Single In Detroit

First post in forever and its a big one!

2009-02-05T23:20:00.004-05:00

Well, big news in my life:

Starting in March I will begin life for a new employer:
Working on the following:

So if anyone finds themselves in the Moline, IL/Davenport, IA area give me a ring!

Reconnecting

2007-09-05T18:28:00.000-04:00

Its been a good wrap-up to the end of summer. Lots of people to see and things to do. I even managed to make it home twice in the last couple of weeks! Granted one of the trips was only for a couple of hours, but it still led to a nice dinner.

For work I had the privilege of going down to Peru, IN for three days and taking a driving class at an old air force base. The experience was absolutely awesome, imagine 10 hour days with 8 of them driving a car around, and being paid the whole time, to top it off. I even came away with a trophy in the end which is now proudly displayed on my desk. The best part was that I got to bring a Pontiac Solstice back up to Michigan and had the chance of stopping off at my parents for a couple of hours on the way home. My mom and sister absolutely fell in love with the car, although I did manage to scare them a bit!

That weekend, I had my first what I'll call minor party in my home (about 10 people), for the Woodward Dream Cruise. This is the biggest event of the summer (30,000 old muscle cars), and my new house is about a 1/4 mile away from all the action, so I decided to take advantage. It seemed as though every third house or so was having a party in my neighborhood, and it was almost surreal, until about 2:00 in the morning when it was still really loud. At least its only one day a year I guess. A lot of people actually leave town because they don't want to deal with it. Lots of cool cars though. We ended up cruising around Friday night in an old 5.0 mid 80's Mustang convertible.

I also attended my 10 year high school reunion which was an absolute blast! I had really built it up in my mind and it didn't disappoint. All of my good friends were in town, (Ross, Chris, Luke), and I ended up seeing about everybody at the reunion that I could have wanted. We ended up touring the old place as many construction projects had occurred and then ended up taking a 2 hour tour on lake Wawasee courtesy of The Frog boat. We wrapped things up at the bar, and it was hilarious to see the look on peoples faces to see that Ben Carpenter actually drank beer! For the record I don't think I ever had a drink until I turned 21.

This past weekend, for Labor Day, Tim Fenton and his wife Nicole flew into town, and Tim Staufer, his wife Esther, and their 18 month old Michael drove in, to spend some time together. Tim Fenton was my college roommate for 3 years, so we had some pretty good stories to go around. Ended up doing some typical Detroit things, John K. King used book store, Detroit Jazz Festival, and the Detroit Zoo. At the zoo we had one of the most amazing experiences with one of the polar bears. They have an arctic area this huge glass tube/walkway goes underneath the water. We are inside the tube and this polar bear literally sits right on top of the tube with only six inches of glass separating us. Was one of those moments that you remember for the rest of your life. Very cool. Anyway, we all had an awesome time, reconnecting and making new memories. Also, with an 18 month in the house, I learned about all the things I need to change if I ever have children. Lets just say there were more than one or two small injuries that occurred over the course of several days with Michael.

Until next time!

Its Always Sunny in California

2007-08-11T20:25:00.000-04:00

The last month has been pretty entertaining. Lots of happenings and last week I just got back from a week long trip out to California. Its hard to believe that the summer is almost over, and I've made it through my first six months of home ownership relativity uneventful (up until my range stopped working last week). Some highlights:

I made the second trip to the hospital in the last six years due to kidney stones. How fun. This time was a bit less traumatic, as I actually knew what was causing the extreme pain I was experiencing. Well six hours later and a nice morphine drip and most of the drama was over. Its amazing that these little things can cause your body to feel this much pain. The spec on the left is only a bit larger than a grain of sand. Back to drinking lots more water I guess.

My buddy Kevin had an absolutely amazing luau party with plenty of props ands everything. He really goes all out on these things and his Christmas party is also up there with the best of them. The guy even rented a real karaoke machine, and I was able to get my groove on with a classic rendition of Guns N Roses Knock Knock Knocking on Heavens Door. You should of been there, I was amazing!

I attended my first mud bog last month too, which was quite the experience. Kyle and I rode our motorbikes up to some land his uncle owns and once a month everybody in the area gets a bunch of 4x4's together and creates this huge pit of mud to run them through. It was pretty interesting, and I can only describe it as the most hillbilly type event I have ever been to in my life. Very entertaining though. They took a bit of a break and all the kids (along with a few adults), starting having a good ol time in in the mud. This stuff was waist deep in some places. Sunday of that same weekend I took another bike trip with some guys from work. We did the 2 hour ride over to Hell, MI which is quite an interesting place. Not really much of a town, 4 buildings or so, but there is a restaurant along with an ice cream shop. It is a serious motorcycle destination on the weekends.

Last week I went out to Los Angeles to visit my friend Meghan who was an intern for GM a few years ago. I had an absolute amazing time and the trip changed my entire viewpoint of LA. I had always taken the typical Midwestern viewpoint of the area as too noisy, too crowded, etc, but I really became a fan of the place after experiencing it though the eyes of a local. Also mid to upper 70's everyday with low humidity is really tough to beat! Plus she lived about six blocks off the beach! Some pictures:

Universal Studios Hollywood was pretty impressive, I enjoyed the sites more than the rides.

The War Of The Worlds movie set in which a jet plane crashes: they took a real plane and ripped it apart.The wonderful town of Whoville from the move How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It was funny because this is directly behind the Bates Motel.

There was a volleyball tournament on the weekend that was quite unusual. Thousands and thousands of people and all the teams in it had themes. Even thought the whole purpose was to come up with the most outrageous theme you could, the volleyball players themselves were very talented.
This team had authentic Masters caddie uniforms. They even used golf props when they played.
Attended my first Dodgers game. Thank you very much to Meghan's parents for the seats. I even came back with a Dodgers cap.
The setting for the stadium was absolutely beautiful. Another interesting fact was that Doc Brown (character only) from the movie Back To The Future threw out the first pitch. Only in LA.
Also managed to stop off in Anaheim on my way down to San Diego to see the Red Sox play the Angels. I even scored a free ticket in line out of the kindness of some stranger.

See what happens when a rental car agency screws up a reservation. You end up with a Jeep Wrangler for the week. This was a pretty sweet vehicle for cruising the beach, but you absolutely can't feel safe with anything locked up in them. All it takes is unzipping a zipper to get inside.

The famous Hotel Coronado.Went into Tijuana for an afternoon. I can only describe it as much safer than I had thought, but absolutely 10 times seedier than anything I could have imagined. There were street walkers everywhere!

Walking back across the border it was quite the site to see all of these people selling things in the long line of traffic waiting to go back across into the US.

Hey look at me I'm an Idiot!

2007-07-09T23:23:00.000-04:00

This past week was the annual GM summer shutdown, so with no plans, what is a boy to do? Spend a week at his parents of course. Everything went great except for the fact that I happened to come home without my glasses. I stopped by Ben Kaminskys parents on the way back to Detroit and they happened to have a jet ski out on the lake. Well you just can't leave a jet ski sit around and not be used can you? In my mind I had every intention of just taking it out on a nice leisurely cruise around the lake, so I happened to leave my glasses on. Well after a couple of minutes of innocent cruising, I decided to push things a little bit. Bad call on my part. I try putting the thing sideways, it catches on the water and I go flying off at about 25 miles an hour. I hit the water so hard that even my life jacket comes half way off, and surprise, surprise, my glasses are no where to be found. Not a huge deal, besides the hassle of getting a new pair this week and luckily I had some spare contacts laying around, and I'm a little sore. Back to the rest of the vacation. I managed to see a good number of people and relatives, but it never seems like there is enough time to see everybody. One of the "highlights" of the week was seeing the worlds largest wooden peg barn. Its this huge barn that was built over by Elkhart to be somewhat of an farmers market/Amish goods store. It was somewhat interesting but I still don't understand peoples fascination with this kind of stuff. Another highlight of the week was spending some time out with the LeCount and Moore family at lake Wawasee. There are now three LeCount small ones and they are absolutely adorable. Pictured is Grandma Terry with her grandson Fisher.

We also worked a bit on the house last week. I now have a blue kitchen! Its not finished yet, as I still have all the trim to paint and the cabinets will eventually get painted white, and I'll install new counter tops, but I'm quite happy with the look. Its pretty strong, but I think it fits my style well. Its also been nice having some extra painters around. Ben's wife moved in with us
about 3 weeks ago, and I now have two live in guest, until they sell there house in Alabama or they get sick of me, whichever may come first. I've also started a little patio area in my backyard, although it severely needs some landscaping. It has become a nice little refuge in that its behind my garage and can't be seen from the sidewalk or road.

I Swear I'm OK

2007-06-10T22:29:00.002-04:00

I'm guessing that a lot of you saw last week the story of Ben Carpenter from Michigan getting taken for a ride by a semi. Judging from all the e-mails I received, for some reason people found this funny. Anyway if you haven't heard the story I highly recommend reading it. It involved a man who was crossing a stoplight in a wheelchair and a semi didn't see him, and ended up pushing him for around 4 miles. Miraculously the kid (Ben Carpenter) didn't have a scratch on him. Read about it here. By the way I think I had that same shirt as a kid.

The summer seems to be progressing quite nicely here, I've got a bit of an outdoor area set up now with a new grill and patio set. I'm actually sitting back there right now enjoying a wonderful evening, next to my ilegal outdoor fire. Its hard to believe its almost July already, and my first big vacation of the year (if you call going to your parents house a big vacation). I am going out to California in August to see my friend Meghan for a real "vacation" though.

