On my way to Tulsa

I got up at 4:30am to fly to Tulsa. I'm back tomorrow night.

Cat in a Hot Aluminum Dryer

Emily

Overheard as Emily was playing bowling on the Nintendo Wii:

I just got five strucks! I am the struck queen!

Triad

I guess it's bound to happen anytime you get a group of competitive guys together, but when we work out in the mornings at Triad, there's a ton of smack talk going on. It's all done in fun, but on some days it goes a little too far. We came up with the concept of $1 Mondays. We created four rules and each violation costs you a buck:

1. No Insults
2. No Swearing
3. No Farting
4. No Making up other Rules

I paid in $2 today.

Weird Cat

My cat is weird:
1. When it sees someone go into the bathroom, it will follow them in. If possible, it will put it's front paws on the rim of the toilet bowl and watch the bubbles.
2. When you bring home groceries, the cat will search out the bread in bags and if left alone will shred the bag and eat the loaf of bread.
3. The cat has a horse stuffed animal that it carries around the house and wrestles with.
4. It will sit in front of the television and watch what's on for a while.
5. The cat likes to fight with my dog. It'll come up to our dog and start smacking her in the face with his paw.

I'm not a cat person, but this one is growing on me.

Libby and Bender

Susan and Susan Junior

Clean Sweep

This morning's conversation with the kids in junior high was around the stuff we have versus all of the needs people have. We talked about the homeless, hungry and hurting and what we do help them. We all agreed that if we had 100 refugees living in our backyard, it would be a lot tougher to wake up each morning and be wasteful with our food, clothes and stuff. It would probably be a lot easier decision to buy food and clothes for the people in your back yard instead of the $400 iPod.

Unfortunately, none of us came up with any easy answers. Cathie and I did go home and clean-sweep our closet. I came up a giant pile of clothes that I'm taking to downtown Detroit with me on the third Saturday in March. I'm not saying these clothes are great, but they sure beat some of the crap that we pass out to the homeless down there. Cathie was my sounding board as I'd try and figure out if I was going to keep an article of clothing, often mocking me and my taste. I did come to the conclusion that I have a ton of Hawaiian Aloha shirts. To make Cathie happy, I threw in the shirt you'll see in the lower right hand corner of the picture... That and the X-Files hat in the middle. (Why would I have ever had an X-Files hat? I like the show Scrubs, but I'm never going to buy a hat that says Scrubs on it... Now that I think about it, I think it was a gift from my Mom.)

My Grandma

Nate and I are staying at my Dad's for a couple of days helping out as he recuperates. We got a call around 4ish that my Grandma was being taken to the hospital again. Her legs weren't working and she had fallen so we met up with her at the emergency room. They did some X-Rays and discharged her. It was a really sad night. I watched my Grandma helpless doing everything she could to stand and walk, and she can't. She's lived on her own until now and she's at a point where she just can't live without help any more and she hates the idea of giving up her freedom and going into an assisted living home. I saw her sit and cry tonight as she talked to me about what it's like to get old and worn down. She wants so bad to do things on her own and her body just won't do it. She's lost her husband and both of her children, survived by my Dad, her 4 grandchildren and 11 great grand children. I don't know what I'd do in her situation. She feels alone and helpless. It broke my heart tonight to see this happen. She's still sharp as a tack and has her sense of humor, but it's tough to see this happen and think about myself at that point in life.

Happy Birthday Aunt Lois

Happy birthday to Aunt Lois! My Dad is the youngest of eight kids and she's pictured here with some of my Dad's other siblings - Gene and John. We get to see them this summer in at the Kurt Family Reunion in Iowa with a theme of Bib Overalls! I'm not sure what's going on in this second picture, but I'm pretty sure my Uncle Gene is getting ready to plant a big one on my Uncle John.

Fat Tesday in Austin

My brother Dan

No words needed.

Dad

Since I'm in Texas, my friends and family have been visiting my Dad and sending pictures. My Dad is smiling because he no longer has his cathader in. If you visit, he'll show you his scar if you ask.

