TheDeLay

My Mom spent some serious time putting together Christmas Stockings and Tree Skirts for each of her kids:

Click on the pic for a full-sized view.

My stocking…I believe Grandma DeLay (my Dads Mom) made it.

The 2nd from the left is the stocking my mother made for me

The 3rd is a stocking she made for Marti

The 4th is a stocking Grandma DeLay made for Marti

The semi-circle over the hearth is a tree skirt my Mom made.  It’s in the shape of a circle, if you lay it out, but it’s folded in half for the picture.  She put some very serious time into that needle-point project.

The Takes girls (my sister-in-law and her two daughters) made the tree skirt at the bottom.

Transcript in article.

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This weekend, we went to see “We Gotta Bingo” – Chicago’s hilarious Interactive Dinner Theater Experience.  I’d like to include some pics from their website here, but copyright laws say that’s not really a good idea.  That said, check out their website:  www.wegottabingo.com

This was one of the best shows we’ve been to yet.  It wasn’t super flashy or formal, but that’s kinda what made it awesome.

Click Continue Reading – To Read More (further explanation not available)

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This is a weather app for Linux/Unix machines that runs in a basic terminal (no graphics needed).  In the nerd world, this is pretty cool.

With the holidays coming up, many of us are meeting relatives from our extended family. When they explain how they’re related, some of the terms are confusing. This chart gives you an easy guide.

It’s hard enough to know what a great grand uncle is, let a lone what a 2nd cousin might be.  If you throw in a 3rd aunt, twice removed, I have no idea what that is.

But, the picture (chart) below puts it simply.

Click Continue for the details:

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The Smith/Takes/DeLay family tackled the zip lines while staying in the Dells.

I think everyone had fun.  It wasn’t exactly death-defying, but it was a good time.

We talked Keith (my brother in-law) into using a go-pro helmet cam.  The video is in this article.

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One of life’s moments.

What it takes to recover data from a failed system with failed drives:

Please backup your data.  Click on the link to see suggestions, if you’re not sure where to start.  Ultimately, any backup service is better than no backup service.  Buy whatever backup service you’ll use.  www.crashplan.com may be a good place to start.

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Think dressing up our pets & taking them everywhere is a new “fad?”

Think again.  It turns out this has been going on for hundreds of years.

See THIS LINK for pics:

http://io9.com/vintage-photos-reveal-century-long-obession-with-dressi-1468852263

We recently went on a camping trip with our family in Iowa.  We really enjoy the lazy/plush version of camping.  Lazy/plush being trips with heaters/air conditioners, microwave ovens, storage space, a shower and so-on.

We used to own our own camper, but sold it because of the expense of owning it, expense of keeping it running & the incredible expense of owning and maintaining a tow vehicle (more on all this later in the article).

For our most recent camping adventure, we rented a 30′ RV from Cruise America.  Many folks are a little scared by the thought of renting an RV, assuming that the cost is very high.  I’ll explain the cost for us and a few other details next:

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