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Christmas Report
I’m happy to report we had a great Christmas weekend! We went to Jackson on Friday to see everyone, eat some good food, go to church, and have our annual Dollar Gift exchange. On Sunday, we were in East Lansing to see J’s family, eat some good food, watch the Lions upset the Dolphins, and catch up on all the latest news.
The boys both got iPods for Christmas (but you knew they would). They pooled their money to buy a Wii videogame system, and have been playing it for the last few days. M and K will usually win games against me - they have time to practice because they are kids with no responsibilities during their break, and I work for a living. I did manage to stay up late last night, however, and beat M's high score in Archery. It won't last long, but it's something.
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Some links I've been saving up
My company bought me a phone so I could be notified of server problems during off hours. They gave me a choice between the BlackBerry or this one.
Some neat pictures of the Paris subway.
A huge boat being disassmbled in Bangladesh.
A fun project for a rainy day and an old Diet Mountain Dew can. Let me know if you're low on Diet Mountain Dew cans, I have plenty.
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Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!
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A Day Out in Ann Arbor
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Yesterday we had a fun afternoon out in Ann Arbor. First, to Anneke's to get the kids their Christmas haircut. Then we went to BD's Mongolian BBQ, which is a fun restaurant. You go through a salad bar-type line and fill a bowl with meat, veggies, sauces, spices, and other things. Then you take the bowl to a big circular grill and someone grills it up for you using long metal sticks. The bowl I put together had chicken, tofu, hot jalapenos, assorted veggies, Szechuan sauce, dill, and crushed red pepper. It was just a tad hotter than I intended, but it was good. We were all happy with what we chose. If you don't want to try to guess what your combination will taste like, or need some suggestions, they have recipe cards available that you can follow. When J and I first went there a long time ago, we used the cards to give us an idea of what to do, but now we just walk over and dig in.
After we digested that for a few minutes, we walked down the street to the art store that has the retro Ann Arbor transportation posters (we have two in our back hallway.) They are are realistic, but fictional, posters advertising Ann Arbor transportation systems, such as a subway, monorail, airline, and so on. They are very believable.
Next, a few quick stops: The Cupcake Station and ACME Mercantile.
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Christmas is only a few days away. We have all our shopping done. More accurately, J has all our shopping done, as she's usually in charge of getting everything for the kids. This year, the #1 item on each of their lists was an iPod. I told them that iPods weren't free, and that I was in my late 30's before I got my first iPod. That last argument wasn't very convincing, though.
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Lots of fun plans with family coming up this weekend. We're looking forward to seeing everyone!
In case I'm not back here before then, Merry Christmas!
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Yesterday we had a fun afternoon out in Ann Arbor. First, to Anneke's to get the kids their Christmas haircut. Then we went to BD's Mongolian BBQ, which is a fun restaurant. You go through a salad bar-type line and fill a bowl with meat, veggies, sauces, spices, and other things. Then you take the bowl to a big circular grill and someone grills it up for you using long metal sticks. The bowl I put together had chicken, tofu, hot jalapenos, assorted veggies, Szechuan sauce, dill, and crushed red pepper. It was just a tad hotter than I intended, but it was good. We were all happy with what we chose. If you don't want to try to guess what your combination will taste like, or need some suggestions, they have recipe cards available that you can follow. When J and I first went there a long time ago, we used the cards to give us an idea of what to do, but now we just walk over and dig in.
After we digested that for a few minutes, we walked down the street to the art store that has the retro Ann Arbor transportation posters (we have two in our back hallway.) They are are realistic, but fictional, posters advertising Ann Arbor transportation systems, such as a subway, monorail, airline, and so on. They are very believable.
Next, a few quick stops: The Cupcake Station and ACME Mercantile.
---
Christmas is only a few days away. We have all our shopping done. More accurately, J has all our shopping done, as she's usually in charge of getting everything for the kids. This year, the #1 item on each of their lists was an iPod. I told them that iPods weren't free, and that I was in my late 30's before I got my first iPod. That last argument wasn't very convincing, though.
