Three of Five

I flew onto Lansing tonight and after stopping by to see my Mom I met up with Noel and Bill for a beer and cigar in Okemos. Thinking ahead, Bill picked a place that doesn't allow smoking. We were missing Will and Brad to have the original five Wild at Heart Band of Brothers, but we made due. It was great catching up and laughing all while trying new beer. Either Noel is a light weight, or the Belgium Ale he was drinking really did have 12x the alcohol of a normal beer.

This guy's got skills.... Num-chuck skills, lego skills.... Check out his other pics on eBay.

Travel Blues

I got up at 4:30am to fly out of Lansing. I quickly fell asleep only to be awakened to some nasty turbulance. Nothing like waking up from a sound sleep with a surge of adrenaline and part of your brain thinking you're going to crash. I've been sitting on the plane to Kansas City for the past 2 hours waiting for them to fix the landing gear. Hopefully we're taking off soon.

Mom Update

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers about my Mom. Here's the latest update from my Dad:

She had an appointment this morning at U-M Comprehensive Cancer Clinic in Ann Arbshe go to U-M instead of Lansing Sparrow Cancer Center because they have docs in Ann Arbor who specialize in radiation and chemotherapy treatment for those with pancreatic cancer. It was interesting that the U-M docs thought it was a wise move that we went to the "big boys" at Mayo Clinic for the Whipple Procedure. We thought they might be upset that we didn't go to Ann Arbor for the surgery, but that was not the case.

Lynn continues to make progress, but has bad bouts of nausea. Sunday and this morning were really bad days for her in that she felt so bad that she was unable to eat anything. You know Lynn well enough that while she is eating one meal, she normally plans on what she is having for the next. Unfortunately that is not the case now. She continues to loose weight. In discussing this with the docs today, they prescribed some new anti-nausea medications. Tonight, she is feeling less nauseated and was able to eat. We hope and pray that this will resolve the problem.

The doctors have set up a treatment plan for the next 4-5 months. She will start two chemotherapy treatments in Ann Arbor on December 9 for three months. Treatment will be 2 Fridays in a row with one Friday off for 3 months. This will be followed with a combination of chemo and radiation treatment for 5 days a week for 5 weeks.

Please continue to pray that God do something amazing in all this.

My sister Susan is leading the charge so far as the most technologically adept in the family, having uploaded multiple photo albums to the family photo gallery. Jon hasn't uploaded a single photo album, while even my Dad and brother Dan have got pictures out there. Sigh.... I don't know how Cathie manages to do it with three kids. Jon seems pretty overwhelmed with Libby, at least too overwhelmed to contribute to family memories. Sigh.

You scored as Captain Jack Sparrow. Roguish,quick-witted, and incredibly lucky, Jack Sparrow is a pirate who sometimes ends up being a hero, against his better judgement. Captain Jack looks out for #1, but he can be counted on (usually) to do the right thing. He has an incredibly persuasive tongue, a mind that borders on genius or insanity, and an incredible talent for getting into trouble and getting out of it. Maybe its brains, maybe its genius, or maybe its just plain luck. Or maybe a mixture of all three.

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

After being off Wed-Friday of last week without having a single work related thought, I'm having a tough time getting back into the swing of things. I love my job and this is one of the first days in a long time that I can remember not looking forward to starting my day.

I picked up my repaired iPod today after it was fixed at Best Buy as a part of my extended warranty contract. They claim it was only a loose hard drive cable. I don't buy it. This thing was clicking and knocking and acting pretty funky. If it dies again, it's another three weeks away for repair. Unless of course it dies to the degree that it's cheaper for them to replace it then to fix it.

Sanctuary

We had the first Youth Group Sanctuary tonight, complete with a student worship band, three of whom were my kids since sixth grade. Jason taught on 'Could Jesus have become Darth Vader?' Which dealt with the Jesus's temptation in the desert. There were about 20+ people there and it was excellent.

No idea

Emily and I were laying on the couch today watching a High Def IMAX show on the Great Barrier Reef watching a bunch of sharks when this conversation occured:

Emily: "Dad, those sharks are called presidents, which in spanish means mean sharks."

No idea.

Later, she saw someone on TV using an iBook:

Emily: "Hey look, that's an iPod computer."

