A Monumental Report

Recently, I came home from work and Wendy was at the laptop surfing the web.

"I just finished reading an article about the 20 least-visited national monuments in the U.S. Guess how many we've been to!" she said.

It was a leading question, to be sure, so I knew the answer was greater than zero.

"Um, two?"

"You're right!" she replied. "Now guess which ones!"

Hm, a much tougher question. I thought about it for a bit and made a few wrong guesses. Then said: "George Washington Carver National Monument?"

"That's one!"

We wrote briefly about our stops at the GWC National Monument a few years ago. I'm surprised it made it in the top 20 least-visited monuments, but according to the article it comes in at #13, with 39,000 visitors last year.

So, one down, one to go. I tried a few more ideas, but with no luck. "Ok, I don't know. What's the other one?"

"The Capulin Volcano in New Mexico," Wendy said.

Ah, Mount Capulin. I would never have come up with that. It's a cinder-cone volcano in northeastern New Mexico.

Back in our Colorado days we took a continuing-ed Astronomy class at Colorado State University. From the class we learned about Star Hill Inn, an astronomy retreat in the mountains of New Mexico. You rent a cabin in the woods and get access to over a dozen telescopes of all different types to use for stargazing.

We went a few times and really enjoyed it. It was during one of those stays we visited the Capulin Volcano which was nearby. The thing I remember most is thinking we picked the right day to go; it was cloudy and cool, while the day before and day after were sunny and very hot. Had it been sunny and clear, though, we might have seen portions of four states from the highest point (New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado).

I am sad to report while writing this post I discovered that Star Hill Inn is now closed. Bummer. It was a very cool place.

Finally:

"Now guess what the least-visited monument is and how many visitors it had last year."

"Well, it has to be in Alaska. 50 visitors?"

"Aniakchak, Alaska. 14 visitors!"

More Turtle Videos!

Turtles have a long and storied tradition on our blog: from sunbathing on logs to the annual migration across our yard. This year, we've decided to super-size that tradition! I now present to you, courtesy of the Springfield Zoo, a Galápagos Tortoise:

For the past few years we've been meaning to visit the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL. We've heard a number of good reviews of it, so over Easter Weekend we drove down for a few days.

Because rain was forecast for the latter part of the weekend, we decided to do the outdoors attractions first. Thus, our first stop was the Springfield Zoo. It was fairly small as one might expect, and a few exhibits were closed until later in the spring, but it was still a decent outing. Our encounter with Mr. Galápagos was alone worth the price of admission.

Afterwards, we visited the Dana-Thomas House which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We went on an hour-long tour of the house, but pictures were not allowed inside, so you'll have to make do with these exterior shots. The interior, by the way, was very elaborate with lots of winding passageways.

Finally, at the end of our first day we visited Lincoln's Tomb. This was much more moving than either of us expected it to be.

Day 2 was devoted exclusively to Lincoln. We spent the entire morning exploring the Lincoln Museum, and yes, it is quite good. There's a lot of information presented very effectively. Again, no pictures were allowed of the exhibits, so you'll have to take our word on it.

One of the highlights was seeing one of Mr. Lincoln's top-hats on display (there are only 3 left in the world, the very helpful volunteer told us), complete with thumbprints on the brim where he would tip his hat. Lincoln wore the hats partly because he liked to carry papers inside of them.

Finally, from a gift-shop book I learned that Lincoln had quite a temper as a young politician, published vicious letters anonymously in the paper attacking his opponents, was found out by one of those opponents, and was challenged to a duel. Both men met with swords at the alotted time before a peace deal was struck at the last minute. (The entire affair is rather funny; you can read a full account here.)

For the last stop on our Lincoln Tour, we spent a while touring the neighborhood and house Lincoln lived in for 17 years.

Lincoln did quite well as a lawyer in Springfield.

This house was remodeled twice during his stay.

Lincoln's sofa. It was actually long enough for him to recline in.

His work desk in the bedroom.

We left Springfield the next morning, but took a longer route home so we could meet Danny and two of his friends in Champaign, IL. We had a delicious Easter brunch at Carmon's restaurant (their crepes are quite good), and enjoyed catching up on the latest news.

Kitto Katsu!

A few weeks ago I strode confidently into the living room and announced:

"I have an announcement!"

Wendy, perhaps mildly bemused, looked up from the laptop and cupped her hand around her ear.

"I am ordering Nestle Kit Kats from Amazon!" I stated, proudly and boldly. She cracked up, we exchanged a high five, and off I went to complete my purchase.

Rewinding several days, I was telling Wendy everything I had just learned about Kit Kats. I'd read a BBC article comparing Kit Kats and bananas as snacks, and it became apparent that Kit Kats in the rest of the world are vastly different than Kit Kats in the U.S. So I turned to the Kit Kat wikipedia page to fill in the details. Here are the things I learned:

• Kit Kats were created in England by a company called Rowntree, supposedly after a factory worker put a suggestion in the suggestion box for a snack a "man could have in his lunch box for work".
• Kit Kats are made by Nestle everywhere except the U.S., where they're made by Hershey.
• U.S. Kit Kats taste differently than those in the rest of the world (the U.S. version has more sugar and less milk).
• Nestle bought Rowntree in 1988 thus acquiring the Kit Kat brand, but they had to honor a 1969 licensing agreement Rowntree had made with Hershey to sell Kit Kats in the U.S.
• The deal is that if Hershey is ever sold, the U.S. Kit Kat rights revert back to Nestle. Hershey did try to sell itself in 2002, but failed, partly because if someone bought Hershey, they would immediately lose the Kit Kat brand.
• Kit Kats have become very popular in Japan, in part because of the Japanese phrase "Kitto Katsu" which translates to "You will surely win!" They've become a popular good luck charm for parents to give to students during exams.
• Finally, there are a huge variety of Kit Kat flavors, none of which are available in the U.S. Here are some examples: Mint, Orange, Caramel, Capuccino, Apple, Hazelnut, Banana, Strawberry, Green Tea, Passion Fruit, and Lemon Cheesecake.

