Snowed in

Tuesday morning I got up to shovel us out so I could go get Ben and then head to work.myself.

Wasn't happening.  After an hour or so, I cleared the driveway enough to back out to the road.  I hoped I could get to the ruts in the snow where some SUVs & trucks had driven past ... but even in that I got stuck.  I managed to unstuck myself in only about 15 mins, then took another hour or so to finish the driveway.

Helped dig out neighbors, helped unstuck some of their vehicles.

About 10:00 Ben called to say a coworker's parent could get out of his drive and had offered to drop off stranded lifeguards at their homes.  About 10:45 the plow finally cleard our street.  Ben was dropped off about 10 minutes later while I was clearing the skred from the bottom of our driveway.

After helping a couple neighbors again I finally got back in the house just past noon.

Man, I am still sore.

Snow!

Ben needed to be picked up from work about 9:30ish tonight.  It's been snowing pretty fiercely all afternoon, so I figured I'd give myself a few extra minutes to drive slowly and left about 9:10.

I promptly got stuck at the top of our driveway.  And by "at the top", I mean 2 feet out of the garage.  But you know, especially on pristine new snow, it's deceptive how much drifting happens at the top of the driveway.  I cleared that away and sure enough, it was at least 12 inches deep there and less deep as you went further down the driveway.

So I got the car backing down the driveway ... and got stuck at the bottom of the drive.  I mean good and stuck.  Hit the snow on the road and slid right  into the curb in front of our mailbox.

As I was digging that out, Ben called from Tundra Lodge to let us know the hotel was putting up employees for the night because the roads are unfit to drive on.

Queue one of our neighbors getting stuck in the snow driving up the street.  Her brothers came out to help her get her car in the drive, then they came over and helped me.  By now Becky had come out to help clear our drive and dig our car out.  With the neighbors help we got the car half way up the drive.  I only stopped at 1/2 way up because snow had piled up on the rear window and, as I was backing in, I couldn't see where I was going.  Cleared things off, got back in the car, slid back to the bottom of the drive.

Ugh.  More clearing, got the car turned around, drove it forward this time and got it back in.  One hour in our driveway.  Ugh.

I'm really glad Tundra Lodge is putting Ben up overnight. I don't think I could have gotten across town to pick him up.

Merry Christmas!

Bob & Leeann hosted Christmas at their place.  Sherry & Ralph were there with all but two of their kids, Mike & Dana came with their kids and Becky & I were there with all our kids.  Full house.

Sam & Ben both had to return Christmas day due to their work schedules, so we went up Christmas Eve.  I actually worked Christmas Eve so Becky drove up early that morning and I left when I was done.

Christmas day was a wonderful time.  Opened presents, played with family, a big midday meal.  Then I brought Ben home while Becky & Tabby stayed with her parents until Sunday afternoon.

Christmas evening I had a great, long conversation on the phone with my parents.  Mostly I just kicked back & relaxed through Sunday.

Book Report: SeveNeves by Neal Stephenson.

You know a book is going to be good when one page in you're thinking, "Oh man, I can't wait to see how this turns out!"  I mean, first page of the book and Stephenson blows up the moon!  That first chapter is a perfect balance of the dumbstruck astonishment of an amature astronomer observing the event and scientific exposition of how it would actually look more like a fracturing than an explosion.

The destruction of the moon puts Earth on a very short clock.  Everyone is going to die that can't escape the surface of the planet.  So until that happens, there is a frantic effort to get as many of us as possible into space.  After it happens, there is an epic effort to arrive somewhere safe where human survival is possible until they can a return to the surface.  And finally, the book jumps 5000 years into the future to see what that return might look like.

It is every bit as exciting, as engaging as awesome as that first chapter promised.  The writing makes me wish I was better at writing myself just so I could appreciate more all the writing tools he uses that I remember learning about in my high school English class.  It makes me grateful that I had good teachers.  The prose flows flawlessly.  The characters are well developed engaging people.  The concepts he addresses are fascinating.  I love this book.

