It's Mike's Blog!

OK, so I lied

2010-06-21T01:23:00.003-04:00

Of course, it's sports that makes me resurrect this blog. No promises for the future.

It’s one of those things: everyone knows where you were when (fill-in-the-blank: Challenger, 9/11, JFK (I’m too young), etc). I think sports fans have a list of sports moments that they will always remember, and I added another to the list about two weeks ago. At 7:00pm Annika had her piano recital, and afterwards we were picking up Jake and Abby from the Eriks’ house. I was outside holding Zach to keep him happy, and I sat in the driver’s seat to turn on the radio. The Tigers were on, and the first thing I heard was “24 up and 24 down!” as the Tigers finished the top of 8^th inning – Armando Galarraga had pitched a perfect game through eight innings. I immediately grabbed my phone to call Dad, going through their home number, his cell phone and finally Mom’s cell phone to reach him. They had just gotten home from the piano recital too and I informed of the situation – ironically, I had made a similar call only 3 days earlier when I discovered online that Roy Halladay was in the midst of his perfect game. Once off the phone with Dad we headed home – the Tigers were batting in the bottom of the 8^th. At home I asked Lisa if she would put Annika, Abby and Jake in bed if I took Zach and headed next door to see if our neighbor was watching the game – we don’t have cable so our house was no good for that. She agreed (bless her) and I went on over. Sure enough, Mel and his wife had the game on, and they gladly let Zach and me in. The Tigers scored a couple more runs in the 8^th, and then the Indians came up in the 9^th. Mel’s wife was meeting Zach for the first time and took a turn holding him. Fortunately, he behaved himself. On Galarraga’s first pitch, Mark Grudzielanek crushed a ball to center field, and Austin Jackson ran a mile to make an incredible basket catch with his back to the infield. Comerica Park is really deep in center, so that may have been a home run in other parks. The next batter grounded out weakly, and then the third batter hit the grounder that sparked the call heard round the world – Cabrera backhanded the ball going to his right, spun and threw to Galarraga covering at first, who was there in time, but Jim Joyce called the runner safe. The play was close enough that it was hard to tell whether the ump was correct, but I remember yelling “Oh no!” in Mel’s family room. After watching some replays, realizing how bad the call was, and seeing the next batter get out to end the game, I headed back home. I called Dad immediately, and he just answered the phone and said “He was robbed.” We spoke for a minute, and then I got on Facebook and corresponded briefly with other baseball fans. I felt empty, in a sports-only kind of way, for the rest of the night. During my drive to work the next morning, it was all over the radio, but the fallout was quite uplifting, amazingly enough. This is what I love sports for – moments like these, and sharing them with other people.

The End

2010-02-05T20:25:00.002-05:00

OK, I think I'm officially giving up. I'm not motivated to update this blog, and everyone interacts so much through Facebook now that I'm even less inclined to put time into this. It's weird, with the proliferation of blogs, that it almost feels like the events of my life or all my important thoughts about sports don't actually occur if I don't blog about them. Despite that, I don't care enough to spend time writing a blog. By the time the kids get to bed each night I'm much more interested in playing some video games, watching something decent on TV, reading a book, drinking a fine beer or doing school work than investing time in writing a decent blog post, which tends to just sound like work. I'll just rely on Facebook status updates to spread my good word instead.

The family blog still lives, of course, and I'm certain it will get updated as the kids keep doing ridiculous things.

So, I think I'll leave this as the last blog post, but I won't shut down the blog, so it will just be one of those dead websites, like the personal part of my homepage (as opposed to the work part (link at right)).

Smell you later!

And more...

2009-10-14T12:56:00.003-04:00

OK, so I didn't get my Cardinals-over-Dodgers wish, but the rest went my way, and I'm still pretty OK with the Dodgers. I have to prefer the Dodgers over the Phillies now, because either a Dodgers-Angels-battle-of-LA World Series sounds fun, and so does a Dodgers-Yankees World Series. The TV networks just salivate any time they can get LA vs. NY in any sport.

I'm allowing myself some hope for the Notre Dame-USC game this Saturday, since ND's quarterback has been really good (as has most of the offense), the game is in South Bend, and USC is starting a freshman QB - they're not quite the dominant force that they have been recently. In past years I've just been hoping that the game wasn't a total blowout. It starts right after the end of an undergraduate math conference that I'm going to with some students, so I'll have to subject some of them to the game on the radio during the drive back from Detroit.

Look! Two posts within a week!

Spouting on Sports

2009-10-07T14:23:00.003-04:00

So, what good is a blog that only gets updated once every two months, anyway? Oh well. What follows is all sports-related, so if you don't care, don't say I didn't warn you.

The sad Tigers of Detroit gave us hope, toyed with us, then went out drinking and let us down. There never should have been a one-game playoff, but the Tigers couldn't put together a decent win down the stretch to close it out. Boo. This season's end is a lot worse to take than last year, when they finished last in the their division.

So then, given who has made the playoffs, here's how things will go in my ideal world (these aren't predictions, just requests of the baseball gods):

In the NL, the Phillies beat the Rockies and the Cardinals beat the Dodgers, and then the Cardinals beat the Phillies to get to the World Series. I wouldn't totally mind the Dodgers making it all the way, but I want St. Louis in the World Series - see below.

In the AL, the Yankees beat the Twins and the Angels beat the Red Sox. I'm a bit burned out on the Red Sox and their rise to glory (as tainted by steroids as it may now be). Then, I'd actually hope for the Yankees to beat the Angels - I don't find the Angels particularly interesting, and even though I despise the Yankees, there's good reason for them to reach the World Series.

Now I would never hope for the Yankees to WIN the World Series - that's about last on the list of my desires - but if the Tigers can't represent the AL, then why not have the Yankees nearly meet their definition of success and then crush them? I'm requesting that the Cardinals win the World Series in five games, so they win at home, with a 550-foot home run in the bottom of the ninth by Albert Pujols, the studliest, most awesome, respectable and steroid-free player in the world. I'd prefer that it be a game seven home run, but then it would have to happen in New York, since the AL team gets home-field advantage this year, and I'd rather witness a series-ending homer (of which there have only been two - Joe Carter, 1993, Blue Jays and Bill Mazeroski, 1960, Pirates - Kirk Gibson's homer in 1988 was the coolest, but it happened in game 1). Also, throughout the playoffs I would prefer lots of exciting games, numerous game 7's, fewer commercials between innings, and games that end by 11:15ish, so I can get a respectable amount of sleep. It's the first postseason that I get to see in HD, so I'd like it to be a decent one.

Meanwhile, the wonderful football season's are motoring along, and Notre Dame looks decent so far. They might even beat USC in a couple weeks. We'll see. Hockey started too, but it gets lost amidst the football and baseball, and I can't get into it when the playoffs won't end until June. It's a bit ridiculous, really. I have plans for reorganizing the entire NHL, if they ever ask.

Yay, I posted again! While making chocolate chip cookies, no less. Until December...

...but hopefully not.

John Adams

2009-08-04T22:20:00.002-04:00

Tonight I finished reading John Adams, by David McCullough. Being a biography, it was quite unlike anything I've read in recent years, but it was a powerful read for me. John Adams was an incredible American and contributed no less, if not more, to the formation of our country than both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. It's incredible that there are gigantic monuments and memorials attributed to Washington and Jefferson, but no such thing exists for Adams. After reading this book, in fact, I'm much more impressed with Adams than I am with Jefferson. I wasn't expecting to feel the need to "find out what happens next" when reading this, and I never developed the irresistible need to keep going that can surface when reading Harry Potter, but David McCullough writes so well that it felt that way toward the end of the book, and the fact that I was reading about actual people and events made it that much more meaningful to me. This book certainly goes on my "recommended" list. I also have a copy of The Path Between the Seas, his book about the Panama Canal, which I might read next, although it's long and I probably wouldn't finish it before school starts again. Besides, Lisa and I still need to watch the third season of Arrested Development.

HP6

2009-07-19T15:26:00.002-04:00

A sixth Hewlett-Packard? Of course not...

Lisa and I saw the sixth Harry Potter movie the other day. I think they've mostly improved since the first one, mostly in terms of the presentation of the characters and story. I thought this movie had the best dialogue and character interaction - there wasn't anything that I thought was really cheesy and made my eyes roll all over the place. Some of the lines from the previous movies were excruciating. However, this far into the series I'm taking the special effects for granted, and given that there wasn't anything spectacular in terms of action (it was all very good, but nothing way better than every other movie out there) I don't feel the need to see it again. As good as it was, the movies just can't compete with the richness of the books. It'd be fun to watch all the movies again, but not as rewarding as reading all the books again. The Lord of the Rings movies mean much more to me than the HP films. And...that's my big grand opinion on it all.

Praising Pixar

2009-07-07T21:41:00.002-04:00

Discussing the greatness of Pixar's movies may become an annual tradition for me, right after seeing their latest film. In the past I ranked them based on how much I enjoy them, but they're all so well done that I feel bad leaving any of them at the bottom. So, instead, here they are in groups, not based on which ones are my favorites to watch, but just based on my assessment of their quality as films. They are all wonderful, really, and beautifully animated, but some are better than other. So, here it goes:

THE GOOD ONES

Cars - one of my favorites to watch (and I've done so with the kids a lot) but not the best as a film.

Monsters Inc.

A Bug's Life

THE GREAT ONES

Toy Story - this was the landmark first movie, and that almost pushed it into the next category, but I left it here.

Toy Story 2 - possibly better than the first one.

Finding Nemo - do ya? Do Ya? DO YA?

Up - a nice addition to the family.

THE REALLY GREAT ONES

The Incredibles - my favorite of them all, too

Ratatouille - underappreciated, I think, since it didn't have the marketing appeal that Cars or Finding Nemo did, but wonderfully original (as they all are)

Wall-E - it's incredible what they were able to do for the first half of the movie without dialogue.

And here's what we get to look forward to for next year.

National Anthems

2009-05-30T22:25:00.002-04:00

It's game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight, with the Red Wings playing the Penguins, a rematch of last year's finals (they're ahead 3-1 as I type). In honor of hockey, here's a video. Sometimes I think it would be cool to be Canadian, just for the national anthem, which I think is way better than ours (God Bless America is better than the national anthem too). And, I've never been to a sporting event where the crowd removed the need for someone to sing the anthem.

Top Ten Aerosmith

2009-05-15T12:06:00.002-04:00

Developed while eating lunch and listening to the Big Ones album, here are my top ten favorite Aerosmith songs, albeit without a good knowledge of their 70s stuff:

1. Cryin'
2. Angel
3. What It Takes
4. Livin' on the Edge
5. Janie's Got a Gun
6. Walk This Way
7. Love in an Elevator
8. Dream On
9. Dude (Looks Like a Lady)
10. Rag Doll

Thanks for caring.

Don't call it a comeback

2009-05-06T22:13:00.002-04:00

Mostly, it's an attempt to get out of last place on the blog list on Nick and Beth's blog. It's hard to return after five months off with something awesome, so here's this:

I was on the radio today, due to a piece of sports trivia that I know. A local sports talk show does a quick trivia quiz at the end of the show and I happened to be in the car at the time, driving up to Ferris. They ask five questions and then take answers from anyone to any of the questions. The theme was "Stanley Cup goals," and I could only think of one significant goal (my hockey history knowledge is not as expansive as my baseball history knowledge) - that Uwe Krupp scored the gamewinner in overtime to clinch the Stanley Cup for the Colorado Avalanche (in 1996, it turns out). I managed to balance driving, talking on the phone, and controlling the volume on the radio all at the same time, and due to the radio delay I managed to catch the end of what I said on the radio itself. I mostly remember this goal because I was working a physics research project at Calvin that summer and I downloaded the replay of it from the Internet. It was one of the first videos I ever downloaded (it was 1996!). It took forever and the quality was crappy, but it got me on the radio 13 years later. I didn't win anything, unless I answer more trivia questions this week and get the most right for the whole week. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

In other news, I gave my last final for the semester today, and I start a decent load of summer teaching in a couple weeks. And I'm going to try and read John Adams by David McCullough this summer too. It's about time I read a book instead of watching reruns of Family Guy.

Mourning Studio 28

2008-11-18T22:58:00.002-05:00

It was announced this past weekend that one of the original mega movie theaters, Studio 28, in Grand Rapids, will show it's last movies this coming weekend. It makes me a little sad, I suppose, although it's not surprising. Attendance there has declined significantly as of late - Lisa and I were there recently to see the new Indiana Jones, and it was startlingly empty. I don't know that this was my first movie theater ever, but it's certainly been the most visited one of my life. Among other things, I've seen a lot of Star Wars movies there: Empire Strikes Back there when I was little, the entire Star Wars Trilogy in a charity re-release during high school, the Special Editions during college, and even Episode III on opening night just a few years ago. I won't necessarily miss the location, as all the newer Celebration Cinemas are quite accessible, and we mostly go to the cheap theater if anything. However, Studio 28 has one thing that none of the other theaters have: Theater 1. It's fully THX-certified, and just plain huge (over 800 seats!) - so large, in fact, that when they converted the other 19 theaters at Studio 28 to stadium seating, they didn't do Theater 1, since it's simply too big for it! Theater 1 is where I saw most of those Star Wars movies, Waterworld, one of the Lord of the Rings movies with my brothers and their wives-at-the-time, Titanic, and Independence Day - for the last one I really recall entering the theater in the midst of a huge crush of people, and no one tore my ticket. There are probably many movies I saw at Studio 28 that I don't remember, either. I'm nearly sure that I saw Jurassic Park there, too, but I don't have a specific memory of it. Well, there'd be something cool about visiting one last time, but there isn't anything in particular that I want to see right now, and Theater 1 is showing Madagascar 2. I don't need that to be my final Studio 28 experience. Anyway, here's the official announcement too. Bye, Studio 28 - you were cool.