Fast forward to last weekend, and my package of international Nestle Kit Kats had arrived. I had been eagerly awaiting them all week, and I'd read a number reviews praising how much better Nestle Kit Kats were than the U.S. version. I opened a pack, broke off a piece, and took a bite.

And it was a disappointment. "It's just a Kit Kat," I said to Wendy. I'd read so much about them, about how people "would never eat another U.S. Kit Kat again" after tasting the Nestle version, that my expectations had risen too high. My life did not change after that one bite.

So, I took a few more bites, then ate another piece, finished the package, and finally decided that they are actually pretty good. Probably better than most U.S. candy bars. The chocolate is definitely much better. And now, after having sampled... numerous... packages, I have to say that they are delicious and are indeed superior to the U.S. version.

Finally, if you would like to try these Nestle Kit Kats for yourself, now is the time of year to do so. The Amazon page states "Customer takes responsibility for melted chocolate (happens mostly during summer months)".

P.S. Wendy's reaction after her first bite: "Oh, that's good!"

The Legend of Tiny Gallon!

After one of the craziest Christmases in recent memory (see last post), we enjoyed a remarkably peaceful New Year's Eve by staying home. The highlight of the evening for me was:

1. Finding out OU has a basketball player named Tiny Gallon.
   
2. Watching Tiny Gallon do this:

There was a 50-minute delay while they brought in and set up a new basketball goal. Thus, the last game of the decade turned into the first game of the new decade. OU lost badly, but provided the most interesting highlight by far.

Also, props to the OU football team who, earlier in the day, won its bowl game (finally!) against a tough Stanford team.

To complete the OU-sports theme, I'll leave you with this quote from ESPN Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin, regarding Alabama's recent victory over Texas:

A victory would have made Texas the favorite for team of the decade in the Big 12. A pair of national championships would have been hard to argue with.

But now, Oklahoma's six Big 12 championships and one national title trumps the Longhorns' two Big 12 titles and one national championship in 2005.

Catching Up, Part 3: We Fought Christmas, and Christmas Nearly Won

Warning: this is a very long post! And we have no photos! You can check out Cory's post here for his take on Christmas, as well as some pictures.

We had tickets to fly to Tulsa on Christmas Eve, Thursday, at about noon. The warnings started Sunday, which was the same day I came down with a cold. Major winter storm coming Wednesday and Thursday! Ice! Sleet! Snow! If you value your lives, flee now! (Okay, maybe not that last part, but pretty close.) We kept an eye on the weather, and kept hoping maybe the forecast would change and it would get here by Tuesday, or hold off until Thursday night, but it stayed stubbornly fixed on Wednesday into Thursday. By Tuesday, they were saying we'd get a quarter-inch of ice on Wednesday, starting about noon, and then the snow would start that night. We were not feeling real hopeful for our chances of getting out of Chicago.

It kept snowing that week - just a bit every day, enough to make getting around kind of a pain. Wednesday morning, when I went to work, I checked the weather again and found the forecast for us unchanged. But the weather for Tulsa now said Major winter storm coming! Ice! Sleet! 7-12 inches of snow! If you value your lives, flee now! Luckily, one of my coworkers told me that the airlines were letting people change flights for no fee if they could get out of town ahead of the storm. I called Randy (who hadn't left for work yet), and he immediately called the reservation line while I looked up possible flights for us.

Luckily, we were able to switch our 11:35 a.m. Thursday flight to an 8:30 p.m. Wednesday flight. "Go to the airport now!" my coworkers said. "Otherwise you'll never get out of here! If you value your lives, flee now!" So I headed home, we packed super fast, and left for the airport by about 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday the 23rd. It started sleeting on our way to the airport, and it took us about an hour and forty-five minutes to get there. We got checked in and just for the heck of it, put our names on the stand-by list for the 4:30 flight. Unbeknownst to us (at that point), the 11:35 a.m. flight had been cancelled and there was no way we were going to get on the 4:30 flight.

So we sat down, and we waited, and I blew my nose every two minutes. Every flight we saw had a huge stand-by list, including ours. We waited more, and I tried to use my hand sanitizer as ostentatiously as possible, to avoid a revolt from my fellow passengers. We watched the sleet change to snow. It would have been beautiful had we not been trying to fly out - the flakes were huge, probably the biggest I've ever seen. We waited more, and I tried not to wheeze too audibly. Our gate changed probably 6 or 8 times. At one point, we were all sitting at G8 when a guy up at the agent counter turned around and yelled out, "Hey, it's H16 now!" Everyone sighed, gathered their bags, and shuffled off together. We were right behind a serviceman in uniform, who we'd seen at 3 of our previous gates, at least. "I've walked more today than I did during basic training," he said. I glanced over at a flight status monitor on our way over to H16 - and saw the gate change to H18. All we could do at that point was laugh.

