Beth has had a rough weekend. She made some reservations for her and Missy to go to Indy for an overnight trip in July, to Ikea and the zoo and maybe a few other things just by themselves, but she got an odd email Friday acknowledging her checkout of the motel and asking her to rate it. Which was odd because she hadn’t stayed there yet. Come to find out that somehow she made the reservation for this week, and it had already passed, so there was bugger all to do about it. Not sure how because she swears she checked the date 3 times. So that was a couple hundred dollars blown. On Saturday, she had found out about a dueling pianos special show going on at Tippy Creek Winery earlier in the week and thought we should go! But when she found out about it, she said they didn’t say anything on the website about needing tickets. So when we got there, it was listed on the sign as ‘ticketed event’ so we had to go ask if we could still get any. We could, so I just asked for 2… and as they rang it up they said ‘ok, that’ll be $84’ and I almost choked. We still went, but it was a lot more than I had been expecting. Two wine slushies were also about $24 because of the commemorative plastic cup. We also were supposed to have brought lawn chairs because the tables were all reserved seating, which we also didn’t know. However one of the servers was kind enough to help us find a place to sit; there was an older couple at one table with spaces for their friends who weren’t going to show up, and she asked them nicely if we could sit there with them and they were agreeable. So we had good seats for the show. I would have put in a request for a song but it seemed that the going rate for a request was a $20 tip, and we’d spent enough already.

 No softball game this week because it had rained earlier in the day. Yeah, it downpoured for about 15 minutes at around 3:30 or so, and CCAC called off all games because the field wasn’t draining. Baloney, though. I drove by just after work and the fields were dry. But what can you do. We’ve had a lot of rainouts this year, but it felt like someone just didn’t want to bother. Speaking of rain, it’s been the kind of hot and humid lately that means that it could thunderstorm out of the blue at practically any moment. Which is what it did on Tuesday, which I realized was happening after a few minutes because I wasn’t near a window and it was noisy where I was. And I had left the truck windows … and sunroof … open because it was so hot and it didn’t look like rain. So a mad dash to get out to the truck in pounding rain and get the windows closed. It wasn’t too terribly bad in the truck, but things were pretty wet. A lady at work had a convertible with the top down so it was worse for her.

 Missy and I went back to FW to pick up her framed self-portrait that we dropped off at Hobby Lobby a couple weeks back. She’s so proud of it, and rightly so. It looks beautiful. Such a great picture and such a nice job framing it.

The van finally has air conditioning again. It hasn’t worked in a while, at least since before Missy came home for the summer. It’s been getting hot so I took it in to get the AC recharged early this week, but at the Pit Stop they told me it wasn’t that it needed to be recharged, it was that the compressor was bad and needed to be replaced. Which they don’t do at the Pit Stop, so I made an appointment to get that done at the Boggs Auto on old 30. That was Thursday, and by the afternoon they had a good news/bad news situation for me. Good news, it’s not the compressor that is bad, it’s the flow sensor, which is a much cheaper fix. Bad news, it’ll take another day for the parts to come in. So it wasn’t so bad, actually. They just had the van for another day before I got it back on Friday with a working AC. 

Tuesday the softball team got another W – but we tried hard to blow it. We spent the first few innings building up a big lead, and the later innings losing it. By the end, we’d fallen behind by a few runs, but we mounted a comeback late and shut them down at the end for a 16-12 win. 

Saturday Beth and I went out with the Harrisons for our/their anniversary. Yep, we have the same anniversary, only theirs was several years after ours. Anyway, we picked them up and headed to a new-ish restaurant in Nappannee called Ruhe 152 Italian Bistro. Beth and I had never heard of it, but Rob used to work pretty much across the street from it so he knew about it. Anyway, it’s obviously an Italian restaurant, and it’s really good! I had lasagna like always, which was excellent. 

Missy has turned 21! Legal drinking age, so we all went out to Applebee’s for her to get her fist drink. We had dinner though, and by the end she didn’t really feel like it so we didn’t. She couldn’t find anything on the menu that she thought she would like, so she decided to do it some other time. We just did presents and an ice cream cake for her at home. Aunt Judy came to visit for the day as well to see her. We got her some clothes and some cool pottery for her room and some books, and finally presented her with the pink knitted dragon that I bought for her at the craft fair in the spring without her noticing I was doing it (see 3/2/25). She loved that. 

There was no softball game this week, because we postponed it because several of our players were helping out at True North VBS this week at church. Including me. Beth and I were guides for the 3rd and 4th graders this year, so basically the same job we’ve done for a few years now… we had some good kids but we also had a few kids that did not want to participate and basically didn’t want to be there in the first place. Unfortunately we also weren’t as impressed with the VBS program this year… we didn’t think it was as interesting and engaging as the Lego program last year or Keepers of the Kingdom or Making Waves from the past few years. There was a lot of talking to the kids, enough that they invariably got restless and bored, and the songs weren’t as memorable or as fun. It was good, but just not as good. Anyway, we had a good time with the kids and they did have some fun and learn some Bible lessons. 

