Quick Question

What's memorable about July 4th, 1976 (other than it being the bicentennial)?

Clever Clue of the Month

Yes, your vote counts here. We've never had a problem with hanging chads. Vote now. Check back Monday evening to see the winner.

Pecking order? ..............................KISSME
Abbr. with a ring to it? ....................MRS
Brief, for short: Abbr. .....................SYN
Garfield's head? ............................LITTERBOX
Board of inquiry? ...........................OUIJA
Injection into the vain? ....................BOTOX

Are any of these confusing you? Explanations here.

PAUL Happy Birthday!!

We all want to say Happy Birthday to Paul today. Is this the BIG 50? The iris is in memory of the fortys while you can still remember them.

Chuch Noblock

We've been going through some boxes of Peter's old stuff, sorting for things we want to keep. Here's an entry from a journal he kept when he had just turned eight. I wasn't much into sports at the time and he had just discovered the joys of baseball the summer before. For that particular day it's the only thing he wrote.

I believe these days the "comed down" would be spelled "calmed down". By the way Peter is seriously thinking about changing majors and schools from Statistics at Winona to Surveying at St. Cloud. Anybody know any surveyors who might have words of wisdom?

I know I haven't been posting much lately but I think maybe I'll get more down soon: for example, finish the Yukon trip and get back to work on the Stynsberg slide scans.

Anacortes to Alaska

Here we are sitting in John and Heidi's stairway. Hidalgo the dog just licked my bald head to say goodbye.

We arrived home in time to have Ralph and Jean come by for a few days of visiting.
We're down on the beach at 9pm looking for heart shaped rocks. It has been a long day and Ralph cannot find the camera.

Bloomin' Roses in Roseau

Faith & I celebrated our silver anniversary the last few days. The kids threw a surprise party for us at the church on Saturday.

Faith and I then headed to Winnipeg - where we spent the first night of our honeymoon 25 years ago. We stayed at the Hotel Fort Garry (with the 'best breakfast in Winnipeg'), enjoyed a play at the Celebrations Dinner Theatre, saw the IMAX thriller: Wild Safari 3D, enjoyed The Forks, Assiniboine Park, and ate at Mongo's.

When we returned home we noticed the roses are already blooming!

grandmajean

Ralph and I have an opportunity to go up to Alaska with our friends, Tim and Chris Johnson, June 8th-16th. Chris grew up in Waterloo and Travaille's were their family friends as well as Pastor and wife. The Johnson's invited us to go with them on Saturday evening, then during the night, their son in law had to have emergency hernia surgery. He has an unusual condition that effects the elasticity of his skin. When he is opened up his organs are kind of in a jumble. Anyway, Ben, cannot work on his own home while we are up there so Ralph and I will be doing some physical labor to help them out.
Mark and Lois Ann are returning from Washington on the 11th when we will be there. We hope to make arrangements to visit Mark and Lois, too. We can only afford this trip on such short notice because Tim works for NWAirlines and we can fly standby with them and Tim is so appreciative to have help that he is also helping us out.
I'll will try to get my name and password information cleared up at a later time. Thanks, Dan.

Ericka and Joe

Wow!!! How does one respond to such news? Here are some tentative thoughts I've had.

1. The round robin probably isn't the place. It isn't the place because it's open to viewing by anybody. It isn't the place because this tragedy requires more personal contact - phone calls, letters, e-mails.

2. If this isn't the place and life goes on, I would propose we continue to use this space to chronicle the everyday things we have been doing and thinking. The thing I hope and pray for is that Ericka and Joe will be able to come to the place where they can see that life goes on even after something like this. The Bible provides hope here in that it chronicles the lives of all sorts of people who made humongous blunders and still went on to be heroes of the faith. (e.g. David and Peter)

3. When I think about how we can help them, there is, of course, communicating our love and forgiveness and support in any way we can. But one huge thing that comes specifically to mind is money! Joe is out of a job. There are huge legal fees. Their home is newly bought and probably has no equity. The point being. . .if anybody has any idea how they could get some help in the form of a gift or a loan at convenient terms. . .check it out.

I Love the Macro Setting

Remember when you would take a picture and wait a couple months to see if it looked good? I took this picture a few minutes ago. I took about half a dozen shots - this is the only one that turned out. (It was windy.) We should have roses in a week or two...

Speaking of emergent/emerging church - Moody radio had a good program on the subject recently.

Clever Clue of the Month

I always appreciate your input here – even if it's often different from what I would've chosen (which it often is). Vote on what you think is the best one today. Check the Clever Clue page on Saturday to see the winner.

You may get it to go ........................BRAN
Last word before someone is shot? ...........CHEESE
Flush formation? ............................EDDY
Digital tool ................................NAILFILE
One trying to stay up when going down .......SKIER
Development sites? ..........................UTERI

Remember Me

Since the switch to the new blogspot I have been unable to get the site to "remember me" and have had to re-enter my e-mail address and password every time I logged on. Well I finally went to the "help" section and found my problem. In case anyone else is having that problem, here is a possible solution. It is happening because you are using Internet Explorer 6.0. You can switch to Firefox to fix it. But since I use AOL, my browser is automatically IE6.0 and here is what I had to do: Under Internet Explorer select "settings" then "internet options" then "privacy". At that location enter "google.com" as a site you want to always allow. It worked for me.

Wildlife ala Metro Minnesota

Thanks Mark. There is a part of me that yearns for wilderness. I have had to suppress that urge, but I can't think of much that would be for me more thrilling than to see moose, bear, wolves outside my front door. It's a little more subtle around here. But last week as a part of Jo's birthday celebration we went for a walk into a local "woods". Jon took the camera and discovered the correct options for capturing close ups.

Wildlife

I was walking to the front door a few days ago and didn't even see this moose until Holly asked if i saw the moose in the yard!








Here she is by the picnic table so you can get an idea of the size.








This animal is a little smaller. It is a muskrat in the pond back in the woods. I stood real still and it swam up close because of curiosity.






I have seen quite a few wild current bushes around the garden and woods. They grow around decaying stumps and wood.

40,000 lbs/sq inch

If you click the above title you will find the answer you have all been wondering about in greater detail. There are also some more plant photos in marksalaska.






It took several weeks to cut off the old 180's that were cracked on the inside. Had to grind them smooth for the new ones to be welded on. Some welders from Louisiana came to do most of the work using mirrors etc. for the difficult welds.





Here is a photo of the Syngas machine that uses the 1500# steam to run the turbine that runs the compressor. We've been running since about May 2.

Thank you for the "Happy Birthday"!

I cannot leave comments as yet so don't expect too much from me. I'll try to get on every several days to a week and try again.

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you....

Happy Birthday dear Dean and Jean
Happy Birthday two YOU

......and many more

Early Thanks for the Birthday Greetings!

I just wanted to thank everyone ahead of time for the Birthday greetings that you will probably post to Jean and me!

grandmajean

Let's see first if this works and if it does I will see if I can respond to any postings.

ICE out of control

We tried to start up our plant about a month ago and had a little problem with leaking water in our 1500# steam system on the reformer. We are now making ammonia as of yesterday!!!
Here is the QUESTION of the WEEK: How many pounds of pressure does water make enclosed in pipes like this, when it changes to ice?? (send your answers to the comment section below)

Sentimental Value

One thing I forgot to include in my favorite books post is the 7 book series: The Chronicles of Narnia. My dad started us off young on these beloved stories. For awhile when I was about 7 it became our nightime ritual to read them before bed. I still have not grown tired of all of these adventures. The two I especially love are The Magicians Nephew and The Silver Chair.