Will left this morning for the youth group’s 2008 mission trip to South Dakota. The group will work with Youth Works in Rapid City. We don’t know what they’ll do, but I suspect it will involve plenty of hard work. You can click here to see a few photos we shot before he left for the trip today.
It’s official
Graduation ceremonies took place yesterday at Pershing Auditorium. Around 520 students were in Ellen’s senior class at Southwest High School. The ceremony went smoothly and three of Ellen’s friends gave wonderful speeches.
Graduation parties filled out the day yesterday and today then it’s summer break. Whoo hoo!
Mind if I hitch a ride?
How are you planning to land on Mars? Well Google and Virgin founder Richard Branson are teaming up to answer that question.
In 2014 they will lead hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history - colonizing Mars.
The following questionnaire was on Google’s Web site yesterday, 4/1/08. Do you have what it takes to travel to Mars?
See for yourself. I thought I was going to pass out from laughing so hard at this quiz.
Got what it takes to join a startup civilization?
This 15-question multiple choice quiz will help determine your potential suitability as a Virgle Pioneer. Finish the test, then click “Submit.” Good luck!
1. I would characterize my overall level of physical fitness as:
a. Great. I’m totally buff.
b. Good. I can do the stationary bike roughly as long as it take to watch a Talk Radio rerun on my gym’s cable system.
c. Okay. I could probably do a few crunches if you really insisted.
d. Poor. The mere sight of a treadmill gives me chest pains and a weird tingling feeling in my extremities.
The week is off to a slow start for me
You know it’s going to be a long week when the dog is smarter than you are.
It was nice to wake up to a spring rain shower this morning, kinda made me want to stay in bed.
Once it was light out and we could make sure there weren’t any potential victims, in the form of bunnies, in the backyard, we let Milo out to do his business. He enjoyed the rain and the smells and came back in a few minutes later.
I opened the patio doors and let Milo in. I was prepared to see him shoot in like a rocket then wait for a treat for being so good. Instead he stopped immediately inside the door and sat down. I was a little puzzled by this until I realized he was wet and he knew he was supposed to wait to be toweled off. I didn’t have a towel and didn’t realize what was going on for a minute.
I think it was about the time that I began looking for a towel that I realized that Milo, at that moment, was smarter than I am.
He’s a good boy.
Bo, left, and Carl Pelini.
And football coaches who buy it
Ernie’s in Ceresco has gone bananas! No, this time we’re not kidding.
A truck from Ernie’s pulled up to the house today to deliver a bunch of furniture to Carl Pelini. Carl is the brother of the Husker football head coach, Bo Pelini. Carl is the defensive coordinator/defensive line coach and he used to live in our house when he worked on the team as a graduate assistant, back when Bo was the defensive coordinator for the Huskers in 2003.
We don’t know where Carl lives, otherwise we would have given the delivery guys an address to take the furniture. Instead they just gave Pam a blank stare, as if maybe Pam should check to make sure she’s not actually Carl Pelini.
I hope he got his furniture. When we heard Carl was moving back to Lincoln, we were hoping he might offer us an unconscionable amount of money to buy back his old house. I guess that isn’t going to happen. Bummer.
Where does the time go?
Ellen will have her graduation party soon (sigh!). It’s hard to believe she’s going to the university this fall.
I’ve been playing around with a new photo sharing Web site, so I thought I’d try it out here. Click here to see some of the photos we shot this week. Let me know how the slide show works on your computer. If it’s too slow or it doesn’t work, I may try something different.
From the deck at Fox Spit
This was the first chance I’ve had since I’ve been here to shoot the sunrise from Dad and Anita’s deck. Every morning has been cloudy except today. Here’s a link to some photos I took around the house on Tuesday.
And her lies
I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. Today she said that Barack Obama’s campaign is about one speech given in 2002 while she has a lifetime of experience. Coupled with her negative ads and the way she misrepresents everything to bring her opponent down, I think I’ll probably not vote at all if Hillary wins the nomination. I am so sick of her tactics.
