We got back yesterday after a whirlwind trip to Pennsylvania this week. Conflicting interests, wanting to visit Laura & Thomas and also minimize trauma, had us limiting the visit to 3 days. Originally we planned on the 27th-29th but Alex had an appointment to keep so we delayed to the 28th-30th. We were prepared to do the long drive with Churro in the car but in the end Natalie decided to stay home because it seemed like a long time for him to be in the car with everyone and she wasn’t sure how he would react with their cats. We were going to take the van but since Nat stayed home with the dog, we took the SantaFe instead. We left around 10 on Saturday. Way on the other side of Ohio we were passing Grandpa’s Cheesebarn, which we’ve passed many times now on this route, and we’ve always said one of these days we should stop there. Well, this was the day. We stopped and spent an hour or so wandering around the cheesebarn to see what’s what. It’s a lot of cheese, that’s what, plus all the stuff that goes with cheese. And candy. We actually spent around 50 bucks in cheese and summer sausage and crackers, planning to break them out at Laura’s the next day. We got to her house around dinnertime and she had fajitas just about ready for dinner. Plus a lot of cookies and things. We watched a lot of football the rest of the day and the next, which was mostly just hanging out and playing games. We introduced them to ‘No Thanks’ and played that (and Wizard!) about constantly. Sunday we also did a painting thing, where Laura had gotten some blank canvases and Thomas sketched some Christmasy things (gnomes, reindeer) on them, and we all took one and painted it. Missy however, preferred to draw her own. So she took a blank canvas and sketched Kermit the Frog making a scrunchy face, and she painted that instead. It was a lot of fun and our works all came out pretty good. Fun time. We did presents (small stuff, but the kids all got Stanley water bottles!) and in the evening Beth and I went out for a nice dinner at the Hilton with Laura & Thomas without the kids (even had a drink!). Monday we did a bit of shopping in town (although we found most everything was closed, except the Ace hardware) and got some discounted Christmas décor. We all went out for lunch at the Eat’n Park before we hit the road again.

Obviously, it was Christmas this week! Not too much going on at home, really, Alex has still been working a lot of hours and the rest of us are basically chilling. There was a Christmas eve service at church; we all went out to early dinner with Mary Jane at Texas Road House so we could make the 6:00 service, then afterwards we watched “Elf.” We had a nice Christmas at home: Beth got me a Komets hockey jersey (love it), I got her the Warsaw Cut Glass Ornament and tickets for us to go see an Eagles tribute band next month. The kids got their games and clothes and movies and gift cards and candy. We went to see the synchronized Christmas lights display like we usually do in the evening. It always amazes me that people are willing to spend that much time and effort putting up lights. We did get a new tree this year and managed to get it put up a few days before Christmas, but never did get it decorated. I put Beth’s collection of decorative Christmas trees up, and the stockings, but that was completely it for Christmas decorations in the house this year. 

While watching tv a couple days before Christmas, Beth was eating popcorn and forgot that she has several crowns because she loves crunching the unpopped kernels. Well, she broke one of her crowns on one of them. The dentist’s office is obviously closed, so she won’t be able to get it taken care of for a couple weeks at best. I hope she makes it. 

Something also went snap in the trainer while I was riding it in the morning the day after Christmas, and then the pedals wouldn’t turn. I was afraid I broke it somehow, but once I got the bike off the trainer again both of them turned just fine by themselves. Somehow the two smallest gears had come loose; looks like we didn’t get it tightened up enough when setting it up last week. I went to the Trail House and they lent me a sprocket wrench for free so I could get everything put back together and tight, and after that it seemed to work just fine. 

Well, the kids have been home on break for a week and finally I am too. I wrapped up for the year on Friday, and actually spent a chuck of time cleaning up the office, getting rid of stuff I don’t need to hang on to any more, and straightening up. My cubicle has been a wreck for a long time now. Anyway, I think I accomplished a lot this past year and I am taking the full 2 weeks off now. The kids however are still working. At least Alex is. They both asked for time at Kroger (Alex) and Lowe’s (Missy); Kroger asked Alex to start right away and they have been giving him a lot of hours already because they are so short. Lowe’s told Missy she’d be on a call-in basis, and they have called one time, resulting in 3 hours of which most was taken up trying to get her activated in the system without much luck. So Alex is getting hours but Missy is not. 

I went back in to work on Monday wearing a mask because I still didn’t have a negative covid test. I had forgotten how much I hate wearing a mask. Got use to it a couple years ago but I don’t even remember what we did with all those masks we made back in the covid days. I’m sure we still have them somewhere. 

Thursday my group at work did volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity again (3rd or 4th time?) Starting first thing in the morning we all arrived at the site in Mentone to work laying down laminate flooring. New to everyone in the group, but it didn’t take long to get a system going. We got well over half of the living room and the master bathroom covered before ending at around lunch time, then we all went to lunch at the Bull Dog Saloon in Mentone, which we had never been to, but someone heard they have really good pizza, which they do!

Friday was the Christmas party at the Zastrow’s house for everyone on the worship team (including tech) at church. It was a snacks and games party for the most part. Beth made Laura’s famous corn crack dip which everyone loved, so none of that to bring back home. After eating a bunch we all got into playing a massive round of ‘5 Second Rule.’ Basically that was hilarious. 

Saturday while Alex was at work, the girls all wanted to go to the antique / junk shops around town. The one down US 30 from Warsaw turned out to be closed for renovations though, so it was cleaned out. We got a bit lost following the county roads up north a ways but did make it to North Webster to the antiques stores there. There were plenty of cool things to find but nothing I really needed until I found some 1990 Topps football cards from sale, with the stick of gum still intact in the packs. I picked up a couple of those for Laura and Thomas. Beth and Missy each found some fun and pretty trinkets. 

Trey at work has lent me his smart trainer. Basically it is a device that you remove the back wheel of your bike and attach in its place. Then as you ride it adjusts the resistance. When you sign up to Zwift, which is a riding app, you can virtual ride through a world a lot like in Wii Sports Resort. So anyway, I’ve been trying out the app (subscription service) and the trainer with some rides this week. Trey came over to help me get it set up, and so far I like it a lot. I’ve put the old Schwinn on the trainer instead of the new Specialized, maybe I’ll just leave it set up like that. Nice to be able to ride in the winter.

Coronavirus! Covid has struck again. Beth and me both; she has been about a day ahead of me in the progression so I know where I got it from. I started feeling like I was coming down with something on Tuesday evening (went to D-group at church anyway), on Wednesday morning I felt well enough to go in to work but was feeling worse and worse as things progressed so by lunchtime I went home and stayed home, feeling achy and chilled all over. Sitting on the couch watching tv in a hoodie (with the hood up) under a blanket with my slippers on was about all I could manage for a few days. Mary Jane got some covid tests for us and brought them over (left them at the door) on Thursday, and they were both very very positive. No needing to wait 15 minutes for the lines to appear, they lit right on up. By Friday, we were doing a bit better, which was a good thing because Missy came home for break on Friday and on Saturday Alex was flying in to Indy. Missy was nice enough to take the risk of driving to Indy with me to get Alex, but we both masked up in the van on the way down there. She drove all the way to Indy and I drove back. Alex got in at about 6:30, we got some dinner there and headed home. The process of driving to IND and back absolutely wore me out. Alex was jet lagged and Missy was tired too, and Beth was covidy, so nobody left home all day today either.

The culmination of the soup season… the Wawasee Middle School PTO Gift & Craft Bazaar… was this weekend. We went to set up on Friday evening and were in the same spot we were last year, and Beth got up super early Saturday morning to make the sampling soups. No major events like burning the chili she was going to serve (2016) or being so late we lost our booth or getting the van stuck in mud (both 2018). The show seemed slower overall than previous years, but I guess that was an illusion because we counted over 150 sold altogether, and only 2 short of an all-time record (set last year). For some reason, the soala soup she was serving came out really bland this time, so instead of ‘wow that’s really good’ from everyone who tasted it, we were getting ‘meh…needs salt’ most of the time. I tasted it way too late in the show to make up for the lost sales, and I’m sure we did lose some because it wasn’t very good. Not sure why, but she did use a different bouillon so maybe that was it. Anyway, it was a good show, but Beth is glad it’s all over. It’s been a tough year for Beth since her back has been hurting so much this year, so I helped make soup a lot more than I normally have to.

We also had very little time to rest after the Wawasee show because the Komets annual Teddy Bear Toss was Saturday evening. They were playing the K-Wings, too, which made it even more interesting. We went with the Presslers who brought their girls, both of whom love going to the games and donated some of their old stuffed animals. The K’s fell behind early and never led, but we did get to launch the stuffies by midway through the first period. Eventually, the Komets lost to the Wings 3-2 despite outshooting them.

Sunday was Beth’s work Christmas party, which I think we missed last year but I don’t remember why, but I did find my white elephant gift from last year that I was going to bring then, so I brought it now. It was a very nice time, we had a carry-in dinner and played some party games and had the white elephant exchange. I brought a laptop satchel and Beth brought a couple jars of soup; I came home with a new board game called “Gimme That” which I don’t know anything about yet, and Beth got a Keurig coffee & tea sampler.

Alex finally has his car back. It’s been OOC for over a week now, but Monday (they suggested he wait until after the holiday) he got the towing company to come to his apartment and they were able to get it started, but suggested he drive it to the shop right away and not shut it off. He also got to learn an important life lesson, when the tow truck says they’ll be there in an hour or two, they mean a lot longer than that. But he got it to the shop and it turned out to be a bad alternator, as we suspected. So now he has a new one and finally got the car back on Wednesday.

I got home from church today and went downstairs to let Churro out, and found Natalie in her bedroom, even though Beth had dropped her off at work at 9:00. As it turns out, even though she was on site 15 minutes early she clocked in a few minutes late after eating in the dining area…and was fired. My guess is that she should have been fired last week when she left work a half hour before the scheduled end of her shift (by mistake, but…), and because of her usual practice of being a few minutes late for her shift almost every time. So, that’s the end of her Starbucks employment.

