Bethanna-Banana

My sister-in-law Beth is the smartest person in our family. She's a doctor, doing her fellowship at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. If you''re not familiar heard of St. Jude's (and amazingly, I had never heard of it until Beth started working there), it was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas on the premise that no child should die in the dawn of life. Thomas named the hospital for Saint Jude Thaddeus, the Catholic patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes. All medically eligible patients who are accepted for treatment at St. Jude are treated without regard to the family's ability to pay. St. Jude is the only pediatric research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay. In addition to providing medical services to eligible patients, St. Jude also assists families with transportation, lodging, and meals.

Beth is the best-of-the-best working at the best hospital in the world for her area of study. Many think she's just smart. Not only is Beth brilliant, she's married to my brother Jon and has some of the worst gas of anyone in the family. Beth puts her pants on one leg a time, but afterwards she makes gold records... and cures cancer.

The other day Beth heard from a friend from residency who is now practicing up in Alaska. She was attending a Pediatric Hospital Conference and one of the talks she went to was "Top 10 articles in Pediatric Hospital Medicine". Beth's article which was published in Pediatrics last year (you can read the article here) was one of the articles presented because it was felt that it would change the way that pediatric medicine is practiced.

Man Week

Nate and I went out for breakfast this morning and then we had practice tonight. Day two of full contact went a lot better than the first day for Nate. I saw him get knocked on his butt at least twenty times, but he kept getting up and kept going. Most of the other kids have been play for a while and have a lot of the skills and techniques down, which makes all the difference when you're making a tackle. Nate does a great job not getting frustrated as he's learning the positions. He watches the other guys pretty closely and learns from them and hangs on the every word of the coaches.

I'm still on parking duty, and I've figure out to do the job right, I should bring my iPod, wave a lot, smile and look like I know what I'm doing, and . One of the women on parking duty with me has grand plans like repainting the parking lot lines, advising each and every person to park straighter and slashing the tires those cars that park on the lawn. I'm pretty content with smiling, waving and suggesting that people should park on the pavement. If they don't I figure there are worse crimes against humanity. The field is a giant trash-heap with big sinkholes that's been turned into a park, so how badly can it be destroyed?

After football, Nate and I went go-karting and then rented the baseball game The Bigs for the Wii. It's a blast and it uses the WiiMote and Nunchuck for all the hitting and pitching in a way that make the gave realistic and fun. We finished the night off watching the football movie Rudy. The girls come home tomorrow night and Nate and I have a LOT of cleaning to do.

Technology Fast

This is pretty interesting article from the Washington Post entitled, The Longest Day Ever. It talks about a group of student's 24 hour technology fast:

No television, computers, iPods or other MP3 devices, radio, video games, CD players, records or cellphones (or land lines) for 24 hours.

This would probably throw my system into shock and kill me. Anyone up for doing this with me sometime?

Nate's First Day of Full Contact

Today was Nate's first day of full-contact in football. They had to have three days of practice with helmets and five days in pads prior to contact. Talking to the other parents, this day is the make-or-break-it day for a lot of the boys in their first year. The first time getting tackled or tackling another player, going helmet to helmet, pad to pad shocks them the first time. Nate was a little nervous going into today, not knowing what to expect. I watched Nate out there a little hesitant at first to make the first full-on tackle After a few tries, he got into it. He got his bell rung during one of the drills when one of his teammates accidentally clotheslined him. He couldn't breathe for a few, which scared him more than anything. His coach told him to sit out for a bit, but instead he jumped back in and continued the drills. All-in-all, he liked his first practice, but knows he's got a lot to learn. His coaches are fantastic, working with the kids individually as need, very patient, but very disciplined. Nate's team has their first scrimmage with another team on on Thursday. Their first game is on August 25th.

Nate and I had planned on going to the Detroit Lions practice today, but it got rained out and moved inside, which doesn't have room for the public. We went out to our favorite restaurant, Buffalo Wild Wings after practice and came home to watch a movie, as part our ongoing man-week.

Nate and I talked to Cathie, Maddie and Em and it sounds like they're having a blast. They spent most of the day at the American Girl Doll store downtown. They got their dolls hair done, they got matching outfits and had their pictures taken with their doll and then took them to an American Girl Doll play. Nate and I agreed that this would be close to our idea of hell. Nate and I broke down today and did our first load of laundry, but we're avoiding any dishes, making beds or cleaning anything else until the 11th hour.

Crazy Story

Interesting (no longer Wild) story about Cathie and the girl's trip to Chicago, as told by Sooze:

I was chatting with Sherry (my Mom's best friend) today on the phone. She is shopping (what a shock) with one of her and my mom's good friend, Ramona, in Chicago. I mentioned that Cathie, her mom and the girls were there too!

Not even 20 minutes later, Sherry calls back and says that she just ran into them. Don't worry, everyone's okay. Crazy!!

Cathie texted me today and told me that they were walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago and saw someone walking in front of them that looked just like Sherry. Sure enough, it was her. Small world.

Update: After reading the story again, I'm not exactly sure it deserves the title 'Crazy Story'. 'Mildly amusing story'? Maybe. 'Small World'? Better. Crazy... Only when it refers to Sherry.

Man Time

After football practice, Nate and I grabbed Slurpees, headed home and grilled some big 'ol steaks. As we ate our manly dinner, we watched one of the greatest football movies ever, Remember the Titans. Tomorrow we're heading to watch the Detroit Lions practice and then hit BW3's after practice for some hot wings.