Finally, at 9:30, an hour after we should have taken off, they announced that we could begin boarding and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief that we would not be spending the night at the airport. We had to wait for de-icing and finally took off a little after 10 p.m. Our flight was uneventful, except that we had to wait to deplane in Tulsa. Our captain came on the intercom to announce that due to the late hour, there was only one ground crew working and we'd have to wait our turn until they could get to us. I guess it could have been worse - after we made it into the airport at about 12:30, we heard an announcement: "Those of you waiting for the Denver flight, the new estimated arrival time is 2:30 a.m."

Joy and Cory had stayed up late to come get us (thank you!), and we made it back to Randy's parents house outside of Spavinaw at about 2 a.m. We were both starving, and after a quick sandwich, we all went to bed at about 3 a.m. It was a very long day.

It started sleeting by about 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve, and by about 2:30, the power was out. Because the house has an electric well pump, the lack of power also means no water. "Oh, that's a bad sign," Randy's dad said. "The power should not have gone out this early into the storm." We made the best of it, lighting candles and eating a late lunch by kerosene lamp. We decided to open our presents then, and called Randy's uncle to tell him he better head out from Tulsa ASAP if he was going to make it. (We, uh, may have also asked him to bring wine when he came. I think we all felt that we could maybe face a powerless Christmas a little bit better if we were all just a little bit, um, more relaxed, let's say.)

After about 4 hours, we were done opening presents, we had moved on to card games by candlelight, and Randy's uncle still hadn't arrived. Then the power came back on! We all cheered, and there was a literal sprint to plug in our cell phones, DS lites, and other electric devices, just in case the power went out again. At about that point, it started snowing, and wow, did it snow. After another hour or so, we heard from Randy's uncle - it had taken him nearly two hours to get to the outskirts of Tulsa, where he discovered what we had just seen on the internet - the governor of Oklahoma had declared all state highways, turnpikes and interstates closed. So he turned around and headed the nearly two hours back home.

Meanwhile, the snow kept falling. By the time it was done Christmas morning, there were about 7 inches at Randy's parents' house and in Tulsa, and Oklahoma City had gotten about 14 inches - more than it had ever gotten before!

It should be noted that Oklahoma does not get much snow. They just do not have the manpower or equipment to deal with a big snowfall like that. Joy and Cory had a flight out of the Tulsa airport at about 8 a.m. on December 26, and after some discussion, they decided that they really better head in to town the afternoon before, because they had no idea how long it would take, and so that they could make at least part of the drive before it got dark. So we quickly ate Christmas dinner and they packed up and piled into Randy's dad's truck. They took off, with Randy's dad at the wheel, moving very slowly and carefully. Nearly 3 hours later, they called to say they had made it to the hotel and that the roads were completely snow-packed.

That night, Randy, his mom and I played a game of Pandemic, which Randy got for Christmas. It's a really fun game, and we enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little prophetic, and not in a good way. By that evening, Randy and his mom had both come down with the stomach flu and were vomiting.

The next day, Randy's dad made his slow, careful way back home. We heard from Joy that they had made it back to Phoenix before Randy's dad managed to drive back from Tulsa! Neither Randy nor his mom was really feeling any better. They both spent most of the day in bed. Meanwhile, I was checking the weather for our return on the 27th, and seeing that McHenry was supposed to be getting 6-10 inches of snow on the 26th. The only good news was that it looked like it was supposed to be done by the 27th.

The morning of the 27th, Randy (still not feeling good, but not eating anything so he would have nothing to throw up), his dad and I left for the airport. Our flight left at 2 p.m., and we decided that just to be on the safe side, we'd leave by 9 a.m. We headed (very slowly) out on to the icy, completely snow-packed roads. "Wow," Randy's dad said. "The roads are much better than they were the other day!" Luckily, by the time we made it to the turnpike (about halfway there), the roads actually were much better. Although one lane of the road was still completely covered in snow, the other lane was pretty much clear, although not totally. It took us about 2 hours, so we were plenty early for our flight, but we figured that was better than being late.

Once again, our flight was delayed, but only by about an hour. After a slightly bumpy flight back, we retrieved our car from the extended parking lot and headed home. My only concern at that point was how we were going to get our car up the driveway with all the snow. (We live in the pink area, right around the "d" in Woodstock.) Thankfully, a kind neighbor had come over with his snowblower while we were gone - there was an inch or two on the driveway still, but we didn't have to go out and shovel that night.

So! That was our Christmas. How was yours?

Catching Up, Part 2: Abby and Matt got married!

In November, Abby and Matt got married!


The wedding was held at the VA Chapel in Leavenworth, and everything went really well. Abby and Matt both looked great, and were very happy.

We were a pretty good-looking wedding party, if I do say so myself.

I had kind of forgotten how much work weddings are when you are not the one getting married. Not that it's not a lot of work to be the bride (or groom), but no one expects the bride to pin corsages on the groomsmen, make sure the ushers are in place, or track down her own safety pin a few minutes before the ceremony begins. Not that I'm complaining - please note that Abby did all these things (and more!) for me at my wedding, too.

The reception was a lot of fun, with very tasty food.


Now that Abby and I are both married to sons of preacher men, you can probably guess which song it is that we're dancing to here.


After the wedding, Abby and Matt headed off for a Caribbean cruise, and Randy and I headed down to Wichita to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and grandparents. We had a nice, low-key time, which I think we all appreciated after the wedding. We didn't do all that much while we were there, although Randy and I ventured into Hutchinson at one point. Since we're not all that familiar with the area, my grandpa let us take the bossy lady along for the drive. She didn't let us down, and we navigated there and back with ease.

