Dave Kurt's Blog

This is my nephew Drew's victory pose in front of his lucky tree. He led his team to victory on Saturday with three goals, giving them a 5-1 victory!

It's a blast to watch Nate keep improving every week at football. He had his best week ever this week with a few big tackles, including the one pictured on the right as he's chasing down a guy heading towards the end-zone. Cathie's Dad was there to capture the moment on video. Cathie's Mom is over in Japan and not able to make the commute back for his games, so I wanted to put it online for her (and to brag about my son as I'm a very proud Dad). They lost the game by a touchdown and had one kid taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

Kevin, Sooze and the kids made it up for the game as well. Maddie and Em are proud of their brother, but only have so much tolerance for football. Coloring is a nice alternative. We had perfect weather for the game. Only three games left until the end of the season.

We had a beautiful day for our 15th annual Crossroads Youth Group Paintball outing. What made it even better is that for the second year, Nate's been old enough to play as well with me. After doing this for so many years with other people's kids, it's so much fun being out there with Nate and doing this as a father-son activity. The best part for me is working with the fifth and sixth graders who play. They're all new enough and scared enough that they just need a little coaching and direction. We formed an unstoppable mob. Nate and I ended up with lots of welts, which Nate wears like badges of courage. We had a huge group, around 40, and did the event with two other youth groups in the area, giving us over 70 people total in our group.

Cathie was over at the Girards making Apple Cider, so I helped Nate pick out his clothes for paintball - trying to find some thick enough pants and shirt that might minimize the pain. Apparently I picked out his brand-new school shirt and only pair of dress pants. Nate was kind enough to try and take all the blame for me, but Cathie somehow re-directed it back to me. Oops.

Just like in US Weekly, Jon is asking you:

"Who wore it best?"

Northwest finally cancelled our flight and we headed to downtown Little Rock to our hotel. It's a nice downtown and they've just gotten done celebrating the Little Rock Nine's fiftieth anniversary. We found this sign at the resturant where we ate.

Jason and I were trying to demonstrate how to play leap-frog in the mud as one of the games. Instead, it looks like I'm delivering some kind of odd choreographed dance with another man's head up my butt.

I'm in Hot Springs with Bill and he was sporting an interesting foot wear choice.

For 35 years of my life, the tag of my underwear has always been in the
back. My wife bought me new underwear with the tag in the front.
Apparently it's going to take me another 35 years to get used to this as
I've put them on backwards at first every time I've worn them over the
past 6 months.

I took Nate out of school early today to go and play Halo 3 with me. Probably not going to earn me the "Good Parent of the Year Award" unless kids are passing them out. We went over to the garage where there were a bunch of other high school kids from our youth group whose parents had done the same thing. Go figure.

Cathie had to pick Emily up from school to take her to the doctor today. As they were leaving the school, Cathie remembered that she'd left something in the office. She ran inside to get it and came back to find Emily curled up on the floor of the van.

Cathie: "Emily, why are you laying on the floor?"
Emily: "Because I didn't want you to go to jail."
Cathie: "Go to jail?"
Emily: "Yeah. For leaving me in the van by myself."

Nigel got here about 12:30 with Halo 3. We hooked it up and played two player for a while. The graphics, textures and shading are amazing. The new features rock. Haven't played the story-mode yet.

I had originally pre-ordered Halo 3 from Amazon, assuming they'd ship it early so that I would receive the game on the day it was released, like they did with Harry Potter.

Instead, I met Jason and Nigel up at Game Stop, took advantage of Jason's Barnes and Nobles discount and pre-ordered it. Nigel's picking it up at midnight and dropping it off at my house. The countdown is on.

Emily's teacher happens to be a good friend of ours. We had her over for dinner tonight, as we have many times, but this is the first time she was here as Emily's teacher. It was the equivalent of having Barry Sanders come over and have dinner with me. She was pure celebrity. Remember back to what a big deal it was when you saw your teacher in a non-school setting. Em's teacher has known her since she was a baby and it's funny to see how quiet Em is in her class, even though she's known her forever.

As she was enjoying an adult beverage, Emily asked her, "Ms. X, while you're drinking, could you play Go-Fish with me." Later as she was eating, Em said quietly, "Wow Ms. X, you must have been really hungry."

I came outside yesterday after watching the Lions get destroyed and I found Emily laying on the lawn in front of the house, with Baily the guinea pig on her back. No idea what she was doing, but the girl sure loves her animals.

