Beth and I bowled with Steve and Laura again today, for the first time in a while. We've had to reschedule or cancel or find substitutes several league days in a row. But today, for a short time, everything was perfect. I found a groove in the second game, and closed every frame in the game for the first time (7 strikes including 5 in a row, and 3 spares) and scored a personal best 232. Had in the 120's the other 2 games. A zone is nice when it hits, I gotta say.

I have begun to remodel the small room downstairs that has served as an office/junk room since we moved in. Since we need another room for another baby, we're turning it into a guest bedroom. It's small, but serviceable. I've been pulling down the ugly ceiling tiles and ugly paneling so I can put up drywall, and today a work crew was here to install two new double hung replacement windows to replace the drafty old ones with the crappy cranks. I sealed up the sides with caulk and great stuff and you can already notice a difference in the room. It's still not really warm, but at least it isn't freezing any more.

Last time we were in Michigan my nephew Ric told me about geocaching. It sounded fun so I checked out the website, and wound up buying myself a little handheld GPS receiver off of Amazon.com. I found my first cache today. It wasn't hard to find, it's just hidden in some underbrush by a city park here in town. I took a foot warmer and left some Sponge Bob band-aids. Of course, now that I have the GPS and could have some fun with it, we had a winter storm that dumped several inches of snow on us so there's little chance of finding anything now until spring. Heh, maybe next spring I'll get to go caving again too.

Yesterday was Beth's birthday. For the occasion we went out to eat at a nice restaurant that we hadn't tried before, The Channel Marker in Syracuse (Indiana). They seem to have a good selection of food there, although my steak wasn't the best I've had it was not bad. Beth really liked hers. And it's located right on Lake Wawasee; it must be really scenic in the summer. The day before yesterday we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters in town. They played to a packed...and I mean packed...violation of fire codes packed...house at a local middle school gym. Why a middle school gym and not something larger? Who knows. We needed to get there much earlier than we did to get decent seats. But it was a fun show. They're not quite like I remember from the Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal days when I was a kid, when they had their own TV show and Saturday cartoon, but it was still a good time. I saw a lot of people I know from work there; I think most of Warsaw was there.

Greg Bell and I just got back yesterday from the auto show in Detroit. We were going to drive up very early Saturday, get there by 10, and drive back when we were done but more snow was closing in so we left Friday night instead and stayed at a cheap motel (got it on Orbitz) in Dearborn. Big winners: Ford and Suzuki (Ford was generating to most traffic with the new Mustang, Cobra, and GT, all of which are SO COOL. and of course the new F-150s as well. Suzuki has some very nice new family cars out that I would take a look at when replacing the Geo: well screwed together, attractive, and passed the door test - makes a nice clunk when you slam it) Big losers: Saturn and Kia (Every Saturn we looked at and sat in was cheap, flimsy, and overpriced; and Kia....Oh, Kia, Kia, Kia. You would think that the CHEAPEST cars at this show where you're trying to draw interest, the ones in the display next to the likes of Maserati and Bentley, wouldn't be LOCKED.) Honorable mentions include Dodge (for the NASCAR simulator) and Jeep (for the cool waterfall, the video games, and the Wrangler Unlimited).

Last night was date night. Beth and I went out to dinner and then to see "Big Fish," which we both really enjoyed.

Back to work today. Between vacation and being sick, I've been off for three whole weeks. Today was tough to get through, although it was made better by the fact that I had NO phonemail messages waiting for me...they did some upgrades at work after Christmas and everyone's voicemail was wiped out. Speaking of wiping out...we were up in Michigan to help move Beth's mom out of her apartment (she's going to an assisted living place but is visiting Judy in Alabama currently) and drove through a really bad snowstorm on the way back. So bad that the roads were insanely slippery. Enough so that going less than 25 mph we still wound up in a ditch. Fishtailed the minivan 2 or 3 times and slid right across the road, hit a ditch, and plowed right up the other side. Took a branch off some guy's pine tree, broke a parking light and knocked a piece of plastic off from somewhere under the grill. Tore up his lawn pretty badly, probably, but I couldn't really tell because of the snow. Alex didn't even wake up until I opened a door and he got cold. The people who owned the pine tree happened to be outside and saw the whole thing and helped us push the van back onto the road. A little bit down the road we stopped at the dirtiest, filthiest, scariest little backwoods hole in the wall gas station to check the tires and use the restrooms...and decided that if we were going to wait out the storm, we sure weren't going to do it there. We got the rest of the way home without further incident.

Today Beth and I and two other couples went to South Bend to a fondue restaurant, the likes of which Beth and I haven't been since leaving Orlando in 1995. It was a really nice place, and they serve appetizers and desserts included with all the entrees. We're going to have to get together to find eclectic restaurants more often. Yesterday, these same friends volunteered to watch Alex all day so Beth and I could have a free day together. Not much was open so we went for a drive around the countryside. We checked out the covered bridge in Roann (it's a covered bridge) and the Victorian Village in North Manchester (a couple houses was all we saw...wonder if we missed it). And Alex did indeed get to see his first New Year's Day come in. We passed on the hockey game this year (after we bought tickets, we couldn't find a babysitter) so we went to a gathering at a friend's house instead. Played some Pit, some Catch Phrase, had a LOT of food...and it all broke up at about 11 pm. Too many little kids there. Sam fell asleep at a regular time but not Alex...not with so much hubbub going on. And he was so would up that after we got home he still couldn't get to sleep until after midnight. He still hasn't been sleeping well lately.