Austin is odd

Golf in Austtn

We golfed today at a private club called Onion Creek. My boss used to work with the owner of the club and the place was amazing. It was a formal dress club, which I found out as I walked on the course and they announced 'Remember, the club has a no shirt-tale policy. Please tuck in your shirts.' I was the only one without my shirt tucked in. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees and my team came in 2nd.

Ausin Marti Gras

Austin Mardis Gras

Travel

I've got a lot of travel coming up. I leave tomorrow for Austin, TX through next Wednesday. The following week I'm in Tulsa, OK for a couple of days, the next week I'm in San Fran for meetings followed by a trip to LA the next week. My job goes through cycles where I can go a month without any travel followed by back-to-back weeks. My travel in this position is a lot less than it was previously, but any travel at all is a pain for my family, to a degree.

I have the great, most understanding wife in the world when it comes to my travel. She knows that it can change on a dime and it means she's left holding the bag in terms of transporting kids and taking care of everything around the house. I've been traveling in my job in different capacities over the past 10 years Cathie and the kids have gotten fairly used to it.

Slippers are not shoes

I got up this morning at 5:30 to go to the workout. I threw my slippers on to start my car and get it warmed up and headed back in to grab something to eat. Around 5:40am, I jumped in my car and headed to the gym. As I'm driving, my feet felt weird. Slippers don't work well at the gym.

The Saga Continues with my iPod

I took my iPod into Best Buy two weeks ago as part of the Product Service Plan I purchased when I bought it. Per the plan, on the fourth time you bring it in, they evaluate it and are supposed to replace it as a lemon. When I brought it in, I was told it would take a week. I'm over two weeks into this and getting annoyed. I've called them daily, each day being told to check back the following day. The guys in the Geek Squad are nice enough, but their service department sucks at Best Buy. Two things have come out of this:

1. My dependence on my iPod
2. A reminder that "The stuff you own can end up owning you." I've put way too much time into thinking about this whole issue and following up on it.
   

Tags: Best Buy, Product Service Plan

Ro Sham Bo

Eli and I got together at BW3's to grab a beer and Budweiser happened to be sponsoring a Rock Paper Scissors (Ro-Sham-Bo) competition with the potential to go to the finals in Vegas. I went head to head with a guy who was a retired pro and lost the best two out of three. Eli went up against a girl who had never played RPS before and he just barely beat her.

USA Rock Paper Scissors League Oath:

I know that RPS belongs to no man or woman and was created before recorded history. To that end, as I prepare to battle and engage my worthy and respected opponent. I honor the RPS players that came before me. I recognize that the rules and regulations of the USA Rock Paper Scissors Federation at the governing body of the sport and yield to the authority of it's referees and officials.

Jesus Camp

At Shinn's recommendation, I rented the movie Jesus Camp. It's a documentary on a segment of evangelical Christians and was horribly painful to watch. It focuses on a kids camp, comparing some of what's done at the camp with what's done in islamic indoctrination camps for kids in the Middle East. I know there are are pieces taken out of context and it's about a small segment, but ouch. The most painful part was seeing myself in parts of this.

Being Fed

Good article called On Using Your Own Fork on a pet peeve of mine around people who jump churches for the reason that "They're not being fed."

Most often, it seems that those who feel they are not “being fed” are the ones who have failed to feed anyone else. After all, Jesus wrapped a towel around His waist, washed His disciples feet and told them, “This is what it looks like to follow me.”

Snow Day

The kids had a snow day today and while I worked, they played and Cathie shoveled the driveway. I took the kids out sledding after work and it was freezing at about 5 below wind chill factor. Nate's buddy Austin came and brought this motorcycle sled that Emily couldn't get enough of. Even in the freezing cold, she trudged up the hill, rode down over and over again. Some guy had built this 3 foot high jump out of hay bales, which Nate quickly took, crashed hard and tried again. I was frozen before they were, but we sledded on for around an hour before heading home to thaw out.

Chiropractor

At the recommendation of my friend Kirk (voted the top trainer in Michigan by Men's Journal), I went to see a Chiropractor yesterday. I've got a spot on my back that keeps popping out of whack when I workout and it's happening more and more frequently. I've always been of the mind that Chiropractors are nuts. Lots of people I know that use them seem to be really defendant on them to solve all of their problems, most of them non-skeletal, and then move on to not vaccinating their kids and hating antibiotics.

