Whitesalls on the web

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-12-01T21:11:00.002-05:00

Lynn shot some nice pictures of the kids @ the cabin. I especially like this one because everyone is true to form. Ben harassing Nick, who's probably getting ready to chomp down on his arm. Jacquie happily playing along with her goofball cousins and Katie trying to play it straight, giving the camera a look that says, "Hey, what did you expect?"

Out of the mouths of babes...

2009-11-12T08:58:00.003-05:00

Ben's decided he wants to take up bassoon in band, a switch his band teacher describes as 180 degrees different from trumpet. There are a zillion different valves (or whatever they're called on a bassoon) to manipulate, and he has to learn bass clef after playing treble for 2+ years. Peter and the Wolf seems to have something to do with this - Steve downloaded it last summer and Ben's spent months listening to it before he goes to bed. So this morning I wrote a check for his first bassoon reed. Let the fun begin.
"I know it's totally different (from the trumpet)," he said as I handed him the check. "But the bassoon sounds awesome. It sounds like a fart."

Play?

2009-10-18T20:32:00.007-04:00

We got to the cabin for a weekend a couple weeks ago - seems like a long time already. We thought this was a nice picture of Tiger, our most photographed family member.
Then we've got Nick, our second most photographed family member, on the "bridge" he constructed out of not- very-big sticks.

this is a test...

2009-10-08T08:09:00.001-04:00

This is only a test to see if the feedburner email feed is working...

Labor Day weekend - not just for working anymore

2009-09-08T09:14:00.003-04:00

When you're given four perfect days at the end of summer, I guess there's no choice but to drive 1000 miles, spy on elk, watch sunsets and moon-rises and weddings, jump from cliffs and explore waterfalls. Oddly, I came home feeling really rested...

Hard to believe...

2009-08-31T20:55:00.012-04:00

...but school resumes on Wednesday night for me, and in a week for Ben and Nick. (Steve reports that the med students already back at it). We survived a very soggy Chelsea Fair, and I think the boys are eager to get back to a routine (even though it's going to mean waking up a whole lot earlier than we have been the last few weeks.)

I worked a lot this summer:
The boys played Spaceball (and I wrote about it - www.annarborchronicle.com).

We caught a minor league baseball game in North Carolina (and I wrote about it - for the Orion Review!)...

Then we came home and had an energy audit that told us where all the (many) leaky spots are in our house (and, yes, I wrote about it for an edition of Our House that's yet to be published).

We burned two Christmas trees because last year's Christmas in July got foiled by a crabby dispatcher.

I chose to keep this one on the down-low...

Summer speed update

2009-07-16T16:19:00.003-04:00

schools out. baseball. work. drive, visit, drive, baseball, beach, parasail, drive, indian mound, historic, cool, barefoot. stimulus grants, interviews, energy audit, insulation. bike, play, frogs, crickets, good books, grill, sunshine, strawberries, blackberries, mullberries, spinach, lettuce, snowpeas, tomatoes soon. cabin porch roof. wedding wedding wedding.
To be continued...

OIB

2009-07-16T16:16:00.001-04:00

no joke

2009-06-09T20:11:00.006-04:00

For years, whenever we took the boys to the barbershop for haircuts, they would joke with Gary the barber that they wanted a mohawk. Gary would just smile and nod, and Steve or I would explain what kind of "modified mohawk" whichever boy would be getting on that day. So I suspect Nick was a little surprised today when I OK'd his mohawk without modifications. Honestly, his hair was such a mop I was just happy he was willing to have it cut. And it's so thick that it'd be kind of a shame not to do anything interesting with it. He's still deciding how long he wants to leave it up top, but he thoroughly enjoyed having the full attention of a whole barbershop full of people while Gary worked his magic.

Enterprising

2009-05-20T16:45:00.005-04:00

Ben has a job! - or rather, a business? He was looking for was to earn money to buy the ipod/guitar/latest object-of-his-desire and we brainstormed a couple of ideas that he might enjoy and therefore be motivated to do. Lawn mowing came up, and I suggested that he hook up with a Realtor with some vacant houses in need of basic lawn care.... He now mows at two houses, which seems to be his limit, given his homework/baseball demands. One has been sold, but the new owner says Ben can cut the grass there for as long as he likes.
Meanwhile, yesterday Nick said he was going to make a batch of double chocolate muffins for lunch. When I told him he couldn't eat six chocolate muffins for lunch, he said, "Yeah, but if I make six chocolate muffins and take them to school, I can trade them for all kinds of stuff."
Couldn't argue with that.....

