Vacation's Over

I took this past week off, because it was spring break for Anna and Cameron. Packed in quite a bit over the nine days.

On Easter Sunday, we had the pastor and his family out for dinner. That would be a total of 4 adults and 10 kids. It was a lot of fun. Their kids and ours get along great and they stayed for quite a while (pastor and I watched the great Memphis v. Texas A & M game).

On Monday and Tuesday, me and the kids headed to Fort Wayne to spend time with mom and dad. Had the always great noodle dinner on Monday night with Steve and Pam, Tom and Paula, and Benjamin also in attendance. On Tuesday, mom and Anna went to see "National Treasure 2" while dad and Cameron went to Menards (Cameron didn't think he got the short end of the stick here, he loves going there).

Tuesday night I went with Steve to the Ft. Wayne table tennis club and played great. Later that week, I went to the South Bend club and played terribly. Although I did have a breakthrough against one player that I'd never beaten before. Although that excitement was quickly tempered when I found out later he was playing with his opposite hand.

On Friday after Dorene got off work, we headed to Pokagon State Park in Angola. Stayed at the Potawatomi Inn there and we all had a wonderful time. The kids swam and swam and we explored the whole park. We plan to return again when it warms up more and there are even more things to do. We'll also go there during Christmas break (already got the reservations).

Now, I have to get back in work mode. Being off a week is nice, but makes it kinda hard to get back to the normal routine. It was a good week off, and I was able to focus a lot of attention on the kids and wore them out pretty good.

We Had a "Blast"

Friday evening, Dorene and I sent the kids off to Grammy's house and we had a rare night out on the town. After eating at Papa Vino's a wonderful local Italian restaurant, we headed downtown to the Morris Performing Arts Centre for a performance of "Blast."

This was a very cool production, which consisted of a group of brass and percussion players doing all sorts of things. Some particularly amazing percussion segments, especially the drum solo to end all drum solos, in whichere you had one guy and one snare drum. Before he was done, he was somehow playing with one hand and the other stick was balanced on his ear (yeah, you just had to see it).

Parts of the production kinda reminded me of "Stomp" which is probably one of the best shows I've ever seen. "Blast" originated from a drum and bugle corps known as "Star of Indiana," which has won national and world recognition. If you ever get a chance to catch this show, I highly recommend it.

Hmm

My wife works in the public schools and they have the day off today for Good Friday. My kids attend a Christian school and they do not have the day off.

NCAA Picks

I haven't really followed college basketball much this year except when they fired Kelvin Sampson from IU. I always fill out a bracket at work, but never do very well. So, here's my shot at it this year. Either I will come across as brilliant or just another hack who thinks he knows something others don't (I'd go with the latter).

Final 8 Teams
Memphis - Stanford
UCLA - Duke
Notre Dame - Louisville
Kansas - USC

We then have a PAC-10 dominated Final Four with Louisville-USC and Stanford-UCLA. Which then takes us to an all-California match-up in the championship game with UCLA prevailing over cross-town rival USC by a score of 68-60.

This year's Cinderella teams will be Oral Roberts University and Siena (both 13th seeds), one of which will advance to the Sweet 16.

Apple: Use at Your Own Risk

The following message recently came from our information technologies department:

"As a part of the overall campus emergency planning effort, an application has been installed on all campus PC's which will allow campus police and other authorized users to issue emergency alerts through the campus network. When an emergency alert is sent, a pop-up window will appear informing you of the emergency and what steps to take. Currently, there is no way to provide this to on-campus Mac computers."

So hopefully the Mac users will catch on when a tornado strikes and they are the only ones left at their computers, wondering why everyone else left.

Making Tammy Wynette Proud

Once again, a public official steps down after getting caught in some extra-marital activities. Once again, the wife is forced to stand by her man and listen to his apology as the cameras flash away and late night comics have a field day. I always wonder, what are they really thinking?

What happens when they have their first moments alone after the scandal has broke and the husband steps down from office? Is it a teary eyed confessional? Lots of yelling and screaming? A time of healing? Or, perhaps, threats by the wife to take some hedge clippers and inflict permanent damage?

Spring? Maybe?

Maybe, just maybe it'll be spring. I am so tired of winter this year. It seemed to have dragged on and on this time. Our kids are dying to play outside (and we want to be able to send them outside). The dogs want to be out. Let's be done with this cold weather. Today I'm wearing a sweater and turtleneck which I hope will be for the last time.

I'll Do It My Way

Recently, I took Cameron to a birthday party for one of his classmates at a skating rink. I strapped skates on the little tike and told him to go at it. I think it possibly took him 20 minutes to make one pass around the rink. He would go about 1 foot, maybe two, and plop down. Up again, down again, and so on. Needless to say, it was pretty funny to watch.

However, Cameron got lots of offers for help. He had adults coming to help him, and junior high and high school girls coming to the aid of this little kid. But in each instance, Cameron waived them off. He refused any help. He was going to conquer this on his own. So he kept his up again, down again routine all afternoon. By the end, he was actually moving around fairly well. He told me later that, "Daddy, lots of people came to help me but I told them NO!"

We're finding out that Cam has just a wee bit competitive spirit in him.

Idiot Alert

We have one of those underground, invisible fences for our dogs. If I'm ever asked if they are worth it, the answer is . . . .yes. They work extremely well. Although, for a while, our rat terrier was so traumatized she'd just stand out in the middle of the yard and not move, afraid of getting zapped if she moved.

This weekend, one of the collars came off. I found it at the edge of the driveway and was walking back to the house with it. Suddenly, I felt a couple jolts running through me. Yeah, I was holding onto the sensors of the collar that put out the jolt. Took a few of them before I realized that maybe I shouldn't hold the collar like that. It was a pretty good jolt, so I can sympathize with Daphne the Rat Terrier when she gets zapped.

Upon hearing the news of this, Cameron just laughed and laughed and informed me that he'd be telling everyone at school how his daddy got zapped.