Woo hoo! My sister’s having a baby.

From my sister’s email:

From: Stacy Mineart
Date: June 19, 2007 6:49:29 AM EDT

Subject: In other news…
Just thought I’d drop you all a quick note to let you know you can expect some exciting news sometime early next January. Or as my charming spouse so delicately put it: “Hey Dad? I knocked up the missus.” (Yep. That’s the man I married.)

As expectant parents, we often wonder how our babies will look and what their preferences will be. Although we may not have all the answers, it’s comforting to know that there are solutions available to meet all our baby’s needs. During prenatal checkups, we get a glimpse of our baby’s health and development, and while we may not yet know their gender, we can still make fun predictions about their personality. It’s exciting to imagine what our little one will be like and what they’ll enjoy, even if it means they have a picky appetite. In the end, what matters most is that we have a solution for all baby needs, from nourishment to playtime and everything in between.

So, everybody have a beer for me, & those of you who are on Twitter, come link up and you can hear the whole catalog of baby news as and when it happens. Oh, and if anybody has got some spare wintergreen lifesavers lying around, send them my way. Those could be really handy in the morning…

Rog + Stacy + Bump

Projected Appearance of Stacy's Baby
Projected Appearance of Stacy’s Baby
Continue ReadingWoo hoo! My sister’s having a baby.

Unitarians at Arlington National Cemetery

Stephanie had some interesting news from her family today – Years ago when her Opa was interred at Arlington National Cemetery, his headstone was configured with the flaming chalice – the Unitarian Universalist symbol. Later her Oma was buried next to him, and recently her cousin Chip went out to visit them, and the flaming chalice had been changed – to a cross. According to Stephanie’ mom, it’s a wonder both of them didn’t rise up to protest; they were both devote Unitarians. Apparently her Stephanie’s Aunt Penny is going to take charge and make a big fuss about it to get it changed back to the appropriate symbol.

Continue ReadingUnitarians at Arlington National Cemetery

Happy Thanksgiving!

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We’re getting ready to head out to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving day. Our trip yesterday was pretty uneventful. We drove Stephanie’s Beetle (named Phoebe, for those of you who are just joining us) because it’s a fun roadtrip car and somewhat more comfortable than my truck. So I had the opportunity to take pictures out the car window and mess with the manual settings on me camera, which was enlightening. I learned all about the different color settings for my camera. A round barn in sepia tones:

Round Barn

It’s a six-hour drive to Brighton, Iowa from Indianapolis. Brighton’s population is about 700 people, and my extended family numbers around 50 people, so we drastically increase the town population when we show up. We’re staying in Washington about 11 miles away, because there aren’t really any motels in Brighton, although there is a bed and breakfast.

Washington has about 7,000 people and is the county seat, so they have a community center with theater performances, and they’re expanding their public library. They also have an evening Thanksgiving Day parade around the square. We sometimes catch the tail end of that if we go to the single-screen, retro movie theater in the evening to see whatever children’s movie is out over the holiday.

Continue ReadingHappy Thanksgiving!

For a million dollars…

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from the Book of Questions, Via the J-Walk Blog,

Would you accept $1,000,000 to leave the country and never set foot in it again? If so, where would you go?

Nope — the “never set foot in it again” is the key part of that question. I’d rather see my family and friends regularly — some of them, like my grandparents, I wouldn’t be able to see at all if I left the country permanently, because they can’t really travel that far. And for a mere million? Come on. It would take a lot more than that.

