Thanksgiving Poker Party

We got together last night and played poker at my Dad's house. Cathie's Dad, Ron, and brother Ed, Will, Jon, Dan, Kevin, my Dad and I played. We played tournament style texas-no-limit hold'em. One of the players really blew everyone away with their play and won two of the games that night.

Thursday Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday with the whole family, including Will and Monaca and some of Beth's family: Paul, Laura and Elise We had three different turkeys. My dad had two nice breasts and another whole turkey. These were some of the best turkeys ever.

The girls cooked a feast that was worth of the banquets my Mom used to prepare. We even had the standbys that only one person likes: Cranberry Blob, Green Bean Casserole and Creamed Peas.

We hung out and watched the Lions get destroyed by their old quarterback, Joey. It was a bittersweet thanksgiving as the first holiday without my Mom there.

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

Turkey Bowl

Thursday morning I drove back to participate in the first annual Crossroads TurkeyBowl Football game. It was a beautiful morning: Cool, Crisp, Sunny with a thin cloud cover about 50 feet in the air that refracted the sun beautifully. About 20 of us got up at the crack of dawn to play football at our church property. We had four teams and only some minor injuries. The kids had as much fun as the adults, and got hurt equally. Bruce Green coordinated the whole thing and it was a great tradition to begin.


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

Tags: Crossroads Flag Football

YouMail

While messing with the SimuScribe service I mentioned here, I came across the YouMail service. It's a customizable voice mail service in that it lets you customize your greetings based on who is calling and it lets you listen to your voice mail messages on the web. You can then take the messages and save them as .wav files to your computer. The two services aren't interchangable, so I'm trying YouMail and then SimuScribe.

Tuesday/Wednesday

My Dad came over last night for dinner and we were able to introduce him to Emily's wonderful world of Sequence. This is Emily's favorite game in the world and she can easily play ten games in a row. After my Dad left to pick up Jon and Beth from the airport (they never made it in), our friend Tiffany came over to hang out, talk and watch a movie. Nate had two buddies over for a sleep-over, and they finally called it a night around 2AM. They started out the night with their Nintendo DS's, all in the same room, playing Mario Kart wirelessly, which was funny to see.

This morning we were greeted with breakfast in bed by the girls. It consisted of a newspaper, milk, and two ice cream sundaes. The girls and I sat around watching old family videos from 8 years ago and laughing hard. You could tell they were old because Kevin and Will still had hair and Emma, Lindsey and Nate were all playing ring-around-the-rosie together.

We had a big breakfast later in the morning and I went outside to finish raking the leaves. I'm going to the airport in a few to pick up Jon and Beth, and then we're heading to Dewitt for the double-whammy thanksgiving at my Dad's house tomorrow for Thanksgiving. My Mom would always go all out in cooking and this will be our first holiday as a family without her. It'll be sad in parts, but good to see everyone. On Friday, we're having another big Thanksgiving at Cathie's parents, right down the street from my Dad's house.

Ballroom Dancing

I had the chance to teach Maddie some of what I learned from my ballroom dancing classes. I'm still not very good. I figure we'll be able to really show off when it comes to the next Daddy-Daughter dance.

SimulScribe

This is kind of cool technology called SimulScribe. It will transcribe the voice mails on your cell phone and send them to you via e-mail. They've got a 1 month free trial that I'm checking out, but otherwise it's $.25/message. If you add up the amount of cell minutes you spend checking them and pain of writing stuff down, it seems like a cool feature that's not quite as expensive, especially if your cell phone supports e-mail like mine does. I'll let you know how it works.

Brad's Two Bucks

I just got this picture from my friend Brad, who sadly enough, has no blog. He shot two big bucks hunting last week up north and apparently picked up a lovely orange jacket and flannel pajamas to to celebrate the event. Whenever hunting season starts, Brad likes to grow a beard in honor of his namesake Blue from the movie Old School:

The likeness is uncanny, don't you think?

Tags: blue, old school, deer hunting

Cheat Sheet

Nerdy? Sure. Just showing off? Maybe. Everything I learned in Computer Science is summed up in this document. This is the Greatest cheat sheet ever for Computer Science.

Fantasy Football

I made some great additions to my team last week in Fantasy football. I picked up Campbell, Evans and Cleveland's defense. What I didn't do actually pick the correct people to play. I left 78 points on the bench, giving me a potential of 161 points. As Eli said, "You're a great GM. Bad coach."