World Series Post

2008-10-29T21:52:00.002-04:00

I'm watching the Phillies and the Rays play game 5 of the World Series. We're a double play away from the end right now, the hopeless Cubs a distant memory. I thought I might be done watching on Monday night, but this goofy suspended game didn't get continued until tonight. I'm enjoying it, though, since the game is almost done and it's not even 10pm, rather than midnight or later like it's been some years. One out to go. Someday they have to schedule a World Series game for a Saturday afternoon, even if they have to compete with college football. I'd like to think that my kids would appreciate a Tigers World Series someday, but the games would be on way too late for them to stay up for it. Game over, the Phillies are champions, and guys get crushed at the bottom of a pile at the pitching mound. Overall, I'm happy with it, since I'm not a fan of upstart franchises like Tampa Bay winning the World Series in only their 10th season, which we've seen quite recently with the Florida Marlins (twice) and the Arizona Diamondbacks. In other random notes, the special "World Champion" hats the Phillies are now wearing are quite gaudy, and the regular hats look dumb with those hugs World Series patches on the sides. So, yay for the Phillies. Maybe the Tigers can live up to expectations next year.

By the way, Obama is going to win the election. That's not an endorsement or a condemnation, but I think it's pretty much done. It's not very bold to make a prediction like that when there are only two outcomes, but I think it's going to go that way.

The World Series trophy just made its appearance, which ranks somewhere in the middle of all the sports trophies in terms of coolness. At the top: the Stanley Cup and the green jackets of the Masters. Toward the bottom: the fragile, sissy glass football that the college football champions get.

It's over!

Breakfast Stout Breakfast

2008-09-23T17:09:00.002-04:00

Each fall the release of the latest batch of Breakfast Stout from Founders Brewing Company is highly anticipated, and the past few years Founders has hosted a Breakfast Stout Breakfast to celebrate. This year I went for the first time, with three friends. It was an exclusive event - only 200 tickets were sold. This year the food was catered by San Chez A Tapas Bistro, which was a change from previous years (I heard the food was so-so in the past).

We arrived right at 10am to join the long line outside, entered, received our special Breakfast Stout mugs, filled them with the delicious double chocolate coffee oatmeal stout, and got in line for our food. The large doors to the outdoor porch were open, as the weather was beautiful. Here's the view inside Founders (before 11am!):

After gathering a muffin, some scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, some potatoes, bread, and samples of three different kinds of hash (including "Bloody Mary"), my breakfast looked like this:

Note the cool mug, and the beginnings of the light brown lacing left on the inside of the mug by the beer as I drank it. Breakfast Stout is black as night, contains 8.3% alcohol, and went really well with the food. It wasn't weird to be drinking it before noon at all. We went back for seconds later, and even though the event was supposed to go until 1pm, they were running out of food by noon when we left. It was a pretty cool experience overall.

Yeah, More Sports

2008-09-09T21:04:00.003-04:00

We've failed miserably to maintain the blogs lately (both of us have played a lot of Word Challenge on Facebook, plus school started) and I'm not even going to attempt some grand make-up-for-it blog entry, so I'll just talk about sports some more...

Cupcake update: a few years ago East Carolina was in the midst of a span where they went 3-20. During that time they agreed to be a cupcake on the 2008 schedule of both Virgina Tech and West Virginia. They've improved since then, and beat both teams to start this season. Awesome.

NFL head coaches punt way too much, even on 4th and 1 from the middle of the field. If they go for it and fail, they get blamed. If they punt and still lose, the players get blamed for playing poorly. I've seen thorough statistical studies that show that teams should pretty much go for it on 4th and 1 from almost anywhere on the field. Heck, the Lions were losing by three touchdowns on Sunday and punted from the other team's 40-yard line (that's straight from "How Not To Try But Still Look Like You Are"). Now I boo every time I see coaches do this - I saw good chunks of around 3 games this past week, and I had to boo at least 4 or 5 times. Some high school teams never punt, but even the TV announcers usually side with punting in almost every situation. Boo on them too.

Not to jump the gun, but the Yankees are now in 4th place in their division and could be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in less than a week. The Tigers have more hope than that, but really they don't so I need to be excited about something. It should be interesting to see how the Cubs manage not to win the World Series again too.

Saturday's lineup: Michigan - Notre Dame at 3:30 and then USC - Ohio State at 8:00. I don't say it often, but "Go Bucks!"

Michael Phelps is still not necessarily the greatest Olympian of all time.

Cupcake Alert!

2008-08-26T23:05:00.003-04:00

Ha! You didn't think that this post would be about football, did you?

Happily, college football starts this week (although ND starts the next Saturday). In particular, this is the time of the year when powerhouse football programs shell out big bucks to "cupcake" schools so that the cupcake can come to the powerhouse's school and get trampled. Every school is obligated to play a number of games, usually 8 or 9, within it's conference, and these matchups are somewhat fairly determined, but the remaining 3 or 4 games are pretty much up to each individual school. The cupcake games usually go as planned, but we did have the Appalachian State - Michigan game last year. Notre Dame, on the other hand, is not part of any conference (for football). Thus they have full control of their schedule, but they still play a decent number of tough opponents. I'm still irked by the guy at the Michigan - Ohio State game two years ago that observed my ND attire and made some comment about the pansies ND was playing that year (like Navy, Army, etc). I compared ND's schedule to OSU's sometime later and decided that ND's was slightly tougher (but it was way too late to make a point).

Also, I'm going to tattle on some of the big schools that play 12 regular season games but have either 7 or 8 (!) games at home. Also, most of these teams play at least one cupcake team:

7: Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Texas, West Virginia, Texas Tech, and Kansas

8: LSU, Clemson, Florida State, Missouri, Louisville

As much as I hate USC (and I do), they are using their three non-conference games to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Virginia this year, which is pretty respectable. Still, I hope they go 0-12.

I didn't do the research for this, I got it from an ESPN writer who produces lengthy but somewhat interesting missives on football each week during the season.

Finally: I bought and was actually able to setup a wireless router today, so I got to type this while sitting on the couch. Hike!

Michael Phelps Burnout

2008-08-18T09:32:00.003-04:00

OK, so Michael Phelps won 8 golds in Beijing, and if you want to call him the greatest Olympic swimmer of all-time, I'll probably agree with you. But all the claims about how he's the "greatest Olympian ever," or how his Beijing performance is the "greatest athletic achievement of all time" are starting to drive me crazy, and it's all based on the fact that he won 8 golds, which is more than winning 7 or 6.

Basically, I think he's benefited from two things:

1. Coming from a country that has a lot of good swimmers, so he could win gold in 3 relays

2. The fact that the Olympics recognizes four different ways to swim!

If each race was just about swimming as fast as possible and not based on what stroke was used, there wouldn't be nearly as many races. Take away everything but the freestyle, and Michael Phelps would have only won three (3!) gold medals, since there'd be no medley races or relays, and no butterfly events. Even if you allow him the butterfly races, he'd only have 5. For comparison's sake, if you throw out the medley races, Mark Spitz wins six golds in 1972, so I guess he'd still be "the greatest swimmer ever."

Of everything I've seen of the Olympics so far, Usain Bolt's 100m final was the most amazing thing I've seen. If you haven't seen or heard, he basically quit running with 15 meters left, stopped pumping his arms, slapped his chest, and still set a world record, with the biggest margin of victory in the 100m in 40 years. Even if he wins the 200m and Jamaica wins the 4 x 100m relay, he'd only have 3 golds, and won't be nearly as celebrated as Michael Phelps, but there's only one kind of "stroke" when it comes to track and field - plain old running. Maybe they should four running formats too: forward, backward, gallop, and side-shuffle. Then there would be many more track races and medley races and maybe someone would have a chance to win 8 golds. Carl Lewis won 9 golds over his career, but I guess he can't be the greatest Olympian ever, based on the way Michael Phelps is being judged. Heck, those beach volleyball players, for example, play 7 matches or so throughout the two weeks, for one measly medal.

An ESPN online writer actually started calling Michael Phelps' Beijing performance the "greatest athletic achievement of all time" and gave readers the opportunity to rank it with 14 other performances, like Tiger Woods winning four consecutive major championships, Wayne Gretzky's amazing hockey season in the early 80's, a really good game Bill Walton had in the NCAA championship, and some woman swimming the English channel a long time ago. That feels like you're comparing something more than apples and oranges - more like apples and shrimp.

Anyway, Michael Phelps is a great swimmer. I'm sure I'll soon see him on the cover of Sports Illustrated, for the third time in about six weeks. But spare the ridiculous superlatives. They bother me.

26 Days Until School

2008-08-07T09:04:00.002-04:00

Well, I utterly missed July, so here's my attempt to post something before Jake wakes up.

I went to MathFest 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin last week, which is a really cool city. I had never been there, but for four days the weather was great, my hotel was across from the state capital, and downtown was (and is) located between two huge lakes: Mendota and Monona. You immediately notice all the bikers when you hit the city, as well. If I was forced at gunpoint to pick a place to live other than Michigan, Madison might not be a bad choice. I'm sure the snow is no less than what we see here, however.

Lisa heads to San Antonio today, so I'll be a single parent until Monday morning. As a result, our current Netflix movies are Mike-oriented. On deck: Shaun of the Dead, and Grindhouse: Planet Terror. I'm sure the girls would love to watch them with me (of COURSE, I'm kidding).

The Tigers are fading from the playoff race, so I'll probably be reduced to hoping that the Yankees miss the playoffs, something interesting happens with the Cubs, and the playoffs in general are exciting. If all of that disappoints me, four days after school starts, Notre Dame football starts, so there are things to look forward to.

While I'll miss the summer, the thought of doing math and teaching does sound appealing, too. I could pass on the commuting, but with some well-planned carpooling, that should be OK too.

It's 9:15am, and Jake's still sleeping!

Beer Dorkery

2008-06-25T15:59:00.002-04:00

First things first: the Belmost Stakes was a disappointing race. We had South Bend friends over and we were eating Chinese at the time and I think they were confused when I forgot what time is was and bolted for the TV, afraid that I missed it. Actually, the most exciting thing that I've seen come out of the race was the recently released zoomed in photo of one of Big Brown's shoes dangling off his hoof near the beginning of the race. Anyway...

While childcaring to my wit's end, I've managed to do some enjoyable things. Recently I finished updating my list of all the beer bottles I own, handily done on the pool table in the basement with my laptop. The official count is now 237 bottles, which comes after some paring down that was done before and after we moved. That number only includes empty bottles, and there are some full ones waiting to join the collection after their liquid has been enjoyed. Also, that doesn't count all the Kentucky Breakfast Stout bottles, as I've kept all of those - I have 5 empty and 7 full KBSers. Topping the list, I have 28 bottles from Bell's, 23 from Sam Adams, 17 from Founders, and 13 each from Leinenkugel and New Holland. I especially enjoy collecting seasonal bottles - I have lots of Octoberfest beers, for example - and I put those out on the ledge above the basement stairs at appropriate times (dork city, yes, I know). Currently I have my summer beers out, along with 9 from Victory. The Founders bottles and most of my bombers (big 22oz bottles) are on permanent display. In that vein, if you drink any summer, winter, pumpkin, Christmas, or Octoberfest beers, I'll happily take the empty bottle off your hands. Back to childcaring...

Yay for the Red Wings

2008-06-06T12:31:00.002-04:00

Once the Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Finals, I decided to watch all the games. I had to go to Mom & Dad's for the first two, since they were on the goofy cable channel Versus. The first two games were blowouts by the Wings, Pittsburgh took the third game, and Detroit won the fourth (barely), so the Stanley Cup (the coolest trophy in all of sports) was on hand for game 5 in Detroit. Jake, who refused to go to sleep, watched some of it with me, pleasantly cuddled in my lap, and was clearly the inspiration for the beginning of the Wings' comeback from down 2-0. After Jake was asleep they took a 3-2 lead, and the excitement was building as they held Pittsburgh off. Eventually the Penguins pulled their goalie, and a couple nice bounces could have given Detroit an easier empty-net goal, but instead the Penguins scored with 34 seconds left to tie it. It was incredibly frustrating to watch. The game finally ended in TRIPLE overtime, after they had played almost 50 extra minutes (a non-overtime game is 60), with the Penguins winning, despite many near-goals by Detroit. Overtime hockey is very tense, because the first team to score wins, and if Detroit had scored it would have been a Stanley-Cup-winning-goal. I was drained, and instead of going to bed at 11, it was nearly 1am, so I was whipped the next day. At least they start the games reasonably on time, just after 8pm, unlike the NBA - they aren't starting their finals games for another hour. Fortunately, the Wings won game 6, but in Pittsburgh, so they did get to skate around with the 35-pound trophy. It would have been more fun to watch if they had won in Detroit, but a game 7 would have been even more nerve-wracking.

And I'm sort of excited for the Belmont Stakes this Saturday - thanks, Kentucky relatives!

