Hallelujah!

Finally! I have figured out our stinkin' answering machine. For months now people have been calling and leaving messages, but our machine never registered that we had any messages. After googling it, reading the manual, and pushing ALL of the buttons on the machine, I finally gave up . . . and then Rhett tried. He googled it, read the manual online, also pushed all sorts of buttons. But to no avail.
Well, yesterday, I decided I'd record a new announcement explaining that we couldn't get our messages so when people called, they'd know not to leave a message. Well, I recorded it, but it never changed when I did a trial call. Finally, the thought occured to me--why are we paying for voicemail, when all we need is to hook up the answering machine? So I did some research and realized our voicemail through Qwest was set to pick up at four rings, and the answering machine was set to pick up at six--so the answering machine never got to pick up the calls. I had to call Qwest to get my password to retrieve our voicemails, and when I finally got to them, we had 35! I had to listen to all of them to delete them--25 of which were me and Rhett saying, "This is a test." I thought that was pretty funny. So I've decided to cancel our voicemail services (since we are paying for them), and just use the stinkin' answering machine (which we've already paid for).
On another note, it has been snowing like crazy. We've had more than 24 inches now in just two days. This beats the record of 13 inches. Last week, Rhett received an email from the Dean of Academics saying under no condition would they ever cancel or reschedule finals. They said weather was no excuse to missing class, and if they couldn't drive, they were expected to walk. Well, this morning, he got another email from the Dean of the Law School saying the entire school (of Gonzaga), including the law school, was closed, and finals would have to be rescheduled. How exciting, I guess. Today was his last final, and it would have been nice just to get it over with, but now he'll just take it after the break. They even cancelled Law School graduation.
So this morning we walked to the Harris' and had breakfast with the Day's (minus Jen and Brookie), the Green's and of course, the Harris'. After that we watched an awesome movie called "Traitor." It was a great start to our Christmas vacation!