{"id":69,"date":"2006-12-20T17:09:21","date_gmt":"2006-12-20T17:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnjeske.isa-geek.com:8080\/?p=69"},"modified":"2011-04-02T17:10:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T17:10:05","slug":"69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For all of you patiently waiting for an update, here it is!  I meant  to do this sooner, but unfortunately Zelda was consuming a lot of my  time (ok not that unfortunate =P ) and I&#8217;ve been busy with Christmas  stuff too (like surprises for the wifey!)  The first of these was to  come a couple weeks ago&#8230;  During mid-November tickets became available  for Dow employees (and contractors) for a Ray Charles tribute, &#8220;I Can&#8217;t  Stop Loving You&#8221;.  I figured this would make an excellent Christmas  surprise for Susan and the scheming began.  I figured we would go  somewhere romantic to eat and head over to the Dow Event Center in  Saginaw to watch the show.  I made reservations at a place I&#8217;ve been to  (not ate at, but stopped in for some wine-walk tickets) and was able to  book a table next to the fire place (doesn&#8217;t get any better than that).   Of course I mentioned to Susan to keep her plans open on December 9th  and to figure out something dressy to wear&#8230; well then the questions  came.  I played it cool and managed to get her to think we were going to  Mount Pleasant, when in all reality we were going to The Atrium in Bay  City.  During my planning, I remembered way back in June, around Lori&#8217;s  wedding, Susan had mentioned she really wanted some beach glass  earrings.  I thought about driving all the way back past the &#8220;End of the  World&#8221; to pick up the earrings she liked, but couldn&#8217;t see myself doing  that and decided to hit the internet.  I found a site that had Lake  Erie beach glass jewlery and ordered not only a pair of earrings but a  necklace too!  Everything was coming together, until Susan comes up to  me the day before saying she has to play at 4:30 PM mass on Saturday  (sigh&#8230; thought I said keep your plans open).  So she called the church  and said she wouldn&#8217;t be able to do it, alright&#8230; one bullet dodged.   The day has finally come, we start getting ready when Susan realizes she  doesn&#8217;t have any shoes to match her dress or pantyhose to wear (didn&#8217;t I  say get something dressy to wear a month a head of time&#8230; women&#8230;)  A  quick run (quick so we could make it to dinner on time) to JCPenny to  get pantyhose (and shoes while I was waiting ever so patiently in line).   The person ahead of me wanted to ship something and the sales  associate that should have been helping me was helping her co-worker  sort out what the customer wanted (I think we waited 20 minutes before  we could actually check out&#8230;)  The rest of the night went unhitched.   We got to the restaurant on time, Susan really liked the beach glass  jewelery and we managed to survive going to Saginaw late at night  (though the parking ramp guy was kinda scary) and enjoyed a fantastic  tribute to Ray Charles.  As for the rest of Susan&#8217;s presents (she must  have been a good girl), she&#8217;ll just have to wait and see&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This last weekend was also pretty fun.  We went to the DeHate  family Christmas party.  Boy was it an adventure to get out there.   Being internet-savy I decided I&#8217;d mapquest the directions.  Mapquest  marked the path and the maneuvers and I thought we were set.  We grabbed  the directions and headed on out.  We&#8217;re doing good until we were  suppose to turn right onto old M-30 N.  We turned on an old M-30 road  but that must have been south because it dead-ended after about a mile.   We get back onto M-30 and continued heading north.  After about 10  minutes we see the road to turn on for the next step and did so (I still  don&#8217;t know where old M-30 N is, unless M-30 just changed into it).   This is where it gets tricky, the road splits and there is only about 5  or 6 street signs with different names on them and arrows pointing every  which way.  We took a guess to go right and we guessed wrong, but we  did get a nice scenic view of the area (needless to say Mapquest had let  me down).  Finally we got back on track and managed to miss the turn  for their driveway.  Luckily no one was on the road and I just backed up  and we headed down the driveway (which must have been close to a 1\/4  mile long).  