I got to see my ol' alma matter Cedarville participate in the Formula SAE competion up here in Detroit about a month ago. Its always neat to see them participate in these competitions and it always gives me a bit of a sense of pride to see them compete with the big boys. Granted I have never seen them beat the big boys but its still neat none the less. For my senior design project we designed the suspension for this vehicle and it is now in its third iteration.

Memorial day weekend was a blast. As is our tradition a huge group of college friends got together in Canton, OH. We had I believe around 12 people staying at my friends Jenn and Nelsons, which they were great in hosting us. We had two children for the first time as part of the festivities which made the experience all the more special. If anyone is interested I'm planning on having a get together the weekend of August 18th for the one and only Woodward Dream Cruise, which happens to be only a block and a half from my house now.

Took the first motorcycle trip of the year this weekend, nothing too serious, only about 250 miles out and about Michigan. We (Kyle and I) happended to stumble across a Civil War reenactment just outside of Brooklyn. These people are hardcore. Everybody was camping in authentic clothes, and all their supplies and tents were also authentic. We didn't actually get to see any battles or anything but it was still quite the experience. We also had one of those, hey lets check that out, moments. On the map in nice red letters there is supposed to be a Michigan Space Center, outside of Jackson. Well we travel propably 20 miles out of our way, stop and ask for directions and find one of the biggest dissapointments ever. The place was never much of anything, but to top it off it had closed three years earlier and was still labeled on my brand new map. The picture is all that was left of their displays, and it turns out that the center has been moved to Kalamazoo.

Also had a chance to check out the Detroit Festival of the Arts today. I always love this festival because its just not an art fair, but a celebration of the arts and always brings out some strange things. We even saw a showing of the oldest surviving animated film, "The Adventures of Pince Achmed", which was created in 1926. Some highlights:

These guys were all on stilts doing some dramatic theater. Kids were absolutely freaked out by them.

Nothing like taking someones hair and using it as your canvas.

This group was rather interesting, they called their routine physical music.

I used to be so good at this

2007-05-05T11:23:00.001-04:00

I really used to be good at blogging, I really was. Every week I could come up with something witty and refreshing (at least in my eyes), and it was easy. Anymore it seems like its all I can do to sit down and dedicate some time to it. I will definitely say that this home ownership thing has shifted my priorties in life. Mostly in a good way. I only watch a couple of hours of TV a week, and I will also say I'm a bit less lazy than I used to be. Granted there is a lot more to do, so I really didn't have a choice, but I will say I'm definitely enjoying it. The picture above is what the front of my home currently looks like, I planted my first ever flowers (the yellow pansies) and I believe they already may be dead or at least severely struggling! Everything else is coming along nicely though and I finally bought my first ever mower last weekend (a big moment in a mans life by the way, third behind having a child, and getting married). Well anyway, here are some highlights of the last month or so, some you may enjoy, others you may not.

Continuing on with the house theme, I managed to get rid of an old green shed that was sitting behind my garage. How do you get rid of a shed you might ask? Non other than craigslist.com. I put the thing up at midnight for free and by 9:00 am the next morning I had 25 replies. In fact I had so many replies that I sent out an e-mail at 5:00 that night and within 30 mintutes it was gone. It is quite the site to see someone driving down the road with a 6'x6'x6' steel shed handing out of their truck, but anyway its gone, and I now have to decide what I want to do with the space. I'm thinking patio funiture, but so far have not been able to find anything I like. Its not a huge space, and I also need to decide what to do with the fireplace, as well as some other nice touches. Its not in bad shape, but at the same time needs a little work. I just found out its illegal to have open fires in my town (pretend you didn't see that photo), so I'm slightly heading towards turning it into a charcoal grill. Or my other option is to continue using it as a fireplace until I get my first ordinance violation.

Managed to attend my first Tigers game the other week. My friend Meghan from California was in the other week and we had a blast. I hadn't seen her in a couple years, and had forgotten how much fun we had had, back when she was an intern in my group at GM. I'm hoping to get out to see her in August in LA and then head down to San Diego for a couple of days. She was in charge of getting tickets and somehow managed to score tickets 11 rows right behind home plate, which made for one of the better games I have seen in a while. Last time I saw a game with her however we had a couple offer us 1st row tickets right on the third base line.

Kyle and I managed to make it to the Our Body, The Universe Within exhibit down at the Detroit Science Center. I don't know how many of you have heard of these type of exhibits but they are quite powerful. People have bascially donated their bodies to science and they have becomed plastizied. For some reason the bodies on display were all Chinese, and were displayed in vaious forms of disection. I was a bit apprehensive before we went, but it wasn't nearly as gross as I had imagined. The worst thing I saw was an entire piece of human skin on display that I can only liken to a bear rug, except with human skin.

I finally got my couches for my living room, which is still a work in progress. I really like them, and they ended up going on sale for another 1100 dollars off after I bought them. After a couple of days on the phone with Macy's I was finally able to get the price I bought them for reduced to the sale price. I still need to get a new end table and a console table for this room, along with a rug and some artwork, but I'm very happy with how its turning out. I'm thinking of pop art for the walls, something along the style of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. Should look good when its finished. Speaking of art work I did a little piece of my own the other night. I made a huge collage with every sporting event ticket I've ever gone too. Almost 13 years worth. It turned out pretty nicely and I had planning on doing one for several years now. It was pretty neat to go through the tickets and all the memories they brought back, the different people I had gone with. I'm guessing I was missing a couple, but it turned out to be quite a few tickets.

I'm a Local Detroit Celebrity!

2007-03-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I had a first for me. I was mentioned in the same newspaper article with Kid Rock. During my home hunting experience I made use of a website called zillow.com . Its a website where it predicts the current value of a home based on several different factors. All you need is an address and you're good to go. While its much more accurate for metro regions its pretty neatto experiment with. Anyway, the Detroit News came to my realtor looking for people who had used the website and she mentioned me. So I got to do an interview and get some pictures taken and low and behold I got a couple of paragraphs and a photo in one of the major papers in Detroit. You can check out the article here . Its been pretty neat having people come up to me at work and say they saw me in the paper.

That crappy room you saw above in the background has now turned green. One room down, only 4 or 5 more to go. Many thanks to my friends Ben and Laura for helping to paint and also in making me be a bit more daring in my color choices. I have some couches that show up for this room in a week and a half and am getting pretty excited. I've decided I'm going with a formal living room (no TV), and think this will be a great place to relax. I'm also painting my basement bathroom red at the moment, which is a bit of a stretch for me, but so far so good. Let me know if you've got any suggestions for my kitchen. I'm going to be painting the cabinets white, and right now a sugestion for the walls has been a darker shade of blue. We'll have to see about that one.

I've also had the pleasure of having some new visitors stop bye a couple weekends in the past month. My friends Jenn and Nelson made their first trip up to Detroit and also my parents came up with my sister Camille and her husband Jeremy. As always experienced some excellent restaurants with them again. My parents have now been coming up once or twice a year for 6 years now, and I don't think we've hit the same restaurant once. We also did some neat exploring of the city. Its amazing all the intesting new things you see everytime you head into large cities. I've been down there dozens of times and it still fascinates me everytime I go. For all the negative stereotypes Detroit has, it has so much to offer. I do describe it as a city you have to learn to love. It doesn't present itself well to outsiders, but is such a neat place if you give it a chance. Here a couple of images from throughout the day.

The Guardian Building

The Spirit of Detroit, and Joe Louis Fist

No trip to the city is complete until you ride the Peopple Mover, our lovely elevated train that takes you in a 3 mile loop and deposits you right back where you started.

Special credit should be given to my sister Camille for the above photos.

Is This Kid Ever Going To Do Another Post?

2007-02-11T23:38:00.000-05:00

Back by popular demand, here I am. A couple of you have been bugging me about updating this thing (Laura and Vivian), so here goes a quick recap of whats going on the past month. For some reason my plethora of free time has vanished, and I no longer have my own internet connection, so these have become a little harder to do.

House: Moved in on Jan 10th. I though it was going to be around a month or so till the previous owner moved out. Well guess what, 5 days after closing I took pocession. Its been a lot better experience than I imagined, although its amazing all the little crap that you can find to do. Its also amazing how half ass, people tend to fix things. You can walk through something several times and until you start tearing things apart you truly don't know what you have. The only bad surprise so far has been a little water in the basement. It happened literally 3 days after I moved in and we'll have to see how bad it gets this spring. It happend when we had those 50 degree days with rain, and I had a gentlemen out who recommened some things I can do outside to greatly improve the situation. I have been tearing out a multude of wires out of the basement ceiling. I wish I would have snapped a photo before I started, but I had never seen so many wires in a home. Turns out many of them were dead or open ended, so whats a man to do? Begin tearing them out. As you can see from the picture, I ended up with a pretty decent pile. Ben Kaminsky and I also started a little project this weekend and put some can lights up in the basement. Yeah the place is an absolute mess, but the lights turned out pretty good. Hopefully by this weekend it will be cleaned up, because my parents, along with my sister and brother in law are coming into town.

Other Stuff: January is that time of year again, yes I'm talking about the one and only Detroit Auto Show. Chris Miller and his wife, Chrissy, and her brother, came up for the weekend, and became my first house visitors in the process. Its amazing how much more enjoyable it is to host someone in your own home, as compared to hosting people in your roommates home. We had an absolute blast. The show was steller again this year, and its nice to see that GM is getting mostly good press these days. The new Cadillac CTS is awesome! Although in a more pratical sense I'm guessing that this may be my next new car in a year or two. The Pontiac G8.