Amazing marketing.

Kids say the darndest things....

Overheard at Thanksgiving:

Cathie: "Will's here with his friend Monaca"
Nate: "Why's Will bringing his harmonica?"
Cathie: "No, Will's here with his friend Monaca."
Nate: "Oh. I like the name harmonica better."

Overheard Tonight:

Emily: "I can't find my book anywhere. It disappeared and I didn't even say abracadabra or anything."

My brother Jon sent me this amazing Christmas Tree light setup, explaining that he and my Dad set this up yesterday after we went Christmas Tree Shopping. I'm a little hesitant to put this up, as my brother Jon has explained to me that I shouldn't post anything that has ever been posted before.

Shared Photo Gallery

At the past few family gatherings, I've noticed that there are lots of pictures being taken. Big revelation, huh? Typically, it's lots of pictures of the same thing? Why? No one shares their pictures, or at least shares them in a format that's reusable.

I sat up last night until about 3AM creating a shared picture repository for the whole family. I used the open source project Gallery, which is amazingly functional.

I can assign privleages to allow uploading into family albums and downloading of full-size version of the pictures to be shared by all. There's a remote client software piece that allows you to easily upload pictures as well.

You can access the site via the Gallery on the right hand side of the page.

Thanksgiving, Part Duex

Jon, Susan, Dan and Kris got up at 5ish to head out to save $5 on some black friday sale. We slept in... Or sort of. Cathie's parents have a nice chiming clock that goes off every 15 minutes or so, and woke me up every fifteen minutes, so I didn't sleep all that well. We all met up around 11 to do our annual Christmas tree shopping. We decided to break with tradition and try a new tree place, Peacock Road Tree Farm. It was a nice place with a petting zoo and some other cool stuff, but they charged a few bucks more than the other place used to. By the time we'd seen all the sights and checked out the trees and their prices, the kids were freezing. Being decendents of my father, everyone decided they'd go elsewhere to save 23 cents and look elsewhere. Rather than make the trek back out into the field, we took pictures of the family as we pretended to cut down a pre-cut tree, hoping that in 3 years, it would look like we continued our longstanding tradition of cutting them down.

From there, we headed to Cathie's for another feast. We ate like kings, again, while Cathie's brother Ed worked hard to look good while doing it:


Before the food coma set in, Cathie's Dad and I took the kids over to a new sledding hill down the road at the new Granger park that was excellent. It snowed hard, the hill was fast and the kids had fun and didn't whine... Can't ask for more than that:

We drove back through some pretty nasty snow and got back in around 9something. Great two days. Now, to veg and get ready for the real-world on Monday.

Thankgiving, Part 1

We got back late last night from our two day Thanksgiving extravaganza. We started the shin-dig off on Thursday at my parent's in Dewitt, a little different than usual. Instead of my Mom doing ridiculous amounts of cooking, the girls did all of the food and the guys helped serve the it. Dan and I had had the honor of carving the two turkeys.

We had a huge amount of food this year, plus we had some special guests. Not only was this Libby and Ben's first Thanksgiving, but Will brought his girlfriend Monaca as well.

This may not sound like a big deal to you, but to run a significant other through the Kurt gauntlet is more than more relationships can bear. To put anyone that you care about through this test is pushing things to the edge of the envelope. Will is family, considered a brother, and therefore needs to go through the same right of passage as everyone else did when they brought their significant others over. Monaca held her own against the best that we could throw at her as Will sat there with his thumb in his mouth, rocking back and forth in a comatose state, seeing his relationship flash before his eyes. My Mom had briefed us all before hand to be on our best behavior, some claim she even announced"This may be Will's last chance at Love, and you better not ruin it".

Rather than continue watching the Lions get destroyed against Atlanta, Kevin and I took the kids outside to play. It was 15 degrees, with a wind chill that made it feel like zero. Ouch. My parents have a decent hill in the backyard that leads into a swamp, so we figured we'd give it a try for sledding. We wore a decent path down until we could get some decent speed going. The only problem was at the bottom, when you hit the weeds, the sleds would stop and the kids would go flying. They seemed alright with that.

Another momentus occasion happened yesterday: My brother returned a pair of socks to my Dad. This may not sound like a big deal to you, but for the past 30+ years, we've been borrowing socks and t-shirts from my Dad during various occassions, and NEVER has one been returned until now.