This weekend was also Father’s Day, which I never like to make a big fuss about so we just grilled for dinner (so I usually wind up fixing most of the special meal for me anyway…) Beth got me a nice present this year; a power washer. I guess she’s got some work for me to do. I’ve already tried it out and surprisingly it does a pretty good job. I did some washing of the backyard patio and it works better than I was expecting. I assumed that an electric washer bought from Amazon wouldn’t have much cleaning power (like the ones I rented from Menard’s last time) but this one seems to do a pretty good job. At the hardest setting, the washer was taking some surface layers off the stones and concrete on the patio. It also takes dirt right out of the driveway concrete so I’ll have to give that a full wash sooner or later.

The truck has new shoes. As you recall, I left the truck at Discount Tire overnight last Sunday, to deal with it on Monday. That meant that all 4 tires needed replaced. Well, at least I knew it was coming...the truck had those tires on it when we bought it and they weren't in the best shape then, and I was told the last time I had them rotated that they would all need to be replaced soon. I've known they were on the way out for a while but I've been delaying as long as I could. Which was until now. So that came to around $1400 altogether, ouch.

Thursday this week was Zimmer Biomet night at the Wagon Wheel Theatre for their production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." A show that I love, but it has been updated at some point and I don't love that part. For some reason, someone chose to update the narrator as a tour guide at a museum for a group of middle school age kids, and the story is all a big VR presentation to them, so what you have is the show with a dozen kids with their phones out milling around on stage pretty much all the time. I seriously could have done without that. I literally felt like shouting 'get those kids off the stage' a few times. But regardless, I enjoyed the show although I'd rank it below the production I saw at Loy Norrix High School back in the 80s. And, the tickets were free. ZB is a big sponsor of the show so the night before opening (final dress rehearsal, I guess) was ZB night where any ZB employees got free tickets. Pretty cool, that. 

Softball was back to our regular ways on Tuesday. We lost to Pathways 22-8, but at least we scored against them this time. And, due to a bunch of re-scheduling that has had to happen league-wide, it was officially a practice game. Won't count in the standings except as a playoff position tiebreaker, if necessary. So we had a couple guys play different positions than where they normally would, specifically pitching. And it did not go particularly well... 

Odd bike ride on Saturday morning. It was the annual Dunes Day ride (I never go that far, though) and I was planning to ride in the 30-40 mile group, but when I got up in the morning the fog was so thick I actually thought it was smoke from the Canadian wildfires. They've been giving advisories to stay indoors lately because the smoke amount has been so high here, and I'd heard that it was supposed to be even worse on Saturday, so I wasn't sure there would even be a ride if it wasn't safe to be exerting yourself outside. I rode to the starting point but when I got there by 6:45 it was deserted. So I wasn't sure if the ride was still on. But nobody was there, so I just rode back home and went back to bed. Turns out, the smoke was pretty much all fog, the ride was still on, and the starting time was 6:30 and not 7:00 as had been on the website. Missed it, oh well. 

A short week at work, and not much happened this week. The whole family did go to N Manchester on Wednesday to deliver dinner to a family in our church that someone had surgery this week, and that's nearly all that happened this week...Saturday we all went up to Nappanee to Coppes Commons mostly for something to do together, but we found it closed (except for Rocket Science) when we got there. Otherwise, I'm working, Alex is working, Beth is working (a little), Nat is working, Missy is looking (Lowe's hasn't called her back since telling her the computers were messed up with her employment, but she doesn't want to go back there anyway). Beth and I also went to Lowery's to pick out some fabric for the camper curtain that I took down because it wouldn't stay up any more. It's a northern woodland animal scene, should be cool in the camper. Now I have a sewing project. Saturday there were a few graduation parties to attend for kids from church. 

The biggest event of the week was softball getting our first win of the season! And it was one that we'll still be talking about 5 or 10 years from now. We were playing a doubleheader, and in the first game of the evening, we played Harrison Center pretty close for the whole game, trading big innings and small, until we were down just 1 going into the last of the 7th. I was hitting the ball pretty well all day, had a bunch of singles, scored a few runs...and with 2 on and 1 out, I hit a high fly ball that while it was caught, it drove in the tying run. In their half of the 8th inning, our wheels came off and they scored 8 runs. Then in our half, their wheels came off and we scored 9. I even scored the winning run. That was an amazing game, one the likes of which I don't think we've ever been in before. So we got the W 20-19 in extra innings, then lost the second game of the doubleheader 18-6, a mercy loss. I guess we were spent.

There was an unusual occurrence today: I was on van duty for church but I had to run home to get Natalie to work on time in between services, and shortly after dropping her off I ran back home for something and noticed a hissing noise coming from the front drivers side tire. And I found the source easily enough; there was a big crack with a big hole in it. The tire's time was up. I knew it was coming sooner or later, though, so not a shocker. I was able to get the truck over to Discount Tire across US30 from us before it went totally flat; I was walking home when the Purvii saw me at the intersection and picked me up and took me home. Which was nice, so I didn't have to walk across 30. So now the truck is sitting in the parking lot there and I'll have to deal with it tomorrow.