Very good article on the question How long do I wait to buy new technology?

We had an the perfect storm for this year's tenth annual Crossroads Mudbowl. We had perfect weather, a great team of guys that did the leg work and setup, a ton of kids and great mud. We played steal the bacon, link tag, four-corner crossing and caterpillar racing followed by a team painting contest.

I stayed pretty mud-free until the end when the 8th graders tag-teamed me and tried to take me down. Nate started off playing and was joined at the end by Cathie and Maddie. Nate brought his buddy Austin to play.

Cathie, Jess and Jen all got into it - and Maddie took multiple dunkings from Tiff and Jess both. The highlight was watching Jess and Tifff deliver regular beatings to each other in the pit.


Since I was out of town last week, they were kind enough to move it to this week so I could be a part of it. Our Pastor Joe explained in Church today that he had a very, very somber and important family event that he had to be at and could not make the Mud Bowl. I was never aware that your team NHL Fantasy Hockey Draft qualified as a somber family event.

You can see the rest of the pictures on our youth group's site here.

Nate's team lost to the Brighton Bulldogs 0-19. These guys were impressive, including the 6'3" sixth grader with a 50" vertical, as pictured on the left. These guys seemed to play dirty, including the giant #54 pictured in both of these shots. How many personal fouls can you see wrong with the picture on the right?

Nate's been getting a lot more playing time and I've been getting out on the field taking more and more pictures, including a couple like this one below where I almost got drilled.

The coach continues to do a great job with these boys, knowing how to motivate them and work on the fundamentals. Brighton traditionally has a very good team and the silver lining in this cloud was that they beat us by less than they'd beaten the other teas.

Nate and I were playing Madden '08 today. He was the Patriots and I was the Colts.

Nate: "Dad, why is that guy on the kick-off team named Gay?"
Me: "No idea."

Nate: "Look Dad, I'm gay."
Me: "Wow."

"This piece of pizza is mine, but not forever. Soon I'm gonna poop it out."
-Emily, eating pizza

...and this picture of them.

Emily is our little third child negotiator. She believes the world is her bargaining table. She didn't want to clean her room, so she figured she'd negotiate her way out of it:

Emily: "Mom, if you're going make me clean my room then I'm going to sleep in this box."
Cathie: "You're going to sleep in a box? Ok."

Emily: "Mom, if you make my clean my room, I'm going to be sad and wear this box on my head the whole time."
Cathie: "Ok. You can be sad and wear a box on your head. Just as long as your room gets clean."

Emily: "Dad, i know how to scare a fly just by walking by it'
Me: "Did Ms. Brainard (family friend and Em's 1st grade teacher0 teach you that trick?"
Emily: "I already knew it BEFORE I started first grade."

Thanks to Jenny for these hilarious commercials for the LA County Fair:



This, this and this are just as funny.

Addressing the graduating class of emory university, tom brokaw said:

You have been hearing all of your life that this occasion is a big step into what is called the real world. What, you may ask, is that real world all about? What is this new life? Ladies ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifnd gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high.

The world that you’re about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds. 40 years from now, I guarantee it: You will still make a silly mistake every day. You will have temper tantrums and you’re feelings will be hurt for some trivial sleight. You’ll say something dumb at the wrong time. And you will wonder at least once a week, “Will I ever grow up?” You can change that. In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up. Set a standard, and stay faithful to it.

tom brokaw, emory university commencement address

Glad I'm not like this.... No really... I'm uncomfortable gong 2 hours without the internet:

A recent survey shows most Americans are uncomfortable going more than a day without the internet; online activity also lessens the amount of time people spend having sex and socializing with friends face-to-face.

The guy came at 7:30 this morning to fix the TV and we're good to go. Apparently the bulbs on DLP TV's last about 2 -3 years or 5,000 - 10,000 watchable hours. Since we bought the TV in 2002, the guy showed me that had the TV on for 9,756 hours. Mind you our macmini is hooked up to the TV and we use it as a home entertainment system for pictures and music - but that's still a LOT of time. An embarrassing lot of time.

This is probably the first time I've fasted from TV for a week as we waited for the repair guy. This being a crazy week at work, I found myself working at night. Even last night when I wrapped up with work, Cathie and I were both sitting in front of our laptops instead of hanging out together. The good news is that the TV is fixed in time to play Halo 3 next Tuesday.

