The first soup show of the season is in the books. Beth and I worked at the Depuy craft show at Lakeview Middle School on Saturday. We were in the foyer area instead of the gym, which I don't know if that was good or bad, but things opened up at 8:00 and while it was never swamped, it never got dead either. Traffic was light-ish but constant, so in the end we sold about 56 jars of soup. That's similar to what we would sell at the Brethren church craft show, which is next weekend. The good news is that Beth made plenty for both shows, so no need to make more this coming week. Especially chili. For some reason, the chili did not sell... we sold one jar all day. That was even with a pot of it for tastes. Most people declined to even taste it. Oh well, more for the next show, I guess. 

On Tuesday I gave a presentation at work. About poly! I am the poly guy. I don't even remember who, but at some point in the past year someone from an NPI group was asking me about poly, and I got some feedback that it might be good to educate everyone in the group about the same stuff. I volunteered with the group leadership to do a talk, so I spent an hour talking about the history, chemistry, and different types of orthopedic polyethylene, with a focus on all the different flavors of UHMWPE that ZB has. Fascinating stuff, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

This weekend was mostly about soup. Beth is almost satisfied with what she has made for the first two shows, which is good because the first one is next weekend. 

Alex is back home. He got back Tuesday, having spent Monday night at Laura & Thomas's again. The hotel was able to find most of his stuff, most not all. A few t-shirts are missing, his electric razor, and his retainer. Why? Nobody can figure out why his retainer and razor would have been taken. But they weren't with the rest of his things. He's left them a scathing review on hotels.com. Anyway, hopefully the motel losing his stuff experience won't color the whole trip. Although next time he says he would fly. Driving in New York is horrible. 

We were supposed to have our life group meeting today, and I felt bad about cancelling it but there was a men's event at the same time. Because it was wet and chilly, the even was held indoors at the church instead of back by the bonfire area. Basically it was cookout (hot dogs and burgers), fellowship, and worship for a couple hours, with a guest speaker. Life group would have conflicted, but hardly anyone's been attending anyway.

Indianapolis Colts 31, Arizona Cardinals 27

Today Beth and I crossed off a 'one of these days' item - more for me than her - and went to the Colts game in Indy. The ZB Club at work offered some discounted Colts tickets a few weeks ago, including "Banner Club" level tickets, for $70 each and I snapped up two. The Banner Club includes holding the Colts banner on the field during team introductions and slightly better nosebleed seats than regular game day tickets. We thought about getting a hotel overnight Saturday evening but with Beth's second hotel error of the last few months a couple weeks ago, in the end I decided that we'd just drive down to Indy early. I reserved a parking spot on ParkWhiz and we arrived there around 10:30 or so, plenty of time. Parking and getting in was no problem. We proceeded to the bowels of the stadium where Banner Club was staging. The banner is just that - a big banner that is basically the width of the field and about as long, solid blue with a big Colts horseshoe on it. I was in the anchor line, directed to plant my feet on the goal line and stay there while the opposite side stretched the banner out, and hold it taut without waving it, all through the team introductions. Then, as soon as Jonathan Taylor was introduced, start furling it back up, gather it up onto our shoulders, and quickly carry it off the field again and line up on the sideline for the national anthem. A different (enormous) crew was doing the same thing with the flag (the size of the whole field) that we did with the banner, only they waved it at the appropriate time. Then carry the banner back into the bowels of the stadium and stage it where it was when we got there. Very fun and very cool! After wrapping up, Beth and I went to find some lunch (got some bratburgers, which were terrible) and climb up and up and up to our seats in section 402, row 17. We missed the Colts first touchdown drive while eating and making our way up, but had really good seats I thought, behind the northerly end zone and with good sight lines to the entire field. The game itself was a good one, especially the 2nd half. A couple 3-and-outs for both teams early, traded off picks, but then nobody stopped anybody and every drive ended with a score except the Cards last one (failed on 4th and 7 from the Colts 9 yard line... whew!) and the Colts last one (one first down and then kneel downs). That last Cardinals drive really had a do or die moment... how often does a game come down to one play? Literally how that one last play went, either team would win. But it was an incomplete pass in the end zone on 4th down... although maybe they got away with a hold...maybe. After the game, getting out again was a nightmare. Beth was really hurting, so she wanted me to pick her up just outside the stadium but it was a mess of one-way streets going the wrong direction, streets blocked off, and streets under construction, or all 3. I had to walk back to her and tell her that I could find no way to pick her up curbside and she was going to have to walk for a while. Eventually I left her on the sidewalk by a hotel and went to get the car, but it was still so tricky to get to her again that she had to walk out into traffic and get in rather than me pulling over to pick her up. But we did make it, and got out of the jam in time to meet up with PJ and Linda at Upland Brewery, where we have met before. Although this was the first time we'd met Linda. They were on their way to an Elvis Costello concert on that side of town, so we had a nice dinner and visit before they needed to get there and we needed to hit the road. We got back home sometime around 11:00.

Meanwhile. Alex is away by himself. He and some online friends got an idea to go to Comicon in New York City which is this weekend, so he drove himself all the way there, found a motel and made all the arrangements himself. I did suggest he split the drive in half and stay at Laura & Thomas's house overnight on the way there and back, which he did. He got there in two good driving days (apparently New York is "three hours of driving hell"), got checked in, and was hitting Comicon today. The downside: at about 9:30 we got a message from him that the motel had checked him out this morning so they didn't have him as being there tonight. And all his stuff that was in the room is gone. And they don't know where it is. They were able to get him checked back in (someone from Hotels.com had to call them to straighten that out) but he has nothing with him. SO we just have to hope that the morning shift can find it before he has to hit the road tomorrow. 

Saturday was a real whirlwind tour of lower west Michigan. Beth made arrangements for us to go to the annual Ric's birthday chili cook-off at the Wiessner house this weekend, and also made arrangements for she and I to go to her 40-year reunion for high school in about 3 weeks. However she realized only Saturday that the reunion was not in 3 weeks, it was this Saturday. Yep, you read that right. She paid for us to have dinner at the reunion and everything. But she didn't want to miss the chili cook-off either. So we solved the problem (as well as we could) by driving ourselves separately from the kids (Alex drove the Honda). Beth made a crock pot full of her Mom's chili recipe (which she hasn't made in years, and I remembered when she was making it how much I like it) during the morning. In the afternoon we headed up north, and got to Ric's at about 6 (30 minutes early). So we dropped off the chili, and had a few minutes to visit before heading out again (left the kids there). We drove to South Haven where the reunion was at a newish place called Lake Arvesta Farms & Sports Complex, sort of a manmade lake/beach with mini golf and pickleball and ziplines and everything. Plus a restaurant and bar. We didn't get there until around 7:30 so we missed the dinner (as we had at the chili cook-off too) but we had a few hours to visit with some of her old friends. She had said on the way up there, that there were only about 5 people that she really wanted to see, and 4 of them were there. But it was a good time. We headed home around 9:30 or so, called the kids and found out that the chili had finished in the middle of the pack, but at least it got there, unlike the last 2 years (see 10/8/23 and 10/6/24).

Friday night was the Ladies' Ministry annual 5 favorite things party. Beth got a bunch of pens and notepads and such to pass out, and came home with some chocolate and hand lotion and such. Missy came up from BSU for fall break Friday night to join her at the party, and to go to Michigan with us for the chili cook-off. She'll get to visit for a few days.