Gaylord - Sunday Afternoon

We got up around 8 and after checking the weather report decided to go golfing. Glenn and John hadn't brought clubs, so they got this nice set of loaners for free. Nice clubs, eh?

Someone ahead of us was playing at a really, really slow pace. It took us 3 1/2 hours to play 9 holes.

I'm not a good golfer. Not at all. It's a big part of why I don't do it. I walk away hating myself half the time after paying a lot of money. I golfed with John and Ron while Bill, Todd and Glenn golfed together. Even after breaking us up into the good group and the suck group, I was still at the low end of the ranking.

Todd had brought about 300 of these little jello treats, so we left some for our team behind us.

They were appreciated, as you can see by Glenn, Todd and Bill's toast (Bill is the real tiny guy on the right).

Bill showed us that he's the next tiger woods. After playing for 5+ hours and only making it to the 13th hole, we bailed and decided we should hit the lake. Glenn started off with the kneeboard, I hit the wakeboard and Bill...

showed us what it really means to go big... or go home.

Up North

I met up with Todd Hawley about noon and we headed up north. We picked up Glenn Anderson on the way up at the Flint airport (all the way up from Alabama), and got into Gaylord around 3:30 - just in time to watch the Michigan/Notre Dame game. We met Bill Belanger up at the Big Buck Brewery, watched the first half and then headed over to Bill's cottage.

Todd brought up a game called Cornhole (big in Nebraska apparently) which is basically throwing beanbags into a hole, and he and Glenn whooped Bill and I (or cornholed us?) in both games. Bill and I then showed them some Michigan Hospitality, smoking them both in a game called Moosetracks, which is all about sliding washers into a hole.

Bill is a master griller, and had been cooking a huge beef brisket all day long. Ron Reyhl picked up John Holzemer from the airport, flying in from the San Francisco area. We ate late and then hung around the fire for a while before we played poker into the night. Newton Peters and Mike Doyle are joining us up here tomorrow. Newton's flying in from Florida, Doyle's driving in from Clarkston. Hawley snores like a freaking beast. I was up most of the night with Todd sleeping in the bunk next to mine, snoring like a hog. I contemplated chucking stuff at his head, but the only thing I had was my pillow - and a few times I thought about sacrificing it for 5 minutes of quiet.

Friday

Cathie and I went out on a date tonight. We went to a The Melting Pot, a Fondue restaurant in Novi for dinner and then we went to Wal-Mart. Why Walmart? To get a deck of cards. While we were in the parking lot another driver hit our van while she was backing out and she scraped up the side of the car and bumper nicely. We went in, got our cards and then headed over to Starbucks to get a coffee and play gin rummy. Cathie is the champion of the universe, beating me 4 games out of 7.

We came back and our babysitter showed me her new Mac Power book. It's got a built in camera and a great feature that lets you apply all sorts of great affects on the fly. Did I stop at just one? Oh no. I took 12.

I'm heading up north tomorrow with a group of guys from work. Guys are flying in from as far away as California to hang out. We're going to go wakeboarding (cold), fishing and golf.

Tags: Powerbook, Walmart, Novi, Gaylord, California, Wakeboarding

Wow

Back a while ago in Orlando I road on this same slingshot ride. I didn't have quite the same reaction as the kid on the right.

Golden Tee Golf Game

I could truly be happy with one of these Golden Tee Home Golf Games.

Flag Football

I'm coaching flag football again this year. I'm coaching with 3 other dads in the neighborhood, all of us with sons on the team. We had a coaches meeting last night and then went out to the South Lyon Hotel to talk coaching strategy over a few beers. None of us are great football players or coaches, but we all want the kids to have fun and learn the game. The one thing I have going for me is that Will used to room with a guy who played football at Michigan State (or so he tells us all on a daily basis). Apparently, there's no organized sports-betting associated with this league - and that's not a good question to ask at the coaches meeting.

Bleeding Edge Technology

When I originally installed Windows Vista on my desktop, it warned me that if I didn't put the license key in at the beginning, I could be hosing myself in a big way and have to re-install. Whatever. I went to try and add a license key yesterday and found that there's a reason it's called a "Release Candidate" and not a full-release. The upgrade functionality didn't quite work as advertised, so I needed to reinstall the whole system. Naturally, I had just gotten the system to a point where it was working beautifully.

