Memorial Day weekend was pretty good. It’s been chilly and wet and windy so it seemed a good thing that there was no thought of camping this year, but if we had, it would have ended well. Saturday morning was wet, not raining exactly but not not raining either. I had been asked to lead the B group bike ride Saturday morning, which was the only reason I showed up. If not, I would have gone back to bed. As it was, I rode down to the Trail House and waited, but nobody else from the B group showed up, and not many from the A group either. So I just went home. I thought I might as well ride since I was up already, so I did a virtual ride for an hour instead. Today, it was very nice outside. Enough so, that since I was off work and had nothing else planned, in the morning I took off and went to Goshen to bike the Pumpkinvine Trail. Perfect day for it. It took a while to find a trailhead where I could park, but once I found somewhere, I got on the trail and rode all the way to Shipshewana and back. There were a lot of other riders on the trail too. The Amish love recumbent bikes, they do. I also found a nice BBQ and ice cream place in Middlebury that smelled good but wasn’t open when I went by, so Beth and I came back later on for lunch.

Tuesday the softball team pulled off a pretty rare feat – we swept a doubleheader! We won the first game 9-7 and the second one 9-8. The first game was a back-and-forth affair with us taking and relinquishing a lead a couple times, but finally came out on top. I was batting as the game ended. In the bottom of the 6th inning the clock was winding down as we were batting. I came up to bat with 2 outs and maybe 30 seconds on the clock. If I’d gotten out before time expired, we would have played another inning…so there was no way I was going to take a swing if I could avoid it. The first pitch was a strike and I stepped out of the box to take a “practice swing” before coming back up to bat, and the clock ran out, ballgame. 

I had my follow-up with the doctor that scoped me on Thursday. He had basically nothing to report except there was some irritation in my esophagus but nothing major. So I’m going to be on the acid medication for a while and then wean off it, and hopefully the acid reflux will be over with at that point. 

Missy came home for the weekend. It’s a long weekend, and there’s a wedding she wanted to go to (more on that later) so she drove up Friday afternoon. She’s only planning to stay for the weekend though, and head home Tuesday I think. But she’ll be coming back again next weekend too!

I dropped off our old grill with Jacob (Nat’s bf) on Friday, along with Nat. I was going to scrap it since we just got a new grill, but he said our old one was in better shape than theirs so could they have it? I said sure and took it over there in the truck. They’re going to fix it up, I hope. It needs new burners and diffusers at least. Nat was planning to spend the whole long weekend with him but on Saturday, she came home because she had not been feeling well and had an upset stomach. She was only home for a few hours though, and she was feeling fine then, so I took her back (Jacob etc were at the races in New Paris so I dropped her off there). She was successfully gone the rest of the weekend. 

Also Friday: a new Star Wars movie! “The Mandalorian and Grogu” premiered tonight, so I went with a small group of friends from church to go see it. Overall I would say it was good. It would have made a really good half a season of the Mandalorian TV show, and everyone would have said it was great, but you just expect something bigger and better from a movie, and in the end I say I liked it, I enjoyed watching it, and I give it a 6 or 7.

Saturday was our friends’ daughter Lydia’s wedding. She’s getting married just before heading off to Duke University seminary or something like that. She was pretty excited too, she was hopping up and down throughout most of the ceremony. They had a chess cake at the reception too, with a real chess set on it. Before cutting the cake they sat down to play a game. They each made about 2 moves before he conceded. It was a beautiful ceremony, and though they had a communion during it, they did not fall into the same mistake that Beth and I did and have the bride hold the juice. Reception followed in the backyard at the church.

Last week Monday I called in to “Fresh Out of Bed and Head to Head” again, and won pretty easily. I called only because they were giving away South Bend Cubs tickets, and I thought that would be fun. I won again the next day, and the next, and the next, so I’m now a 4-time hall of famer on Pulse FM. However, when I got the tickets in the mail Wednesday, instead of 2 tickets for 1 game there was 1 ticket for 2 different games, next Thursday and Friday. I asked Corey about it after the Thursday contest, and he apologized and said he would send me the other tickets for both games and I could go to either or both. Then on Friday I got in the mail, 1 more ticket for a 3rd game. I sent a message to Pulse and they told me I could trade them all back in and they would give me another ticket for whichever game I wanted. So, Beth and I are planning to go to the Cubs game on Thursday. They’re playing the TinCaps for that series, should be fun.