Saw the Pistons play the Lakers this past Thursday. No matter how many times you go to a basketball game they never get old. We had an outing for work and I took Ben Kaminsky along with me. If you've wondered why I've mentioned Ben twice now, its because hes now living in Detroit after having moved up from Alabama. Its quite humorous to see someone who's become accustomed to the south, experience 0 degree whether for the first time in several years. His wife Laura should be moving up shortly, and it will be nice to have another pair of good friends in town.

If anyone finds themselves in the Detroit area, let me know and feel free to stop in. I now have a couple of extra bedrooms, although no extra beds to speak of at the moment. Man do I have a lot of crap to buy!

Some Friends, Some Family, And A New Year

2007-01-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

Ahh, the annual gathering of college friends over the new year holiday. Good times were again had by all, with the rendezvous point occurring in Baltimore, Maryland this year (Thank you Dan Cochrane). I'm pretty sure that in some form or another at least a couple of us have gotten together since we've been out of school starting with bringing in the year 2002. I've missed a couple of these with trips of my own (Key West and Austin, TX), but no matter where the location, have tried to make it when I was free. Its always neat to reconnect with people, and to see how we have all changed throughout the years. Many of us are now married (some to each other), and we even had our first child present this year, which made the event all the more special. I will have to say that this is probably one of the funniest groups of people I've ever hung out with although I have a feeling that my good buddy Ben Kaminsky may heavily set the tone in this arena. The man has one of the best sense of humors I know. His ability to tell a story is unfounded and his ability to impersonate almost anything amazing. As you can see from the photo below on the right, we were all in tears. I physically hurt from laughing so much. Ben did manage to have the most idiotic moment of the weekend however, when we went down to Washington D.C. for the day he had a little trouble inserting a simple fare card into the turnstile for the Metro. We're all standing around wondering where he's at and for the next minute or so we have the pleasure of watching him struggle through a simple process. I even managed to grab a photo it took so long!

** Special credit goes to Anne Zettle and Jenn Lewis for letting me steal a couple of their photos**

The Girls and their Pink Champagne!!

If anyone is interested in the next gathering I'm hoping to host everyone over Memorial day in my new home which I close on, this Friday.

I also managed to make it down to the Hoyer family Christmas, and we had a great time. You know things are going well when you break up for the evening and its 2 am on Christmas eve. All of the aunts and uncles made it into town which is a pretty big thing considering some are coming from Texas and Kansas. 4 older sisters and one younger brother are pictured to the left.

1510 Eaton St. Berkley, MI It Is!

2006-12-17T13:42:00.000-05:00

Well we officially signed the purchase agreement this week, so starting Jan 5th, I take ownership of my first ever home. While I won't actually be taking pocession of the home at that time, I'm getting pretty excited. The guy selling the home will be renting in back from me at a pretty decent rate, and after a month the rent increases 50% so I'm hoping that by the end of January/early February, I should be moving. I went through the home with a home inspector yesterday, and while nothing major was found, its amazing how many little things that need done on an older home. My mind is already starting to race thinking of all the little things I'd like to do, and all the things I'm going to have to buy. I don't own any lawn maintenence items, heck I don't even own a stepladder! I'm also debating on how much furniture I'd like to pick up right away and how much can wait for later. I currently own enough stuff to pretty much fill up a living room and bedroom, so there might be some extra floor space for a while. Here are some photos of the place:

The upstairs bedroom which will I will probably make the main bedroom. It even has a small walk in closet. Not too bad for a bungalow. A lot of these have side walls so short you can't put a bed against the wall.

Here is the main floor living room, which I think I might try to keep just as a sitting area, without a TV.
This room in the basement I am heavily considering turning into my TV/Entertainment area. Not too sure about it being downstairs though.

A nice office type room in the basement. I'm sure some serious boardroom decisions will be made here.The basement bathroom (might need some more color) and laundry room.

The 2 main floor bedrooms.

The main floor bathroom (this definetly will be one of my first main projects). Notice the nice window in the shower and yes the bottom is frosted.

The kitchen. I'm sure some glorius feast will take place here. I actually see myself cooking more with my own home, but we'll see.

A couple more outside pictures, the garage needs a little something to jazz it up and maybe a little more landscaping in the rear of the house.

A House? Maybe

2006-12-10T17:36:00.000-05:00

This whole homebuying process has been quite the hassle, but a little fun at the same time. I think I may have found a place already, although nothing is official yet. After looking at hundreds of homes online, and around 15 in person, house number 11 seems to have come out a winner. I wasn't real impressed with many of the homes I looked at and my main downfall through this whole process was I was trying to get in an area of town that is a bit more "trendy" and thus homes are slightly inflated. So last Sunday I made my first offer on the home I'm interested in. I underbid the guys asking price by 22k, which I didn't expect him to accept but thought was a good staring price. He comes back 7k lower and I come up 10k, so we are now 5 apart, and I'm set in my mind that I'm not going to budge a bit. He says hes not budging either, so I make it known I'm done with negotiations. A day later he comes down another 2.5k and I'm still sticking to my guns. So what happens late on Saturday night? The guy comes down the rest of the way. We have a winner!! Nothing official yet, but we are supposed to get everything down on paper early this week. So if everything goes according to plan, I should be the owner of a 1952 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1100 sq. ft. bungalow, in Berkley, MI. The only thing I have against the house is that its a corner lot, but that wasn't a deal killer. The 1100 sq ft. doesn't include the finished basement or from what I can calculate the third bedroom located on the second floor, so the place is bigger than it sounds.

Last weekend was the annual Noel Night, in downtown Detroit, where they open up all the museums for free and the whole town gathers in the streets to sing carols. It was quite the experience. I also got to catch dinner with my friends Debbie, and Dan (who was on his way back from Amsterdam). One of the local Episcopal churches was open, and was absolutely stunning. I keep thinking that its a shame they don't build churches like this anymore, but at the same time, its a bit of a waste to put so much money into something, when so many other needy causes are out there. I also learned what cappuccino semifreddo was this evening after being very unsuccesful in trying to drink what turned out to be a frozen beverage. Boy did I look like an idiot. I wondered why the cup was so cold, but thought oh well, its just regular cappaccino. Incorrect.

Hey look, its one of the wisemen with his camel!
Nothing says Christmas like a mariachi band in a public library.

I've hired a Realtor!

2006-11-20T00:09:00.000-05:00

So Ben is growing up. This past weekend I had my first meeting for what I hope will become a fruitful relationship. I've met with a realtor. Yes, after being in Detroit for 5 years Ben Carpenter finally has the maturity to handle his own home. I've been debating this for about two years now, but for some reason always came up with some really lame excuse. I imagine that Kyle (my housemate) is probably ready to get rid of me as I've been living with him for over 4 years now, but man I bet that rent money I've been paying him was nice. So I'm hoping a by mid to late winter I'll be moving into a new place. I'm not looking for anything fancy, but definelty not a huge fixer upper either. I've seen all the fun my friends have had with some of their homes and while I appreciate their experiences, I don't really want to go down that path. So here's to good home shopping.

I made it back to Indiana the past couple of weekends for a couple of different events. In early November it was to see the ol high school get their butts kicked 40-7 in a game in which everyone thought we had our first ligitimate shot to actually make it somewhere. Jimtown was the defending state champs though. It was great to see everyone though and sit through absolutely freaking cold weather with friends. GM had election day off on that Tuesday so I was able to make a four day weekend of it. Had such a great time that Sunday night my parents asked me if they were going to be able to see me at all while I was home. Also made it home last weekend for the wedding of Haley Lantz (now Mrs. Marty Yoder), a good friend from high school. She started dating a guy back in June and five months later its official. This whole dating thing when you're out of school scares me. Things seem to happen way too quick. In my mind I still have the date for 2-3 years thing going, but I guess when you know, you know, and thus apparently, I don't know yet. Also by the way they didn't have a garter toss, so I was unable to capture my seventh garter.

Have a great Thanksgiving everybody!

Chicago, Chicago, my kind of town!

2006-10-30T16:09:00.000-05:00

Headed on over to the windy city this past weekend with my buddy Mike and his girlfriend Kara, to visit her friend Tracy who’s going to grad-school at U of C. The girls spent Friday afternoon shopping so Mike and I hit some museums. I hadn’t been to any of the Chicago museums since our sixth grade field trip, where our group, led by my lovely mother, was accidentally left behind by the school buses for about a half hour. Those were some tense moments as I recall. We visited both the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. The Shedd has recently been expanded and they now have an awesome dolphin exhibit along with some Beluga whales. Highly recommended. The Field museum had a traveling King Tutankhamen exhibit which was really neat although I was disappointed. I expected to see some sarcophaguses and they just had a lot of the treasures and artifacts that were found in his tomb. So the picture you see was not seen by me. Saturday, we did some more exploring down town and just taking in the hustle and bustle. One of my favorite cheap things to do in town is that there is a lounge on the 96th floor of the Hancock building that you can get up to for free. Its actually a bar, so I usually end up ordering a drink, but it offers an absolutely breathtaking view of the city. Over the years I can’t believe how much I’ve grown to love big cities. Growing up in Amishville, USA, I never imagined that I would come to appreciate the city more than the country.

There’s big news in the Carpenter/Smith household. We now have a dog! Kyle inherited a 110 pound golden retriever from one of his friends, and I can’t stand the thing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love dogs. I just don’t enjoy living with them. A large dog in an 1100 sq. ft house is a little crowded for me. I also may be allergic to the thing, in that I’ve had cold like symptoms since he showed up three weeks ago. I’ve had a ton of dogs in my life, but this is the first house dog, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m starting to get the housing itch a little, so I may have my own place anyway by next spring hopefully.