Vista has a new feature that allows you to supposedly transfer a machine's profile exactly - including users, software, data, settings - everything - and drop it into a new machine flawlessly. It lets you do this out to external hard drives, over a network over even over the internet. Potentially cool feature. The exporting part worked great, but it crapped out when I went to pull it into the new install. Microsoft's "Solution Finder" came back explaining that the feature just didn't work and that it would work on the full release. Nice solution.

Tags: Windows Vista, License Key, Reinstall

Tailgating

While we were tailgating at the Buffett Concert, we cooked out chicken, brats and grilled some onions and peppers to go top of them. The Grill was sitting right below Brad's feet, in front of my car. Wow, does my car smell bad now. Not like smoke, which I could deal with, but like a giant cooked green pepper, which isn't as pleasant as you'd think.

Calling All Kids

We have a big wooded lot behind our house that over the past few years has slowly been torn down and is being developed into houses. Over the past 6 years we've lived here, our kids have built forts, played games and tracked animals back there. Putting Madeline to bed tonight, I came across this flyer that she and her friend Julie put together to rally kids to not have the forest torn down:

Calling All Kids!!
Kids, we need your help! Here's a question: Do you want Nature Well I know that I sure want nature. If the workers make a lot of houses then we won't have room to make cool forts and stuff like that. Please make signs and banners for us. And here are some reasons I think we should keep nature:
1. You can build cool forts
2. Animals live there! Workers are destroying animals habitats!
3. The workers ruin nature
4. We can't play back there any more.
5. Keep the trees adn buses and that stuff!

Please help us!

Seger

I picked up the new Bob Seger album Face the Promise off iTunes yesterday and I like it. I'm more excited about his potential upcoming tour. When I was a kid, we would go and visit my Grandma in Detroit and I'd spend time with my Uncle Bill, who I idolized. I'd sit next to him in church, at dinner, at family events and ride with him in his car any chance I got (he started teaching me to drive when I was 12). When we'd get in his car, he would introduce me to all kinds of music, including Bob Seger's music. One of the first albums he gave me was Seger's Live Bullet (which IMHO is the greatest live album of all time), especially the version of Turn the Page. Everytime I hear the song, it reminds me of my Uncle. Toward the end of his life as he was getting sicker and sicker, I wanted to go to a Bob Seger concert with him. Seger never toured, but I'm not going to miss the upcoming tour.

Tags: Bob Seger, Live Bullet, Face the Promise, iTunes, Tour

Nonulcer stomach pain - MayoClinic.com

Nate had his Dr's appointment today with the pediatric gastroenterologist and after now that they think they've cleared up all of the ulcers, they believe it's a chronic thing, something called
Nonulcer stomach pain.

Nonulcer stomach pain is a common, sometimes long-lasting (chronic) disorder of the upper gastrointestinal system, which includes your esophagus and first part of your small intestine (duodenum) as well as your stomach. The disorder can cause signs and symptoms that resemble those of a peptic ulcer, such as pain or discomfort in your upper abdomen, often accompanied by bloating, belching and nausea.

The pain itself starts and then triggers some pretty bad headaches from there. The Treatment (if you look at the list, we've done all of them except this one) is a low-dose antidepressant that will help address the pain:

Tricyclic antidepressants and drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), taken in low doses, may help inhibit the activity of neurons that control the role of the intestines in decreasing pain. Your doctor may suggest antidepressants such as imipramine (Tofranil) and amitriptyline. SSRIs such as fluoxetine (Prozac, Sarafem) or paroxetine (Paxil) also may be helpful.

Online Bus Route

It's common knowledge that U of M doesn't turn out the sharpest knives in the drawer and that if a smart one does stumble out somehow, that they'll be sure and let you know. It's also a well known fact that MSU's computer science program is far superior to U of M's (one of the top ranked in the country) and routinely turns out useful stuff to make the world a better place. (Full Disclosure: I got my undergrad in Computer Science from MSU. Go Figure).

All that aside, I have to give Kudos to this online bus map that U of M developed. It uses Google maps, and shows the buses real-time on the map along with the various routes. Very cool.

Parrottheads

Last night Eli, Bob, Brad and I went to see Jimmy Buffett at DTE Music Theatre, thanks to Bob for hooking us up with fantastic and untouchable seats to a show that sold out in 10 minutes. The place was amazing to see. There were Parrottheads everywhere. This thing is really like a yuppie Grateful Dead Concert. People had giant setups including full tiki huts and bars and decorated their mobile homes and buses with fins, sharks and hula skirts. People were dressed in the most amazing grass skirts, coconut tops, hats and full shark suits.