Now she’s running ads claiming Obama has failed to direct his subcommittee to hold hearings on thwarting Al Queda. As he explained, he was only given oversight of the committee in January and he’s been busy campaigning. Clinton’s true colors are showing and I don’t like the hue.
But this eagle was just messing around
Today I’m making up for a missed photo opportunity of a bald eagle with the shot above, taken at Freeland. This ornery eagle was sitting in a tree minding his own business when he suddenly took off and started chasing a seagull. I’m sure he could have feasted on the smaller bird if he wanted to, but I think he just enjoyed the chase. Ornery thing.
Got DSL hooked up for Dad and Anita on Tuesday. Because we added a new large, flatscreen monitor and Ethernet, I thought I’d better upgrade their RAM. They were running XP with Service Pack 2 and only had 256 mb of RAM. They have 1 gig now, which should be sufficient. There’s still an open port to add another gig of memory down the road, if they want. We stopped by the phone company to pick up a DSL router. What a change from Lincoln. People were friendly, we didn’t have to wait, and they were actually nice to us. Seems like Alltel makes you wait 45 minutes to tell you they can’t get you what you want. Big difference between a small, locally owned phone company and a large one like Alltel. We were in and out of there in about 15 minutes and they didn’t charge a thing for the router, the filters or anything else.
We had a burger at the Shell Shack, a gas station in Freeland. It was actually pretty good. Can’t say much for the atmosphere, but you couldn’t beat the price.
We baked some monkfish and I grilled some albacore for supper. There wasn’t any fresh (only frozen) salmon at the store today, so we’re snubbing our nose at that. If you ever got a look at a monkfish, you’d think we’d snub our nose at that too. Yikes! It turned out really good though – very tender.
I may not make it to downtown Seattle. I’m having a good time with Dad on the island and I hate to give up a day just so I can go take some photos downtown. I’m still debating though. I have about one more day before I need to decide. Anita is willing to take the bus with me on Friday, so it’s still a possibility.
A day of this and that
Two bald eagles sniffed out some breakfast right outside Dad and Anita’s window this morning. The birds were nearly hovering in the air as they watched the water for the prey. It was incredible. So much so that I forgot to grab the camera until it was too late. I did manage to take a photo of Northern Flicker woodpecker (the yellow-shafted form of course) that seemed nonplussed by the predators hovering around him.
Since it was raining I couldn’t take many photos today. I got a great action shot of Dad’s pork chops cooking in the oven. I took advantage of the weather to install a flat screen computer monitor for Dad. It was not without its complications. The monitor wouldn’t work so, after being on hold for 45 minutes, I got some help from the technical service person who told me the minimum settings required for the new monitor. The new settings needed to be established before taking the old monitor off. It would have been nice to know that ahead of time.
We went to the public library in Freeland where I so wanted to shoot a photo of a white-haired man in his 60s who was sitting in a chair laughing to himself as he read Mad magazine. I admire the hell out of that.
We had lunch at the Dog House tavern in Langley where the fish and chips were surprisingly good. A nice delicate batter on the fish! After lunch I ducked into my favorite shop in Langley, Gregor’s rare books. About four or six years ago I passed on an autographed first edition of a Kurt Vonnegut book. I think it was “Slaughterhouse Five.” I kick myself to this day for not buying it, but I didn’t have the money then (nor do I now). The bookstore was all out of Vonnegut books today.
I plan to install an Ethernet card in Dad and Anita’s computer tomorrow so they can get DSL. The broadband service will actually be cheaper than the dial-up service they have now because they can get rid of the extra phone line they’ve been paying for.
Oooh! I almost forgot! I had a slice of huckleberry pie at Greenbank Farm this afternoon. We stopped by as I searched for cufflinks at the thrift stores in Langley and Freeland. No luck, but I scored big on the pie. Sweet! Reminds me of my sister Pam, who was working on fractions as in elementary school. She was explaining the concept to all of us and she said, “Henry Medina is smart. He’s a whole pie. I’m just half a pie.” I wish I was a whole pie.
