If you haven’t heard of the 101 things in 1001 days, your not alone…
No I’m not doing this, but Susan got the idea off some website and has her
own list of things she’d like to accomplish in the next 2.5 years (you can
track her progress here). In going along with this, we decided to upgrade
our membership at the MCC to be multi-activity, allowing us to use the
Fitness Center (and all the other amenities!) We’ve been going quite a lot
lately and been burning rubber on the track (which I prefer to a
treadmill… running in circles beats running in place anyday =P ). I seem
to have increased my stamina which really helped me get a win in
racquetball last week (oh yeah!) Either me or Mittag will be going up the
ladder this week depending on who wins our match, that’s pretty exciting!

In other news, I’m still stuck at my boring job, trying to find
something to fill the time. I’ve been playing an online browser based
game, but you’re only allowed so many turns per day, so I decided to make
my own game. That was pretty fun, until I got bored doing that and have
since tried many ways to occupy my time (…my boss just got a job based
in Minnesota, so she’s not around much and the project I’m working on is
dependent of other people reviewing my work… which is a slow process…
very slow…) I managed to find the audio version of The Golden Compass
books and was able to listen to them at work… I got through all three
books in four days (some say that’s lazy, but sounds ambitious to me!) As
far as jobs go… I applied for a couple positions in the area today, and
am still hoping to hear back from Charter, but each day that goes by, my
chances go down I think… We did go see my grandma on her birthday and
had some really good chocolate cake. It was nice to see everyone and we
had a really good time

Well, here we are in the New Year already, about time for a new blog
entry! Seeing as how this entry will be quite lengthy, I’ve decided to
break it up into multiple sections

Christmas Came Early this Year:

Not wanting to haul all the Christmas presents down with us to open and
bring them back, we decided to open them a couple days early. I was pretty
excited to get a new video card for my computer (with a lifetime
warranty), one of the best mario games ever… Super Mario Galaxy, a new
computer game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (putting the video card to good
use!), and some racquetball gear. Tonight’s my first match on the new
ladder… and I’ve got a spiffy new dual racquet case, that houses my new
racquet, ball saver (pretty neat thing, creates a vacuum to make the balls
last longer), a new glove I got and my safety glasses. I took the gear for
a test run this past weekend, and am pretty excited for my match tonight!
Susan must have been a good girl again this year (even though she blamed
me for losing her stuff… see below…) She got a couple movies, Superbad
and Ratatouille, the Golden Compass book set, Kite Runner, a LightWedge
(story behind this, see below…), moisturizing socks, a set of
springforms (hopefully I’ll be getting yummy cheesecakes without the
smoke!), two packages of rechargeable batteries, a teddy bear with the
year 2007 on the foot (it’s tradition!), and a competition bocce ball set
(for when the new lawn comes in, and dang those balls are heavy!) from me.
Scout saw this really nice gift basket (well mostly a really nice big
green bow), and gave that to Susan, it had (besides a bow) a 6 pack of
Smirnoff Ice, Hairspray (the movie), and a box of dove chocolates. Scout
must have been a bad kitty, she only got one present, a kitty-training
set… hopefully she’ll be able to learn some new tricks (besides
talking…

The Case of the Missing Items:

Getting ready to head south for the holidays, it took us longer then
expected to pack for the occasion. Doing the compressed work week schedule
we had the Friday before Chirtmas off… giving us plenty of time to pack
and get ready (not quite =P ). We spent the day enjoying our new gifts and
mentally getting ready for the trip. The next day was crunch time, we got
our suitcases ready and the car was being loaded (we even managed to
remember the Christmas presents for everyone!) Just when I thought we were
all set to go, Susan couldn’t find her neck pillow (aka “Horse Collar”) or
sleep mask anywhere. The search began… first in the basement (where I
assume everything is that I can’t find, it’s a mess down there…) Then we
scoured the first floor and guests bedrooms, while Susan insisted she
already checked those places. I started going through the bags in our
closet (again, hearing the “I’ve already checked there!”) Back down to the
basement we went… it still wasn’t there. Finally, tucked away in a
carry-on bag Susan found what we were looking for (thought you checked
there… and I didn’t have anything to do with it being there =P). Our
next item, the sleepmask, it could only have been in a couple different
places (again I was the one to blame for losing it…) We tore all the
sheets off the bed, looked under the bed, looked in the washer, and in the
dryer, until… I found it, hidden away in Scout’s secret area of
treasures (under the rug, by the back door…) The second item I was
accused of losing, turned out not to be my fault once again. There was one
more case where I “lost” something, the rechargeable batteries from
Susan’s camera (thus why she got some for Christmas). Before we moved, I
had used the batteries for a game of Madden on the Wii, being a good
borrower I had put the cameras back (or so I thought…) Days turned to
weeks, turned to months and the batteries were no where to be found (or
were they?) As it turns out, they were in the camera the whole time (where
else would they be?) The case of the missing batteries had been solved

What the Heck is a LightWedge?