I fell in love with the new iPod touch when I saw it at the press conference. I've been reading all of the reviews (This is by far the most comprehensive review I've seen out there. Mossberg has an interesting review as well) and trying to figure out if i really NEED one of these. I bought my iPod in 2004 when the 20GB 4G iPod was first released. Through the beauty of Best Buy service contracts, I now have a state of the art (for 2 more weeks) 80GB Video iPod that works great. To my earlier thoughts on simplicity, buying another device to support, keep track of and manage doesn't really play into that. Since I don't really NEED this and the money could go to way better places to bring way more joy to others than it would to me, I'm torn. Nothing like knowing the right thing to do and not wanting to do it.

Cathie had small group last night and decided to get dressed up in this fancy pants-suit, complete with swank ear-rings, shoes and boob-shaped-purse. Her friends had gotten her this nifty outfit for her 37th birthday, figuring she should start dressing her age.

Emily on the other hand chose this outfit, and decided not to button it up because it would be a lot of work. This is the outcome after having Jess Shinn influence your children's fashion sense combined with having a lazy third child.

Nate's football team won their first game ever, 26 - 6! The kids were thrilled. The coach had told them he'd shave his head on the first victory. Should be fun to watch. Dan, Kris and the kids were there to see the first win - while I was up North, which I felt really bad about. I wanted to see it really badly - and wish I'd of gone p North later after the game.

We golfed on Sunday at Black Forest golf course up in Gaylord. The course was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Nine of us played, two teams, for money, of course. I figured that after golfing all year in a league, I might not continue to embarrass myself on the course. I was wrong. I think i was actually worse this year than in the past.

If nothing else, we enjoyed cold beer and cigars, and laughed a lot. My favorite pictures are these of Mark Kohne, hitting the ball - almost - or at least a giant piece of grass.

In the evenings, everyone had their laptops and would break them out periodically to check e-mail or update their fantasy football team. Newton apparently worked so hard that he fell asleep. That's just the way they roll in South Alabama.

We left on Saturday morning for our fifth annual Xerox guy's weekend. We started five years ago with a local group of guys who worked together, heading up to my friend Bill's place to wake-board, eat, drink and golf. We've now got it to the point where people fly in from all around the country. We're a team that all work virtually, many of us who've worked together as long as 13 years. This is a time to get together to just hang out, have fun and solve the company's problems.

Glenn (in the middle) flew in Friday afternoon from Arkansas and stayed with us. I took Glenn into the "D" so he could see the best of Detroit and then we headed back to our house to hang out.


Todd made about 450 jello shots to keep things lively and he brought the game Corn Hole, which we played for roughly 13 hours non-stop, with lots of side-bets and jello consumption. One of the rules of the game is that you must have a beer in your hand as you throw. The game consists of throwing bean-bags into a hole.

Newton flew in from Alabama and apparently brought his wife's pretty flowered suitcase. Bill continued his role as the the grill-master as we ate like kings with a giant beef-brisket. Today we're heading out to golf, eat and hang out some more.

1. My big-screen TV is broken. Thankfully I'd bought a service plan and it won't cost me a penny to have it fixed.
2. I was cleaning my hot-tub out this morning and filling it out, getting it ready for the fall. I found a dead frog and a ton of frog poop all over the thing. Nasty.

We kicked off the year with a huge crowd at our first Chaos meeting, over half of the kids being brand new sixth graders, who I think a blast. Being their first Chaos meeting, they got to pick from the box of crap, which is a collection of dollar store junk that they seem to love. One of the 6th grade guys picked out a set of decorative plastic nut cups. He held on to these the rest throughout the meeting, including in our small group breakout time. In our guys small group, we were talking about the types of things you have to leave behind to follow Jesus where one of the kids shared the obvious thing: nut cups.

The boys were wetting themselves laughing at this idea and every time anyone said 'nut cups', the guys kept laughing harder and harder. Every time I used the words "nut cups" they assumed I had no idea why it should be funny. That's the beauty of having a sixth grade sense of humor.

While I was waiting for my Dad, I called Mike to find out where to eat. I brougt him a free lunch of some nasty chinese food and I ended up visiting his house so I could see his new pool. I'm pretty sure he loves it more than Jesus.

I just met with the surgeon and he said that everything went very well. Funny, he did not mention that it would have been faster had I been there to assist.