That's my boyyyy!

2009-04-28T08:32:00.000-04:00

S'appening?

2009-04-19T21:46:00.006-04:00

Eugene Seitz (he's the guy in the midde) makes maple syrup. George Baum (left) and Michael Bridges (right) make music and perform all over the country as Lost and Found. They also make silly T-shirts that say thigs like "Scone on?"(Nothing much. Scone on with you?) and more recently "S'appening?" Michael and George performed at our church on Saturday, and Eugene sold each of them a jar of homemade maple syrup, then turned around and used the money to buy a S'appening? shirt.

Nick's last day of 9

2009-04-06T17:49:00.002-04:00

Nick turns 10 tomorrow - hard to believe. I was filling out some bank paperwork and kept wanting to write "99" for the year. I think this must be my subtle attempt to keep him little :-)

speechless

2009-03-23T12:08:00.002-04:00

The writing's been on the wall for a while, but this still bites.

What a difference a year makes

2009-03-14T21:52:00.004-04:00

I've already ranted in this space (March 2008) about the joys of youth wrestling tournaments, but it looks like we've turned a corner, of sorts - or at least caught a break (tee hee, literally, come to think of it) since we only have one kid wrestling this year. Ben's 1996 birthday puts him in the "schoolboy"division, which means he doesn't have to weigh in (or show up) at tournaments until most of the younger kids are already well into their day of waiting around/wrestling. So instead of showing up at a school an hour away for a 7 a.m weight in, we got to roll in at a leisurely 11:30. Sure, there was waiting around, but this itme I brought a book. Experience served Ben well, too. He wrestled well, and won his second match - good for second place in his three-kid division.
Nonetheless, it was his first win and his first pin, so here it is for posterity.

Spiffy!

2009-03-12T16:58:00.002-04:00

Ben is no longer fluffy! Check this out.

He's got a wrestling tournament on Saturday and decided "That 70's Hair" was not appropriate. He kept asking what a Princeton looked like and we kept telling him, "Go look at an old picture of yourself."

Cabinweb, we hardly knew ye

2009-02-27T10:45:00.002-05:00

If you've tried to visit the cabin online lately, you might notice that it's not there. It's not anywhere at the moment, actually, but I promise I'll find a new home for it soon. Some friendly Norwegians bought www.cabinweb.net to host a service that lets people reserve vacation cabins in Norway. It turns out I'm a squatter! (I probably should have tried to get more money out of the one lightning-strike occasion when someone wants a domain I own. Oh well.) I can at least use the proceeds to buy a new home for the cabin.

Greetings from cyborg boy

2009-02-21T09:46:00.004-05:00

It took the better part of a day to track one of these down in Ann Arbor, and when we finally got Steve's brace fitted at St. Joe's, the orthotics guy informed him that they have an office in Chelsea (with a brace just like this one on the shelf) in the little office building ACROSS THE STREET FROM OUR HOUSE!
Grrrr... Nonetheless, Steve's pretty pleased with his new hardware, which allows him to hold a coffee cup with his right hand.

post-surgical post

2009-02-13T17:02:00.002-05:00

Steve's tendon repair went well - it turns out thee was still a little shred of tendon still attached, so the doc knew right where to hook it up. Very handy. He's come up with an arm sling adaptation that he wants to patent, and I think he has not stopped talking all day. This morning I figured it was just because he was nervous. Now I don't know. Maybe its the vicodin. Anyway, he's in great spirits and is relatively comfortable, and i'm very grateful for that.

and the saga continues

2009-02-02T17:01:00.003-05:00

Steve's MRI showed that he completely detached one of the ligaments that attaches his right biceps to one of the bones in his lower arm (radius, I think, though I could be wrong). It's apparently an injury that for some reason happens more frequently to men (Gee, i wonder why...see testosterone poisoning above). Anyway, he can let it heal on its own eventually regain most of his ability to curl his arm, but only about 20 percent of his ability to do things like turn a screwdriver with his right hand. Or he can have surgery, get full recovery, but have his arm in a cast for 6-plus weeks. Stay tuned....