Apparently Jon has taken his role of being a stay-at-home Man Mom to the next level.I'm ont sure the beads match.


We came back in and warmed out, while Emily got a chance to cuddle with her Grandma. We headed over to Cathie's parents around 6, which is only a few miles away, to begin Part 2 of our Thanksgiving.

You can view the pictures from both days here.

Reading tonight, I heard Bobby Dylan singing these words in the song Gotta Serve Somebody:

You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage,
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,
You may be a business man or some high degree thief,
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Wow. What a song. It's always painful to sit back and look at all of the things I serve in my life, versus what I should ultimately serve.


d

One of the other reasons I love this time of year is that I can have fires in the fire place. I love getting the kids in bed, making a fire, turning off the TV and turning on some music while I read. I'm still in the midst of The Holy Longing: The Search for A Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser, constantly being struck by this book in so many ways.

In particular, I keep coming back to his idea of the church as a family, drawing the same kind of commitments that a family brings with it. Rolheiser uses a picture of a conscriptive rope that connects us to the church that resonates with me:

It is one which we may let go of after we have accepted it. Ecclesial commitment does not work that way. One does not keep an exit visa in his or her back pocket and, consciously or unconsciously, emotionally blackmail the family he or she belongs to with the attitude: "I will stay with you as long as I deem you worth it or until you radically disappoint me!" The church has always that, and rightly so, that baptism is irrevocable, that it leaves an indelible mark on the soul. Anyone who has ever had a child knows exactly what that means; when you hold your child for the first time it scars your soul indelibly.

Any covenant commitment, if authentic, does precisely that; it locks us in. Like a mother who has given birth to a child or a couple who have promised lifelong fidelity to each other, we cannot opt in and out of the church as fits our mood and phases of growth. As long as we do not understand this, we are still, in terms of ecclesiology, a child or an adolescent who needs to be carried, as opposed to an adult who is helping to take responsibility for carrying our family.

I was also struck today by the contrast between the ideas of charity and social justice:

Charity is about giving a hungry person some bread, while justice is about trying to change the system so that nobody has excess bread while some have none; charity is about treating your neighbors with respect; while justice is about trying to get at the deeper roots of racism...

He takes it deeper in terms of the motivation behind that justice:

Thus, for a Christian, the ultimate motivation in working for justice may never be simple ideology, irrespective of how noble that particular ideology may appear. Rather both the truth that inspires the quest for justice and the energy that fuels it must ground themselves in something beyond any ideology. Ultimate, both justice and our motivation for seeking it must be grounded in the equality of all human persons before God and in our respect for nature as also being God's child. Any motivation for justice that grounds itself simply in liberal ideology or in indignation and anger at inequality will ultimately not change the world's heart, even when it manages to change some of it's structures.

I know this stuff's probably horribly boring to read out of context. I'm writing this more for myself. I'm trying to put the pieces of this stuff together in my head as I write it out, as I try and understand how this is breaking down some of my world view.

How does a guy who squirts milk from his eyes competitively end up with a web site of his own and Microsoft sponsorship?

First Snow!

I love the first snow of the year! We've gotten an inch or two today and it's beautiful. For some reason the first snow is the most beautiful of them all, everything looks so pure, so fresh. The girls have been outside for a couple of hours playing, while Nate and I moved some firewood around and then did some high performance sledding down the drive way. We've got a funky driveway that's a hill with a curb at the bottom of it, enough so to launch nate in the air for about three feet of distance and land on the street. Hard. Later, the girls decided to see how long they could stand in the snow in their bare feet, and then run back to the fire and warm them up.

I'm off work today and still couldn't find a way to sleep in. I was up bright and early at 7am. I hung out with the kids for a while until Cathie woke up, and then headed up to a new coffee shop in town to read for a while (The Holy Longing). We spent the next chunk of day cleaning, during which I made an interesting observation about my family. We like odd hats. Not in public, but more in private. While putzing around the house, it's not uncommon for one of us to pick up a hat and just wear it around for a while, no matter what the hat looks like. I noticed Cathie wearing a princess tiera while cleaning, and then came down to check on how Nate and Austin were doing on cleaning up after there sleepover to find this:

This free iTunes Konfabulator widget is amazing. It works on both Mac and XP and ties directly into iTunes and does some amazing stuff. It links in with Amazon and Google, automatically looking up your iTunes songs and tracks info, and fills it back into iTunes as you play the songs.
You can download it here, for either mac or windows. If you're not familiar with Knofabulator, it's a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather. Before downloading the widget, you need to download the engine, all of which is free, and get it here.