The weekend kicked off the annual Fat & Skinny Tire Festival, of which I didn’t participate a whole lot, but I do enjoy it being here. Friday was the community group ride from the Village at Winona to downtown Warsaw. I rode out to join the ride. There were hundreds of people in the ride, bigger crowd than I’ve ever seen at it. I think. I just came right home instead of staying for the stunt bike show and got to work on the other half of the weekend activities: the lawn & garden type. I had to get the grass cut in the front and finish getting the flowers that we’d bought last weekend into the ground. Beth helped as she could and so did Nat, but we were eventually driven indoors by the mosquitoes with a few left to plant. Saturday I got up early to do some shopping: first to Menard’s for some grass seed and new hoses, then to Lowe’s to pick out a nice new gas grill (the old grill is turning into a rusted out hunk of junk quickly now), then down to the Village again to get in on the backyard sale at Cloud 9, where I found a nice pair of Saucony running shoes for a real steal. At least I hope they’re nice, I haven’t run in them yet. Did some other shopping at the shops in the Village and saw a used Trek mountain bike for sale at the Trail House that I was very interested in…so later on I bike back down to the Village to get lunch at the 2nd Mile Adventures tent (pulled pork) and watch some of the MTB race. Then back in at the Trail House I asked about the Trek; they sent me out on a test ride and to my disappointment the bike was just a little too small. The seal was maxed out high and my hands were hurting by the time I got back from the test ride. Too bad, it was a nice bike. Sunday we stayed home after church because Beth wasn’t feeling good, so I got to work. Assemble the grill, check. Finish getting the flowers in the ground, check. Break down all the boxes piled in the garage, check. Clean up the work area in the garage, check. Get the lawn tractor out from behind the camper, check. Get the arbor vitae into the ground in the backyard, check. Re-seed some of the backyard lawn patches that haven’t grown much, check. Shower, check…

In other news of the week: on Tuesday I got scoped, top half this time. Only the second time I’ve been put under, but this time I didn’t have to completely clean out the GI tract first which was nice. I was being checked to see what’s what with the acid reflux/heartburn I’ve been having lately (although it hasn’t been too bad for the past few weeks). It’s an odd feeling when you wake up and have no idea how long you’ve been out. After going under I only remember opening my eyes and Beth was sitting there. She said I’d only been out for half an hour but it could have been a week for all I knew. Everything looked normal. 

Also Tuesday: FCC softball’s second game and second loss of the season. We were keeping with the other team all right until I let one of the guys pitch. He’s wanted to try pitching, so I started letting him last year. He’s not good at it yet. He pitched one inning this week and gave up 10 runs, including walking in several of them. Anyway, at least the game ended because the clock ran out instead of being mercied. Even though I had been put under for the scoping earlier in the day, I played. Split time at second with another guy. And batted twice, got one hit. Not a good one though. 

The 2nd Mile group rides are back! Saturday marked the first ride of the year, except an afternoon one last week, because it was still so cold. It was a bit chilly this week, too. The B group was just me, Stuart, and Mike C, but Mike didn’t want to do the whole thing (he’s 81, I think, and he’s slowing down a bit) so he parted ways with us and headed back after 10 miles or so. Stuart and I did the circuit through Sidney and got back with ~33 miles.

Next up for Saturday was the Mother’s Day ritual: flower shopping. We went over to Sherman & Lin’s, or whatever it’s called now, and loaded up the car with flowers and a couple arbor vitae trees. Now the work begins: the front garden area needs to be weeded and turned over, and all the flowers need to be planted. 

No FCC softball game this week due to rain. Not rain on game day, rain before game day. The field was too mushy to play on. 