Neal Stephenson is one of those authors who I will always grab one of his books from the library and know I'm in for a good read.  This last year I read a book of his called Anathem that is easily the best book I've ever read.  Mind blowing.  If you read sci-fi, read that book.  Read anything by Neal Stephenson!

On the back of SeveNeves jacket there's a comment from the LA Times that perfectly captures what I think of Stephenson.  "For all of his achievements, Neal Stephenson's most impressive may be his ability to attract a following equal parts hacker and literati ... It's not just that his prose is smooth and often witty or that his intelligence is wide-ranging and speculative, but that he wrestles with concepts... in ways that would shame most 'literary' novelists."

Lost Friend Found

My family moved from Sandy, Utah to Wisconisin Rapids , WI when I was fourteen years old.  Instead of starting my first year of high school as a Jordan Beetdigger, I would be in 9th grade at West Junion High School.  It seemed like a big disappointment at the time.  Turns out it wasn't so bad.

That first day of school, for some reason, I had one of my Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks with me.  I guess that's how much of a dork I was.  In Mr Pittman's earth science class I sat at a table next to a kid who introduced himself as John Douglas.  Fortunately, he was just as much a dork as me.  He noticed the rulebook and made some offhand comment about also playing D&D.  We probably spent a good portion of that first class geeking out.  Then it turned out we were also in the same American government class, same English class, had the same lunch hour.

We became and remained really good friends until my family moved from Wisconsin to Arizona a few years later.  In fact, John was the last friend I visited before moving.  He still had one of my D&D manuals they day we were leaving.  I had to get it back.

The Summer after moving to Arizona I came back to visit Wisconsin for a couple of weeks and by happy coincidence, it was the same week of John's wedding!  One of the coolest things we ever did together was for his bachelor's party.  John's younger brother threw it for him.  Mostly, I think, as an excuse to convince Mrs. Douglas to turn a blind eye to him drinking.  Only four of us were there.  John, me, his brother and a friend of his brother.  They broke out the booze and sci-fi flick about a radioactive monster.  Neither John nor I drank, we weren't interested in the movie, so we ditched his party.

We drove from his place in Vesper into Rapids, stopped by Copp's to talk to another friend who was working.  Drove around a bit more then heading back to Vesper decided to stop and climb the water tower.  It was a beautiful clear night where we were, but there was a pretty intense lightening storm off on the horizon.  It made for an impressive lightshow.  We just watched it and talked.  For hours.

Then I went back to Arizona.  We lost touch.  That was easy to do in the days before e-mail and Facebook.

Sometime, I don't know, just after 2000 ... like 2002 or so, John somehow found my e-mail address and we got back in touch for a while.  I was in Manitowoc, he was moving to Minnesota.  We actually lost touch again pretty quickly.  Turns out that's easy to do even with e-mail.

Every so often, though, I'd wonder what John was up to and Google his name.  Last week I finally found his online presence.  I commented on his site, got his email address again and have got briefly caught up.  Maybe we'll stay in touch this time.

Band Concert

I sometimes play Magic with a group of folks.  We officially get together every other Wednesday night for a few hours.  It's a lot of fun.  Not everyone makes it every time, but somewhere around 6-10 usually do.  I'd like to make it every time, but realistically I shoot for about once a month.  Today was going to be that day for me ... but Ben had his Christmas band concert tonight.

The concert was good.  I mean, it was a high school band so it sounded like a high school band.  On the final number, a piece called Winter Storm, or something like that, Ben got to play timpani and he sounded fantastic.

The concert was really short.  In past years, each of the school's bands played about 15-20 minutes or so.  It would last a total of about an hour.  There's just not room in the auditorium to accomodate all the attendees, though. So this year they split it up.  The auditorium was a little over half full for the one band and they got to play for a full 1/2 hour.

Last year Ashwaubenon approved a school funding referendum to build a new auditorium.  It should be done by next year and will have the capacity to support a concert with all the bands again.  It'll be nice.

Yay Christmas!

We finally got our Christmas tree up on Saturday.  Bought some new strings of lights 'cause our old ones had too many burnt out bulbs.  I even got some extra lights to put on the bushes outside this year.  I've been waiting for it to stop raining to put them up.