The forecast had been rain all week and we knew it going in, so we were prepared. We got there early, setup a tent and got the grill fired up. We kicked back and grilled out as the rain started to come down... and come down.. and come down. The tent we'd setup was 20 feet away from the giant bus/motor home above. As the rain came down harder, we kept moving further from the edges of the tent and quarters got tighter and tighter. As we stood there under the tent, the people in the giant motor home waved for us join them inside. We came into their palatial bus, which was huge and decked out with everything you would need. They invited us to join them for drinks and food and we ended up hanging out with them for a while talking. This is the hospitality of the Parrottheads.

DTE is on a giant hill with a big pavilion. The hill was a mudslide and the rain just kept coming down harder and harder. Thankfully we were in the pavilion. The concert was fantastic. Jimmy played for 2 1/2 hours straight and the rain didn't damper the fans spirit.

It took us about 2 1/2+ hours to get home once we got home, with 1 1/2 hours of that coming from getting out of the parking lot.

Here's some video footage from the concert last night:

Tags: Jimmy Buffett, Parrottheads, DTE

Amazon Digital Video

Amazon just released their new digital video download capability called unbox, so I figured I'd give it a try. I went to download a TV show on my mac, which I use for my home audio/video, and found it's not yet supported. The prices are similar to iTunes, but they offer rental for movies at a much cheaper price. The downside is that they don't support iTunes DRM, so there's no taking the video and putting it on your iPod. Yet.

If I've learned nothing (TE) it's that Amazon likes to start small and grow from there if an idea works. I would guess that a huge number of the early adopters of downloadable digital video are iTunes/iPod users and that they'll have to figure it out sooner or later. The one thing I don't get in the pricing for any downloadable video in general is the price point. Shouldn't it be a significant savings if I'm buying something digital instead of the physical disc and box? Even more so with a rental. Paying $4 to rent a movie digitally for 24 hours, when I can go to Blockbuster and rent it cheaper for longer doesn't seem to make sense. Once Amazon supports the mac/iPod I'll give this a try again. I read that Apple is holding out for a $9.99 price point for library movies and $14.99 for new releases.

Tags: unbox, itunes, amazon, osx, mac

Update on Nate

Back in July Nate had a when Nate had his latest endoscopic procedure on his stomach, we thought they'd figured out the problem. It doesn't look like it's gotten better. It seemed to be better for a while, but it's gotten bad again. Yesterday, Nate was curled up on the floor from stomach pains and today I had to come in and bring him medicine at school to help him out. Nate's got another doctor's appointment on Wednesday and we're hoping they've got some good ideas. The specialist we go to (Dr. Belknap) is great when we're at the office (out in Troy), but they suck at communicating in every form: calling you back, letting you know what's going on or talking to you on the phone.

Tags: H. Pylori Ulcer, pediatric Gastroenterology specialist, Belknap

Family Guy Quote

Old Lady (To Peter): "You're a monster."

Peter: "You know what was a monster? Frampton Comes Alive, 1976. Is there anyone you knew who didn't have that record? I don't think so."

Tags: Family Guy, Peter, Frampton

Xerox Spans the Globe with Three New Imaging Services Centers

Very few people I know care what I do for for a living or can describe it very well. In the big scheme of things, it's not all that important or interesting to many, but I love my job, the people I work with with and the company I work for. This recent press release on Xerox Imaging gives some insight into some of the stuff I've been working on over the past 6 months in the new role I'm in:

Xerox Global Services also is now offering imaging services on-site at customer locations, and off-site at existing scanning locations. With on-site services, Xerox installs the necessary scanning equipment and software at a customer location and then manages the scanning process, enabling customers to scan hardcopy documents that can't leave the premises to be scanned directly into their own digital repository or to a secure Xerox repository. Xerox can also send customers' documents to a nearby scanning location, freeing the customer from having to send their critical documents long distances.

Tags: xerox global services, xerox, imaging

Bold CEOs

Interesting article on the changing role of CEOs. As I've said before, I'm a big fan of our CEO, Anne Mulcahy, and being in the strategy role I'm in now, it's interesting to be involved in some of the behind the scenes thinking on how we grow organically and through acquisition. (Note Anne's colorful language below):

Real growth requires placing big bets that probably won't pay off until far into the future - and today's impatient culture offers little incentive. What practically killed Xerox (Charts) was its leaders' resistance to making the technological leap from analog copying to digital, which was almost guaranteed (as most such changes are) to cut margins.