Missy has graduated! Unbelievable. Her years at Ball State University have flown by. I’m not sure how my 4 years at RHIT took literally forever and her 4 years have gone by in a blink. Anyway, I took half of Friday off and we headed to Muncie (Beth, Alex, and I) in the afternoon because there was an expo of the seniors’ work going on that we wanted to attend. Missy and all her friends and frenemies had their stuff showing on screens in the lobby of the building where the art department is held, and we got to see everything including a showing of their short films in an auditorium. Judy traveled all the way up from Birmingham to join us for the graduation ceremonies as well. After the expo was over, Beth realized that she had forgotten all of her meds, so rather than have her feel terrible for the next few days I dropped everyone off at Missy’s apartment and headed back to Warsaw. Drove home, picked up Beth’s meds which were all assembled together in a pill container on the sink in the bathroom and ready to be packed, and drove back (to Anderson, actually, because we couldn’t find a hotel room in Muncie). The rest of everyone went out to dinner while I was on the road; I got back to the room around 11pm or so. The next morning we met up with Judy and headed to campus. Traffic was as bad as I’ve ever seen it but not too bad. I did find some parking on campus-ish. Natalie and her bf Jacob joined us at the auditorium for the ceremony. The graduation was very nice, if mostly standard, but there was a big surprise for everyone, including the students who also had no idea…but the speaker for the graduation was Hugh Jackman! He’s dating a professor in the arts department, apparently. He gave a nice speech for the graduates, and enough of them went over to shake his hand while they walked across the stage to get their diplomas that the dean “encouraged” them to move it along several times. Afterwards Missy went with us to Anderson because the restaurants in Muncie were all packed. She chose Texas Road House but the line there was huge so we went to Red Lobster instead (cheddar bay biscuits….mmm mmm). Then we had a little party for Missy at Judy’s hotel room, before packing it all up and heading home. Missy came with us. I think she felt too exhausted to drive herself. She’s going to stay at home for a week before heading back. 

FCC softball is back baby! Last Tuesday was the debut of the new team. Mostly like the old team, but a few new faces this year and a few missing. The church is getting to the point where we could just about support having 3 teams: my team fielded 17 on opening night, which meant that nearly everyone had to split time in the field with someone, and also since we got creamed, many only batted once (including me, and my one at-bat resulted in a piddling little grounder and an out). We lost 17-5, but we were never going to beat that team. They had a bunch of big young strapping guys, and we have guys like their dads. But we have fun losing, as always.

I had a consult this week Thursday for a scoping. The acid reflux or whatever it is is still hanging around, although it’s been better lately. But I thought the scope was actually going to be Thursday. So I fasted. Until the appointment at 3:00 pm. When it turned out that that particular day it was just meeting the doctor and him telling me that he’s going to scope me. Which I already knew. So I was really hungry. Anyway, I’ll see the doctor again in a couple weeks for him to actually scope me.

This has been a full weekend. There was a work group from the UK in Warsaw this week, so Friday afternoon we did a team building event and went out for pizza at Rocksteady and bowling afterwards. I hadn’t bowled in years, I don’t think, but I held my own anyway. We all did 3 games, and I bowled something like 125, 109, 132… or something like that…. Just enough to be in the middle of the pack. Imran from the UK actually took first place in the series.

Also Friday evening there was a trivia night (fundraiser for a youth group trip to a conference) at the church, which was really well attended. Beth and I didn’t have a team, so we just joined in another table that was also short. Alex got together with some of his friends and formed a team themselves. They made sure to specify that phone use was prohibited during the event, and it was divided into some 6 rounds of 10 questions each, none fitting into a particular category, except getting progressively trickier. We wound up in a group with 2 other couples, but we were the stars of the show haha… we only missed a few questions over the whole course of the event and ended up in first place so we took the GOAT trophy. Alex’s team came in second place (it had been their only goal to beat me). 

Saturday I got up early and ran 10 miles. That’s the first time I’ve hit double digits this early in the season, I think. I think the bike riding has kept me in better running shape over the winter than I usually get. Anyway, later that evening Beth and I went to a Symphony of the Lakes concert at the Wagon Wheel. I’d been really interested in the their spring concert “Music for Movies” because I assumed at first that it would be John Williams…Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, that sort of thing…. But it was not. They did a series of classical pieces that have been featured in movies over the years, like Amadeus, The Mission, Charlie Chaplin movies, etc…. stuff that you normally don’t think of as movie music. But it was a good show and we both enjoyed it. SOTL is good, but they’re no New York Philharmonic. Interestingly enough, there was also a movie trivia event in the half-hour before the concert started. Of some 25 questions about movies, We only missed 2 or 3 obscure ones. However, we didn’t win, but I’m not at all convinced that the winning team wasn’t looking up answers on their phones (there was no announcement prohibiting that, but I assumed it would be understood). 

Also this week: I took the Santa Fe in to the shop the get the brakes done. The car has started shaking when braking from high speeds. Seemed like classic warped rotors or something like that, and it was…the front brakes were just about not even there, and the rotors needed to be replaced too. At least it was common stuff so they had it done in half a day. So the car rides much smoother now and we’re set back by around $600, ouch.

It must be almost softball season! The coaches meeting for the upcoming season was this week Tuesday. Looks like it'll be about the same as last year, no major changes that I could tell. 

