I turned 36 last week. People at work got me an ice cream cake. I made an appointment with an eye doctor. I bought a new belt clip for my cell phone. I finally got around to ordering my passport, and when I presented my ID they noticed that my driver's license had expired. So I got a new one of those.

Yesterday Beth and I took the kids to Binder Park Zoo in Michigan with Beth's friend Sheri and her husband Russ and their kids. It was a hot day and rainy through most of the drive up, so by the time we got there it was muggy as all get out. The kids liked it but everyone was so uncomfortably hot, especially when the clouds all dissipated and it got stifling. So, we left the zoo and headed for the mall. I picked up the new Harry Potter book. Earlier in the week I attended the Zimmer hip and knee forum in Chicago, where I got to see 8 live surgeries (everyone wants to know if I dropped a Junior Mint in anyone....No. I was in a conference room watching a live video feed) which were pretty gross at first but I got used to it. Except for the revision surgeries, which were horrible. Lots of sawing and hacking, and stuff I never want to have to go through. Dinner Monday night was at Rosebud's, which was excellent. I went with a guy from India and one from China who knows where the best Chinese restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown is, so on the way home Tuesday night we ate there (Lao Sze Chuan). Some of the stuff was really good and some was kind of weird. There was this jellied green bean dish that I thought was onions when I saw it because all the green was gone, and it was the texture of gummi worms. That was not so good. The five powder beef was excellent, as was the spicy chicken (they had a batch of peppers that were not as spicy as usual, which was good for me but Kai thought it wasn't spicy at all). The spicy tofu and the eggplant dish were both good too.

Beth and I were going to go out bowling with Steve and Laura (to get some practice before the season starts soon) but we never noticed that during the summer the bowling alley is closed Sundays. Bummer. We got lunch, then found that there were no movies playing we wanted to see (or had a good starting time) so we went home. Short job for the babysitter.

Beth and I went to see "War of the Worlds" a week ago today. Wow. I haven't been that creeped out by a movie in a long time. It was certainly a spectacle. We both were all jittery afterwards. Last Saturday 7/2 we went geocaching again, but only got two before we came back to the van to find a dead battery. Again. Not the first time this has happened, or the second, or the third...I guess it's time to get a new one. Fortunately, the first person to come by on a very rural country road stopped and gave us a jump. On the 4th, we went caching again, this time without incident. After we were done we went to Fort Wayne to shop at Jefferson Pointe and ate at Chili's, which was something to be endured because both kids wanted to go home. Loudly.
Last Tuesday my church softball game in progress was called because of the weather. It was partly cloudy at the time. However, someone had reported a funnel cloud in Mentone and Silver Lake (both at least 15 miles away). We all wondered if maybe Bubba had too many Blue Ribbons and fell off his porch, causing him to see things?
The other day Alex's friend Carson was discovered to have a tumor in his abdomen. Today it was confirmed to be malignant. He will have surgery Tuesday and will have some sort of chemotherapy following. How...why...does a 2-year-old get cancer??