Conversation with Nate

Nate: "Dad, check this out. I lost another tooth."
Me: "Did they pull it out at the dentists office?"
Nate:"No, I pulled it myself."
Me: "Did they let you pull it out"
Nate: "When they numbed my mouth for the cavity, I couldn't feel anything, so I pulled it."
Me: "So it was loose enough to yank on your own?"
Cathie: "He pulled it out when they left the room. The hygienist said it still had a few weeks, but Nate figured just because he couldn't feel the pain, it was ready to go."
Me: "Nice."

Happy Birthday Jon

Today is my brother Jon's 32nd birthday. Here are 10 fun facts about Jon:

1. Jon has a poop-stain shaped birth-mark on his right butt-cheek. (This picture was taken during one of his wife Beth's favorite Christmas memories, entitled "Jon was sloshed on Xmas Eve")
2. Jon has always been one of my closest friends. He was the best man in my wedding and I was the best man in his wedding.
3. Jon was named after Jonathan in the bible, King David's friend that he "loved like a brother". (Ironic, huh? Jon actually is my brother.)
4. Jon once gave Madeline a bloody nose and paid her $10 to pretend that Jon hadn't done it.
5. Jon married far above himself with his beautiful, smart and kind wife Beth. She is the Ying to his Yang.
6. When I accidentally set off a large amount of fireworks in my room, Jon helped me with the clean-up. We took down the burnt curtains, cut out the burnt carpeting and rearranged the furniture to try and cover it all up.
7. When I would get in trouble as a kid, Jon would often plead my case to get me out of my punishment, as my consigliere.
8. Jon loves wieners more than any man I know. He has two.
   
9. Jon loves to read almost as much as he likes to watch TV. He and I have pretty much the same taste in books.
   
10. Jon is one of the funniest people I know. He cracks me up. He is the self-proclaimed lyrical gangster.
    

Lesson Learned

Hypothetically speaking, if a kid comes to your youth group and refers to himself as "junior", don't ask him what his first name is. It could be "Flem" and he might have to tell you that in front of a large group of kids, and you could (in disbelief) ask him what his first name is again, thinking he'd told you his last name (Deep down, I wanted to believe that a parent would not give their kid the first name of Flem). To top it off, he could be a fourth generation "Flem". Do parents not think of this before naming their kids? Maybe they were just big fans of the Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue.

National Losers

For the big game yesterday, a bunch of us from church went up to the Youth Room at our church property to watch the game. It's pretty nicely decked out - with two big video screens (one for the game, one for XBox) couches all over and Bob Ray's grilling. The whole clan of Ray's boys were there, including Joe, who you see duct taped above. The duct tape started as a threat if Joe didn't quiet down. Joe was cracking me up the whole time between his climbing around and trying to get me to tape up his brothers, himself, and giving him a foot slapping. He would climb up on the couch with me, watching the game for 30 seconds and then bounce off the walls som emore. I can't help but smile when Joe's around.

At half time we played football outside - the old guys vs. the young guys. I'm old enough now to be in the "old guy" category. Right off the bat, we figured we couldn't beat them on speed alone, so we went to a zone defense and ended up smoking them - 21 to 7.

Cathie went to a girl's poker party yesterday. One of the guys in neighborhood threw a birthday part for his wife and invited a bunch of other wives in the neighborhood and he taught them all how to play poker. Following in my footsteps, Cathie ended up winning some money. I think Eli would actually stand a good chance of winning for once against this group of girls.

Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand...

Nate and I sat around this morning and watched the movie Cool Hand Luke. Aside from being a great movie with one of the best titular lines in the world:

Dragline: Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me - with nothin'.
Luke: Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.

along with this:

Captain, Road Prison 36: What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.

the egg eating contest and the fist fight, and the capstone:

Dragline: He was smiling... That's right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren't a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker.

Team Strike Force

Riley started barking by the back window so I got up to look. Walking in a row through our back yard were four adult cats. My brother Jon suggesetd that they're some kind of feline para-military force trying to rescue the kittens. I did what any dog owner would do for their own amusement: I opened the door and let my dog Riley go chase them down. I was pretty impressed to see one climb about 20 feet up a tree. These ninja-cats have skills, but I have God on my side.

Dancing Like a Fool

All I knew was that it was a secret. Our wives had planned a night out for us guys and we were supposed to show up. None of us had any idea what was going on. After a long day, the guys were looking forward to having a cold beer, but that wan't going ot happen for a while. The Niemi's, Schultz's, Muzzi's, Girards and us all met up in a parking lot in an indusrial complex, which looked suspiciously like the dance studio Maddie had gone to. Strange, huh?