The Truffle Shuffle!!


My Mom just sent out this baby picture of my younger brother Jon:

Tough to believe, but that's not really jon as a baby. It also is not the kind of monkey that I would dress up in armor and fight.

Pinball Wizard

We got back early so we had a quick 4 man game of pinball at Bob's house. He has Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is an amazing game. I won. By a lot. I got lucky.

Wings Game

Bob, Brad, Ted and I went to the Detroit Red Wings game tonight. 7 minutes into the game things stopped and we couldn't figure out what was going on. The EMTs ran over to the bench with a stretcher and defibrillator, eventually bringing his fiancee over to the bench as we waited. He was given CPR and a defibrillator was used on the bench. Yzerman and Draper skated the stretcher over. Word in the stands was that Uri Fisher had been hit by a puck. Apparently, he'd had a seizure on the bench, his heart had stopped but they got it going again. He is awake, talking and in stable condition at Detroit Receiving Hospital. After an hour of sitting around, they called the game. More at this article.

Pre-School Thanksgiving Party

Cathie and I went to Emily's pre-school today for her Thanksgiving party. Since I'm missing Nate's school concert due to work travel (yes, I'm a bad father. I can hear my brother Jon singing Cats in the Cradle right now), I figured I should probably be at this to earn brownie points with Cathie. The kids had decorated the room and made some of the food (bread and butter). They had a big 'ol turkey there as well, which none of the dad's wanted to step up and do. Luckily, my Dad taught me how to carve a turkey. All of the women were very impressed and told me repeatedly how I was the only Dad who knew how to do this. Worse case scnario if I had botched it up? Would a bunch of 4 year really care? No.

Apparently, I need to take some Bean-O. Cathie shared with me that Emily told her teacher I was coming, but that I might do something bad. The teacher asked what I could possibly do that was bad enough for me to not come and Emily responded: My Dad toots a lot. Thanks Em.

I figured David Blaine had made some kind of deal with the devil to do the magic tricks he does. Guess not. Here's a link to how he does what he does.

Today at church, Emily's Sunday school teacher was telling Cathie that he'd heard we'd had 8 puppies. Cathie explained about Emily's collection of stuff animals and her imaginary friend, chalking it up to some combination of both. He'd then asked Emily if her Dad had done her hair this morning. She responded honestly, "No. But my Daddy toots a lot." Can't argue with that kind of honesty.

I woke up at 6AM wide awake, so I came down, got coffee, updated my blog and sat down to continue reading The Holy Longing: The Search for A Christian Spirituality. I came across this picture of church:

The crucifixion scene is a good image of church. Jesus dies between two criminals. Anyone at the time, looking a that scene, would not have amdee a distinction between who was guilty and who was innocent. There was just one landscape - God on a cross between two thieves. That is the perennial ecclesical image. Grace and sin, sanctity and pettiness, and fidelity and betrayal, all a part of a single horizon.
The church is always God hung between two thieves on the cross. Thus, no one should be suprised or shocked at how badly the church has betrayed the gospel and how much it continues to do so today. It has never done very well. Conversely, however, nobody should deny the good the church has done either. It has carried grace, produced saints, morally challenged the planet and made, however imperfectly, a house for God to dwell in on this earth. To be connected with the church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murderers, adulters and hypocrites of every description. It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic sould within every time, country, race and gender. To be a member of the church is to carry the mantle of both teh worst sin and the finest heroism of soul...because the church always looks exactly as it looked at the original curcifixion, God hung among thieves.

Back from the dead

The good news is that my iPod is back, fully repaired and refurbished. The bad news is that it's back, refurbished. The hard drive in my iPod died about three weeks ago and I took it into Best Buy under the extended warranty program. They explained that if they couldn't fix it, they'd have to replace it with a new one (i.e. Video iPod). They called Friday to say that mine is fixed. Stinkin repair departments. Do I NEED the new video iPod? No. Do I want one??? Badly.