That was the response I received from many a-people on my quest to find
Susan her book reading light. Oh, but it’s not just any book eading light,
it’s a Lightwedge… so what does that mean exactly? Well, it’s this
new-fangled contraption that you place on your book and through a piece of
plastic it lights up the whole page (if you get the right size). I started
my search by heading to the Lightwedge homepage. On this site they have a
variety of Lightwedges for sale, coming in different shapes and colors.
They also have this really neat feature that lets you put in a zipcode and
it’ll come back with the three closest stores that carry these nifty
little inventions (so one would think…) I slap in Midland’s zipcode and
voila… three places came back, Target, Barnes & Noble, and OfficeMax…
hmmm… that was easy, a little too easy. During my Christmas shopping I
started off at Target, no luck on the Lightwedge there, okay, lets try
Barnes & Noble… a book store, logic choice, right? Nope, the British
accent guy had no idea what I was talking about. Well, seeing as how
OfficeMax was on the other side of Eastman (a treacherous stretch of road
this time of the year), I decided to hit up Staples (similiar to
OfficeMax)… but that was a no go either. Finishing my shopping at
Meijer’s and Wal-Mart… neither had the Lightwedge, I decided to cross
the road and go into OfficeMax. They didn’t know what I was talking about
either, but the cashier said someone had bought something like that 30
minutes ago… but they didn’t know where to find it or what it was called
(that’s helpful…) So, did Susan get one before we left town, you betcha!
I quickly ordered one online, paid a nice sum of cash for two-day delivery
and it was there in time for me to wrap it up and put it under the tree,
yay! Now she wants a bigger one, even though she said she wanted the
paperback one. -.-

Bransen Missouri, Here we Come!

This year for Christmas we went down to see my folks in Bransen. They
have a timeshare there and invited us down for a real Missouri Christmas.
The trip down was pretty easy going until we were about 30 miles from the
Illinois border. It started to sprinkle and then really started coming
down. We had a late start, but thought we were at a good stopping place…
a Hilton Garden Inn in Effingham (about 4-5 hours away from Bransen). My
mom had hit the same storm during the day and apparently it was a
tremendously dark and large raincloud she drove into. That same storm had
closed I-70 in Kansas where there was an 80 car chain reaction pile up due
to the snow! Not wanting to pay seven bucks for the Hilton breakfast
buffet, we hit up the local McDonald’s and were on our way. Not having
cell phone coverage outside Michigan, we never got the messages from my
mom telling us which room they were in… We got to the front gates, told
the security guy we were there to see the Jeske’s and that I have no idea
the room number… He let us through, and we stopped in at the front desk,
got ahold of my mom and were on our way to the room. Apparently there was
some sort of mix up, as my parents expected to be getting a cabin (but
there were none left)… then there was a problem as my mom only received
a key to half the room (it’s split into two parts, an A and a B). She had
gotten just the B room, which was just that, a room and a bathroom.
Getting everything straightened out, we stayed in a really nice room (the
A part had another room with jacuzzi bathtub, a living room with a
fireplace, a screened deck, a kitchen, and a dining room), not quite a
cabin, be really nice nonetheless

Showcapital, USA:

If you haven’t heard, Bransen is famous for the numerous shows they have
each year. We picked a few that we wanted to see… first on our list was
the Kirby magic show. We tried to get discount tickets, but found out we
had to listen to info from a timeshare to get them. Seeing as how we were
by the theatre, we decided to just suck it up and get the tickets there.
It’s a good thing we got there when we did, as the line was getting to be
quite long after we got our tickets. We managed to get tickets that were
in the center about seven rows back from the stage! The magic show was
really good (better than the one in Mount Pleasant) and that was only half
of it. The second half was a Christmas play that was super funny. The
guest comedian apparently didn’t say any lines from the script, which made
it all the more funny. The ears kept falling off the elves (one was
dripping with sweat), and all around it was a very entertaining show! The
next show we went to see was the Dixie Land Stampede. They had a pre-show
entertainer, and he was one of the best jugglers I’ve ever seen! That
alone was almost worth the price of the tickets, but the stampede was
really awesome. They seat you around this huge arena filled with dirt. In
front of you is a couple of cups a plate and a bowl (but no silverware.)
During the show, you’re eating a full course meal with just your hands, so
to clap, they had these boards set up in front of your feet you got to
kick (otherwise known as a Dixieland Stampeded)… The food was good,
albeit a little much… soup, rotissarre chicken (a full bird, small, but
still all the parts), pork, corn on the cob, baked potato, and an apple
dessert (again… no silverware, it was messy and fun!) and the show was
pretty sweet too! Next up we went to see 50’s at the Hop. This had a
handful of male and female vocalists singing the popular songs of the
fifties and dancing (for almost two full hours!) The show was
entertaining, but they could have used an upgrade to their soundsystem
(still it was really impressive!) We also paid a visit to the Butterfly
house, where we got to see a 3D movie about butterfiles, go through a
mirror maze, and of course we saw butterfiles (and turtles that look like
rocks!) It was neat to see all the butterfiles, and the mirror maze was a
lot of fun (unless you ran into the mirrors 😉 ). We also spent a whole
day at Silver Dollar City, where we saw A Christmas Carol, glass being
blow, a saloon Christmas show, got to ride a roller coaster (frontwards
and backwards… yes it was cold, but at least it wasn’t raining!), and
had a fun (cold) filled day

