Walk it Off

Now that we are into warmer weather (well those in CA never left it) people are spending much more time outside. I for one am feeling the need to get out and get in shape. I have been riding my bike a lot lately and am loving it. I thought it would be nice to have a way to measure how far I was riding each day... the only problem is I don't ride on roads so looking up directions is pretty useless. However, I did stumble across this little tool a while ago and thought I would share. It is a way to track how far you travel, even if it is not on a road. You just draw the route you took and it calculates the distance. This works for any place on the planet so get out and get measuring! Click here to see the tool.

Good times in Michigan

Thanks to James and Megster for their hospitality. It's Spring now and time for backyard barbeques. . .and they are ready to go with their new deck furniture. The yellow tulips are up also in the front yard.

 

Darth Nut Cracker

I saw this at Bronner's Christmas store in Michigan this past weekend. The sticker price on it is $399. I think that is a little steep, but this really would be a one of a kind thing to get out during the holidays.

Greenfield Village

Here are some pictures from our trip to Greenfield Village in Detroit. It is very similar to Williamsburg in VA. It opened by the Ford Motor Company in 1929. Henry Ford basically moved many famous houses and buildings to this 90 acre park. Some of the buildings include the Wright Brother's home and cycle shop, Edison's lab and a court house where Lincoln practiced law. It was very fun and interesting.


Megan, Margaret, Evan and Nantie in front of the Martha-Mary Church (named after Henry Ford's mother and mother-in-law). A popular place to get married.


At the glass blowing shop they were making Christmas Ornaments. The glass is heated up to 2500 degrees F.


This is a picture from the front porch of the house of Henry Ford's childhood. The building in the distance is the front of the park (a train station).


This is Megan at Edison's Lab where he first got the light bulb to work. It lasted all of 40 hours!


James in front of Cotswold house. It is a home all made of stone, even the roof. He was holding the turtle pictured below.


Here is one of the 3 turtles that we rescued (thanks to Nantie's eagle eyes) at the Village. They were about the size of a quarter.


This was a hobo band that played at the village. One guy was playing a saw, but we couldn't hear him.

Michigan Ho!

Here are some of the pictures from the trip across the country to Michigan. The captions for the different pictures are below them. Enjoy!


Grammie and Grampie on the snowmobile after it had snowed 18 inches and we couldn't get off the mountain.


We finally made it. . .Helen, Grammie and Margaret logged their 50th state in North Dakota.


Easter breakfast at the lodge in Montana with Ian, Evan, Helen, Erin, Grammie, Grampie, Alana and Margaret. We stayed in a friend's lodge on top of the mountain outside of Bozeman. We could see 100 miles to the east and also to the west.


Watching the ships sail through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.


Now this is a cow. . .38 feet high and 56 feet long in New Salem, North Dakota.

Not Even Elected and Already Lying

Ok, so this is just about the funniest thing I have seen on the web in a long time. A candidate for the position of Mayor of New Orleans decided to use a fake picture of her in the French Quarter. She did not want to use a picture of the real French Quarter since it is in pretty bad shape. What is a girl to do? We they had the brilliant idea of having her in a picture of Disneyland's French Quarter (pictured here)! The dead give away is the trash can in the background. Have a look here. This in and of itself is very funny, but they took it one step further and digitally took out the trash can and kept the same picture. Have a look. I personally would rather cast my vote into the ocean.

Final Kitchen Video

We finally finished the kitchen... we think. Who knows what the future holds. We still want to get some shelving for the empty place where the fridge was.

Google Calendar

Ok, so I think this is just great. Google launched yesterday a slick web calendar. This is wonderful for families who really have no idea what is going on in each other's lives. So what you do is upload your Microsoft Outlook Calendar (or iCal for those lucky enough to have a Mac). That puts your whole schedule up online. Don't worry it is private by default, unless you want to make it public. Now you can allow certain people access to your calendar. So when they sign in to their account your calendar is overlayed. This is perfect for trying to find a time for everyone to get together. You can know when everyone in the family has vacation/free time. There are some other cool features like inviting people via email and when they respond they are automatically added to an RSVP list. This thing is still in beta (meaning test stage) but I think it has great potential. Some people worry about Google knowing too much about them, but who cares that I am going to the dentist at 3 pm next week??? Have a look here.

Megan & Dan in England

Dan and I used the travel credits he had from the honeymoon he didn't take soon after we were married. We had a wonderful time and would love to go back and see many of the sites we didn't have time to see. Everything was very expensive, almost double. Hope you enjoy this video of our trip.

Vet-A-Visit Fun

This was the exhibit where I spent most of the day. We were showing off some of the raptors that we have in the Wildlife Ward. We had a Barred Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Red Shoulder Hawk and a Merlin Falcon. We also release a Cooper's Hawk that came into the ward last year with a broken wing.

This was one of our favorite exhibits. They painted a horse with many of the anatomical structures that you would see if the horse had no skin or muscle. Kudos to the artist on this one.

Megan and I both were able to hold a gator that the Michigan Society of Herpetologist brought in for people to see. They also had a 5 foot gator for us to pet as well.

This is me with a Mexican Red Kneed Tarantula. It is funny that I am not scared of these big spiders, but I hate the little ones :) 

A Horse Treadmill

Yesterday, Megan and I went to the MSU Vet-a-Visit which happens but once a year. Basically the Vet School/Hospital opens its doors the public and lets them see what we do. There were thousands of people that showed up to see all the fun stuff. This is a horse named "Beannie" running on a treadmill. They use this treadmill to evaluate performance levels of horses and a bunch of other things. It is pretty neat to see a horse going full speed but staying in one place.

Tahoe Commercial?

This was fun to make. There is a website that Chevy set up that let users make commercials. Here is my stab at it. I was not too kind to them, but it was still a funny thing to do. You can make your own by clicking here.

Belated B-Day Gift

Happy Day! I just bought my Airport Express tonight, which should be here in five business days. I have really been wanting one so when I saw one on sale a snatched it up using my B-day money that people sent (thank you!). For those who don't know what this is, it is basically a wireless router the size of a deck or cards that can also stream music to my stereo and also print wirelessly. That means I now get to take 3 cables out of the back of my PC. Pretty sweet!

BJ and Tony

I kept thinking that someone would put some new pictures on the blog but since it didn't happen, we get to see BJ and Tony relaxing.