Fusion Game Night

Last night I had a game night for our Middle School Youth Group at Crossroads, called Fusion (Yeah, I know it's been the same name for 10+ years with the original logo Noel designed fo rme. What can I say, I like the name, and I already have a logo for it). Having started the year this fall with 2 middle school kids, I wasn't really sure what the turn-out would be. We ended up with 17 kids, plus 6 high school leaders and 3 parents stuck around to help. The theme for the night was "Gross Games".

We started the night off with this clothespin game, which was actually pretty painful. The guys tried to be tough, but you could tell it hurt. Then I stuck two of the leaders in, Chris and Mike, and let the kids go to town on them. It still hurt. We then moved into a pretty twisted one, involving the kids eating melted snickers out of the middle of a diaper. I've changed enough diapers to tell you that it looked EXACTLY like a big 'ol-nasty pile baby poo. The visual killed some of the kids, others ate right through it. We then had another game that involved eating M&M's out of a flour filled cookie tray. The kids ended up with big white gotees, which I could see, but they couldn't. Funny.

My personal favorite for the evening was the game "Trout Smack". This game involves putting an egg on your forehead via a pair of pantyhose, climbing on someone's back and then proceeding to try and break the egg on the other team by smacking them with a trout. It was tougher than it looked, but the kids had fun. Eventually, the leaders had to play. Mike/Tiffany went up against Lori and I. Couple of observations:

1. Tiffany can swing a trout really hard.
   
2. Catching a trout in the melon at full speed will make you see stars.
3. Apparently this whole process makes you smell bad in the end. So my wife says.
4. Short people have very short reaches (Lori).

The next game involved pouring gross stuff into a blender, progressively worse, until no could hold it down. I saw it come out one kids nose. Alka-Seltzer spew worked pretty well, but it didn't come out anyone's nose. We played a couple more games, including sardines. Here's how sardines works: One person hides, everyone else tries to find them. As you find them, you hide with them, until you have 20 people packed in a small space, like a closet. The house on the property Crossroad's has purchased was perfect for this. It has a ton of secret hiding places, and is pitch black at night. The guys had more fun scaring the girls than anything else.

We ended the night with a bonfire, make smores. This kid, Cameron, a sixth grader, enapsulates everything I dig about Middle Schoolers. He'd taken the egg from the trout-smack game and spiked his hair with it. Prior to this, he was telling me this crazy story about a rabbit that roamed the world stealing crackers, threatening to blow up the world. That is exactly why I dig middle school kids. They are my people.

More pictures here.

Bono Interview

If you read and enjoyed the Jan Wenner/Bono Rolling Stone interview, check out the podcast of the whole thing, about 3 hours worth of audio. You can subscribe to it here.

The Holy Longing

I've been reading the book The Holy Longing: The Search for A Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser for the past week. I'd had it sitting on my shelf for a few years, but picked it up after listening to a message by Rob Bell from Mars Hill Church. I'm glad I didn't read this book back then because of how it's been impacting me now, right where I'm at, right when I needed it, in the exact way I need it to.

The book has a number of deep thoughts about spirituality, most of which are just starting to sink in, so I won't try and summarize. The big theme that has stood out and stuck to me throughout this whole book is this: Community is essential to Christian Spirituality. Pretty obvious, right? Sure. Most people can agree with this:

What church community takes away from us is our false freedom to soar unencumbered, like the birds, believing that we are mature, loving, committed, and not blocking out things that we should be seeing. Real churchgoing soon enough shatters this illusion, and gives us no escape, as we find ourselves constantly humbled as our immaturities and lack of sensivitivy to the pain of others are reflected off eyes that are honest and unblinking.

..the individual in quest of God, however sincere that search, lives the unconfronted life. Without church, we have more private fantasy than real faith....real convesrion demands that eventually its recipients be involved in both the muck and the grace of actual church life.

I've seen this first hand. By going to a church of people that are very different than me, and sticking with those people even when I disagree and dislike some of them has shown me more about myself by what's been exposed. Going to church, in perfect harmony, with a bunch of people who are just like me and never rub up against me is probably the last thing I need. He takes it way beyond just going to a church, and takes it into what it means to be a long-term part of a community, no matter how tough and ugly it gets.