They were able to remove the blockage and there was no undue stress on the heart during the procedure. He was under local anesthetic, so recovery should be fairly quick. He's in post-op right now and he'll be moved up to ICU in an hour or so for recovery. He should be able to go home tomorrow and drive by the end of the week. As much as Dad requested a catheter, they would not put one in for him. Even though they said he should be fine, Susan keeps insisting she needs to help him go to the bathroom. Weird, huh?

Poor, poor Eli. I have embarrassed both him and his family. As usual, Eli was crushed by me in this past weekend's fantasy football league 165 to 123. Eli is the consummate football fan who understands the game inside and out and knows all of the stats off the top of his head. This makes it even more humiliating for him to lose to a novice like myself, a guy who can barely spell football. As a side note, my brother Dan is embarrassing the family with his beating from the Rays family, 198 to 120. Eli could have beaten him, I guess.

My Dad is having surgery today to have his carotid artery roto-rootered. I stayed over at his house in Dewitt last night and we sat around watching my Dad's taped editions of Oprah (In his defense, David Letterman was on) while I drunk Will's gift of 12 year old single malt scotch. In preparation for his surgery, I volunteered to shave his chest, but he said it wasn't necessary. I explained that you can't be too careful and drew the line at giving him a sponge bath - again, not necessary. We got up at 4:30 to get to the hospital in time so that we could wander around the hospital lost for fifteen minutes and then wait around for another hour.

The procedure he's having is called Carotid Edearterectomy and they do it under local anesthetic, so they can make sure he's still getting enough blood-flow to the brain, but they keep him knocked-out enough so he won't try make jokes or tell "funny" stories. When they put him under with the initial dose of truth serum, I asked him who his favorite son is, and he said me. Enough said. Many people wrote in suggesting I assist with the procedure, ready to toss a junior mint in at a moments notice. Apparently, the surgeons are not as open to help as one might think. Prima Donnas. He's at Ingham Medical in Lansing if you want to stop by and say hi. Don't bring him any Single Malt Scotch, Will already took care of that.

Wow. Bad year to be a Michigan fan. I smiled watching my alma-mater Michigan State defeat Bowling Green and saw Michigan get trounced by Oregon. These stats on ESPN were fun to look at. Since MSU has historically started strong over the past few years, enough to get my hopes up, and then tank in the second half - I need to enjoy this while it lasts.

Nate's team played Hartland today and lost 0-15. The team played really well, but got off to a slow start in the first few minutes when Hartland had a couple of big plays and scored quickly. The team played well after the first five minutes but had a tight time scoring due to a few turn-overs. At least they played better than University of Michigan (but then again, so did the 3rd and 4th graders who played before Nate's team). (This picture resulted in an incomplete catch, and the pass-interference on Nate wasn't called).


Nate had strained his achilles tendon in a scrimmage on Thursday and I didn't think he was going to better by today. After a ton of ice and steady ibuprofen for a couple of days, I was pretty impressed that he was ready to play today. He's got two guys out right now with busted ankles, so keeping everyone healthy is the challenge right now.Nate keeps getting more and more comfortable out there and continues to love it. He's still playing mostly at cornerback but got a chance to play on offense today as well for the first time, playing tight-end.

You can see the rest of the pictures here from the team blog.

I received a large packet in the mail label abeled "Human Rights Campaign - Talk About It". I opened it up to find a collection of balloons, pamphlets, stickers and posters for National Coming Out Day. One of my wonderful friends must know something I don't know and was kind enough to sign up me up for a whole set of resource materials to help celebrate this day. What thoughtful friends I have. I should be on all sorts of great mailing lists now. On the positive side, I have a ton of stickers I can post on my friends cars.

Anyone want to fess up to this?

Update: Surprise, surprise. It was Jon. Wonder what sites he was surfing to come across the order form for this stuff.

There is now officially a site for everything in the world. This is a fascinating site devoted to things the world that use "quotation marks" incorrectly.

In some circles, my friend Bill is known as The Sausage King of Chicago. The man loves sausage. Bill was adamant that I try his sausage dish last night. My friend Greg loves the sausage as well and was also trying to force feed me.


The three of us went out to dinner last night with a group of co-workers as a going away party last night for Greg. (He's not leaving the company, just the account that we're on). Bill, Greg and I have worked together for a good part of the past ten years and have a blast together whenever we travel.

Amanda Eileen Haase was born at 8:48 am September 5, 2007 to our good friends Ted and Sherry Haase. She is 7 lbs 13 oz and 19 inches long. Thankfully she only has her father's hair, yet her mother's looks, personality, demeanor and temper. Ted will not let her date until after she has graduated from college. Her big brother Ethan is thrilled to have a baby sister to look after. He'll be bossing her around in no time, if he's anything like his Dad (which we're praying he isn't).