---
Lots of fun plans with family coming up this weekend. We're looking forward to seeing everyone!
In case I'm not back here before then, Merry Christmas!
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U of M Basketbal Wrapup
K and M at the game
We went to the Oakland University vs. University of Michigan basketball game yesterday. It was the first time I've been to a game in about 15 years, and the first time the boys have been there. Oakland recently upset No. 7-ranked Tennessee, and gave MSU all they could handle, so we were expecting a fight. UM won 69-51, though, and UM was in control for most of the game, so it wasn't what we were expecting.
You get a prize if you can find the ball in this picture. Click on the picture to make it bigger.
After the game, we went to the dollar store to buy our dollar gift exchange presents for the family Christmas gathering coming up. I'm not going to give away what I bought, but I would have paid up to two dollars for it, it's that good.
The Big Chill: An Aptly Named Event
The boys, with red cheeks and hot chocolate.
The four of us went to The Big Chill, which was an outdoor hockey game between U of M and MSU. A hockey rink was installed on the field of UM Stadium for the occasion. Over the last few weeks, a number of other hockey games, from kids' leagues to high school to college, have been played there, but this was the biggest game scheduled.
We helped set a Guinness record for the largest crowd ever to watch a hockey game: 113,411 people. I don't think our names will be in the book, but if they are, I hope they spell our names right. There was a similar game at MSU's stadium a few years back, which was the largest crowd to watch a hockey game to date, but it wasn't an official Guinness record because no one invited the Guinness people to witness it.
At the end of the national anthem, there was a flyover by a stealth bomber. It was awe-inspiring - it looked like a space ship and made almost no noise. I heard later that it also took all of our pictures and samples of our DNA as it passed over.
A picture of the Wolverines beating the daylights out of the Spartans.
We were able to see the puck and the game surprisingly well from our seats. We were concerned we wouldn't be able to see much, but when we got there and saw how it was set up, we weren't worried any more.
UM won, 5-0. MSU fans like me had a happy moment in the middle of the game when the puck went past the UM goalie for a goal, only to have it called off by the referees. I don't watch much hockey, but it's not unusual for goals to be called back for some infraction or another. Each time UM scored a goal, fireworks went off, and at the end of the game there was a fireworks show. Fireworks were sent up from the field and the tops of the luxury boxes. It was a good show and a lot of fun overall. (If you click on the stadium picture above to enlarge it, you can see the pads with the fireworks laid out across the 5-yard line.)
The weather wasn't too bad, fortunately. The forecast had rain in it for a while, but yesterday morning it showed the rain and snow holding off until well after the game ended. Some us were making use of the little hand-warmer packs on our hands and toes. The boys also slurped on hot chocolate at the second intermission to fend off the cold.
I hope you're all staying warm these days, but still have some time to get outside and have some fun.
The Week In Pictures
This year's tree!
The Christmas tree is up! We got a corkbark fir this year, which is the first time we've gotten one.
A Corliss steam engine
We went to Henry Ford Museum on Saturday. I love the giant steam generators and seeing the machinery that powered the beginning of the industrial age. We watched a demonstration of the Corliss steam engine, which was (in this case) used to drive a 24-foot diameter wheel. The wheel was used to transfer power to machines via a giant belt. This particular engine powered 12 different businesses at a time, from textiles to woodworking. For demonstration purposes in the museum, the steam power was replaced by compressed air. This giant engine, with its 23-ton piston rod, can be powered by 2-3 psi of compressed air. That's it.
Because the engine could only be started with the piston rod in a certain position, factories that owned one of these engines often employed children whose job it was to rotate the wheel until the piston rod was in the right position. They did this by climbing onto the wheel's huge spokes; their weight would cause the wheel to slowly run the piston through its cycle until it was at its top position, ready to be started again.
A better picture, and more history, can be found here.
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