Beth has been so sick for pretty much the entire week. She started feeling bad the day after we saw the movie last weekend, by Monday she was sick enough that she called in to work. She's been feverish and coughing all week, so not much has happened this week. And this weekend we watched a lot of basketball. That UConn-Duke game...holy cow!

Life group met on Monday, such as it is. One of the couples wanted to host a session at their house, and this was the week for it. Only the 3 couples that have attended anything since last year attended, so as has been the recurring theme, I'm not sure what to do about it. Maybe we should keep trying to add members or maybe we should combine with another life group that's struggling or maybe we should just tell everyone we're disbanding and they should find another life group if they still want to be in one. Well, we'll keep the status quo for now. Anyway as far as this week's session, the 6 of us got together for dinner and a session of the minor prophets book (Hosea). Winter has been lingering this year, and we still have been getting snow at times, and Monday there was still some on the ground here and there. But by the time Beth and I left their house (near Mentone), the snow flurries had started in earnest. By the time we got as far as Mentone, the snow was coming so thick and so hard and the wind was so strong, we were in complete white-out conditions and I literally couldn't see the road. I had to drive by the sound of the rumble strips for a bit, and was moving at a relative crawl. I could tell that there was a drop-off not far past the shoulder, though, so that also kind of freaked me out. It was bad enough that everyone was texting each other to let everyone know they got home safe. Alex even texted us to remind us to drive safely. The snow abated after a while so we got home in a regular snow flurry instead of a blinding one.

It's NCAA tournament time, which means it's time for a bracket challenge. I filled out two with people at work this year. The one I usually do with the ATS lab, I started filling out and realized that my picks weren't very good already and I didn't like them, so I just punted and picked all Big Ten for the final four: MSU (champions), Michigan, Illinois, and Purdue. I think it's a crap bracket, it just kind of happened. There's another bracket challenge at work though, new this year with the research folks, and I filled out one that may be even worse. That final four was Houston (champs), Kansas, Arizona, Michigan. As of now I'm doing all right in both brackets, surprisingly. We watched some really good games this weekend: VCU knocking off UNC was great. Nebraska-Vanderbilt was great. Purdue-Texas was great. I love the tournament!

Thursday my group from work volunteered for Habitat for Humanity again, at a house being built just off the ZB campus. It's a house that's been running behind schedule and having delays from the utilities. It was originally supposed to be a women's build but they're too far behind schedule right now so that's been waived. We spent the afternoon painting doors and bifolds, laying flooring (Trey is the expert in this and nearly finished the whole house) and doing some wiring. I installed the exterior power receptacles and all the smoke detectors and did some painting. We got a lot of work done if I do say so myself. 

Friday was an event I've been looking forward to for a while now. Opening weekend for "Project Hail Mary," which as I've been telling people I was Jurassic-Park-level stoked about seeing. I loved the book and have only heard good things about the movie, and the trailers were all awesome. So we went to see the movie with the Zastrows and Matthew. I was not disappointed at all! Loved it, 10/10. There was more humor in the movie than in the book but generally I thought the movie tracked the book incredibly well and never lagged. And included almost everything from the book. Great movie, fun time.

Saturday the family went on a road trip to Indy to visit the IKEA. Alex was off work, and he's needed a new dresser for a while. Nat stayed home but Beth and I and Alex drove down to Muncie first to pick up Missy, then headed to the store. I'm always surprised and a little disappointed that the IKEA outside Indy is so small compared to the one we go to in Schaumburg. But we did find a good dresser and were able to schlep it home in the car even though it was larger than we thought it would be. Now we just have to assemble it....

Alex's birthday was Thursday. He picked Red Robin for his birthday dinner, so we went to the mall (he also had some birthday money) and did some shopping and got dinner. He got to hang out with some friends this week as well, but generally it was a pretty chill birthday, I think. 

Saturday Beth and I went to Elmhurst IL (Chicagoland) for the funeral for Laura's best friend Monica. Laura's BFF since before high school, Monica passed recently of breast cancer that spread. We went mostly for moral support for Laura, but I wanted to see her brother Mark as well. We drove to Chicago early in the morning, as usual when we leave plenty of time for traffic, there isn't any to speak of and we get there very early. Anyway, the funeral was nice but short. There was a couple hours of visiting (she was cremated) before the service, then a pastor spoke (but didn't want to offend anyone, so it was spiritually very light), Mark spoke, and Laura spoke. The service lasted about 20 minutes or so, then everyone went to a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the funeral home before heading out. We were home by around 8pm. 