The Day Before Christmas Day:

The day before Chirstmas, Wal-Mart was open, but didn’t have a lot in
the grocery department (Jubilee was already closed when we got there…)
It was a mad scramble to get everything we needed for Christmas dinner,
there were tons of people there and the store was closing soon! We managed
to get everything we needed, and the dinner was really good. We also got
to watch A Christmas Story a few times (my dad still didn’t get to see the
ending, heh!) My parents seemed to enjoy the gifts we got them, Este
Lauder for my mom, and a bucket of beer for my dad (with a movie and a
fancy bottle opener!

The New Year:

There are quite a few colorful pictures of me getting our Caribbean style
drinks going in the picture section (recipes are in the archive section =P
). Just as I was pouring the first glass, we realized it was almost the
New Year… we had forty seconds to spare (whew… we didn’t miss it!) We
watched the ball drop on TV, then flipped through the channels and found
something more interesting to watch… (sadly we didn’t get to see any Law
& Order marathons…) and off to bed it was (yup… not very exciting…

Work and Other Such Non-sense:

Coming off a two week break and going back to work isn’t my idea of fun.
Someone forgot to pack a lunch yesterday and almost forgot again today! 😉
Luckily with this compressed work week schedule we only had to work
yesterday and today, and tomorrow we have off… if only we could work two
days every week… and still get paid! I did manage to get a phone
interview with Chater Communications (shush all you anti-Charter folks =P
). I wasn’t exactly what they were ooking for in the position I applied
for, but they have an upcoming opening they’ll be contacting me (hopefully
shortly) that I’m an exact match for… keep your fingers crossed

Day Two:

This entry has been so long, it took me two days to write it! I ended up
playing my match last night and man it was a lot of fun. The first game I
lost by six points, but the second game was defintely more exciting (no…
I didn’t win 🙁 ). We were stuck 12-7 (me being the seven), for quite some
time… until finally I scored a point and then he scored one. We switched
serves a few more times and he got another point, 14-8, I managed to hold
him off and was up to 13, until he got the game winning point. It was a
tough match and he challenged me to a third… I whooped him 15-2, if only
I had a couple more points in the second game, I would have won the match!
Well, that’s about all I can think about that happened over the past
couple weeks, stay tuned for more… and Happy New Year

This weekend was pretty exciting, the Lions almost beat a team with only one loss (but the Lions ended up losing by one point in the final minute of the game…) We also picked up our Christmas tree, and that was an adventure… I guess it all really started last year after Christmas. We decided to get a really nice looking fake tree (no watering, no vacuuming up needles, and no need to find a way to get rid of it, sounds pretty good to us 🙂 ). Although we couldn’t just get any tree, we had to get one that looked real… no easy task mind you. We had one picked out before Christmas last year, and thought it best to get it after Christmas to get it on sale. Only one slight flaw in this plan, we forgot which number the tree was (and they no longer had their display up). As you recall from a previous blog this is where I opened up multiple boxes to see if “our” tree was one of them (it wasn’t). This year we had once again picked our tree out (No. 1… easy to remeber), but instead of waiting until after Christmas, we got it this past weekend (on sale!)

We got our shopping cart and proceeded to the back of the store to where the trees where. There where multiple boxes to choose form, lucky for us the one I started to slide out had a broken handle (that makes it easy…) As I’m sliding the tree out from underneath the display, I ask a certain someone to help and get the other end of the box (it was about five or six feet long, a point that comes in to play later…) I ask a second time for a little help, but someone must have been distracted by the pretty display Target had… I manage to get the box up on end (it stood almost as tall as me, and weighed about a hundred pounds…) Apparently not needing any help I slid the box to the end of the cart, and asked if someone could hold the cart. I began flipping the box over the edge of the cart (which was moving… making it easier), and finally managed to get the tree in the cart. Well, you can imagine how that looked, a huge box sticking out of the cart… it was hard to see over it… and of course the isle we are trying to go down has a group of girls walking all over the place (I didn’t run too many over 😉 ). We also got a tree skirt and proceeded to the front of the store (without any casualties). After the guy rang us up, it was about ten minutes before we got the real price on the tree (it was on sale afterall… even if it wasn’t rining up as such). Finally we were checked out and ready to get this thing home. Knowing we would need some room to try and get this huge box in my car, I asked Susan to back it up. I opened one door and threw it in, and we were good to go… almost… The box didn’t quite fit in the backseat. All I could hear was “I told you it wouldn’t fit”, but all I could think was “I thought someone said once that the futon could fit in my car”. Not wanting to give up, I knew I could get it in there… I started moving the seats up and playing with the box (not getting much help…). After a few minutes, and with the driver seat pushed completely forward, we managed to get that tree in my car (told you it would fit…) Susan, being a little shorter then me, got to drive us home…