Coolest Field Trip Ever

2008-05-30T12:43:00.003-04:00

This morning Abby's preschool went on a field trip, as they frequently do. It was also the official celebration of Abby's birthday, since school won't be in session during her birthday in July. Anyway, I joined them and drove a few kids to the airport to visit the hangar where the Alticor (formerly Amway) Corporation keeps their planes. The kids might enjoy the pumpkin patch or the Critter Barn more, but for me it was the greatest ever. We got to see the gigantic hangar complex, which can hold around 10 jets (and a helicopter) and then toured the interior of some super-fancy jets, a gazillion times nicer than anything I've ever flown in. The kids got to sit in the pilot's seat and test out the leather seats in back. These are the jets that the Alticor bigwigs and their families (Devos's and Van Andel's, I presume) use to fly all over the world. Very, very, very cool.

Schooooooools...OUT...FOR...SUMMER!

2008-05-13T13:24:00.002-04:00

Ack! A month went by. Well, another year ended at Ferris, and I was too far down on the rotation list to get any summer teaching assignments. That's a good chunk of change that we won't get, but with the depressing gas prices I don't really mind NOT driving up to Big Rapids. So, I'll just be in GR for the most part, trying not to spend too much money, mowing the lawn, teaching Annika to ride a bike, and doing a few mathematical things that I've been hoping to do.

At the end of April I attended the math meeting that the Michigan section of the Mathematical Association of America holds each year. This year I contributed a 20-minute talk on dividing squares and rectangles with into smaller squares, and the highlight was showing off the quilt Mom made using one particular pattern that divides a square into 21 smaller squares, no two of which are the same size. The quilt was a big hit. We had talked about showing it at the Tulip Time quilt show in Holland, but I needed it for my talk during the show. Maybe next year. Amazingly, I don't have a picture of the quilt.

Until next month...(hopefully not)...

A Roaring Start

2008-04-03T17:04:00.002-04:00

The official prediction by Sports Illustrated is that the Tigers will beat the Cubs in the World Series next fall. The Tigers have indeed put together an incredible lineup, something I never could have imagined a few years ago, and they have some pretty decent pitching. ESPN amassed separate predictions from around 20 of its writers, and nearly all of them have the Tigers in the playoffs, and either the Yankees or the Red Sox out (that hasn't happened in awhile). So, the season started Monday, and the Tigers went and got swept by the Royals this week in a three-game series in Detroit. The Kansas City Royals! Yuck.

Adventures in Minor Car Repair

2008-03-30T21:03:00.005-04:00

I am not gifted at car repair. I mostly prefer cars to do their job and then sit in the garage (and only speak when spoken to). As a result, Lisa's dad is usually involved when things go wrong with our car. On Friday my car started to make a loud rattle underneath, and this weekend we stopped by Lisa's folks to take a peek at it. I actually found the rattling part after a quick inspection, and after Lisa's dad found a hose clamp in the basement, we managed to tighten up a loose piece of the exhaust and essentially fix the problem. In between those steps is where I "helped."

To get under the car Lisa's dad got out his ramps and we went to drive the front wheels up them. In the past Lisa's dad has usually done this, but I decided to just do it, since I was at the wheel already. So, as I've tried in the past, I used both the brakes and the engine simultaneously, crept up the ramp, reached the top, and then proceeded to shoot completely over the ramps. When you do this, the car drops over the far edge of the ramps, lands loudly upon them, and with the wheels still spinning some, keeps going. For a moment I had visions of plowing into all sorts of things at the back of the garage. During this time, the ramps, which are being crushed by the car into the cement of the garage floor, were dragged along with a deafening grating sound.

Fortunately, the car stopped relatively quickly, we easily jacked it up to release the ramps, and I successfully made it up on a second try. The ramps do have some dents on top where the frame of my car landed on them, but they appear to still be entirely functional (phew!). So, anyway, yay for incompetency in car repair.

KBS Day

2008-03-20T15:11:00.005-04:00

Of course, KBS stands for Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Friday night, as planned, Nick, Dad, Kevin and I went to Founders, but only after we fed ourselves at Yesterdog (Kevin's first time). It was busy, but we got a table, each had a couple delicious beers, and munched on some peanuts. Later that night, after rejoining the ladies, some of us watched Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (on VHS!) to get ready for the fourth Indy movie in May.

On Saturday, Nick and I headed back, after the 11am start time for the sale of this year's batch of KBS, the beer currently rated as the 6th best beer in the world by BeerAdvocate.com (Nick and I are both members). It wasn't very busy and we both ordered some KBS and sat down to enjoy it. We each got the official KBS goblet to take home, too. In the end, we bought a case (24 bottles) of it to split:

I have yet to try one of my bottles, but the sampling we had at Founders was as glorious as ever. At $4.75 a bottle, it's expensive (I'll let you do the math for a case of it), but that's equivalent to a $20 bottle of wine, which some people don't blink an eye at. Either way, it'll be a while before I spend big money on beer again.

The Boss

2008-03-13T21:48:00.002-04:00

My latest favorite song lyric:

"Mister as I bent and kissed her, she was picked up by a twister;
My Oklahoma woman blowed away."

-Bruce Springsteen, singing "My Oklahoma Home" on We Shall Overcome

Coming Attractions...

2008-03-10T12:20:00.003-04:00

It'd been a month, but here's some coming excitement:

Founders on Friday night with Kevin (and maybe Nick)
Founders on Saturday with Nick to buy some Kentucky Breakfast Stout on the day that it's released, and then time spent at some other cool GR beer locale
Determination of the March Madness brackets for college basketball on Sunday, and then all the ensuing hullabaloo

Now that's a weekend to look forward to...

Football Eulogy

2008-02-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

Farewell, oh 2007 football season - you were very good to us. You had upsets, suspense, scandal, and you even made history, both good and bad. Thank you for giving us a splendid Super Bowl. It went perfectly with my India Pale Ale and homemade hot wings (thank you, Kevin). I was disappointed not to see a perfect season by the Patriots, but in the end it seemed fitting and just, since they might be big old cheaters. Even my typical disdain for the success of New York sports teams waned a little. Maybe it's because Eli Manning seems like a nice guy (although he and Peyton will probably be in ever commercial during football '08). So, thanks again, football, for being there for me on the weekends. Maybe I'll even see you in HD next year (I can dream). But Notre Dame football 2007 - I'm glad you're gone.

Now, we will just try to survive the next 6 weeks, until March Madness sets in and baseball finally starts.

See you next year, oh noble, glorious football.

LEGOs on eBay

2008-01-23T12:23:00.000-05:00

Years ago I bought a large Star Wars LEGO set on clearance - at half price, it was $45. I never even opened it, and I checked eBay to see what they were selling for. Lisa and her sister had been selling a bunch of stamping sets recently, so we added my set to their stuff. As of today (Wednesday around noon), the current bid is $177.50, and there's still more than 4 days to go! If you want, you can see the auction here. Too bad I didn't buy more of them. I wonder what I could get for some of my other stuff...

Music on the Desert Island

2008-01-17T21:22:00.001-05:00

The other day I was looking through my ancient webpage and decided that my music page needed to be redone. I was also hungering for some new music. I satisfied the latter urge my checking out the nearby library and getting some CDs. For the former, I went ahead and redid my top ten albums list while watching the NFL playoff games after the kids were in bed. If you're interested, you can go check out my music page, but otherwise here's Mike's Desert Island Albums, in alphabetical order:

The White Album - The Beatles
Kerosene Hat - Cracker
Welcome Interstate Managers - Fountains of Wayne
Fumbling Toward Ecstasy - Sarah McLachlan
Bang Masters - Van Morrison
Monster - R.E.M.
Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens
Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
Rattle and Hum - U2
The Blue Album - Weezer

I kind of like the fact that the list is bookended by albums that don't have a name and are simply known by their colors. Also, some of the albums on the list are high-quality musical masterpieces (especially Sufjan), while a few of them (like Cracker) are almost guilty pleasures, but simply full of rock 'n roll that I always enjoy. There were lots of honorable mentions, too, and they're all listed on the webpage.

Every Kiss Begins With [barrrffff]

2007-12-16T20:33:00.000-05:00

Christmas brings out many types of commercials, but the jewelry commercials are by far the most nauseating to me. What bothers me the most is that they all feature some cutesy way for the man to present his woman with the gift:

Immediately following the breaking of the wishbone, as he "grants her wish"
Holding up the bag from the store to stop a snowball fight
Hanging it on a tree at the tree-selling lot
Putting it around her neck while she sleeps
As part of a yucky version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas"

I'm sure I'm missing some...

Every commercial seems to indicate that he has fulfilled her ultimate wish, which makes her look shallow and superficial, like a raccoon that's in love with sparkly objects. I bet he's just trying to placate her with money instead of time or affection so he can go play golf each weekend. I mean, really, ladies, if your significant other spent $1000 on jewelry for Christmas, would you like it or think he's a doofus for spending that much money on a bunch of rocks?

...it can only be JAR-ed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's In The Game!

2007-12-11T20:43:00.000-05:00

Annika occasionally asks me to play computer games with her, mostly because she wants to play things like Zoo Tycoon, or some of my EA Sports games. A few weeks ago we played some Madden '04 together. I have it set on "Rookie" level, so I usually win big, and I let her play defense most of the time. She's played enough now to actually run the offense, specifically seeking out the running plays, which are given a different color when selecting them. She hasn't quite put together an entire touchdown drive but she's moved the ball.

Another game we play is Tiger Woods '04. She enjoys playing, but I think the most fun part for her is customizing her player. The hair, clothing, shoe, accessory, and tattoo options are so extensive that number of possible outfits is basically unlimited. Usually she hits the links with a braided blonde ponytail and an array of pink clothing. Today she switched from short sleeves and a skirt to a jacket and pants, since it's winter. Then, while playing, she actually holed out a chip from the rough. I missed it at first but confirmed it on replay.

"Dad, it went in the hole!"

The Seymour Militia

2007-11-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

I brought Abby to dance class armed with my camera the other day. I quietly entered unlocked rooms and saw many familiar places. My camera died before I could really capture everything I saw, but I still brought home some good old janitorial memories. This will only be meaningful to a handful of people, but here goes...

Miss Holkeboer's old classroom, decked out for dance. I hid a message in drop ceiling there once that commented on Chris Buchholz working while sucking on a lollipop. It might still be there.

Down the "first grade wing" - the old paint job, above the more recent drop ceiling, with appropriate peeling paint, water leakage, and damaged plaster.

The south building boiler room deep sink. I fumbled around in the dark for the light switch hiding under the shelf. I didn't find it until later, but I KNEW it was there. It's still absurdly warm in there too.

Geoff's south building "office," completely empty. This is where we used sledgehammers on the grinder in the dark. I wasn't brave enough to enter "the hole" through the wooden door at the back, as I was fearful of alerting the people working for the church in their office right near the main door to this building. I did see the lower level of the hole, but the pictures were crummy.

The boiler room control panel down the stairs. Loud, damp, and warm down there.

On the wall: the boiler room bunny, which I wouldn't have actively remembered. It felt familiar when I saw it, though.

Finally, the electrical chair storage room, with an expansive coat of white paint, hiding all the ancient messages left by former janitors and those that came long before we did. However...

Peeking out from beneath one of the shelves: STAN IS GOOD!

There are plenty more dance classes to come, so I'll try for more. Remember,

"If I'm Ann-Speyered, I'll work asbestos I can."

Bailando con las Estrellas

2007-10-31T20:57:00.000-04:00

The past few years Lisa and I have only made a point of watching two shows - The Office and Scrubs. We've added another to the list now: Dancing with the Stars. We actually find it entertaining and interesting. I think adding celebrities to the mix makes it initially more interesting, but then the hosts and the judges make it way, way better than any other competition. The judges (two of whom have English accents, which always helps) are witty and intelligent, making the morons from American Idol look mean and stupid.

We first got into it a little bit during the last season, and we've been on it from day one for this season. In addition, the girls really like it too, and it starts at 8pm so they can watch a little bit of it some weeks. Each week the couple eliminated (a celebrity and a pro) is determined by the judges' scores and popular voting, so it's not just a popularity contest. That said, we were witness to injustice last night, when one of the better contestants (Sabrina, a Cheetah girl (?)) was eliminated, while the likes of Jane Seymour and Marie Osmond, who are clearly a step below everyone else, didn't even make the "bottom two." Unfortunately, this means that we'll have to endure at least two more weeks of one of 'em. I'm sure they have an army of fans keeping them afloat (well, they must, since they get the lowest scores). Oh, the drama!

College Allegiances

2007-09-20T21:28:00.000-04:00

In response to the comments on my last post:

Notre Dame is my school. Even though this is going to be a pathetic year, I can't abandon them. From my perspective, there's no way they're going to beat Michigan State this weekend, but from the MSU point of view, I'd be worried that everything will fall apart this weekend, when they should win, but won't, simply because things are rarely this good for the Spartans (3-0 so far, while U of M is 1-2).

Even though I work at Ferris, I don't identify with their athletic teams or with their student experience enough to care much about their football team.

I have no experience with the University of Kentucky, although since Dan and Rebecca became Wildcats, I notice them now when looking through scores. It was cool for them to take down Louisville last weekend.

And then there's Ohio State - I've been to three OSU football games, courtesy of brother Nick (Ph.D., class of 2007) and two of them were the Michigan game. That means that I've also experienced this: "We don't give a **** about the whole state of Michigan, cuz we're from O-HI-O!" sung with such sincerity by many scarlet-and-gray clad people, where **** represents a variety of four-letter words. It's pure, vile hatred that many Buckeye fans have, not just for U of M, but for THE WHOLE STATE OF MICHIGAN, like the entire place is one big toilet (but not Nick, right? Stay strong, brother!). That means you, fellow Michigander - they think you're scum! I don't necessarily dislike Jim Tressel (the head coach) or the individual players for OSU, but I hope that Michigan obliterates OSU this November, just to ruin the senior year for a bunch of moronic, Bud Light-swilling 22-year-old Buckeye fans.