We both had a good time hanging out with all the relatives and Matt and Abby's friends, but I think we were both very glad to be home, too. We've done much more traveling than usual this year, which of course means we've run into more travel problems than usual this year.

Unfortunately, our pleasure at being home and being done with traveling would turn out to be short-lived...(cue ominous music!) Tune in tomorrow for part 3 of Catching Up!

Catching Up, Part 1

There are several posts we've been meaning to make over the last couple of months. We're almost to the end of the year now, so I think we should hurry up and get them posted before 2010. This is part one of our catching up: my birthday trip to Mackinac Island.


I turned 30 this year, and Randy surprised me with a trip to Mackinac Island. It's about an 8-hour drive from McHenry whichever way you go, so we decided to drive there by going south, around the bottom of Lake Michigan, and come home from the north, through Wisconsin. Our trip started off on a pretty promising note when we checked into our hotel Saturday night (still on the mainland of Michigan) and discovered that Washington had defeated USC.

Sunday (my birthday), we caught the ferry over to Mackinac Island. They don't allow motorized vehicles on the island, so the main methods of getting around (other than walking) are by horse and by bike.

We did both! We started out by taking a tour of the island by horse-drawn carriage. The town is very picturesque, and our tour guide told us about several interesting historical facts. (Bonus interesting fact: look at the link to see where Dr. Beaumont is buried!) After seeing the town, we headed into the interior of the island. Although the coastline of the island is very flat, it gets extremely hilly as soon as you turn inland. I was impressed the horses were able to pull our tour group of about 20 people up the hill with only a few short rests.


It was very pretty, and the weather was perfect. After our tour, we rented bikes and rode around the island. There's a highway that goes all the way around the edge of the island - it's about 8 miles in circumference. It was really, really pleasant to be able to ride without worrying about cars on the roads!


Our second day on the island was not quite as perfect - we still had a nice time, but it was chillier and kind of drizzling for a lot of the morning. We went up to Fort Mackinac and rode bikes again. We managed to get slightly lost on a tour of the island's interior roads, and ended up having to cut across a golf course twice in order to get unlost. I was kind of outraged to see a (non-horse drawn!) golf cart at one point.

We had a great time and I would definitely recommend the trip. I don't think I can overstate just how gorgeous everything was!


Tune in tomorrow for Catching Up, Part 2!

Post #99

It's a little distracting trying to type this while Wendy plays Mario Kart, but here goes:

Happy Birthday, Wendy

We celebrated Wendy's birthday this year with a trip to Mackinac Island. If you're not familiar with it, it's in Lake Huron between Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, and there are no motorized vehicles allowed on the island. Horses, hiking, and bicycling are the only options once you're there. It's a very popular tourist spot, but we managed to avoid the crowds by going during the week, and towards the end of tourist season. We'll post some pictures and more details in a later post, but for now I'll just say that it was way more fun than I thought it would be, and if you enjoy riding a bike, the place is heaven.

Happy Birthday, Car

My car turned 14 years old this month. It was purchased in October of 1995. "You've had your car longer than you've known me!" Wendy pointed out. It's been a pretty good car overall (a Chevy Cavalier). These days it doesn't have to do much except get me to work and back.

Booksale books

There was another employee book sale at work recently. I got 49 books total. Here are some of the more notable finds:

• M is for Magic and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origin of the Internet
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• The Saga of Solomon Kane
• Batman: Year One
• Statistics II for Dummies
• Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras, and Skipping Stones

Nerds 'R Us

Speaking of books, we measured the length of all our books on bookshelves. It came out to 75.8 feet (910 inches), and, since we've cataloged them with librarything.com, we know there are just over 900 books, which works out to about an inch per book. Why did we do that? Because of this.

Noisy Frame

We bought a new bed a while back (mattress, box spring, and frame), and while the mattress is really nice, the frame was a disappointment. Any time you moved slightly or rolled over, it made a metal squeaking sound that would often wake you up. It felt like it just needed to be tightened, but the frame was designed to not have any screws, so there was nothing to tighten. We took it back, thinking it might be defective, and got another one, but it had the same problem. As usual, Google came to the rescue: someone online recommended putting rubber washers between the loose frame parts, and that worked perfectly. Thank you Google and anonymous internet person!

And finally...

Mario Kart is pretty cool.

The Sweet Stench of Victory!

The SpongeBob SquarePants Marathon

A few weekends ago Nickelodeon aired a 50-hour(!) SpongeBob Marathon, culminating in 10 brand new episodes. Our Tivo nearly died from exhaustion. It pulled through, though, and we've been watching new episodes whenever we have some free time. Congratulations, Mr. SquarePants, on your 10-year anniversary!

Wii Sports Resort

I got Wii Sports Resort for my birthday, along with new MotionPlus controllers that enhance the accuracy of the remotes. It is lots of fun! The jet-skiing game is far and away my favorite; it makes me want to try jet-skiing for real. The flight simulator, bicycling, and swordplay are very cool as well. One neat feature is that the game will import characters created by other people, and they'll show up as your opponent, or as fans in the background. At one point Wendy was playing the Air Sports game and realized she was skydiving with Barack Obama!

New carpet

We got new carpet in the upstairs bedrooms last month, after a few setbacks. We originally ordered from Home Depot, and they said it would be installed in 5-7 days. So we spent all of Memorial Day Weekend painting all 3 bedrooms (and ceilings) in anticipation. But the date got pushed back again and again and again, much to our frustration, and finally was going to be 2 months from the time we placed the order. So we canceled it and went to Flooring Discount Warehouse. They had similar carpet for about the same price, and about a week later (on July 4th), they came out and installed it. We are quite pleased with the new carpet and with the new paint in our bedrooms.

