My odd children

This is the way Emily picks candy from her halloween stash. Madeline has seen Cool Hand Luke a couple too many times to understand what it means when we tell her she gets "A night in the box."

Lola and the Girls

The puppy continues to be cute and clueless about being potty trained. He's got this weird thing he does with Maddie's hair, and only Maddie's hair. She loves to pull on it. She'll grab it with her mouth, yank on it and grab it with her paws.

Riley is no longer scared of the puppy and actually enjoys wrestling with her, most of the time. It's the first time I've seen Riley try and be the alpha dog with another animal. The cat has bullied Riley around since she was a kitten, but Riley regularly pins Lola down when they wrestle. It's hilarious to watch.

Cathie has a love/hate passive/agressive relationship with the puppy. One minute she hates the puppy for all the accidents in the house, another minutes she's cuddling and talking to her like a baby. We're trying to potty train the dog and teach it to ring a bell by the back door when she has to go to the bathroom. She actually did it today for the first time.

Maddie's Class Rep Speech

Maddie was class rep in 3rd grade, postmaster last year and was nominated for the class rep position again this year. On her own, she started working on her speech.
She did not take my suggestions to disparage her competition using innuendo like,

"I'm not saying that my competition hates puppies punches babies, but do you really want to take that risk in voting for her? I love puppies and babies!"

Here's what she came up with all on her own:

As you all know, I'm Maddie Kurt and I am running for Mrs. Hares Class Representative. The qualities I have that would make me a good class representative would be that I am responsible. I would make sure that I wrote down everything we talked about and will make sure all the information gets to you.

Another quality have is that I have had experience. I was a Class Representative in Third Grade. I know what to do and I will be able to get the hang of things a bit quicker. I promise I will be at the meetings on time and ask for YOUR input. i will ask for any ideas you have or I think are good ideas. For example I could ask for a divide yourself in half day, where you could divide yourself in half with mismatching clothes down the middle, at the waist , Or Both! Or maybe we could come up with fun fundraisers for Active Faith or different charities. Also I could ask if maybe at lunch we could ask for a pizza party where a pizza place comes in and we could have pizza! This one is a long shot but maybe we could have a movie/video game one night after school. We could maybe have a day where we could do crafts at recess or bring our dolls or stuffed animals out to recess.

The last trait I have that would make me a good Class Representative is I love to help people. I want to help the people and the school to be more fun. Remember, vote for Maddie Kurt and I will keep all these promises I made in this speech.

Witches Hat Run New Results

Back in September, Kevin and I ran in the local Witches Hat 10k run. I was surprised to see a friend that I'd hadn't seen some time running in the race Andy (now known as Andrew) Hively. He was behind me for the first 6 miles and then came out of nowhere the last .2 miles and we sprinted the last part of the race together.

I thought Andy had beat me by one second, but it turns out that I won. Andy posted a picture on Facebook that was pretty much just like this one. You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words. Apparently this other doctored picture made it onto the internet as well, but it's very obvious that it's been doctored:

Blogging Feedback

For the most part, I have no idea who reads my blog. I go through ups and downs in the frequency, but lately, I've been putting more effort into Facebook stuff instead of my blog. I guess either my life has been pretty boring lately, I've been busy, or just haven't felt like writing anything down.

I received the following note from a couple of friends at work, Cyndi and Silas, who read my blog and have no qualms in telling me what they think about it:

Cyndi and I feel your blog has been really lacking good content over the past few weeks. To be honest you changed the backdrop and called that a revitalization and its no different then changing the wallpaper from roses to daffodils while keeping the fixtures and toilet the same. In the past it was fun, had technology tips, and made me want to go visit it. It used to be something we visited for enjoyment and pleasure reading, but lately.. Well.. It’s really not cutting it and I have moved it to the later part of my day instead of the first part as it just doesn’t excite me anymore. Perhaps in your new found extra time, since no big deals are beings signed, you can sign up for one of those online courses to help you improve your blogging skills. I am not sure where you can go for this but I am sure we will here about it in your blog as this might be the only thing you have right now to blog about.

We hate to sound so harsh but friends should not let friend’s blog like you have in the past few weeks.

Some might say Cyndi and Silas have too much time on their hands. Some might say that Silas is the Haji to my Johnny Quest. I was laughing as I read this note to my wife. Her response:

I've been thinking the same thing. Your blog's been pretty boring lately. Just lots of pictures. Nothing really that interesting.

Emily's Future Career

Cathie and Emily were at McDonald's the other day and had this conversation:

Emily: "Mom, what's that person behind the counter doing."
Cathie: "She's making french fries."
Emily: "Whoah! I am so working at McDonalds when I get older!"

Big Football Hits

My brother Dan sent me sent me this collection of big hits in Pee Wee football, including this kid getting drilled:

New Ear Piece

I'm a huge fan of Plantronics in terms of headsets. I use a Plantronics CS70N wireless headset in my office and a Plantronics Voyager 510 for my mobile phone. I have tiny ears and the Voyager fit my ear very nicely and seemed to have pretty decent sound quality on both ends of the line.

