Day 49: Friday, July 2, 2010 - Mike

After running the Fairview Route, the family made another stab at "geocaching," an exercise where one uses a GPS device to locate a hidden object, mostly as an excuse to get to a particular location and gawk around.  

Just as with our Lincoln Homestead expedition over a year ago, our two stabs at locating either "cache" this time were unsuccessful.  We did get out for a nice hike over at Mt. Zion at Spitler Woods, and also ate at the Cow Palace on the way back home.  Great food there. 

Spent the afternoon reading, playing, relaxing.  Watched a Danger UXB after supper.  Those dastardly German inventors came up with a new type of fuse which could only be doused by cold.  Some tense moments, but somehow our hero Ash survived this episode.   

Day 48: Thursday, July 1, 2010 - Mike

Early day.  Went to Money's at 6:30 and he and Mike H and myself went to Clinton Lake.  Stayed on the water until 2:00-ish, had a burger there and drove back to Decatur.  Caught 24 fish.  The boat took in 100 even.  Catch and release, of course.

Ros had movie class and Will and I played some team Halo3 together.

Day 47: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - Mike

A run day.  Actually made it to two pull-ups.  Progress.  Ros worked on the stairwell all day and we went to Sakura for supper.  Sushi and cherry pie all in one location.

Watched a Danger UXB and two folks got blown up tonight to make up for previous episodes.  Started reading a new anthology of horror/fantasy stories edited by Gaiman.

Day 46: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - Mike

A morning cool and dewy as a cucumber.  Outstanding late June temperatures.  Biked around 9 miles around the neighborhood, but not having the Rock Springs route available is still a bummer.  Dropped Will at his volunteer job.   Ros and I ate at the new fusion Mexican restaurant downtown, though I was not impressed with either dish we had.

My new deck umbrella finally arrived from Target, to go with my mosquito netting that goes with such an umbrella of this type.  We'll see how it does against those vampires.

Read all afternoon on old American lit histories and critics and played a bit of Civ3.  Had a neighbor with a very long ladder come clean out the forest in our northside gutter.

Had a traditional supper of turkey spaghetti.   Walked the dogs with Will and finished off the day with another fascinating episode of Danger UXB.  Nothing exploded this time except Brian Ash's affair, which tragically fizzled.

Day 45: Monday, June 28, 2010- Mike

Monday.  Usually a day a gloom, shuffling back to the every day drudgery of the job.  But for the semi-retirement of the summer vacation, it is just another day in paradise.

Ran the Fairview route, then went up to Millikin around 10:30 to work on scheduling issues.  The family had lunch at Panera's, then did a bit of shopping up north.

No explosions in Danger UXB tonight, just fireworks between Capt. Francis and Ash.

William - Breadsticks

While eating at Olive Garden one day, I had a breadstick. I then realized that it was the pinnacle of human creation. It is able to be eaten without getting food on your mouth, and you can just pick it up with your fingers. That's without event mentioning the great taste. So delicious. If mankind had never made the breadstick, we would have to eat... dry biscuits.

Day 44: Sunday, June 27, 2010 - Mike

Slept in, then biked through a muddy lower bike trail and then over to the spillway.  Lots of flying flung mud in the air.  Ate at Olive Garden for lunch, napped in the afternoon, and picked up a new Xbox controller at Best Buy.

The two weeks of network troubleshooting are over (I think).  It all boiled down to a three-way cable splitter I put in the basement, to watch some TV down in "manland." It cut the signal quality so much, it caused the network failures we've had all along.  I wonder why I couldn't figure that out earlier.  Process of elimination, I suppose.

Leftovers for supper, then a Danger UXB episode, where they almost blew up a trapped woman in a factory, but instead blew up a regular character's wife.

Experimented more with e-text programs for the Kindle.  Located a delightful program called Calibre, which converts e-texts to various formats, like EPub to Kindle-friendly files. That allows the million plus texts on Google books to work on my reader.

Day 43: Saturday, June 27, 2010 - Mike

Saturday.  A delightful day, though heat warnings issued for the afternoon.  Ran the Fairview Park route, though the Race for the Cure crowd was gathering there, so I did not linger to do pull-ups and sit-ups, etc.

Mowed the yard, yet again, between all these rain storms we've been having.  I delightful crop of vegetable matter in the backyard, though not much actual grass.

Ros'good friend Joyce and her son came over for a visit, arriving this afternoon.  I took the opportunity to go up to Bloomington to see Paul.  He was able to get out, so we hit a couple of bars for the evening and went by to take a look at the new ballpark by his campus.  Drove home under the gaze of a full moon.

Day 42: Friday, June 26, 2010 - Mike

Friday, everyone's favorite day of the week.  Another hot one.  Had to bike to the Decatur Lake spillway again and put together a random 10 miles of exercise, out on West Main.

Went up to do some work in the office during the morning, then Money and I went out for some sushi.  Trying to switch to more vegetable-oriented sushi rolls, with tuna endangered in the Gulf.

An afternoon of tearing my hair out over the continued network failures at home again. This gave me a chance to finish my Gaiman novel, Neverwhere, which was an excellent read.  It was almost my first book completed on the Kindle reader, which was an all-around positive experience.  Also, in the late afternoon, we all went to see Toy Story 3, another well-done Pixar film, though a tear-jerker at the end.

In the evening, played a bit of Civilization, another time-consuming computer-based game.  Could not get to sleep, so stayed up very late out in the sun room.