Along with 7 other couples, we began our ballroom dancing class. I wasn't horribly against it, I just was caught off guard by the whole thing. We proceeded to learn to foxtrot and waltz. The insructor would split the guys off to one side of the room and the girls to the other and show us our individaul steps and roles for the different dances. The guys as a whole were pretty slow at learning the whole thing while the girls picked it up pretty quickly. It ended up begin a fun night. It was fun learning the dances with Cathie and seeing the other guys be equally off. We'd all be so focused on learning to dance that we'd run into each other throughout the night. We laughed a lot and I got to hold my beautiful wife the whole time. We out to the South Lyon Hotel for dinner afterwards and then played cards at our house with Dana and Eli and Kasey and Michael.

Today we're getting together with a bunch of friends to watch the Michigan vs Ohio State national championship game. For the first time ever, I am rooting for Michigan in a game. MSU's season has let me down to the point that I'm hoping my statement has a huge impact on their motivation next year.

If you haven't wasted a lot of time on Line Rider, you don't know what you're missing. This is one of the more impressive rides I've seen, courtesy of none other than David Crowder:

Raitz in Cinci at NYWC

My meetings finished up around 4 yesterday and I was able to meet up with my friend Jason Raitz and his wife Tracie. Jason works at Willow Creek doing junior high youth ministry and knows everybody at these Youth Specialties conferences. He even has this special chair brought in for him. Not only does it set him apart as a "big deal", it also soothes his flaring hemorrhoids.

We were able to catch up for a while before I drove home, which seemed like the longest five hours of my life.

Great American Ballpark

Saw this view from our customer's office.

Rainy Day in Cincinatti

I drove in to Cinci yesterday for a couple days of meetings with a customer along with some co-workers I hadn't seen in a while. We had dinner last night at The Mongomery Inn, which they tout as great BBQ, but it doesn't hold a candle to Corky's in Memphis. I'm driving back this afternoon, after I meet up with Raitz, who happens to be down here for the National Youth Worker's Conference.

Chaos

We had our Chaos junior high youth group meeting tonight. We had a huge group of kids tonight (almost 20, which is huge for us). At one point, one of the leaders, Matt, came running in the room and chased down the other high school leaders (dressed in costume, including a life size power ranger costume) and tackled them. We played a bunch of fun games, including one where we wrapped a few kid sin saran wrap and they had to scootch down the room and eat a banana without their hands. It's harder than it sounds.

Jay's message tonight was on self esteem and how God values the kids. One of his quesitons was, "What makes you unique?" and it was cool to see how the kids see themselves. Each meeting keeps getting better and better, and the kids seem to be responding and bringing friends. We've got some great events coming up, including a man-hunt for costume-clad leaders in the Novi Mall and a winter retreat.

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

And then there were three..

We've got all three kittens at our house now. We're taking turns watching all three for the next three weeks. It turns out that the kittens are about 4 weeks old and need to be together for a few weeks to help socialize them. Seeing them cuddle together in a big pile and play together makes cats seem that less evil.

Does your Mom read your blog?

(Thanks to Marko for this)

3 Cats and a Wii

We now have three kittens, temporarily. Apparently, these kittens are about 4 weeks old and being that young, they need to be socialized (sadly enough, this never happened with my brother Jon). This happens by keeping them together for a couple more weeks and letting them play. We're switching off watching the three of them between us and the two other families in our neighborhood who've got the cats.

On a funny side note (funny to me at least), when I was talking to Nate and Maddie about what's involved in taking care of the kittens and splitting up the duties between them, they both immediately stopped me and said, "You said doodie...*laugh*". I found this very funny, but then again, I work with junior high kids and find them very funny and sophomoric humor in general very funny.

On a more important note, I want to take a wii... home with me from Walmart or somewhere else. Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone want to wait in line with me somewhere to get one?

I'm a sucker

Yes, I am a sucker. I hate cats, but apparently I can't resist a cute kittens. We've decided to keep one of the kittens, the male that the girls named "Rascal". Of course the kids have promised to do everything related to the care and feeding of the cat forever, but past track record has shown how long that really lasts. I considered having the kids sign a contract saying that if they didn't follow through on the care and feeding of the cat, they would have to put the cat in a burlap sack and personally throw it into the river. Cathie thought I was being a little overboard with my view of accountability.

