The Harris Family @ Home

The Easter Egg Story

Filed under: General — KevinHarris April 10, 2007 @ 12:36 pm

Okay, by popular demand (aka my sister’s nagging - luv ya sis - really!) I’ll share the Easter Egg Story.

We had my mom and dad (aka Re & Pop) in town for Easter as well as Olga’s sister from Venezuela, so we decided to go to the bilingual church so that Helena could keep up with the Easter message (it was translated so that Re & Pop could keep up, but they’ve heard it before anyway).

I took Cesar to his class so that he could enjoy Sunday School.

The service was really good. They had a great choir that was very energetic and celabratory (a must for an Easter service). While the songs were in a mix of English and Spanish most of them were tunes that at least Re & Pop could recognize and might even be able to sing along with in English.

After the service, I went to pick up Cesar. As usual he had a handful of stuff to cart home. The handout with the Bible Story, a chocolate bunny (yippee!) and an Easter egg that they had made in class. As I took it, the teacher told me, “That’s a real egg” which I could already tell. I just made the assumption that it was a hard-boiled egg. (You can already see it coming can’t you?) So, I said thank you and proceeded to cart Cesar’s armload of stuff down the hall while herding the young one.

At some point in the hall, I decided to put the egg in my pocket to free up a hand for herding (after all he’s a four-year old boy, he takes a lot of herding. I immediately forgot about the egg… It’s hard-boiled right? It’ll be safe in my pocket.

So I took Cesar to the bathroom and commenced herding the family to the car. I got Cesar and everybody situated then got in the driver’s seat and started for home. Well we didn’t even get out of the parking lot before I feel something on my leg. I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled it out wet, sticky, and yellow!!!!! The Sunday School teacher had given a class of three and four-year olds raw eggs to decorate.

I don’t know about you, but ever since I was a kid, I had never seen a raw easter egg. They’reĀ  always
boiled. I was pretty upset since I had ruined my only suit slacks with a raw egg.

After all who in their right mind gives a four-year old boy a raw Easter egg? I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer to that question is “Nobody! Nobody in their right mind anyway!”

So there you go, enjoy yourself at my expense, it’s the greatest story never told… until now.
Kevin Harris

Is it a New Year Already?

Filed under: General — KevinHarris January 2, 2007 @ 12:14 pm

Wow! I guess it really is true that time moves faster as you get older. It seems like 2006 really flew by. But that’s a good thing right? Well, I guess it just means I’ve been busy and haven’t had much time to stop and smell the roses last year. As a matter of fact, we haven’t done much travelling or geocaching at all in the last several months. Why?
I have spent that last half of 2006 working on a new project/business. It has really eaten up a great deal of my time, but I’m really excited about it and looking forward to seeing the fruits of all the labor.

You can see a little bit about my project at www.cpaservicegroup.com, although, I will warn you. If you’re not in public accounting that page may not make a whole lot of sense to you. In a nutshell what we’ve done is created some software to help accountants with public audits. We’ve set up a system that is much quicker, more accurate, and a great deal easier than anything currently available on the market.

If you know anybody who is in public accounting, have them give me a call or shoot an email. I’d love to visit with them.

I’ll try to find some time over the next few days to post some holiday pictures.

Took a New Route Today

Filed under: General, Travel — KevinHarris August 10, 2006 @ 10:59 pm

We just got home from a trip to the San Antonio area. We spent some time in San Antonio, San Marcos, New Braunfels, and Gruene. These are some of our favorite spots on earth.

We took a new road home today. We shot North on 281. This took us through the heart of the Texas Hill Country. The road was much less hectic than I-35. It took about an hour longer. But the views were just georgeous. The hills stretched from San Marcos all the way to Benbrook, just south of Fort Worth.

Marble Falls, Texas was probably the best jewel along the way. Just a beautiful little town with a nice lake snaking along it’s southern side. We’ll have to get back out there again soon. Although, we certainly played the tourist when we asked where to find the falls. We were told they were under the lake. Oooops! They dammed the Colorado River several years ago and flooded the town’s namesake falls. Oh well!

No trips planned for the near future. But the some of The Harris Family is coming in next weekend. Looking forward to seeing them.

-kevin

Need a New Gadget

Filed under: General — KevinHarris August 6, 2006 @ 7:32 pm

We’re in the Hill Country enjoying a few days of rest and relaxation before school starts back in a couple of weeks. We had a horrible experience upon arriving at our resort. The room was horribly dirty and stinky. Everything smelled like cigarette smoke and immediately put our sinuses on high alert status.

We had to wait until the next day to get everything cleaned up properly (and the cleaning crew really did it up right the second time around). They also brought a little ozone air handler to run in our room. This little unit is marvelous and does a terrific job of handling odors in the air and completely removed any trace of cigarette smell from the entire unit.

We immediately went online to track down the company that makes this unit: RainbowAir.net Now, the units are not cheap. But I can certainly recommend them. It really works well. I can think of a few friends that have indoor pets that could use a unit like this. ;)

Time to head over to ebay to setup a watchlist for one of these.

-kevin

Best way to talk with love ones!

Filed under: General — OlgaHarris July 31, 2006 @ 9:34 pm

We have being getting some family members installing msn and skype in their computers. These neat programs are allowing us to chat with them over the computer using a mic and a video camera. I’m not great when it comes to using the computer technology, but I’m loving being able to our families online.

I have my family in Venezuela so it is a BIG deal to me being able to see them when I call them. We had our first video call this week and it was so exciting to see them and for them to see our son Cesar. One of my sister decided to come to visit us in September after seeing how fast he is growing.

We also visited with Pop once and another time with Re and Pop. The night that we visited with Pop he was able to pray with Cesar before he went to bed…what a blessing when you live far away from your love ones.

Chao
Olga

I’m a Millionaire!

Filed under: General — KevinHarris @ 1:43 pm

I got an interesting email from my father recently. It was so good (and family related) that I just had to share it with you.

From: Hal & Marie Harris
Subject: Fwd: ATTENTION Hal ( About James Harris )Jim ‘n Lucy, (cc’s to some others)

I just had to share this one with you. In checking email, the first thing I do is check for email that shows a name that I do not recognize. . .then I look at the subject line. If I also do not recognize that, it goes straight to the trash pile. Well, this one is from someone whose name I do not recognize. . .but, the subject. . .now that’s another story. I know “Hal” and I know “James Harris”. Well, you will have to read it, and then see my comments below that:

Chris Mark wrote:
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:47:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chris Mark
Subject: ATTENTION Hal ( About James Harris )

FROM THE DESK OF Chris A Mark
SENIOR PARTNER Rhodewestlockers
Law Firm,Suite D4738,Holograms
Suites,4855 Copthal Avenue.City
London, EC4567BN GB
Tel:+44-704-011-2489
Fax:+44-870-068-7881

Dear Hal,
Compliments of the day to you.I must solicit your
confidentiality and assure you that I am contacting
you in good faith and this proposal will be of mutual
benefit. I am Mr.Chris Mark(Esq.),a legal
practitioner.My client,late Mr.James Harris,who died
with his entire family in a fatal accident,sparing
none of their lives, some years ago.

Before his death, I assisted him in the deposit of
8million pounds with a Security Company for
safekeeping. The funds have remained unclaimed since
his death, and such unclaimed funds are appropriated
and returned to the treasury as a matter of
policy.Considering the lack of success in my bid to
locate any of his relatives for over a year now, I
hereby solicit your consent to enable me present you
as the Next of Kin to my deceased client.

I am contacting you for two reasons. Firstly, you both
have the same last name, which makes the claim most
credible. Secondly, I strongly believe that the
Security Company does not deserve to inherit the
funds. These reasons led to my resolve to claim the
funds, which was why I contacted you.

With your permission, I will proceed to establish you
as the next of kin/Beneficiary to my late client. As
soon as this is done, you will then give instructions
to the Security Company, to transfer the deposited
funds into another account you will provide, after
which we shall then share the funds upon agreed terms.

When I receive your response, I will provide you with
further details.
Regards
Chris Mark(Esq)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
HAL’S COMMENTS
. . .”Fatal accident”?? I just saw them a few weeks ago alive and well. . .and I was not even notified. . .???

. . . “some years ago” Oh, yes, now I remember the family tree. There are SEVERAL “James Harrises” in our family. Maybe there are still some lurking around Great Britain. . .

. . .”8 million pounds”. . .isn’t that something like 20 million dollars??? Now, I know, he surely has the wrong Harris family.

. . .”next of kin”??? Sure, for 8 million pounds, why not?

… .”give instructions to the Security Company, to transfer the deposited
funds into another account you will provide.” . . .Hey, why go through all of this? hold out your cut and just put the rest of into a cashier’s check (or cheque if you prefer). That’ll work for me just fine!!

. . .Can you imagine someone falling for this? It happens! B-T-W, Jim, just because I won’t comply to this, don’t try emailing him back yourself. Remember, you’re dead!!

I was teaching SS this morning and the lesson was on “Wealth” and some of the greed, envy and corruptions that go with it. This made a fine illustration.

Hope you’re all doing well.
Love,
Hal

Of course I have seen emails like this before (haven’t we all). But I had never seen one with family members’ names in it like this.

Now, you probably have figured this out. But just in case you haven’t, I’ll say it anyway.

You should NEVER fall for this type of scam. And that’s exactly what it is, a scam. Yet people get greedy and fall for this kind of thing every day. Just don’t be one of them.

By the way, while I’m at it, I may as well share with you the solution I use to filter about 98% of all my spam email into the trash bin on my computer.

Popfile is the program I’m talking about. I have used it exclusively for several years and it maintains about 98% accuracy for sorting my mail, including spam, into the appropriate folders. As a matter of fact, I would have missed this email because it had been sorted into my trash bin. The only reason I found it was because I decided to go in and reclassify a few emails that had been sorted incorrectly. It had keyed on some of the phrases in this email and identified it as spam. Which really meant that it was doing it’s job correctly since there was some spam included. ;)

Now, a word of warning. If your using Yahoo or Hotmail this program won’t work for you. It is meant to be run on your local system so that it can scan your mail as it is downloaded to you PC. And it can be a little bit persnickety to setup, but it’s worth the effort.
-kev

Geocaching: A Great Reason To Get Outdoors Again

Filed under: Geocaching, Articles — KevinHarris July 29, 2006 @ 8:43 pm

Geocaching is a treasure hunt game using a hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. Hiders hide a geocache (small waterproof containers) anywhere in the world, make a note of the GPS coordinates, and list the geocache on a website for hunters to seek. Once the site has been listed, hunters can use a hand-held GPS unit to direct them to the cache. They will usually get close, then they might have to be clever to find a well-hidden cache. A typical cache can be just about any size, from really small to large, and it will probably be camouflaged to make the hunt more challenging. The cache usually contains a notebook, for logging the find, and some small trade items (usually of little monetary value). (more…)

New Look!

Filed under: General — KevinHarris @ 3:10 pm

If you’re familiar with our website, you will immediately recognize that we’ve got a new look and feel here. For those of you who know us, our personal website hasn’t been updated in about 3 1/2 years. And you all have been after us for new pics.

Well feast your eyes on the new site, because you’ve got all new stuff here to enjoy! Now no more complaining!

We’ll be updating this site with our adventures and fun stories. Stay tuned!

-Kevin