Summer's End

Here's a few fun things we did our last days out there in Abilene. The Gladiator games were a big hit. Probably the most memorable of all the days was the watermelon challenge. Brandens team was fantastic starting out, but ended up losing it in the end. It was pretty close though. We left before they did the winners games. Branden's team took 2nd so he would have gotten to do the diving for dollars again. All in all it was a very fun summer. We're gonna miss everyone out there.




Also Branden got a letter from one of the head hanchos of APX the other day.


Branden,

APX Alarm would like you to know what a difference you are making in the lives of the families that you have protected. One of the families in whose home you set up an alarm system had the following emergency:

Homeowner says that her 87 year old mother is having chest pains. The operator gets a medical dispatch started and then continues to communicate with her. The mother can be heard struggling to breathe and groaning from the pain. They say that she is conscious but the pain is getting worse. Once she lets them know that the ambulance is on the way they instruct her to go ahead and disconnect as there are several family members on the premises. 3:15

You truly made a difference in their life. Keep up the hard work and know that what you are doing is more than just miles of walking and hours of hard knocking—you are saving lives.

Brenchley!



Isn't that cool to know that selling alarms really does make a difference?

Guess what this is? Just a baby rattle snake on the sidewalk right next to the doors of the hotel we stayed in. Jeff Strong (Brandens boss) wanted to catch it in a box, there was a huge crowd around the little guy. They were keeping it around by hitting it with their hats. Probably not the smartest thing to do huh? It would have been better to kill it but there was some dink wad we didn't know who kept saying "it's illegal it's illegal". For some reason he thought it'd be smarter to leave the dang thing around the doors where anyone could get bitten. There's a lot of children around there too!

We're pretty excited to get back to school now. It's been a long and a short summer. Branden's gonna start up anyday now. I'm gonna begin again in January. The only thing I'm worried about is finding some kind of a job. We're hoping for something really close to the apt so I can walk just incase Branden needs the truck for something. With GM laying off 21,000 people out there the economy is goin down fast. Last time we left 35% of the population was out of a job. I can't imagine it's any better now. We're keeping our fingers crossed though.

Welcome to Nowhere

Welcome to Abilene, TX. Population- well that depends if you count the farm animals or not. A city, well noted in country songs you hear on the radio, that's full of hotels and windmills. Oh and at the moment about 3 different alarm security companies reside here. Just our luck. Someone in our office snitched our plans to move out here and so the other genius companies decided to go to. What is that? Why the heck would you wanna follow APX or any other company to try and sell the same houses? It just doesn't make any sense.

Living out of a hotel has its ups and downs. Free oatmeal and waffles for breakfast and nachos and tuna fish sandwhiches for dinner... At least the company while eating it was good :) The maid service was great. They even cleaned up Tony's messy toys. All in all it's been not so bad except for the crickets. There's a hole in the wall outside that leads directly to the vent to our room. Everynight the crickets wake up and join in the chorus that lasts til the sun comes up again. It's so ANNOYING! The first night it happened I wanted to call maintainance, but Branden being the fix it man decided to take matters into his own hands. We didn't have bug spray so febreeze had to do. I swear he sprayed 1/2 the can into the vent. It worked for a while, thinking we choked them out we turned out the lights and went back to sleep. Then the AC turned on. Every ounce of febreeze in the vents came out at once. We couldn't breathe. The next day the ridex guy came and opened the vent to suck out the little buggers. Things went well for a night or 2. But, nothing lasts forever and they're back again. Only 3 more nights and then they'll be someone elses problem. We can't wait to come home again!