Before and After: Maddie's Haircut

Maddie got her hair cut today.

Short. I think it looks great, but makes her look too old.


I want her to stay my little girl forever!

Hon

Nate and I both agree that waitresses under the age of 50 shouldn't be allowed to call you 'Hon' or 'Honey'.

Video Games and Food

Nate has his first football game tomorrow so we went out to pick up a pair of cleats and mouth guard. A new BW3's opened up over in Brighton so we grabbed dinner and spent time talking and playing these video game stations at each table. Needless to say, Nate was in heaven.

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I'll admit it: I'm addicted to my e-mail. I can access it from my phone, my laptop, my desktop at a moments notice. A little too easily. I just read this interesting summary on LifeHacker around why?

How many times a day do you refresh your inbox? How often do you do it without thinking? The Mind Hacks blog tackles why checking your email can become such a compulsive, addicting behavior: because, like the slot machines, it has "variable interval reinforcement."

Sometimes, but not every time, the behaviour produces a reward. Everyone loves to get an email from a friend, or some good news, or even an amusing web link. Sometimes checking your email will get you one of these rewards. And because you can never tell which time you check will produce the reward, checking all the time is reinforced, even if most of the time checking your email turns out to have been pointless. You still check because you never know when the reward will come.

Like Pavlov's dogs, the article discusses ways to recondition yourself to stop hitting that "Get Mail" button so often - by enforcing timed delays, making it harder to do, and removing or moving the new mail notification. This article's a little heavy on the psych-talk and "we're just animals with animal responses," but it's a really interesting look at the why's and how's of online addiction. Why email is addictive (and what to do about it)

Things I learned from the show 'The Office'

When I have a big party in my hotel room, I will not bring a black light. I owe my success in my job to the things I've learned from Michael and Dwight on The Office.

Tigers Game

I went to a Tiger's game today with some friends from work. It turned out to be a nice day for the game, and my first time in Comerica Park. I'm not a big baseball fan, but with the Tiger's being getting into the playoffs and playing well, it was fun to see.

I met up with Mark Kohne, Mike Doyle & Todd Hawley there. I was also amazed to see my brother Dan's Doppelgänger, complete with mullet.

A beautiful day in the neighbrhood

I got into Charlotte, NC yesterday and the weather is beautiful - 80 degrees and sunny. I checked into my hotel and they upgraded me (thanks you Hilton Diamond status) into a ginormous room with two bathrooms, two bedrooms, three beds a living room and kitchen with a pool view balcony. I feel obligated to use them all. I'm sitting on the balcony checking e-mail this morning, getting ready to head into the office for all day meetings.

Charlotte

I'm heading to Charlotte, NC this morning. I haven't been traveling much, which has been nice, for me. Now that the kids are in school during the day, I'm pretty sure Cathie wants me to get an office so I'm not bothering at home.

Stink Eye

Cathie woke up yesterday unable to open her eyes. She was in a huge amount of pain, so after church, I took her to the emergency room to get checked out. Dana took the girls for me and Lori ended up picking her up from the emergency room. Apparently, she had a pretty serious case of keratitis and it good that she went in yesterday instead of waiting. She ended up getting some drops which she had to wake up every two hours and put in her eyes. She's got to go to the eye doctor today to get them checked out further. I'm hoping she's able to get a sexy pair for blue blocker sunglasses out of this.

Paintball

Our Junior High & High School youth groups and a bunch of adults got together with two other churches in the area to play Paintball at Futureball Paintball course.

Bob Rays grilled out for us and the Rays boys were out in force along with their buddies.

There were all sorts of Paintball couples who've been playing together for years - including Zach & Tiffany and J & Jess. One of the cool things this year was that Nate finally got to play with me. Technically, you need to be in 6th grade and it was great to see how well he did. I wasn't sure how he'd react to getting nailed with a paintball, which can hurt pretty badly - especially when you get pelted multiple times.

Nate was there with kids he's grown up with in the church - kids like Grant, Josh and Justin.

I walked away without a too many bad welts, but I did take a shot dead on my cash and prizes, much like Eli did below:

Eli was there with Jeff and Bobby. Bobby had a ridiciulous paintball setup and looked like a commando. Jeff was trying to let off some aggression from the beating he took in Fantasy Football from me last week (although he said it was Diane that picked him team for him.)

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Tags: Paintball, Futureball

Emily

Emily: "Mom, I threw up a little bit, but don't worry, I cleaned it up."
Cathie: "Was your tummy feeling sick?"
Emily: "No. I was doing this with my hand (puts whole hand in mouth) and it made me throw up a little."

Free Coffee

I love Dunkin Donuts coffee, especially their Iced Coffee. Yahoo has a coupon today for a free one, good only today.

New Fall Lineup

There seems to be a plethora of good new TV out there this year. I hate to add new shows into my core lineup because I just don't have the time for it. Here's what I've caught so far:

Survivor - This is turning out to be a pretty lame season. The racial divide isn't cutting it.
Grey's Anatomy - I've never seen the show last night so I sat with Cathie and watched it. It seems to be a less funny, more dramatic version of Scrubs. Cathie was pretty annoyed as I asked her who all the characters were, but so far, I'm not hooked. I want Scrubs back.
Studio 60 - I caught this last night and liked it. Kinda seems like the West Wing.
The Amazing Race - I watched it for the first time last season and liked it, a second season might just be too much more of the same and I'm not sure if it's worth doing again.
The Office - This show has come back stronger than ever. I about wet myself laughing last night.
My Name is Earl - I love Jason Lee. Enough said.
Thief - I heard this is an amazing show, but I haven't watched it yet.