So Nate's friend Enno took one of the cats, we're taking the another, and have since shamed Nate's friend Austin's parents into taking the third.

Football

Nate's football is done for the year and this is his last season of doing flag football, probably one season too many for him. He's ready to play tackle football next year in our local Panthers - Pop Warner type league. The flag football league is a fun place for kids to learn how to play football - where everyone rotates through all the positions and everyone plays, no matter how well they do, how much effort they put forth and what their skill level is. You can see some of the pictures from the game here.

The Panthers league is full contact tackle football where the kids play a position and have pretty intenses practices every day starting in August with a high intensity level. It doesn't have the same warm fuzzy feeling of the community ed leagues do, and I think Nate will enjoy and it do well with it.

God as an Artist

This is a collection of amazing photos.

Rascal and Buddy

The girls found three stray kittens outside today and brought them home - temporarily. The kittens are in a box in the garage right now, snuggled in a blanket and being doted on by the girls. The kittens already have names: Rascal and Buddy, and the girls put the hard press on me to keep them, complete with tears. Foolishly, I told them the kittens could stay here until we could bring them over to our friend Dana's house, who works at a vet clinic, and can hopefully find a home for them.

I'm not a cat person. They're cute as kittens, but they're not dogs. Cats are not loyal, they walk in their own poo and they think they know it all.

Grandma Lebbon

Cathie's parents came up to see Nate's last football game of the year. It was cold and wet, but we won the last game. Madeline was kind enough to help Cathie's mom demonstrate the latest scarf fashion as we went out for lunch afterwards.

I'm Lost

I know a lot of people love the show Lost. For me, it's getting to be a little bit too complicated and slow. I came across this article which has a pretty good explanation for what's going on and some thoughts on where the show is going.

My Dad is the Worst at Keeping Secrets

I was talking to my Dad tonight and he asked me the question, "Have you heard any news from Jon yet?" (My brother is a stay-at-home-Mom. Big news for him is that Libby is potty trained, hid in a closet or his dog didn't bite a child.) My response was: "What's going on, is Beth pregnant?" My dad was silent. Nice cover-up Dad.

Jon called me tonight to say hi. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell me. Jon's response, "Dad is the worst person in the world at keeping secrets". Apparently Kris called Jon earlier "just to see how he was doing" - another dead giveaway.

This is an awesome thing and we are all really happy. If my Mom were alive, she would be THE MOST EXCITED out of any of us. She would begin telling every person she knew, and many she didn't. When my Mom used to work at Eddie Bauer (a job she used as an excuse to tell total strangers about her grandchildren and show them their pictures), she would have managed to tell 100 people by now. My Mom would spend the next 7 months doting over Beth, calling her regularly and seeing how she was feeling on a daily basis and continue in her excitement through the birth, which she would be there for, as she was with all ten previous grandchildren. If she wasn't in the room when the child was born, she would be right outside, making a pest of herself with the nurses, asking if the baby had been born yet. My Mom would dote over the baby, making that baby feel that they were the most important, most special, most beautiful baby in the whole world. My Mom loved her grandchildren like nothing else and I'm sure she picked out Little Baby David in heaven.

Me first and the Gimme Gimme's

A while back, Shinn turned me onto this band a while back.  They're a punk band and all of their music is punk cover songs of stuff from artists ranging from The Muppet's "The Rainbow Connection" to John Denver's "Danny's Song".  I love cover songs, and I dig their new album (thanks Jeff) which is called Love Their Country and consists of all country tunes, like Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and the Smokey and Bandit theme song "East Bound and Down".  If you dig good cover songs, definately a band worth checking out.

Top TV Shows

Top 5 TV shows right now:

1. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
2. Heroes
   
3. The Office
4. Mythbusters
5. My Name is Earl

Shows I want to watch but don't have time:

1. The Unit (Not what you think. It's a military show)
2. Friday Night Lights
3. Smallville
   

Tags: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Heroes, The Office, Mythbusters, My Name is Earl

The Big Lebowski

Cathie was in Small Group tonight, so I hung out tonight and watched one of my favorite movies of all times, The Big Lebowski, a Coen Brothers Film. It's a movie about nihilists, shabbos, pacifists and of course, The Dude.

My favorite t-shirt in the world from my friend Will has a message from the Dude (which my friend Willie Hiedinger claims is also mentioned in the bible).

And the big line...
The Dude: Yeah, well. The Dude abides.
The Stranger: The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals.