Once home, I brought the tree in, and the fluffing process started. Apparently I’m not a very good tree fluffer and Susan was “happy” to do must of the fluffing… Scout, of course thought she got a brand new toy, and couldn’t help claiming it for herself… The next day she was actually up on one of the branches of the tree (silly cat…) If I can find some batteries, I’ll try and put some pictures of it on here (it’s a really nice tree!) We’ll be getting our ornaments on there soon, and hopefully Scout won’t be batting down too many of them…

Well the Christmas season is finally upon us, only 20 more shopping days left, and yes Santa I’ve been a good boy this year! 😉 Keeping up with what we have dubbed to be “Date Night”, I decided to surprise Susan last weekend. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but every week either me or Susan picks a night to do something special on (mostly dinner and a movie), but last weekend I scored some tickets to a community theatre. The show didn’t start until eight, but around five, some one was getting antsy. We hadn’t been to Red Lobster in awhile, and decided it was just the place to go. The food was excellent, even if I missed endless shrimp, and our waiter was the best we’ve had in awhile. Not knowing exactly where the theatre was, I jotted down some directions… After navigating our way to Saginaw, and missing the turn (almost two times!), we finally found the Pit & Balcony Theatre (right by the riverfront). After deciding showing up an hour and a half was too early (not my fault…), we took a cruise through the nice side of Ol’ Downtown Saginaw. We made our way back to the theatre (almost missing the turn again), and were getting pretty excited for the show. What was the show you may ask, well Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and man was it awesome! We both really enjoyed it minus the ending where the beast turns into a prince (we didn’t care for the prince’s actor too much). In other news I lost my racquetball match again… but… I did beat him in the first game (woohoo, my first victory). I also challenged him to a fourth game (matches are best of 3) for fun. I was on fire that game, but I lost again (at least I think I’m getting better 🙂 ). My second match is against Matt and that one will be fun, maybe we’ll get to play tonight.

Hopefully you’ll read this before it gets archived =P. I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. It was quite busy at the Jeske household, but worth it! The weekend before the day of stuffing, me and Susan went out and got our last bit of groceries… T-Day was coming and there was no stopping it now. Luckily with our compressed work week schedule, we only had to work Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was our day to get a lot of work done (like cleaning the house, even though it wasn’t that dirty 😉 ). My mission was to get the turkey dethawed… it would have been a lot easier if we had pulled it out Sunday night and put it in the fridge, but who wants easy? The nearly 15 pound bird took eight hours to finally thaw out and in the meantime Susan had gotten quite a few dishes prepared (including a green bean cassorale that for some reason didn’t taste right – we think it was the pan it sat in before being cooked..) Susan’s folks planned to be there in the evening to help get things ready the next day (Susan mom did the driving from the bridge, we all knew should could do it!)
We all thought Applebee’s sounded good for dinner, especially since they have really good desserts (the shooters I recommend the strawberry cheesecake one!) After dinner, everyone took my recommendation and we all got the strawberry cheesecake shooter, hehe! It was kind of late we we got back, but we had to get the pumpkin cheesecake ready. Everyone took part in making it (must of been why it turned out so good!) After getting everything ready, in the oven it went. Soon after, it got very smokey in our house… the butter we had put in was dripping from the spring-form and creating a nice smoke cloud in our house. After pulling it out and cleaning up the mess as best we could (once the oven cooled a little). The cheesecake went back in to finish baking. I must have drew the short straw, because I was the one who made it sure it was done and in the fridge just before 3:00 AM. I was suppose to put the oven on it’s self-cleaning feature, but I forgot…
Everyone was up early the next day (well except for me, I got to “sleep-in” til nine o’clock). The first thing on our agenda was to get that oven cleaned… It only took four hours, but man did it come out all shiny again (and created a second wave of smoke clouds). Even though it was below freezing outside, we had all the first floor windows opened to blow the smoke out (it was quite frosty in there!) After a couple calls from my mom, we found out they were almost there and just in time for kick-off. The Lions put up a tremendous effort during the second half of the game, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Favre and his Packers… (guess they don’t always win on Thanksgiving). Even though dinner was suppose to be around 4:30, we acutally ate around close to six… There was a lot of found to go around, the tables were all decorated nicely, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. After dinner me and my mom packed the food up, no we don’t keep bags in the dishwasher mom ;), and got the kitchen all cleaned up.

