Cory's

Cory is a friend from the undergrad/beginning of grad school days. He is a really kooky guy who has been traveling around the world between working a comic book editor. Anne, Randy, Joel and I went to visit him in one of his (far too) rare appearances in Ohio.

Cory eats children...and it makes them grumpy to be eaten.

Cory's folks always put on a great cookout. They have a fantastic house in Woodville. Joel played with the dogs.
He also played with the swingset. I only took video of him on the trampoline--he freaked out with how much fun the trampoline was. He could not stop laughing when I went on it with him and we jumped together . It rocked.



Joel has been a lot of fun lately. He laughs and jokes a lot (all physical humor, of course). I really like it when he decides to hug, kiss, or blow raspberries. He is quite affectionate at times...and it is wonderful. Father's day has been great. We had my whole family (including Joel's great-Grandma) and Gerry over for good Belleville grilled beef.

Anne and Joel got me a sweet hammock. Now to finish laying these paver stones in the backyard so I can build and put in the arbor (by the way, Google Sketchup is awesome--I made a fast and decent plan in no time), so I can hook the hammock onto it and the one other post (that I still have to put in too). In the midst of all of this, I am still fighting for time for sleep and dissertation. It is all good though. Life is pretty fun and I am happy to be here.

Zoo and life

The family went to the zoo.

This is from Joel's favorite place at the zoo. He jumped from window to window smiling and laughing while using his favorite new word--"more." We went over last last weekend. We also went with some friends to their parent's house on a lake in Hilldale, MI. It was a fantastic time. Joel went on his first boat rides and Ryan B and I had way too much fun flying across the water behind a speedboat on a pancake disc raft (it is a 10' diameter inflatable disc--you hold onto some straps which lift to get into the air/hold to not fall off while the driver attempts to throw you off by giving you as many Gs as possible on the turns. Man, that was a fun weekend with some fun people. It was the first vacation-type of thing we had done in quite a while and it felt great.

Joel is growing up like crazy. We can just tell him "if you want to use that shovel in the dirt outside, you will have to get your shoes" and he will run inside from the porch into the house, find/bring both of his shoes, and plop down so we can put them on him easily. He is getting this planning and language thing down really well. It is fantastic.

I got that side of beef. It is fantastic, as all meat from Bowling Green's Belleville Market is. I wish there were more meat shops like that. The chuck tastes like round and the steaks taste fantastic. I have barely scratched the surface so far. It will be a good summer of eating (280 lbs worth). Joel appears to love the grillings, so it will be very very good. Anyone need freezer space? Ours is still half empty! In other food news, the CSA (community-supported agriculture) project starts soon, so we should have a crazy amount of local vegetables soon too (the garden here is doing really well too). We have also switched over to free-range eggs (from the farmer market) and they are way tastier and richer that the grocery store eggs.

Just when I thought the house was through with its "this needs to get done" list for the first time since we have moved in, a small drip happened last night from over the porch room...this time from the area we did not replace. Argh. In good news, I put up a lattice for the wall-climbing vines and need to do a free-standing one for the grape vines because we had not expected them to go this crazy this quickly. It took Time-Warner 8 months/10 calls/3 missed appointments to finally bury the stupid cable in our yard. It does not sound like much, but it was a miracle that they finally did it.