Tags: The Big Lebowski, Coen Brothers, Nihilists, Shabbos, Pacifists, The Dude

Banks vs. Credit Unions

My Dad has worked his whole life in the banking industry and he naturally loves banks. He believes they can do no wrong and that it is actually us, as customers that do all the wrong. He hates Credit Unions because they are a non-profit organization and do not pay taxes. All of his children belong to credit unions, which he is none too pleased with and has written us out of the will because of it. This is not a major issue, as he's planning on spending everything before he dies.

I went into my bank today to exchange some foreign currency that I had left over from my trip to Europe. They were very quick to tell me that they don't do that any more, which left me scratching my head. I asked them if they don't deal with ANY currency, or just foreign currency and what the bank branch offices were for if they deal with money. I was saddened and even a little melancholy. I called my Dad for an explanation and he explained how helping customers isn't always profitable for banks.

I then called my credit union who said to just bring it in and they would swap it out. What service! I will gladly supplement the credit unions with my tax dollars as long as they continue to give me stellar service like this. I'm not for big government like Will is, but maybe it's issues like this that started him down the path of wanting the government to be involved and fund every aspect of our existences. One more things the banks have done wrong - and this time it's personal.

Hopefully, my Dad is taking all of these things to heart and sharing them with his fellow bankers in the hopes that banks can catch up to the level of customer service provided by credit unions.

Obiwan Shinobi

I love a good story - especially when it goes counter to what normally happens in the world; stories of when a person chooses others rather than themselves, stories about long-term commitment, love and sacrifice. Here's a true story that speaks volumes about a friend of mine, Jason Shinn.

Jason is the Youth Pastor at Crossroads Church, where Cathie and I have been attending for 12 years. The past few years have been pretty tumultuous - with two affairs on staff, lots of people having left and a church in chaos. As a fresh-out-of-college Youth Pastor, Jason was forced to step up into teaching, leading and odd jobs to keep things rolling. Throughout it all, he stuck with the church and with the kids.

Even in the midst of our newly found consistency and new growth, we're at a point right now in our budget and our building campaign where we've had to make some hard trade-offs. With a church of about 150, we don't have the budget right now to pay a youth pastor what we should, which is where Jay comes into the story. Now understand that being a youth pastor isn't a glamorous job to begin with and Jason is not paid a ton of money, even by youth pastoring standards. It would have been very easy for Jason (and his wife Jess, who works part time helping everywhere for free) to be disgruntled, leave and go find a job at a stable church that pays him decently).

He and Jess are so committed to this church and to the kids at this church that Jason was willing to humble himself to go work at Old Navy so he could continue the work that he feels God has called him to at Crossroads. I think that speaks a ton about J and his commitment to his calling. Kids learn stuff from the youth group meetings, but mostly, they learn from the character of the leaders over time and they way they live their lives. The kids in our youth group saw leaders in this church do some very dishonorable things over time and I'm proud of the way Jay has shown them what honor, integrity and commitment look like in his life. In a world where the average life expetency of a youth pastor is 2 years, and youth pastors jump from job to job every couple years and rarely stay long enough to go deep, Jay is the kind of guy that I would want my kids learning from.

Chaos

On Tuesday night, we had our Chaos meeting, our mid-week junior high meeting. For games, we started with the dizzy stick, as seen above. The person puts the stick on their chin, stares at the top of the stick and then tries to spin around 30 times in 30 seconds. The person ends up looking like a drunk monkey. It's way tougher than it sounds. The next game was baby-food hot potato. The jar of baby food gets passed around until the music stops, at which point the person has to take a bit of vegetable medley baby food. Nasty. We played another game and then jumped into the topic for that night.

The topic was around God's love - where does it start and stop. Jason really does an amazing job with the lesson - making them very interactive. He's very high energy (yes, Jason is high energy for these meetings) as he teaches and getting the kids moving from part to part, having fun and rolling with things as they come at him. Jason had the kids act out the Prodigal son story and they had a blast with it, and we went through a list of what people perceive to be things that get you in good with God, and what doesn't. At the end of the day, the kids walked away understanding that God loves them no matter what, and wants what's best for them. Lots of people know that J is great with high school, but it was really cool to see Jason hitting on all cylinders with junior high. They dug it, and he was having fun.

We've got a great leadership team that J has put together that consists of guys currently in our high school group and kids who have graduated for our youth group. The guys run the games and do side events, like Matt and Zach's mad scientist moments where they blow stuff up and burn stuff. Anyways - it's fun watching our junior high group grow so fast and gain such momentum.

