Trip to D.C., Annapolis, and Greenbelt, MD

Alana and I went to Washington D.C., Annapolis and Greenbelt, Maryland for the National League of Cities Board Meeting and the Small Cities Council. We toured the oldest airport in the world at Greenbelt, where the Wright Brothers flew their airplane in 1908 (to get the U.S. military to order a contract from them). We also toured Greenbelt, which was the first planned community in the U.S., under FDR (Small Cities people on the steps of the museum). We also went down to Chesapeake Bay, had more crabs for dinner than I have ever eaten, and toured the old capital building in Annapolis. It was great for us to be with all of the Small Cities people again.

 

Birthday Bash and Fashion Show

Last weekend, we were able to get together at Grammy and Grampie's house to celebrate Jeannie and Allison's birthday (minus Allison because she was at SLO studying for finals). It was great fun to see everyone and to surprise Jeannie and Erin - they didn't know I was coming! Grammy made Jeannie's favorite dinner - TACOS! Erin, Alana, and Jeannie found some dresses that Grammy had worn to college friends' weddings a "few years ago". The girls enjoyed playing "dress up" with the gowns and the adults loved seeing the beautiful styles on them. Mom, you must have turned quite a few heads when you wore those gowns at the weddings. The weekend was fun - just wish we could have had the entire family together!
 

Weekend Getaway - $24,250

Thought this would be a pretty cool trip, and then I realized that it is just a little bit outside my price range. Anyway, check out this website for a pretty hardcore vacation. Seven course meals, rental cars in the form a Ferrari and Bentley, etc...

Click here to check it out.

It could be a sweet honeymoon huh?

G'Day Mate

Brad, Shirley and I just got back from Australia about 7 a.m. this morning. The speech in Melbourne went well but I am glad that it is over. These are some of the pictures that we took. ..saw the penguin migration to their nests one night near Melbourne, walked around the Sydney harbor (cleanest harbor I have ever seen), saw a lot of kangaroos (this one with a baby in her pouch), and then went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef. The people were very friendly. . .I would really like to go back again to see this country that is about the same land mass as the continental U.S. but only has 20 million people.


 

Yard Work

Now that we are back in town for a while and the weather is getting warmer (a little too warm at times) we have been doing tons of yard work. Megan planted a garden next to the deck with strawberries, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers and a few other veggies. We hope that we can put our green thumbs to work and that it will pay off. I mowed a lawn for the first time in my life. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. We decided to settle on a regular push mower since a ride on mower was a little out of the question :)

The Revenge is Still On

Two weeks after returning from Guatemala, some of us are still fighting off some sort of sickness. I am not really sure why I am quite the lucky one, but everyone else claims that these pictures explain why.












Did you know that termites taste a lot like carrots? Neither did we until we found ourselves on the location of SURVIVOR GUATEMALA. We voted our guide off the island to say the least.

Guatemala 2006

Ok folks... here is a quick video that I made of the trip. I didn't have any Mayan music, so that will come in the next one. Enjoy!

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.

Venetian Masquerade

Last night was the Heritage Halls (the dorm that I live in) Invitational. We had a lot of fun making masks for the "Venetian Masquerade." I went with some roommates and friends. It included: dancing, Italian sodas, really good food, karaoke, a "gondola" ride, and great decorations. It was a lot of fun getting all jazzed up with my crazy, but lovely roommates. The pictures are of some of the people I went with (roommates Jill and Tori, and Philip).

The Bracket Standings

NCAA Tournament Standings - Ian is in the lead, but Erin is in a close LAST! We give Erin props because she actually signed up... and did not make a bracket! That means that no matter how bad I do, I will not be in last. Congrats to Ian and Erin! Click on the ball to see the latest standings.

The Kitchen Change

Ok, so here is some of the progression of the kitchen. The first picture is the way the kitchen was when we moved in. The bottom two are where we are as of tonight. We are still going to paint the ceiling and re-staining the cupboard doors. We also bought some new flush-mount lights to get rid of the ugly ones that are currently there. We are having fun with this, but it will be nice when it is all over.

Those Crazy Cats

Cats are funny animals. I think this video is really funny. Also, notice how dangerous cats are to children. And people are worried about Ster and me having a snake when we have kids!

Where is that money going?

During this tax season as we give (willingly or otherwise) our hard earned money to the government, it would really be nice to know where all of it is going. All that information is available on governmental websites, but since I am a visual learner I found this picture very helpful. Kudos to the person who made this. To see the original size, click here.