On the other hand, for every Sunday Night Football game, they always run through the starting lineups (recorded earlier), and each player says their name and their college. The former Buckeyes always say THE Ohio State University. Sheesh.

Finally - Pumpkin Ales can be very good, but I'm never as thrilled as I hope to be. Fall is great, and measuring time by when the Oktoberfests hit the store is fun, but I often prefer quality India pale ales and stouts over the fall seasonals. And Nick, you do tend to have a strong affinity for pumpkin anything. Am I right?

We buy a house tomorrow!

My Team Stinks

2007-09-17T12:03:00.000-04:00

There are 120 Division 1-A football teams, and there are four stats that characterize a team's offense: rushing yards, passing yards, total yards, and points scored. Looking at these quantities per game played, Notre Dame's ranks are 120th, 114th, 120th, and 120th. For the season, ND has amassed (-14) rushing yards: overall, they've gone backwards 14 yards when running the ball! Navy has fewer passing yards than ND, but they lead the nation in rushing to compensate. ND has scored 13 total points, and 7 of those were scored by their defense on an interception return! Can they beat anyone this year? (I was going to say Duke, but then I checked and they actually beat Northwestern last week for their first win since 2005). Blah.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are still alive, and if the Yankees could just disintegrate, they'd make the playoffs. It's still possible, but I'm not too confident.

Solution to the Problem of the Week mentioned in the last post: the North Pole is the obvious location, but then there's an infinite number of places to start near the South Pole. Lines of longitude stretch from the North Pole to the South Pole, so they're all the same length. Lines of latitude (like the equator, the Tropic of Cancer, and the Arctic Circle) have different lengths, though - they get shorter as you get closer to the poles. So, if you start one mile north of the line of latitude that is 1 mile around (you're near the South Pole) , you will go a mile south and then do a complete circle when you go one mile east. Going one mile north again brings you back to where you started. You could also start a mile north of the line of latitude that is 1/2 mile or 1/3 mile or 1/4 mile around and still end up where you started.

Finally: I've decided that I like the idea of Pumpkin Ales and Oktoberfest beers more than I actually like the beers. They're fine, and I like collecting their bottles, but there are plenty of other beers that I like better.

The end!

Problems of the Week

2007-09-07T15:22:00.000-04:00

At Ferris I coordinate the math department's Problem of the Week series. I get some student solutions (although some of the response is based on the fact that I give my own students little bits of extra credit for solving them). Most of the problems are understandable to the non-math public (well, at least the questions are, but not necessarily the solutions). The latest one is this (the 64th problem since I started a few years ago):

64. You are somewhere on the Earth, which we'll assume is a perfect sphere. You travel 1 mile south, 1 mile east, and 1 mile north, and arrive exactly where you started. Where on Earth might you be? Surprisingly, there are lots of answers -- describe at least two of them.

If you want more, see the link at right.

Anyway - other professors notice the problems as well. One of my colleagues suggested I just post a picture of President Bush. Another professor, from a different department (and whose name I don't know), offered me this today:

How come a mirror reverses images left to right, but not up and down?

At first it may seem like an easy question, but I don't think a satisfying explanation is all that simple. I'm pretty sure I understand it, but it's more subtle than it felt at first. Or, I'm just dumb. Hmmm...

Great Days of Sports

2007-09-02T21:13:00.000-04:00

One thing that's great about sports: you never know, at the beginning of any game, whether you're about to see a mundane, run-of-the-mill contest, or a few hours that will go down in history. Who goes to a baseball game expecting a no-hitter? No one, but it sure must be cool to have "been there" yesterday to see a kid with the last name Buchholz throw one for the Red Sox. Last January I almost went to bed, but decided to stay up for the entirety of the Boise State - Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl spectacular. I'm glad I did. Certainly, no one expected much out of the Appalachian State - Michigan game Saturday afternoon. If you somehow haven't heard, here:

Each year high-powered college football teams start their season by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to probable cream-puffs to come to their stadium and get killed (see Oklahoma 79, North Texas 10). Appalachian State was to be Michigan's victim Saturday, but instead U-M paid $400,000 to be the loser in one of the greatest upsets of all time, 34-32, when App State blocked a potential game-winning field goal on the last play, only seconds after they made a field goal to take the lead. We were busy watching Notre Dame get embarrassed by Georgia Tech, so we didn't see it, but then You Tube came roaring to the cause:

First, highlights from the last few minutes of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_LnLiv99Ys

Reaction from an Appalachian State family at the game. The kid's face is priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDFxzAp1Lf8

Following the game, some students and fans from App State back in Boone, N.C. went to the empty football stadium, climbed a fence, tore down the goal posts, carried them to the chancellor's house, and laid them in his driveway. College football is awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-1MOFOYolw&NR=1

Rivalries what they are, many fans from other schools took joy in watching U-M go down. Here's the scene among a group of Ohio State and Penn State fans during the last few significant plays of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOBjdka9uEw

Next week my Irish, who looked pathetic against Georgia Tech, get to go to Ann Arbor to play a certainly ticked off Michigan team. I'm not expecting much.

Here's one more that has nothing to do with the U-M game. It's the greatest football game prank I've ever heard of. The visiting crowd was told that they would spell out "Go Darby" all together. They didn't. Go look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtuLwWJGnn4

Mas Beisbol

2007-08-24T13:36:00.000-04:00

While the Tigers continue their freefall out of the playoffs (leaving me to root for the Mariners to keep the Yankees out) other things happen:

Wednesday night the Rangers pummeled, mauled, destroyed, clobbered, etc the Orioles, 30-3. The Orioles were actually winning 3-0 after three innings, and then gave up 30 unanswered runs (16 of them in the 8th and 9th innings). It's really the worst loss of all time - teams scored more runs in the late 1800s, but baseball then is not like baseball now. In honor of the game, ESPN presented the Top 100 Beatdowns of All Time, complete with links to YouTube clips and game summaries. I especially liked watching Mike Tyson take 90 seconds to defeat Michael Spinks. First Tyson knocks Spinks down, and right after the announcer mentions that Spinks had never been knocked down in his entire career, Tyson just wallops him and finishes the fight. Oh, and you've never seen Secretariat win the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths? That's there too. It goes beyond single games and also encompasses movies, books, entire competitions and individual moments. Yay for sports!

Baseball

2007-08-11T13:18:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's career home run record a few days ago. It's mostly disappointing to me, with all the controversy surrounding it (steroids and such). It's very different from 1998, when Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single season record. That was exciting and I was paying close attention to it, and I even have home runs 60, 61 and 62 on videotape yet. Looking back, everyone was pretty blind to the steroid thing then and we were enjoying the comeback of baseball after the 1994 strike. This year, I made no effort to watch Barry Bonds, although I'll admit that part of the reason why is that we don't have ESPN.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are quickly going down the toilet, although they're still in it. If the season ended today, they'd be out of the playoffs. Meanwhile, the yucky, disgusting Yankees have surged back and would just barely miss the playoffs today. They're only 5 games back of Boston and percentage points behind Seattle for the wildcard spot. All my dreams of a Yankeeless postseason may be dashed. Sigh. No team is all that great this year, actually - based on today's records, no team will win 100 games.

We'll see what happens. And there's only three weeks until Notre Dame plays Georgia Tech!

The End of HP

2007-07-28T14:46:00.000-04:00

Hewlett Packard? No, Harry Potter. We've finished the Deathly Hallows, and sadly that's the end of it all (apparently, at least). I've got all sorts of thought and opinions to express, but I'm not even going to start here, except for this one (highlight to read):

Albus Severus Potter is a really awful name.

We'll probably never see a book series with that kind of popularity again. Now that the Star Wars movies and the Harry Potter books are over with, I can't think of any upcoming movie or book release that I would attend at midnight, especially while there are young children to take care of.

Anyway, now that all seven books are out, here how I rank them, as my favorites:

1. Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Half-Blood Prince
3. Sorceror's Stone
4. Deathly Hallows
5. Order of the Phoenix
6. Goblet of Fire
7. Chamber of Secrets

And . . . . . . discuss.

Pixar and Potter

2007-07-20T22:21:00.000-04:00

I'm a sucker for Top Ten or Top 40 lists. I'm not addicted, but I'm definitely interested. I've watched parts of stupid things like "Top 40 Heavy Metal Moments" on VH1. Not because I sought out to do so, but because I was flipping channels and found it.

Anyhow, after seeing Ratatouille on the 4th of July, I've now seen all eight Pixar films. What follows is how I rank them, from most to least favorite, based on only one viewing of Ratatouille. Note that I'm not saying which movie is best - there's a big difference a "Top Ten Movies of All Time" list and a "My Favorite Movies List." Here goes:

The Incredibles
Cars
Toy Story 2
Finding Nemo
Ratatouille
Toy Story
Monsters, Inc.
A Bug's Life

Discuss.

And have you ever considered the sheer number of celebrities that have contributed their voices to these movies? I almost started making a list and then realized how long it would be.

Finally: in less than 90 minutes it will be July 21st, and I will be heading to the store that is a center of all-things literary: Meijer. I'll return some pop cans, get some groceries, and pick up a copy of Harry Potter 7, and try to resist reading any before I go to bed. I'll probably fail.

Firefox is Fabulous

2007-07-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

Lately, our computer was running sloooowww........aaaaas......mooolassssssessss. We weren't very diligent about virus protection and such things, so I fixed that and cleared out some spyware that was haunting our machine. That didn't make much difference. I contemplated getting more memory. Then, I also installed the Mozilla Firefox web browser, as I've been encouraged to do from various sources in the past. Today was the first day where we've run Firefox exclusively (no Internet Explorer at all), and it's like the problem had never even existed. I'm so happy with it, and it's been a little boost to the mundanity (?) of life, especially since I'm "teaching" an online course right now and it's been driving me bonkers to count the seconds of my life wasting away as I watch the computer sit in a stupor after every mouse click, even to load up stupid things like pages of text. Anyhow, I hope this improved performance continues.

Of course, I remember, my freshman year at Calvin, in 1998, on the dorm computers in the basement, following a discombobulated series of links to grainy images of various things from Star Wars. It took 5 minutes to go through the whole thing and load the pictures, but we thought it was awesome.

And the One shall become Two

2007-07-08T21:33:00.000-04:00

I'll apologize now: I'm Sorry.

Since no anti-blog proliferation treaty has been signed yet, I'm taking this opportunity to create another blog. The one you're reading now, which is mikedekker.blogspot.com, will be my own personal blog, where I can rant and rave about sports, movies, beer, math, or whatever.

Meanwhile, all the happenings of Mike, Lisa, Annika, Abby and Jake will be moving to a different blog, which is located here:

handfulofdekkers.blogspot.com

So, if you just want to hear about what's going on in our family, you can stick with that one. The two blogs will always be linked to each other, so they'll be easy to find, but you'll have to adjust bookmarks and such a little bit, if that's something you do. Sorry.

Anyhow, you can venture over there now if you like, as the first family update will be appearing shortly. Cheers!

The Roundup

2007-06-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

Another "livin' in the country" event. In the picture below, you can barely see our neighbor's calf, Ground Round. He doesn't belong in the marshy area in front of our house, but he managed to escape his electrified enclosure. Lisa spotted him on our street and called our neighbor Molly, and eventually her father-in-law and I joined her in chasing him around. We actually got a leash and collar on him twice but it came off both times. Lisa, carrying Jake, took pictures. Finally, we managed to surround him and guide him through an opening in the fence and back to his proper home. It was my first cattle roundup. Quite the excitement.

Last weekend we had Lizzy's wedding, in which Annika and Abby were the flower girls. It was one of the nicer and most fun weddings we've been too. The girls loved all of it, especially the dancing at the reception. While they both started to melt down around 9:30pm, they both got a second wind. Eventually, around 10:30, Annika was still out dancing to the deafening sounds of Bon Jovi and Outkast, while Abby had completely crashed on Grandma Dekker's lap and slept through the same music.

Various things...

2007-06-10T22:16:00.001-04:00

Lisa, Jake and I attended the 150th anniversary celebration of the CRC at Van Andel Arena (with overflow at Devos Place) today. I'm guessing that it might be the largest CRC gathering ever. We had communion with 12,000 people. The service featured little foil-sealed cups of grape juice, a full orchestra conducted by John Varineau, a huge choir, video cameras on cranes, and a sleeping 11-week old, who can claim he attended the 150th service when he goes to the 200th anniversary service someday. Speaking of, Lisa did well in getting this picture...

Other things:

Annika has a fluffy stuffed dog that she named Mimi. Mimi is also a WebKinz, which is an online version of the stuffed animal that you can play with, buy things for, etc. The online version of Mimi has three status bars, for happiness, health, and hunger. The other day Annika was playing online while Abby was watching, and we called down to the basement from upstairs with a question for the girls. Abby ran to the bottom of the stairs, and with all the earnestness and concern in the world blurted out "Mimi is sick on the 'puter!!!" It was hilarious to hear, and sure enough, Mimi's health was down to 76 out of 100, and she had to visit Dr. Quack to get healed.