Finally got some Christmas shopping done.  Most of it done, in fact, on Amazon.  There were some frustrating moments when I wanted my order shipped to multiple addresses.  Amazon didn't really make it clear that the "Next" button (or whatever it was called) actually sent the item.  I assumed it would direct me to a "divide up your order" screen.  Turns out I was already on the "divide your order" screen ... you just had to know where to look.  I guess now I do.  I also know how to correct an erroneous address.

Sunday School Lesson: 1 John 3

So  today in Sunday School we were talking about the Epistles of John.  The focus of the lesson being that God is Light, God is Love and it is through us that the love of God can be made manifest.

At one point we read 1 John 3: 16-18

 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
 17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

And all I could think is how morally bankrupt it is of Scott Walker to declare that he wouldn't let Syrian refugees relocate to Wisconsin.

Book Report: Red Country

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Shy sets out with her stepfather Lamb to rescue her young brother & sister from the men who kidnapped them.  Along the way they cross path with famous frontiersmen, a mercenary band currently fighting for the Union, the Union's inquisitors, Rebels, Ghostwolf plainsmen and lawless gold prospectors.

It is an exciting story, told well enough.  The characters are intriguing.  Altogether the book is okay.

But just okay.

As intriguing as the characters are, the only thing that differentiates them is their pasts, thier individual stories.  They mostly don't have distinct personalities.  Instead they all speak with the same cycnical voice, share virtually the same outlook on events regardless of their history or current positions or loyalties or whatever.  There are a few exceptions: Waerdinur, the Ghostwolf who adopts the children; Zubair, the mercenary who sees his work as God's.  Characters who feel like they would have their own fascinating stories.  Unfortuanately, they play relatively small roles in this story.  It ends up less the story of Shy and Lamb and more like Joe Abercrombie telling a fable.

About half way through the book it suddenly struck me that I had read another book by Abercrombie, Half a King, and it had the same issue. Which is primarily why I never continued reading the Shattered Sea trilogy.  It was also an all right book.  Good enough that I finished it, right?  But I think I can find better.

I've got to admit there's something else that bothers me about Red Country.  Abercrombie borrows elements of his world from a quasi US history setting.  Western expansion, gold rush, wild plains natives, lawless frontier towns.  Notably, a land divided between Union and Rebel sides.  Throughout the book there is a theme that good and evil are just the stories we tell about men when in actuality, we all will do what we must to survive or thrive.  For some reason, in his story, Joe Abercrombie choose to portray the Union side as evil and the Rebels as good.  And I'm not just talking telling the story from the perspective of a Rebel soldier who faces a Union army burning across his homeland.  I mean, the Union is portrayed as a tyranny supported by a Spanish-type Inquisition while the Rebels are all freedom loving, don't tread on me individualists and certainly not slave owners.  I could understand it if he was just changing perspective to support his theme.  What bothers me is that in portraying the good & evil in his story he inserts an evil that wasn't there and omits the evil that was.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it.  It's not a Civil War history, after all.  Yet it does bother me that he would borrow from that history, even use the same vocabulary, but warp it into something it wasn't.  That dissonance distracted from his story.  Or maybe the dissonance is intentional.  Abercrombie's way of illustrating how wrong it is to let storytellers define the sides for us.

In the end, I guess if you've got nothing else to read and this is sitting around ... it is an exciting read.  But I bet you could find better.

Time to get a new computer

So the other day we had a window message pop up: "Upgrade to Windows 10 now!" Our computer is pretty old so we always just click "No Thanks".  And I did this time too ... only to have it start downloading anyway!

I don't know, maybe I misclicked?  It sure looked like an official Windows thing (and still seems to have been), so I don't think it was a virus of some sort. Anyway I figured, whatever, maybe it's fated to happen eventually anyway, right?  So when it was done downloading I went ahead and installed.

Oh man.

First the good.  It freed up about 60G on our hard drive.  That's worthwhile for the amount of memory Becky's photography is using.

But oh man, the bad.  Our computer runs sooooo slow now.  Constantly freezes up.  It gets worse when we try to use multiple programs simultaneously.  So frustrating.