Missy's been home for spring break! Unfortunately we're not doing anything fun, but she had enough work to do over break that it wouldn't have been a great time to do that anyway. She arrived Saturday morning and we've been doing mostly nothing. She did get together with one of her roommates who lives in the FW area on Wednesday, her friend Evie came over (she picked her up) and they spent the day hanging out. I was voluntold to drive them back because Missy didn't want to drive her home and back in the dark. So I did. We took her out to a nice sushi dinner on Friday, and up to Coppes Commons in Nappanee on Saturday (Rocket Science, in particular). She headed back to Muncie Sunday afternoon.

Beth went in to the orthopedic center again for an injection in her back on Friday. She's pretty worried about it not working, because her back has been awful lately and her last injection didn't really help as much as it should have. She got put under this time because she passed out the last time, and it went off with no problems. It's still a bit early to tell how well it worked though. She's also worried that it costs so much money and our insurance just reset at the beginning of the year, but I've tried to allay that as much as possible and told her we're going to be fine and we'll get the shot. At this moment she still doesn't feel great but we're hopeful.

Beth and I tried a new tack to get our small group together this week, she arranged a meeting at American Table instead of the usual study at the church building on Monday. Mixed results, two other couples came but mostly declines and no-shows. Well, we'll keep plugging at it and maybe things will improve. Not much else going on this week.

It seems Beth and I are now old; she told me some time last week that she had reserved spots for us for a spaghetti dinner at church on Friday, but I didn't realize until we got there that it was a seniors dinner. They were doing a fundraiser for the youth group to do a trip to the CIY conference, which I did know about, but I noticed when we got there that we were maybe the youngest ones in attendance. Well, I guess there's no getting around it, we are old. Anyway, Saturday afternoon there was a guest speaker at church which I didn't really want to go to, but the pastor asked me specifically if I would attend, so I did. My guess is that many others turned him down...there was practically nobody there for the afternoon talk. Well, there were maybe a couple dozen, but mostly they were from other churches. Only a few from FCC were there. 

About the only other reportable thing from this week is the leaves. We've had something of a warm spell for the past week, so the snow is gone...which uncovered all the leaves in the backyard that stayed in the trees until our first big windy snowstorm in November. It's frustrating when there aren't even any leaves to rake until the snow comes, but that's what you get with our trees sometimes. So I've been raking up one or two tarpfulls of leaves after getting home from work. There are a lot of leaves....

It has been a slow week. Not much going on, and we didn't stray from the routine. Beth and I did go to Owen's Meat Market in Leesburg on Saturday for something to do on a slow day, one of those places that we drive by occasionally and say "we should check that place out sometime." Otherwise, not much reportable happened this week. Sunday was the super bowl watch party at church; the men's ministry had a get together for the big game and I and Alex went. It was a lot lesser attended than I thought it would be, maybe 20 or so there, and only a couple that I knew. Alex came late after work and left at halftime, he didn't know anyone there. And the game itself was lame.

This was the weekend of the special getaway for Beth and me. Friday after work, Beth and I headed over to Fort Wayne. I know that's not exactly glitzy but not the point. Beth got us a reservation at the Holiday Inn across the road from the Coliseum. We checked in, and the hotel is nice enough but not spectacular and not exactly new either. And we couldn't get into our room at first, so they had to give us another one on a lower floor. Beth had got one on the top floor. No matter. We went out to dinner at Storming Crab by which time it was already 9:00, so we just went back to the hotel to do some hot tubbing. That was actually the #1 reason we got the room there, was for the hot tub. Guess what? The hot tub was out of service. Empty. The pool was open, but we weren't really interested in that so we just went back to the room and spent the evening there. The next morning we swung by the Coliseum, exchanged the Komets tickets we still had for the game that was cancelled in December for 2 tickets for Saturday's game and refunds for the rest. Then we went to Stitch & Frame to pick out framing for my cross-stitching of Clarence & Smokey, which I just finally finished a few weeks ago (I started stitching that during the lockdowns for the covid pandemic, so almost 6 years of off-n-on work). We picked out some that I think will look really cool, and picked out a next project as well. So did Beth. Afterwards, we went to the big even which was a glass blowing class. I had bought Beth a groupon for a glass blowing class for 2 about 10 years ago... for some reason she didn't seem enthused about it and I never knew why. But I recently found it again and was determined that we were going to do it anyway. We took the paperweight class so both of us got to do it. The guy that runs it lets you do as much of the procedures as you feel comfortable doing, so we did about everything except the actual dangerous parts. Beth made one with red, green, and white which looked like it could be Christmas so then she added blue and black. I made one that was go-green-go-white. It took around an hour or so, and at the end the guy put then in the kiln to cool slowly so we could pick them up the next day. That was the big thing for the day, so we then went on to the other stuff I'd found to occupy us for the day. It was a short list really...we went to Hyde Brothers Booksellers which I'd found online, which is a cool used books store that has rows and rows of books stored floor to ceiling on two levels with everything you could imagine...and a shop cat named Scout. How cool. We spent an hour or two there, Beth found some mystery novels to buy, and we headed to lunch. By this time Beth's back was hurting a lot so we just went back to the hotel to rest. In the evening, we went to Barnes & Noble to look at some new books, then over to the Coliseum to catch the Komets playing the Tahoe Knight Monsters (dunno...must be a Vegas farm team). I'm not sure we've ever seen a shutout before, but the Komets won this game 6-0. By the end of the 1st period, the K's were up 3-0 which was the same score as the last game we went to that they ultimately lost. Not so this time: a dominant performance start to finish. The next morning, we decided to try breakfast at a restaurant we'd never been to before so we went to Don Hall's Hollywood Drive-in. We were kind of tipped off as to what kind of place it was when we saw only old people there...it was basic, and it was fine, and we don't have to go there again. Anyway, we went to pick up our paperweights after breakfast, and headed home. 

