A new BOB

Today (Fri) is a day off for daddy, except that he's taking care of the baby who happens to be napping at the moment. I should mention how happy I am about the gorgeous weather we've had lately. Sunny and dry enough that I don't have to mow the lawn often.

In biking news, I've been advising our friend Nina on her road bike acquisition plan. She's been riding a nice hybrid for some years and was hoping to enter the glorious world of road bike riding. Also, she wanted to build up a bike from all the parts.

Some time passed, and ebay auctions were not 'won', before we came across a 1988 Bridgestone RB-1 frameset from the i-BOB list (internet Bridgestone Owners Bunch. Fun fact: Bridgestone has not exported bikes to the US since 1994). I had some spare parts in the garage, so last week we started to put it together. Eddie Merckx looks with approval at the lugged steel frame.

Some 3ish hours later, we had a mostly ridable bike: single speed, single brake, too-wide handlebars. I think Nina is gonna like it.
I'm afraid that Clara is developing a bit of a reputation in the church nursery. Last week she took a pacifier out of another baby's mouth to play with it (she doesn't suck on them). You wouldn't know this bully streak by looking at her.
In other news, our church softball team won the men's B church softball league championship. After finishing the regular season 5-5, we were the 8th seed in the tournament. Of the four tournament games we won, three were by 1 run. And we were the visitors for every game, so we had to hold them off during every last bottom inning. High drama for Jill, Clara, and our other 3 fans!

Finally, Jill is venturing closer to work-a-day life. In addition to her normal rating from home job, she'll be teaching a reading class at the Intensive English Institute. The current plan is for me to watch Clara during class (1-2 M-F) for my lunch break. We're excited about this gig.

melted

I'm writing this post with the a/c off and the windows open. After 2 weeks, the heat has broken. During that time, I would walk outside at 10pm, and it would be hot. I would ride to work in the morning, and it would be very warm.

Clara managed to find entertainments during her more often than usual interior confinement. To her dismay, many of our cabinets are locked, but the pots and pans are accessible.

We played in the garage one night and learned that the floor is very dirty. Note Clara's knees and hands. Soon she will be walking. Sooner, we'll wash the floor.
On Saturday morning we volunteered at Salt and Light, made relatively famous becauseExtreme Makeover rebuilt the leader's home and provided truckloads of goods. I didn't bring my camera, so no photos with the somewhat famous family. S&L gave out hundreds of backpacks filled with school supplies to families that waited in line for quite some time to get them. Jill and I walked the line handing out cups of water.

After church today, we went to lunch with John and Nancy and a couple law students. Zack is from Fremont and went to Cal. There are hundreds of people that fit this description, but two of them meeting in Urbana rarely happens.

Other than my commute, not much bike riding has been happening. Today I rode to my favorite destination, Homer Lake. Felt soooo nice.

very hot

This is a rather disjointed post of recent goings on. I blame the heat. Each region must have a unique way to quantify the weather so as to impress outsiders of the misery we endure. For example, in the desert, one could cite the temperature (i.e., Ack, it's 115 degrees!). Here in the midwest, we use the heat index, a complex combination of humidity and temperature (i.e., Please kill me, the heat index is 117! (which it was on Tues and Wed)).

If you haven't stopped by to visit us (or if you live in town), you might wonder what my co-workers look like. Our leader, Massoud, retired last week so we ate lunch together and took a photo. He gave a speech advising us to do work we enjoy with people we like. And make sure that our work and ideas are relevant.

Here's the best picture to date of Clara's lower teeth.

Friend (and fellow Wild Card bike racer) Tom came over for dinner last week to show pics from his recent trip to Malawi. That's in Africa. He went there with 3 others from our church to work at Rafiki Village, an orphanage/school for children that have lost parents due to AIDS. I don't have a feel for the place, but it seems to have an intense blend of hope, joy, and grief. After the orphanage work was finished, Tom did a 6 day hike of Kilimanjaro.

Tonight our friend and budding professional photographer invited us to a park for a photo shoot. Clara was a fine model despite the heat and mosquitoes.

Finally, we've had our second set of Mormon missionaries visit us here. I impressed them by remembering the name of a previous guy. We're impressed by their deep knowledge of the more mysterious passages of Scripture (Paul's mention of 3rd heaven, Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead, etc.). Tomorrow they want to talk about our pre-human life as spirits in heaven. Since that's not of general interest we'll talk about the gospel stories of Jesus' life instead.

milestones

Before we get to the newest news, let's rewind the internets and recall a couple big events. First, Jill and I celebrated our 10th anniversary while on vacation. 10 years of love, laughter, and living the dream!

Second, my mom visited right after our vacation. The biggest adventure the gals took was a trip to Arcola, nearby Amish town, where they learned that much stuff is closed on Mondays. They enjoyed the nearby Mexican restaurant nonetheless.

Back to the present: we celebrated Jill's birthday last night. Happy birthday, Jill! We invited some friends over to celebrate with food and a dramatic reading of The Importance of Being Ernest. What's more appropriate than cucumber sandwiches? Thankfully, the farmers' market had cucumbers for ready money.

