The latest Flying J news (sort of)

So it's been a while since we've posted anything on here.  We've been keeping pretty busy.  I've been traveling for work every other week for the last 6 months upgrading computer equipment around the country.  It's been fun to see America, but it's hard being away from home that long as well.  Tricia is mainly a stay at home mom, but works part time a few nights a week for some extra dough.  She's still working at Tie One On in the mall selling ties to people.  I'm still at Flying J, but I'm not sure for how much longer.  Last December they filed Chapter 11 because of a mistake made in anticipating the oil market to continue to go up at the time, which it didn't, it crashed hard and left Flying J with a bunch of $140/barrel oil that would only sell for around $35/barrel.  Oops.  So it's been quite a few months since then and I thought the company was doing better and working through things and preparing to emerge from bankruptcy when all of a sudden they come out and say they are over a billion dollars in debt and that we pretty much cannot recover from that.  Now we are "merging" with Pilot, another oil and transportation company, but it's more like a buyout.  They will control about 80% of the company so they are the ones calling the shots now and my fate now rests in their hands.  They will be making a very important decision in the next month or so to determine which technologies of Flying J's, if any, they will implement in the merge.  My employment with them rests on this decision since I support Flying J's systems.  Obviously, if they don't use any of them, they won't need me.  It's been hard to get a feel for what they are going to do, but I actually had the chance to demo some of our stuff for the executives of Pilot this week and it seems like they want to implement at least a few things, which would be good.  Well, I just wanted to let everyone know a little of what was going on with that and that I could be looking for a job in a few months if the worst happens.  Please keep us in your thoughts.

Madi is a handful as usual.  She is approaching the terrible two's and it shows.  She's not that bad though.  She can calm down pretty quick, especially if "timeout" is mentioned.  She continues to get smarter every day.  She can now say a few words well.  The latest is "apple".  She loves animals more than anything and can correctly point out almost every animal there is and even knows some of the sounds they make.  We finally caught her making the sounds on video so I will post those when I get a chance (and it's not midnight).  She never makes them when she's put on the spot so I think this will be a rare treat for most everybody.  She also knows all her body parts, including her tongue, hair, teeth, and nostrils.  This is also on a video that I will post.  I've added a few more pictures as well so check those out.

Well I hope everyone is having a good summer.  Later.

Kris