My Mind: Lifesized

I'm sitting in the cozy confines of my folks house in Indianapolis, having arrived back this afternoon from my week-long vacation on the western shores of Michigan. I had a great week as usual and have many stories to tell and memories to relive as the present fades into the past. This was my first year to organize the trip and so the first couple of days were fairly stressful...it was Monday before I could really begin to think about relaxing. I'm very satisfied as every person who attended told me how much fun they had and what a great job I did. I wanted people to rekindle that excitement we all felt when Curt Churchman first started organizing this trip and the group had about 15 people, so I reached into the past and revived some of his cool gags. I had goodie bags waiting for everyone upon their arrival (an old Global Churchman standard): Kids got wall walkers, crazy balloons, bubbles, lunch bags, glow in the dark bracelets (Troy Michael quickly informed me his w...

I've just got a few minutes left on my guest pass at the Douglas/Saugatuck Public library so I'll make this entry quick... I'm enjoying the second week of a two week vacation that brought me back to Indiana for a week and then up to western Michigan to participate in the 13th annual vacation with my friends from the "Holland" group, which seems to be growing like the Borg. Days on the beach making sand castles, reading books and enjoying good conversation are hard to beat. It's pretty awesome. There were 39 people for dinner on Saturday night! I'll write more later.

I was hoping to just plug my digital camera into my Mom's desktop and run with it, seeing as how both my Mom and I have Canon digitals. Unfortunately I can't get her software to recognize my camera so I can't post any photos of all the fun stuff I've done so far. Here is a quick re-cap: I arrived in Indy Saturday afternoon and spent the evening with my folks. On Sunday they had a very nice family cookout for me and my Dad's brother and his wife, along with two of their daughters (Uncle Mike, Aunt Mary Ellen & cousins Michelle & Jennifer)and one of their daughters husband (Jim)joined us for the fun. Monday we tried the Bloomington adventure and Monday night I visited my Ultimate buddies for a cookout. Yesterday my sister Leslie (superwoman in my eyes), her two girls (Tara & Brooke) and me headed over to Holiday Park for a picnic and an afternoon of fun. We played in the playground and went for a nice little hike along the White River. We also wal...

...Or what I did to kill two hours in Spokane, Washington.  I'm back in Indiana for the first week of my second two week vacation in a month and a half.  I think it is safe to say I'm pushing the limit with my employers (not that I meant to, it's jsut the way the vacations fell this year. Two weeks in France last month and now a week in Indiana and a week in Michigan....yes, you ARE right, I cannot complain).  Anyhow, with all the last minute planning for the trip to France, I forgot to actually purchase my plane ticket back to Indiana.  I tried to wrangle a frequent flyer trip out of Northwest Airlines and using my Merrill Lynch miles but in the end I didn't have enough miles bacause my departure date was too close. I was left with the only other viable option, purchasing my ticket through Priceline . And the best deal was to leave from Spokane, which is a little over three hours due west of Missoula.   My original intent was to leave Missoula early and get a...

Somehow an earlier post about the Arlee powwow was lost. I'm trying it again. Over the July 4th weekend I ventured up to Arlee, Montana for the 116th annual Arlee powwow. It was an amazing event attended by Native Americans from the USA and Canada and plenty of non-natives alike. The powwow is a celebration made even more important by the coincidence with the holiday weekend. Originally, during this time of year, tribes from the area would send their boys out to become men. They would hunt and also battle other boys from other tribes. The ones who returned would gather in the river valley to dance and celebrate and also to mourn for the ones who didn't return. This ritual was replaced with the Powwow. Now they celebrate with dance and honor those who've passed on. Their dance also honors native Veteran's and I was honored to meet an Vietnam Veteran wearing the Navy Cross, a Purple heart,a Vietnam campaign medal and many others I did not recognize. I was luck...

Oh man am I stoked. This morning I went to one of my favorite music websites, allmusic.com to do a search for the artists of a particular song and to my complete surprise the site was completely different. it has been tottally re-vamped and amped up with all kinds of advanced features making a guy like me practically explode with excitement. Allmusic.com has been my #1 source for information about songs, artists and albuns for some time and I've always wished you could have some specific advanced search features, like being able to do a sub-search or narrow down a general search or drill down in the genre section. Well now you can! The site already had some great features, but now it's even better. They've added a ton of classical music content, added expanded artists & album information (credits, songs, charts & awards) and generally made my day. You can now register with the site too and subscribe to specific newsletters and other email offerings. The...