He uses this example:

Imagine you join a new parish community. Initially, meeting all these people for the first time, you fin dthe community good and to your liking. You are so impressed in fact that you get involved both in the parish council and the choir. Eventually, however, as you get to know everyone more deeply, a certain disillusionment sets in. You learn that your pastor has some rael faults, that your parish council can be petty and narrow, and the community itself can be quite self-absorbed and callous to the needs of those outside itself. It all comes to a head one evening at a board meeting when someone accuses you of being pushy and arrogant. The penny drops inside you, and as you walk out of that meeting, you say to yourself: "This is intolerable! I don't need to put up with this! I'm outta here."

To say, "I don't have to deal with this!" goes against the teaching of Christ because this is precisely what he was referring to when he said: "Unless you eat my flesh you cannot have lifewithin you."

...In essence, what Jesus is saying: You cannot deal with a perfect, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-understanding God in heaven, if you cannot deal with a less-than-perfect, less-than-forgiving and less-than-understanding community here on earth. You cannot pretend to be dealing with an invisible God if you refuse to deal with a visible family.

We cannot bypass a flawed family on earth to try to relate to a nonflawed God in heaven.... Part of the very essence of Christianity is to be together in a concrete community, with all the real human faults that are there and the tensions that this will bring us. Spirituality, for a Christian, can never be an individualistic quest, the pursuit of God outside of community, family and church.

This book is reshaping the way I look at a couple big things in my life.

The last 150 Google.com logos.

"A lot of investment companies rushed onto the Internet. But Dylan Thomas took their time. Sure, when they were ready there was only one web address left. But it's one you can count on."

SNL Dillon Edwards Commercial

These people have too much time on their hands to do something this detailed. On Mate a Movie these guys create intricate movie posters by combining two movies together.

I'm home

I made it back tonight from Hot Springs, AR (Boyhood home of President Clinton). When I got to the airport Wednesday night around 11, the guy at the rental car counter handed me my keys and explained that he didn't know where the car was, but told me to hit the button on the key FOB and I'd find it eventually. Talk about service. We had frost both mornings I was out there, and apprently ice scrapers aren't standard issue in Arkansas. A hotel room key works just as well when three guys are scraping. Just looks funny. The work stuff went well, but long. We went from 7AM on Thursday until about 11:30PM. There was a fair amount of debate (most of it by me) with some of the Hot Springs locals, if the movie Deliverance was supposed to have taken place in Arkansas. While I was out there, I got to catch up with a friend of mine and previous boss, Kathy, who's made a permanent home out in the 'Springs.

I had a cramped flight back to Detroit, sitting next to a huge National Guardsmen who just came back from recruiting training. We didn't fit well into the seats side by side. I explained to him that I wasn't singing up, but give me his spiel anyways. We talked about the Iraq conflict and what should happen with the troops. He shared with me how much the majority of the people over there love and appreciate the US vs what's portrayed on the news. I was giddy to finally make it home tonight. Five days away sucks. I missed my family badly.

I'm in the Minneapolis airport. I came in at the F terminal, and walked a mile to the A terminal. I kept passing . During the mile walk, I walked by one person sitting in the middle of the floor. I walked by a guy carrying a football. Not just carrying it like a souvenir, but like a running back. I had all sorts of funny quesitons going on in my head to say to the guy, but I just smiled as I walked by.

The wireless is down in the airport, so I'm connected to the internet through my Treo. It works great for casually surfing the web, not so much for pulling over a day's worth of e-mails with attachments. The plane to Little Rock, AR is one of the small Mesaba jets. The seats are small and really uncomfortable. I just talked to a co-worker whose stuck in LA until 1AM PST on his way back to Ohio. At least I'm not sleeping in the airport.

Olympic Training Center

I've been working with the US Olympic Committee on a project out their training facility in CO. The training facilities and cafeteria are excellent, cool seeing all of the athletes and understanding more about how things happen. I'm on my way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I get in around 11, back on Friday late, home all next week.

