Today was Alex's rocket launch day. He's been pretty stressed about it for a few days, but it went ok in the end. For his middle school science class, they've been learning about rockets and this project was for them to build one out of a 2-liter bottle. They fill it about halfway with water, add some pressurized air, and foosh. But the kicker is they have an egg in the rocket that they have to recover safely. So Alex did all the design work and I helped with the build. We made a cool looking rocket out of two bottles, one smaller, so it looked kind of like a two-stage rocket. Foamboard fins and nose cone, trash bag parachute, urethane foam egg container, decorated with duct tape, and named "Inertia Mk II." The upper stage and nose cone was supposed to detach and expel the egg which then parachuted to the ground safely. Well, his rocket SAILED maybe the highest in the class, or at least one of, but my guess is the upper stage got jammed together with the lower stage during acceleration, so it never came off and the whole thing plummeted like an arrow. It fell a long way. And the egg did not survive. But, even though nothing slowed it down on the descent, he had a really good aloft time. He lost a few points for a dead egg but still got an A- for the build and flight. Even with the egg loss, it was impressive. I wish I'd had a launch pad that we could do test flights with, maybe we could have made some tweaks to improve it. It worked fine when I threw it up by hand in the backyard.

The annual church picnic was today, and it looked to be a beautiful day for it but unfortunately we were pretty much all driven inside by the bees. We had the picnic tables, the bounce houses, the games...and the bees. Everywhere. So most everyone went inside, which cut the picnic short by a lot.

Last Thursday was Beth's surgery day. Wait, you say, didn't Beth just have surgery in January this year? Well, yes, she did, on the left thumb. Now, she's had the exact same surgery by the same surgeon on her right thumb. Again, everything went super well and she was headed home within a few hours of the procedure, in no pain (yet). We know this time exactly how much pain to expect. Judy came fro the surgery, she had planned to stay for a few days but decided to leave since I was home from work for the day of and after surgery, so anyway we finished up watching the entire series of "Friends" on Netflix and watching basically whatever else we can find, and overnight I just slept on the couch and set an alarm for every 2 hours for Beth to take her pain meds. So far she says the pain management is better than it was last time, but that may have been because her dominant hand was so much worse than the left. Anyway, you know what the best thing about this surgery is? It was free! I was really hoping to be able to get Beth in for both surgeries in the same calendar year. We burned right through our deductible and hit the out of pocket maximum by the end of January, so health care has been free (ignoring the premiums, of course, since they're deducted from my paycheck so I never see them) for the rest of the year! And another surgery is included! Anyway, we're all hoping Beth recovers from the surgery soon, because she's planning to start making soup again this week. We've already started getting the jars and bulk ingredients ready.
I'm still trying to get back to running since the half marathon I want to run is in about 2 months. I made it about 6.5 miles this weekend, so halfway back.

Gotta love a day off of work for Labor Day. No camping this year, but instead we all went up to Mishawaka/Elkhart/South Bend on Saturday to look at some. We stopped at a few of the larger dealers up there (it seems to be the world RV capitol) and found a few nice ones, both hybrids and bunkhouses. While looking at the campers somewhere up in Mishawaka, Beth got a call from the lady she was supposed to be meeting for lunch and coffee, oops...Anyway, unfortunately they cost a ton of money new and depreciate fast so my guess is we would buy a used one. We are once again thinking of selling the popup and upgrading. The camper has actually been for sale on Craigslist for about a month, and we've received no serious offers, although a couple of people did come by to take a look at it. My guess is we'd have better luck selling it next spring rather than late summer so I'm not going to take a lowball offer. I'm still trying to recover from the pneumonia, I ran again today but about 3.6 miles was all I had in me before I was pretty much done. Later on we all went to Paige's Crossing to play some mini-golf and drive some go-karts to celebrate the day off. The go-kart track there is not that great (just a simple racetrack) but we had fun. Missy kept it slow because it made her nervous but Alex and I raced each other full out. Beth also chose not to drive.