Furniture shopping

We devoted an entire weekend last month to furniture shopping, mostly for bedroom furniture. Our first stop was Plunkett Furniture in Vernon Hills, because we heard on the radio they were going out of business. We got there to find they had already closed down. Bummer! We couldn't believe how quickly it happened. It turned out they had other locations in Chicagoland that were still in the going-out-of-business phase, so we visited one the next day, but the "liquidation" prices were still way out of our budget. Then we visited Georgetown Furniture in Antioch (which is where we bought our sofa and loveseat), only to find that they, too, were going out of business. Bummer again! All they had left were a few mattresses and a rummage sale. At this point we weren't feeling so great about the state of the economy. We also hit a couple of places in Rockford, and one place in southern Wisconsin (Steinhafel's Furniture). We saw a few promising things, but nothing great.

Finally, a coworker recommended Crest Furniture in Arlington Heights, and man, it felt like we hit the jackpot. The sales guy took us on a whirlwind tour of all the major furniture brands, showed us the difference in quality between them, and explained the pros and cons of each. Finally he gave us stacks of catalogs to look through, and we got a much better sense of what we want. We have yet to purchase anything, but we left with much more confidence in our ability to make a decision. Thanks, Crest dude!

Selling on Craigslist

We had to move everything out of the bedrooms for our carpet installation, and the futon proved to be the biggest, heaviest, and most unwieldy thing of all. After struggling to rotate it vertically (without hitting the ceiling fan), angle it through the narrow doorway (with barely an inch to spare), line it up with the stairs (without hitting another ceiling fan), we got it halfway down the stairs when we set it down precariously for a break, and Wendy, exhausted, said "Let's sell this f***er". Being quick to recognize good, common-sense ideas, I agreed. Thus, we put it and a computer desk up for sale on craigslist.

The computer desk went first, after about a week, but no one seemed interested in the futon. This basically made our living room unusable, as it was crammed full with a futon, sofa, loveseat, coffee table, and piano. We lowered the price, which got a few people interested, but started to despair when still no one bought it. It felt as if our house was in a permanent state of disrepair. The posting expired several times, I kept reposting, lowered the price again, and finally, this morning -- hallelujah! -- we sold it! Our living room is once again back to its normal state.

To mark the occasion we ate a celebratory pizza lunch and watched more new SpongeBob episodes!

Wild Kingdom

Spring has officially come a close, astronomically speaking. Here are some noteworthy events from the season past:

We were eating dinner one evening, looking out the bay window, when a small fox trotted out from the side of our house. We'd seen him once or twice before, always disappearing around the front of our neighbor's house. This time he stuck his head into the neighbor's wood pile and came out with a big egg in his mouth. He took it to the opposite end of our yard, buried it among some flowers, and went right back to the wood pile for another egg. This one he buried in the yard across the street and then came back for egg number 3, which went in a different neighbor's yard. He went back and forth, burying eggs in various yards (I think we wound up with 3 in our yard). We counted 10 eggs in all. At this point Wendy connected a few dots and remembered we always see a duck with about 10 ducklings in the pond each year. Probably not this year, we thought! It turns out we did still see a mama duck with 9 or 10 ducklings this year, so who knows if they were duck eggs the fox found.

Another annual event we always see is the migration of a giant turtle across our yard. Apparently she lays eggs in a neighbor's back yard (not one of the same ones the fox buried eggs in), and then in a painstakingly slow process, migrates back to the pond, always across our yard. And somehow we manage to see her every spring. The neighbor always comes out when she gets close to the road and shepherds her across. This year I shot some action-packed, jaw-dropping video of the event:

Finally, we bought some patio furniture a few days ago, and today spent part of the afternoon sitting out on our deck reading (and playing Nintendo DS). This is something we never considered doing with our old deck, so I take it as a positive sign that our home improvement projects are headed in the right direction.

I Heart Weather Data

Anytime we have interesting weather I love to pore over the data my weather station is collecting. The past two days have given me lots of chances to do just that.

On Friday we recorded our first 80 degree high of the year (84.4, to be exact):

The WGN Weather Blog reported it had been over six months since we last saw temperatures that high. Now that I've recorded about 10 months of weather data via WeatherUnderground, I pulled up a chart of temps for the last 6 months:

A quick scan verified that stat. Early October (the 12th, the be exact) was the last time temps were as high they were on Friday. The chart also reminded me just how cold it got in mid-January!

And then Saturday's weather was even more interesting. Here's a chart of temps:

We had two big temperature drops during the day: a 15-degree drop from 12:30 to 1:30, and a 10 degree drop between 4 and 5. These drops coincided, as you might imagine, with a change in wind. The first temperature drop happened right as the wind shifted suddenly from the SW to the NE:

While the second drop occurred right when the wind picked up again, after having died down for a couple of hours:

And, finally, we got about half an inch of rain over the afternoon and evening:


Wendy and I spent the first half of Saturday working in the yard, removing dead bushes, transplanting hostas, and pulling up weeds, so we got to experience the 15 degree temperature drop firsthand. Eventually the rain, and our stomachs crying out for lunch, forced us indoors.

After the 10 degree temperature drop in late afternoon we were forced to close all the doors and windows, because it was just cold with the wind blowing through our house.