I asked Ted if he'd thought through all of the nicknames with Amanda (I'm looking for Amanda Hug-n-kiss) and he hadn't. Sad.

Our friend Sherry Haase is delivering their baby today. Ted, her husband, I'm sure, has been harassing the doctors to no end. If they're smart, they'll drug him.

This is kind of cool. One of my friends brother, Todd (now Toed) is an artist out in LA. I haven't seen him since my friends and I road tripped out to LA via Arizona State University 17 years ago. My brother Dan turned me on to his web site, which I was surfing around this evening.

He has some pretty amazing animation, including this work he did for the movie Donnie Darko, the animation for the Tool video Sober and some other 3D Animation for Jon's favorite kids show Jay Jay the Jet

We went out with the Niemis, Schult's and Girards for Cathie's birthday. These three girls are some of Cathie's closest friends. They were kind enough to get her a valour-blue jump suit that smelled like old people along with a matching set of clip-on earrings. We went to the Zuki Lake tavern and then to Barnstormers and then over to the Rhino Pub. The latter two were deserted. You can see from the picture below that we had a lot of fun. The girls danced while the guys played Golden Tee and talked about our love for dance. Eli some how made his way into 80%of the pictures. Kind of an odd one of him standing behind Mark.

My brother-in-law Ed is a huge Michigan fan. For a while, he'd even lured my son over the dark side. Prior to the Michigan game on Saturday, he sent me this video from his cell phone. He must have known that he was about to make history and witness what is now being called The Greatest Upset in History. Living in Ohio, I'm sure Ed will hear a lot about this. I pity the Michigan fans like Ed who had to be there and watch their team's season crumble before their eyes. Being the loyal fans that they are, everyone around here is asking for Coach Lloyd Carr's head on a platter already.

I was flipping between games, watching Michigan State up 42-0 in the first quarter. My alma-mater is expected to finish 10th in the Big Ten, yet already we're up on Michigan in the standings.

My did a fantastic job cooking the pork tenderloin today. Instead of cooking the moisture out, he took it off at the right time and it was delicious.

On her way out, Monaca thanked my Dad;
"Thank you for the best pork ever."

My mom collected teapots from around the world with almost 405 total. As much as my dad loves teapots, he was redistributing them with the family today. All of the girls, and Stephen and Gabe chose teapots for themselves. Stephen chose this one because of his love for vegtables. Gabe chose his because of his love for tea parties.

The girls (and my Dad) sat around looking through Monaca's wedding scrapbook. This is a book of pictures of pictures of ideas she wants for her wedding. Will LOVES looking at this book. The men chose instead to shove firecrackers up our butts and squat over an hibachi.

Will and Monaca were very, very late today to my Dad's labor day party. Will very much appreciated the 27 calls he received on the way, including the one telling him that my dad required a bottle of 18 year old single malt scotch to make up for it (pictured here).

We were going through a collection of papers my Mom had saved over the years. We came across this letter from Supreme Court Judge Clarance Thomas. I'm pretty sure it had a pubic hair on it. (I thought this was so funny I told this same joke 5 times)

Cathie's Mom was selected as part of a joint MSU/LCC overseas teaching program in Japan. She's in her second week and she's setup a blog to capture some of her thoughts as she's learning the culture. What a cool thing to live in another country, immersed in another culture for three months. Cathie's Dad is heading over in for a 2 week visit as well.

You can find her blog here.

Em and Maddie kept coming down tonight after they'd already been tucked in. They were told that the next time they came down they'd get a spanking. 20 minutes later Em came down with a big 'ol grin on her face and a book shoved down the back of her pants.

I'd told the kids the story of how I'd done something similar to my Dad when I was a kid, except my Dad didn't know about the book before he'd given the spanking - and he used his bare hand. I probably shouldn't share the stories of how I tried to rappel out my window as a kid using a rope attached to my dresser.