We got to see my family, eat lots of food, and had a really  good time.  We got to play the panthose reindeer game.  The objective  was to blow up balloons (there were all kinds, long balloons, big  balloons, and water balloons) and fill the pantyhose with them.  The  first team that could get the pantyhose on someone&#8217;s head and to stand  up (like reindeer antlers) and sing Jingle Bells won.  Our team was  really close&#8230; we had the pantyhose full of ballons and standing up but  the other group had already started singing.  Probably a good thing as I  was the one elected to put them on my head (whew&#8230;)  Susan&#8217;s group  couldn&#8217;t seem to get the balloons in the pantyhose (probably should have  had a girl doing it&#8230;)  There was also a gift exchange at the end that  went by birthday (starting after Jesus&#8217;s birthday).  The presents were  laid out on a table and each person got to pick one, according to what  day they were born, and open it up.  If they didn&#8217;t like what they got  they could exchange it with anything that had already been open (kind of  neat idea).  When it got to my turn, I somehow picked out a 6-pack of  beer (lucky me&#8230; :\\ ), though I&#8217;m glad I didn&#8217;t pick the &#8220;man&#8221; gift my  aunt got.  I ended up exchanging the beer for a set of Nascar mugs.   Susan must have sniffed out the M&amp;M&#8217;s&#8230; as she picked out the gift  that was almost a pound of M&amp;M&#8217;s (she got to keep them).  It was a  pretty fun-filled occassion.  When we were ready to leave, we were of  course blocked in&#8230;  We got the car moved and were on our way.  Only  one problem&#8230; there were enough vehicles there to the point I couldn&#8217;t  turn around and ended up backing the whole way out the driveway (that  was pretty exciting&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Recently me and Susan decided to apply for grad school at good  ol&#8217; Tech. Susan got her acceptance letter yesterday and mine came last  week.  It doesn&#8217;t look like we&#8217;ll be getting any funding so that&#8217;ll  probably be a no go&#8230;  I finally beat Zelda the other day and man I  thought I was going to be disappointed.  The boss of the last dungeon  was super easy to beat and I thought that was the end of the game, well  it wasn&#8217;t&#8230; there was still one more boss to go and man was he tough  (which made it rewarding to beat).  I forgot to mention above Susan had  made Taffy Apple salad for the Christmas party.  Well, it was so good we  decided to make it for our work Chirstmas parties (both yesterday).   The plan was Susan was going to make it Monday night for both of us to  take to work with us on Tuesday.  She wasn&#8217;t feeling very well and  somehow I got the job of making it.  Mine didn&#8217;t look nearly as good as  the one Susan had made earlier, but everyone at Dow Chemical seemed to  like it.  Dow Corning on the other hand, didn&#8217;t seem to appreciate it as  much (oh well&#8230; I tried&#8230;)  After work yesterday I decided to try and  get some of our packages sent at the UPS store.  The line was almost  out the door when I got there and I subjected myself to this again  today.  Though, I didn&#8217;t get puked on yesterday (or today) and that made  me happy.  As I was waiting in line, yesterday, I decided I&#8217;d fill out  the form indicating I had three packages and where to send them.  As I  was going up to the counter to get one, I see this milky white liquid  spraying to my left.  I turn only to see this poor kid throwing up and  luckily I was out of the projectile&#8217;s path (but just barely&#8230;)  The  poor little guy just kept vomiting and everyone felt bad for him (never  thought the UPS store could be so exciting&#8230;)  I did managed to get 2  out of 4 packages shipped.  Your probably thinking that&#8217;s not too good,  well I forgot to grab one present for the package (they box everything  for you) and Susan wrote down the address for the other one to the point  where I didn&#8217;t know what the road name was&#8230;  That&#8217;s why I went back  today and managed to get everything shipped out (without any puking&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For all of you patiently waiting for an update, here it is! I meant to do this sooner, but unfortunately Zelda was consuming a lot of my time (ok not that unfortunate =P ) and I&#8217;ve been busy with Christmas stuff too (like surprises for the wifey!) The first of these was to come a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}