Updating on a Friday instead of a Sunday as usual because Alex and I are going to be starting a big road trip tomorrow. Things have not worked out as hoped vis-a-vis Alex's job situation since graduation, and since Missy is back at school we are down a car which has been inconvenient, plus I don't like having things in limbo like we do now, with the car just left in the care of Scott and Alex's stuff in storage in Redmond. So, assuming Alex is going to be home for a while yet, Beth will drive us to Chicago (Beth is still dealing with the ear infection, but still improving, so we're hoping it goes well) and drop us off at O'Hare, we will fly to Seattle, retrieve the car, pack up Alex's stuff (we will cram the car as full as we can, ship a few totes with what won't fit, and leave what won't fit or ship. We're donating the desk and dresser to Scott, who says he can use them). Then we're going to drive from Seattle home. I'm looking for interesting stops along the way, so I'm not sure how long it will take, but we may not go that way again so why not? Everything I see online says you need a week to see Yellowstone, but I'm trying to figure out what we can see in an hour. Maybe Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, Wall Drugs, the Badlands, but definitely NOT the Corn Palace. That place is lame.

Meanwhile as we prep to be gone for a week or so, the water heater in the house has started seriously leaking. I had thought the water on the floor of the laundry room downstairs was condensation from the AC but it started getting bad enough that it seemed it couldn't be. Once I looked under the water heater it was clearly leaking. And then once I noticed it, it started getting worse very quickly. I went out and bought a new water heater on Wednesday hoping it could be delivered in time that I could get it installed and wouldn't have a massive gusher downstairs while I'm gone. It was delivered on Friday, and I immediately dropped what I was doing and started work on installing the thing. Which was tricky because it turned out I ordered the wrong size, or at least a different size than I had thought. The old leaky heater was short and squat, and the new one is taller and narrower. Same capacity but it made making the connections awkward, and I had to run out to Menard's once to get new longer connections, and then to Lowe's to get some new longer connections that don't leak. Getting the thing in place wasn't hard, it was getting the pipes attached so I didn't have MORE water getting out than I had before. It took a while, and a lot of fretting and cursing, but I got it done and in the end there were no apparent leaks. And I even got the old one out and up the stairs into the backyard. The bottom of the old one is really corroded, no wonder it was leaking so bad.

Anyway. Tomorrow morning Alex and I head out for an adventure!

Beth is finally starting to feel better from the ear infection from hell. The antifungal drops continue, and she no longer has constant sharp pains but it still does zing too often and she still gets feverish throughout the day, especially in the evening, and she gets worn out quickly. But even with all that, she’s finally doing better. 

Friday my group from work got together again for a cookout at the boss' house. We met there at lunchtime and were treated to a pulled pork BBQ. Afterwards as usual we play lawn games, it was Kubb this time, I think we did that last year as well. We usually do something as a group like this to say farewell to the interns we've had for the semester, we had 2 for the summer. 

Saturday was my first 50+ mile bike ride! Nate from 2nd Mile Adventures had been planning a 50-miler for a few weeks specifically to get me my first one. It was a good ride, I could have gone further. We went from Winona Lake about halfway to Plymouth and back around, pausing in Bourbon along the way. It was a B-group trailing the A-group day, they were doing 80-ish miles. But at the end I had just over 54 miles, so I deserved a cookie at the farmer's market. 

Later Saturday the whole family (except Missy ☹) went to see the new “Fantastic Four: First Steps” movie. It was really good. I appreciated that they didn’t spend a lot of time on the origin story, which we’ve seen too often already with the other Fantastic 4 movies that were terrible. We all thought it was really good, maybe Marvel will get back to making movies that we care to see now.

 Beth’s ear thing is still going on. She still has the stabbing pain and terrible itch, and running a fever and everything. She saw Dr. D on Monday, and he could tell her that it’s still infected but told her not to irrigate any more so the ENT can get an accurate view of what’s going on. But she couldn’t stand it because the itching was driving her crazy and did anyway. The nurses were able to get her an ENT appointment on Thursday. The 5th time she’s seen someone about whatever it is that’s going on. So the ENT told her… it’s a fungal infection! How totally gross. And that all the antibiotics and drops and such have been making it worse. The ear should be kept totally dry. Except now she has some new drops to take twice a day, and she’s going to continue to be uncomfortable for at least another week. 

Meanwhile on Thursday, Missy and I loaded up the van and the truck with her things and moved her into her apartment (house) in Muncie. We kind of blew it with getting her a new mattress; we didn’t get around to shopping for it until last week and so it’s not here yet, so we had to pull her old mattress down from her bed at home and take it with. Plus all the IKEA stuff that she and Beth bought last month. Speaking of which, the IKEA bed was incomplete. Nobody noticed until yesterday that only 3 boxes of the bed were here, and they were numbered 1, 2, 4. But the website made it look like there were only supposed to be 3 boxes, so we decided to go with it and hope all the parts were there. NOPE we unloaded everything and got to work assembling the bed, only to find that parts were missing before we even got past page 1. And they weren’t parts that you can do without. The angle irons holding everything together weren’t there. The drawers and gliders weren’t there. The whole back side of the bed wasn’t there. So we called Beth to see if there was anything in the garage that we had forgotten (she was still home waiting for Alex to be off work) and there was not. Beth called IKEA and the best they could do for us was to have us pack everything back up again (are you insane?) and cart it back home, and they would come pick it up and deliver a new bed next week. In the meantime, Missy and I assembled her desk and chair and unloaded everything. She has a small bedroom but it’s in what seems to be a nice old house. Beth and Alex were there around 8:00 and we did some shopping at Wal-Mart and Menards to get her a small dresser (since there are no drawers now) and a cot-type thing to get her mattress off the floor, and a fan because it was hot as blazes in there. We had her all moved in and taken care of, and new furniture assembled, by around 10 so the rest of us left her there to do all the arranging and decorating that she didn’t want help with. On to her senior year!