I went their yesterday, the doctor X-rayed my back, showed me what was going on (right around the T-4 vertabrae) and did some "adjustments", which translates to him cranking on my neck and spine to put whatever was out of alignment back into alignment. I've got to go three more times over the next two weeks in addition to having Kirk give me some exercises to strengthen this area. Between those two things, the claim is that it should go back and go back for good. Could all of this been diagnosed and fixed by a regular MD? Probably. We'll see how it goes after a couple of weeks.

Triad

I'm back to working out at Triad this week. I'd taken about a month off starting in early January to change things up a little. When i first started coming to Triad, i had been lifting 3 to 5 days a week and even though my cardio endurance wasn't great, the strength from lifting helped keep me in the front of the pack (with this group, you don't want to be the guy bring up the rear). Over time, I changed to just doing the Plyometrics at our morning workouts three days a week and stopped lifting altogether. I noticed I was dragging, but wasn't sure why.

I took a month off and lifted five days a week, upper and lower body, to get my strength back to where it had been. This morning I saw the difference. Yesterday we did sets of jump squats and explosive plyo ball push-ups and today we did this crazy combination of 10 laps of bear crawls in all directions around a 12x12 square followed by a series of forward box jumps. Both days I was able to keep up and at times even take the lead. I'm alternating doing 3 days of lifting and 2 days at Triad one week and 3 days at Triad and 2 days lifting the following week. I've been eating like crap on the weekends, but doing a pretty good job getting 6 good meals in during the day (with the occasional ice cream at night). I haven't weighed myself in months, but I think I'm hanging around my 205 weight.

My brother Jon has a Special Purpose

"Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television."
-David Letterman

Brad

If you remember a while back, Will destroyed Brad's shoulder in a fit of all-to-common rage. Brad finally had surgery a few months ago and has been rehabbing his shoulder ever since. Brad's physical therapist was showing him a new exercise today that involved a softball sized medicine ball and a mini-trampoline. While a number of clients (women) looked on, Brad tried this new exercise, bouncing the ball into the trampoline and catching it. All was good until he caught a bad bounce on the trampoline and the very heavy ball hit him square in the junk and dropped him like a sack of potatoes in front of the onlookers. Awkward and painful.

I think Brad's a little sensitive. On a junior high youth group retreat once, I tagged him back, a little too hard evidently, and he ended up throwing up outside.

Nate's Basketball Pictures

Caribbean Cove in Indy

Last weekend my Dad took the whole family to the Caribbean Cove Water Park in Indy. We chose Indy as a half way point for Jon and Beth and us, even though Dan didn't think Jon and Beth were worth driving five hours. The park was awesome, including three huge water slides that went outside. These slides were wicked fast and we spent lots of time on them. It had a huge lazy river, a water basketball court and a giant climbing area where a giant bucket dumped every five minutes.

One of the things that is so great about our family is the way that all of the kids enjoy hanging out and play together and all my siblings and sister/brothers-in-laws get along and have fun, taking care of each others kids all the while having fun no matter what we do.

On Sunday afternoon we went to The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The place was huge and one of the better museums we've been to. After a couple of hours of walking around, we found the planetarium (also known as the nap-a-tarium) where my brothers, Dad and I took a nice 30 minute nap in comfy seats while the kids learned about stars or something. They had tons of interactive stuff stuff, including a drawing area where the kids could draw portraits like this of their Uncle Jon.



Throughout the weekend, the kids hit the arcade hard. I've been working for ten years to convince them of the poor value proposition around arcade tickets. They saved up 1,000 tickets to get this set of walkie-talkie-headphones (which we still haven't got the 9V batteries yet) along with lots of other useless crap.

We had a blast and ended up pretty water-logged. We watched the Superbowl together on Sunday night with some of Indy's finest mullets. People in Indy have ridiculous team spirit. Every person we saw had a Colts jersey on and every building had a Go Colts sign on it, including the children's museum.

After enjoying some amazing Chick-Fil-A's for breakfast and lunch, we swam some more on Monday and headed back.

Between all of us, we took a lot of pictures, including family pictures. My sister Susan loves to try and jump into the background of our family pictures, so I figured I'd reciprocate:


So you can see the rest of the pictures here and here.