Heading back to Indiana this coming weekend for the big Fairfield/Jimtown football sectional championship game. A couple of friends are also coming into town so it should be a good time. Fairfield, my alma mater, is 11-0 for the first time in school history, and I also believe may be going for their first ever sectional championship in football. If only I hadn’t quite playing football as a freshman things may have turned out a little differently! So instead I played basketball, and became the best 12th man this side of the Mississippi.

Cedarville: 5 years later

2006-10-09T22:42:00.000-04:00

Made the trek down to Ohio this past weekend for Cedarville's homecoming. I had never been to one of these and it turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. It also happened to be our five year reunion so a ton of friends happened to be coming into town. I even managed to attend my first ever soccer game there (yeah, thats pretty sad, but I've never been a big soccer guy).
Some Highlights:

Happened to run across the ol' Ethanol Truck that has since been decomissioned back to a regular old truck. Shes looking pretty rough at the moment and its sad to see all those hours that everyone put into this thing and now this thing is just sitting around not being cared for that well. The picture on the left was taken at the Detroit Auto Show I believe in 1999.

The best part of the day was the banquet they had for our class. I'm guessing there were approximately 100-120 people there, which I don't think is too bad when you're graduating class is around 700 I believe. It was amazing how many people had children! I'm guessing 40-50% of them and most seemed to be in the 6-18 month range. It was also funny to see how many non-Cedarville spouses there were, I could only pick out a few. I had the idea that everyone who was single should where an "S" next to their nametag, but this didn't seem to go over so well with the couple of people I mentioned this too : )

Nelson Lewis and I

Amanda Marriage and Jenn Lewis(Nelsons wife)

Some of the ol gang: Me, Spencer Phelps, Spencers wife, Neslon, baby Emily(Nelsons), Jenn, Amanda, Nick Tucholski,
Chris and Lia Reichiell (and yes, I know I screwed up your last name).

Chris Reichiell and I

*Some photo credit should go to Lia and Jenn who I stole a couple of photos off of their blogs*
I also got a great photo with our past president Dr. Dixon. They created this bronze 80% scale replica of him and hes sitting among some benches in a hallway in the chapel. A little wierd if you ask me, but I guess its the thought that counts.
Jenn, Nelson, Emily, Amanda, and I ended up finishing up the weekend at Amanda's parents. They did pretty awesome, with me giving them 4 hours notice that I needed lodging for the night. (Plans, I don't need no stinking plans!) Got to spend some good quality time with Jenn and Nelsons daughter too. Don't I look like a natural. Their baby is one of the cutest most well mannered children I have ever seen in my life, and shes only 4 months old.

Ok, Time for the funny story of the week. This one involves three guys, a Saab, and a late night. Some of you may remember that I ran out of gas a couple of months back due to a faulty fuel gage, well it happened again. My buddies Kyle, Mike, and I had just gotten back from a day of golfing, eating, and drinking, and right after I drop them off back at work, the Saab dies on me. Well turns out my estimation of what I thought was empty on the faulty fuel gage, was just a wee bit off. I manage to get off the road which happens to be 4 lanes of traffic with a turn lane in the middle. The guys stop to help and we debate our options. Do we tow it, do we go get gas, or do we push it to the nearest fuel station? Well men being men, we decide to push it approximaty 1/4 mile down the road in the middle of a 4 lane road. Its around 10 pm so traffic is still pretty heavy. It was quite the site to see, I was riding in the Saab, Kyle was pushing, and Mike was driving his truck behind us for protection. We made it all the way to the station, filled up and continued on.

El Weekend de Football

2006-09-25T20:56:00.000-04:00

Took in a little live football this weekend. Was hooked up with Michigan vs. Wisconson tickets for Saturday at the last second and ended up attending the game with my friend Debbie. I've been to a couple of Michigan games before, but this is always a neat experience. The crowd is amazing, its not the loudest, but being part of a stadium full of 111,000 people all watching football is a pretty surreal experience. I'm greatfull for attending a university such as Cedarville (very intimate experience), but at the same time it would have been neat to be part of the whole "spectator" of big time college sports. Oh, well I guess you can't really have it both ways.

We also finally got our Lions season tickets this year (my buddy Mike and I). After waiting for two full years, on their waiting list, we finally have the right to watch one of the worst teams in the NFL. I actually get made fun of at work anytime that I mention I have tickets. Its still fun and this past weekend we got to take in the Packers and watch Brett Farve look like he was 25 years old again. Lions did have a chance to tie it up on the last play, but around 75% of the crowd had already left.

I have a little treat here for you. Someone was actually able to snap a picture of me this weekend dancing at a party. I think this may be the second one in existence in the entire universe. The moons must be perfectly aligned to get this rare phenomena, so they must have been on Saturday night. Nothing like dancing in somebodys kitchen. Good times!

Jugs or Nuts

2006-09-18T21:50:00.000-04:00

Horrible, Horrible, Horrible, for the first time since I started this thing last March, I finally missed a week. I really didn't have too much to write about, and didn't want to do one of those, I did this, I did that kind of post. So instead I'm going to do one of my most controversial post ever. (Those of you with young ones may want to discontinue reading now : )
Co-ed flag football season started a couple of weeks ago, and our team name has evolved a bit. We originally started out as the Juggernauts, I have no idea why, but it worked for a couple seasons. Well last season we started joking around a little and somehow we came up with the term Jugs or Nuts. Creative isn't it. Yes, we are a group of people in our mid to late 20's and not teanagers. We've now made it official with team shirts and I thought I'd show them to you. If you don't get the logo you're an idiot by the way.

Luke and Gretchen Morningstar (high school friend and wife) stopped by the weekend of the 8th on their way back from Makinac Island. They were only able to stay one night, but I still had a blast considering it was the first time they had ever been by to see me in the five years I've lived up here. Good eats and good times were had by all.
Made the pilgrimage to IKEA finally for the first time in my life. We finally got one up here in Detroit this summer, and it has been packed ever since. These stores are pretty cool and I can see why they become tourist destinations in and of themselves. Some very cool fashionalbe stuff, although I could never see doing my whole house in it. It just doesn't seem like a lot of this stuff would last very long with heavy use, although its not too pricy so maybe thats not a bad tradeoff. Anyway, I made my first purchase of a cool LED light, it doesn't really function very well as a light, but I couldn't turn it down due to the coolness factor.

Out and About

2006-09-06T20:20:00.000-04:00

I think this is the worst I've ever done keeping up with this blog thing. I'm losing it, sorry there folks. The Labor Day weekend made me a little lazy, and I just started my 9th out of 10 masters classes, so thats something else to worry about now. We also managed to attend a rain filled Tigers game last night, which they ended up losing. This team is starting to scare me. I think they have lost 15 out of there last 22 or something like that. They still lead their division by 4 games though. Should be an interesting last month to the baseball season. This past weekend was the Detroit Jazz Festival along with another huge festival up here the Pontiac Arts, Beats, and Eats Festival. I happened to attend both of these this weekend and had a blast. Lots of good food, and I most enjoyed the Jazz festival, and watched a couple complete concerts, with my favorite being Joan Osborne. A few picture highlights from the weekend:

These two pictures are from a high school around here called Cranbrook. Its a private school for extremely gifted kids in the arts and sciences.

Dowtown Detroit, Upper left is the Dodge fountain and on the right is a cool painted billboard for the Pontiac Solstice GXP, note General Motors headquarters in the background. Below is me trying to be a little artistic. I took this shot in the Compuware Building lobby. There is this awesome 15 story fountain in the middle of the atrium.

Kyle is a Girly Man

2006-08-28T23:33:00.000-04:00

I didn't want to go into this, because this is something that should probably be kept as a deep dark secret, but I can't hold back any longer. My roommate, Kyle Smith, can't handle rollercoasters anymore. He was exposed at Cedarpoint this past Friday. It started slow, and built into a big event where the man got litterally sick. It put a damper on the day, although we still managed to have a good time, well, at least I did. I was able to do a couple of the big coasters and also check out the two newest rides that I had not ridden since I hadn't been here in two years, we did have to leave a littel earlier than scheduled though. MaxAir was really cool, its like a big swinging wheel that rotates you around as it swings. My favorite new ride however was Skyhawk. A huge 120 ft high swing. It wasn't so much scary as it was an awesome sensation. Imagine the swings we rode on as children, and now imagine that swing being 120 ft in the air, and you're looking directly at the ground! A little bit of a surprise for next year is that they tore out the old log ride and are putting up yet another roller coaster from the looks of things. If anybody is up for a trip some time next spring let me know.

I also managed to run into a couple of people that I had no idea were going to be there. I've gone tons of times where I knew people were there, and yet couldn't find them. Anyway, I ran into my pastor from back home in Indiana, John Randolf, and his two youngest daughters, and also a gentleman from work. I had no idea that the Randolfs were going to be there and had to do a double take when I saw this girl waving at me from across the midway.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

Toodles!

The Mama and the Papa

2006-08-21T22:30:00.000-04:00

The ol parents came into town this weekend. My dad had rotator cuff surgery three weeks ago and has been off work, so they had some spare time on their hands. I think they've been coming up to Detroit about twice a year now for the past five years, and I don't think we've repeated anything yet, not even food. I've now found my absolute favorite barbeque joint, Slows BBQ, in downtown Detroit. Absolutely amazing ribs and brisket! The pictures by the way are from last years summer trip to the Henry Ford mansion (I cheated a bit).

