Last night Joshua had his first "culinary" experience. As a belated Birthday present, Carlos and Sissy took us to Jenpachi (a Japanese steakhouse) for dinner. Joshua loved watching the chef chop the vegetables and meat with the "big-o-knife." The constant fire and food and utensil tossing demonstration were also very entertaining for Josh. At home, Josh is always ready to lend a helping hand in the kitchen, particularly anything that he can make with the blender or beater. And, as a birthday surprise, Terry and I received free desserts and a birthday serenade (both in English and Japanese). Anytime Josh gets to sing "Appy Birtay" and blow out candles, he is in seventh heaven.

No I'm not talking about some hair brained idea I have on how to make more money. Of course I'm talking about Josh and his hockey skills! ;) I promise to keep all my child bragging on this site only so you are not 'forced' to listen to it but can read it at your leisure - at least as much as you can stomach :) (even though I am being sarcastic for the most part when bragging).

So Josh and I went skating Monday with Uncle Tom and cousin Nick. Tom is the one who'll probably guide Josh into hockey more than me. I want to keep him focused on golf or something other than hockey. Maybe in another blog I'll explain why ;) However, since he already worships Tom and the crew (Tom's kids), especially when watching them play hockey, I think my attempts at keeping him off the rink are slim to none.

Anyway, we meet up with Tom and Nick at the rink and they gave Josh a new hat with a Zamboni on it. Anyone who saw the 'ockey... 'boni?... SKATES! picture gallery and read the commentary know that Josh is infatuated, no obsessed with the Zamboni. He proceeded to admire his new 'Boni Hat' while I laced up his skates.

Now this was only the second time for Gretzky..er I mean Josh on the ice. The first time only lasted 10 minutes if that due to lack of interest. Well there was plenty of interest in the Zamboni sitting in the garage (not even on the rink just sitting there), just no interest in skating. So I was pretty sure this might be a 15 minute trip which again included me holding Josh up while hunched over killing my back the vast majority of the time.

However, I was thoroughly impressed this time. Josh lasted for an hour and after we got him a walker to help balance, he was doing the majority of the balancing without my help! I couldn't believe it. Of course I was still killing my back because I was hunched over 'ready' to stop his head from splattering on the ice if he fell - but I wasn't holding him. I don't have a helmet yet :S I figured I didn't want to spend the money because a) like I said earlier I wasn't going to push hockey at all and b) since Josh only lasted 5-10 minutes at a time, I didn't think it was worth it. But after his performance this night, I gotta get a helmet for him and start talking to agents to see who wants to sign him.

Josh had a great time and can't stop talking about it, especially the part about 'Nick lot-o-snow!' (and he says it in such a serious tone). To Nick's delight (not sure why, I always hated it and as you'll see soon, like father like son), he likes when Tom stops just short of him and sprays him with the snow that comes up from the ice/skates. So Tom skates around to get momentum, then slams on the brakes right at Nick and Nick gets a face/body full of snow. Nick thought this was funny, and of course Josh thought it was hilarious. So Tom sprayed Nick 2-3 times and then asked Josh if he wanted to get sprayed. I saw the 'gears turning' in Josh's head and he wasn't quite sure if this was going to be as fun first hand. So Tom took 'one stride' to spray enough snow on Josh to basically get his legs. Well, game over. Josh was PO'd. Tom had just ruined his night lol. Of course we all did the panicked 'Look we'll spray Nick again' as Tom turned Nick into Frosty the Snowman but Josh was still a bit rattled and took a little time to recover. But eventually he did and started skating again.

So I'm off to buy Josh a hockey helmet. He did well enough that I'd be comfortable being 'in front' of him playing while he was on walker if he had helmet on. Josh and I can't wait to show Mom how good Josh is at skating, I was thoroughly impressed.

Next week...backward crossovers!

Quick note for those of you who want to stay informed about Aney Adventures Online...I've added RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to the site. For those of you that know what RSS is and already have a reader of choice, the URL is http://localhost:4266/BlogEngine.Web/syndication.axd. You can also find our RSS subscription at any time by clicking 'Subscribe to Our Feed' in the upper right corner of the site at any time.

For those of you unfamiliar with RSS, you can see the definition here (just read the 'Usage' section for decent description). I'll assume everyone reading this probably knows what a BLOG is, and almost all blogs you read (and now our blog can be included in that list) will have an RSS feed to keep you informed. If you use my.msn.com or www.live.com as your home page, you can link directly to RSS feeds on your home page.