Annika and Abby were hitting balls in the yard the other day, when I decided to try and get them taking turns hitting and running the bases. Annika hit first, got a double, and then Abby hit off the tee, so Annika ran from second after Abby's hit, and so on, like a real game. Abby doesn't quite get it all yet, and the next time she was up she ran straight from home to second base, and this was very upsetting to Annika. While I tried to calm Annika down before her turn, Abby continued to run, from second to third, across the diamond to first, and then back to third, which didn't help Annika at all. We gave up on Abby. However, on Annika's next hit, a blast to center field, Annika went around second at full steam and plowed straight into Abby, who was running full tilt in her randomly chosen direction. Basically, Abby got creamed, but both girls went down and were upset. It was pretty much slow-motion to me right before the collision. Abby was crying, and then Annika started too, and when I asked her if she was hurt anywhere, Annika moaned "No, I'm just sad for Abby." We went inside and had some green Kool-Aid.

Finally, and I almost dare not point it out, but the Yankees are 9.5 games out of 1st place, and 5.5 games behind the Tigers for the wildcard spot in the AL. Could we have the playoffs without the Yankees? Dare the baseball gods tease me with the possibility? Of course, we have 100 games to play and the Yankees have currently won six straight and made up some ground on the Red Sox, but let's keep our fingers crossed, OK?

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

A very nice Memorial Day - the men (Dad, Greg, me) painted the railing on our front porch, which badly needed it. Meanwhile, the women (Mom, Katelyn, Lisa) bathed, fed, and practiced wedding hair on the children. Later, Annika asked nicely and was allowed to use the digital camera. That led to the following collage of Abby, which I discovered on the computer later that night. Enjoy!

Baptism

2007-05-23T23:20:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday Jake was baptized. Many friends and family joined us at church, and the baptism was highlighted by Annika singing "Jacob, Jacob, God Claims You" in front of the whole congregation. She did a great job, we all beamed with pride, and she caused more than a few tears to flow in the congregation. Greg kindly took a digital video of Annika singing and I hoped to put it on YouTube for all of you that are far away to see, but the video is sideways and huge in file size, and I don't have any video-editing software. Lisa's grandpa also took very nice analog video of the entire baptism, and we're glad to have that.

Afterwards, we had 33 people at our house for a party. I spent most of my time on the deck, where I grilled more meat that I ever have before - a dozen hot dogs, 16 hamburgers, and 18 brats. Dessert was a great cake from the DeBoer bakery, which we finally finished three days later. Just for fun, here's a couple pictures...

First, Greg displays the quality ale available at the gathering - Bell's Big Porch Ale, an amber ale brewed for the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island

Second, Mike grills the flesh of many animals:

Meanwhile, Lisa has strep throat (yahoo!). Tee ball is done. Our thermometer read 92 degrees today, although the humidity isn't too bad. Jake is two months old. In a couple weeks, school will be done and it will really be summer. Our neighbors, whose house had a fire last fall (I think it was), had a fire in the dumpster that's in their driveway from the repairs.

An anecdote: Abby comes out of her room, a pacifier in each hand. Mike encounters her in the hallway. She hides them behind her back. "What do you have there?" says Mike. "Little People," Abby outrightly lies. She'll be 3 in July!

Country Living

2007-05-15T21:14:00.000-04:00

Life continues, out in the country:

Our old strawberry patch is coming along, even though we haven't done a thing for it this year. We're not planting a garden since we're hoping to move. The riding mower is frequently in use (although I had to jump start it with my car when I first got it out this year - I didn't even know that could be done). Between mows, the dandelions are blooming like mad, much to the delight of the girls (by the way, there's nothing cuter than a 2-year-old Abby in a ponytail running barefoot through the yard). I could make the huge list of birds that are around, but I'll spare you (the hummingbirds showed up, too (sorry about all the parenthetical comments (here's another!))).

Our super-gardening neighbors have added livestock to their life, too, with three goats and a baby cow. The goats are named Pam, Nicole and Rebecca, while the cow's name is Ground Round (guess what he's for!). However, with the livestock also comes a fully armed and operational electrified fence. Fortunately there's a buffer consisting of their garden and the road between our property and the fence, so the girls won't accidentally run into it - apparently it's a very unpleasant experience. Meanwhile, the dirty starlings built a nest under the cap of our propane tank, which I eventually had to clean out. They had laid eggs, and I broke one getting them out, but then the girls and neighbor Leo made off with them. Annika eventually dropped two of them and Abby simply squeezed hers too hard, but Leo still had his 30 minutes later. A different day we found and chased a two-foot snake along the edge of the house, and later Abby and I found one on the road while taking a walk with Jake.

Phew! We'll miss all this if and when we move, but we won't miss being so far away from everything.

In non-country related news, we've been watching a lot more TV lately, since we're always trying to pass the time dealing with Jake before bed. It makes me pine for better cable, in order to get more sports, since you can watch that even with blaring static on, if that's what's necessary to calm Jake down. Besides that, I've seen more American Idol and Dancing with the Stars than ever before. Personally, I think DwtS is more entertaining, and Annika loves it. That said, here's a preview of coming attractions...
Annika's dance recital is June 2.

Six weeks down

2007-05-07T22:20:00.000-04:00

Quickly, stuff that has happened:

Annika and I started tee-ball. My semester ended. I went to a math conference, heard some good speakers, and hob-nobbed. Meanwhile, Lisa bravely took the girls and Jake to Chicago for Lizzy's shower. Today Lisa went back to work and I had my first day alone with Abby and Jake. Jake is sleeping some longer chunks, but not anything we'd call "through the night" yet. When taking a calm, broad look at everything, we're mostly doing well. Catch me at the right moment, though, and I may eat you.

Pictures:

First oriole of the year!
Annika took the following two pictures. The first one highlights Jake's awesome complexion.

Truly, Abby does not always look like a ragamuffin. She actually cleans up quite nicely. Thanks for looking! Baptism is May 20, and you're all welcome to join us!

I Love YouTube

2007-04-20T16:53:00.000-04:00

Before I get to that, a few quick things:

The surgeon has pronounced me healed, for the most part. All my stitches were subcutaneous (inside!) and I just had some strips of tape that initially held my incision together on the outside, but I peeled those off and everything looks good. I can bound up the stairs two at a time now, and pick up Abby. She was pleased.

Jake had his first "all-crib" night with no time spent sleeping in the cradle in our room. It went OK, although he had a long stretch of restlessness where he couldn't sleep on his own. Otherwise, he's coming along, and he's already 4 weeks old.

I only have two weeks of the semester left, but then Lisa has to go back to school until the end of her year, which is in June.

I'll get more pics of everyone up soon.

Now, YouTube: initially I always thought of Nick and Beth when Youtube came up, mostly because Beth's boss, Paul Robinett, is a "Youtube personality," to say the least. Also, while in Columbus with N & B over Dad's birthday last summer, we all made a video-card for him that prominently featured Annika and Abby and posted it on YouTube for him to see from home.

But now most of my YouTube activity comes through links provided by column writers on ESPN.com, who can easily post a link to just about any event that's ever happened, because someone posted the video on YouTube. I mean, why describe the final play in the career of the cockiest high-school basketball prospect ever - a slam dunk off an alleyoop from himself followed by throwing the ball into the stands and getting ejected - when you can link to it instead? It's nice to know that any sports play of signficance that you missed from the night before (or 20 years ago will be there on YouTube in no time - even the recent incident at a Red Sox game featuring a foul ball, two fans, an oufielder, lots of spilled beer and a flying piece of pizza (hi-larious). Oh, and go see Bo Jackson score a 99-yard Tecmobowl touchdown on a play that takes up an entire quarter. The fun . . . is endless!

And here it ends.

I Profess My Love For...

2007-04-14T23:52:00.000-04:00

As of late, like I've said previously, life has been sheer chaos - I'm recovering from my surgery, our house is in perpetual disarray, we're all adjusting to life with a son and brother (Abby is taking steps backwards in the world of potty-training), Jake had his worst night last night, resulting in little sleep for Lisa and me, and then today was Annika's birthday, which involved Chuck E. Cheese (a blackhole of chaos).

Parenthetically: Annika pulled one of the biggest stunts ever, today, on her birthday. We were busy dealing with multiple things upstairs, including trying to figure out something to do for Annika's birthday. At one point she was in the basement trying to feed cat food directly to Tate (the cat). Later, Lisa's grandma called to wish Annika a happy birthday, and when I went to the basement to give her the phone, I found every square inch of the basement, including couches and ledges, coated in cat food. Annika had taken it upon herself to evenly distribute cat food all over the place, to the point that you couldn't walk around without stepping on it. Needless to say, we were totally floored, and underwent a long cleanup process. End parenthesis.

Halting the complain-o-rama, here's where I profess my love, for . . . radio static. I'm generally pretty worthless when dealing with babies after bedtime, because working for 30 minutes to get the kid to sleep alone for 8 minutes reeeeeallllllly aggravates me when I should be sleeping. But, in a small moment of determination, I decided to take Jake at 10pm and let Lisa go to sleep for some period of time, in hopes that I could at least last until 11pm. Jake was OK for about 5 minutes, and then started the "I'm gonna be crabby for undistinguishable reasons" routine, so I fell back to an old gimmick that I used with Abby a lot: turn the stereo to 87.5 FM and crank up the static. The result was almost instantaneous relaxation on Jake's part, followed by some snoozy snoozin', while I watched TV with the volume up just enough to hear over the static. More than two hours later, he's in bed, and I haven't heard him stir yet. Most importantly, I made it through some time late in the day with my son without resenting him or myself, and that feels like a lottery win for me right now. Now it's 12:18am and I'm going to bed. PEACE OUT!

Appendectomy

2007-04-09T19:23:00.000-04:00

Clearly it wasn't enough to be raising a 2-week-old, selling a house and dealing with snow in April, so my appendix went on the fritz. I woke up at 2am Saturday morning with abdominal pain, and after no culminating flu-like event occurred and the pain just got worse, we headed for the ER around noon. Once some pain medication kicked in the weekend got relatively easy for me, at least, as I pretty much laid around, slept, went through surgery and had my appendix removed, remembered nothing of it, watched TV, slept, ate, and eventually went home. Life for everyone else around me got more complicated, though.

I'm planning on heading back to work on Wednesday, and I'll only have missed one day of teaching. Annika's spring break is over then, too, so we'll have those logistics to deal with as well. I've been appreciating my Vicodin today, but hopefully things will start to heal up so I can return to normal soon and life can start to even out.

A few weeks ago we had a nice routine in our life, but since Jake was born it's been serious chaos. Here's looking forward to some normalcy (in 2008?).

Jacob David

2007-03-25T21:12:00.000-04:00

Our apologies if this is the first you hear of this: Jacob David Dekker was born at 8:39am on Friday the 23rd. He came in at 6 lbs, 9 0z (Annika and Abby were 6-10 and 6-4, respectively) and 19 inches long. We reached the hospital around 5:30am that morning and he popped out in no time (yay!). Everyone's doing really well, and we wanted to get some pictures out for those that aren't near Grand Rapids. We look forward to talking to you if we haven't yet, and Jacob looks forward to meeting all of you too!

That's a yawn!

Change of Season

2007-03-13T13:34:00.000-04:00

It's transition time, from...

Winter to spring (hallelujah): in the past few days the snow is melting away, unveiling daffodils, daylilies, and other perennials that are poking through the turf. I spent some time today cleaning up dead plants from last year, while new stuff comes up from underneath. The birds are back too: I have recently seen my first robin, red-wing blackbird, grackle, super-blue bluebird, and killdeer of the year. Also, the neighbors started their maple-sap boiling operation, so the neighborhood smells like roasted marshmallows.

Eastern Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Time: it's amazing how that little change can make the whole day feel different. The girls have gone to bed late each night so far.

Pre-Spring Break to Post-Spring Break (at least for me): now I'm thinking about the back half of the semester, which will involve more exams, a math competition, conferences, a baby, planning for the summer, selling the house (maybe?), tee-ball, etc.

The worst sports time of the year to the second best (behind October's baseball playoffs and football): no single sporting event appeals simultaneously to both my mathematical and sports interests like the NCAA Tournament does - 64 teams, each with a seed, in a single-elimination tournament, and all the history of 15-seeds beating 2-seeds, no 16-seed ever beating a 1-seed. I love filling out brackets for the ESPN competition (which I'll never win), and this year I put together a couple probabilistic methods using random number generators for determing possible outcomes of the tournament, which I'll use to fill out 4 of my 5 ESPN entries (for the 5th one I'll use my gut). I can explain it at length if you're interested.

Kindergarten Visit

2007-03-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of a haircut picture. Lisa says it's not as dramatic as you might think, and it's been growing back a bit already.

Mostly, we've been dealing with snow, schools, and illness here. We got positively piled upon by snow the last week or so, and that led to possibly the worst drive up to Ferris that I've ever had, getting the minivan stuck in our driveway, and thankfulness for a paved driveway and a snowblower. Just today Annika got over a wicked ear infection that perforated her eardrum and woke her up into weeping and screaming the past few nights. It was quite unpleasant, but today she's substantially better. Meanwhile, I'm on spring break.

Annika's kindergarten class is having a "Mystery Reader" each day this month, and the first one on Monday was me! As the mystery reader, even Annika didn't know I was coming. I read "Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon," got to participate in the "Tooty Ta" song and then watched them play the "Thumbs-up" game, where nearly everyone in the class puts their head down and a thumb up, while a select few go around and push a thumb down, and then those with thumbs down try to guess who did theirs. Abby got to hang out in kindergarten too, and more-or-less participated in the game - see below, she's in the crowd. She loved it, but also showed that she's only two and not ready for kindergarten yet.