Now, our computer is about six years old.  It was kinda' glitchy anyway.  We've been contemplating getting a new one.  So it's really not a hard decision between going through the hassle of backing out the Win10 install or getting a new machine. We're going to get a new machine.

I'm really unimpressed with Windows 10, though.

Fire Drill

The other night Tabby confided that she was afraid of fire.  She worries we might have a fire in our house and she wouldn't know where to go or what to do.  So we talked about it a while and I realized it had been a very long time since we've had a fire drill. Like a few years.  Long enough that in Tabby's short lifetime, she couldn't remember it.

Boy did Tabby ever take to the idea.  She put herself in charge of planning it, made fake fire drawings she could tape up around the house and made sure we were all informed where to go.

I'm really glad we did it.  Turns out Tabby had no idea how to open her windows.  Now she does.

Book Report: The Robe of Skulls

Tabby found a book that she absolutely loved.  Enough to make Becky & I read it as well.  The Robe of Skulls by Vivian French.

Lady Lamorna wants to buy a new robe from the Crones, but is out of gold.  So she hatches a plot to get gold involving princes, toads & blackmail.  Foyce is a wicked girl who wants in on the plot.  Foyce's sister Gracie just hopes to escape life with Foyce and their cruel father Mange. Prince Marcus wants an adventure.  All their paths cross with the help of an entrepreneurial bat named Marlon.

It's a cute story pitting evil against good.  The writing is lively and fun, as are the characters.  I'm with Tabby.  The book is aimed at mid to late grade school kids and I would recommend it as an enjoyable book to read.

Real Appeal

As I approached 210 lbs this Summer I decided that was fatter than I wanted to be.  I feel the weight on me, hindering how I move, aggravating what would otherwise be minor aches.  So when my insurance company sent out e-mails offering to pay for a weight loss program called Real Appeal, I signed on.

I'm approaching it differently than I did Weight Watchers about 15 years ago.  I was strict on WW.  Followed the point guidelines rigorously, lost 50 lbs in six months.  That was cool ... but I was also miserable all the time.  Soooo hungry.  Cranky.  I would have liked to lose another 10 lbs and probably could have in just another month or two.  I was just done though.  Couldn't stand it anymore.

This time I don't care about being so stringent.  Having the support structure to track my diet habits, to check in with a group all doing the same thing that's helpful to keep me focused.  As long as my weight is going the right direction, I'll be happy with that.  I don't care how fast it goes that way.  It's working out so far.  I'm down to about 198.

I'm afraid that leads me to often blow off my Coach, Lisa.  She encouraged me to try and shoot for about 1550 calories per day.  That's where I was miserable on WW.  There's no way.  "So maybe try 1900 a day to start and as you get used to it cut back."  Ha!  Cut back. 1700-1900 a day is actually not too bad, though some days I do feel hungrier and jump up around 2000-2100.  Still fine.  The RA software tells me my basal metabolic rate is about 2500 calories per day and describes finding a "calorie sweet spot" where you're under that basal rate, but not hungry all the time.  Roughly 2000 calories seems to be where that is for me.

He comment on Thanksgiving was, "I discourage 'cheat days'.  It's hard to get back on track."  Oh but I love cheat days.  Especially on holidays.  One of the realizations I had on WW was just how much a role food plays in our social lives.  And by not eating, or by significantly curtailing what I ate, I felt socially isolated at times.  I'm going to eat a lot at Thanksgiving.  I'll binge on candy at Christmas.  Snack all night New Year's Eve.  Have some cake on Ben's birthday.  So that means some weeks I may not lose weight?  Like I plateaued out Thanksgiving week?  I'm okay with that.  And admitting I'm okay with that helped me get back on track just fine.

I guess I'm figuring that the best diet is the one you'll actually do, right?

Family Gaming

Tabby has discovered a new game in Minecraft.  I don't remember what it's called ... some sort of quick build competition.  The players are given a theme and have 3 minutes to build something related to that theme.  Then all players get to tour each others' builds and vote on which is best.  She loves it.  "I don't win, but I'm just a little kid and it's fun and that's what games are for, right?  To have fun?"

