04-23-2006...Beth and I ate at Mad Anthony's Lake City Tap House after bowling this weekend. How nice, I say, that something new has moved into town. I definitely approve. I had something they call an 'unwrap' which is sort of a cross between a wrap, pizza, and quesadilla...I had the Greek one (with the feta cheese, olives, etc) and it was excellent. We were going to try them about a month ago after bowling but the wait was 90 minutes (it smelled really really good outside) so we went to the new East of Chicago instead. The pizza there tastes like Little Caesar's. Which is not necessarily bad, but HOLY CRAP avoid the PB&J dessert pizza.

It feels like I've been running constantly for over a week now. Last Saturday was Beth's mother's birthday party up in Michigan. Beth and I hired Jenny and Katie to keep the kids at home all day, and we drove up to Kalamazoo in the morning and stopped in at Pam and Marve's new condo...very nice. We visited for a while, went out to lunch with them and then picked up a bucket of KFC for the party. It was at Mom G's assisted living place. She opened all her presents at least twice and was surprised each time she saw them. She is going downhill. Sunday morning we drove up to Ann Arbor to my sister's apartment, because out Auntie Irene is visiting from England. She flew in through Detroit so is staying for a day with Laura. She's never seen the kids so we took them with us this time. On the way there we had another breakthrough...Alex told us he had to go potty for the first time. Unfortunately we were in the boonies at the time, a long way from a toilet. So, when we got to Fort Wayne we stopped at McDonald's so Alex could try...and he was still dry, and he went! Domino Farms is close by where Laura lives so we thought it would be fun to take the kids there..petting zoo, hayrides, pony rides. It went well until a young cow mooed right in front of Alex in the barn. Being in the barn amplifies the sound. It was LOUD. It scared him...badly. We're lucky we didn't have to take him home right then. But he rallied when we got out of the barn and could go feed the ducks. He and Missy had something of a problem waiting turns for a pony ride but they both enjoyed it for as long as it lasted. Both of them wanted to get down by the time the ride ended. On the way home, Alex woke up somewhere in southern Michigan and cried the whole rest of the way home. I don't know why. We even stopped at a McDonald's to try to calm him down...no luck...and then I took a wrong turn near Fort Wayne and wound up going the long way around the city, which added maybe an hour to the trip with a crying toddler in the van. Eventually we did get home but it was a long trip. Last Monday a group of people from work (including me) traveled to Boston for some meetings with people from Mass General and Cambridge Polymer Group. I slept about as long as possible before leaving home, apparently, because I caught the plane leaving FW at the last possible moment. I was hurrying, but there was nobody at the flight check-in counter when I got there. There was a sign saying they were servicing the plane and would be back shortly. The self check-in kiosk had reached the cutoff time for the flight. Panic. I asked at the security check-in point, and was basically told, it's your problem. I did finally notice a buzzer at the counter and someone came up to check me in, and told me to run. Then of course there's suddenly a line at the security point, I get chosen for a random pat-down, my bag has to go through x-ray twice, I forgot about the little Swiss Army knife on my keychain, and finally I get through. I literally got on the plane just before they shut to door. Once we got to Boston, it took me four tries to get a hotel room. The first room they gave me had no heat. The second room already had someone in it. The third room had a broken lock and I couldn't get in. The fourth one was ok, though. Then, it just so happened that the immigrants' rights parade in Boston went right past the hotel, just as we were trying to get out to dinner, so we got stuck in traffic for a while. The taxi meter said over $7.00 before we had gone a block from the hotel. The entire group went to Legal Seafood, where I got the plate of lobster and steamers, neither of which were all that good. Everyone also got Werner from Switzerland to try a lobster; he seemed a little grossed out. I don't think he likes handling his food, for one thing. We had some good meetings with MGH and CPG over two days before heading right back. Friday evening, Beth and I got a babysitter and went to Fort Wayne with the Johnsons. We ate dinner at Joe's Crab Shack (better than Legal Seafood) and went to see the movie "Inside Man" which was pretty good, especially for a Spike Lee movie. And the theater had an ATM-style ticket selling machine. How cool is that? This weekend, Beth and I took the kids out geocaching both Good Friday (the 14th) and yesterday. Friday we only got a little bit outside of town before the rain started, but we did find one. Yesterday there was a softball practice for the Zimmer department team (I signed up in addition to church league this year). I had a good practice overall, hopefully I showed good enough outfielding skills to get some playing time. Had a couple hits too. Got a pretty bad sunburn all over my neck as well.

Beth paid me back for taking Alex out while she quilted by taking the kids out while I worked on the room downstairs. Progress has been very slow lately. We got some window trim stuff at Lowe's the other day, partly in an effort to try to seal off the infestation of ladybugs that the room has. (Mom was pretty creeped out by all the bugs, I think). While at Lowe's, Alex almost caused an amber alert with one of those 'I thought you were watching him' deals. We were checking out and I thought Beth had both the kids until she asked me "where's Alex" just after we all walked out. He was nowhere. Panic sets in. Beth has Missy in the cart running up and down the parking lot because we thought he had gone outside. I'm looking all over near the checkout lanes where we saw him last. Nowhere. I ran all along the front of the building and back in the entrance and told the first person in a red vest that my son was missing. Gave him a description and the photo out of my wallet, he was about to do whatever they do in such a situation, when I spotted him sitting at one of those little privacy desks where their employment computer is. Which was why I couldn't see him. Mom says I used to disappear like that a lot, and Alex is a lot like me at that age. Anyway, I got one of the windows trimmed and took a shop-vac to the bugs on the outside of the window, which helped the bug problem more than anything.