We even had a little showdown between Marcus and Scout. It all started the day before Marcus got there, Susan’s folk’s had brought a box full of stuff, including a Christmas present for Marcus. Scout saw that big red bow on top and claimed it for herself (spoiled cat…) Anyway, the next day Marcus came and Scout did not take a liking to him, he would chase her around and she would run and hide (I don’t know why Scout wouldn’t like him). It wasn’t long before Marcus was into Scout’s toys and he really liked her ball (that’ll show her 😉 ). When nap time came, Scout couldn’t resist the play pen and was trying to sharpen her claws on it (even though she doesn’t have any front ones… silly cat, don’t tease the baby). Things finally mellowed out between them, Marcus was sleeping and Scout was hiding under the couch…

Heh, been awhile hasn’t it? Since the last time I wrote we’ve been pretty busy. A couple weekends back we figured it would be best to seal our garage floor before winter came. We picked up some supplies from the Home Depot and were ready to get started… We managed to get all our stuff out of the garage and couldn’t believe how big the garage actually was (we had a lot of stuff in there). Sealing was pretty easy, basically it was a lot of cleaning/scrubbing and then spreading the sealer on. We waited the two days and tested it by dripping a little water on it, it didn’t soak in, but beaded up… success! We put most of the stuff in the basement and thats where it still is (it’s nice to have a clean garage 🙂 ).

I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here, but I’ve joined a racquetball ladder. I learned very quickly I’m not as good as I thought I was… Some of the guys on this ladder have been playing for over 25 years (yeah, I didn’t have a chance). You can track my progress over here . My game has defintely improved since I started and I’m pretty excited for this week’s matches (two macthes are played every week). The ladder has been fun, but one day me and Susan were having a friendly game when my wallet was stolen. We were on court 4 and there were a couple of “hood-lums” playing on the court across from us. As usual I put my wallet on the ledge outside the court. At one point during play, their ball came into our court and one guy raced up stairs to “look” for it. I grabbed it and gave it back to the guy still left in the court. We played a little more until the manager came around telling us we had five minutes until closing. At this point we got our stuff together and I noticed my wallet was missing. I thought Susan was trying to pull something, but I soon realized she wasn’t. The next day I spent getting my identity back (it’s exciting driving around without a license 😉 ). It seems there was suspicous activity caught on a camera in the hall, but I haven’t heard anything yet…

Wow, a lot has happened since the last time I posted a new blog entry. Let’s start at the beginning and see if I manage to get everything that has been going on. First, let’s go back to the weekend following the Lions first victory (against the Raiders). It was my first Compressed Work Week, CWW, where I had a Friday off. To celebrate this new schedule (okay, not really celebrate it, but to have some fun!) me and Susan decided to take a trip down to Cedar Point. The initial plan was to pack up the camping gear Friday, drive down, set up our site and go to the park at 6 PM (as this is when they first opened for the day). Then we’d go back Saturday to catch all the rides we really liked (and hit ones we didn’t get a chance to get on). Well Mother Nature had a different plan. The forecast called for rain that day in Sandusky and we thought it best to drive down Saturday.

Not wanting to get wet, we thought we’d stay a night in a hotel. A quick search on the internet led us to a couple different options as to where we could stay (or so we thought). With mapquest directions in hand and a print out of hotels in the area (no, we didn’t make reservations…) We were off to Sandusky. My avigator got us to the outskirts of Sandusky with no major problems (and no turning around!) As we followed the signs through the residential areas, we were wondering if we were indeed on the right track. Finally we came to a stop light with a sign pointing left to Cedar Point. We had wanted to get a hotel and kill a few hours before going to the park and just get what’s known as the twilight pass (going on the rides in just the evening). My avigator insisted we go left even though I really wanted to go right (left it was…) We ended up going straight to the park and paying the $10 parking fee before we knew it.

We were directed to a spot and the excitement in the car was rising (for rollie-coasters of course 😉 ). We decided what the heck let’s just get a day pass and worry about a hotel later. A little sun screen, opening and closing the trunk half a dozen times (don’t ask…) and we were on our way. It was a chilly day, but the sun was shining and the cool breeze felt kind of nice (as long as you weren’t standing in the shade). We made our way to the gates and man the lines were still long (even though the park had been opened for an hour or two already). We finally get up to the window and I bought the tickets, it was slightly unusual to sign with a highlighter, but nonetheless we were in. As you may or may not have known during the months of September and October, Cedar Point has a Halloween theme going on, and has extended hours (the park didn’t close til midnight!) They have all sorts of activities going on and man if you follow a parade it can get annoying (we kept hearing the same song, over, and over, and over again!)

First stop, the bathroom (exciting, I know!) Then it was off to our first ride, The Mantis. The wait was long, but worth it. They ended up taking the still picture camera’s out of this ride and replaced it with motion camera’s on the ride itself. After we got off, you could watch a short clip of various parts of the ride… I had to giggle at Susan who was scrunched down, holding on for dear life (she really did enjoy it though, even if we couldn’t get the DVD 🙁 ). The rest of the rides were really fun. I worked up the guts to get on Top Thrill Dragster. This ride starts you off at a mere 120 MPH, shoots you up a 90 degree ankle (straight up) for 420 feet, where you come back (straight down). This ride was awesome! The wait however, was not that awesome… The sign said it as about 1.5 hour wait and I tried to talk Susan into going, but she didn’t want to do it (next year she says…) After waiting awhile (and making idle chit-chat with the other nervous thrill seekers), I noticed the cars haven’t been sent up for awhile. The line kept moving though, and I continued to wait. A few minutes later, an announcement came over that no one could understand, except for short delay, maintenance problems. Apparently those who have waited for a couple hours decided to get out of line (chickens…) Once the ride was going again, they thought they’d get back in line (guess again, suckers…) The wait was around two hours, and man was the ride fun (all 17 seconds of it, heh!)