That is right, Tabby.  You have fun.  I love that she's doing something creative like that in a game.

We had a fun time playing games over Thanksgiving.  I recently bought some new games we played a couple times.  Ascension and Dominion.  They're very similar.  I went to Gnome Games intending to purchase Dominion on a day they had a 25% off sale, but they were sold out, so I got Ascension because it was similar.  Then a few weeks later when I went in and saw they had some copies of Dominion I snagged one.

Tabby's favorite is a game we have called Dead Man's Draw.  It's a push your luck type card game based on an app.

So anyway, over Thanksgiving while Jack & Sam were both up we played those games a few times.  So fun.

Games aren't really Becky's thing, so she didn't join us.  Plus she wanted to put together a photo display for a networking thing a friend from church was holding for a bunch of women who run their own businesses.

I guess it's good that someone in the house has responsible priorities, but I am also glad I have kids that see the value in gaming.

Book Report: The Library at Mount Char

I recently finished reading The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins.  I liked it.  The story is about a God who has gone missing and his children who are trying to find him.  Then there are some interesting plot twists.

Interesting is a good way to describe the book.  It is an interesting portrayal of what it would mean to be a god.  At least, what it would mean for someone with all our mortal flaws.  There are an interesting set of characters with an interesting set of flaws and virtues.

I'm not sure what else to say about the book.  It was fun to read.

Pictures!

We've got so many pictures to show off.  Going all the way back to this spring.

Bob & Leeann came up at some point.  Becky took them out for pictures.  Fonferrek maybe?  Somewhere with rocks & trees & water.

Sam graduated from High School!  Yay Sam!  About a week later he was in Milwaukee.  St Francis, to be precise.  Quickly got himself a job stocking shelves at Target and started figuring out the whole living on your own thing before school started in the fall.  He's attending Milwaukee Area Technical College to get a degree in Audio Production.

Ben graduated to 11th grade!

One weekend Becky, Tabby & I went to visit Sam at his place.  He lives, like, a five minute walk from a great beach with a beautiful view of the Milwaukee skyline.

We took a weekend to go to Michigan.  Spent a night in St. Joe with Becky's Grandma & Grandpa Chadderdon.  Their last week in St. Joe, in fact.  They have now moved to Nebraska.

Went to Sherry's place while we were there.

Becky has been giving herself photoshop assignments so she doesn't lose what she learned this spring in a class she took. We spent a whole afternoon at the botanical gardens getting good flower shots so she could turn pictures like this:

into this:

Plus she's taken us out just to snap pictures for fun.

Becky took some friends of hers from here in Green Bay along with Tabby & Ben and met Mikey's family at Eau Claire Dells.

On July 30th we went out and got pictures of the blue moon .. just like it was the evening before Tabby was born.

Becky traded family photos with a woman she knows from church for a spectacular birthday cake.

Summer fun at the water pad!

In August we all went up to Marquette, MI for the Ore to Shore bike race.  I mean, I guess the bike race happened.  We actually went there for fun on the lakes.  Tabby learned to fish with Grandpa Chadderdon.

Per tradition we hit Lake Superior after the bike race.

With exhausted bikers.

With a side trip to Black Rocks Beach

And more fun on the lake at the cabin.

We went to Alton, IL to visit Judy.  She took us to a park on the Mississippi River with an awesome fountain.

And took us into St. Louis to see the Arch.

Down to the School of Dentistry campus where they have a statue of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world, who was from Alton.

A new year of school has started.  We have quite a group at the bus stop in our neighborhood.

Jack got his own place in Sheboygan and is working at Jimmy Johns again.

Just this last weekend we went up north of Cable, WI for the Chequamagon Fat Tire Fest.  Becky thought she'd try a "star trails" picture.

We relaxed on Lake Delta.

Tabby went fishing.

We hiked to St. Peter's Dome.

And Morgan's Falls.

Tabby got to be, literally, happy as a kid in a candy shop.

The race happened.

Ben & Ryan found some fresh water jellyfish. They're tiny. About the size of a penny.

And finally, just a cool picture took fooling around with some new tools she got with her camera for a wedding photo shoot this coming weekend.