Having a work holiday so soon after Christmas always seems odd to me. But I’ll take it anyway, I guess. Monday was MLK day so I had the day off. I went to Menard’s in the morning (I’ve been finally coming back to the basement of the house…it’s been unfinished too long. I’m doing some plastering and getting the door trim put back up.) and did some work downstairs but that was about it for the day. Only left the house to go to Starbucks otherwise. 

Wednesday was Beth’s birthday (59!) so we all went out to dinner at Salvatori’s to celebrate. I got her a card and some flowers at lunchtime, but she wasn’t home so I just left them for her to find. She likes stuff like that. Nothing else special since we have some plans to do a weekend getaway in FW next weekend, because the special thing we’re going to do was unavailable this weekend. Tune in later for more on that. 

Today, church was cancelled because of the weather. Basically everything’s been cancelled because of the weather lately, it’s been super cold and we’ve had a lot of snow. Just as well, because the church van is in the shop with a bad battery, a check engine light, and the hood won’t open (sounds familiar) so it was unavailable for morning pickups and we had several that were coming for baptisms. But it was bad enough outside for services to be cancelled, so that problem solved, anyway. 

Had a follow-up appointment Monday regarding the acid reflux. It’s been better since I started taking the medicine but the prescription ended 2 weeks ago. Which confused the NP I saw because I was supposed to have a 30 day supply and I only had 2 weeks worth. So I’m not sure what that was. But anyway it’s been better, so we’re in the wait and see phase, where we just see if I still need to take it or if a single round of it basically cleared something up. If the reflux comes back, I give them a call.

On Wednesday, Natalie and Churro and I had something of an adventure. Not a good one, though. After I got home from work, it seems that a couple hours prior, Churro found and completely ate an entire quarter-pound bar of dark chocolate. He was pretty wired when I got home, wanting to play and doing so aggressively, running and snapping at you if you picked up his toy and barking at you if you didn’t throw it fast enough. Nat was worried because she hadn’t realized what he’d done for so long, so she called a vet line and the vet she spoke too sounded worried about Churro too, and said we should get him in to the emergency vet clinic in Fort Wayne right away. So she called the clinic and they also said he should come right in. Well, it had been snowing all day so the roads were crappy and I didn’t really want to drive to FW, but I did anyway. Hoping all the while that he didn’t throw up in the truck. I took the truck ostensibly because it has 4 wheel drive in case the roads were slippery (which they were) but mostly because I was afraid he would throw up and I didn’t want that to be in the Santa Fe. Anyway, Nat and Churro and I were at the vet clinic (the same one that Nibbles the bunny died at) for a couple hours. His heart was racing when we got there and his bp was really high. They gave him something to make him throw up, which he did. Poor doggie puked his guts out. It smelled like chocolate. He didn’t feel great after that but they gave him something else to help with the nausea and his heart rate, and sent us home with some instructions, medicine, and two big bottles of activated charcoal to force feed him for a few days. He seemed fine after that. Nat tried the force feeding for a few days after that but he wasn’t having it and wouldn’t eat his food if it had any on it. But he still seems to be doing fine.