Tags: Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Caribbean Cove Water Park in Indy

Daddy Daughter Dance

Tonight I took Maddie and Emily to the annual Daddy/Daughter dance that we've been attending for the past four years. The girls and I get dressed up (Madeline picked out my outfit for me), go out to eat and then dance the night away. Their idea for a fancy dinner was Brown's Root Beer in town for Coney Dogs and then we headed over to the dance.

Imagine a middle school cafeteria with a DJ and lights and 100+ dad's awkwardly dancing with no rhythm to the Hustle, the Macarena and others. The Hustle has become my favorite part because the girls gather in a circle around all the dads as we all do the worst rendition of the dance you've ever seen. Mid-way through the dance we're all facing different directions and moving to different parts of the song. The Cha-Cha was the only one with any congruity as it actually tells you what to do throughout the whole song. The last dance was a slow dance to the song Butterfly kisses, a song about how quickly your little girls grow up and how one moment you're at a daddy daughter dance and another moment you're dancing with them at their wedding. I don't think there were too many dads with dry eyes during that song.

While the girls and I were waiting in line to get our picture taken, I asked Madeline what I'd worn last time to the dance. She looked at me and said, "Dad, you wore the same thing last time." Sure enough, I did. As a side note, after seeing what my latest effort at facial hair looked like in this picture, I decided to shave it off. How come no one told me it looked this goofy? As Cathie put it, "It kid of looks like a big smile on your chin" Nice.

Update: I came to bed last night and found a thank you note from Maddie and Em on my pillow:

Dear Dad,
Thanks for taking us to the Daddy/Daughter Dance. (Maddie)
That was a lot of fun. (Emily)
PS We love you lots!

Start spreading the news...

I'm leaving this morning, on a 6am to head home. I had the dessert pictured above last night for dinnner, which could be the greatest dessert ever. It was a hot funnel cake topped in ice cream and carmel. Wow. I've calculated my time to get dressed, packed, drive, return the rental car and get through security down to the second to get every last second of sleep this morning, but 4:30 is early any way you cut it.



I'm taking the girls to the Daddy/Daughter dance tonight is always fun. We all get dressed up, go to dinner and dance akwardly with a bunch of other rhythmless white men. The strangest part last year was when 100 dads did the hustle very badly as the girls stood in a circle around us clapping.

Cathie's Uncle Tim

Please pray for Cathie's family. Her Uncle died today from a heart attack. He was a great guy. 18 years ago when I was first introduced to Cathie's family he welcomed me right into the fold. He got to know my Mom really well when he was working delivering for DHL and my Mom worked at Eddie Bauer. Tim had a gigantic heart and was a great guy.

Please pray for Lori

Please pray for my friend Lori Girard's Mom and her family. While looking at some back problems Lori's Mom was having, they found a spot on her lung which turned out to be cancerous, but couldn't do anything until the spinal surgery occurred. After the spinal surgery, they did a brain scan and found out that she had brain cancer as well. Crap.

Cold at 5:30AM

Watching the Superbowl in Indy

Indianapolinites at their best as we watched the Superbowl in the hotel. Where else can you see a dude wearing a team jersey and a feather boa while the woman next to him wears a bikini top and fuzzy cowboy hat.

Will shaved his Grizzley Adams beard!

Emily saw his full beard and exclaimed that Uncle Will doesn't look like Uncle Will any more. She no longer has to be afraid!

When is it Okay to leave a church

I've seen people leave churches very badly (I think I wanted to punch some of them in the face, which doesn't say much for me) for what I saw as horrible reasons and seen people leave well, whatever that looks like. I thought this was a great article from Relevant Magainze on When is it Okay to leave a church?

Switching to Google Reader

It took Will suggesting it a few times, but I think I'm switching over to Google Reader. I've been using Bloglines for a few years and love it, but I think Google Reader has really gotten it right. Bloglines hasn't done much in terms of innovation since I've used it, while Google Reader has slowly improved. (If you're using bloglines, you can export all of your subscriptions and import them into Google Reader)

If you're not sure what an RSS reader is, you need to check it out. It lets you put all of your blog subscriptions in one place and it will show you people's new posts, instead of having to go out and check all of the individual blogs.