On the brighter side, Thanksgiving was this past week. Missy came home for the long weekend, and on Thursday Beth, Missy, and I (Nat was still working then and stayed home) went to Michigan to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Wiessners. We brought a big salad and drinks and managed to get everything to Ric’s without spilling everything onto the ground. Most of the whole gang was there: Ryan, Sam, Lauren, Marve & Beth, Judy, Steph & John, Trevor, and us. Big crowd for a small house. We had a good time and nice visit and headed home late in the evening. 

While Missy was home we all went to see “The Wild Robot” before it left theaters. Really good! Beth had seen it in Washington and wanted to go see it again with all of us. Missy and I carried out our plan to watch “Alien: Romulus” while she was home as well, which neither of us liked as much as we’d been led to believe we would. It was ok, but the Ian Holm CGI was horrible and unnecessary.

Alex broke his glasses the other day, and when he was going to go to lenscrafters to see if they could fix it, his car wouldn’t start. It’s been sitting for a couple days now, doesn’t make a clicking sound when the key is turned, lights won’t come on, and his attempts to jump start it were not successful. I’m guessing the alternator is bad, but I’m no mechanic. Here comes an adulting lesson for him! He’ll have to arrange getting it towed to a repair shop. And I’ll have to arrange paying for it over the phone. And speaking of his glasses, when he finally got to Lenscrafters (a friend gave him a ride) he found it was closed because they had no power. Yep, he lost power at his apartment. As did most everyone else in the area, it seems. They had a big windstorm… a “bomb cyclone” and “atmospheric river”… in the northwest and it blew out power to millions. Alex’s power was off for a day and a half or so. 

The soup season continues: Friday evening Beth and I went to set up shop at the show in Columbia City. Due to somebody’s poor planning this year, they have a conflict with a basketball game and the gym was not available for use. So all of the craft vendors were moved into the cafeteria and hallways instead. The Soup Lady was put into an empty space in the cafeteria area, so we were open on 3 sides (just backed up to one other vendor). It looked awful and didn’t seem like traffic would flow very well so we figured the best we could do was get another table and set them up like an L with the shelves forming the back of the booth. It worked well enough, wasn’t perfect but things went ok. The show was steady, we did lose some traffic because of the game, I thought. We sold well, didn’t set any records but did pretty consistent with how that show usually goes. Beth forgot her stool so she was pretty sore by the time it was over.

Beth went to Washington this week. Alex has not been doing very well lately; he’s had persistent low grade pain in his plumbing and recently may have passed a kidney stone, although I suspect it was something else. He’s been to a clinic a couple times and they’ve never found anything wrong with him, but it’s persisted and he’s been super anxious about it for a long time now. I also suspect the anxiety has a lot to do with it, but the pain is real and it isn’t going away, and the anxiety was becoming a real problem lately. So, we made a way for Beth to go out there this week and see him and help him get some answers. Sometimes you just need your mom. So on Thursday the 14th I took most of the day off to drive Beth to O’Hare and sent her to Seattle. She got there fairly early in the day but Alex was able to pick her up, and the next day they went to an ER. After an hour or two, they could tell him that there were no abnormalities they could find, no cancer, no kidney stones, no infection, and they gave him a referral to a urologist which we will try to make when he’s home for break. Beth said it was like the weight of the world coming off him and he seemed so much better when they were done. Still no answers but he seemed more like himself. They had dinner with Scott and Alex showed her around the town a bit, and they went to see “The Wild Robot” which they both loved. Meanwhile, Natalie and I watched the big Mike Tyson – Jake Paul boxing match… which was kind of a joke…. and I raked a lot of leaves, made the other shed door, and made a lot of soup. Alex dropped Beth off at SeaTac early afternoon Sunday, and I headed back to Chicago to pick her up … at midnight. We got back home pretty late, like 3:00 am.

Earlier in the week: on Monday Beth finally went to see a doctor about being sick. She’s felt awful for most of the past week, like a bad cold that keeps getting worse. So, unsurprisingly, at the doctor she was diagnosed with a raging sinus infection. Sounds about right. Hopefully she can get back to making soup soon, because she needs to!

I’ve been sleeping on the bed in Alex’s room for most of the past week. Beth started feeling sick this past week, and it’s been bad enough that starting midweek I thought I better sleep away from her. It’s a bummer to be sick like that with a C-PAP, from what I hear. She’s had a snot river and been running a fever for a few days, but hasn’t gone to see a doctor because she just thought it was a head cold for a while. So on the weekend she finally decided that if it wasn’t better by Monday she would go in. And anyway I’m trying to keep away from her but she’s lousy at quarantining. Even this far after covid.

There was an FCC men’s ministry even today. As with previous events there was a hot dog grill and fellowship time followed by a competition; this time the group broke into teams for a fire-building contest. With the same supplies (hatchet, a few matches, and whatever you could find in the woods) the teams worked to build a fire that could burn through a string held a foot above the ground. Just like on Survivor. I gave a ride to a guy who started feeling ill before going into the fire-building, so I missed most of it taking him back home, but I got back in time for the very end of the fires and caught the worship time and the speaker. And smores around the campfire. 

The first soup show of the season is under our belts. The holiday craft bazaar at the Brethren church in town here is always the first one. It’s smaller, but Beth loves it and the people. It’s been running concurrently with a huge other craft show for a few years, so that can depress the foot traffic, but it’s still always worth it to do the smaller one and get ready for the larger ones. Even with the other show going on, it seemed slower than in previous years, though. We did steady business but not as much as we have done there. In the end, we had a good show, not a great one, sold fairly well, but didn’t set any records. We made enough to pay for the supplies we’ve bought, I think. So the rest of the season should be mostly profit. Hope so, anyway. After the show was over Beth and I spent a long time trying to find the money pouch before finally figuring out we left it at the church… and it was all there when we came back for it, of course. Then we spent a long time trying to get our inventory to tally before coming to the conclusion that we were wrong on our beginning count by a dozen soups. We’re pretty sure anyway, as that was the only thing that made it tally. We were an even dozen off. Had to be. 

 Beth worked all this week and her work was interesting and boring at the same time, sort of. On Monday morning first thing she found was there was no internet service in the building, which also meant that ther was no phone service. So all she could do was wait for people to show up. She couldn't take cancellations or anything since nobody could call through. And it was slow slow slow all day. By lunchtime she asked if I could run a book out to her. It was back on Tuesday so after that it was super crazy! Tons of messages to catch up on. After that it was more or less normal for the rest of the week. 

There was a Feed my Starving Children mobile pack event this past week at the high school. My group from work manned a table and cranked out bags like crazy. I was on the sealer and packing cartons this time. I don't know how many bags we packed altogether but it was a lot. ZB wasn't in the top 3 corporate partners for bags packed per person, so I'm not sure how the other teams operated, but we had the line humming. The group went to lunch beforehand at a Caribbean restaurant that's new in town called Pina & Coconut, which was really good. I brought Beth there on the weekend for a lunch date.  

Saturday I was helping the Burgess' move most of the morning and afternoon. They've had some drama with selling their house and buying a new one, so most of their stuff was in storage while they lived temporarily elsewhere. So Saturday a bunch of friends came to help unload 2 storage units (they had two  U-haul trucks and several friends' trucks including mine) and haul everything to the new place. They have a farmhouse out near Mentone with a few outbuildings (stable, tractor barn, dog kennel) and most of the general stuff besides furniture and clothes were just unloaded into the tractor garage to be taken in and unpacked at a later date. Even so, moving everything that a family with 6.5 kids has takes a while.

Sunday I made a big trip to Menard's and got a bunch of things for my fall projects, which I hope to get to before winter. First off, more 12" pavers for behind the garage where grass doesn't grow and all the neighborhood cats think is a litter box. Get the last 6 feet of that area covered with the pavers. Then some pressure treated 2x4s and plywood to rebuild the doors to the garden shed which look terrible. I got the first door rebuilt and hung and I think it looks pretty nice even if it is different, and it's certainly better than the second crappy one that I need to get to soon. I didn't have time to set any of the pavers, or even to get the stuff to fill some more cracks in the driveway concrete, which I've been wanting to do but haven't done for months, years now... (I dug out all the weeds in a big run of the cracks last summer but never got around to filling it and they all grew back)

 Soup season is in full swing. With Beth's bad back (although her knee is better this year) she's been dreading getting back into it but she's been doing pretty well with it. I've also been helping a lot more than usual, mostly with getting the jars washed, refilling containers of ingredients, taking recyclable stuff away... just the general stuff that needs to be done but slows the process down a lot. With me doing the running we're finding that the soup-making part goes really fast. We've cranked out a dozen soups of various flavors in no time flat. The first show is November 2, and she's thought for weeks that it was next weekend so she's feeling good about that too. 

Not much else to report here for the week, except that there's a super rare comet in the sky and Beth and I have been trying to see it and failing. It's apparently low on the horizon after sunset and only visible for a while before it sets itself. We drove all the way out to the country to try to see it on Friday night, with no luck. Either it's just too faint or it's not really there....

The Heartline Donut Dash 5k was this weekend. I'd been waiting to see what the weather was going to be like before committing to running it but things were nice all week so I did. About as soon as I registered, it started clouding up and light drizzly rain moved in. It was pretty much done by the time the race started, though. I did well, won my age group and finished in 25:24 officially, which is a pretty fast time for me. I ran the course twice around to get a good 6 miles in, of course. 

Speaking of the rain, today was the day I was planning to finally get the camper folded up and moved back into the garage for the winter, and then move the pool into the garage on top of the camper for the winter. The rain put a short kibosh on that, but I just had to wait another day for them to dry out again. 

Beth and I had a date night of sorts on Saturday, we tried out the new sushi restaurant in town (it's the same as the old one, apparently, it just moved... and the same people work there) and spent the evening hanging out with the Zastrows at their house. 