Even though it’s a wooden roller-coaster (according to some, wooden ones are very smooth), I’d advise agaisnt Mean Streak (though if getting rattled around is your thing… by all means… go for it) We did enjoy the Gemini, that’s actually a very smooth cooster, and the second (or third) time we went on it, they didn’t even brake us on the last corner, before going to the loading/unloading station. We were flying near the end, it was awesome. We were looking forward to getting on the Maverick, Cedar Point’s newest addition, but it was down for repairs all day (ugh, guess we got to go back next year to try it out 😉 ). Last time I was at the park, the Millienium Force was the newest ride on the block. The first time we tried to get on, it was down for repairs. We figured we would try to get on it later, and when we came back we ended up going through the Scare Zone (not sure that’s the offical name , but you get the idea). Basically there was this section that had half a bizillion fog machines going. It was dark and you couldn’t see anything through the fog. They had all these people following behind you and jumping out at you and just trying to have a good ol’ time scaring you. Susan actually jumped when one guy shouted and jumped out at her, though we think it was another patron (not someone working, hah!) We finally get to the Millienium Force (about 30 min before the parked closed). It was down again for repairs (it had been running after we initially saw it was down for repairs). We waited to here the announcement and the lady said it was a short delay and didn’t know when the ride would be up again. We figured we might as well wait it out (30 min left, what the heck?) A few minutes later, it was running! We got in line and thought that was a great way to end the day (we didn’t even have to get out of line for Snoopy On Ice, 8) ). After getting off the ride, we were on our way out. We happened to pass the Iron Dragon, but the line was still opened. As soon as we passed the pole holder, she was radio’d telling her not to let anyone else on. We managed to be the ONLY ones on the ride and got to sit in the front seat. Of course we screamed our heads off to make up for no one being on the coaster… that was pretty sweet!

Wow that was a lot to write about Cedar Point, but the story doesn’t really end there. With all the thrills we had gotten that day, I was pretty much wide awake and would have rather drove home that night… but that didn’t happen. We took out our print off’s of the hotels and started the search for them. The first stop, a Hampton Inn… no rooms. The next stop was just down the road at Comfort Inn… no rooms and I asked if she knew if there was any hotel with rooms (she didn’t know of any…) Another hotel, this time I had to wait about half an hour for the receptionist to take care of other people. Finally she got to me and was sorry they didn’t have any rooms, but a hotel in their chain eight miles away did. After hearing this, me and the guy behind me turned towards the door (he needed a room too). I was joking around when I said, “Race ya!” but he must have been grumpy because I didn’t get a response (oh well…) We managed to get a room at that hotel (Micro-something), which we probably won’t stay at again. It was nice the pool was opened 24 hours, but I think a train came by every hour or so and kept waking Susan up (I guess I was more tired then I thought, because I slept through all of them). We got up, went to Perkins’, no not for breakfast, but for their famous chicken tender melt (even though it was breakfast time). We managed to make it back home, just in time to watch those awesome, awesome Lions get their second victory (I know, I know, 2-0, who would have thunked?) Undefeated and looking pretty good, the Lions beat the Viking’s.
As you know from reading my blog’s ;), me and Mittag have been playing racquetball and it’s getting more and more competitive. We ended up playing a couple times this week and I learned a very important lesson. Midland had this great idea of flashing red lights for left turns before turning to green arrows… not so great in my opinion, but oh well. We were coming down Waldo and I needed to turn left onto Patrick. The left turn lane for this intersection is crazily long, so I get in and before I’m about to turn, the light turns yellow… I have a flashing red light, which was momentarily about to turn to a left green arrow, so I went through the intersection. Sure enough a copper was sitting in the left turn lane on Patrick. A few seconds later I see his lights go on, and know I’m about to be pulled over (I then get in a high speed chase that you can still watch on You-Tube, j/k 😉 ). I pull over to the side of the road get my license, registration, and proof of insurance out (atleast I have my tags up to date, unlike the van I was driving the last time I got pulled over, thanks dad!) Anyway the officer comes to my car and tell’s me I should have stopped. I tell him once the light was going to a green arrow. He’s not buying it, so I quickly apologize, tell him he’s right, and that I should have stopped and waited for the intersection to clear (a “what-to-do” I had heard on the radio a couple weeks before, aplogize, say he’s right, and have your information ready…) He goes back to his car for quite some time, until he gets back. His words, “I’m letting you off on a big warning this time.” Phew, dodged that bullet… I did mention though I didn’t realize you had to actually stop at those flashing reds (for fear of being rear-ended), but from now on I’ll be a-stopping… His remark was, “Well… I guess they don’t have too many of those in Negaunee.” Yeah… not really…