Saturday here was the big Woodward Avenenue Dream Cruise. This is the automotive event of the summer here in Detroit. They estimate its around 30,000 classic cars and 1.5 million people spread out over 16 miles of road. There are some pretty rare and interesting cars that show up, and my parents enjoyed it a lot more than they thought they would. We ended up actually driving the thing, and it took 2 hours to go 5 miles.

We also checked out Superman Returns in IMAX. Yeah, I know the movie has been out for like four months now, but I hadn't caught it yet. I don't know if any of you have ever seen a regular movie on an IMAX screen, but its quite the expereience compared to a normal movie. They even had about 20 minutes of footage that was in 3D. Very cool, these movies in 3D are of the type where you actually feel like you can reach out and touch the objects in front of you.

The Trip Around The Lake (Erie that is!)

2006-08-15T22:25:00.000-04:00

Well it was the weekend and Kyle and I didn't have any plans. So what are two single guys to do? Call some girls and line up dates? Nah, we decided to take a motorcycle trip. After debating the strategy for a while we deciding doing a little two dayer around lake Erie would be perfect. We'd take off Saturday morning, stay in Niagra Falls that night, then head on over to Buffalo, and back around down through the States on Sunday. We didn't really plan a route, we just tried to stay as close to the lake as possible and to head east on Saturday, and then head West on Sunday. Perfect plan. The weather turned out to be gorgeous and actually a little too cool towards the evening hours.

The ride through Canada was interesting, after getting through the border crossing (bye the way, pulling out money and identification is not easy when riding a motorcycle.) Kyle is pictured on the right, right after we crossed into the great Maple Leaf Country, I'm on the left a little later into the trip. Speedlimits are a little slow here, 80 km/hr, which is only around 50 mph, so traveling was a bit slow, and of course we followed this speed to the exact letter of the law : ). I've never seen so many greenhouses in my life, we traveled about a 10 mile stretch where there was nothing but greenhouses on the side of the road. Some were up to an acre in size. We even saw a region where they were growing tobacco. We also stumbled upon this huge wind farm. It was like a scene out of a science fiction movie. There had to be 40 or 50 of these huge three bladed towers all along the lake shore generating electricity.

Ah, Niagara Falls! One word of warning, do not show up without hotel reservations on a Saturday night. We had to stop at about 10 places before we found something that had rooms that were either available or weren't a complete rip off. The lovely Kingsway Motel, located right next to two strip clubs and a massage parlor. This place was high class! Only 130 bucks a night. We'll take it. At first they only had the honeymoon suite available with one queen bed, and a heart shaped jacuzzi, but at the last second, another guy checked out and we were able to get a room with two beds. Now wouldn't that have been romantic? The one thing I hate about Niagara is it is almost a little too toursity. The falls are simply amazing, the sound, the mist in the air, all that, but the whole town is just one little concentrated tourist trap. I had never seen the falls at night which is an entirely different experience than the day time views. We even managed to get ourselves into a little mischief here. There is an incline railway that leads down to the falls from all the hotels and Kyle didn't want to wait in line. So what do we do, we take off for the woods, and descend up a 45 degree embankment and for the next 10 minutes I'm doing everything I can to get up this freaking hill thats almost 200 feet in elevation. Good times. Good idea Kyle! For some reason he seemed to have an easier time with it than I did. And by the way, it was also pitch black out.

The trip back to Detroit through the States turned out to be an excellent ride. There are some absolutely beautiful roads through wine country in Western New York. We ended up stopping in Cleveland for a couple hours. Toured the Walter G. Mather boat, which is a 700 foot freigher that use to haul iron ore on the great lakes. The accomodations on the boat actually didn't look too bad. Well guys being guys, we again had to do something stupid while in Cleveland, so we thought it would be funny to unhook these huge chains that they had as fences on the water. What we didn't plan on was not being able to put the thing back when we were done. Why do guys do stupid stuff like this? I honestly have no answer for this. We also stopped off at a Czechoslovakian restaurant in Vermillion, which had one of my favorite appetizers of all time, Sourkraut balls. My mothers relatives make these every Thanksgiving, and while these didn't quite stack up they were good none the less.
So you're asking yourself, I wonder what one looks like after spending 800 miles exposed to the elements on a motorcycle. I'll offer up a picture of my helmet as an example that this mode of transportation can get a little nasty sometimes.

Ross and Sarah

2006-08-06T23:07:00.000-04:00

Ross and Sarah Beehler, married friends from high school, came up to spend the weekend this past week. They had never been to Detroit in the summer time so they were looking forward to the trip. Lets just say last time they came up it was around 10 degrees out and we tried going to two different events that we couldn't get into. One involved 4 hours in traffic and a monster truck rally that sold cash only tickets that we were cashless for. Man that was a fun time.

I was also able to score a Pontiac G6 convertible for the weekend, so that was a bit of a bonus, although convertibles with the sun beating down, actually get a little old, believe it or not. We started off the weekend by visiting the Edsel Ford home, which is the home of Henry Fords only child Edsel. The home is amazing with its 60 rooms, many of which actually have wood paneling that was brought over from 16th century English manors. It was built in 1929 for around 3 million dollars which is now the equivalent of 35 million. So at 6.5% interest over 30 years that works out to about $221,223.81 a month. Not too shabby. They also stated that their heating bills were just a measily $125,000 for the entire year.

Saturday we headed on over to the Henry Ford museum, that Henry Ford established. They had a temporary baseball exhibit going on and we were actually able to see one of the original Honus Wagner baseball cards which is the most sought after baseball card in existense. Some highlights: the limo John F. Kennedy was killed in, the chair Abraham Lincoln was shot in, George Washington's camping gear from the Revolutionary war, the bus that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on (I'm sitting in that seat in the picture), the original Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, and a ton of other items. That evening we headed on down to downtown, and accidently ran into a free scrimmage that the Lions were having, and even brushed paths with the legendary Barry Sanders (pictured). The Tigers were also playing, and somehow we were able to score tickets from the box office, to a game a month ago I tried getting tickets to, but was sold out. Not sure how that works out? Anyway, the baseball game ended up being the best game I had ever been too. The game ended with a two out walk off homer in the bottom of the ninth. Absolutely amazing! Overall everything we ended up doing turned out to be the exact opposite of what had happened on their last trip (bad was now good). It was almost like a Seinfeild episode.

Why Not to Talk to Hot Girls

2006-07-30T23:16:00.000-04:00

I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. If an attractive woman seems overly friendly, stay away, stay far away! This little lesson stems from the canoeing trip, me and 11 other friends took this past weekend up in northern Michigan on the Rifle river. We went up Friday afternoon camped two nights and did a 28 mile canoe trip on Saturday. I'm not an expert canoer by any means, but consider myself quite capable in the water. Ok back to the story, my buddy Kevin and I were partners and as we were coming down the river there was this huge crowd of people partying on the bank of the river. This girl starts wading out into the river and asks us whats in our cooler and if we have any beer. Well, Kevin and I being the friendly people we are (and appreciative of any attention we get), tell her to go ahead and take a look in the cooler. She comes up to the canoe and immediately starts rocking us and dumps us. We both are pretty pissed, and I end up trying to get her back by tackling/pushing her down, but the damage had been done. She ended up getting some more guys behind us which made us feel a little better. Overall it turned out to be a pretty good trip however, and we even ended up tipping ourselves over another time. Theres nothing like trying to fish your clothes, food, and cooler out of the water. I've never seen so many people on a river before, it was like a freaking traffic jam in some areas. Lots of booze, and lots of girls flashing their boobs for plastic beads, you've got to love a nice family afternoon with the kids going canoeing. I also came to another realization this past weekend. I'm not a huge fan of camping. I love the outdoors, and all the campfire/food stuff, but the whole no shower, everything gets damp, and the hot/humid conditions I can't get past. Man I'm turning into a wimp. Oh, well.

Its County Fair Time

2006-07-24T23:07:00.000-04:00

After an eight year hiatus, I made an effort to get back to my hometown county fair this past weekend, The Elkhart County 4-H Fair. I've heard its the third largest county fair in the nation, but anyway its the event of the summer back home. Everybodys there, and this year I made sure I partook of the festivities. I'm also a 9 year 4-H Swine Club veteran, so I know a thing or two about raising animals for the fair. I ended up running into a ton of people, around 40 or so. Some of them I hadn't seen since high school, and it was interesting to see who was married and how many people had a significant amount of children already. I lined up to meet some friends while I was there, and found out that Haley Lantz (pictured in last weeks post), recently became engaged and is set to be married in November. She had been dating the guy all of one month, although knew him previously from their church, Nappanee Missionary. Okay, this dating thing when you're older scares me, when things can happen that fast. Congratulations Haley and Marty! Another cool little tidbit from the weekend was the Sunday night Vespers service at the fair. My friend Luke does sound for a band Takeaway Me, that was the opening act for Mark Schultz. They performed in front of one of their largest crowds ever (8000) and ended up selling a ton of merchandise, and put on a good show. No post could ever be complete without including a picture of Ross Beehler trying to milk a fake cow.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

2006-07-17T23:43:00.000-04:00

I'll have to say I just went through one of the most boring weeks of work I've ever gone through. GM finally didn't make us take 2 weeks off for our annual summer shutdown but yet about 50% of everybody still took 2 weeks off. So not much was going on. Helped my buddy Mike over the weekend with some home renovation. For those of you who know Mike, he likes to dive into things. This guy is currently redoing his garage, kitchen, and bathroom, all at the same time. I think I would have went with one project at a time, but such is Mike. Theres nothing like ripping out 50 year old insulation and plaster. My lungs greatly appreciated it, and I'm sure I probably took about 5 years off of my lifespan. I did wear a duskmask but those only go so far. Hes been going for 2 weeks now and the garage is almost finished, bathroom is 50% done, and kitchen 25%. Its been a good learning experience for me since I've done almost none of this work before, but I do understand why most people contract out a large majority of this work.