You can find more pictures here.

Hairy Mail

This is nice. You can use nair to carve a message into the back of Will and send it to a friend. It's called Hairy Mail.

Not so different

Will may be a bleeding heart liberal who supports big government, but there are some things that we both agree on - the superiority of MSU in all ways (except football). We were talking about the election results and discovered that we both voted the same way for University of Michigan's Board of Trustees. Both of us consistently try to vote for the most whacked out candidates possible for U of M - so we both chose the Natural Law and Libertarian Party candidates. From these results, it looks like these candidates got less than 1% of the vote.

Maddie Kurt - 3rd Grade Class Rep

Maddie ran for class representative and today she gave her speech and the kids voted. She wrote her own speech, which was the following:

I would like to tell you why I would make a good class representative. I promise to be on time for all meetings and attend every single one. I promise to always, always listen carefully and think about ideas and discussions. I will always use my best manners and be honest all the time. The reason I think being class representative would be fun is that I can help think of spirit week ideas and help make Bartlett a lot more fun! And for you boys I promise to ask about card game day or Pokemon day. That is why I would like you to vote for me.

After she wrote her first draft, we got to talking about why people vote for a given person. Since her class is made of of 15 boys and 7 girls, we talked about how to make sure you're running on a platform that is attractive to all of the potential voters, so she added in the second to the last line to make sure that 15 boys in her class felt like she'd represent them well. Nate suggested all sorts of wild stuff, and Maddie responded, "Nate, I can't promise things that I can't give them. That wouldn't be right." I guess Maddie could teach most politicians a thing or two. Maddie won and came home very excited about her new role.

We Voted

Emily came with me to vote, decked out in her princess tierra and some of my Mom's old jewelry that my Dad gave her, complete with giant clip on earrings.

10 Reasons to Buy a DSLR Camera

I own a small, Sony DSC-T1 Digital camera along with a Canon 350XT Digital Rebel camera. They both have their uses, but after having a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) I couldn't go back. This is a good article entitled 10 Reasons to Buy a DSLR Camera. If you're frustrated by the whole "push a button and wait three seconds for the picture", then read this.

Tags: Sony DSC-T1 Digital, Canon 350XT Digital Rebel, DSLR

NASA Rollercoaster

Now this is cool. NASA has built a roller coaster system for astronaut escape. Way more exciting riding a coaster if you have a rocket exploding behind you.

Tags: NASA Rollercoaster

Nate and Maddie's Slingshot Ride

Here's the video of Nate and Maddie's ride on the Slingshot:

Triad

This morning's workout at Triad was a killer with two guys coming close to losing it (i.e. throwing up or passing out). We started with lateral box bear crawls - 12 "boxes placed in a 15 foot circle and from a bear crawl position, you move around the circle, up and down, between the boxes. Being a circle, you've always got someone behind you pushing you, and you're trying to push the guy ahead of you - so no slacking. We then moved into box steps, where we stepped up and down between each box, to the side, followed by push-ups. I'm back to Triad 3 days a week now and I'll probably start hitting the gym and lifting on the days in between now. It normally takes me about 3 weeks at Triad to get to a point where I can even come close to keeping up with the old men there, and I'm getting close now after two weeks in. Brad's supposed to have surgery on the shoulder that Will destroyed a year ago, so Brad's out for at least a few more months. Right now it's been Kirk, Tommy, Todd, Roy with the new addition of Bob Rays back in force.

Clear as Mud

Em's Prayer

Thank you for our food, and I hope Grandma and Jesus are having fun playing together in heaven.
--Emily's dinner time prayer.

Yard Work

Today was a perfect fall day in Michigan. Our house is on almost an acre, and we had a ton of leafs we hadn't touched yet so the whole family spent time raking and creating a giant pile for jumping, wrestling and burying.

The kids petered out first, and after emptying about 1,000 cubic feet of leaves into the lot behind us, I headed inside to take a nap and watch the Lions game (the first one I've seen this year and enjoyed) on the couch. Cathie stayed out for another 4 hours and took care of every last leaf in every nook and cranny (while I lay on the couch, of course).

I finished the my "weekend of fixing crap" by fixing the washing machine and cleaning out the garage enough to get a car (mine for now) inside. I'm home all week, getting a chance to catch up with a bunch of friends, something I haven't been able to do in a while.