Soccer Kids

The entire morning yesterday was spent installing the new receiver from DirecTV. We were excited to be able to get rid of the annoying rolling and distortion in the picture on our TV. When it was installed, I had to call DirecTV to complete the installation and complete the re-programming on the receiver. What a disappointment. The problem still exists which means that there is a problem somewhere in the cabling or a connection somewhere that needs to be located. Since we are leaving this week and DirecTV couldn't schedule a technician to come out and check out the system, we have to wait until we return to AZ for the winter - following our trip to Chicago. We have a phone call scheduled with DirecTV for October 17 when we will be settled in AZ for the winter. They will re-open the case at that time and schedule a technician to come out to our site to check out the system. In the meantime, we have to live with the problem. I packaged up the old receiver - along with 41 movies and 3 shows we had taped on the hard drive on the receiver - and took it to the FedEx office in town to be returned within the 10 day requirement so as not to be charged for the new receiver. We now start over with taping shows on a new hard drive.

There is a huge soccer tournament in town this weekend and we were sold out last night. There were kids everywhere in the lobby all night and they practically drove us crazy. They would come in and out to get hot chocolate at our beverage counter and Josie was kept busy all night cleaning up hot chocolate messes and spills at the counter. It was a challenge to keep up with the activity at our beverage counter and to keep it clean. Everybody checks out this morning and will be gone by the time we start work at 3 PM. Today and tomorrow - our last day - will be very slow and boring.

The weather has prevented us from doing any outside work to organize things for our departure. We need to clean the grill and clean the chairs before packing them away for the trip. The forecast is for more cold weather and rain the next two days, so we aren't sure when we will get those chores done...