That's the deal here. Less than four weeks until the due date.

Haircuts and Mike's Important Sports Opinions

2007-02-21T14:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got what is possibly the shortest haircut I've had in my life. The barber (in Big Rapids) cut it, but after I wanted it shorter and he thinned it out it was remarkable. I didn't really realize it until I got home. It's not quite a "Greg haircut" but it's short enough that I can't even part it. Plus, my cowlick is pretty obvious in front. Fortunately, Lisa said she liked it.

Other than that, we're mired in the worst sports time of the year - post Superbowl, pre March Madness. The NBA, the NHL, and college basketball are all in full swing, but in the NBA and NHL way too many teams make the playoffs, so I don't have any desire to watch anything until the postseason, and college basketball is all about the gigantic tournament - playing a slew of games just to see who gets into the tournament isn't terribly interesting either. Calvin-Hope basketball is always worth paying attention to, I suppose. Spring training is starting up, too, but the regular baseball season is what's more interesting. I didn't watch the Daytona 500, but I do wish that I'd seen the end. Anyway, here's looking forward to "Selection Sunday" and the chaos of a 65-team single elimination basketball tournament.

Cold Weather Update

2007-02-06T07:38:00.000-05:00

Consider this a P.S. from my last entry:

Even though Annika has finally recovered, there's been no school Monday and Tuesday due to the cold. The past two days, around 7am, my thermometer (with the remote sensor on the north side of our house) has read -20 and -22. I don't know if the sensor is affected by wind, so there's part of me that doubts those temps a little bit, but I do know that I've never seen a temp that low on the thermometer before.

With all the illness and school and church cancellations, the girls haven't so much as been outside the house since last Wednesday. I'm supposed to take them and two cats to the vet this morning, though.

The Blizzard of 2007

2007-02-04T14:40:00.000-05:00

Well, that's the heading I saw on the news this morning. We got lotsa snow the past few days, and the thermometer read -5 when we got up this morning. There were reports of at least half a dozen pileups on the highway involving 20 cars or more. Overall, the timing was pretty decent for us - a Saturday and Sunday, so work schedules weren't ruined and I didn't have to decide whether or not to take "the drive" up to Ferris. It does come on the heels of a week-long illness for Annika, who has finally gone back to normal today. She should be ready for school tomorrow. Lisa was home Thursday and I stayed home of Friday, so the girls haven't even gone outside since Wednesday. Neither has our minivan. We couldn't go sledding, but I am hoping for a good sledding opportunity before winter's over, since Annika is starting to enjoy it more this year.

Abby said "Holy cow" the other day, out of nowhere, and having indoctrinated her with Finding Nemo, has been saying "DoyaDoYaDOYA?" too. It's funny. Oh, and she likes to sort her food - see below. She does it with Froot Loops too.

Eames

2007-01-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

I coveted last Saturday night. Lisa and I went to the Christian Learning Center auction at Calvin Christian Middle School, an event that I used to open up the school for back when it was at Seymour and I was a janitor there. We got a couple of kid-sized wooden lounge chairs, and I snagged a $25 Lowe's card for $20, but, to my mild disappointment, we didn't take home the most prized item of the night - a Herman Miller Eames Lounge and Ottoman.

Grandpa Ribbens used to have just such a chair, and I recall quite fondly sitting in it at their house on Lake Michigan. I remember that all the air in the cushion would woosh out when you sat on the ottoman. Then, Saturday night, among all the other items on stage, there sat a sparkling new Eames Chair. I looked it up on the evening's program and first mistook a different chair - item #21 - for the Eames. The supposed retail value of item #21 was $800. I mildly entertained myself with thoughts of bidding on it. However, when #21 came up, they rolled out a nice office chair, not the Eames. Going back to the list, I found the Eames, #73, with a retail value of ... $3995. It would have been incredibly irresponsible of me to bid on it, but Lisa said I could go for it. I set a limit around $700-$800 for myself, but when bidding started, the auctioneer went down to $500 to get the first bid, and in 15 seconds the bid jumped to $1000, so I never had a chance. A few minutes later, a half-nerdy guy and his wife in their 40s quietly stood there looking wealthy, made it suspenseful, and got my prize for $2300. Oh well. Maybe someday (or not).

January's Latest

2007-01-27T13:35:00.000-05:00

Above, see Annika and Abby pouting together since I wasn't going to let them want any of the funny parts from Finding Nemo, like we did the night before.

Pretty soon after school started again in January, we made huge strides in potty-training Abby, with the help of our daycare provider, too. We're pretty much done with diapers, except at night, but even then she wakes up dry about half the time. It's hardly been perfected (three accidents before lunch today), but given that we weren't pushing it much before, she's doing great.

Annika's still doing well in kindergarten; Millbrook and Ferris are fine for Lisa and me, respectively.

No bites on the house this week. It's kind of weird to know this huge change is probably coming up before next fall, but we just don't know when for sure.

Just over two months until baby 3.

Lisa made some spectacular chocolate chip cookies the other day.

Abby finally seems to be healthy, after nearly two months of a cold, multiple doctor's visits and antibiotics, and then an eyelash stuck in her eye this past week that actually resulted in a trip to Urgent Care to get it out. Sheesh.

Mostly, life's just goin' on. And can't think of anything witty to end with.

House For Sale!

2007-01-17T14:13:00.000-05:00

Here we are, bracing for another radical change in our lives - selling our house and moving further into Grand Rapids, to get Lisa and the girls (eventually "kids") significantly closer to school, hopefully before next fall (if not much earlier). I think it's a change that we will definitely benefit from, even though my drive to Ferris could be considerably longer, depending upon where we find a new home.

So, we've been cleaning up, doing projects that make us say "Well, we should have done that two years ago," purging our house of unwanted stuff (which feels good), and mentally prepping for the process of selling and moving.

Looking for a new house is more fun, and although we haven't gone to see anything yet (since our house needs to sell first) , it's been exciting to peruse the internet, especially when one location you're considering is the Greatest Zip Code of All Time, 49507.

If you're interested, here's our house listing online, which just went up yesterday:

http://public.grar.com/public/pubrecn.mac/start?MLS=G583541

The "realtor description" is a little cheesy, but I think the pictures turned out pretty nice. Our first showing is Saturday(!).

Inside Jokes

2007-01-05T08:23:00.000-05:00

Aren't inside jokes great? They're very exclusionary, if that's a word, but ultra-fun nonetheless. Guys are particularly adept at it, especially with lines from movies. Annika and I have a set that are our own, albeit they're mostly lines spoken by Dory in Finding Nemo. At any time, feel free to brighten her day with lines like

"Are you my conscience?"
"Hey there grumpy gills"
"Mr. Bossy"
"Do ya? Do Ya? DO YA?" while getting increasingly closer to her face
"Dude? Duuu-uude? Hey, Dude!" (that's Crush, the sea turtle)

It's most funny when she brings them up out of nowhere at all. Lately, while driving in the car or sitting in the kitchen, Annika will say "Hey Dad - Nationwide is on your side" in a low, chanting voice, which of course comes from the Nationwide Insurance commercials.

In other news, the semester starts next week, Lisa and Annika have started school already, and we're into trimester number three of Operation: Dekker Male.

Mischief Managed

2006-12-09T23:23:00.000-05:00

Abby frequently makes good use of the bathroom stool to reach light switches and items on the counter. In the picture above, she's placed the stool on the couch and used it to step up on the couch cushion, which she's crushing with her weight. Oh, and that's a weird dress-up shirt, a floofy skirt, and a winter hat on her head. It was one of those "What's Abby doing? I can't hear her anymore" moments. At least it's all in the name of getting closer to Baby Jesus.

'Tis Winter

2006-12-05T08:06:00.000-05:00

Just like that, 2 weeks went by. Here's what happened:

Went to Columbus and attended the OSU-Michigan game. Exciting. Hung out with lots of family.

Set up our Christmas tree (yes, a day before Thanksgiving). Fun for the girls (and the cats)

Had parking lot duty at church on Thanksgiving, which was a beautiful day. Met Deacon, Dan and Rebecca's enormous puppy.

Went to South Bend that weekend, strolled Notre Dame's campus, had fun with old friends, watched Notre Dame get pounded by USC (boo), and went to our old church.

GOT SNOWED ON. The semester is getting close to wrapping up, but winter didn't wait for the end of it, unfortunately. Lisa had a snow day last Friday and I cancelled my classes, so we all stayed home. I got out my 6 horsepower snowblower, which roared to life and cleared the driveway, while the girls played in the snow. Abby didn't last too long, but Annika stayed out for two hours sledding down our little hills. I look forward to taking her to a better hill someday.

Painted our bedroom. The snow day actually messed up our plans for this, but it turned out well when Mom and Dad came and helped on Saturday.

It kept snowing through yesterday (Monday) and I need to snowblow again. Only two more days of teaching for me, and then finals week is here. I'm counting down the number of drives I need to make to Big Rapids before I'm done until January.

Brithday News

2006-11-17T09:08:00.000-05:00

Indeed, yesterday was my birthday (or, as us Dekker boys know it, "brithday" (thank you, Chris Buchholz)). It's good to be prime again (31). As birthdays go, it was ridiculously full: wake up; open a couple presents from my wife and girls; put everyone in the van; bring Abby to Diane's; go with Lisa and Annika to Lisa's ultrasound, where the gender of our third child is determined (more on that later); meet Diane at her Mom's house to pick up Abby; rush home; eat lunch; head up to Ferris; attend 2 meetings and finish preparing a calculus exam; proctor said exam to 145 students; create a grading rubric with the other calculus profs; get home right before 10pm; hug Mom, who is watching the girls since Lisa had conferences; eat chocolate angel strata; read a few pages in a book; go to sleep.

For the biggest news of the day: if you don't want to know the gender of our next child, do not read the rest of this post below. We only told a few people yesterday, and if this is the first you're hearing of it, I'm sorry, but I wanted to post this before I go away this weekend (and more on that later). So, here goes (SPOILER ALERT):

Our

next

child

will

be

a

um....

(last chance not to look!)

BOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOYBOY!!!!!!!!!

It was quite obvious on the ultrasound, and I identified the appropriate part before the technician said anything. Annika was hoping for a boy and thus was quite pleased, as was everyone else that we told. And more importantly, HE looks completely healthy and well-nourished, so it was a great day babywise.

And tomorrow morning we leave for one of the biggest college football games ever: Michigan vs. Ohio State, #1 vs. #2 (that's a little bold, but maybe not - it's certainly one of the most-hyped regular season games of all time). I hope the game lives up to the hype. I'm not sure who I want to win, but it would be fun to run on the field if OSU prevails.

Go Bucks/Wolverines! (and go Irish, but they better just pound Army)

Halloween Postgame Show

2006-11-07T15:55:00.000-05:00

Here are the girls, decked out for trick-or-treating. They were "ballerina ladybugs." Abby was unwilling to wear her pair of antenna. They had a good time at Calvin going through the apartments, and then we stopped by all the grandparents to get more candy. It was freezing cold - of course, it was 61 degrees at 10pm on October 30, and then a cold front came through the following day before we put them in tights and tutus. I think I've eaten more of their candy since that night, too.

Below is an old picture of them I found while going though some stuff on the computer today. Believe it or not, it was taken in June, when it was about 85 or 90 degrees out. They found the winter clothing and Annika even went so far as to change out of her shorts and T-shirt into long sleeves and pants. Then they went outside on the swingset. It didn't last too long, as Annika got plenty sweaty in no time.

Halloween's on the docket, baseball's not

2006-10-31T10:29:00.000-05:00

What does a trick-or-treater and the skin of a hot dog have in common?

They're both hollow weiners.

Ha! I made that up myself back in college. I swear I've read it in print since then.

Tonight is a much-anticipated night (at least for Annika). The girls have matching lady-bug costumes. I'll try to put up a picture soon.

Well, the World Series ended sourly last Friday. It was pretty disappointing to watch the Tigers essentially give it away - 5 errors in 5 games by the pitchers. One of my colleagues mentioned that his TV was lucky that he wasn't wearing shoes when the 4th error occurred in game 4. Last year, when the Tigers were finishing up another losing season, I wondered whether I would get all wrapped up in a successful season or not, like I have recently with Notre Dame football and in hoping the Yankees would lose. Heck, the Tigers hadn't played a postseason game since I was in 6th grade. Despite the miserable conclusion to this season, I was glad that it hurt - I was disappointed and mad and somewhat crabby (just ask Lisa) when they just tanked in the last few games. Baseball is my favorite of the major sports, as it has been since 1st grade or so - I like the uniqueness of the ballparks, the history of the game, and the glut of statistics. I've always enjoyed chasing down a pop fly. That said, it bothers me (playing the Tigers or not) that the World Series champion barely won more than half of their regular season games. The Cardinals had the13th best record in baseball, but they made it to the playoffs and won the World Series. I know there are more important things to care about in the world, but...there it is. Play ball!