When I was at my parents last weekend, I broke into the old photo vault and had a blast. And since they now have a scanner, I went crazy! Its amazing all the memories that come back when looking at ones life. I thought I'd post a few here for your enjoyment. It was also funny looking through the photos and I don't think that I found one that had all five of my family members in it. Weird. Okay, onto a couple highlights.

A young Ben: Now tell me thats not a cute kid.
First day of either Kindergarten or 1st grade: Scared out of my mind, Nice Snoopy lunch pale, and I believe a Garfield book bag.
Some old Friends (Me, Zach Worthman, David Allen, Kurtis Baumgartner)
Junior Prom: Me, my date Amy Kinnel (Neild), Haley Lantz, and Ross Beehler
Senior Prom: Haley Lantz, Jason Lecount, Me, my date Emily Elrod (Lecount)

Chris and Chrissy

2006-07-10T23:32:00.000-04:00

Had a great time in Indiana this past week. Spent 3 days at my mom and dad's and then headed on down to Indianapolis to visit my friends Chris and Chrissy and see the house that they have been working on for I believe 9 months now. Got to see some people back home that I hadn't seen in a while and caught up on some sleep. Highlight of the visit was getting my grandma on my motorbike and taking her out for a little spin. I tried to scare her a bit but she was one tough cookie. Also had the opportunity to have dinner with friends Joe and Emily and her brother Jason and his wife Michelle. They both have their own kids and its an interesting dynamic to have friends with kids now. We went for a walk and when some of the kids saw my motorcycle, they imediately wanted to sit on it. Its just a man thing I guess, its in our geans. Pictured is Emily's 1 1/2 year old son Fisher, and Jason's 3 year old nephew. Jason has a 9 month old of his own named Cooper.

Chris and Chrissy's house was amazing. They had redone all of the floors and they were beautiful. Its one of those really old houses, with a lot of character, where nothing is quite perfect, but looks incredible. They had all of their Purdue friends over for a rousing night of Clue. Had never played the game in a large group before and it turned out to be quite fun. We ended up hitting the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday which was pretty good for a medium sized city zoo. My favorite: The polar bears. They also had a gardens section with a really neat butterfly house. Being surrounded by hundreds of butterflies can be quite the tranquil experience.

The weekend ended on a little bit of a sour note for me. I ended up taking back roads all the way back from Indy to Detroit on my cycle and got one of the worst speeding tickets (Ohio) I've ever gotten. 78 in a 55 out in the middle of no where, surrounded by corn fields. It was only a little over a hundred bucks and I'm really hoping it doesn't make its way back to Michigan and end up on my insurance (fingers crossed). A motorcycle at 80 feels a lot slower than a car at 80 by the way. There is something about the state of Ohio that I have trouble with. I think I've gotten around 6 speeding tickets in my 11 year driving career and 5 of them have now been in Ohio. So far none of them have ended up on my record so hopefully thats a good sign. And yes, I know I need to slow down!

Dan and Debbie

2006-07-04T01:23:00.000-04:00

What a great way to kick off my forced week of vacation (GM annual summer shutdown). I spent this past weekend paling around with Dan Cochrane and Debbie Pittman of Cedarville University fame. Dan was in from Baltimore visiting a mutual friend of ours. Well mutual friend may not be the correct term for someone I hadn't seen in seven years, but I'll say that after spending three days with the two of them, she's now back on the mutual friend list. And don't worry Debbie, I don't think you'll leave that list soon, now that we know the two of each other only live about 3o minutes apart! We took in 4th of July activites on Saturday at The Henry Ford. The Detroit Symphany Orchestra was giving an outdoor concert, with fireworks following, and it was an absolutely outstanding event. I had never seen fireworks set to a live orchestra which made them all the better. I also saw one of the most impressive renditions of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", sung by a performer who was only 11 years old. Absolutely amazing, she also sang several other songs and if it wasn't for her "young girl" voice you could never tell she was just a kid.

Sunday we headed into Ann Arbor and took in the sights and sounds of the University of Michigan. Debbie knew some cool spots and we visited their law library, which was one of the most impressive library structures I have ever seen. We ended the evening with an awesome meal at a place called Zanzibar, and at the end realized we were the last people left, and the place had closed an hour and a half earlier.

Monday was my day to shine as we headed into Detroit. I absolutely love showing people the city and trying to turn preconceived notions around. Detroit as most of you know doesn't exactly have what I would call a stellar reputation. Heck, it doesn't even have a good reputation with locals here. I find though, when you point out the things the city has to offer your heart can start to turn a little for it. We even asked Dan at the end of the day if we had changed his view of the city, and he said we had. Success! Ended up touring some cool buildings, city parks, John K. King Used and Rare Books, which has over 1 million used books in his store, and hit up the Heidelberg Project, which is one of my favorite things to show people from out of town. The Heidelberg Project is a neighborhood where a gentelman has basically turned into an artistic display. He uses various objects in yards/houses and creates some vary stunning visual displays. My personal favorite is his interpretation of Noahs Ark. I'll leave you with a couple good action shots of me eating an eclair at a local bakery in Detroits Greektown District. Looking forward to the week ahead as I'm heading back to mom and dads for a couple of days and then off to Chris and Chrissy's in Indianapolis.

My Shiny New Gas Can!

2006-06-27T23:43:00.000-04:00

Warning: Do not trust car gas gages to be an absolute device for measuring fuel levels. I learned the hard way tonight. Kyle and I were heading down to the Tigers game and ended up running out of gas on the inside lane of a four lane interstate. After fighting other cars to get back to the outside, got the car stopped and hiked up the embankment on the side. We find ourselves smack dab in the middle of desolate inner city Detroit. We start walking around to find something and absolutely nothing is around. We end up flagging down a cop, and he decides to help us. He also has no idea where a gas station is, so he says "hop in". I am now experiencing my first ride in one of Detroit's finest rear seats, with the back divider wall and everything. Its so tight back there you can't even really put your feet in front of you. Cop drops us off at the gas station, and tells us good luck and takes off. I was hoping he'd run us back, since its a little over a mile to the car, but we were still greatful, none the less. We buy a gas can, and start walking back. Within 2oo feet of walking back, an awesome black woman stops and ask if we need a ride. (I mention her race, to make a point later in this paragraph.). She runs us back to the car, we fill er up and we're off again heading down to the ball game (20 minute delay total, not too shabby). Here is the point that I'd like to make, after Kyle and I talked about this a bit. If this situation is reversed, black person in heavily white neighborhood, I'm highly guessing that no one would stop and help them, at least not where we live. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Detroit, but I've never experienced a more racist/segregated area in my life. It goes both ways here, blacks feel uncomfortable with whites, and whites feel the opposite with blacks. I believe Detroit city statistically is around 80% black, which just shows you how segregated this region is. Its amazing to hear what coworkers say about the city("I haven't been down there in 20 years"), and I'd like to believe that I am in some little way might change just a few peoples thoughts.

Ok, about the ballgame. By the way the Tigers Are Awesome! 53-25, best record in baseball. I can remember three years ago taking my parents to their 100th loss, the year that they almost set the record for most losses ever in baseball with 119, one shy of the 1962 Mets. How quickly things can change. Finally saw my first Tigers win after my third game this year. Roger Clemons was pitching, so the place was packed and the crowd was jacked. Tigers ended up winning 4-0 with Clemons taking the loss. Whos your Tiger? (Inside joke here in town, its their catch phrase in all their commercials). There were also fireworks after the game, which was pretty enthralling. If you've ever seen fireworks in a small enclosed area, they are much more powerfull, and reverb quite nicely off of walls. A good start to the upcoming 4th of July holiday.

I had the pleasure of hosting my sisters, Corinne and Camille, this past weekend. I think that it may have been one of the first times ever, that its just been the three of us, without mom and dad. Its pretty cool now that we're all "adults" and the new dynamic that exists. We spent some time in the city, Detroit Science Center, Small Plates (Excellent Tapas restaurant, absolute best cut of meat I've ever had in my life, a 4 oz. tenderloin), and walked around town a bit. I also took them over to Windsor, Canada, since my sister, being all of 20 years old, could gamble and drink here. The legal age for these activities in Canada is 19. Its funny to see all the young kids going over to party on the weekends. We really didn't do much gambling or drinking, but she still got a kick out the experience. It was weird buying my sister a legal drink. Ah, the joys of living 15 miles from an international border. I had made a previous commitment on Saturday to attend a Young Automotive Professionals Conference at the Chrysler Proving Grounds, so they ended up hitting the zoo by themselves and then we hung out Sat. night, and they took off on Sunday. Back to the Chrysler Proving Grounds story, in the morning they had speakers, but in the afternoon, the event turned into a huge ride and drive event, with I'm guessing around 50 vehicles. They had guys giving rides in Vipers on a road course at 120, an offroad, mudbogging course, with Jeeps, and a cool event where they had reversed the steering on a Jeep (left is right, and right is left), where you had to navigate some turns. They also had a ton of vehicles you could drive yourself on a 4 mile loop. I heavily enjoyed any of the SRT vehicles. (Approx 400 hp) Lets just say that the 70 mph speedlimit that we were supposed to obey, may have been slightly disobeyed. Ok majorly disobeyed, but we were still careful. My favorite vehicle of the day: Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT 8, absolutely amazing.