A couple of months ago, a friend gave me one of his extra Jawbone earpieces. He'd lost it, found it and didn't need two. I used it for a while and was amazed at the quality of the sound and noise canceling ability. I was walking through the airport, between the A and B/C terminals in an area with blaring psychedelic music going, talking to Cathie on the phone. The music was loud enough that I could barely hear Cathie, so I assumed she couldn't hear me. The Jawbone actually cancelled out the background noise to the point that Cathie's could barely hear it. The wind noise reducition was so-so with this headset.

My only problem with the Jawbone 1 was that it didn't fit my freakishly small ears very well. It was tough to get on and felt flimsy once I had it on my ear. I looked around and picked up a Jawbone 2 new on eBay for about $35+$20 for a charger. The new headset fits much better, is half the weight, and the noise cancelling quality is even better. I was on the phone with Silas yesterday in a wind storm and he could barely hear the wind in the background. (As a side note, Silas was sharing with me his view on how India will someday enslave America, but that he will take good care of me when that day comes. How very thoughtful of him.)

Exercise Rut

I'm in a rut again as I'm transitioning my workout for the winter months. I'm still exercising five days a week, but I haven't got a real rhythm going yet. I've been lifting most days, but I'm trying to keep running as part of my routine. The running part is hard with the cold and my increased travel recently. I dropped about 30 lbs, down to my lowest of 180lbs from 208. I'm hovering at about 187lbs now, which is decent.

I've been lifting over the past couple of weeks with one of the high school guys from my youth group, Rodney. I've been trying to impart some of the wisdom I've learned from Kirk, and originally even from Brad over the years. It was close to ten years ago that I started working out with Brad and he taught me how to lift weights. We went through a bunch of cycles of the Body-for-Life program, along with Wilbur and the three of us would work out together pretty regularly.

Girl Scout Tea Party

The girls had a mother-daughter Girl Scout tea-party on Saturday. The girls had the chance to learn how to set the tables, serve properly and use their best manners. Nate and I hung out at home and did guy stuff. Way more fun.

I attended an etiquette dinner in college. I shared with my parents all these great manners I'd learned and there response was, "Really?!" (Said in a Kasey kind of way). Apparently my parents had been teaching me the exact same manners all my life and I sorta missed it. They would roll their eyes as I would share with them the gems I'd learned in the class which they'd taken credit for. What goes around, comes around.

New Digital Camera

A couple years ago I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XTS. At the time, I bought the extended warranty for $99. It seemed like a good idea at the time based on it being a $1,000 camera. The camera seemed to die every time I would go on vacation. I brought it in four times and on the fifth time, they replaced it. They gave me a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XSi.

The new camera is great with a number of great new features. The downside is that I had to buy new memory cards (it takes SD memory cards instead of Compact Flash), new spare batteries and $199 on the new service protection plan. The nice thing about the plan is that it covers accidental (and maybe intentional damage) for four years from today, but it'll probably be worth it in the end. Hey, my $400 plan on a $5000 TV got me a brand new TV a few months ago.

You can tell the mood is gone when....

The last words you want to hear your wife say after coming in from a date:

"Ewww! I thought I was picking up a leaf and just picked up a #$#@ piece of Lola's poop!"

Also, the wrong response to the situation is to bust into laughter. Apparently that makes your wife chase your around with poop on her finger. Not good.

Eli loves his girly drinks

Anne Mulcahy on the Obama Economic Team

Two of my idols (some would say crushes) are on Obama's economic team: Anne Mulcahy (Xerox's CEO) and Warren Buffett. (Hopefully they offset the lunacy of Michigan's Govenor and her failed policies, who is also on the team) I'd heard Anne Mulcahy talk about her personal politics at a Business Week symposium I attended in Manhattan. Regardless of her political views, I hold her in the highest esteem in terms of her ability to lead thorugh economic crisis, as she's done multiple times at Xerox. She understands culture, leadership and transition better than any leader I've seen.

Warren Buffett is an interesting bird. On one hand, he's the wealthiest man in the world with a wealth ranked earlier this year at $62 billion. He's brilliant, humble and frugal. On the flip side, he plans on giving away all of his wealth, with the majority of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He believes the rich should pay more to help those less fortunate. I've read and watched everything I can on the man because his simplification of the business world fascinates me. I also like his view on philantrophy:

I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.

Paul and Jon may hate both of these people, but I respect them both greatly.

Dan and I

My Uncle took this picture when we were kids. Kind of encapsulates our relationship growing up. Much improved now.

Wrestling

Nate started wrestling practice last night. It's his first year and he was a little nervous going into it. He decided that this year instead of playing basketball in the fall he'd wrestle. I wrestled in 7th grade (82lb weight class) on the middle school wrestling team (along with Matt Tomlinson, whose not in this picture).

Nate is one of four kids out of 40 that haven't wrestled before, plus he's one of the smaller guys (73 lbs). I'm so proud of the way Nate is willing to try new stuff like this, even knowing that's it's going to be tough going in the beginning. Wrestling runs a little different than Panthers. It's a team sport where people compete as individuals. Starting in January, they have meets during weekend that they go to. The coaches are there to support them, along with the rest of the team when they're not competing in their own events. Practices are 3 days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for two hours per night. It's great for Nate because it keeps him busy and active, not to mention what he learns from wrestling.

Somewhere over Florida

Best Garbage Arrangement in the Neighborhood

This morning's family service at church

I found this on my pillow tonight