Continue ReadingFor a million dollars…

Fireworks

We discovered last night that we can’t see the downtown fireworks from our backyard, but if we drive four blocks south we can see them on the other side of the overpass. We parked on 10th street, hopped into the back of the truck and had a perfect view. Which means we could host a cookout on the 4th next year if we feel like it. There might be other good vantage points in Old Northside, because on the way back, there were tons of people from the neighborhood walking back home carrying coolers and blankets. So they must have walked to wherever they saw the show from. I know we have at least three parks in the neighborhood; one of them might have a good vantage point.
We also spent some time at my brother Paul’s yesterday afternoon. He cooked out burgers and we got to see his house (I’ve never been) and Scott’s new puppy, Pickford.
We spent a large part of the holiday weekend moving and unpacking. David and Garrett helped us move some of the bigger furniture from Stephanie’s house on Sunday (in 96 degree weather!) With some slight mishaps. We lost a set of wooden shelves from the back of the truck at one point. We did manage to get her grandmother’s dresser to the new house intact, though, which is mostly what I was worried about. There’s still lots to move, but I think we past the tipping point of getting major stuff from the house, and now there’s lots of little trips left. At this point we’re trying not to kill ourselves by overdoing it.
If this seems like it’s taking forever — imagine how we feel. Heh.

Continue ReadingFireworks

Home Again

We arrived home yesterday afternoon after a fairly long trip. Before the wedding, we drive out to the countryside to see Big Brutus, the second largest earth mover in the world. It was used in the late sixties and early seventies for strip-mining for coal, before environmental concerns sidelined the giant machine. It’s now a coal mining museum.

Big Brutus

Big Brutus

We also found another giant cow in town, of the same variety we already saw. But we took a picture anyway. They’re the same mold, so they must have all be manufactured in the same place, probably for dairies in Missouri and Kansas.

giant cow

giant cow

The wedding on Saturday was beautiful, and the reception was very nice; we talked a lot to my family a caught up with them. Sunday we had breakfast at my Aunt Susan and Uncle Ron’s house, then started home by way of Kansas City for a change.

Sarah and Chris

Sarah and Chris

I had some giant things plotted out there, but we only located one of them — three giant Badminton birdies on the lawn of the Art Institute. We went on a fruitless tour for a muffler man, and decided against visiting the World War I museum, due to concerns about time. So we headed back across Missouri on I-70, which had the advantage of bypassing lots of the road construction we were stuck in on I-44.

Giant Shuttlecocks

Giant Shuttlecocks

giant tire

giant tire

We stopped at Ozarkland (crappy tourist giftshop) and Nostalgiaville (fun pop culture memorabilia) which were at the same exit for King City. Nostalgiaville was interesting, but not enough to really get off the road for if you’re pressed for time.

Scary stuff for sale at ozarkland

Scary stuff for sale at ozarkland

Ozarkland

Ozarkland

Nostalgiaville

Nostalgiaville

We didn’t see as many giant things on I-70, though. We did catch site of a muffler man next to the road, that from what I can tell, hasn’t ever been documented before, but it was almost dark and in the middle of a thunderstorm, so we decided against trying to turn back and hunt it down.

giant tires

giant tires

We stayed on the outskirts of St. Louis, then headed home. We did hop off to visit Mid-America Motorworks, which has a Corvette/Volkswagen museum. It’s a big parts manufacturer and distributor for people restoring classic cars, and they have have some big car shows every summer and sponsor lots of car shows around the country. The had some of the special effects VW bugs from the original Herbie movies, and a couple from the recent Herbie: Reloaded movie, too, which was fun to see. And lots of really cool corvettes.

Herbie Goes Bananas

Herbie Goes Bananas

1964 New York World's Fair Mitchell Styling Corvette

1964 New York World’s Fair Mitchell Styling Corvette

1954 Pennant Blue Corvette

1954 Pennant Blue Corvette

As we were leaving, we were photographing a restored Microbus outside the building, and the companies’ photographer came out to talk to us.

Microbus

Microbus

He takes pictures for their website and catalogs of all their merchandise, including car parts, the classic cars, clothes etc. Stephanie knows an enormous amount about cars, so they got talking, and he took us into his studio to show us how he takes pictures of everything. It’s a really awesome setup. So we got a behind-the-scenes tour of how they produce their catalogs and websites.

Mid-America Motorworks owner's car

Mid-America Motorworks owner’s car

As we were leaving (again), the president of the company stopped by, and we also took pictures of his corvette. Then we finally got back on the road for home. We snapped pictures of some odd things along the way, like a house on stilts and a couple of cool round water towers, but that was pretty much it.

House on Pole

House on Pole

cool water tower

cool water tower

Continue ReadingHome Again