes’ house and played with Wes’ wii and PS2. It was great. The only bummer was an absent Courtney and Tim (who were both away visiting their famlies).

The next morning, Rachel and I had a nice breakfast at a great new bagel shop out in Tradition near her home in PSL. We then went to Jensen Beach to leisurely shop for a couple of hours- just like old times. We stopped at Jay’s place before heading back to her house, so I could drop off a few things I found for him. We got to chat with his girl, Lorraine, and meet her new dog, Rascal. After that, it was time for me to go home. :(

Y’all know how I love the whole human beatbox thing so when this link came thru on BoingBoing at lunch- it totally made my day. After his performance, if you skip past the panel comments to the very end, there is a quick clip of him doing the beginning of a song by Eve.

Tim got a bike for his birthday. Two weeks ago, we spent an entire Saturday going to every bike shop in Gainesville (yes- there are that many bike shops in our town!!) until we found the perfect bike for my boy. It finally came in today and we dropped by the shop to pick it up. When we got home, I got my bike out and we raced around our neighborhood for about 20 minutes. I’m proud to say that T. was much more winded than I!! haha We’re looking forward to riding the trails in our area on the weekends! Yay!! :D Give us a call if you want to join us on Saturday mornings!

Saturday night we had a party to celebrate the ‘birf-days’ of Tim, John, Melissa, and Alison. We got a 1/2-keg of Blue Moon and a bunch of food and cake. We had a special guest DJ all the way from South Beach Miami… DJ Andrew West…and lemme tell ya….Andrew brought the POWER!!!

The stream of guests started around 3pm- with Ally, Asher & Lydia stopping by to drop off margarita mixers and food and to hang out for a bit before the kids were scheduled to hang at grandma & grandpa’s house. Ali and Gosia stopped by right as the Austins were leaving and we had some tea and enjoyed some yummy bread pudding they brought with them. They had to leave for a gig and as we were walking them out to their car, Andrew and Katie arrived from their trip to Gainesville from South Beach! Good timing!!

We had just about enough time to pour some drinks and chat with them right before the Westfall family showed up. Chase and Amber brought their three little ones, Charlie, Ivy, and baby Reese. We started pulling out food and then the night took off after that!

John and Alison showed up and Melissa shortly after. The Westfalls left around 7:30ish (Amber had a baby shower to go to). Then Alison’s little brother Drew arrived with Mike from Alta following right behind him.

Little later after that, Carrie (from my library) and her boyfriend, Sergio, dropped in and then Julie, Adam and Buju showed up.

It was a wonderful time spent with people we love. We were honored that Andrew and Katie came all the way from Miami and John and Ally drove all the way over from Tally.

We shut the night down with Andrew and Katie at about 4:30am……….

The next morning, Tim and I woke up around 11am and were bummed to find that A & K had split sometime around 9am! They left us a note on the kitchen table saying they were headed back to Miami. So we still owe them a special home-cooked breakfast of Egg McMurrays and French Toast! ;)

More pictures here: http://flickr.com/photos/staceyewing/sets/72157594576384017

Well, one arm of the gang is reuniting to attend THE POLICE concert in Dallas!! (**We’re all goin’ to Dallas! We’re all goin’ to Dallas** – Joel C. that one was for you!) Yep, we’ll be going back to Texass with Rach, Glenn, Wes, and Court to attend the concert with Aaron and Janelle. We even managed to get seats together in the same section, albeit three rows apart. We decided it would be best to bite the bullet and go see them on the first part of the tour in case they break-up halfway through all the scheduled dates. The tension is already apparent during the most recent interviews. ugh. Fingers crossed here for a successful event! :D