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.