By the time they were finally forced to, their business was in free fall. The company was eventually charged with improperly accelerating revenues and overstating earnings. (It settled without admitting wrongdoing and paid a $10 million fine.)

"You have to change when you're at the top of your game in terms of profit," says Mulcahy, who cleaned up the mess, made the changes to digital and color, and is now trying to jump-start revenue.

"It's hard to do. Your business looks its best. Your margins are at their best. All that makes your job easier. Then you're like, 'Oh, shit, here we go again.' You've got to jump into that risk pool, and once again you're in this mode of 'You know, this could fail.' "

Tags: Anne Mulcahy, Xerox

eBible Site

eBible.com has released a very cool new Web 2.0 interface that is very cool. It's got a million options and you almost wouldn't know you're using it in a browser. You can click on a verse and have it show you on the same screen all of the commentary and x-references associated with it as well as bookmark the verse. You can compare multiple versions side-by-side . I normally use biblegateway.com, but after using this initially, I think I like it more.

Tags: ebible.com, biblegateway.com

The TIre Swing

Emily loves the tire swing we've put in our back yard. She has me push her on it just about every day and she has no fear on the thing. When Kevin and I first installed the swing, the kids were small enough to fit inside the giant tire. They can still kind of fit into it, but they really like riding on top of this. When pushed to the full extent, it puts her about 15+ feet in the air. You gotta dig Emily's boots on the second picture.

PC Pro: News: Xerox reveals transient documents

Interesting article on Xerox's new transient document technology that disappears over time.

Tags: Xerox, Transient Document

mySpace

A ton of the kids in my youth group are on mySpace, so a while back I setup an account to stay connected with them and use the technology enough to be able to intelligently talk to parents about what's going on. At least I've got 38 friends. My wife, siblings and some friends setup profiles a while back and we've all added each other, but haven't done much with it.

This SNL video which pretty much sums up how the majority of mySpace is used by adults:

Tags: myspace, youth group

Saturday

On Saturday we headed to Dewitt to visit family. We went to my parents house where Jon, Beth and Libby were visiting.

Will came over as well for lunch and we hung out. Each of my kids got a chance to spend some time one-on-one with my Mom. I was there in the room with each of them as she sat there and told each of them their story from the time she found out they were born, to being at the hospital when they were born, to how special they are to her right now. They loved the one-on-one time with her.

We went over to Cathie's parents for a while and hung out while the kids swam in the freezing cold air and cold pool, while Cathie's Dad and I hung out and watched the State game.

We headed over to Eli & Dana's for Makenna's one year birthday. Their was a huge food spread (including phenomenal smoked beer-butt chicken) and the kids played with each other as the adults hung out. We played poker later which came down to Dana's sister (not Eli, not Dana's brother-in-law, but her sister) and I and split the pot (for the record, I had her beat 5:1 in chips and split the pot to let the last of the people play again). It was a fun party and a great way to cap off the summer.

The Grand Food Alley

We watched the Niemi kids today after church and the girls decided to create their own restaurant, called "The Grand Food Alley", kinda like "The Grand Finale". Get it? They had their own menu, setup a table, and Cathie "enjoyed" their smoothies and peanut butter sandwiches. She tried to give me the chance to "enjoy" them as well, but I had just brushed my teeth (about 7 hours ago) and figured it just wouldn't taste good.

System Up and Ready

I've got Windows Vista all up and running on my system, including all of my Web services, and the Kurt Family Photo Gallery. Getting Apache, PHP, Perl and mySQL up and going were a little painful with the new extreme security measure that Windows takes. In trying to make windows more immune from Spyware and viruses, they've got the environment locked down tightly, which is nice, but all of the warning messages and approvals

I've got all of my hardware going - all without having to download any custom drivers. I'm continuing to learn some of the nuances of the OS, but so far I like it a lot. On this system, I'm not able to access some of the cooler functionality that goes with Vista. The system ranks your hardware and figures out what you can do and what you can't accordingly. The OS is designed to be very dynamic, letting you upgrade the OS on the fly and buy new add-ons very easily. In terms of compatibility, I haven't found anything that I can't run yet except for anti-virus applications for XP.