Injury update

2009-02-01T16:33:00.004-05:00

For those of you keeping score at home, Steve's no longer using his sling, and he can move his arm around quite a bit more than a week ago, although we're still waiting to hear the doc's interpretation of his MRI. The underside of his arm is bruised every color of the bruise pallette from his biceps to just above his wrist - lovely. I should post a picture.
Nick's finger once again points the direction it should - though you can probably put two and two together and figure out that it didn't get back that way without some hollering. Nonetheless, he'll proudly tell you that when the doctor offered him the option to a) get a shot to numb it, then have it re-aligned or b) straighten it sans-shot, he went with B. (I was leaning toward A. I think it was a clear-cut case of testosterone poisoning....)
As if there hadn't been enough pain last week, I had parent teacher conferences on Thursday for one child who will remain nameless. They pretty much sucked. I'm not even going to go there. I came out feeling like it has been winter for an awful long time.
And OK, finally, one fun thing. I've finally launched my business website. It's undergoing periodic tweaking, but I think it's probably functional enough to let everyone know about it.
It's at www.activevoicemedia .com. Take a look and let me know if you have any suggestions. If you use Internet Explorer 6, the logo's going to look funny - I'm working on it - in my ample free time:-) (Which means you'll probably have upgraded to IE8 by the time I get it fixed)

Welcome to the House of Pain

2009-01-26T22:14:00.004-05:00

On Sunday, helping to move a piano at church, Steve ruptured a tendon in his elbow. The thing tore loudly enough that three or four other people in the room heard it - I'm told it sounded like a kid twisting a sheet of bubble wrap. The ER docs referred him to an orthopedic surgeon, and the orthopods asked that he get an MRI before his appointment. Chelsea Hospital's MRI unit happens to be adjacent to our church's parking lot. So today when he made that appointment, the receptionist - obviously conditioned to use landmarks to make sure patients don't get lost - asked, "Now, do you know where St. Paul's church is?"
Ah, but if only the fun ended there. Monday is wrestling practice. Ben stayed home with a sore throat. Nick lasted an hour before I got a call from one of the coaches telling me, "Nick jammed his finger. It's kinda bad."
OK, off to pick up Nick, who has a known history of dramatic excess when it comes to injury (see "stitches in lip/"I'm gonna die; I'm gonna dddddddiiiiiie") I drive to the old high school thinking,"Tylenol, ice, calm him down, see how it looks in the morning." And when I get there he lifts the ziploc bag of snow they've parked on his left hand to reveal a ring finger that, well, lets just say it was doing something alien. Choose your alien - either Mr. Spock ("Live long and prosper" or Mork from Ork "Nanu nanu") Nick had finally mastered that split-fingered gesture - except that he wasn't doing it on purpose (and didn't find it very funny when I asked if he was.)
Back to the ER. X-rays. Re-examination of Nick's finger and its unnatural angle, re-examination of the x-rays. And yep, there's a break right down near the base of the finger, extending into the growth plate. Splint, wrap, refer to the orthopedic surgeon.
Here we go again.
And it's only Monday.

we won!

2009-01-18T13:41:00.002-05:00

Wooo hooo! the Green Algae, led by Teresa "hat trick" Brown, beat the Grey team 4-1 and won the first MACRHL championship for every player in the picture, some of whom have been in the league 6, 7 or 8 years. Next week we'll all be playing on different teams....

wonders of winter in Michigan

2009-01-14T14:57:00.003-05:00

I was leaving Nick's school after some volunteer duty this morning when I heard this awful scraping sound coming from somewhere under my car. It wasn't quite as ominous as grinding brake pads, but close. Something definitely wasn't right. So I stopped in the parking lot, got out and looked underneath the car, where I found a clod of ice the size of a bowling ball, wedged between my undercarriage and the ground. Nice. Thankfully I was able to dislodge the thing by driving over a pothole.

Life is short. Play more hockey.

2009-01-12T10:08:00.004-05:00

If you're sitting around the house at 10:30 on Friday night, perhaps picking lint out of your belly button and/or thinking, "What I'd really like to do right now is go watch some recreational hockey," get yourself over to Veterans Ice Arena in Ann Arbor, where my MACRHL team (unofficially the Green Algae) will be playing for The (MACRHL) Cup! After five or six years in this league, I've finally landed on a team loaded with solid players, complemented by a couple of really good ones. And me.