Our Church's Junior High youth group stuff started up today. We've got a bunch of new sixth graders coming in, which is a blast. I think sixth grade is one of my favorite ages because they're so ackward at that age and so diverse int heir maturity and so honest about things. There such an easy group hang out with because a lot of what they want is simply to know that they're valued. (By the way, I think Noel designed the logo on the left about 12 years ago... Or maybe it was a friend of his)

On Sundays we have a pretty informal time. During Joe's message we break out and meet in a medium size group. We spend time checking in on what's going on, what movies we've seen and often have a question of the day (today's was an easy one: "What's your favorite cereal") and give the kids a chance to introduce themselves. We do a lot of laughing, connecting and occasionally learn some stuff - not all bible related. Today we got on the subject of how soy products give you really bad gas and talked about the time where John F. Kennedy told Germany that they are all Jelly Donuts. We also touched on the story where the prophet Elisha had God maul a bunch of kids for making fun of his bald head. (Seriously, it's in the bible in 2 Kings 2). The composition of this group is so cool. Two of the kids in the group I've known since the day they were born and a couple others since they were a few years old. Some of the kids who sat in this same circle with me in sixth grade come back and hang as well. The high schoolers come with us periodically and are so cool to the junior high kids, which seems to be such a rarity in the real world and such a cool thing to witness first hand.

You may sense my excitement as you're reading this. I just noticed it. Frankly, it took me by surprise. I've been so busy in life with work stuff and family stuff that Fusion starting up took me by surprise. I've been doing junior high youth ministry for about 12 years. I started doing it with a group of parents: Brad, Sue and Nicki - all who became very close friends of mine. Our leaders now consist of our old youth group kids, which I love. They still come to church and sit in the circle. Today we spent a few minutes laughing about what they were like in sixth grade, which was funny for the new sixth graders to hear about these college students being equally weird way back when.

My big worry when I turned 30 was that I wouldn't be relevant to kids any more because I'd be old. I'm 36 and finding that it's much more about liking them then it is about being cool and having the right facial hair. I don't have the same time for it that I used to, but I still love doing junior high youth ministry as much or more than I ever have. It's a very cool thing to be in that zone where you know that God has created you for, and you just sense it and get excited about it.

Have you ever had one of those where all of the elements are just right and you want to lock it in your brain like a snapshot? This was one of those moments. We went out last night to celebrate Cathie's 37th birthday with the Girards, Niemis and Schultzs. We went to the Zuki Lake Tavern for dinner and setup on the upper deck. The weather was prefect, it smelled like the lake, we were laughing and having a great time, Eli and I were splitting a bucket of ice cold Corona beers and Jimmy Buffett's Son of a Son of a Sailor was playing. It was a perfect summer day.

It was a tough game today. The defense played alright, but the offense just couldn't get things going. The only score was a touchdown run-back on a kick-return. Nate's getting more and more comfortable out there and understanding his position. The coach his the new kids playing D-Back positions, with Nate playing corner. The downside is that he rotates with a few guys and doesn't get a ton of playing time. Talking to the other parents, this is pretty normal for the first few games for new kids. Nate wants to see more action, and I'm sure he will as the season progresses. He continues to love playing. You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Nate's team played Milford today, losing 12 to 6. My Dad and our friend Tiffany came to watch Nate play.

Today is Cathie's 37th birthday. Here are a few things you don't know about my wife:

1. Cathie grew up in the hood of Lansing on Michigan Ave, a street known for prostitution and drugs.
2. Cathie and I started dating 18 years ago. On one of our first un-official dates, I picked her up from MSU to take her to church and then to breakfast afterwards. She ordered the most expensive orange juice EVER and I didn't have enough money to pay for the bill. She ended up paying.
   
3. Cathie thinks black people are funnier than white people. It may sound like reverse discrimination, but a white man and a black man could tell the same joke and Cathie would only laugh at the black man's joke. Why can't we all just get along?
   
4. Cathie likes to come up with special abbreviations for her favorite drinks. "White Zin" is one of these secret-codes.
   
5. Cathie's favorite type of music is hip-hop. She listens to it in the car when the kids aren't around. She also loves to go out dancing with her friends. Me, not so much.
   
6. While we were dating, Cathie used to borrow my parents cars and somehow she ended up breaking them.
7. Cathie has had more hair styles than any person I know. Some of these styles have not been good to her.
   
8. Few people know that Cathie has a very similar sense of humor to me. She often whispers the funniest stuff to me and I'm just the one to say it out loud.
9. Cathie has chosen to spell her name with the "ie" at the end just to be a pain in everyone's butt. You'll never see someone angrier than when Cathie gets a letter or e-mail with someone spelling her name "Cathy".
   
10. Regardless of how she looks in this picture, I'm more in love with Cathie and think she's even more beautiful than the day I met her.