Jill has been wanting to have gatherings in our garage for some time, so that's where the activities happened. Nancy and Nina anxiously await their next lines.
Maggie dressed for the role of Miss Prism, replete with handbag. We forgot to check for a stain caused by an exploding temperance beverage.
Many thanks to Christine for making the apricot-almond cake. Yummy!

Northern vacation part 2: the Lake

For the second week of our vacation, we rented a beach house near Michigan City. You don't need a good reason to spend a week on the beach at Lake Michigan, but we did. Jill's parents had their 40th anniversary last year, and this was the celebration. Matt's family, Mom and Dad, and we all came.

A typical looked like this: breakfast, beach, lunch, beach, dinner, beach, bed. Clara took some excellent naps on the beach.

Brent and Beth's family came down for a beach day. We squeezed some bubbling blowing, squirt gun fights, and board games into our beach days.
Usually, I'm not that excited about swimming, but swimming in the Lake was a blast. The water was mild, shallow for a Long distance from shore, and mildly wavy. We played catch with a frisbee, nerf football, and tennis ball. We swam out to the buoy because it was there.

Clara and the boys played a rousing game of 'where is ___?'. They would all hide behind the coffee table and stand up when their name was called. Super funny!
So the vacation came to an end. We saw a Lamborghini on our way through MI City. I returned to bug picking from our spruce tree. The bugs enjoyed the 2 week reprieve.

Northern vacation part 1

Taking advantage of my massive vacation allotment, we just took a 2 week vacation. The first week was a near re-creation of our 2003 bike tour of MI, except that this time we had a baby with us and drove the entire route. On the bike tour, our relatives were amazed that we could ride our bikes so far and pampered us. For this trip, Clara received most of the doting.

The first stop was Athens, MI, where we visited Great-grandpa and Aunt Kevin and Uncle Terry. Clara swam in a pool for the first time in Uncle Terry's pool. She even dipped her face in the water a couple times. The big outing was a trip to Turkeyville for a turkey (no kidding!) lunch and mini-concert by a band playing Johnny Cash songs.

Then we moved on to Jackson (birthplace of the Republican party!) to see cousins Beth and Brent and Amy and Aunt Jan. Clara enjoyed playing with Josh and Alli's plethora of toys. I enjoyed Wii sword fighting with Alli, though she more often got the better of me.

Jill's childhood friends put on a shower for Clara. She loved the chocolate ice cream cake.
We took a day trip from Jackson to Bowling Green, OH, to see Todd and Leigh. Clara enjoyed playing with their son Jack, who is 3 months older than her, and his toys.
Penultimate stop was Evart to see more Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and great-grandma. We watched the cows, birds at the feeder, and the Tigers beat the Twins on tv. If you're wanting to become a Christian but are afraid of losing too much of your Sunday at church, consider joining the Free Methodist church in Evart. The service was 45 minutes, including a nice performance by some dulcimer players in town for the festival.
Finally, we headed down to Zeeland. Here we are at the top of Mt. Pisgah, a 200+ stair-step hike, that overlooks the big lake and Lake Macatawa (fun fact: the property taxes for some houses along Lake Mac are $40k per year).
We took a few short bike rides, once pulling Clara in the chariot and a couple times without her when she was napping (fun note: we didn't leave her home alone). Favorite place was Evart with nice rolling hills, ponds and a river, and dirt roads. I'd love to explore that area more.

bug picking

Last fall, David and Heather told us that some bugs were attacking the spruce tree in our yard. I thought little of it. A month later I got around to picking pine-cone shaped objects off the tree, but no bugs were seen.

This week, I noted that the spruce budworms were back. Wanting to get on the spruce tree's good side, I picked a few hundred and threw them on the ground. The next day, the other David told me that the bug/pods can crawl back to the tree from the ground. Rats! I broiled the next round on the grill, but then settled on drowning them in soapy water. After 5 days of picking, they are harder to find on the tree, but they aren't gone. I probably picked 1000 off the tree.

The worms live inside those mini-cones. Like turtles, they hide inside when startled. Unlike turtles, they are creepy and gross.

On the other end of the cute-ugly spectrum is the happy baby of the house. She's climbing up onto everything she can.
Thankfully, since we haven't locked the cabinets yet, she has only opened one drawer so far. That would be the drawer with q-tips in bulk that can happily be dumped on the floor.
Sunday afternoon church picnics took place all month. Clara did her best to entertain the brethren.
Finally, in competitive sports news, our softball team is playing mediocre ball. We, including me, could hit in a more timely and frequent manner, but our defense is good. As for bike racing, I skipped the 2 races I did last year. One would think that with a nearly perfect angel child such as Clara, Jill and I would never feel worn down. Alas! My fitness went south, and I didn't want to spend the time and cash to race at a sub-optimal level. This Wed, I did join the team for a training ride and even got a shout out in Paul's blog. Thanks, Paul!