This weekend we pretty much chummed around the house and got it all cleaned up. Afterwards I had another racquetball game scheduled with Matt… It was tough going, but I managed to win the first game. The second Matt took a victory in… The next game was going in my favor, but I had managed to sprain my ankle pretty bad near the end. I jumped up for the ball, and came down, rolled my ankle and was in quite a bit of pain. I told him I needed a few minutes, went outside the court and tried to walk it off. Suprisingly it started feeling better, and I managed to take a win, sore ankle and all. The aldrenaline must have really been pumping, as I was ready for another game. My ankle had not starting swelling and it didn’t really bother me unless I made a sharp turn… I actually beat Matt the last game, and knew I would pay the next day for playing on my ankle… On our way out, it was really starting to hurt. The next day I was slow moving and limping around (probably shouldn’t have been walking on it, but oh well…) It started getting better and by the weekend I was able to put most of my weight on it (still hobbling around a bit).

If you were paying attention, you’d have realized this was my short week, and we decided to go up north to see Susan’s folks and take a tour of the copper country. We got to help Susan’s dad hang a door and see some pretty amazing colors. We drove up Mount Brockway, and I’ve never been in wind quite that powerful before, it was kind of cool (if only we had a kite…) We tried coasting down the “hill” in neutral and probably would have done it except there was a slow moving car in front of us and a fast moving car behind us (yeah, he was most likely getting annoyed by me, oops… so we ended up “driving” down… We left a little later then I wanted, but luckily we were able to catch most of the Lions game on the AM radio… They actually managed to beat the Bear’s in the fourth quarter also achieving an NFL record (most points scored in the fourth quarter… 34). Sadly they had lost the week beforehand to the Eagles (guess that’s what you get when you can’t protect your QB or play defense…) Still, 3-1 is already better than last season where they only won two games…

This last week has been all about getting the lawn going… yay, we might finally have a nice lawn! We had a sprinkler guy come out, and he had some pretty neat stuff to show me… We decided a sprinkler system would be a good idea now as we planned to have a guy come in, kill the lawn, re-rake and spray hydro-seed. That way we won’t have to tear up the lawn after it’s planted. The sprinkler guy made it out to our house Friday and had all the heads/outside piping done by the time we got home. Only one little mishap, he hit our cable line. After spending an hour on the phone with Charter to figure out if cable was out in our area or if it was just us (it was…), we had a technician scheduled to come out the next day. That’s why my site was down… blame Charter as the lines they painted didn’t match up to where the actual cable lies… Saturday was when the sprinkler guy should have been there to do the indoor work, but the guy doing it was having some problems on another project and wouldn’t be able to make it out that day. He rescheduled for the next day, which he was a little earlier then I expected him. Well, it was one problem after another getting the indoor work done, and I sort of felt bad for him as he kept apologizing and saying it shouldn’t take this long (he projected an hour, it was closer to three). Finally after all that hard work was done, he fired on the system and showed me how to use the computer. It is all very cool stuff (you should come by next year and see it in action, along with our beautiful lawn!)

Still employed with Dow, but I did have a job interview not too long ago… with Wanigas (Saginaw backwards, whoa!) Credit Union. The interview went pretty good, but I haven’t heard back yet, so I’m guessing it’s a no-go. I see there are a couple posting’s I’ll be applying for later today, hopefully something comes up soon, as I may or may not have a job next year (not to mention this job is boring as can be). I was put on a new building/project where I was assigned all these protocols to write, but they’re already done… yeah, my job is useless, but my boss thinks I’m doing a good job! So much going on, I forgot to mention about the corn maze we went to Friday night.

Susan’s co-workers organzied a get together and we had a lot of fun, walking through the maze. There were two parts, a small part and a big part. There were also seven posts, and if you got a punch from each post on your card, you could enter to win a gas card. We started off as one big group, but shortly after entering the maze we split up. The other group found post three before us and told us it was in the small part… it wasn’t (we totally would have beat them had we known that). We finally find the third post, in the large part, and managed to get every other post but six. On our way to six, we met up with the other group, who was looking for the exit (they had all seven posts ). We got to six and somehow I was put in charge, and we lost someone from our group. I would have beaten them out, but someone from my group led us to a dead-end. Oh well, it was a lot of fun… We also managed to make it to the movies this weekend and saw The Kingdom, excellent movie if you get the chance to see it! …and the Lions lost, pretty bad to the Redskins (not much to say there…)