Tags: Google Reader, Bloglines, RSS Reader, Switch

Great Moments in The Office

Last night's episode of The Office was one of the funniest ever. There were too many great lines to try and list them all. Here's a list of the all of them. Some of my favorites:

Jim: Michael referred me to a male strip club called Banana Slings. Instead, I called the Scholastic Speakers of Pennsylvania.
--
Michael: So you know who turned out to be kind of a creep? Ben Franklin. And Elizabeth the stripper? Gave me great advice. Which rhymed. Really makes you wonder how Ben Franklin can become president but someone like Elizabeth can’t.
--
Michael: I am instituting primae noctis.

Jim: Primae noctis, I believe from the movie, Braveheart, and confirmed on Wikipedia, is when the king got to deflower every new bride on her wedding night. So …

Michael: I’m sorry. I had a very different understanding as to what primae noctis meant.
--
Michael: Mr. Franklin, I would say you are probably one of the sexiest presidents ever.

Ben Franklin: Well, actually, I never was president

Michael: Yes, but Ben Franklin was.

--

Michael: Guys! Beef. It’s what’s for dinner. Who wants some man meat?
Jim: Michael, Dwight would like your man meat.
Michael: Well then my man meat he shall have.

Random Stuff

• My Dad is taking the whole family to Caribbean Cove Waterpark in Indianapolis. Jon, Beth and Libby are driving up from Memphis and the rest of the family is driving down. I can't wait to hang with the whole family. This will be the first Super Bowl in 12 years that I haven't watched with my friend Brad.
  
• I took my iPod into Best Buy for it's fourth and hopefully final repair. In theory, they're supposed to replace it with the latest model under their extended service plan lemon law.
• We got our Wii back finally. They replaced the drive unit and sent us a new version of Zelda. Apparently the gouging of discs was known issue, much like they had initially with the Xbox 360.
• I'm in New York for a few days next week, home the following week and then in Austin for five days.
  

Tags: Wii, Caribbean Cove Waterpark, Scratched Disc

Nate's Birthday

We met my Dad tonight at Outback Steakhouse in Brighton for Nate' s birthday. Nate ate an entire 18oz Porterhouse by himself, which was rather impressive for a ten year old. He's no passed the mark where he can order off the kids menu. Gosh I feel old having a ten year old. My Dad must feel old having a 40 year old son (Dan), and my brother Dan must just feel plain old being a couple of months away from 40. My brother Dan will start getting AARP cards soon.

Happy Birthday Nate!

Ten years ago today at 3:30, my son Nate was born. He's an amazing boy and I'm . Here are ten things about him:
10. Nate loves video games and can beat me in most of them.
9. When he was a baby he used to be a biter. When you would hold him, for no reason he would bite your shoulder. Hard. We tried hot sauce, yelling at him, pinching him and even biting him back. Nothing worked.
8. Nate's favorite book right now is the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records.
7. I am farther in the game Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess than Nate.
6. Even though his Mom and Dad are both MSU Alumni, Nate is a U of M fan for some reason (thanks to his Uncle Ed).
5. Nate loves listening to music and understanding the stories behind in the lyrics and behind the song. Every couple of weeks he and I put together a mix CD of all types of music from Tom Waits to Rich Mullins to Weird Al. He listens to it as he falls asleep at night, typically putting one song on repeat - almost always a different song. I like going in at night and covering him up, hearing what song he's at on a particular day.
4. We occasionally refer to Nate as "The Troll" as he comes home from school and immediately goes down into the basement to watch TV and play video games.
3. Other than me, Nate is the only other person who understands my Audio/Visual systems and can help Cathie and the babysitters get things setup to watch what they want to watch.
2. Nate is a strong believer that cleaning his room and making his bed every day is a waste of time, because it's just going to get messy again.
1. Nate is amazing boy with a huge heart for others. He has an understanding of his faith that goes beyond your typical nine year old and he thinks deeply about things. If I were to lay out everything I'm looking for in a son and in heaven pick from every child based on those requirements, Nate is exactly the son I would choose. I believe he will grow up to be dangerous for good in the world.