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Tormented

"M, I'm feeling tormented.  I have too many problems to work out.. I'm figuring out problems in my sleep at night and again when I wake up in the morning."

"I'm sorry, dear.  You need to pray about them and give them to the Lord to work out instead of dwelling on your problems."

Such a sweet, loving woman my wife is.

"No, they aren't problem problems but Sudoku problems.  If I wake up at night.. in that half asleep half awake state I see rows and columns of numbers and I'm putting numbers in the boxes and trying to do it faster to beat my last time.  It's like the burn-in you could get on the old televisions if you left the same video game image on there too long, except I have Sudoku burned into my brain and I see the puzzles when I close my eyes.

And when I'm not solving Sudoku problems in my head I'm trying to figure the solution to sorting an array of words in Ruby [I'm learning Ruby so I can learn Ruby on Rails so I can go to stuff like the CarsonWorkshops Summit and learn about making a killer web app] without using the 'sort' method.. I thought I had it worked out but there's a bug and I haven't tracked it down yet.. still learning the language and all.  I've been stuck on it for a few days now.

And then this morning I woke up trying to decide if it would be more efficient to process the new loan portfolio we're buying using Salesforce or my old FilemakerPro solution.."

"Oh, that's just terrible dear.. you poor thing.."

Happy Birthday to Z!

"Happy Birthday, Zachary!  How does it feel to be eight ?"

"It feels great!  I love being eight, and it means I'm one year closer to being seventeen so I can play Halo!"

Update:  see all the photos here

Kava House

My favorite coffee shop in Grand Rapids is Kava House on Lake.  I go there about once a week now to spend the day working out on their patio and enjoying a strong Latte.  I went there today.. walked up to the door and pulled.. locked.  Oh no.. out of business.. ugh.  But wait!  There's a sign on the door which reads: "Closed after 11:45AM for the annual Kava House Employees Canoe Trip."  Now how cool is that?  A canoe trip!  What a great reason to be closed.. not "we ran out of milk" or "rats carried away the espresso machine," but a canoe trip.  What a great place.

Ionia Free Fair (Spinning Teacups!)

This weekend I took kiddos to the fair.  We started out by stopping at the 4H booth to consume some hard-earned ice cream, Z's reward for doing a good job helping out in the 4H food booth last week.  Watching the kids eating their ice cream reminded me that I had only a bowl of cereal for breakfast, nothing for lunch, and I worked out in the yard in the morning trimming the hedges (no electric trimmers for me either) in the 90 degree heat.  I was starving.  Amidst the ice cream, candy, and carbonated beverages on the menu, the words "chili dog" jumped out at me.  That's what I need I thought.. a quick chili dog fix I can down before the kids finish their ice cream, and a little sustenance should keep me from passing out in this heat.  I just had one of them, because they're not very good for you, right?

DayTrip: Traverse City

We drove over to Traverse City today and took one of my favorite scenic tours out onto the peninsula to Old Mission, Michigan.  This 18 mile stretch out into Little Traverse Bay reminds me so much of California.  It's a two lane road that ends at the Old Mission Point Lighthouse (another link here), and along the way are beautiful stretches of grape and cherry orchards against clear blue water.  Surprisingly, the water looks more like something you'll see in the Bahamas.. it's that turquoise color from the white sandy bottom.

We stopped at a You-Pick cherry orchard along the route and got some pictures of us all sampling.  They should have weighed us before we started.. we picked 5 lbs and probably ate that much too!  Get this.. 5 lbs of cherries for $7.00.  Fun times. 

Petoskey Vacation, July 2006

Here are some of the pictures I've taken so far.. more to come!  You can see our campsite and the view of the water we're enjoying.  Temps have been in the 70's and it's been sunny.  I took a bunch of pictures of parades today and will post those later in the week.

Pictures are here.

Sign Language

At dinner the other night Elizabeth was talking incessantly (she is very social), and finally I said "Elizabeth, will you PLEASE stop talking and eat..." and she started signing to finish what she was saying as "and eat" left my mouth.

She's not fluent in sign language, so don't be too impressed at that.  I just thought it was so funny that she would do that, because I'm sure she was trying to be funny in her cute little way.  She is such a neat kid.

Petoskey

It's that time of year again when we make our annual trip up to Petoskey, Michigan to enjoy a week of camping by the lake, bike riding, parades, fireworks, and festival type stuff.  You can see the fireworks from three cities from where we'll be camped.  During the day it will be in the upper 70's or low 80's and at night down in the low 60's.  From our campsite we can ride bikes or walk to the marina, park, and downtown.. pretty much everywhere in Petoskey.  Harbor Springs is one of my favorite places in the world and it's just 15 minutes away.

This is truly the highlight of my entire year.  It is such a good time and I highly recommend it if you're able to make the trip.  My parents are normally up here visiting for a few weeks around now and they've always gone with us, but they have other plans this summer so we've invited [gasp] my mother-in-law.  I should have some good pictures to post when I get back....

Here are the pictures from our July Petoskey trip in 2005 and our second trip last August.

Carcassonne

Last week I read a little diddy on Gizmodo about a gadget geek like myself who stumbled across a board game called Carcassonne and had lots of nice things to say about it.  Intrigued, I read some other reviews and, after a quick google search to find my nearest "other types of games" vendor, headed over to my nearest games and hobby shop to purchase said item.

They were sold out.  But they did have another game, Catan, that I purchased on the store clerk's (a long hair scruffy looking dude in his early forties) recommendation.  Z and I have played Catan several times this past week, which is totally amazing considering how much Z likes xbox and computer games.  He actually WANTED to go play this game instead of asking to play his computer games..  It's fun, but requires just a bit more reading than Z is able to do at a quick glance at age 7.  I found the instructions to be a little complicated at first, but it's fairly straightforward after playing a bit.  Fun game.  But, our quest had just begun.

Priceless

Elizabeth & Anna,

-- 16 gallons at the Marathon station..  $44.80
-- double tall vanilla bean latte from Beaners.. $3.70

-- seeing my two little girls swinging happily on the front porch of our home in the country... priceless