Not a very busy week this, I've still got the camper unfolded in the driveway drying out from our wet camping trip, and cleaning it up a bit. I got some more of that mildew stain remover that I used on the canvas last year, and also got some waterproofing spray because I bet that the mildew killer I used last year is why water leaked through the canvas onto my pillow twice this year. Nothing like trying to sleep on a wet pillow. So cleaning up the canvas and waterproofing it, plus I've discovered that they sell a plastic tape with the RV curtain hangers riveted into it on Amazon so I could replace the old cracked and broken ones with new. I'd need to pick out some new fabric for the new curtains and add some blackout fabric, but then I could sew the hanger tape onto it and voila. Maybe a winter project. 

Speaking of projects, summer is officially over because I started draining the pool once we were home from camping. The water was still pretty clean but also absolutely freezing. I've got it emptied and turned upside down on all the outdoor furniture to dry. 

Saturday was the annual Wiessner chili cookoff, which we haven't had the best luck with of late (see 10/8/23). Since last year Beth spilled the chili all over, this year I got to do it. Beth made what she was calling "pantry chili," because she just threw everything together from things she already had in the pantry, or "panic chili," since she hadn't made any kind of plan and was just throwing it together from whatever she could find. The chili seemed to come together nicely though, smelled good, tasted good, and we had it all loaded into the Instant Pot for the trip to Michigan. Missy drove up from Muncie to come with us, and we left around 5:00 or so. When we got there, I got out to unload the chili, and the pot rotated out of the lid when I turned, the full pot fell to the road, and everything dumped out. You could see a big steaming pile of chili in the road from Ric's backyard. So a big chili fail once again. She would have won, too....

Beth and I went camping over last weekend. This was intended to be our first camping trip just us together, solo. No family or anything. Remember back when we found the Mitchell Persimmon Festival by accident a few years back (more than a few, see 9/18/2011)? Well I thought, we should go do that festival again! So we made plans to go camping at Spring Mill State Park. Now, one of the big attractions of the Persimmon Festival is the candlelight tour of the pioneer village, which is on the Saturday at the start of the festival, so I made a reservation to be there onsite so we could go to that, which unfortunately is a big enough draw that there were very limited sites available for Friday and Saturday, so I had to reserve one in the woods and then make a different reservation elsewhere for the rest of the week. Remember back when we got to the park and couldn't get the camper set up because the site was so steep (See 7/27/2014)? Well, I think we got the exact same site again this time, and we still couldn't get it set up. I took Friday off so we could arrive in the daylight with plenty of time to set up and cook dinner, but we spent a few hours trying everything to get set up (in the end, leveling the camper meant the back end was too close to the ground to turn the crank to raise the roof) including nearly getting the truck/camper stuck sideways in the next site over before giving up and asking if there were any cancellations we could switch sites to. Luckily, there was one that we could move to for two nights. By the time we got things set up there, it was dark and late so we went out for pizza in town. Saturday we went  looking for a cool and unique coffee shop nearby. There was one in Bedford that we found that had what turned out to be some of the WORST coffee drinks either one of us have ever had. Oooh, it tasted like dirty dishwater or something. Bad. Awful. Yuck. So we dumped both of them after a sip and found a Starbucks. Then we went to Bluespring Caverns (where the cave tour is on a boat) and an apple orchard / farm market, did some grocery shopping, and as it turned out, I thought Beth really wanted to see the candlelight tour and she thought I really did, and neither one of us wanted to that much...so we skipped it, and made cucumber salsa. Sunday it looked like rain, so we were hoping the get moved out of the site we were on and onto the new one as soon as possible, and the people in the new site just would. not. leave. They were packed up and ready to go for hours before they finally pulled out, and we dashed over there and set up as fast as possible, but by that time it was already raining. So we set it all up in the rain. We also found a really cool restaurant in Bedford for lunch called the Rusty Gator, which had an eclectic menu of cajun fusion. We had some awesome cajun potato skins. The park was pretty much empty when we got back to the site after lunch and we just hung out and napped for the afternoon. Monday morning I went on a hike. The state parks have these challenge hikes, I did one at Clifty Falls a couple months ago so I wanted to do the Spring Mill one, which was just 'hike all the trails.' I figured it would take around 3 hours, and go for around 11 miles. I planned the route on the park map and had everything all set. I headed out at first light and went on the most amazing, incredible, fantastic hike ever. Through karst forest, old growth woods, pioneer village, caves, lakes, dams, stairs, rivers, gorges, canyons, and about 14 miles and 4.5 hours start to finish. As I walked into the campground I saw Beth coming the other way, mad at me for scaring her because I was gone for so much longer than I said I would be. She was really worried. Seems what I told her was overly ambitious, pace-wise. The rain started while we were in town getting lunch with persimmon pudding at a church in town, and it rained a lot of the day. We checked out the festival activities when it wasn't raining Storms overnight and the next day. We drove to French Lick just to see what's what there on Tuesday and looked at the arts and crafts exhibitions, and on Wednesday we packed up and headed home. It was a good campout overall and we had fun, but Beth's back was really hurting after sleeping on the camper bed and it was so wet all week. Second wettest campout we've been on, I think, after Clifty Falls this summer. But we still love the park, even though Beth said at one point "I HATE this camper." I think our time with it may be drawing to an end. 

Meanwhile, while we were gone, Natalie had some work days at Starbucks, including having to get to work at 4:00 am one day (Mary Jane picked her up and drove her there). We left her some cash to get food while we were gone and she seemed to do all right. Poor Churro had to be in a cage for 8 solid hours when she worked 4-12 that time. She also worked an early shift Saturday after we got back, from 4-8, after which Beth came back and went back to bed and Churro shrieked the *entire* 4 hours she was gone. 

We decided to have a chill weekend after the camping trip. The most we did was search the town for jars for soup season. Yep, that's starting up again. 

We have returned from a quick trip to Louisville! We dashed down there for one night only for Lily Boschain's graduation party! We would have gone a day earlier but Beth and I had both signed up for the "Sent" conference at church, which was basically a training session for sharing your faith and how to live a sent life. It was good to go, but honestly neither of us really wanted to that much. It went from 8 until 2, at which point we immediately hit the road and headed for Muncie to collect Missy, and after the briefest of pickups went on to Louisville. We arrived around 9, at a motel that Beth had picked out because it was cheap and we needed 2 rooms for Beth and me and both girls. Under other circumstances, it was not what we would have picked (a Motel 6 by the airport) but it was just someplace to crash overnight. The room was adequate, but with things like someone's dirty clothes left in the bathroom. The toilet seat didn't fit the toilet. Renovations/repairs had been done...badly. The sheets weren't as clean as they seemed at first. Beth was bitten on the ankles repeatedly by...something. And of course, the airplanes landing all the time. But anyway. We went to the Boschains' church for the Sunday service and afterwards helped get things set up for the party in one of the activity rooms at the church. Blowing up balloons, hanging streamers and such. It was a good time and Missy loves hanging out with Jacob. We even re-enacted a 2009 photo of Missy and Jake together, just for kicks. After the party we all went out to Subway for dinner, and hit the road afterwards for Muncie, dropped off Missy, and headed home. 

 This week was slow. But: I can report that we did something fun this weekend. I know Todd was interested in seeing "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" so I texted him if he wanted to go see it on Saturday, which he did. So we met him at the theater for an evening show. It was a relatively full house, too. We all liked the movie, but I had some notes. One of the side plots got resolved a little bit too easily and suddenly, for example. But I did like it and we had fun. 

Alex has returned to school now too. He and I made the trip out there again this weekend, and it gets faster and easier every year. We flew out of Indy again, which is so much easier. It was a 6:30 pm flight on a Friday, so I took a half day off and we headed out in the afternoon. Once again, we left in plenty of time for traffic jams and long lines, so there were neither, and we had a couple hours to kill once we got through security at the airport. An uneventful flight to SeaTac had us there at about 9 or so, and we caught a shuttle to a motel. Alex had plans on Saturday morning, there is a video game convention (Pax-west, whatever that means) that he goes to every year and he wanted to make sure he got to it, which is why we got the flight time we did. We just stayed in the motel room and got delivery for dinner, and in the morning I caught a shuttle back to the airport to get the rental. I hadn't wanted to pick it up last night so I could save the expense of another day. Anyway, I woke up in the morning and left Alex asleep as I headed to the airport, and it never really occurred to me that a) it was super dark out, b) there was practically no traffic, and c) there was hardly anybody around anywhere at the airport until I got to the car rental place and realized that it wasn't 7:30 am, it was 4:30 am. Pacific time. And the rental center was going to be closed for the next couple hours. I would up walking a mile or so back to the motel, unsure of how safe it was to do so, and going back to bed for a while. I got the shuttle from the motel back to the airport again a couple hours later and this time successfully got a rental car (minivan), and Alex and I headed to downtown Seattle. I dropped him off near the convention center and found a place to park, then I went walking through Pike Place Market and surrounding area for a while. I talked to Beth and the girls who were in Michigan for Julia's wedding, bought some salmon to ship home, and took a ride on the giant ferris wheel by the waterfront. Found a cool antique/junk shop right around there too. Alex was done with the convention by around 2:30, so we met up and headed towards Redmond to get him moved in. No drama with moving in this year, we knew for a long time where he was going to be. No Scott this time either, as he had some family issues to deal with and was away. Anyway, since I rented the minivan we got everything out of the storage unit pretty easily, although he's on the third floor of an apartment building so we had to schlep everything up three flights. And his bedroom is pretty small, so we had to be creative in where exactly we put things. We went to Target and Fred Meyer to pick up some things he needed for the apartment and get his groceries stocked for a bit, got dinner, and then I left him and headed back to the motel at the airport for a Sunday morning 8:00 flight back home. I had to stop and change planes in Chicago...and the flight to IND is really pretty short. After getting back to Indy, I met PJ at a brewpub restaurant for dinner. That was a great time... I knew I had to leave to get home before the middle of the night, but literally it was like I looked at my watch and it was 9:00, and then I looked again and it was 10:00. I did make it home by around 1:30 or so. Good thing it's Labor Day and I don't have to go to work. I did go running though. 