Great Quote

Saw this in Shinn's Youth Leader Meeting training today:

The greatest Christian Revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there.
--Phillip Yancy

Walk a mile in these shoes

I love my Birkenstock sandals. I've been wearing them for a lotta years. My latest pair I had for five years and I was told that they'd outlived their life expectancy. The arches had flattened out completely and I'd worth through the rubber on the bottom all the way to the cork. I ended up buying a new pair on Amazon (Thanks for expediting the order TE). I got a great deal on them, but I was still a little hesitant to buy shoes online. I'll buy just about anything else, but shoes seem like something you really want to test drive in the stores first. I probably should have gone some where and tried them on first, but I got them, they fit, and I'm happy. Nothing like walking around with a new pair of shoes to make your day. My wife is tired of hearing about how much I like them. It's her opinion that I'm spending way too much time talking about a simple pair of shoes. She just doesn't understand.

PS2 is Busted

Our PS2 is is dead. Anyone want to sell me theirs? I hate to buy another with the PS3 coming out soon, but it sounds like they're going to be scarce, even if they do come out around Christmas time. The Nintendo Wii should be out October 2nd, and looks like a good potential choice as well. Anyone got a used PS2 to sell?

Tags: PS2, PS3, Playstation, Used

Practical Joke

We had a Youth Group leaders meeting after church today and two of our leaders, Matt and Zach, were telling me a story about a joke one played on the other. The two of them work together and these guys have been friends since sixth grade and have been in my youth group since then. Anyways, at work one day, Zach made a sign saying "Allah is Fake" and put it on the back of Matt's car. Matt drove around with this for three days before he realized this. Luckily, Matt was never pummeled. This story came up after we'd watched this video from The Daily Show. Later in the day, Mark shared this homeland security video with me, which seemed appropriate.

My Mom

Thanks so much for all of your prayers for my Mom. They released her from the hospital. My Mom is tough and always an optimist no matter how bad things are in the moment. I got a chance to hang out with her this morning at the hospital and we're heading over there for lunch tomorrow. Please keep praying that God would help her with the pain and give her what she needs to make it through the triple-threat chemo treatment she's doing right now, which is some hardcore stuff. My Dad does an amazing job of taking care of my Mom - loving her and serving her in every way he can. Please pray for him that God continues to give him strength and peace.

And the Jester sang for the King and Queen.....

....in a coat he'd borrowed from James Dean? I went up to our church-wide garage sale today and Jess (suprising, huh) found this outfit, complete with pointy gold shoes. Apparently all the good stuff was gone early in the day - and this outfit wasn't considered "good stuff".

My Mom

Please pray for my Mom. She was admitted to the hospital tonight. Thank you.

Every cloud has a silver lining

I have my file server all up and running. It's been clensed and I've weeded out any software that I didn't own so I could have a clean conscience to go with my clean machine. The good news in all of this is that I caught one of the drives before it completely died and I was able to get everything back where it should be.

I took one of the empty drives and I'm in the process of installing Windows Vista RC1 to see if my machine can handle it. I've heard it's pretty stable and from everything I've seen it looks very slick. The new office 2007 suite won't work on it yet, and I have no idea if my other application services will work in the Vista environment.

So far, I've got it up and going and it seems to run reasonably well with the hardware and software I've got. The interface is great, the new security is great, and it's much more of an OSX based paradigm.

Tags: Windows Vista RC1

Dave Barry Quote

"I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me."
-Dave Barry

I'm not saying I had anything to do with it, but last month while I was at the Greater Seattle Classic I talked to Alan Mulally, President of Boeing. He's now the CEO of Ford. Coincidence? I think not.

Sigh of Relief

It looks like my drive is not in fact wiped. It's dead, but the one that's dead is the one that I'm okay with being dead. I still have to reload my system, but I was able to pull all the useful data off it before I formatted it. I love the feel of a nice, fresh system. It's similar to the way my brother Jon describes that he feels after his colon hydrotherapy.

Crud

I couldn't get the drive to reload on my server, so I pulled the drive out and did a low-level format on it. I've got this sinking feeling in my stomach right now that I might not have pulled the right drive out. I'm formatting it and loading windows on it right now, but if I'm right (and I hope I'm not) I may have formatted my data drive. I had recently reset my backup and was waiting for a new backup set to be created overnight. I have my work documents backed up and I have most of my digital pictures backed up, but there's a bunch of stuff that'll be lost. Crud. I'll know in about 30 minutes.