Tuesday I called into the morning show on Pulse again and won Fresh Out of Bed and Head to Head again. No contest, really. I called because I thought they were giving away tickets to the Funny Pharm on Friday, when Corey from the morning show was doing his first headlining show. Turns out they didn’t have those tickets but I asked for them anyway so Corey said he’d get me a couple passes. I won the contest again on Wednesday and Thursday, too, so one more and I’m the hall of fame again. Anyway, by Friday Beth was still not feeling well enough to go and Alex was going out with friends, so I took Natalie with me. High praise from her: she said it was better than she thought it would be. It wasn’t a-list comedy but still it was a good time and Corey did a great job. He even called on me at one point (‘yeah, blue shirt!’) when he was asking the audience how long they’d been married. He also had a joke about Stanley Cups that took me a hot minute to realize he was talking about expensive water bottles and not hockey trophies. 

Friday was another outing that Beth didn’t feel up to: the labs at work had organized attending a TinCaps game. Nobody else really wanted to go either, mostly because it was so hot out. So I went by myself, met up with the ATS folks there. Good seats, lower deck along the first base line. However sometime around the 3rd inning the thunder started and the rain came shortly thereafter. I headed up and under the roof of the stadium when it started sprinkling so I didn’t get wet when the heavens opened and the deluge started. The grounds crew got the field covered pretty quickly and about half of the crowd left. Everyone who stayed just milled around in the aisle under the roof until the rain stopped, which was about 45 minutes. It started sprinkling again as they were uncovering the field again so I was afraid the next round was coming, but it lightened up and they got the game going again. In the end the TinCaps beat West Michigan 3-0 in a not very interesting game. 

Finally, Saturday was a wedding between two kids that grew up in our church, Lily and Derek. They had the wedding outdoors, risky this time of year, but it went well. It was pretty hot but tolerable and there was plenty of shade. It was a nice service, standard except instead of a unity candle, they welded a unity cross. I can say that that is something I've never seen before, and I'm glad they didn't burn a hole in her dress or his rented tux. 

 Beth is still down with the ear thing. By Thursday afternoon the ear pain and terrible itching was back again, but she missed getting another appointment with Dr. D so she got one at Medstat and late enough in the day that I could go with her. They checked her out and found her ear was all plugged up again and inflamed. The NP irrigated the heck out of her ear…said there was something in there that was moving slowly… and when it finally came out it was disgusting. A HUGE mass of slimy gunk. Her ear felt better when it came out, but it really begged the question, what’s going on in there? They didn’t change the meds she has, but they did make another appointment to see Dr. D on Monday and gave her a referral to an ENT. By the weekend, her ear was feeling better, then worse. This is getting ridiculous. She’s irrigating all the time to keep flushing whatever that is out; at least it feels good while she does it. 

Softball has ended. The last of the tournament (without my team) was this past Tuesday. I went to the ballpark to watch the games with the other FCC team. They won the first game I saw but got beaten pretty hard in the championship game. So the other FCC team was 1st place regular season, 1st place all-night tournament, 2nd place season ending tournament. My team was last place regular season, didn’t play in the all-nighter, last place in the season ending tournament. Oh well, wait until next year!

The good news is Beth doesn’t have shingles inside her ear. The bad news is her ear is infected badly enough that it is swollen shut, hence all the ear pain and headaches and fever and such. She called in to see Dr. Dick on Monday because she was worried enough about the possibility of shingles after going in to the ER. He gave her a different antibiotic than the ER did and added some drops. We’ve been putting olive oil in her ear for a few days because of the itching. Anyway, hopefully that will sort itself out pretty quickly now. 

The softball season has ended for FCC-Knight. We were excused from the tournament Tuesday, losing to one of the two teams we had beaten during the regular season (once out of 2 games). It was a good game, we did our best but were lacking our best player and the only one likely to hit a homer during the game. Even so it was back and forth, we led multiple times during the game but never held a lead for more than an inning. In the end we couldn’t hold a lead in the last inning and they walked us off. We lost 14-13, which guaranteed us last place in the tournament (at 0-2) AND regular season standings (at 2-10) in the lowest division. But we have fun! The other FCC team will compete for the tourney championship next week.

Friday my group at work went on our annual boat ride. One of the team members lives on the Barbee Lake chain. We met at her house and all took a cruise on their boat around the lakes and pulled in to Lake Life restaurant, where they have some pretty good burgers. Then cruised around the lakes again after lunch for the rest of the afternoon. Unlike last year, the weather was beautiful. I wasn’t there last year (I think Alex and I were going to Washington) but everyone had all the stories about how they got caught in a huge downpour while out on the lake. This time, it was sunny the whole time. Nice afternoon.