In the evening, Beth and I went to see "Twisters." I'd been looking forward to it. "Twister" is a movie that is so dumb but I love it so much. Watch it pretty much every time it comes on TV somewhere. And I wasn't disappointed with the new movie. 

A week ago Saturday, when I was on a group bike ride out south of town on a nice morning, I mentioned to Nate (the group leader) that I was thinking about maybe getting a new and better bike. He works at the Trailhouse and said they had a used bike there that would be pretty good for me and I should take a look. I got a text from him a bit later that there was another used bike that he didn't know they had. A 2020 Specialized Roubaix, full carbon frame, hydraulic brakes, thru axles, very clean, very nice, only about 140 miles on it. I went to look at it and test ride it, and asked them to hold it for a day or so. Asked Trey about it, and after he looked at it his advice was "buy it buy it buy it" so I got it. It's a $2000 bike, I got it for $900. Picked it up Tuesday, rode it all through Winona on the way home. It felt like I was flying even though my average speed wasn't any more than normal :) 

Tonight was the 1st annual talent show at church! I had never planned to be in such a thing but after it was announced, Dave W suggested we do an act of dueling dad jokes. Of sorts. It sounded fun so I was in. We met a couple times during the week to rehearse, first for dinner at El Comal on Wednesday evening and then at their house on Saturday for pool/BBQ. Running through the material, we decided that 20 good dad jokes each would fill in the appropriate amount of time, so as we went through what we had Beth and Cindy gave us some feedback as to whether or not they were any good. I had a few that I thought were pretty good but the feedback was "I don't get it" so I left them out. Like this one:

Rumors of a dessert shortage at this year's Spoonerism conference are just a total lack of pies.

Anyway... we picked our 20 favorites and we decided to finish up with the Dracula on the nuns' car joke. On the day of the show, there were a few comedy acts (there was an improv group, a couple of kids did stand-up, Todd sang with his dog, and us), one singer, some cheer routines, some gymnastics, some little kids showing off drawing or lawnmower-identifying skills, and the like. Very well received, lots of fun, and hope to make it an annual occurrence. Don't know if we'll do dad jokes again next year, though.

In other news, on Tuesday I called in on a whim to "Fresh Outta Bed and Head to Head" again, for the first time in quite a while. I didn't win, but they had some tickets to get rid of so they sent me 2 tickets to the South Bend Cubs game on Friday. Alex had plans with some friends and Nat wasn't that interested, so Beth and I went to SB Friday evening on Pulse-FM's dime. They even included a parking pass. And oh boy, are the SB Cubs bad this year. Oh yeah. They're in last place in their division, and we saw some really bad baseball going on. They were no-hit for almost 7 innings, gave up a grand slam in the first inning, and got nothing done offensively until the 9th inning en route to a 5-1 loss. We had seats on the 1st base line again, same as last time, so the sun was in our eyes for a few innings but still good seats.

Missy has returned to college. The nest is emptying out again. I took Thursday off so I could help her move and we could all go out to breakfast at Crazy Egg Cafe, and just after brunch we all headed for Muncie. I had the truck with some of the bigger things, like the bike and chair and fridge, and Missy drove her new van. Well, it's not new and it's not hers but she's keeping it with her at school. She didn't want to drive on the interstate all the way down so we took a shorter but slower route through Wabash. We got everything all moved in, and she was very adamant that she did not want us to help her unpack and put things away and organize the furniture. So we just got her loaded up and found a place she could park the van, and then we took her out to Roots Burger Bar for some really good craft burgers. Then the rest of us headed home and she is back for her junior year. 

Softball is over for the year. We lost to the last place team on Tuesday, but in our defense they lost a lot of very close games over the year and they are better than their record. We beat them when they were short a couple times. But they kind of roughed us up this time, we never got anything going. So that's that for this year, and I'm looking forward to rehabbing over the offseason. No way I'm playing coed league...

Speaking of rehabbing, on Saturday morning I was out on the group B bike ride and had a smallish spill. Inevitable, I suppose, since I cashed in some Ignite points from work just last week and used them to buy a Garmin watch on Amazon, and I had it for maybe 18 hours before crashing and landing on it. A bit. What happened is I was riding too close to the edge of the pavement and went off onto the shoulder, and there was too much of a drop-off from the surface to the dirt so I couldn't quite get back up onto the road and went down. Scratched up the bezel of the watch but not too badly. Gave myself 3 separate road rash spots on my left knee and another on my left shoulder, but didn't hurt my hands or elbows somehow. Finished the ride, we were about 8 miles from home. Bruises showing up on both knees now...

After the bike ride, Beth and I went up to Michigan to visit with Marve and Beth at their house. They were hosting a pool party, but I gather there are still some hard feelings among some in the family because Ric/Steph were not there. Judy & Neill, Ted & Monica, and Beth & I were all there though. We swam in the pool for a while and had BBQ chicken. Then we played Trivial Pursuit, a 1984 edition of the game so I rocked. I haven't played that game in years and years. Beth and I left for home around 9.

The softball tournament started this week. We usually say that the tournament is our regular season, but I'm not feeling it this year. Not that we're not enjoying playing, we are, but we have been in quite a slump. And I've got more aches and pains this year... I pulled or sprained or strained something in my hip several weeks ago and it still hurts, and I re-hurt it every game. So I have put myself at catcher for the remainder of the season. Anyway, this week we had 2 games. We won the first one 16-12, and then an hour later we lost the second one 13-3. First Baptist is leading the division and they smoked us 3 times including this week during the season. So win or we're done next week. You ask me, either way.

Some rare good news on the automotive front: The van (which we're planning to send to college with Missy) has been starting really slowly lately, many times not at all on the first turn of the key. I suspected the battery was getting run down so I took it to AutoZone before the camping trip, and indeed the battery was nearly dead but after they installed the new one I bought, they tested the charging system and it registered as bad. Meaning, the alternator may be on the verge of failing too. So anyway I made an appointment to get it into the shop when we got back, and they reported that everything looks good and the alternator seems to be charging normally. So only a little labor charge and we're good to go.

And the bad news on the automotive front: the truck started showing the check engine light just before we went camping. I had actually already made an appointment to take it in to the Ford dealer, just to fix the rear set belt that doesn't latch, and I had hoped to get it before leaving for camping but couldn't. The light was on and off several times during the week of camping. So when we got back and I got the truck in, I asked them to check out the light. As it turns out, the light meant that 2 of the O2 sensors had gone bad, which means the fuel/air mixture may not be right. So I got those things fixed, which was a lot more than I was hoping to spend on just the seat belt fix. They also didn't have the new seat belt buckle in black, so I had them put a tan one in. Rather get it done faster than worry about matching.

Saturday Missy was working, so Beth and I did some shopping for her. The Warsaw Big Lots, which has been open maybe a year, is closing, so we checked it out to see if we could find any good deals. They had a nice chair like what Missy has been wanting for her dorm room so she doesn't have to sit in a dorm chair all the time, so we picked it up for her. We also went to Walmart and got her a small fridge for her room, since she'll have a single room this year and she used her roommate's last year. 

The truncated family went on a camping trip this week to Clifty Falls State Park. I say truncated family because Alex and Natalie chose not to go. We'd told Nat that we didn't want Churro in the camper, and for a while she was planning to come with us and sleep in the tent with the dog. And, of course, he had to be leased all the time. However, as we got closer and closer to the departure date, the weather was looking more and more like it was going to be nasty. Very hot, very humid, chance of thunderstorms every day we were there. In the end, the horrible forecast chased them both off. Alex doesn't handle the heat well; neither does Nat. So they both chose to stay home, and it was just Beth, Missy, and me. I think that was the right call for everybody, though. We left on Monday around 10:30, leaving some cash and instructions for the kids staying behind, and drove through some rain and temperatures around 90 F. We got to the park around 4:00 pm, and couldn't go to the campground right away because a work crew was still busy clearing a big limb that had fallen down across the road. So we walked down to Big Clifty Falls, which had a much lighter flow than I would have thought with the recent rain. Anyway, we got all set up by around 5:30 and rather than cook in the wet heat we hit the campground pool, which was closing in 5 minutes when we got there, but they let us in to get a quick dip which felt amazing even if only for a few minutes. For dinner we went out to Red Pepperoni in Madison. Early night. The thunderstorms rolled in around 2 am. So it was crazy hot and crazy wet all over the next day, which was a Boschains day. We were going to go to the park pool again after breakfast, but we found it closed due to the pump having broken or something like that. So we hit the public pool in Madison for a few hours instead, which has been remodeled and upgraded since we were there last, with lap lanes and a deep end with a diving board and a water slide. Very nice. Missy got sunburned pretty good though. Later in the day we headed to Louisville to meet up with the Boschains at Momma's BBQ (awesome) for dinner and then to their new house. Their new adopted daughter is just an adorable lil punkin! We got back to the park around 11:30, and it rained overnight again. Wednesday we hit all the antique/junk shops in town and did half of the downtown shops and the Red Pepper for lunch (awesome). Then we did our one and only time to make dinner at the campsite, tinfoil dinners (awesome). Then it thunderstormed all evening. Another early night. Thursday Missy and I went on a hike in the morning to the creek bed, hiked as far as the side canyon to tunnel falls and back. I made a dutch oven pull-apart French toast for breakfast which turned out pretty good but we have some notes and improvements in mind for next time. Then we hit the other half of the downtown shops and went to the city pool again, as the camp pool was STILL closed. As we were leaving the pool, they blew the whistle to close it because of the approaching thunderstorm, which went on for a couple hours. The Boschains (including Jake now!) came out our way in the evening and we met them at Red Pepperoni (again!) for calzones. They could only stay for dinner before heading back. Rain overnight. Friday morning I went on a solo hike to do the Four Falls Challenge, which I did and then some. Some 7.5 miles altogether hiking the length and breadth of the park. By the time I was done with the hike, Beth texted me about when I would be back because the rain was on the way again. We got packed up and headed out on Friday and drove away as the rain began to beat down, again. So anyway, it was a good call for Alex and Nat to stay home, but it was a good trip nonetheless. I don't know that it was the hottest camping trip we've ever been on (possibly), was it was without a doubt the wettest. 