Labor Day Hulk Glove Battle

A few years back my brother Jon got some of the kids these big hulk gloves that the kids could use to fight. What Jon meant for evil the kids have turned into something fun. On Labor Day, the kids brought them out and the battle ensued. Will and Monaca even used them to settle some of the pre-martial issues.

File Server is Hosed

My file server at home is hosed. I've had a big 'ol Compaq system that's acted as an application and file server running everything for my household: Photo Albums, Music, Video, Web Galleries, FTP, Torrent, etc and it's not booting. Normally I re-load my systems every year or so to clean them up, but this one is going on two years just because of it's shear complexity.

Today I couldn't boot it. It died last time I started it up, but I booted into the recovery console, rebuild the MBR and boot sector, and it seemed to start up fine. Not this time. I couldn't get it to start up to save it's life, no matter what tricks I tried.

I ended up using Bart's Preinstalled Environment, which uses your XP CD to build out a CD bootable installation of XP that lets you start up your system, mount your drives, map your network drives and recover any data you need. I thought I just had a bunch of bad sectors on the drive, and hopefully after fixing them, I could get this machine up and going. Doesn't look like it'll be that easy.

I really need to re-load it, but it's just too much of a pain and I don't have the time at this point. As my Grandpa used to say, "If you don't have the time to do a job right the first time, when will you have time to do the job right the second time?"

iMovie Blows

People can complain all they want about the Microsoft platform being unstable, but I've been very unimpressed at the quality of some of the Mac apps I've used. Don't get me wrong, I think OSX is a superior operating system, but some of the Mac suite of apps are pretty pitiful. Are there bad applications for the PC? Yep. The difference is that there are far fewer apps out there for the mac so you don't have as many options.

I use iMovie from the included iLife '06 suite to do my simple video editing for home movies. On average, during the creation of a home movie, I will have the app either freeze or die 2 or 3 times over the course of 30 minutes. I've had similar luck with other i* applications like iPhoto. iTunes seems to be better of the suite as it rarely craps out.

I'm no mac guru, but help me out here - is this typical of mac applications?

Tags: iMovie, OSX, iLife, iTunes, Mac, Microsoft, Unstable

Great Amazon Reviews

Check out these reviews on Amazon by a guy who hasn't actually read or used any of the materials he's reviewing, like this one:

I have not actually read this book but the author is a former communist who suddenly changed into a conservative. I think if the McCarthy hearings taught us anything, they taught us that you can't trust former communists even if they were communists a long time ago.

Kinda reminds me of some of SNL's Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts.

Tags: Deep Thoughts, Amazon

First Day of School

It's bittersweet, but it's here: The first day of school. The kids are looking forward to getting back to school, but not completely. Nate's in 4th grade, Madeline in 3rd and Emily starts kindergarten two and a half days a week. Emily seems so much younger than when Nate and Maddie started the same grade. Some of the reality set in last night for Em about school and Maddie and Cath sat down and had some girl talk about it. Cathie's not sure what she's going to do with all the spare time (other than wait on me hand and foot as I work out of our home). Maddie and Em had their outfits all laid out last night on their floor just like you'd put it on while Nate figured it out this morning. Today is a half day for them and I'm looking forward to seeing how their first day went.

Labor Day Party

We went over to Susan and Kevin's today for our annual Kurt Labor Day party. My Dad has been taking grilling advice from me and was really able to turn his pork tenderloin recipe up a notch by taking a few suggestions from me. I've been teaching him about the joys of gas grills and indirect heat and he's been a good student.


Kevin took his traditional mid-day nap, so we outfitted Ben with a bowl of frosting and set him down next to Kevin. First Ben covered himself and then he set off to cover Kevin. Kevin didn't budge and was soon covered in chocolate frosting.


We had a few different competitions, including a closest to the pin using Steve-o's new golf clubs (Dan won) and then Dan, Kevin, Will and I played horseshoes. The picture above is me posing with my double-ringer, which almost never happens in horse-shoes. It's the equivalent of a Royal Flush in poker and the odds of someone getting it are 50,000,000:1 against. This is probably God's way of telling me i should go pro. My Mom was feeling up to making it, so we all stopped by afterwards and visited for a few.

You can see the rest of the pictures here at the Kurt Family Photo Gallery.