Springtime in Chicago

Channeling the Cold

For the record, it was -22 degrees at our house this morning. Yesterday the high was -2. My favorite weather site, the WGN Weather Blog, has had all kinds of fun weather stats lately:

• Yesterday was the first day in 13 years that the high did not break zero in Chicago.
• It was colder in Chicago yesterday than it was at the North Pole (8 degrees).
• As of January 12th, we've already received a full winter's worth of snow (and we're only halfway through the meteorological winter).

We also learned that schools around here do indeed close due to the cold. Most schools were closed yesterday and today thanks to extreme wind chills of -40.

On an unrelated note, I've discovered a whole batch of cable channels that I didn't know we got. My favorites so far are Toon Disney and History International. Toon Disney has all kinds of cool animated shows like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and The Jackie Chan Adventures. It's being re-branded next month as Disney XD, which will basically be "Disney for boys," while the Disney Channel will remain "Disney for girls". Hopefully they'll keep all the animated comic book fun.

History International has had some interesting shows, too, ranging from the German Autobahn, to what our society learned from the Victorians and the Tudors, to a documentary called "How William Shatner Changed the World" hosted, of course, by William Shatner.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Ours was good - allow me to update you!

We visited both families this year for Christmas, and decided to drive instead of flying. This turned out to be a good and a bad decision - good because we avoided the major delays all the airports seemed to be having, and bad because the delays were due to weather which we ended up driving through. The day before we left, we got 9 or 10 inches of snow here, and areas south of us got ice. The roads were pretty much fine by the time we left, until it started snowing as we were driving through Iowa. Then they were not so great. What made it even scarier were all the cars we kept seeing in ditches from the previous day's ice storm. Luckily, thanks to some skillful and careful driving by Randy, we made it to Kansas City for the night.

The hotel we stayed at was recently remodeled and was, no joke, possibly the nicest hotel either of us had ever been in. The bathroom was gorgeous (I know! A hotel bathroom!), there was a beautiful built-in armoire/computer desk thing, and it had a 33" flat panel TV, which is both bigger and fancier than the one we have here at home. We kept checking the (pretty cheap) rate quoted in our confirmation e-mail to make sure there hadn't been a mistake. So, if you are ever looking for a hotel in Liberty, Missouri, I definitely recommend the Hampton Inn!

The rest of our Christmas was good, too. We saw both sets of parents, and had a lot of fun hanging out with Abby and her boyfriend Matt at my house, and with Joy and Cory at Randy's house. Both of our parents have "new" houses, and it was awesome to get to see all the changes. My parents' house was actually new last year, then they had a fire and were displaced for nearly 6 months while basically everything in the house was repainted, restored or replaced. So, "new." Randy's parents' house was actually new almost 20 years ago, but they've recently had non-essential (but nice!) things like trim and bathroom vanities installed. The kitchen's also been completely redone, and is gorgeous now. So, again, "new."

As much fun as it is to see our families and get nice Christmas presents, it is also very nice to be home again. It is less nice to have to go back to work, but such is life, I guess.

Here's what else we've been up to, in handy list form (now with bonus exclamation points!):

- This is our third winter in Illinois, and it is off to a rollicking start. Last winter was extremely snowy, and this one is already on pace to outstrip it! Um, great? Our mail box was damaged by a snow plow a few weeks ago, and the township road department brought us out a replacement box, free of charge. However, the ground is completely frozen, so right now it's sitting in a bucket of sand right next to our old, currently unusable mailbox. Classy! They've promised to come back and put it in the ground once spring arrives, which will probably be sometime around mid-June.

- We recently switched to VOIP for our home phone service. It's the T-Mobile @ Home service, and it's only $10/month, since we both already have cell phones with T-Mobile. This is especially exciting because apparently local and state taxes make it impossible to get the most basic of basic phone services in Illinois for less than about $45 a month. What a deal!

- While we were in Oklahoma, Joy and Cory asked us about our water softener. The water where they live is very hard, and they're thinking of getting one. We both recommended it, but I have to say, now that we're back home, I recommend it even more. A water softener makes for very nice hair. I guess it's good for other things too, but hey, shiny hair!

I leave you with these final words of wisdom from Jackie Chan, courtesy of an interview we saw on Toon Disney. Don't say you don't like something without trying it - that's not polite. "Try it before you don't like it."

I hope you like our blog, but please at least try it before you don't like it!

Caveat Emptor!

Last year we decided to start a yearly tradition of going to an OU football game each season with George. Last year it was OU at Iowa State; this year it was the OU at K-State game a few weeks ago. Our record so far is 2 - 0! We got to see OU beat K-State handily, in what was a very exciting game for the first half: 83 combined points in the first; only 10 combined in the 2nd.

While we enjoyed our trip to Manhattan, it was fraught with numerous adventures that taught us valuable lessons at every turn. Behold:

The Ticket Fiasco

We bought tickets about a week before the game on ebay, as we did last year. Unfortunately, we did not have the same luck. The tickets were not shipped as advertised and therefore did not arrive in time. The seller was also incommunicado. It was the day before the game, we were about to fly to Kansas City, and we had no tickets. One last look on ebay revealed a different seller who said we could pick up his tickets in KC, so we gave it a shot, and we scored. The guy was very friendly and organized, and it was a pleasure to do business with him. So if you're in need of tickets on ebay, check out bradinkc. We left him very favorable feedback.

When we got back (which is another story), we filed a complaint against the original seller. It turns out Paypal has a very nice system for handling these disputes, designed to get both sides to communicate and come to an agreement, and if that doesn't work, to allow a claim to be filed which Paypal then investigates. Unfortunately the seller was still incommunicado, so we had to file the claim. After 10 days, Paypal decided in our favor and reimbursed us the full cost for the tickets.