I Rode The Thumb!

2006-06-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Friday I accomplished something I've been meaning to do for a couple of years now. In fact I had started a journey a while back and bailed halfway through. Yes, I'm talking something of great life importance here. I finally circled the entire thumb of Michigan on my motorcycle. If you've ever met someone from here, when they tell you where they're from they always hold their hand up and point where their town is located. The lower part of Michigan somewhat resembles a mitten so this method usually works pretty well. Well I took Friday afternoon off, and began a 300 mile journey across farmland, beachland, and forests. Pretty cool ride, for most of the trip you're riding along lake Huron, which was absolutely awesome. I also stopped off on several little sidetrips along the way which was entertaining. At the end of the trip though, I was so sore, I couldn't stand to be on that bike another second. Overall it was a 7 hour ride. You can see some of the highligts, the big cow was the best.

On another motorcycle related topic, I finally sold my old bike. I used Craigslist.com for the first time and am here to sing its praises. For those of you unfamiliar with craigslist, its basically a huge online classified add, which is tailored for your metropolitan community. Well anyway, I put the bike up last Sunday, and by Monday afternoon I had already received 3 or 4 calls. By Tuesday night the bike was sold for 200 bucks more than I bought it for, over two years ago. It was the most painless transaction I've ever gone through when selling something, I highly recommend it.

Saturday, my buddy Mike had his annual Hokie/GM/Corvette barbeque. A very interesting group of people by the way. The party consisted of Virginia Tech people, along with people from work, and a large group of people from his local corvette club. Great weather, and we even managed to get in some semi-competive volleyball (semi, being the key word in the past sentence). Mike also got a keg, which we all drank, but only he seemed to induldge in, which made for some good entertainment at the end of the evening. Our buddy Jason, also brought over his 1948 Buick, which was his dad's first ever car. Pretty cool . The Corvettes also provided a little entertainment of their own.

Went to a very cool car show over the weekend. It was for the Detroit Institute of Opthalmology, and had some very rare cars all the way from back in the 1930's up to current generation concept cars. It was on the ground's of the Edsel Ford Estate, which was absolutely beautiful. Edsel was Henry Ford's only son, so he had a little money, and actually became president of Ford at the age of 27.
A Cadillac Sixteen, gorgeous

They certainly don't make em like this anymore, some sixteen year old would have this sucker off in like two minutes in any parking lot. This was a Pierce Arrow by the way.
This is the eight oldest Volkswagon Bug known to exist, kind of ugly, but cool non the less.One of the most georgeous paint jobs I have ever seen in my life, this guy did all his own work, wouldn't do it on my own car, but still outstanding.

My buddy Allen's car, a Subaru WRX, that he's sunk 80k into. Why would someone do this? Very cool licsence plate, probably wouldn't work on the Saab though.

Just Some Random Things

2006-06-12T22:26:00.000-04:00

This past week wasn't too eventful. Work has been slow, and I didn't take a vacation anywhere this weekend : ) So here are a few random images from the past week.

Headed on down to the Detroit Festival of the Arts on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised. Most art festivals seem to be simply vendors peddling there goods (which is entertaining), but this one had a large number of musical performances, and live sculpting (is that the verb for sculpture?).

Tea anyone?Or how about a nursery ryhme?Maybe a haircut? (Don't ask me what this is, but it was pretty cool when set to music)They also had some college students from Wayne State, who created these huge sidewalk chalk drawings of famous works of art. I don't think the photos do these justice, as they were even
more impressive in person.

A little Da Vinci A little Warhol

With the great weather up here in Michigan this past week I was also able to put about 300 miles on my bike. Its amazing how much fun one can have and end up right back where they started. A couple of nights started out as simple rides and a couple of hours later I would find myself in Toledo or Ann Arbor. Good times. No I'm not a University of Michigan fan, but I thought that this picture turned our pretty well.
Toodles!

Boston Baby!!!

2006-06-06T00:09:00.000-04:00

Mark up another one of my new all time favorite cities. Boston was awesome. Beautiful scenery, great public transportation, and very walkable. I went out with my roommate Kyle Smith, and my buddy Mike Cummins. We left early Saturday morning, at something like 5 am, (for those of you who know me well, thats not a good time for me), and got into town around 8:30. Hello cold weather and rain. Not exactly what I had in mind when planning a trip to New England in June. In fact I had brought along only one long sleeved shirt and no jacket, so this became my primary clothing for the weekend. We also had no rain gear (umbrella or poncho), so we were pretty much in for whatever God had in mind to throw at us. First day we pretty much planned all indoor activities due to the rain, however the issue of getting to these so called activities was still a problem. Well Kyle and Mike being the smart people they are (a lot of sarcasm was in that statement), thought we'd walk to the New England Aquarium. "Oh, Ben, its not that far." Approximately 15 minutes later, we arive at the aquarium and I am absolutely soaked and miserable. Oh, by the way, it turns out that there was a subway stop approximately 1/2 block away. My mood at this point is pretty well depicted in the photo shown, supplied by Kyle. The aquarium was pretty cool by the way, and one of the most interesting aquatic creatures I have ever seen was there and called a Sea Dragon. The thing looked just like a leafy plant, but yet was some sort of fish. We spent the second half of the day at the Boston Museum of Science, which the highlight for me was the worlds largest Van de Graaff. Those of you from the good ol days of Fairfield High School will remember this device from physics and Mr. Ulrich. In those days we called the generator the "Big Ball," and would begin to chant in class, "Big Ball, Big Ball...." until Mr. Ulrich would get the thing out and let us play with it and shock each other. Well this one was huge and threw off electric sparks approximaletly 8 feet long. Pretty cool. The one in high school would shock you from maybe a 1/4 inch away.

Day two turned out to be a little nicer, still cold, just not as rainy. We headed up to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which was very moving and informative, and on our way back probably had one of the more interesting things on the trip happen to us. We saw a drug addict jump on the subway tracks and severly hurt himself to the point where he couldn't get up and was laying about 5 feet below us on a live subway line, with what looked like a severely fractured broken arm. I've always wondered what I'd do in a situation where someones life is in danger, and I pretty much froze up and had no idea how I should help this man. Kyle went up and got a transit officer, while Mike and I made sure that no trains were coming by while he laid there. There was also something like a 480 volt live power line right beside the guy too. within minutes they shut the line down and around 20 firefighters and policeman show up. Pretty sad situation, in talking to the officers they say bums often try to commit suicide in this manner and thats probably what he was doing. He was pretty out of it, and you could see heroin needle marks on his arms. We ended up having to give out our contact information, and gave some statements and ended up leaving once they oppened the station back up, I'm hoping I don't end up receiving a phone call or a something in the mail about this. Off to better things. Harvard and MIT. Harvard was an absolutely beautiful laid out campus with awesome buildings, while MIT was a bit more industrial although still very magnificient. I guess that kind of explains the difference between a liberal arts school and a technology school.

We also began on this evening a little joke of which we started posing with any sort of stature/bronze figure we could find. Well Boston being a historical city, these statues were everywhere. I thought I'd supply a small sampling for your viewing pleasure.

We finished up the weekend with the historical side of Boston. There is this really cool walking trail that goes past 15 or so historical sites such as Paul Reveres house, the Old North Church, and things like that. It finishes up at Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). There was also an old 1940's era Destroyer battleship called the USS Cassin Young, we showed up at just the right time and were able to take a below deck tour, and I think we bothered the tour guide a little with all of the buttons and levers we were flipping and pushing. I still don't see how people lived on these things. In some of the beds there was only around a foot of up/down space. Something like this makes we even happier I never signed up for the Navy's nuclear power officer job, I heavily considered in college. Another cool site was one of the graveyards that containted the graves of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and several other notable figures, who weren't notable enough for me to remember here.

Have a great week!

1400 Miles, Some Friends, A Wedding, And A Baby

2006-05-30T12:52:00.000-04:00

What an awesome Memorial Day weekend. Mine started last Thursday morning, but I'm sure most of you enjoyed your's as well.
I had the pleasure of standing in my college roommates, wedding on Friday evening in York, PA. (Congratulations Tim and Nicole by the way.) Drove out on Thursday morning, and ended up getting stuck in traffic only 40 miles from my house. I ended up missing the rehearsal, however I did show up in time for the rehearsal dinner of course. Their wedding was wonderful and Nicole was beautiful. Tim had a little trick up his sleve during the ceremony and it turned out to be a pretty funny event. For those of you who know Tim, he's 6'8", and Nicole I believe is something like 5'8". Well after they had their customary bride and groom kiss, Tim goes "hold on, I need to get something," he walks away and reaches behind a curtain and pulls out a stepstool which he had made. He presents it to her and she steps on it and they redo there bride and groom kiss. Good times. Bye the way I also caught my seventh garter at the reception. Thats right I said seven. I guess that kind of disproves the whole theory that whoever catches it, is going to be the next one to get married. I guess I better start trying a little harder. I'd also like to give a shout out to my escort Kathryn, and my new friends Matt and Mark, who also stood for Tim who were friends from York.After the wedding on Friday night I drove down to stay at my friend Dan's place over the weekend in Baltimore. Saturday morning I got up and headed on down to Washington D.C. for the day. I've never seen the place so crowded. Since I was by myself I decided to check out some of the attractions that people in large groups never seem to visit. Checked out the National Gallery of Art and the Natural History Museum. The Natural History museum had some of the most lifelike animals I have ever seen. The Hope Diamond was also pretty cool. I ended up heading on over to the Washington Nationals vs. L.A. Dodgers game for the afternoon. Here it is 1/4 of the way through the baseball season and I've been to two teams on two different coasts, and yet the team (Tigers) that plays 10 miles from my house I haven't seen. That will all change this week however as we are going to see the first place Tigers take on the Yankees. After D.C. I headed on over to Annapolis to meet Dan and do some good seafood and some bar action. I had some of the best crabcakes (and most expensive) I've ever had in my life.