High School Musical Trip

On the drive down to the Labor Day party today, I sat in the back of the van and Maddie and I watched High School Musical. We've been listening to this soundtrack non-stop in the car, and I'm embarrassed to admit I've gotten kind of attached to it. We turned on the sing-along version so that Maddie and I could entertain the rest of the car with our beautiful voices.

On the way back, Em took a juice box with a straw sticking out of it and pretended it was a cell phone (it does actually kind of look like one). She had pretend conversations, talking to her friends, including other calls coming in via call waiting.

Chicken Fight

We took it easy and hung out as a family yesterday. We picked up some pizza and headed out to the park in Northville. It has a giant playscape set with a million hiding places, perfect for a good game of hide-and-seek.

I'm constantly amazed at how strong Maddie has gotten from gymnastics. She was doing some crazy stuff on the bars there, and Nate didn't stand a chance against her in this chicken-fight.

Beauty in a Tree

I don't get it.

Invincible

Nate and I went to see the movie Invincible yesterday after church - the Football movie about Vince Papale, the Philadelphia Eagle who walked on the team. Great story - Nate and I both enjoyed it.

Song for a Quarter, Part 2

Here's a video outtake from Emily's Song-for-a-Quarter debut at the first time Nate paid to listen.

Cathie's Birthday

Cathie's friends took her out for her birthday last night, which I'm sure was not nearly as much fun as having all the guys at my poker party sing happy birthday to Cathie. They took her to The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant in Novi. Cathie has a great group of friends: Dana, Jen, Lori and Joanne who Cathie is able to have a great time with.

This picture is dying for a caption, something along the lines of... "That's not chocolate fondue!!!" I can't help laughing when I look at this picture... Even after the fifth time seeing it.

Tags: Melting Pot, Fondue, Novi

I sat on the couch today watched the Michigan State v. Idaho game this afternoon. After last year's disappointing season, I've had pretty low expectations this year. They looked pretty decent. Stanton came back looking great and conducting the offense like a Senior. Their defense made some big stops and their kicking didn't suck like last year (5 for 14?). I felt pretty unproductive, but it was a nice way to spend Saturday.

Tags: Michigan State University, Idaho, Drew Stanton

Poker Party

I had a bunch of guys over last night to play poker. Mark Kohne, Bruce Green, my brother Dan, Brad, Bob, Eli, Niemi and my neighbor Terry were all there. We play in my garage in order to smoke cigars and be close to the fridge.

I took a lot of heat for having a poker game on my wife's birthday. It's a long story, but it's not like it seems. The bottom line is that Cathie was okay with it and to top it off, she got to have 8 hour of tune guys sing 'Happy Birthday' to her. Cathie's friend Dana came over with her girls and hung with Cathie and the kids ended up getting to bed around 12:30am when the game was done. We played one long round of tournament style Texas No-Limit Hold 'em, which surprisingly, neither Eli or I won. Normally it's either Eli, Bob or I winning and this time Brad, Eli and Bob ended up in the final three before we called it to move on to the next game. We played dealer's choice for a while and I ended up taking in about $30 in a game of blind-baseball. We always have a great time when we play. Wasn't quite the same without Ted and Will there.

Song for a Quarter?

Emily is out sitting in front of our house, singing for money. As people walk by, she's asking them if they want her to sing a song for a quarter. She came up with this idea all on her own. I think I was her first paying customer.

She later decided to enhance her offering by adding a bowl of pretzels and a half-dead dandelion in a cup. I gave Nate a quarter to go and listen to a song. She did the same song for Nate as she'd done for me, Listen to Your Heart. She knows the chorus - for the most part at least. Here's how it went with Nate:

Tags: Listen to Your Heart

Brilliant Idea

I just talked with a co-worker who's having a baby and asked her if she was going to find out the sex of the child. She's not, but has it in a sealed envelope and is auctioning it off to the family via eBay. A group of co-workers and I are going to bid on the envelope and then dangle the knowledge in front of her for the rest of the pregnancy.

Happy 36th Birthday Cathie

My beautiful wife turns 36 today and the kids and I started her morning off with breakfast in bed, made with lots of little, loving hands. Em helped me with the pancakes, Maddie cut up the Melon and picked the flower. With the large gap in age between my wife and I (9 months) many consider me a "child groom", but my excessive maturity makes up for my lack of years relative to Cathie.

Update: My wife is actually 36, not 35 as this had previously stated. I am 35. Much, much younger than 36.