A Rock 'n Roll Education

2006-10-18T19:41:00.000-04:00

Last night, somewhat bored, I put on some music in the basement, which, as it frequently does, inspired the girls to start dancing. Annika much prefers to dance with someone (me), holding hands and mostly jumping around the room. Abby was content to dance by herself, holding a Polly Pocket doll most of the time. Both girls like to watch their reflections on the dark TV screen. We also played steamroller during some of the songs. Abby wasn't quite so keen on getting steamrolled. Last night's playlist:

Roy Orbison - Oh Pretty Woman
The Beatles - Oh Darling, Hello Goodbye, and All You Need Is Love
The Traveling Wilbury's - Wilbury Twist
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (twice - Annika really liked that one) and Particle Man
Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We Will Rock You (Abby started to get the lyrics to this one) and We Are the Champions
Fountains of Wayne - Mexican Wine (a perennial favorite) and Stacy's Mom

Annika went into ballerina mode during We Are the Champions, but it actually fits pretty well. I dipped her at the end of Istanbul, which she thought was great, so that's why we had to do it again. I do realize that it doesn't sound great that my 5-year-old likes a song called Mexican Wine, but...I don't have any good defense for it, either. It's a fun song.

Speaking of fun songs - the first few lines of the Wilbury Twist go as follows:

"Put your hand on your head (hand on your head)
Put your foot in the air (foot in the air)
Then you hop around the room (hop around the room)
In your underwear (in your underwear)"

Of course, Annika thinks this is hilarious, and every time I've played it I've had to stop her from following the directions word-for-word.

When it was all over, it was time for jammies. They were sweaty.

Miscellaneous October Items

2006-10-08T20:19:00.000-04:00

First off - go Tigers! After assuming all was lost last Sunday, it was joy to see the party that was Comerica Park yesterday after the Tigers offed the Yankees, the most vile of all baseball teams. Last week it seemed like a nightmare for the Tigers to lose their division and end up facing the Yankees. However, I couldn't script anything better for the Tigers to dump the Evil Empire in Detroit and then watch the whole park celebrate. Here's hoping the next series goes this well...

Abby's speech and vocabulary continues to expand. She occasionally declares things to be "awesome," which comes from her sister's influence. The other day, while wearing a long-sleeve onesie and overalls, she also had on a dress-up skirt and two dress-up shirts, and then would throw her arms in the air and declare "Beautiful!"

Tonight Annika offered to pray before supper and promptly thanked God for skunks, tigers, birds, cats, dogs, horses, cows, and most of all, people. No mention of the scrambled eggs we were about to eat.

I missed some of the Tigers game the other day because the house three lots down from us had a fire in the basement, which brought around about nine firetrucks, water trucks, ambulances, and police cruisers, along with firefighters, many of which are volunteer. No one was hurt and the outside of the house shows little damage, but apparently it's not livable. Quite the excitement for Dairy Lane. I rode my bike over and watched for a little bit, and had a conversation with some neighbors that had recently put their dog down. I'm still not used to country-style animal care, which usually involves guns.

That's the latest here! Yeee-haaa!

Harvest Time

2006-09-23T13:43:00.000-04:00

Our first successful foray into gardening is almost to a close - the zucchini, summer squash, green peppers, corn, lettuce, and cucumbers are long done, and we're just picking the last of the tomatoes now. The sunflowers did well, too. About half a dozen of them are taller than me. I'd say the tallest is about 7 feet tall. With the tomatoes we've already canned two batches each of salsa and pizza sauce, and there are more tomatoes waiting in the fridge to turn into some fresh spaghetti sauce. At left Abby helps pick tomatoes the other day, and up above Abby and Annika help make tomato sauce, in their pajamas, while sitting on the counter.

Meanwhile: the Tigers could clinch a playoff spot today, for the first time since 1987. Unfortunately, the Yankees and their $200 million payroll are looking really strong, and I could see them taking another World Series this year.

The Office premiere on Thursday was great. I love having that half hour of glee to look forward to once a week.

Oh, just stuff...

2006-09-17T21:22:00.000-04:00

Life continues...

We're three weeks into school. Everything individually is fine, but altogether it's a pretty crazy life we're leading. Annika is doing well in kindergarten and liking it, Abby is enjoying daycare "Jenna's house!", my classes are going well, and Lisa is doing well as a pregnant special-ed teacher. She had a checkup a couple weeks ago, and all is well. They found a strong heartbeat, in the normal range for heartrate but slower than our girls were. So, is this a boy??? We'll see....!

My poor Irish got smoked by Michigan yesterday. I quit actively watching before halftime, and stopped altogether shortly into the 3rd quarter. I don't hate Michigan, but I did during the game. However, now I'm sort of hoping that U-M and Ohio State are both undefeated going into their matchup in November. I'll be at the game (yay for Nick and his grad student status at OSU!), and to see two undefeateds go head-to-head in their final regular season game would be great.

Tonight, while taking some cough medicine and looking at me, Annika asked "Dad, why do you have hair in your armpits." I explained that that's just how it works, and noted that I'm good at growing hair all over. "That's because you're a boy," said Annika, but then I mentioned that many women shave their legs and armpits just like I shave my cheeks. She just made a squeaky noise and gave me her "Whaaaat???" look. Aah, parenthood. Also, I'll admit that amidst the baby discussions we've had over the past month, on more than one occasion, she's asked "But how does the baby get in Mommy's tummy?", just as a logical extension of preceding questions. We've totally wimped out on answering that one so far.

Fall is coming...

2006-09-07T21:08:00.000-04:00

I know it isn't even officially fall yet, but below is my seasonal beer display.

From left to right, we have Summit Oktoberfest, New Holland Ichabod Ale, Victory Festbier, Samuel Adams Octoberfest, Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale, Leinenkugel's Oktoberfest, Lakefront Pumpkin Lager Beer, and Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale. Yum yum!

We're right in my favorite time of the year, at least sportswise, climatewise, and foliagewise: cooler temps and full foliage on the trees and plants, and then college football and the NFL in addition to the pennant races and ultimately the playoffs in baseball. The food this time of year ain't bad either, although I think winter and summer have better seasonal brews.

Notre Dame vs. Penn State this Saturday! Go Tigers! I hate the Yankees!

The latest...

2006-08-29T12:49:00.000-04:00

A vehicular change was made at our house recently, putting us among the ranks of minivan owners. It mostly took place this past week because our old Mazda 626 had some serious transmission issues so we opted to just change vehicles instead. In the picture above is our new Mazda MPV. So far so good.

Also, the looming faculty strike at Ferris was averted at the last minute, so we started classes yesterday (Monday the 28th). We sweated through a 2 hour meeting waiting for our bargaining team to return, and they finally showed with a tentative agreement. It was interesting to read about your job in the newspaper, although the University's statements about how they were "cooperative and serious" about negotiations over the summer were utter malarkey.

Five weeks until the playoffs start! Will the Tigers be there? And Notre Dame vs Georgia Tech this Saturday!

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

2006-08-20T17:51:00.000-04:00

I just attended my first very serious faculty union meeting, and someone actually said that. I was privileged enough to be part of an overwhelming vote to "authorize the negotiating team to call a strike if necessary." So, we're not on strike (yet), but we may well be as of next Sunday night. It's excruciating, as an individual taught to think logically and use reason, to endure the irrational, political mind-game that is the negotiating process. I'd much rather be thinking about and teaching mathematics than feeling disrespected (even though that's not a verb) by the administration.

Meanwhile, our 8-year-old Mazda 626 is having serious transmission issues, so we get to try and prepare for a new school year this week with one functioning vehicle and jobs that are both 35 minutes from home in opposite directions. It's not the best of my life right now.

It's hard for me to keep everything in perspective sometimes, because ultimately these are temporary problems that will be overcome, but I still hateithatehateit while it's going on. Ugh.

Lexington, Cincinnati, and Columbus

2006-08-13T14:10:00.000-04:00

We're back from vacation number two! All three stops were scrumtrelescent:

Lexington: a great time with Dan and Rebecca, complete with lots of Kentuckyish stuff - a banjo played in church, a visit to a horse park (with equines of all types), country-fried steak, Kentucky bourbon barrel aged ale, and a street named Versailles that is pronounced Ver-sales. Oh, and chocolate angel strata for Dan's birthday.

Cincinnati: an especially good place for Annika and Abby, since we stayed with friends that have two girls the same ages as ours. Highlights: Coney Island (the largest pool I've ever seen and Annika's first trip down a water slide), the Cincinnati Zoo, a nearly shaved long-haired cat, and overall fine company.

Columbus: another good family time, along with North Market (featuring ice cream, salsa, and tabouli), swimming at Lifetime Fitness, playing at the park, drinking scotch ales, and seeing the mighty Ohio State Fair (featuring Annika's first solo roller coaster ride, the world's largest boot, a cow made of butter, a log-rolling dog, and general fair mania). Back at Nick and Beth's, Annika had lots of fun doing sit-down-stay tricks with Maeby.

We owe thanks to all those that we stayed with, and special thanks for putting up with the chaos generated by a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old.

All of a sudden the new school year is looming large. I'm hoping that the faculty at Ferris have a contract in two weeks so we can start the year with classes instead of a strike.

Hawai'i

2006-07-30T16:07:00.000-04:00

We are back from Hawai'i, where we had a great time. It was fabulous just to spend time with each other, but to do so in Hawai'i was even better. We saw volcanic craters, coral reefs, pods of pilot whales, enormous canyons, sea turtles, lava tubes, huge banyan trees, and the spot where Indiana Jones swung on a vine into a river while escaping the Hovitos.

Rainbow falls in Hilo, on the big island.

A volcanic crater within a crater also on the big island. Hot and desolate up there.

We went to a luau on Maui and were treated to this rainbow.

The Na Pali coast, on Kauai.

Of course, pictures do no justice to the scenery there. I ate lots of seafood: lobster, crab, shrimp, grouper, swordfish, mahi mahi, and generic fried fish, and I even managed to try mussels, which were alright. I couldn't bring myself to try the oysters - you can see the different organs too clearly.

Once we got home I slayed (slew?) a vile demon that was consuming my soul - I repaired the PVC pipes laying underground in the drainfield of our septic system that were punctured or snapped when our neighbor kindly plowed our garden plot with a tractor. We weren't aware of what was lying beneath when we took him up on his generous offer, until weeks later there were puddles of sewage in the garden. Yuck. As far as I know, though, everything's fixed and working correctly. And we're moving our garden next year.

We're looking forward to Lexington-Cincinnati-Columbus next week. And once we get back, there are only two weeks until school starts!

Nothing like a weird coincidence

2006-07-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

Anyone familiar with the show Scrubs knows that Dr. Cox nearly always calls J.D. by a girl's name and never uses the same one twice. While watching an episode from our Season 3 DVD the other night, Dr. Cox actually called J.D. "Annika" (although he pronounced it Anne-ica, not On-ica, in an Annika Sorenstam reference). But, amazingly enough, the next name he used, a few minutes later, was Abby. Weird. The name he used after Abby was Judy, but I don't really see us using that one if and when we have a third daughter.

I just checked, while writing this: the aforementioned episode actually aired before Abby was born, so maybe it was subliminal message to us to use Abby for daughter number 2.

Hawaii in 12 days!

A good summer nothing day

2006-06-30T17:34:00.000-04:00

My summer teaching is done, finishing the day before gas hit $3.09, so I'm glad I'm not driving up to Big Rapids anymore. It was a fun six weeks. I enjoyed teaching calculus again.

Here's the kind of summer day I had, and it made me happy: slept until 8:30 and then helped Lisa get the girls ready for a play date at Long Lake near our house. While they were gone I picked up and vacuumed the basement, cleaned up the "cat room" (the basement bathroom where they have a litter box and where they eat, which sounds like a gross combo, but it's the biggest bathroom in the house), all whilst listening to U2 and R.E.M., loudly. When that was done I had leftovers for lunch, prepared the yard for mowing, randomly picked weeds out of the landscaping as I went around the house, mowed a little (with my new ear-protectors), and then helped get the girls into bed for naps after they came home. Then I put Miracle-Gro on some flowers, folded some laundry, took a short nap with Tate, read the newspaper, finished mowing after the girls woke-up, and then took a shower.

In the end, nothing special happened today, but I just got to be home and do stuff. No driving, no real obligations, and soon we're going to head to the Duimstra's for pizza. Yaa-HOOO-oo-OO!

Dancing, and weird garden problems

2006-06-07T22:19:00.000-04:00

Annika's dance recital was last Saturday. The picture pretty much says it all.

In bizarre garden news:

First, the normal stuff: We are making a good effort, I think. Things are growing well, despite the fact that we've replaced some of the tomato plants twice after the cutworms ate them. We resorted to chemicals. In addition, we've put up strings to keep us and the girls from walking on the plants, we're watering well and Lisa's weeding frequently. Fortunately, we're pretty far from the woods, so we don't have many worries about critters getting in the garden. One of our neighbors has seen deer tracks in her garden.

Then the bizarre stuff: I came home today, and two neighbor girls met me in the garage, almost anxious to talk to me (which is not normal). They informed me that today we had cows - cows! - in our garden. COWS!! Sure enough, there were deep hoofprints all over the garden, and near the swingset. Somehow, they didn't do too much damage, although they apparently tried to eat some strawberries. There's a pasture with cows about a quarter mile from our house. They got out. I wish I could've seen it.

How do you prepare for cows in your garden?