Golden Bee

I'm still out in Colorado Springs, freezing my butt off without a jacket. For dinner tonight, we went to the Golden Bee, an English Pub that's part of the Broadmoor Hotel, the greatest Hotel ever. I stayed here for a week last year while I was out here for some training, and it's the finest five star I've ever been in. It's at the base of the Mountains, backing up to the Pike's Peak area - just beautiful. Back to the Golden Bee.... They're known for two things - a piano sing-a-long and yards-o-beer. The two go hand-in-hand. Newton and I figured we should have a yard and we did. We're at 6,600 feet above sea level here. After the ffct, our waitress explained the pysiology behind why alcohol affects you more intesely and she was right. She also told us that she'd seen a guy drink 5 of these things full of Guiness beer and still walk out of the bar.

I'm getting a case of these for the family for Christmas!

My plan tonight was to head to Denver to meet up with a friend of mine, who used to be in my youth group, Kate. After about an hour stuck in traffic in a snow storm, I decided it wasn't going to happen. I called up a friend of mine who used to go to Crossroads, and I went over to his house for dinner. We hung out for a while and caught up on life. I'd come out here last year for some training and Steve and I had spent a couple days together skiing, but hadn't talked much since, so it was good to catch up.

I'm in Colorado Springs until Wednesday. I left decent weather in Michigan to come to Colrado, where there are 50 MPH winds and expected snow tonight. Good thing I packed nothing warm. I'm heading to warmer Hot Springs, AR on Wednesday, back Friday.

I'm all about making YOUR life easier, so I updated the right side of my blog with my
Amazon Wish List for your Christmas shopping needs. You can access it by clicking on the icon on the right.

Quote of the Day

Marge: Asks Homer to go for a bike-ride:
Homer:"...but Marge, I'm watching Television. A lot of people worked hard on this show."

Which One's Will?

Cathie and I went on a date tonight in Lansing with Will and his girlfriend Monaca. We went to dinner at PF Chang's and then to see a concert at the Creole Gallery in Olde Town. It's a coffee shop/small concert venue/art gallery. We wandered into the art gallery part and were just a little suprised to see the display called 'The Penis Project', put on by Sue Long (no joke). It was a display of hundreds of oddly sculpted penises, ranging in price from $75 to $4,000 and from 8 inches long to 6 feet tall. The one pictured above is named Medusa. The other one is named Will. This whole thing was bizarre and akward. (Not so akward that Will and I couldn't pose with them for some nice pictures)

The concert was somewhat painful. It was great for the first hour, but the second hour hurt all four of us. Every song sounded a like. The guy was a Paul Simonesque singer, and a good song writer, but his delivery blew. It was small enough that we couldn't leave without being really rude. To our relief, he finished around 10, and we busted out of there before he could try and squeeze in an encore. We finished up with some coffee, picked up the kids from Cathie's parents and made it home about 12:30 AM.

For those of you wondering what Monaca's like, here it is in a nutshell: She's great.

Big 'ol Pile

It was such a beautiful day today, I gave up on watching the Spartans play and went out and raked up the leaves. I ended up with a giant pile about 5 feet high. I went in to get the kids to help me bag them, and never got too far. Nate, Madeline, Emily and Nate's buddy Austin piled in the leaves, even pulling leaves out of the bag (thanks Emily) to make the pile bigger.

Nate and Austin topped things off by filling their shirts with leaves for armor and proceeded to have a giant battle, which you see the video of here.

Football Heroes

Nate and Austin's teams had their last football game of the season today. Neither of the coaches showed, so one of the other Dad's and I jumped in and coached. We got smoked. I coached defense, and he coached the offense. Our offense threw 5 interceptions, my defense caught 3 interceptions and stopped every extra point. Nate had the only touchdown for our team.

Best line of the night

Best line heard at the Blackjack table tonight:
Girl to 20-something-Guy at table: "Was that your wife standing behind you?"
20-something-Guy: "That was my Mom"
Girl: "Oh" followed by akward silence, broken up by me and the 20-something guy laughing hard.

After Chris, Doug and I finished up our work stuff, we went to Flyaway Indoor Skydiving in Vegas. The three of us flew for about 15 minutes and had a blast. I'd done it once before with Bill a while back, and it was a lot easier the second time. The feeling of flying is indescribable.

Even if you're not familiar with the music of Iron Maiden, music, this is a pretty funny read: Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Iron Maiden.