Saturday was our annual beef pickup day. In the morning Beth and I loaded up all the empty laundry baskets and went up to Wakarusa, and came back with some of the coldest stuff known to man. It amazes me exactly how cold to handle frozen beef is; the butcher must have their freezer set to absolute zero. The hardest part is digging through the freezer to find and discard all the stuff that’s so freezer burned it’s not worth saving, of which there is an embarrassing amount, and then find space for everything new. But we got it all in, after chucking who knows how much money’s worth of unused food. 

Today was the FCC soup & chili cook off and annual report night. I made the same lasagna soup that won me second prize last year, but this year only first place prizes were awarded and I didn’t make the cut. However, it was all gone by the time I went through the line a second time so people liked it. Beth was going to make something, since she is the soup lady, but in the end she didn’t because she wasn’t feeling very well and her back hurt too much to stand and make it. So we just entered mine and that was that.

This week was appointment heavy. Since Missy’s van had the problem with the hood latch, and I didn’t get it in to the shop in time for them to get the parts to get it fixed, we had to bring Missy back to school and keep the van at home for a few days. We got the van to the Toyota dealer on Tuesday and they had it all morning, but now the hood will open and they filled the windshield washer fluid as a courtesy. And such a little thing, such a simple tiny little issue with the van cost about $1200 to get it fixed. Holy crap. Anyway, this also meant that we needed to go deliver the van to Missy. After I was out of work on Wednesday, Beth and I headed to Muncie in separate vehicles, me driving the van, so we could drop it off with her. She’s well into her final term now….how is that possible….oh please let her find a job….anyway we arrived at her rental house, took all the girls out to dinner at IHOP (their choice), and headed back home again just after dinner because they all had stuff to do. 

Also this week Collier’s came to the house to do our annual furnace inspection. Afterwards, the humidifier is still leaking, though. Although it wasn’t when they were at the house to do the service. Of course. But I did get us signed up for the service plan again, hopefully that won’t fall through the cracks again. The fireplace in the living room doesn’t work, either…I wonder if they can still service that even though it’s >25 years old.

Saturday Beth and I had a date night, something we haven’t done in some time. We’ve wanted to go see the new “Wicked: for Good” movie for a while now and figured we’d better go see it before it was gone, because it’s a big screen kind of movie. I really enjoyed it, as with the first one, more than I thought I would. Not sure why I thought that way since I also really enjoyed the first one, but anyway as with the first one, we went to Goshen to see it. It’s old enough that the theaters only had it at certain times, and the Goshen theater had the time that worked best for us. We went out to dinner (sushi, of course) afterwards back in Warsaw.

 Last day of break. Christmas break has been good this year but chill. We didn’t do much traveling, but just tried to relax a bit and reset. Working around the major job of helping out Mary Jane. She had surgery on the 19th and was at the hospital in FW for several days before heading back to Warsaw and being in rehab at Miller’s for a week or so. Beth and I and Missy and Alex traveled back and forth to FW a few times in the first week to visit and bring her things from her apartment. The only fun thing we had planned was going to Medieval Times (we thought it’d be fun to get the whole gang there again, probably one last time). Getting there while working around the schedules was a trial in itself: Beth originally bought tickets for all of us before break, and told us the tickets were on the 29th. But then Alex’s work schedule came out and he was working on the 29th and couldn’t go. So Beth checked and realized that the tickets were not on the 29th, they were on the 28th…when Laura & Thomas were still going to be visiting us. So I called and got our times rescheduled to the 23rd (the date Beth told me to get) but then…as it turned out we couldn’t go on the 23rd either because Alex was working that date too. So we had to call and reschedule our time again to the 24th. Did I mention that there’s a fee of $50 for rescheduling which we did twice? Anyway we went to Medieval Times the day before Christmas. We were seated in the Black & White Knight’s section this time, too bad for us because he was the first one to get killed, by the treachery of the Blue Knight. That was the major plot line of this show, so they had half of the crowd cheering for the side that were clearly the bad guys, blue and their allies. But the good news is one of the good guys won in the end. Yellow & Red, I think it was. Not our guy, but one of our allies at least. Anyway, we only spent the one day in the Chicago area and drove back home afterwards, not even going to IKEA. 