A and A

2006-06-03T15:02:00.000-04:00

Amazingly enough, the girls continue to grow. We had them in matching dresses last Sunday, but it was impossible to get them in a decent picture together, which is why there are two pictures here. Annika finished a great year of preschool and gets to be a kindergardener next year at Millbrook. Her dance recital is tonight, and maybe I'll get a picture up from that soon. It's nice to have some warm weather so the girls can play outside.
Speaking of the outdoors, here are the recent highlights: today Annika found a snapping turtle in the yard, about a foot or more long. There's a killdeer nest in our neighbor's garden that we keep tabs on. I saw a pileated woodpecker across the street for sure (it's bigger than a crow). Our garden is doing pretty well, although we already replaced the tomato plants once, and the second set aren't doing so well either (cutworms). Our sunflowers are sprouting like mad, as is the lettuce, whose seeds we got from Rebecca (thanks!). I planted almost 150 annuals last weekend, and put some zinnias around the house today. It's all good out there.

Deee-Troit Baaaaase-Ballllllll!!!!

2006-05-24T12:41:00.000-04:00

1984 was a big year for me. I turned 9 that year, not long after my lil' brother Greg was born, but more importantly (sorry Greg), not long after the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. That's a real impressionable age, and that victory still stands as one of the most significant non-religious and non-family-related events of my life. I checked the box scores in the paper everyday, and Kirk Gibson was my favorite player.

Since then, the Tigers have only made the playoffs once, in 1987, and haven't had a winning record since 1993. BUT NOW, in 2006, after a quarter of the season has gone, the Tigers have the best record in baseball, at 31-14. Are they for real? We'll see! If the Tigers made the playoffs and the Yankees didn't, I couldn't be happier.

I'll be wearing my Tigers hat a bit more proudly this summer. If you see me wearing it, though, notice how grimy and gross it is - that's a result of wearing it a lot before this spring, even when Detroit was stinking up the ballpark. Go Tigers!

I'm a dork, but it's OK

2006-05-13T21:22:00.000-04:00

Having reached the age of 30, I find myself enjoying things that sound sort of old and farty, like birdwatching and gardening (I'd like to call it landscaping, since that sounds more manly, but I mostly like the planting and nurturing part of it - what a sensitive nerd). It's like all my interests are maturing - I still enjoy a good rock 'n roll song, but from a more thoughtful and academic perspective. I never much cared for some music that had a history of popularity, from Guns n' Roses and Nirvana to Elton John and Billy Joel, but now I pretty well appreciate their greatness.

On the "birding" front: we have multiple bird feeders on our deck, each serving a particular purpose, and it has made our backyard a busy place. Here's the birds we've seen just in the last month or so:

Goldfinch
House Finch
White-Breasted Nuthatch
Hairy Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Cardinal
Mourning Dove
Baltimore Oriole
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Grackle
European Starling (dirty, pesty invasive species)
Chickadee
Tree Swallow
Canada Goose
Sandhill Crane (not at the feeders)
Robin
Cowbird
Chipping Sparrow
House Sparrow
Rose-Breasted Grosbeak
Red-Winged Blackbird (or as Annika used to say, the Bling-Bling Blackbird)
Killdeer
White-Crowned Sparrow
Tufted Titmouse
Eastern Bluebird

There's probably a Wood Duck that lives across the street from us in a marshy area, and in our general area I've seen Blue Jays, Wild Turkeys, Great Blue Herons, Turkey Vultures, a small raptor that I think is a Northern Harrier, and Pheasants, along with common Mallard Ducks, Crows, and Seagulls (by the landfill). I thought I saw a Pileated Woodpecker across the street too, and my neighbor said he saw a Bald Eagle sitting in a tree in the same marshy area. The Dark-Eyed Juncos and the Tree Sparrows are only around during the winter.

So, not only do I enjoy it, but I document some of it like a junior ornithologist. Nerds 4evah!

Movie Reviews

2006-05-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Because you value my opinion (right?):

Lisa and I watched the Passion of the Christ last night. We borrowed it from our neighbors about a year ago, so it was time. Overall, very well done, but brutal to watch. Some strange stuff, though (spoilers ho!): Was Mary Magdalene the nearly-stoned prostitute? Satan's, um, baby? What? Did demon kids really chase Judas? In the end, these give me Harry Potter syndrome: after seeing a movie based on a book, I feel the need to read the book to see what "really" happened (and in the case of HP, to read the whole series again).

Other movies, in brief, from the last few months:

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory - good weird fun. I do like Johnny Depp, even more so knowing that he can do Willy Wonka and Cap'n Jack Sparrow.

Emma - nice romantic comedy. Nothing super special, but well done.

John Q. - Again, nothing special, but it does make you think a little bit about our screwed-up health care system.

Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 - surprisingly, two very different movies, but both spectacular in their own ways. I think I prefer Volume 1. They just ooze with Quentin Tarantino style.

Ocean's 12 - alright already. Fine, but getting a little ridiculous with that many characters. I can't believe they're making Ocean's 13.

War of the Worlds - pretty good. As a father of daughters, I could feel myself getting anxious whenever Tom Cruise got separated from Dakota Fanning. The minivan-jacking scene is a good example, as Tom argues with the crowd while someone else gets in the driver's seat - my inner monologue was nothing but "Getyourdaughtergetyourdaughtergetyourdaughter."

That's all I can think of. Yay for May!

Birthday 5

2006-04-16T21:38:00.000-04:00

As of last Friday, we are now the proud parents of a 5-year-old (and given that we'll hit our 10th anniversary this summer, we've now been married longer with kids than without). On Annika's birthday we went on a preschool field trip to the Critter Barn, where the kids got to pet and hold all sorts of animals. In the afternoon we spent some time on the playground at Millbrook, where the birthday girl grew a static afro on the slide (see below). It was a beautiful day, so we had some ice cream cones before heading home and opening presents, and then had McDonald's at the park for supper. Overall, she's had a wonderful birthday weekend, and it won't be over until next weekend when she has her "Fancy Nancy" birthday party with girls from school and church.

We had a wonderful Easter today. Annika danced in church and did great (she was the youngest one up there!). Grandma and Grandpa D and Greg and Katelyn came to see her. Abby had a typical pretty 21-month-old day, although it did feature more pastel M & M's than normal (and she thanks Grandma D for them).

My Expensive Beer

2006-04-03T21:47:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I went to one of the mot wonderful places in West Michigan - Siciliano's Market, which has the best selection of good beer, home-brewing supplies, cigars, pipe tobacco, tea, etc. I was there with brother Greg and together we bought a case of beer. One beer I didn't see there was Founder's Breakfast Stout, which is an inky blank, thick brew that features the flavors of oatmeal, coffee, and chocolate, among other things. Also not present was Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which is very similar to the regular version but aged in old Kentucky bourbon barrels for even more flavor. The local beer scene is currently abuzz about this concoction. However, I forgot to mention the 56 bottles that I returned when paying for our beer, so I didn't get my deposit money and subsequently went back to get it. While there I happened to mention the KBS to one of the employees, and she said they had it hiding in back to be sold only when customers request it, or else it would be gone in a flash. After deciding not to get a bottle, I changed my mind, and bought one, setting a new personal record for most expensive bottle of beer I've ever purchased: $4.49 (for one bottle!). That's not much for the hardcore beer fan, but it is for me. It better be good.

The Aerobie Throw

2006-03-14T13:31:00.000-05:00

On Saturday Mom, Dad, Greg and Katelyn came up to our house for supper. It was sunny, 60+ degrees, and windy that day, and Annika was out earlier throwing my two Aerobies around (those rings made of plastic that fly really far). Later, while the ladies were shopping, the rest of us were outside again. Dad was pushing the girls on the swings while Greg and I threw the big pink Aerobie around. At one point it went off course and landed by the swingset, and Dad casually tossed it back to Greg. The wind caught it and it eventually stopped moving in our neighbors' neighbors' yard. Greg tracked it down and then gave it a moderate toss. It caught the wind just right, flew straight and true, and I nearly caught it, but it went really far. As a quantitative kind of guy, I really wondered how far it had gone. So...I went to globexplorer.com and found the overhead satellite shot of our neighborhood. Knowing the dimensions of our lot, I established a scale for the photo and then measured the length of Greg's throw. The result: approximately 400 feet. That's a long way. The world record, on the other hand, is 406 meters.

All the news that's fit to blog.

2006-03-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

Here is some stuff that has happened:

On New Year's Eve we ordered a kitchen table and chairs from Bears in the Woods, an Amish-made furniture store that is very near our house (unlike everything else in the world). It finally arrived and we love it. It's real wood, which is both cool and intimidating, since you don't want to ruin it. We also ordered three matching barstools and a corner hutch, but those aren't done yet, and we don't know when they'll be done.

Yesterday I received official notice from the College of Arts and Sciences at Ferris State that I will receive the promotion I applied for before Christmas. Therefore, this fall I will be an Associate Professor of Mathematics, rather than an Assistant Prof of Math. My astute brother Nicholas pointed out long ago that if I got promoted everyone could call me "Ass Prof", but I would like to point out that being an Assistant Professor lends itself to the same moniker, so everyone could have (or maybe has) been calling me that for three years already.

The feline update: Tate is getting declawed tomorrow, Layla has recovered from her cold, and all the treatments for Marta's heart condition are either prohibitively expensive or stupidly impossible (a pill 3 times a day? ha!). She'll just have to live with it.

Annika's mealtime prayer goes this way: God is great, God is good, thank you for our food and bless Rainbow too, amen. Rainbow is a Betta (sp?) fish that we've had for months and that has been ignored for just as long. We came home today to find his tank knocked over and the water drained (thank you, kitties). We were gone for 11 hours, so who knows how long this fish was sucking air. And just when we thought it was all over, he flopped around a bit. After quickly filling his tank, all seems well, so he can live his neglected life longer.

Name this movie: "It's all illusory - it's ill, and it's for losers."

Heeeeeeeeerrrrrre's....Winter!

2006-02-21T11:23:00.000-05:00

We were thoroughly abused by cold weather as of late. Last Thursday the snow/rain/sleet/hail/ice started to fall, and it coated everything around us with a nice layer of ice, which tore apart trees and knocked out power all over. We were only without electricity for about 24 hours (apparently we're on the same part of the power grid as the township offices, which helps), but it got mighty cold at night. I left the house Friday morning and it was 55 degrees in the house. As of Monday, some people were still without power. When the sun came out, it actually looked pretty cool outside, with every twig of every bush and tree looking like it was covered in glass. It's finally warming up some now.

Over the weekend the girls stayed at Lisa's parents, so we had a lovely good time: we had dinner at the Outback, saw the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, slept in, watched Wedding Crashers at home before noon, had dinner at Panera, went to a Griffins game, had drinks/appetizers/dessert at Friday's, slept in (Lisa until 10:40), and then went and picked up the girls. We could use a weekend like this once a month.

In cat news: Tate is healthy and very much a kitten (he insisted on sleeping next to me under the covers the other night when the power was out), Layla has a horrible cold and is on three medications, and apparently Marta has a heart murmur that is getting checked out via ultrasound today. Yikes.

Abby and Annika

2006-02-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I can't resist any suggestion that I post pictures of my girls (thanks Rebecca), so here's a couple of recent ones. Annika is cuddling with Tate, one of the new cats. Abby's hair pretty much always looks like that. Not long ago we measured the two of them. Annika is 3' 7" (a tall hobbit) while Abby was 2'7".

Da Superbowl

2006-02-06T09:13:00.000-05:00

Superbowl thoughts: the game itself was somewhat disappointing. I was only marginally rooting for the Seahawks, but some borderline penalty calls against Seattle essentially kept the game from being interesting. Oh well. The most fun was having a picnic on the floor with Annika and Abby toward the beginning of the game, and later on just sitting with Annika and watching halftime. She was asking questions about everything all night, mostly about why some commercials were funny (how do explain why the MacGyver ad is humorous?), but it was unending during halftime - "Do they like being in the tongue?" "Why is there smoke?" "Why do they have those lights?" but my favorite comment was just a statement: "He is an old man, but he can still sing!" Indeed, my insightful daughter.

And we're off, with a four-note theme...

2006-02-01T09:24:00.000-05:00

That's a quote from Professor Peter Schickele (aka P.D.Q. Bach), as he "concertcasts" Beethoven's 5th.

I don't know if this thing is going to go anywhere, but I've decided to follow the crowd and put some of my life up for all the world to see. Here goes...

I've adopted "blidablat" as an internet identity, out of the need for something that didn't end with an underscore and 3 digits. A blidablat is a couch-dwelling creature that occasionally emerged during the childhood I shared with my three younger brothers. It was contained by the three cushions of the couch propped vertically against the front, along with the back and arms of the couch. The blidiblat was basically defined by its appetite, as it devoured anything that was tossed into its enclosure. Inevitably, all the brothers involved in offering stuffed animal sacrifices to the blidablat were devoured as well.

Quickly, here's other stuff that has happened to me and my family in 2006:

Got sick. So did the rest of the family. For a long time. Everyone's on the way up now, though.

We adopted two cats from the Humane Society (it's always an adopt-one-get-one-free deal there). Layla is just over a year old, is small, and has a vicious cold right now. We have heard her sneeze upwards of 25 times in a row. She came with her name. Tate is about 4 months old, and was originally named Rexford. It took us about four days to name him, and went through many other potential names, including Pippin, Max, Mookie, J.D., Sky, and some offered by Annika: Oo-ah, Sheeree, Pep, and Workjob. We're all happy with Tate, and it's especially funny to hear Abby running around the house going "Taaaaaaate!". Marta, the existing cat, who is 8 years old, is . . . tolerating them.

Well, I hope someone reads this. With a link on our broswer to the blogs of other family members, we've enjoyed how quick and easy it is to check out what they're doing. It's amazing how tough it is to take the initiative and send out an email or call people just to talk about stuff. Obviously, this is ultra-impersonal, but it helps.