November 8 - 14, 2004

Kostas got his school pictures back and they were not that good, the photographer pressed click a second too soon. We will be using the picture retake opportunity on November 23.

Here is Kostas in Greek school class. Greek flag in background. Dad was the designated room parent this time, kids were good, most behaved themselves.



On Saturday we had Barb Birringer's retirement party. As most of you know, Barb lives three houses down the street and has had a home daycare business for many years. She is retiring at the end of this year. Kostas went to her for about three years and Sophia has been with her from the beginning. Many families showed up at Frenchies, a local restaurant in Depot Town, right next to Sidetrack. All of us families are so appreciative of Barb and the great care he has shown to our kids and we will miss her greatly. All the kids are good kids and Barb's care, we believe, was a great factor in installing them a solid foundation for their lifes. Cake was had by all along with a gift certificate for her to spend a weekend in a bed and breakfast place in northern michigan with her husband Ken. Barb got quite emotional, it was quite a sad, and at the same time, a happy scene. Here is a bad pic from the restaurant, Dad is hoping to get some better pics from Ginny, Barb's daughter and will post them next week.



Right after we got back home, Dad took Kostas to EMU's Convo to watch the men's BB team beat up on Slippery Rock University in a meaningless exhibition game.

Our cat Fluffy is officially back as an indoor cat. The weather is getting too cold for him to be outside, so now we have to teach him again where the food/water is and, most importantly, the litter box!

Mom set up Kosta's new office desk and chair. We will be throwing away the old ones, it was time for them to go.

Dad made breakfast on Sunday morning as usual. Kostas did great in his Chinese school class pretest!

Dad set up mom's laptop in our broadband wireless network. Now we have two laptops we can connect online without wires while Kostas is beating up on Dad's old desktop (windows 95) and laptop (windows 98)...It won't be long before Kostas graduates to one of dad's current computers.

Here are a couple of very useful addon programs from Google. Toolbar allows you to do searches within your browser window you have open and it is also a very good popup blocker along with a form filler. Check it out here
In addition Google now has a desktop search product. It is still in beta but it works great. It can search lightning fast your own computer including emails and web page history! It can be very useful, you can try it here