The weekend before last, we did a little home improving. Wanting to add a little color to our house, we had gotten some paint and such and were ready to tackle our bedroom. I hadn’t realized this before, but Susan had never painted a room before… After a few helpful insights she was off, and before we knew it we had the first coat done (actually it took quite awhile, but we managed to get out alive…) For the most part I stayed pretty paint free, but someone had managed to use the roller to paint their hair (whoops…) After getting the second coat on, we found out the color looked really slick with the trim. Susan took some pictures of our handy work and I should have them up pretty soon (yeah, I know you’ve heard that before =P). The rest of the week wasn’t too exciting, I went to work, and tried really hard to find something to do… Tickets went on sale for the Lions, but I was only able to find one ticket for the Thanksgiving Day game (probably better if I didn’t go by myself…) We did watch those awesome awesome Lions beat the Raiders, though it looked like it wasn’t going to happen once the second half got underway…

These past couple weeks at the Jeske household have been quite busy… two Loons games, an open house, and a family campout! The weekend before last we hosted an open house for Susan’s side of the family so they could see our new house. Before that started, Susan’s folks and grandma came down a couple days before-hand to help prepare and go see the Loons in action. It was a fun game, but really cold, good thing the stadium makes hot chocolate to keep everyone warm. Only problem was they ran out of hot water… Other than that, the Loons played pretty decent until the tenth (that’s right… tenth) inning. The other team just seemed better prepared and scored six runs. Once the Loons got up to bat, it was three up, three outs… can’t win them all (or many for that matter…) I went to get the car while fireworks were set off from the outfield. I got it all nice and toasty for everyone once the show was over (they seemed to appreciate that 🙂 ).

The day of the party was a busy one. I wasn’t a full part of “Hell’s Kitchen”, but I had a lot to do. I went out and mowed the lawn, de-weeded the rock bed, and was off to the store for some groceries and bagels. We wanted to make the same punch my mom had made for Ben’s graduation party, but the recipe was no where to be found. After getting a list of the ingredients (almost all of them, heh…), I was off to the store. Not sure of the exact proportions I found the recipe on the internet… everyone seemed to really like it, although there was no OJ concentrate in it. After the party, the recipe was found (a little late, but we’ve got it written down now!) The party went over pretty good, even though the person who wrote the invitations, *ahem* Sus- *ahem* an, thought the party was an hour later than stated. Needless to say we were a little suprised when people started showing up earlier then expected (oh well we got more help 8) ). After the party I was on clean-up duty while everyone else took a well deserved nap…

There was also some excitement at work the Friday before the party… Around 9:30 or so in the morning the fire alarm went off. We proceeded to the gathering area for my building and watched as 6 or 7 security trucks pulled up in just a couple minutes! As well as a firetruck and an ambulence… I was impressed at how fast they got there… A couple men went in the building and about 30 or 45 minutes later came back out. Apparently someone left a bagel in the toaster too long and sure enough it caught fire (I still don’t think anyone fessed up to it yet!) Always makes for an interesting day.

Ah, the DeHate Family Camp-out ’07… “Dry canoers! Dry canoers!” could be heard during the last stretch of the annual canoe trip. Yes… me and Susan stayed dry… we didn’t flip, and we escaped pursuit of those trying to get us wet. All and all I think there were atleast four times a canoe was tipped, mostly by someone seeking revenge! Hopefully I’ll be able to put some pictures up soon of me and Susan in our spiffy new t-shirts. It was a good time, even though we just went for the day. It seemed liked it was going to be a repeat of last year, there were lots of clouds and a light drizzle as we made it over to Evert. By the time we got there, it had cleared up and turned out to be a beautiful day.

The LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNSS won a game we went too!! (yes, that is absurdly long, and yes can be annoying at a game) We had a really, really good time at that game, besides the drunken guy sitting in front of us. We saw a couple of people we each new from work, we got ice cream… and the Loons won! Next year it sounds like we’ll be trying to get a package deal and be able to go to quite a few games. Hopefully they play a little better…

Well my birthday was a lot of fun… and the celebration isn’t over yet! Susan’s folks are coming down for our house warming party (for Susan’s side of the family) and we’ll be doing something this weekend to celebrate my b-day! I was pretty surprised Susan had gotten me even more gifts… the unicycle was pricey and I thought that was all that I was getting… I also got a book that I’ll be taking a look at once I’m forced to take a half hour lunch at work (I’m switching over to a compressed work week schedule – every other Friday off, w00t!) I also got Wii Play with WiiMote which is a pretty fun collection of mini-games and it comes with a WiiMote! The pie in the pictures was even better than it looked and we got to go to Red Lobster for dinner… Not everything that happened this past weekend was cheeful. I went to light the grill on Saturday and as I was walking out I noticed a bird sitting on top of our garage door… It got startled and tried to fly through the ceiling! It actually bashed it’s poor head so hard it starting bleeding. After he landed on one side of the garage, I grabbed a broom and tried to shoe him out the door. He kept wanting to fly above the garage door (dummy, you can’t get out that way…) He landed again and Susan had a paper bag in hand (what the heck was I suppose to do with that… I’m still not quite sure). He was in shock I think and I bent over to grab him, but before touching him, I was encouraged to put on some gloves. The gloves were too small, but I forced them on and managed to grab the bird and set him free (hopefully he’s okay…) So, maybe that was a happy ending after all! 🙂