We had to get back home on Friday instead of Saturday as planned originally because the bridal shower for Julia was on Saturday. Beth wasn't in the mood for traveling again but she and both girls packed up and headed to Michigan Saturday morning. 

We have a new car. I decided that the 2020 Santa Fe that Beth preferred was just too expensive and she even thought the monthly payment we would have was too much. There was also another Santa Fe, a smaller model but a year older, at the Best Deal in Angola, so we asked them to move that one to Warsaw so we could test drive it before settling on the '17. It was going to take them a few days, so we just ran up to Angola after work on Monday, test drove the '16 SF, decided that we didn't like it (it didn't seem as well taken care of, or quite as sound), told them it was a no-go for us, and went home. On Tuesday I took the '17 SF to Ab & Tom's to check it out, and they reported only that the lower oil pan was seeping a little: as they put it, "it's not the best but it's not bad." So Beth decided that the color was not a deal breaker and she drove it again, deciding that maybe she did really like it after all. We told them at Best Deal that we would take it and get all the paperwork done on Wednesday. We came back and did the deal Wednesday afternoon and we now own a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe. And Beth is quite excited by and happy with it. 

Saturday was the annual un-garage sale for Beth's work. Again this year, we were working the child care area. We checked in and watched kids while the parents shopped. Mostly the kids were good, but I did have one kid, must have been around 8, who decided he wasn't staying any more. I blocked his exit and told him he had to stay until someone came to pick him up, so he pushed past me and ran. Then he ran down the aisles back and forth to get away from me. I went after him but he just looked back and bolted if he saw me. So, we found a parent and kicked him out. He was the only one I wanted to spank, though. Mostly the kids were littler (but only 3+) and only wanted to stay in the play area longer when the parents came back. Anyway, not as much traffic as last year. Still gave away a lot of stuff, but not sure why so fewer people. 

Next week, we are on vacation! Camping at Clifty Falls Sate Park. The weather forecast for the next week is horrible. Very hot and rainy all week. Alex and Nat have both decided not to go because of the weather.

This week was dominated by the outages. There was a big storm Monday night, and about 12:30 am the power went off. I was already asleep, but everyone else was still awake. When I got up for work Tuesday morning the power was still off. And still off at lunchtime, and when I was out of work. The power company was saying by then that their crews were all working on the hardest hit areas (not us), that they couldn't provide a timeline for when power might be back, and that some customers might have a multi-day outage. Well, it was awfully hot in the house with no A/C, and I was starting to get worried about the meat in the freezer outside. Fortunately, Trey at work has a generator, and he never lost power in this storm, so he let me use it until the power came back. Just after work Tuesday we ran up to his house and loaded it into my truck, then I ran it back to my house and got it fired up. We just ran extension cords to the fridge, freezer, some fans, and the pool (was afraid it would get icky with no filter) and got them running. I'm not sure how we would have powered the A/C, but it was a whole-house generator and had the power for it. Also not sure how much gas it goes through. Anyway, we had the essentials covered, so the meat was saved. It was about 5 hours later that the power finally came back on. 

The second outage was in IT. On Friday morning, I tried to log on to my computer at work and just had the blue screen of death. Rebooting did nothing helpful, nor rebooting again. Then I started hearing that everybody's computer had the blue screen because of the Crowdstrike update that was rolled out overnight. Well, we didn't know what it was at first. Neither did anyone. All anyone knew was our computers weren't working. So basically nothing could be done. Across the board. Almost everyone on the shop floor was sent home because nobody could do anything. Well, since it was my birthday I decided to take the rest of the day off myself. It was later in the day that IT seemed to have a handle on what happened, and Saturday morning they sent out instruction for everyone to run through to fix it. Undoing the update, or something like that. Running through the instructions seemed to fix the problem on the first try, so I should be good to go Monday.

Speaking of my birthday, It was Friday. 55. We didn't do anything special but the kids and Beth ordered me some presents online (couple games, a Hannibal Lecter action figure, and some cycling gloves) and they got me a carrot cake. We did presents and went out to dinner at Oak & Alley.

On the new car front, Beth and I drove a nice 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe (like the one we rented last summer!) this week; Best Deal had one and moved it down from another store so we could drive it. I asked them to hold it for a few days so I could get it checked out and get all the financing taken care of. However Beth doesn't like the color, and it's bigger than she wanted. So on Saturday we went to Goshen to look at the smaller Hyundai Tucson at the dealer there, but Beth looked at and drove a 2020 Santa Fe that she liked better and was in a better color. However it was a lot more expensive. She's trying to figure out if the color on the '17 is a deal breaker. 

After looking at the Hyundai dealer in Goshen, we went over to Shipshewana to meet Marve and Beth for dinner at the Blue Gate. They had just asked if we could meet for dinner and drove down her just to see us. So we did the shops and got dinner and had a nice time together before heading back home. 

Beth and I are starting to make it a priority to find a new vehicle. We've decided to give the Minivan to Missy to take to school (I think we can feel like she's safe in it) and find something newer for ourselves to replace it. We went out to Best Deal to take a look around, and found a few cars that might be of interest. Basically we're looking for a crossover or SUV, something like a Honda CRV or a Subaru Outback or something. Well, at least the used car prices aren't so outrageous as they were a year or two ago. 

Beth's boss at LT had an annual summer party at their house Saturday. 

It was an odd week at work. Maintenance thought this would be a convenient time to do a whole lot of maintenance, so effectively the whole plant was shut down for the week. On Monday, there was a total power outage in building 5 for electrical work; I did go in to check on some stuff and found the lights off and nobody home. I mean, I saw nobody in the building. So I worked from home pretty much all week, but it was also a short week. 

Tuesday, the softball team got hammered. A few players were out including our regular pitcher, and a guy who had never pitched before asked if he could. So, he did. He made it through the game but we got mercied 19-4, although he wasn't really the reason we didn't do very well. 

Wednesday was the last work day before the long weekend. Since the 4th was on a Thursday this year, it seemed logical for me to take Friday off as well. Not that there were big plans, but I did get some local geocache maintenance done on Thursday. Around dinnertime we went to the Zastrow's house for a cookout/games/watch fireworks. Todd grilled burgers and hot dogs, we all played "Poetry for Neanderthals" and "Telestrations," and hung out watching their neighbors set off fireworks until after midnight. The Joneses came home while we were in the backyard and could see us there so they dropped in too to hang out. 

I also had some emergency pool maintenance to do, basically the first thing to do in the long weekend. The pump for the filter has been down to a trickle lately, and it seemed hardly any water was making its way through. Backflushing wasn't helping, so I took it offline and opened it up, and found that the filter sand had hardened into a big lump of concrete. Maybe not as hard as that, but still hardened enough that I had to beat it out with a hammer and a length of aluminum conduit used like a chisel. I don't know what happened there, it's never happened before. Eventually I was able to break the lump apart and get the sand out of the filter, replace the sand and get it all put back together. The flow through the filter seems to be restored to normal now. Maybe I need to keep the pH maintained better, or something....

I had a kind of unusual ride on Saturday. Bronwyn H joined the group for the first time; she has a cruiser bike and was never going to be able to keep up with even the regular B group, but no-drop is no-drop so I and 2 others hung back with her. We did the whole planned route which was out to Summit Chapel and back...I wasn't sure she would make it that far but we got about 36 miles altogether, at around 10 mph. She was so excited to do the whole ride. I didn't mind the slower ride, it allows riders to talk more.

Finally, I was practicing flying the drone this weekend and one crash...the first crash...wrecked it. It's hard to keep track of which way the drone is facing, so which way the joystick makes it go. I was flying it in the backyard and it hit the patio umbrella, turned over and fell about 6 feet onto the patio landing on it's top. One crash, and one propellor no longer spins correctly. It makes a whining noise and spins much slower. But, the vendor seems to have a 100% guarantee and will replace for free, provided you give them a 5-star review. So yeah, they got 5 stars for another free drone. Hopefully it's not sent by slow boat from China...

As of Tuesday, our time with T-Mobile home internet is officially over. On Monday, I drove to Fort Wayne ostensibly to return a cable box that Comcast had said I still had (never took the plastic off it, had forgotten I had it, had lots of dust on it) but mostly to come crawling back. Changing the SIM card in the T-Mobile gateway did not help even a little bit, and we still had terrible connectivity issues, so I went back to see what we could do. Anyway they were more than willing to take me back, and we are back on Xfinity internet again for at least 2 years. Already the connectivity problems are gone. I got a brand new gateway which seems to work a lot better than the modem/router I had been using, so maybe the problems we were having before were with my hardware. Dunno. The speed is way faster than it ever was before, and much faster than T-Mobile too. And the price is less than half what I was paying before, for now anyway. So anyway, on Tuesday I took all the T-Mobile equipment back to their store and cancelled the service. They were not comcastic, I guess.

Not much going on for the rest of the week. Kids are working, softball was rained out. We went to Igloo Friday evening and to the mall in FW Saturday. I rode with the 2MA B group Saturday which was combined with A group because there were only a few people altogether. 