Parking Lot Duty

Each family in Panthers football have to volunteer six hours of time in the organization. The jobs range from working the chains at a game, announcing, working concessions or selling tickets. I picked the first job available and signed up for parking lot duty. There are twelve teams with twenty five kids per team, which translates into a lot of cars, and I guess the need for parking lot attendants. As a parking lot attendant, I have to stand around for 30 minutes before and after practice and make sure people don't park on the lawn. I basically stand around for 30 minutes, smile and pretend like I've got a purpose there. I've tried to come up with ways to do the job better or smarter, but frankly, people pretty much don't park on grass, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing there. At least I get to wear a shiny green vest.

Switch to Facebook

Interesting article from Business Week on why people are switching from the business networking site LinkedIn to Facebook for professional networking.

Man Week

Cathie, Em and Madeline are in Chicago on a girls trip with Cathie's Mom. They stayed over at Cathie's parents last night and took the train out this morning. This means Nate and I are bachelors until Thursday night. We caught a movie last night and then went shopping for some "man-food" (steaks, pop, beer (for me), chips and pizza). When we originally found out about the trip, Nate and i had big plans for Cedar Point and Tigers games, but having football practice every night kind of put a damper on things. We've still got fun stuff planned - go-karting, Lions practice, BW3's and movies. We've moved the Wii upstairs along with our Xbox 360 so they're all on the big screen for late night video-gaming. We're thinking that our best bet is not clean the house until Thursday night right before the girls come home, at which point we'll go nuts and get it all straightened up.

Em's Trick

The kids and I headed to Lansing to see my Grandma and to see Cathie's parents. Despite the rain and the chill, the kids decided to swim. Em did her first flip off the diving board, or as she calls it, a 'Black Fip'.

Exreme Engineering

My degree is in Computer Science, but the degree is still part of Michigan State's College of Engineering - so I'm an engineer at heart. I was catching up on my Tivo'd shows and ended up watching the Discovery Channel show, Extreme Engineering, the Big Dig episode, one of the most ridiculous engineering feats ever done to re-route Boston's highway system underground. I was working on a project about ten years ago in downtown Boston as a lot of this was going on. It has got to be one of the most amazing engineering feats I've ever seen. (I've only seen three others, so I guess it's all relative)

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."
-Oscar Wilde

I did it!

For the first time ever, I beat Emily in My Pretty Pony Memory Game. Twice. We've played this gmae a million times and she smokes me each and every time. Cathie claims she's beat Emily once a this game, but I'm skeptical.

Thrill Ride at Wal-mart

Nate, Em and I had to run some errands and came across this boat simulator ride setup outside of Walmart. Em learned that Nate's a scary driver.

When Mom's gone and Dad lets Em dress herself

I take half the blame. The other half is Jess Shinn's influence

Signalmap

Signalmap is a neat webapp that lets you punch in your zip code and your cellphone provider and see how the reception is where you live. Not only can you use it to gauge where the best place is to make your call, you can compare the four big providers so you can see which one is best suited for you (based on your home and work location). Of course, the signals are all user-contributed, so there's no guarantee that providers themselves haven't gone and flooded the site with slightly higher than usual signal ratings.

Check it out and add your own signal.

Jesus Curses the Fig Tree

I was reading these verses this morning and i scratched my head.

Mark:12-14, 20-21: The next morning as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. He noticed a fig tree in full leaf a little way off, so he went over to see if he could find any figs. But there were only leaves because it was too early in the season for fruit. Then Jesus said to the tree, “May no one ever eat your fruit again!” And the disciples heard him say it..... In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

Maybe this would have all made sense to the disciples back in the day, but I'm pretty sure if I were there with them, we'd have all been quietly asking each other, "You have any clue as to what that means? Nope? Ok, me neither."

Maybe Jesus had low blood sugar and was a little grumpy? I can relate.

Football

Nate's first practice in full pads is today. 95 degrees. Nice. He continues to love it.

Update: They ended up canceling practice yesterday because of the heat. I talked to my friend Newton down in Florida, where Football is a religion. He said they don't cancel practice unless there's lightning a few feet away. The kids don't even complain about the heat - just the fire ants on the field. After a recent practice he said it looked like the kids had the chicken pocks from the fire-ant bites.

Simpsons Movie

Will and I went to see the Simpsons movie last night. It was phenomenal. The movie opened up making fun of suckers like us who go see a movie based on a show you can watch 400 episodes for free on TV. One of my favorite parts was where Marge taped a goodbye video to Homer. In order to show she was serious, she explained that she'd taped it over the only copy of their wedding video. That was funny, to me.

On August 22nd, Cathie and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. About 6 months into things, I wasn't sure we'd make it that far. When we'd received our wedding video tape from a friend, i pushed in the write-protect tab instead of popping it out. Mistake. We had Cathie's boss at Big Brothers/Big Sisters over one night to our 400 square foot married housing apartment and we showed them our video. I never took it out of the VCR. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, I had Star Trek, The Next Generation set to tape and it recorded over our ceremony. Wow. Bad move. Horribly bad move. Nothing like making your new bride sob for a while.

For our 1 year anniversary, I had a friend help me reconstruct a video from a bunch of people's movies (of our wedding) and came up with something that was so-so. We laugh about it now....

Mike Yaconelli Tribute

Thanks to Tom for this video tribute to Mike Yaconelli, considered by many (and more importantly me) to be the father of youth ministry. He's written two of my favorite books: Messy Spirituality and Dangerous Wonder. Mike founded Youth Specialties, a company that would create resources for youth pastors. They put on these giant youth worker conferences around the world, which I've gone to a few of. The highlight was always hearing Mike talk - encouraging and challenge youth workers like no one else. Whether you've heard of Mike or not, this is a great video: