Happy Birthday Cowboy

The cowboy and I celebrate our birthdays just one month apart—we won’t say how much older the cowboy is!!  We met in August, 1994 and both celebrated our birthdays shortly thereafter—doesn’t seem that long ago!!  Happy Birthday Michael, you make my life complete!

Last night we took a drive right about sunset and I caught the big moon rising:

Michael wanted to celebrate his birthday by taking a drive—off we went to Billings of all places—I think he also wanted a CJ’s hamburger for lunch!Just after Labor Day weekend the Scheels sporting goods store in Billings moved into their new building.  The crowds lined up to get in at first were impossible and today was our first venture into the store.  The store is the second largest of the 24 Scheels stores located in nine states.  Scheels sells everything sport related—clothing, skis, guns, soccer equipment, etc. 

Scheel’s Facts:

-- Frederick A. Scheel, a German immigrant, opened his first store in Sabin, Minn., in 1902 and sold hardware and general merchandise.

-- Scheels is a privately held, employee-owned company with more than 4,500 associates.

-- Eight costumed sculptures of Scheels' favorite U.S. presidents will be displayed in the store.

-- The store will present a collection of bronze statues of athletes and outdoorsmen.

-- More than 300 taxidermy mounts will be featured.

 

The outdoor bronze sculptures were awesome—very, very well done!

220,000 square feet of shopping space plus a little entertainment—yep, a ferris wheel!!The aquarium caught the cowboy’s eye—there are beautiful, exotic fish swimming in the columns and across the arch.  Very, very well done and when we were checking out—our only purchase was a new toy for Emmi—the sales clerk told us, “dogs are always welcome in Scheels!”  Our kind of store!!

Well readers, I succumbed!  To Apple fever that is!  I’ve never been an Apple fan—I despise iTunes—it’s one of the most user un-friendly applications I’ve ever tried to use.  But with that said, I love my iPad for what it is—a gadget, a way to get on the internet quickly, and a place to read books using a Kindle app.  Computer it is not and I can’t ever see myself having an Apple as my main computer.  But I did buy an iPhone.  I’m waiting for Verizon to “port” my cell number into the iPhone—seems if you are an “off brand” carrier user (Wal Mart Straight Talk) that process can take 24-48 hours!!! 

We returned the Wilson booster and MiFi device today—the Verizon store was great, giving us a full refund for those devices as we could not get enough useable signal here at home.  Check out Nina’s great post about the news from Verizon and AT&T.  In the month of October both companies are offering SIGNIFICANT increases in the number of GB’s you can get for your dollar.  Both companies claim this offer is only good for the month of October.  We are going to wait until the end of the month to see if Millenicom jumps on the band wagon. 

Millenicom works for us.  As we can’t get a cellular signal here at home, we only use a mobile internet device about 4 months of each year.  We’ve used a Novatel aircard and a 3G Store router with Millenicom for several years and it works—well!  With Millenicom you can turn your service on and off at will—we turn it off when in Montana and back on when we travel.  This used to be a free service but now it cost $20 to turn the service back on.  Verizon is getting there—as they should be.  We will see how this month shakes out with all the different carriers.  Unless the cellular signal improves in our neck of the woods, we are sticking with our land line and DSL while in Montana.

A great day spent with my birthday husband!