What a fun weekend! Saturday afternoon we had some friends over, cooked hot dogs and potatoes in a campfire and tapped a keg of Foothills Brewery’s Sexual Chocolate Stout. Sunday, Jacob and I went to check out a friend’s new 10-acre slice-of-heaven in Northern Orange County. A couple of the guys had brought their arsenal […]

Dies ist die Burg Hohenzollern, einer der definitiven Höhepunkte unserer Reise nach Deutschland im August.  Wir fuhren vom Rheintal in den Schwarzwald nach Hechingen, am Rande der Schwäbische Alb. Wenn man sich der Burg nähert, werden die Straßen schmaler und steiler, bis die Burg direkt üher dem Besucher im Wald aufragt. Dort parkt man das […]

This is Hohenzollern Castle, one of the definite highlights of our trip to Germany earlier this month. We drove from the Rhine valley across the Black Forest to Hechingen, at the edge of the Schwaebische Alb. As you approach the castle, the roads become narrower and steeper, until the castle looms overhead in the forest. […]

I am taking welding lessons Wednesday nights at the local Community College, and so I spent three hours last night welding with a stick welder. At 2 AM, I woke up and I felt like my eyes had burning sand in them. That condition is called flash burn, or arc eye, and it is essentially […]

Auf Deutsch … 2011 was a rough year. I’m trying to come up with some good stuff that happened this year, and it’s not easy. One personal highlight was participating in the Doughman race with the 11-foot-8 team. We raised $340 and came in 8th place (out of 75 teams). Besides the race, I ran […]

Today we drove to Roxboro and bought this horse trailer. Finally we’re properly mobile with the horses and can take them places. There are a number of parks in the area that have horse trails. Also some of the stables around here have trails that are open to the public for a small fee. We’re […]

Last Saturday, October 8, at 11:30 PM Laura’s mom, Dolores, died at Eaton Community Hospice in Charlotte, MI. She had been in the hospital, then in rehab for a broken hip, when a CT scan revealed that she had advanced pancreatic cancer. When we found out, Laura managed to get her mom into hospice fairly […]

Saturday I rented an 11hp “Billy Goat” brush mower from Best Rent All and spent about 5 hours this weekend mowing in and around the pasture. The horses are pretty picky eaters and the pasture is not well seeded, so there are areas where weeds and tree saplings are choking any grass that may want […]

Nothing says “summer is here” more than a couple of muggy mid-90 days over Memorial Day weekend, building a tree house and catching fish in the pond. Last weekend, I completed our treehouse. Well, it’s not so much a “house” as a platform in the tree – about 15 feet (5m) above the ground. It […]

Today we bought our new truck – a 1998 Dodge Ram 2500 with a 5.9 liter Cummins 12-valve Diesel engine with 138,575 miles. This is a much better ride than the Ford – not just a “farm truck.” Better handling, more comfy interior … well suited for longer drives. And with the powerful Cummins Diesel […]

[DEUTSCH weiter unten … ] Saturday, we took Wally and Cleo out on a road-trip for the first time. We borrowed the truck and trailer from friends of ours. We wanted to check out the truck’s towing prowess as we were planning to buy it. We had done a test-run the previous weekend and loaded […]

We’re in! I registered the 11-foot-8 Doughman team today – Team Overheight When Flashing! We’ll be competing on Saturday May 28th with 75 teams from all over the country in the DOUGHMAN race – the world’s premier Team Relay Quadrathlon, combining competitive eating with a traditional triathlon. Part of the challenge is also to raise […]

Yeah – another one of those weeks were “challenging” was just not good enough. At work we have to re-build our main file server and so we’re shuffling Terabytes of data around the networks, checking file permissions, backing up data, bla bla bla … Julia had a viola recital today with all the other students […]

Today, 2/27, on my way home from work (!) I saw the odometer roll over to 277777 miles (=447038.748 kilometers) on my 1991 Mercedes 300D. Cool number – especially on today’s date :) So that’s now 33,000 miles on my homebrew  biodiesel in the last 3 years, and she’s going strong.

This week was not difficult enough with both kids at home with the flu … no, today this guy calls and explains he’s trying to collect on a $250 loan someone using my name and SSN  took out last year somewhere in California. Great … another one! I explained politely that 1) I have never […]

Last night it snowed again … while Julia was at her viola lesson. On the way home I had a bit of trouble because the heater in the car does not work and so the wiper would just schmier the snow across the windshield, where it would then freeze. I had to deploy lots of […]

Deha – our 18-year-old siamese on caturday.

Boy – what a surprise that year had in store for us! Perhaps the greatest change in lifestyle for Laura an me since we had children … and a much bigger surprise than the children! Of course I am talking about our horses, Waldo and Cleo. While building our horsefarm and figuring out the ins […]

An hour ago, at 3 AM Eastern, I rolled out of bed to check out the lunar eclipse. The moon was almost completely in the shadow of the earth. Only a sliver on the right side was still brighter than the rest of the moon. I bundled up and went outside and took a good […]

Today, we had our first snow this winter. The weather report called for some flurries tonight, but instead we had about a 1/2 inch of snow this afternoon.  I went out around 5:00 to see if I could get to the grocery store, but even Guess Rd. was totally covered, and so I turned around. […]