The Rental Car Scam?

We weren't sure if we wanted to rent a car for the trip, but when we saw it would only be $60 total from Budget, we went for it. The car itself was fine (a Kia Spectra), but when we turned it in, we were charged more than twice the quoted price. We went to the desk to ask about it, and the guy immediately saw the problem: we'd been charged the wrong weekend rate. He claimed that the computers sometimes pick the wrong rate on the weekends, and they only know about it if customers bring it up after getting their bill. Some weekends, he's seen as many as 8 out of 10 people get the wrong rate! He quickly changed our bill to the right amount, but the whole thing seemed a bit shady.

The Airline Torture

Our plan was to fly home Sunday afternoon on United, but about half an hour before the flight took off, they announced it was canceled because, when the plane was flying into KC, passengers noticed that there were cracks in one of the wings. Yikes! There was a mad dash to get into a really long line at the ticket counter to switch to another plane, but there were no other planes available on United. We tried switching to another airline, but even that didn't work. Eventually they announced United was flying another plane into KC just for us. The plane arrived around 5pm, but by 7:30 we still hadn't boarded. Finally, the captain came out and announced he believed it was illegal for him to fly the plane because he would exceed his daily duty time. United disagreed, and union lawyers got on the phone with United lawyers to try to figure it out. Around 9pm, the union lawyers won, the flight was canceled, United gave us a hotel voucher and said "Try again tomorrow." No one was happy, of course. We'd just spent almost 10 hours in the airport and gotten nowhere. So we tried again the next morning and finally made it home.

The Smartphone Realization

At one point while we were standing in line at the airport, they told us we could call 1-800-UNITED1 to switch flights. So I pulled out my phone, dialed 1-800 and stopped. I had no idea what to dial next. Wendy and I both have smartphones, with a keypad that doubles as a qwerty keyboard, so we no longer have the standard letter to number mapping.


I had never realized this. Despite the phone's obvious technical wizardry and sophistication, the embedded operating system, the built-in camera, the SD card, wi-fi, internet browser, etc, the phone just can't do the simple task of mapping letters to digits in a phone number!

We tried to figure out what the digits to UNITED1 would be, but when we called the number we came up with, an automated message invited us to call a different number for "stimulating conversation." We declined the offer. For future reference, the number 1 doesn't have any letters; they start at 2 and go three letters per number, except for 7 and 9 which have four letters. Now we know!


Finally, the weekend wasn't a total loss. OU won, and we got to hang out with George and with Wendy's family. But most importantly, George bet me a quarter that this weekend's OU-Texas Tech football game will see more points scored than the next OU-Texas Tech basketball game!

Summer Rundown

Here's what we've been up to recently:

* We got a new deck! Our old one was, well, old. And starting to rot. So we had it torn down and rebuilt. Here are the results:



* Wendy got me a super-cool birthday present a few months ago: a personal weather station. It measures wind speed, temperature, humidity, and precipitation, among others, and it connects to a computer. That, combined with a free service from Weather Underground, allows me to check the weather at our house over the internet. Check it out here.

It's a lot of fun to play with. Check out this chart from August. We were woken up by a morning thunderstorm. You can see right when the storm rolled through. Just before 7am, the temperature suddenly dropped, the air pressure started rising, the wind shifted direction, and then it started raining. Very cool!

* I took a continuing education class recently called Investigating Ghosts and Hauntings, taught by a local paranormal research group. It was very interesting, and as it turned out, a couple in the class were taking it because they thought their house was haunted. So we got to go and see the group perform an investigation. They used a staggering amount of equipment: multiple video cameras, eletromagnetic field meters, geomagnetic field meters, positive/negative ion detectors, random number generators, etc. It was quite a production. Nothing especially unusual turned up, but before we learned anything about the house we took a tour, and several of us felt that if any part of the house was haunted, it was the top floor. And we later learned that's where most of the unexplained events had occurred.

* Wendy's Mom came to visit a few weeks ago. We took a trip down to Chicago to see the Field Museum. We had planned on going on a Sunday, but thankfully the night before realized the Bears were playing a home game that day, so there wouldn't be any parking (the Field Musuem is right next to Soldier Field). We went Monday instead, and it turned out to be free admission day.

* Allergies have been terrible this year. I've wondered if it has anything to do with the trees around us; they produced a huge amount of acorns this year. We literally have a carpet of acorns around parts of our house. At times last month we could hear them fall onto our house and roll down the roof. Thank goodness for the gutter screens we put up last year!

They've come for brains. I'll give them... bullets!

Our Tivo has been working lots of overtime this summer. Last month it was busy recording hours and hours of Tour de France; this month it's the non-stop Olympics coverage. Since our Wii is connected to the same TV as our Tivo, there hasn't been much video gaming of late. But, that doesn't stop me from blogging about video games!

One of the greatest video games of all-time is House of the Dead 2. The premise is simple: kill as many zombies as you possibly can. What makes it so great?


Bad graphics
By today's standards the graphics are terrible. You know right off the bat that this isn't a high budget game. But that doesn't matter at all; the game is so much fun that the bad graphics actually fit right in.

Comically gross violence
By far the best part. You're advised to aim for the head to kill the zombies quickly, but if you aim for their body, they stumble from the shock, arms/legs go flying off, they'll have holes blasted completely through them, but they'll still keep coming. Which leads us to the next point...

Lots of green zombie blood
This speaks for itself.

