Today was Ryan's birthday party!! Hard to believe my nephew is now seven years old. We hit a place called Laser Web which turned out to be really, really cool. We all strapped on special vests (OK, the kids did and the adults wished they did) and entered an arena that was lit only with blacklights. The kids didn't get the tactical side of it but the adults helped out (what that means is that we borrowed the phaser guns once in a while and shot someone). Two teams of 15 used their phasers to zap opponents and score points. I'll be going back, and I bet I'm back at some point without kids too. It was that much fun!! We headed back to the Wiedwald's for more play and I ended up upgrading the Wiedwald computer while I was at it.

Speaking of computers, what is it with me, power outages, and failed computer equipment? While we were attending Ryan's birthday party, a six second power outage (my system's log showed that the UPS kicked in for that long) apparently took out our LinkSys router. Unbelievable. First a motherboard, and then this thing. That means no Internet for Markie until I get another one tomorrow....really not that big of a deal, since I'm going to bed here shortly and then to work in the morning. What galls me is that this thing was on a protected power line and nothing else but the router bit it. I like Linksys though, so I don't have any plans to change brands, unless the next one acts like a fruit loop too. So much for getting those pictures online for everyone. That will have to wait a day or so...hope you can wait. Soon I will have some old pictures from Mom's side of the family up for the looking, some dating back to the early 1900's - family I know little of but plan to learn about. See you soon.