Congrats James!

James entered the "Invented in Utah 2010" competition with his Glummy Bag invention and is one of the top 26 entries!!!

Whootwhoo!
(I was only disappointed in that the timing nixed our plans for a couples overnight bike ride in Park City with some of my favorite people. Boo. But at least we're going up for dinner and games Friday night.)

He presents to a panel of judges Saturday morning. Scary!

Here are his instructions:

Presenting:
You have exactly 15 minutes from the moment you enter the room of judges until you leave.  Do not go over as you will be cutoff and ushered from the room so that the next semi-finalist can enter.  We will have a timer in your line of sight the entire time so that you are aware of exactly how much time you have.  Again we suggest you keep your presentation to 5-7 minutes and leave the remaining time for answering questions from the judges.

Be sure to practice your presentation.  We recommend that you come early to make sure you find the building, practice any audio visual hookups and also just have your wits about you.  Come to room 102.  You will then present in the adjacent room 101 where the judges will all be sitting around a boardroom-type table.  

See what I mean about scary!!  

He drives home Friday after working 25 days straight, is taking me to dinner and games and then presents first thing Saturday. Leaves again for work on Sunday. Whew! He comes home again next weekend and then is gone for nine days and then home for THREE WEEKS! Thank goodness. Normally he doesn't work like this but he's been covering for some other guys. The money will be nice but dang! We miss him!

Speaking of money.....

We picked up Austin's car from the car doctor yesterday. $657 for the "Retro-Metro" but we figured we can't get him another car for that and if we can just keep it running through high school it will be well worth it. (For all you car people something was wrong with the fuel filter and then something about a plug coming undone and then somehow that made the other plugs all weird and they needed new wires and then there were a bunch of oil leaks. Whew! I remembered! I am so proud!) The mechanic assured me that it should last two more years. He told Austin to tell all his friend that his mechanic says "NO ONE BUT ME CAN DRIVE THIS CAR!" Apparently there was another boys car in the shop with $1200 in damages from a friend that drove it. Good advice and I'm sure he listened to the mechanic better than he'd listen to me or James. (Not that any of his friends are dying to drive the Retro! It's pretty rough. But Austin's not complaining-once he realized just how much cars cost and just how much he actually makes now that he's a working man! Reality. It hits hard when your young!)

Thanks everyone that reads my blog. Despite my lack of comments I know you're reading. I have one of those tracker thingys. I don't know who you are but I know what part of the country you live in and how many hits I get. My top day was September 6th with 117 hits but that's really high. I average about 40 hits a day with 15 of them returning visitors. So shout out to my faithful fifteen!!!

~Wendy