Hilariously bad voice acting
There's no way to describe how superbly awful the voices are; you just have to hear them. Anybody can do bad acting, but to make it so bad it's funny takes some serious talent.

Staying power
I first encountered the game in arcades years ago; you used a light gun to shoot at the screen which was (and still is) way cool and tons of fun. I could never justify the time and money to get good at it, so I played it infrequently.

The next time I encountered the game was in college as a PC game, only this time it had been reformatted as Typing of the Dead. Now, each zombie had a word next to it, and typing the word correctly fired bullets at the zombie.


Again, TONS of fun!! Whoever came up with that idea is a genius. I was never able to finish the game, though, because it got too hard; towards the end you had to type entire sentences to kill the zombies, and my typing skills just weren't up to par.


Recently, it was bundled with its sequel, House of the Dead 3 and released for the Wii. The Wii is perfect for the game, since it allows you to use the Wii-remote as a light gun, just like the arcade version. I bought the game soon after it came out, plus I bought the Nyko Perfect Shot accessory to make the Wii remote even look like a gun.


This worked well for a while, but I found that the Nyko gun tired out my trigger finger too quickly. I then got a Wii Zapper and discovered that it's the way to go. It's not as cool looking as the Nyko gun, but the trigger is much easier to pull and using both hands allows for much greater accuracy. I am pleased to report that I have, finally, beaten House of the Dead 2! Once the Olympics are over I plan on starting House of the Dead 3.

And, the reason I wrote this blog post in the first place is that today I discovered another House of the Dead game is coming out for the Wii. This one is called House of the Dead: Overkill and there's a trailer for it here (if you enjoyed the movie Grindhouse, then you'll dig the trailer). Here's hoping Overkill is as much fun as House of the Dead 2.

Finally, a post about zombies just isn't finished until I inflict a super-lame zombie joke that Wendy shared with me recently:

What do vegetarian zombies eat? (scroll down)














GRAAAAAAAAINS!!!

Before and After

Fireplace and Mantel

Kitchen Sink and Faucet

Air Conditioner

None of these changes were cheap, of course.

Bank Account Before:

And After:

The Tell-Tale Clink

We've been prodded by grandparents to update our blog; so, here goes:

Last night as soon as we got into bed I heard: clink. It almost sounded like metal on metal. That's not a sound that our house usually makes, so I listened closely, and a few minutes later there was another clink. I mentally went through our house trying to figure out what would make that sound, but could think of nothing.

Finally, after the third clink I got up to investigate. I stood in the kitchen, waiting, and heard it again. It sounded like it might be outside, so I opened the blinds and looked out, but there was nothing except for empty streets and dark houses. By this time it was almost 1am, our house was totally dark, and I was starting to think we may have ghosts, or that people were in our house like the The Strangers previews that are constantly showing on TV.

Then, it clinked again, and I could tell it was coming from our dining room light fixture.


I turned on the light, heard it again, and climbed up on a chair to investigate. My first thought was that it was a bug in the light fixture, but there was no movement, no shadows, and when I unscrewed the light cover there was nothing inside.

Now I was stumped. I waited and waited but there were no more clinks. I decided that it was somehow fixed now that the light cover was off, so I set the cover on the floor, left a note for Wendy so she wouldn't be wondering what the heck was going on in the morning, and went back to bed.

And then, 10 minutes later, it clinked again. And again. And again. And I got up again and went back downstairs. With a bit of patience I was rewarded with another clink, and it was still coming from our light fixture, except now there was nothing but two light bulbs and the base that screwed into the ceiling.


Determined, I got up on the chair and carefully unscrewed the base and pulled it down a few inches -- as far as the wires into the ceiling would let me. From what I could see there was nothing there. Then, I tilted it towards me, and something small and black slid down: it was a bug. A bug in the attic had crawled down into the recessed area of the base, and when it tried to fly around it clinked against the metal. No ghosts. No horror movie characters. Just a bug. I squashed it, screwed the base back into the ceiling, and went to bed. No more clinks.

Here's what else we've been up to in recent months:

* There was another employee book sale at work, and this year we got a buy 1 get 1 free coupon, which meant it was 12.5 cents per book. We got 87 books for $11. Some of our more exciting finds include the following:

The Portable Dorothy Parker
Keturah and Lord Death
Dreaming in Code
Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine by William Gibson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Sagas of Icelanders
Howliday Inn

* The process of home improvement continues ever onward. Currently we're in the middle of getting a new mantel and glass doors for our fireplace, looking for a new washer and dryer, and having our front porch and deck washed and re-stained.

* Most everyone already knows, but in March we went to Greece for a week and a half and had a fantastic time. We went to Athens, Turkey, and a few Greek islands. My suitcase never made it there thanks to the opening of the new T5 terminal at Heathrow. After 3 weeks it was declared lost and I got a check for $600 and got reimbursed for all the clothes and toiletries I bought in Greece. It finally showed up on our front porch 4 weeks after it went missing! It worked out well in the end, since I got my suitcase and the money, but was a bit of hassle during the trip. We've emailed pictures to a bunch of people; if you haven't seen them and would like to, send us an email.

* The weather during Memorial Day weekend was fun. On Friday highs were in the 50s, on Saturday the 60s, on Sunday the 70s, on Monday the 80s, and when we went back to work on Tuesday it was back to the 50s.

* Our Wii has been getting a lot of playing time recently. We're both playing a lot of DDR, which is a lot of fun and a lot of exercise, and we just got Guitar Hero 3 and have started rocking out to it. I've also been killing lots of zombies thanks to House of the Dead 2 and 3.