Last weekend I headed about three hours north and west of Missoula to one of the greatest little towns I've been to in a long time: Sandpoint, Idaho. Sandpoint has a population of about 6,500 people and sits on the shores of Lake Pend Orielle (French for "Ear Pendent"), a 43 mile long and 1,000 foot beauty of a lake if there ever was one. Here's a picture of the lake: I was in Sandpoint for the first annual Mountain2Lake Ultimate Classic, an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. I'm an Ultimate junkie, although my days of trying to be a serious Ultimate athlete on a competitive club team are quickly giving way to playing more of a supportive role and having more fun. I played on a Missoula team of players, most of whom play the sport on a recreational level and not on the competitive level. Overall Missoula sent 21 folks on 3 different teams to the tourney. There were nine teams from as far away as Bozeman, Montana and Calgary, British Columbia. The tourney was...

My Mom just forwarded a new picture of my two favorite girls...ny niece's Tara & Brooke. It is so cute I just have to share Tara & Brooke 2004 . I can't believe how old they are getting and I guess that means I can't believe how old I am getting!

That's what I was told anyway. I never did find the trailhead, but I did find some beautiful Montana wildflowers including Indian paintbrushes, bitterroot, lupine and like these red paintbrushes and this beargrass

Mmmmm...am winding down from a really wonderful 4th of July. I'm still battling my lung infection, so any thoughts of heavy exercising were out. Some of my friends were up at Flathead Lake, some were in Idaho and just about everyone else went on a big mountain bike ride, so I was left to my own devices for the day. I decided to try and find this scenic loop hike up in the mountains that I heard about. The location is in the Lolo National Forest, near the Forest Service roads that access Schwartz Creek and Upper Miller Creek (for those of you GPS freakers out there...Garrett, you know I'm talking to you). Exhibiting my still novice status as a Montana resident, I didn't bother to take my Lolo Forest map or any other guidebooks, I just got in the car and started driving. As a side note, that is how easy it is to get yourself in trouble out here, because it's easy to think, I've got a car and I'll be on a road, how hard can it be? In reality, you can get yours...

Last year I bought my first home. It took awhile and it was here in Missoula, not in Indianapolis where I lived my previous 38 years, but I finally did it and I've been putting my personal touches on this old house ever since. In september of last year, My Mom & Dad drove out to help me paint the house and work on the yard. We took a plain white house, with a crappy yard, and transformed it into one of the gems on the neighborhood. Dad was a huge help with painting the house transforming it into this while Mom and I hacked away an 8-foot wide swath of grass, hauled in a couple of truckloads of dirt and created a garden . Mom worked for almost three days planting, arranging and plotting out the groth of the garden. Well, my garden in now in full bloom and, thanks to Mom's touch, it is beautiful I love spending time in the garden and everytime I'm out there someone stops to tell me how nice my house and garden look. It makes me pretty happy and makes me smile, thi...

The day is finally here for Lance Armstrong in his quest to do what no other rider has ever done, win 6 straight Tours. This year I'm getting in on the fun with some other friends, playing fantasy Tour through Fantasy CyclingNews.com . My team name is Lucky Spoke. For the cost of $10.00 you get 9,000 points to be used in selecting 15 riders. I like Lance, Tyler, Iban Mayo, Petacchi and Betini...we'll see how my Tour knowledge plays out. Come play along

Pretty excited about the new beta version of Google's email offering, called gmail. My friend Beth beat me to the punch and set up an account before I could get to it, but she was kind enough to send me an invitation and I jumped all over it. Originally I posted my gmail address here, but m super smart friend Bruce reminded me that I was exposiing my address to every spambot out there, so if you want to write to me at gmail, use one of my established email addresses to contact me and I'll give you my new gmail address. GMail will allow me to use keyword searches to find things from ANY email I send or receive through the account and to archive rather than throw away mail with tons of free storage space. Check it out at google gmail