This week was mostly about VBS. Beth and I volunteered to lead a kids’ group again, and we had a group of rising 3rd graders this year. We had between 4 and 8 each day, and unlike past years we didn’t have any that were challenges to keep under control. About half of them were kids from our life group, actually. Mostly the same format we’re used to for VBS, with songs and motions and verses and lessons and games and crafts. The theme was “Build” based on Legos, teaching kids to ‘Build your life on Jesus!’ Everyone really enjoyed it. Missy helped us out too a couple days. Dinner was usually a challenge as it usually is for VBS week, since we’re at church from 6:00 – 8:00. And softball also, since at least 3 players (including me) were working VBS and some others on vacation, the team got smoked 15-3.

Saturday, I rode. The 2MA group B was riding with the “Divide Ride” group which is a group going on a mountain bike trip to Wyoming I think, sometime next month. Anyway, they’re training for the ride by riding mountain bikes on the road. Even so, they were pretty fast. The B group got separated at the beginning of the ride though, with half of the group going the wrong way from the Trailhouse. The half I was in rode south to Laketon, at which point the Divide riders stopped at a little place called Bluebird Café for breakfast. Well, I didn’t really want to stop to eat in the middle of a ride, but I got a drink and was waiting for the others to get their orders when the other half of the B group came by. They weren’t stopping for food, so I bailed on the group I was with and joined the others. What I didn’t know was that the second B group was planning on stopping for food in North Manchester at McDonald’s. So we rode for maybe 5 miles and stopped again. I still didn’t want anything, so I just waited for them. We hit the road again after around 30 minutes or so. I got back home after riding almost 50 miles altogether and being gone for about 4½ hours.

In the evening on Saturday, Beth and I went to see the Wagon Wheel Theater production of "Kiss Me Kate." Beth had never seen it, I saw it back in my college years (like maybe 1989 or 90?). It was a good show. I told Beth she would probably recognize some of the songs from it (like "Too Darn Hot" or "Brush up your Shakespeare") and she did. It was a fun evening out.

Softball had another doubleheader this week, of sorts. Dave's FCC team was the beneficiary of a forfeit, because the team they were playing had VBS and wouldn't have enough players. So, instead the league manager offered us a scrimmage against them before our regularly scheduled game. We played Dave's team at 6, and lost something like 12-6, and then played another team at 7 and beat them 12-11 on a great late inning comeback, another walk-off single for the winning run. 

Beth had a procedure on her back on Friday. She has 'old lady spine' so she had a a steroid injection directly into the nerves in her lower back. She had been super nervous about it the last few days, seriously second guessing her decision to not get put under for the injection. She had thought that she has a high tolerance for pain, and it only lasts for a minute or so, and she didn't want to have to spend hours recovering from anesthesia, so she wouldn't be out under. But, on the other hand, some people find the pain excruciating. So leading up to the procedure, she was thinking maybe she had made the wrong choice. In the end, after discussing with the nurses, she decided to go ahead without it, and was glad she did because she said it was no big deal at all anyway. They say the back pain should be much better in 3-5 days afterwards, so we're hoping.

Also Friday my team at work had a team building event, playing cricket! A couple of the guys on the team are from India and big cricket fans, and I'd talked about getting a group together for a scrimmage with one of them a couple times so he made arrangements for us to get together for some learning about the game and practicing, then a local cricket club would come over to the pitch and we would have a game. It was a lot of fun! Raj brought some equipment and taught us the rules, we spent an hour or so practicing the game, and then we played a friendly. We split the group from work up into two teams with the cricket club and had a basic game. The club was very friendly and super excited to help us learn the game. Fun time.

The 'Blackburn Run 4 Others' 5k and 10k race was this Saturday. I opted to run in the 10k, and I did all right! A pretty good time, for me, of 56:46, good for 3rd in my age group and 22nd of 37 overall. The new shoes definitely help.

Looks like Missy has a job! She got an interview at Lowe's and it went pretty well. She has to do a drug screening, assuming she passes that she will start training next week. That'll be good. She says she isn't supposed to use her employee discount for family, though...

Missy's birthday was also Saturday, she is TWENTY. The baby. Our little girl, no longer even a teen. To celebrate her being now all grown up, we got her several sets of little cute toy animals for her birthday. They're called "Calico Critters" or something like that and they were all she wanted. So yeah, grown up but still our girl.

It looks like our time away from Comcast is already about over. Monday, I took the internet equipment back to the T-Mobile retailer because we continue to have problems with connection. Alex can't keep connected with his chats and games, and Missy says hers is buffering all the time. We're still in the trial period, but not for much longer... anyway, they suggested replacing the SIM card in the gateway because maybe it was bad and not connecting to the signal well enough. Or, maybe we're in a dead zone. We never get more than 3 out of 5 bars for connection, even though our speeds are faster than they have ever been, connectivity is the issue. So, if the SIM card thing doesn't help, maybe back to cable we go.

Today was the annual Father's Day extravaganza at church. There was only one service and afterwards was the big party. Cookout, bouncy houses, dunk tank, bingo, and all the regular stuff! Beth and I volunteered to host bingo this year, but it was a little chaotic because we didn't have enough chips for everyone and there was confusion about how to keep your score card (also limited card quantities, and all tear-off sheets from a pad) and when to clear it. But we did the best we could. 

Finally, for Father's Day this year Beth got me a drone. A quadcopter type, but a cheap one. I have always thought it would be cool to have a drone but never have, so Beth got me one. And the cheap one so I can learn how to fly it without worrying about crashing too much. It does have all the fun stuff on it, too. Camera and all. Not sure how good the video is but we'll find out. It's supposed to be able to follow a moving subject, land itself, auto return, everything. 

We are now on internet with T-Mobile broadband home internet! I went to a local retailer on Monday and signed up, and I cancelled the Comcast service the next day. Internet speed checks say that our upload and download speeds are faster than they ever were on Comcast, so it's looking good. 

Softball had an unusual event this week...a win by more than 1 run. We beat the team 8-4, and led pretty much the whole way through. 

There was a 2nd Mile Adventures fundraiser this weekend, "Dunes Day" they call it. They do a 100-mile, a 63-mile, and a 33-mile ride, by going from Winona Lake to Indiana Dunes and back, or Winona Lake to the Dunes and driving back, or driving to Bremen and riding back to Winona Lake. I chose the latter. There was only one other guy doing that ride, and if we'd been thinking about it, we would have probably done the ride a different way. But, we left the van/trailer in Bremen for the others to pick up on their way back, and rode straight into the wind for pretty much the entire ride. By the time we were approaching Warsaw, we were both getting pretty tired of fighting the wind and it was only getting stronger. 

This week I have been gathering the materials to get the pool set up. I would really rather not do it, because it is such a long-term pain to get it up and keep it up and clean, but it does help Beth to be able to water walk and I know she will not go to the Y to do it. No matter how I try to prod her to. Anyway, today I got a tarp to put under it, I got the filter sand earlier in the week, and it is filling up now. Filling the pool requires leaving the hose on for about an entire day, after which it is freezing for several days, so maybe by Missy's birthday or so we can use it. It's supposed to be a hot summer, so we'll probably use it...

Doubleheader! The softball team has 2 rained out games to make up, so we did the first of 2 doubleheaders this week. We won the first one 13-10, a game that we led all the way, and lost the nightcap 12-6, a game that we were never really in. 

I did a 40+ mile bike ride on Saturday with the group. Only the second time I've gone that far. I think I'm getting used to clipping in and out with the bike shoes. No falling since the first ride of the season. 

Beth and Missy and I went up to Michigan today. Nat stayed home with the dog and Alex had to work. Ostensibly it was to go to Lauren's graduation party, but in large part we were going to see Ted. He's home, recovering well. He looked really good today and seemed in good spirits. Still no real answers as to what happened to him, though. Best bet is the internal shingles, plus a severely compromised immune system that allowed several other things to attack. He still gets worn out pretty quickly and the sores aren't all gone, but he is doing so much better. It was really looking bad for him just a couple weeks ago, now he's doing great. But we could only visit for a little while, then he was going to take a nap. Then we hit the party, which was nice. Everyone was there (except Ted) and Lauren seemed to be doing really well. We headed back home pretty late in the evening. 

Our internet service disappeared last week. There was an outage, one that Comcast admitted and said they were working on, for a few hours on Wednesday, then on Thursday the internet disappeared and never came back. And Comcast said there was no outage. I finally called on Friday and they told me the soonest that a tech could be there was June 9. So we've been doing a lot of streaming from a phone hotspot for the weekend and our data usage is through the roof. And I'm checking around and finding that there aren't a lot of other options for internet service around here. Having no internet at home these days is like being in the stone age. 

Ted (Beth's brother) has been in a bad way this week. He has been in the hospital for a few days with something of a mystery illness, a bad one, that's been like an episode of "House MD." Crashingly low platelets and white cells, sores in his mouth, very high fever, bad cough, pains like electric shocks, delirium... and no answers as to what it actually is. All the family is there with him but he's pretty incoherent a lot of the time. Beth went up to see him in the hospital on Tuesday and stayed overnight, and by the next morning Ted wasn't any better and there were still no answers. Some guesses though, possibly internal shingles (eww), and possibly a mold infection from something up north, or something else. Over the next few days he seemed to recover some, enough to be sent home by Friday. 

Wednesday Laura was passing through on her way to Chicago to visit Monica N, so she stopped nearby so we could meet up for dinner. I took the kids to a spot near the toll road where it would be convenient to meet her and Beth on the way back home. It turned out not to be so convenient, since the restaurant I had picked out (looked so interesting on the website which said it was still open) was closed. Permanently. Looked like it had been for a while. Timbuktoo's, it was called, maybe because it was out of the way. Anyway, no good there so we just all met up there and looked for something else. But it had to have outdoor seating because Laura had Chloe, and Nat had Churro. So the next place (Bubba's Pizza) we tried was out because no outdoor seats. The next place we found nearby (The Lake Shack) had outdoor seating but no family dining. Only 21+ allowed, and we had Missy. So the next place a few miles away (The Corner Landing) seemed to fit the bill, so we ate there. But the outdoor seating was not good and the food was not good. They were out of a lot. Anyway we got a passable dinner, and Laura was on her way again. On the way home we passed 3 restaurants that would have been a lot better choices, within a half mile of the place we did eat. Oh well. 