Tags: Survivor, Grey's Anatomy, Studio 60, The Amazing Race, Scrubs, The Office, Thief, My Name is Earl

Poopy Tooth

I went to the Dentists today to get my permanent crown put on. My dentist was putting it in the back of my mouth and he made sure to explain to me that if it popped out, to turn my head sideways and not swallow it. He went on to explain to me that he'd had one patient's pop out at home and he swallowed it. It was later "released" from his system, he brought it in and asked if he could put it back in. The only condition was that my dentist could never tell the guys wife. He figured his wife would have something funny to say every time he had bad breath. I explained to my dentist that telling my wife would be the least of my worries. It'd be my brothers and my friends I'd be concerned about. (It did end up back in the guy's mouth).

Total Chaos

We had our first junior high youth group meeting on Tuesday, called Chaos, which was the right word for it. We started out with some fun games that included duct taping kids to the wall and a five minutes segment where Matt and Zach demonstrated the power of Mentos and Diet coke.

We then went in to the lesson part of the night, called "Dares from Jesus". We're looking at some of the counter-cultural teachings of Jesus and how he challenges us in different aspects of our lives. As part of the lesson, we were talking about what a Dare is all about and tried to come up with some good dares ourselves, one of which was stopping this fan with my tounge. It hurt more than you'd think.

Aside from Jason, Jess and myself we've got 4 other leaders: Chris Cornell, Mike Rays, Matt Killeen and Zach Bashista. All four of them were were in Fusion when they were in 6th grade and now 3 of them are in college and one is a senior in high school. They're great with the kids, each with their own style.

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

Em in a Tree

Roger Waters Concert

Bob, Eli, Brad and I went to the Roger Waters concert last night and we were blown away. It was about a 3 hour show it was probably the greatest concert I've ever seen, even better than The Who back in 1989. This is one of those shows that I've wanted to see since I was a kid, so my expectations were very high, and I was not disappointed. The guitarist that covered the vocals and guitar solos for David Gilmour was amazing - at least as talented as Gilmour, if not more-so. You can see a set-list here and a review of the concert here.

I took some pictures and video, which you can watch here:

Tags: Roger Waters, Palace of Auburn Hills, David Gilmour

Bob, Brad, Eli and I are going to see Roger Waters tonight for the Dark Side of the Moon Live Tour at the Palace. I've listened to Pink Floyd since I was a kid and I gradually got hooked on his solo stuff like The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. This should be a great concert but a little different that seeing Jimmy Buffett last week.

Tags: Roger Waters, Dark Side of the Moon Live Tour, Palace of Auburn Hills, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking

My Mom

Here's the latest update on my Mom from my Dad:

She has been fighting pancreatic cancer for 11 1/2 months and remains resolute in fighting this dreaded disease. She doesn't complain about what she goes through and is an inspiration to all of us.

My Mom started her third round of chemotherapy almost three weeks ago. Before she started these treatments, her oncologist encouraged her to have vascular access port implanted for ease of infusions, hydration and blood draws (which are twice a week). Since this required surgery as an out patient, Lynn was reluctant, but had it implanted anyway. Now that the nurses don't have to stick a needle into her veins she loves her port.

This has been the most difficult treatment yet, with the side effects of pain, nausea, and extreme fatigue, being much worse than the previous treatments. The pain and nausea are controlled to some degree with medication. Because of the fatigue, the doctors decided to postpone the next treatments by one week. They hope that this will allow Lynn to build up her energy level.

You continue to be so faithful with cards, other well wishes, and your prayers for Lynn's healing. With all your prayers and so many other people who don't even really know Lynn bombarding heaven, we thought God would be saying, okay? enough already, shes healed! We remind ourselves that, He is God. He knows the master plan. We place our trust in Him and we believe in miracles. Prominently displayed in our home is a plaque from one of Lynn s closest friends which says: Be still, and know that I am God.

I've used statcounter.com for a while to track the usage statistics on my blog. It's good, but it's not free. Google's got their own free version called Google Analytics. If you've got a blog, this will tell you who looks at your site and when with some amazing detail.

To get set up, login Google Analytics with your Google Account. Once you've got your account set up, to get Google Analytics tracking your site's pageviews, drop a snippet of javascript onto your site's pages (much like Sitemeter.) If you're a blogger, just include the Google Analytics code into all your blogging software's templates.

Tags: statcounter.com, google analytics

Gaylord - Sunday Night

We got back from boating and Mike Doyle and Newton Peters had arrived from Michigan. Newton flew up from Alabama and Mike came all the way from Clarkston, MI. Mike came dressed for action, as you can see by the pictures below.

Newton was kind enough to bring some moonshine, all the way from his brother-in-law's still in rural Alabama.

Bill and Glenn cooked some gimongeous steaks, along with some asparagus and mushrooms that were amazing.

We ended the night playing poker and digesting our food. It's a great group of guys that go way back. Bill, Ron, Mike and I have worked together for the past 12 years. I came out of college knowing nothing and Bill and Ron taught me all sorts of good stuff, most of it true. Bill and I stuck together and went to Xerox and then Bill and Ron came back to work with us after a few years.

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.