If you've never subscribed to an RSS feed, I recommend using Squeet. This is actually the tool I use for all my RSS feeds and it is pretty nice. I'll list the steps to use to sign up for our feed, it'll be the best way to stay informed on website updates, new blog entries, or any thing else of importance revolving around Aney Web Land :)

• Browse to http://www.squeet.com/home.aspx
• Click on the 'sign up' link in the upper right part of the site.
• Create an account for the site. Couple things here. First you can uncheck any 'Sign up for XXX' and secondly, just to assure you I've been subscribed to several things from Squeet and I haven't received any spam or anything, so you shouldn't need to worry about that.
• Once the account is created, you'll be taken to a screen with 'tons of choices' for RSS feeds. If you want to select any of them go ahead and check them and click Subscribe at the bottom of the screen. If you only want to deal with our feed for now, simply click the No thanks link at the bottom of the screen.
• After subscribing or ignoring their list (note you can get back to this by clicking the 'directory' link found at top of page), you will come to a screen where you can type in your own RSS feeds. Simply type http://localhost:4266/BlogEngine.Web/syndication.axd in the 'FEED URL' text box and click Subscribe.
• One last step is required. When you created your account in the second step above, Squeet sent you a confirmation email where you have to confirm that your email was valid. There will simply be a link in the email for you to click. Once you get this email, click the confirmation link and your account should be activated/verified.

Hopefully that should be it and you have succesfully signed up for our feed. Squeet is nice in that it should only send you an email when things change, but if it is 'misbehaving' let me know and I'll give you a hand. You can add any other feeds you want if it turns out you like the Squeet service and begin to become more RSS savvy.

Welcome to the world of RSS!

Audrey graduated from sleeping in her car seat (inside the crib) to the "actual crib" this week. The transition went really well and we are SO PROUD of her!! She has been sleeping in her car seat since the day she came home from the hospital. And, until now, I kept thinking, "why mess with something that works?" However, Audrey is getting so big and now likes to stretch out while she sleeps. Sometimes I think she visibly grows everyday!! I think she's going through a big growth spurt this week, as she's been waking up in the middle of the night for a quick 10 minute snack - she hasn't done that in a long time. Audrey has spoiled us by sleeping through the night (9-10 hours) since she was one month old. Cross your fingers that she reverts back to her old sleeping rituals again.

So obviously as you all can see, we - I say we in a loose sense since Ann helps with the website content, or at least is starting to :) - have updated the look of our website. For non-technical people, they are probably pretty amazed at the site. For technical/web-saavy people, they might be mildly impressed, but I must vent.

I borrowed the look of this site from one of the Microsoft Asp.Net Starter Kits and it has basically caused me more headaches than I could have imagined. I do like the site's look but I can not believe how much work it was to get the site to 'behave' and have things show up the way I wanted. I basically ended up only taking a couple 'images' and colors from the starter kit and starting from scratch :O but I finally got this beast to behave and look pretty good - in my opinion - while doing it.

So all is good in Aney Web Land right?! Hell no...for a little amusement I opened the site in FireFox (a browser alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer - you can try it here if you want, it is a nice browser but I can't bring myself to divorce myself from IE) and of course all of my site 'layout' was screwed up. I don't know how many hours I spent trying to get the thing to work right in FireFox - more than a couple all nighters which at my age isn't as easy as it used to be :S I read countless articles on the web describing how to do things 'correct' but I couldn't get my stuff to work. I'd get something working in FireFox and it wouldn't work in Internet Explorer, and then vice versa.

On top of all that, all this pain I 'kind of' being brought upon myself. In reality, the 'layout' of my site is pretty simple/standard - it has a header and two columns of content. How hard could it be right?! I could have easily used HTML Tables to get the layout I wanted, but supposedly HTML Table support is 'going away' at some point. All web browsers recommend using CSS as your layout option. Now, anyone reading this that 'knows' what HTML/CSS is knows that Table support will most likely (if ever) only be unsupported after me, my children, and my grandchildren are all dead and buried but I couldn't convince myself to do something that seemed so 'morally' wrong ;) So because of this thick headed, stubborn, [insert adjective] attitude I had, I spent more hours on this site that I probably should have (I'm currently sick with some strand of cold - probably brought on from the no rest).

To wrap it up, please someone be using FireFox so my efforts were not in vain. And to everyone that was 'so impressed' with the website, or at least fained it, thanks. I did put a lot of work into it, just spent way more time on parts of it that I 'shouldn't have had to' (i.e. the stupid layout instead of putting cool new features/blogs/etc. into it).