Tuesday our new furniture (that we bought in early April) was finally delivered! Couch, big chair, ottoman. I got the old chairs downstairs and moved the brown double recliner out of the way, and the two delivery guys did the whole setup and install. It looks great! Although now that it's in the house I question the wisdom of buying a light tan set of furniture. No stains yet, though. 

Softball is really on the 1-run games. We won again this week 14-13, no walk-off this time but we did came back from 4 down in the last inning and then hang on to win it. A winning record! 

Thursday Natalie started her new job at Little Caesar's. And ended it. She was in tears by the time I picked her up after a 6 hour shift there. She said she has never felt so gross as after working there. There is grease and butter all over everything and they never wash the pans. Never. They just brush the crumbs off, spray it with oil and butter and put it back in the stack. Never washed. Even the ones that fall on the floor, never washed. She was so repulsed by being there... and only $9 per hour.... and we also said that we are never going the eat there again. So she called to quit after that first day. Bummer, because there's not much hiring going on. And they had already scheduled her to work every day for the next 2 weeks. So much for that...

This weekend was the Winona Lake art fair. I did a 30ish mile ride in the morning with the group and in the afternoon we returned to the village to check it all out. I missed a lot of the art, because Cloud 9 Multisport was having a back door sale and I found a nice pair of Brooks running shoes marked down from $140 to $95. I've been desperately needing a new pair of shoes. After picking them out and buying them, I caught up the the rest of the gang but Beth was getting sore so we weren't there much longer. And it was just starting to sprinkle, so the artists were buttoning up their stalls and people were leaving. It started raining pretty hard a little while after we left. It's always a bummer when it rains for the art fair. 

Since it's a long weekend, but we weren't planning on doing anything special, we all went to the US30 antiques place on Monday. And Ritter's. That was basically all for Memorial Day.

A quiet week, more than we were hoping for though. Now that the camping trip is over Missy went in to Petsmart to ask for her old job back for the summer... and they told her that they don't have anything for her. So, no more Petsmart for her, which is a bummer because she really liked working there. As Natalie has been finding, there really isn't a lot of hiring going on right now. But at least we're trying to get her into the CNA course at Ivy Tech, so maybe if that goes ok she can find a job at the hospital or a nursing home or something. Since there isn't a lot going on otherwise, the girls and I went to Nappanee to get some Rocket Science on Saturday, while Alex was working. At least Kroger took him back...even if he isn't getting the kind of hours we wanted. 

Softball is back to it after yet another rainout last week. We were in another close game but this time it was our turn to blow it late. So, we're 1-1.

Our first camping trip of the year is in the books. We were invited to go on the season-opening trip with Stephanie & John, and a few of their friends, for Mothers' Day. One of their friends have a membership or something at a private campground near Paw Paw in Michigan, so that's where we went. Alex was working over the weekend and Natalie didn't want to take her dog camping with strangers, so Beth, Missy, and I took the camper up to the campground on Thursday after I got out of work. The GPS found us a rather out of the way path to get there, so even though we thought we might get there before dark, we did not. I guess it wouldn't be family camping if we weren't setting up in the dark. It was cool enough that the canvas on the edges of the beds on both sides split a little bit when I was setting up, so that's something I'm going to have to fix ASAP. But we got set up and had time to sit around the fire and meet some new friends. Friday morning I had to work, so I got up earlier than the others and found a quiet secluded place in the campground laundry room (there was nobody else in there) to setup a wi-fi hotspot with my phone so I could connect to the ZB intranet. I worked on a presentation and had some phone meetings for a bit, then staff meeting after that, so in all I worked until around noon before knocking off. The other guys there were working on dinner all day; they had smokers set up to make ribs. I was intrigued at first but started to realize as they were in the 7th hour of tending to the smokers that maybe I'm not all that interested in doing the smoker thing all that much. Seemed like just a way to spend all day at the campsite. Beth and I also brought the salad for everyone, and Beth made a crock pot chicken since she doesn't like ribs, and we had one of those great big collective camping feasts. The ribs were incredible I must say, but I don't think I'm going to rush out and buy a smoker real soon. After cleanup was basically campfire time for the rest of the day, until ~10:30 when someone was going to bed and yelled at the rest of us to come check out the sky in the field next to all the campers. The northern lights were going on. I'd heard that there was a huge solar storm going on now, but hadn't really paid much mind to it, until we got into the field and saw what was going on. The whole group spent the next hour or so in the field watching the sky. There were green and red and purple lights all around us! They were pretty faint with the naked eye but if you took a photo with night vision they turned out spectacular. Everyone was amazed. A couple times I literally turned around in a circle while looking up at the sky and just saying "wowwwwwwww" again and again. Two once-in-a-lifetime celestial events within a month! It rained overnight, so we were lucky that the clouds hadn't moved in yet by then. Saturday Beth and Missy and I drove into Paw Paw to find some coffee and she was interested in finding her grandfather's old house that she used to go to when in high school. She thought she knew right where it was, but it took a bit of driving around to get her bearings. Eventually we did find it. In the evening it was pizza day: one of the guys had an accessory for a normal kettle grill that turned it into a pizza oven. That, I might be interested in getting one of myself. He made the dough for everyone and flattened it out, and everyone brought their own sauce and toppings. He'd hand off the dough to the next in line, they would top it how they wanted, and John would bake it (each one took maybe 2-3 minutes). Then another big collective camping feast! After campfire time, the northern lights were reportedly supposed to be even more spectacular than Friday night, but there wasn't anything really going on in the sky that we saw. Everyone packed up and headed home Sunday. We left for home around lunchtime. 

Missy is home! Last one added back into the formerly empty nest. She was done with class on Wednesday, so after work Beth and I and Alex headed down to Muncie to get her loaded up and hauled home. Both vehicles. We got there around 7, and took around an hour to make a few trips up and down with the cart. Everything but the bike was in the van. We ate at Cracker Barrel on the interstate and got her home by around 11. 

Friday my group from work had a team building exercise... going to do an escape room! First one in a while. We all went out to lunch at an Asian fusion place, then to Tippecanoe Place, the old Studebaker mansion, which is a very impressive gilded era mansion (though not like in Newport). They have turned one of the upper rooms into an escape room. The theme was we were hired to break into the Studebaker mansion and steal blueprints that the heir apparent was going to sell to a competitor. Anyway, our team completed it in nearly the fastest time ever :) but we were probably held back by having so many people that it made it hard for everyone to know what was going on everywhere. But we solved it, and it was fun doing it. 

Also Friday, I took the van to get detailed. One of the college kids at the church has set up his own auto detailing service, and has gotten a bunch of equipment to do it nicely, and we'd wanted to get that done for a while now so I took it to him. He had it all day (he drove me in to work after I dropped it off at his house) but by the time I picked it up it was like new. He did a really good job with it, got down into all the crevices and everything. There was a lot of gunk he got out. And it smelled so much better!

Saturday, Natalie and I sold her car. As previously reported, the repair bill for it was already at about $1500 so I told her we were not going to get it fixed and she agreed to sell it. It's been sitting at Boggs all this time, and someone stopped by their office to ask about it and they put him in touch with me. He has another G6 already and is planning to use Nat's for parts and maybe see if it's worth fixing himself (I doubt it). We just got the new title in the mail Friday, finally, so Saturday we arranged to meet him at Boggs and sold him the car for $350. So now it is off our hands.

Softball finally had our season opener after last week's rainout. We won! We are in the lowest division this year which is probably where we belong, but a W is a W. We had a lead early and blew it late, but came back from a 4 run deficit in the last inning on a walk-off home run (inside the park). I had a couple nice hits myself. Singles, though.

Saturday morning bike group rides are back again! I haven't ridden since last fall but it was nice to get back on the road with the group. We did 25-odd miles going to Larwill and back on Saturday. And this was the first time I've ridden more than a little bit with the new bike shoes (clip-ins) I got last year. I only fell over once, and didn't hurt myself badly this time. I tucked and rolled right, I guess. I've been working out on an elliptical at the Y a couple times a week for a few months now, but I'm going to have to re-adjust the schedule if I'm going to bike and run too.

Alex is home! Add one more to the house. The empty nest is filling back up. He finished up his finals early this week, but still had a project to complete so I came later in the week. I left home Wednesday evening headed for Indy, and stayed (mere hours) in a motel near the airport. It was cheaper to leave the truck in long-term that get a park-sleep-fly (and those PSF hotels sometimes have shuttles that don't run too early or too late) so I just found a cheap place to sleep and caught an early flight to SeaTac. Got there around 9 am local time. Rented a car, and headed to Alex's apartment. We met up with Scott for lunch (Taco Time) and got to work loading up stuff into the car and hauling it to the storage unit. Made a couple trips before Alex needed to get some more work done on the project, so I dropped him off and took his bike (which he never rides) to the same Play it Again Sports where we bought it 2-1/2 years ago. The bike market is more buyer friendly than it was in 2021 during a pandemic, so at first they weren't even going to take the bike but it was in good shape so they decided to offer $40 for it. Which I took. We paid $120 back then so that's probably all I could expect. Anyway, I got checked in to my AirBnB and went back to the apartment, where we met up with Scott again at dinner time and went to Zaucer's. Which Scott really dug. After dinner I left Alex to work on the project some more, but he was so stuck he needed to get a hold of someone to help him out. By Friday he was still stuck. I was up early so I did some urban geocaching, then after he was up we did some more packing, laundry, and cleaning, got the oil in his car changed, gave it a good washing, got all his bedding laundered, then he needed to do some more work so I dropped him off and went to hang at a Starbuck's for a few hours. He finally finished that assignment and got it turned in just before dinnertime. He was going out with friends to IHOP one last time before summer. After he was done with dinner, we packed up the last of his desk stuff, packed it away into storage, dropped the car off at the parking garage, and headed for the airport. It was already around 11 by the time we got there (traffic was really slow) and we had quite an odyssey returning the rental car. We dropped off the rental at a very very deserted rental facility, and were not sure for some time whether the shuttle back to the airport was still running. Eventually we did get one (we were the only ones on it) and made it back to the airport ground transportation location, and the phone at the hotel rang and rang and rang and rang and rang with nobody picking it up. I finally got an answer after letting it ring for around 15 minutes and they said the shuttle would be right there. It was not. It was maybe another half hour before the shuttle made it to us. We finally got back and to bed around 1:00. Luckily, the flight wasn't too early. Also, this has never happened to me before, but the line for security was longer than any line I have ever seen before, and they opened up a new security lane right as I got there! So getting through wasn't too bad. We got to Indy around 6 pm, got the truck and headed home.