Christmas was obviously the next day. We spent it at home, and it was pretty low key compared to past years. I put up the Christmas lights across the front roofline of the house and winding down the pillars along the front just after break started, and I put up the Christmas tree the same day but left the boxes of ornaments out for everyone else to decorate the tree if they wanted. Nobody did anything so I put the boxes away a couple days before Christmas. No stockings this year. When everyone got up on Christmas morning we opened presents: I got Beth the Warsaw Cut Glass ornament, Missy got mostly games and books and t-shirts, Nat got mostly clothes and beauty products, Alex got mostly games and clothes and Legos, I got a Lowe’s gift card and a family game. This year instead of over-doing a big huge family meal for way too few people, Beth decided that she didn’t feel like standing and cooking all day so we went out to eat at Ruby Tuesday instead. Hadn’t been there in forever but it was open on Christmas so that’s where we went. Laura and Thomas arrived Friday the 26th to visit a few days. The majority of the time we played Wizard or Azul, but Thomas brought expansion packs for Exploding Kittens so we played that a lot too. We went out to breakfast on Saturday and did some shopping all around the Village, then in the evening things went a little sideways. Natalie was out with a friend and somehow…I’m not sure about all the details…got caught up in the friend’s family drama involving a baby daddy, the kids, his mom, and his new girlfriend, and the drama escalated until Natalie was grabbed and yanked on and she slapped and spit on someone. Then the cops were called and Natalie was arrested for battery with body fluids. No, seriously. I got a call that she was being arrested and needed me to bring all her meds in case she had to spend the night in jail. She had the cuffs put on her and got a ride to the sheriff’s office, got booked and processed. We weren’t sure that she wouldn’t have to spend the whole weekend in jail since it was already after 5:00 on a Saturday, but once she was processed the bond was set at $505 and she has a court date in March, unless it’s all dismissed by then. We had her home by around 8:00 or so, and hopefully she won’t be hanging around with that friend any more. We had reservations at Cerulean for dinner, and the whole thing going on there made Beth and me late, but L&T went on and we were able to join them around a half hour later. We played some more games with L&T the rest of the evening. Sunday we had been planning to go to a Komets game in the evening, but as I found out less than a week ago just after I bought the tickets, the ECHL was on the verge of a strike over working conditions for the players, and as it turned out, the strike went on Friday and lasted through Sunday. 3 games postponed, including ours, so we had to punt instead. Beth and the kids and I went to church and L&T came over a bit later, and we spent a while playing games. I actually won a round of Wizard. Since there was no hockey game, we went out to see the new “Zootopia 2” movie, which I must say I was a little hesitant to see, because I loved the first one so much. I was afraid the sequel just wouldn’t measure up to the first one which was brilliant. But….not to worry, because the sequel in this case is at least just as good as the original one. They headed out for Chicago on Monday morning. And with that, the holidays were effectively over, but I still had a complete week off, which worked out nicely for me. We didn’t do much else, but I’ve re-started my Zwift membership so I did a lot of virtual riding in the garage, Alex worked, Nat was off with her bf a lot of the time, Missy saw some friends, and Beth and I helped Mary Jane a lot. She moved into rehab at Miller’s by the 29th so we helped her get all the things she needed to get comfortable there. Beth and Missy spent some time with her visiting and such. I got some general errands done: the whole-house humidifier started leaking pretty badly so I got a new filter for it and got us set up for a furnace/AC service plan, since we somehow had let that slip and hadn’t been serviced in 2 or 3 years. I got an appointment at the Toyota dealership for service on the minivan because something broke in the hood release and Missy was unable to open the hood at all. She had driven home for break with no washer fluid because the hood release just didn’t work any more. Unfortunately, they needed to order parts so I’m going to have to bring the minivan in *after* Missy goes back to college, which means we’ll have to drive her there and leave her without a vehicle for a few days, then drive both vehicles back there so we can leave the van with her. Oh well. For NYE, we did basically nothing. Nobody had any real plans and Beth and I were in bed by 11:30. 

Missy wanted to head back to Muncie on Friday so she could catch up and rest a bit before classes start Monday, and because technically the apartment isn’t supposed to sit empty for 2 whole weeks by the terms of the lease. Beth wasn’t feeling great so she stayed home; Missy and I loaded up to van and took the old familiar road back to BSU. Unloading the van at her apartment, I slipped on the ice on the sidewalk and fell right on my hip pretty hard…basically the same thing MJ did so I’m glad I didn’t end up in surgery and rehab. Anyway we unloaded Missy’s things and did some grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, then I headed back home. Her roommates were to arrive over the weekend so Missy was alone in the house without a car, but she seemed fine with that. For the rest of the weekend, there’s really nothing to report.