Photo of the day, Thursday, 10/16/08

That long, painful meeting was this morning. It went longer than I had anticipated, but it was pretty successful, or at least, that's what I thought at the time. We're still waiting to see a PO. After that I tried to decompress by working on a few of the other projects that we have going . Kind of crazy to decompress via slightly less stressful work, but it seems to work for me.



Today was conferences for Spencer and so Holly and I met at Middle School. Hmm, that sounds kind of funny, we actually met well after high school, but that's another story. Anyway, remember that post that had a photo of Spencer's Rosie's Diner project? Oh rats, I just remember that was Holly's post, she had scooped me that day, of course I went through every post that I have made in order to come to that realization, we'll here's a link to it so you can remember how awesome it turned out. Rosie's Diner We saw the final product today, in one of the display cases at school. Oh, sure there were some other structures in the same display case, but not of the same caliber. Just my unbiased opinion. Anyway, all his teachers love him, of course and have Spencer stories of their own. There was no earth shattering conference, just the usual, and he's doing well so we can relax, at least for a day or two.



Yesterday's shot was one that got some comments coming back our way. Remember to share your thoughts with the world, it's easy, get to the actual blog website and go to the bottom and click on the Post a comment link.

I am going to Outdoor Leadership Training for Boy Scouts this weekend so my post will be silent. I will try to come back with some good stories and I may even take the camera. See you Sunday/Monday, depends on my tiredness and the family.

Here's another photo from our little guitar shoot last night. I am not really sure what this pose was for, other than to prove publicly that I will pose for my son after all these years of posing him. Maybe it was to show that our necks are thicker than guitar necks and therefore we know that Dad (that would be me) is not a pencil neck geek. Just a thought.







Have a great day,
Pat

Photo of the day, Wednesday, 10/15/08

As I am settling in to my fall routine I am struck by how life seems to be busier and busier as I get older. I used to attribute it to time speeding up as I aged, but now I'm not so sure. For example work is like this; I have a large project going with one customer and the tooling order is getting close to being placed, so close that I hope we can get it taken care of tomorrow. Anyway, we've been going crazy trying to get everything in place. Additionally we have several other customers that are demanding our attention, all with the potential of tooling and more sales. Yes, even in these crazy economic times, we are frantically busy. Add to that the 3 Bible studies that I'm involved in and Boy Scouts and Children's Ministry and the time needed to prepare for that. (by the way, we're still selling Boy Scout popcorn here) Oh, yeah, I have yet another Boy Scout camping trip this weekend. (I'm pretty sure that I've now camped more this year than I have up to this point in my life.) This time it's just adults, all trying to learn Outdoor Leadership skill to help our boys. (all I can think is that it's going to be cold and wet)

So, where am I going with this? It's pretty simple, Live Life Out Loud and try to keep up! Easy to say, not so easy to do. I always get wrapped around the axle at work. You know, get involved with way more than I should and then my home life starts to fall apart. I am pretty sure that that's not God's plan for me. He has plans to prosper me, not to grind me into the ground. So every once in a while, I take a break. Fall back and ask, what's most important for the future of the world? Usually, it's not work. Of course, with teens, I'm not so sure I can pass anything more than a cold on to the youth of this country.

Now, as for a break here's what worked tonight, here we are taking a break from the stress of life and we're playing guitar hero. I'd like to point out that I actually beat Ian today on guitar hero, of course he was playing on expert and I was playing at..., well,... well, I was not playing on expert. Anyway, Spencer, me and Ian are posed and ready to go crazy for our fans. Well, actually, it's fan. Only Holly was cheering us on, but she's the best fan a guitar hero could hope for. Rock On!

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Monday, October 13, 2008

Man I hate construction season. I was driving back from a customer visit in some pretty heavy near rush hour traffic. Well, OK, it's Grand Rapids, and we don't really have a whole rush hour. It's more of a rush half hour. Anyway, you have to remember, my commute is now totally contained within Rockford's city limits. So there I am, moving along and I see there's some construction coming up and we're to get over. I blindly obey. No one else seems to though. In fact, I see some that get just plain obnoxious with the cutting in and out of traffic.

I was getting pretty angry sitting there. As I sat and stewed in my own juices I realized that I can't do anger alone. It's just no fun without someone to witness and commiserate with. So I laughed at myself and turned up the music. Soon enough we were all flying down the road again and best of all, I felt great!

Here's a shot of our tent village from last weekend. Mine is way to the back, behind the dark blue. The boys were off to the left. It's kind of a cool shot because you can see my shadow in the foreground. Can you tell I had my Indiana Jones hat on?

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Sunday

Pretty quiet day here today. We went to church and then out to lunch and home for a nap. Did one thing in the garage and then started just goofing off. Very non productive, very revitalizing.

Interesting thing about lunch, we went to Bennigans. The parent company failed and the stores owned by the parent company have all been closed. (For details check out Wikipedia) But not any in Michigan. Not yet anyway. Since everyone knows that the parent company failed, people are just not eating at the one on Alpine Ave. So it looks abandoned, which just fuels the fires of confusion. Anyway, we stopped in because it's always been one of our favorite hangout and the service now is excellent, because they have plenty of staff. Good food is still there too. The uniform of the day was kind of cool, it's a T-shirt that says; "Corporate went bankrupt and all I got was this stupid T-shirt".

Here's a shot of Tanner, Shaun and Ian, three additional marksmen that proved themselves this shooting day. Shaun shoots left and there were no left hand guns, but he did great and even took down a clay bird or two at the shotgun area. Tanner said he liked the rifles the best. Ian didn't do the shotguns, he knew the kick was more than he wanted to deal with, but he shot two rounds of a black powder gun and about 6 rounds on a SKS, not really sure what it was but the ammo was really large and when he hit the milk jug filled with water, it blew up really cool.

Have a great day,
Pat