News on Nat's car: Boggs says that the bad transmission lines are basically fused to the radiator, and they won't be able to get the lines out without destroying it. So, the price for fixing it is up to around $1500 now, and I told them not to. For now, they said it can stay in their lot, and also gave me a tip that Lewis Salvage would take it for somewhere around $300-400 and they'd pick it up free. So as soon as the title comes in, that's probably where we're going with it. 

Softball was supposed to have the season opener on Tuesday, but it rained all day so it was called off. We've been assured we will make up the game with a doubleheader during the season, stand by. 

Quite the adventure on Thursday this week. I rented a U-haul car trailer and Natalie and I went to Ohio again, for what should be the last time, to bring back her car. All I knew about the car was that the transmission lines leaked so it had no fluid in it, I didn't know if it would run or anything. The dolly-type car trailer that the U-haul place has was rented out, so I went with the trailer which wasn't too more, but that meant I really had to hope that the car would run or else it was going to be awfully hard getting it onto the trailer. Anyway, I got the trailer at around lunch time after working in the morning, and Nat, Churro and I headed east. We got there with no problems, I put in the battery (I'd had it charged up at Auto Zone, which they do for free) and crossed my fingers, and when Nat turned the key it started right up. Loading it onto the trailer was scary...I legit thought that Nat was going to drive it clear off the front of the trailer...but as I held up my arms and yelled "Stooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopppppp" she did. One of the guys she had been living with helped us get it on, and it was really a good thing it started because when we were trying to just push it up the last bit of the ramp it was obvious that if we had to push it up, there was no way it was going to happen. But once we had the car loaded and tied down, it towed behind the truck with no problems. We got it unloaded in Warsaw at Boggs Automotive (they were expecting us) who very nicely said we could leave the car on their lot until they could get it into the shop to diagnose and hopefully fix the problem. Car unloaded, trailer returned, and Nat is moved out of there for good.

The following day we went to the BMV to get her vehicle titled. She bought it nearly 2 years ago, but it has never been titled in her name, registered, insured, or any of all that car stuff. She also doesn't have a license. She wasn't ready to take the test again but we did get the application for the title processed and sent in, which means that we can sell it. By the weekend I had heard from Boggs that the transmission lines were shot and needed to be replaced before they would be able to tell if the transmission itself had problems. That is going to be about $515 so I told them go ahead, probably against my better judgement...

Friday evening Beth and I went to a play at the Wagon Wheel Theater. First time in a while to be there for us. They were putting on "Funeral for a Gangster," which is a sort of audience participation murder mystery. The play is the setup for the murder, in which the victim is the gangster's widow. Then there is a break while the audience receives a sheet of clues and puzzles to decode, in order to solve a riddle about the murder. You also have to figure out who did it and who killed the gangster. Beth and I worked with a lady who was there alone, and we got all the puzzles solved and correctly guessed who sold out the gangster but not who killed him or who killed the widow. Although, I don't think the audience had enough clues to figure out that last one without guessing. Anyway, it was a fun time.  

FCC Softball is back! The season is starting in a couple weeks, and I took the unusual step this year of arranging a practice before the opener. I reserved the ZB softball field for yesterday and got both teams together for some time to shake the rust off. We're having two teams again this year, and honestly we're probably not that far away from having enough for 3. Dave's team is in the B division this year (back to divisions, which is good) and my team is in the C division. The low expectations team, that's us...

Eclipse day was Monday! The celestial event of the year, the thing you've been waiting for since 2017. I wasn't sure whether or not we were going to do anything in particular for the eclipse until Monday morning. But Monday it warmed up, the rain of the weekend cleared off, the clouds disappeared (mostly), and I decided that this could be a literally once in a lifetime event so we were going. The path of totality came so close to us, we just had to. The bad thing was that once I decided we should go see it, I couldn't find eclipse glasses anywhere in town. I checked at Walgreen's, CVS, Kroger, several gas stations, Meijer, Dollar General, Wal-Mart....nothing. Not long ago the town was awash in them. Now, they were all gone. So I made a pinhole projector out of a box and some foil (which worked, very nicely) and called it good. Just after noon Beth and Nat and I headed out in the direction of Marion. We thought maybe we could get all the way to Muncie and see it with Missy, but we wanted to avoid major roads. SR-15 was pretty clear all the way to Marion, slow through Wabash but otherwise moving fine. We got to Marion, well within totality, and Beth wanted a coffee so we went to Starbucks. The patio there was clear too, and we had a good view of the southern sky, so we decided that was a good place to watch an eclipse. By the time we got there it was already starting but we had an hour or so until totality. There was a guy sitting on the patio who had his glasses on, and I asked if I could borrow them for a moment and he just gave us 3 pair. He had bought a package of 20 of them on Amazon for about $5 so he planned to give them away to anyone who needed them. So that was awesome! He had driven to Marion from Wisconsin that morning, and just found the place more or less at random. He just drove on the interstates until traffic got bad, then switched to state roads until he got to the path of totality, and found a place to watch. Anyway, we watched the show from the patio as it got darker and darker, then all the street lights and the patio lights came on, and I watched the last little sliver of the crescent sun disappear through the glasses, and when I took them off and saw the total eclipse, I literally stood there saying "wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww." What an incredible sight. Unfortunately no photo I've seen of it, including the ones I took, look anything like what I actually saw. After a few moments of not being able to get a good picture, I gave up and just watched it. Totality only lasted a couple minutes, and it was amazing how fast it went back to being blinding as soon as the moon moved off just a little. I'm so glad we went to see it, the real show of an eclipse is in totality. I had thought, well, Warsaw will have like 95% totality so that'll be a pretty good view...nope.... it is all or nothing. If you're not in totality, there's not much to see. Missy only had to walk outside the dorm to see everything, too bad Alex was so far away from it.

The rest of the week was very normal. Eye doctor and dentist appointments. On Friday, Natalie and I went back to Ohio with the truck to get the rest of her things. We got the dresser, the roll-top desk, and many boxes and clothes and stuff, and the car battery. We were able to get everything into the truck and get the cover over it, but it didn't rain so we were good anyway. Only the car left to get, which we'll do next week. It doesn't run, so looks like I'm getting a trailer. Oh, and on Saturday we took the dog to a clinic at Petsmart to get shots.

So, Natalie is back. On Monday afternoon, I went to Ohio to pick up Natalie and as many of her things as we could fit into the truck. I decided not to get a U-Haul truck just yet, which was just as well because some of the larger things like the dresser were not emptied, and I found that the sofa and loveseat we brought her a while back are ruined, and they are not coming back to my house. We loaded up as many clothes and boxes as we could fit and told them we would come back for the rest when we could. Then unloading her stuff at home. This is not an April fools' gag, we moved her and her dog back into the house. So this week was basically about getting used to this. We've already gotten a gate to put up at the stairwell to keep the dog downstairs.

The van went back to Ab & Tom's this week because the steering column still feels like it's, well, not "loose," but bumpy. I can feel and hear sounds like something is bumping around down there. They checked it out and found that the steering rack is worn, so the movements aren't as smooth as they should be, but it's not really causing problems so in the end I decided not to get it fixed at this time. 

Saturday, as I'd promised Beth we would do when the bonuses came in as they did last month, we went shopping for a new sofa at an Ashley store in Fort Wayne. And we found one. Both of us liked it and we both thought it wouldn't be something that we just hated soon after we got it home. And it wasn't super cheap this time either, so we're hoping it doesn't just fall apart. We got the protection plan for it too so here's hoping it lasts and we still like it after a while. It should be delivered (we paid for that too) in about a month. 

 Odd week. In spurts, anyway. On Wednesday, Beth called me at work, I was busy so I sent it to voice mail and then I immediately got a 'please call me right away' text. Turns out she had been in an accident in the parking lot at Aldi. From what she was saying on the phone, the front end of the van was all smashed up and caved in, so I told her to get a police report and I would be there as soon as I could. When I got there, the police had already been and left, and it looked like some of the sheet molding compound on the front bumper was pushed in and the bumper was dislodged from the frame. Still perfectly drivable. She was all upset, but I got to working on it at home I was able to push the bumper back out again and get it pushed back into place. Can't even tell there was an accident. So anyway, no need for us to file an insurance claim, there's nothing to fix. The other vehicle (a pickup) had a scratch in the paint the size of a quarter, and it seemed that the other person wasn't going to worry about it. 

Beth and I went to the Komets game in FW on Friday with the Presslers and Parkers. Beth also picked up Missy so she spent Easter weekend with us. It was a good game and we had a good time, but the Komets blew a lead 3 times and wound up losing 4-3 in overtime. I don't think we've seen the Komets win a game in like 3 years.

Which brings us to this. Beth got a text on Saturday morning...from Natalie. She apparently has to move out of the house where she's been living for the past several months with friends, and has nowhere to go. She offered to pay rent if she could move back in with us, although I don't see how that is possible. So anyway, I guess we're not monsters because on Monday I am going to get a truck and move her back in to the house. And her little dog, too. For now. We're hoping for the best.