After thinking that our college group Memorial Day weekend streak may be over after five years, it somehow made a miraculous survival at the last minute. After looking at my travel map it looked as though it wouldn't take too much effort to stop by my friends Jenn and Nelsons place in Canton, OH on my way back to Detroit. They just had a beautiful baby girl named Emily a couple of weeks ago, so I wanted to stop by and check her out. To my surprise our friend Laura from Alabama also had come up for the weekend, so 6/8 college friends I'd say is pretty sucessful. (I miss you Ben and Anne!) Their baby was absolutely amazing, I can't remember the last time I had held such a small child. She also seemed to be very well behaved. Kind of makes you want to be a parent, although I guess I better start working on that whole wife thing before the baby thing.
Have a great week, I've got four days of work here and then I'm heading out to Boston with Kyle and Mike for a little 3 day weekend on Saturday morning.

Later

My Top Five

2006-05-21T22:17:00.000-04:00

Well a heated debate occurred at a party (Thanks to Liz by the way for hosting us) this afternoon and I thought I'd continue my part of the discussion here on my blog. The heated debate was something of great worldly importance and an item that every man should decide on at some point in his life. I'm talking of course about My Top Five. My Top Five is in reference to who I view as the five most beautiful women in the world. Drumroll please........In ranked order........

#1 Jessica ......#2 Mandy.......#3 Rachel ......#4 Rachel ........#5 Kate
.....Alba............... Moore ........McAdams .......Stevens ...... Beckinsale

So Chad and Scott let me know if you have any issues with this and we can debate a little more : )

I had a little embarrassing moment today during our flag football playoffs this morning. I'm sure we all remember Pat the character from Saturday Night Live whose sex could never be determined. Well I had an It's Pat moment today. Our football league is coed and every third offensive play has to be run to a girl. I'm lined up on one of these plays against someone I thought was a man (I'm not joking here), well ball is snapped I don't focus on the person I'm guarding (since technically the ball can't be thrown to them) and a couple of seconds later I find the football being thrown over my head. In my mind I'm thinking "what a bunch of idiots, they just threw the ball to a guy." Well I was wrong, huge pass completion for like 20 yards. Everybody wonders what the heck I was doing and I quietly try to plead my case to my teammates without embarrassing the individual whose sex I had been confused about. Quite an embarrassing moment for me.

Kyle and I attended a Cedarville Alumni function on Saturday in Detroit, that was pretty interesting. I was quite surprised I went actually, and probably wouldn't have if it wouldn't have been for Kyle's prodding. I am finally starting to truly appreciate my Cedarville experience, and have lost a lot of the cynicism I had when I originally graduated. Anyway it turned out to be a pretty cool experience, although we only saw one person that we had known from school. We did get to sit by the new university president, Dr. Bill Brown, for dinner. Several interesting discussions were had and I've never met a biblical speaker who was so in tune with popular culture. He didn't seem to appreciate however my story about skipping 38 of 50 chapel services my final Senior quarter. We also ran into one of Kyles buddys , who now works for Cedarville, by the name of Joel Tomkinson. He was a big guy who used to sing in chapel sometimes if you can remember. We took him downtown for a little tour of Detroit. Ended up watching a couple of innings of the Tigers/Reds sold out baseball game from the fence with a bum (which is a whole post in and of itself), and also went down to the Downtown Country Hoedown, which is basically a big free jammed packed full of people country music festival. We ended up watching Tracy Byrd for a couple of songs and then remembered that none of us really loved country music all that much. Judging by the crowd that was heavily biased towards cowboy boots and hats, I'm guessing that most of these people were not from Detroit.

Should be a good week, three days of work and then I'm off to York, PA for Tim Fentons wedding on Friday night. I'm then heading down to Baltimore for Memorial day weekend and spending some time in Washington D.C. and also catching up with Dan Cochrane.

Motorcycle for Sale

2006-05-14T22:12:00.000-04:00

Anybody want to buy a 2000 Suzuki SV650? I've got one for sale. This past week I happened to come across a new bike that I've been looking at buying for a couple of years now. I wasn't exactly planning on getting another bike, but I'll have to say that it was destiny that I came across it when I did (is that possible with inanimate objects?). I am now the proud owner of a 2002 Honda VFR800 Interceptor. This bike is a bit bigger and alot faster. It also has attachable luggage so it will now be a lot easier to do some traveling and be able to take along more than just one change of clothes.
Jeremy Beadners wedding was pretty cool on Saturday. Not quite as many Cedarville grads as I had hoped to see but got catch up with Dave Wolfe, Bob Lutz, and Joe Mulvaney. I'll have to say that it was unlike any other wedding I had ever been to. They had a beach theme. Rebecca (his new wife) wore a traditional dress, and he had on a creme colored suit, but after that things were pretty interesting. The groomsmen were barefoot, and wore decorative lais. They also had a thatch umbrella they were married under. Instead of lighting a unity candle they had a sand ceremony. I have no idea why the beach them, considering it was Michigan, but hey its Beadner. We also threw beachballs at them instead of rice when they left.

Until we meet again......

Look at Me! I'm Blonde! (Well sort of)

2006-05-07T23:39:00.000-04:00

Look closely at the picture to the left and you'll notice I look a little different. I now have gone blonde! No not exactly on purpose, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Heres the story. Last summer, my friend Laura, gave me some cool blonde highlights which I really enjoyed. So I thought I'd do the same this summer. Note to User: Make sure person doing highlights has done highlights before. My mother had not. I looked in the mirror and it looked like she had put about 10 times the amount of solution on she should have. Anyway here I am today. I think it looks cool, but I can guarantee you that other engineers will not. I can't wait to walk in with this puppy at work on Monday and hear the ribbing begin. By the way the attractive woman with me is my Grandmother.
My weekend in Indiana was absolutely amazing. I got to catch up with a lot of people. Actually probably too many people as I didn't even see my parents until Sat. night. I had a great time with Ross and Sarah (thanks for putting me up), and also had a good ol' guy's night out with Justin Miller. Sunday was my dad's birthday and the whole family was over. We ended up playing a little badmitton, as well as some boche ball. There was even a little wind to do a little kite flying, which I can't remember the last time I did. As you'll see in the picture, we wern't 100% successful but managed to get the thing up a couple of times. We also made a trip back to my dad's little project, I'll call a pond, which at one time was a pond, but now has become more of a wildlife refuge. Beavers and all! If anybody's ever up for any camping this is a great spot. We even mangaged to take a family photo, even though everybody's not exactly dressed in what I would call there Sunday best.

Later Dudes!

Back Home again in Indiana.....

2006-05-01T22:51:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not moving home or anything like that, but this weekend I will be making a pilgramage back to the motherland. It seems like these trips are becoming fewer and fewer as I get older and that seems like a shame. Heck I remember the first summer I spent up here in Detroit, where I went home every single weekend for three months straight. Ok, so that might have been a little excessive. Its also amazed me as I've gotten older the greater sense of appreciation I've obtained for my parents, sisters, and many other relatives. You begin to view these people much differently when you don't interact with them on a continual basis and truly begin to appreciate them for who they are. Thought I'd attach a recent pic of the family from this past Christmas, minus Camille, who was living in Columbia, MO at the time with her husband Jeremy. They've since moved back to the South Bend area. Anyway it will be nice to catch up with many friends and the family.
May is turning out to be a pretty interesting month. I've got two weddings on the calender. One as a guest, and one as a participant (not as the groom of course). Jeremy Beadner is getting married. Those of you from college will remember this name fondly (hopefully). And don't worry, Beadner hasn't changed one bit since college. Still looking to make a buck off of any kind of scheme. A certain Mr. Tim Fenton is also getting married in York, PA Memorial Day weekend, and he has asked me to share in his joy, by standing in his party. For those of you who don't know Tim, he was my college roommate for 3 years. We were blindly set up as roommates freshmen year, and to this day have mantained a great friendship. The tall 6-8 skinny kid with the short 5-10 fat kid. The perfect combo (see picture below). This also brings up the fact that I'm now pretty much the only person left out of all of my church, high school, and college group yet to get married. Thats like 30 people. That means that I'm in the 3.33 percentile of people who aren't married who have been good friends with Ben Carpenter. Sorry to throw that in there, but I'm taking a statistics class right now. At least I can still count on most of my Detroit friends for several more years of irresponsible, wild, and reckless fun.

Toodles!

SF The Final Chapter

2006-04-23T23:50:00.000-04:00

I've been back for almost 5 days now, and I finally feel recovered. We took the red eye back on Tuesday, and I wimped out and ended up taking Wednesday off. We finally had some great weather, and ended up having a great rest of the trip. Some highlights:
Muir Woods: Ok, how many of you when you think of redwoods, think of these huge fat trees? Lets just say I was disappointed. The ones we saw were tall, but I was expecting the kind you can drive a car though the middle. I later found out that these trees are a type of redwood, but are known as seqouias, and are only found in extreme spotty locals throughout mostly eastern California. Still some cool trees though.
Napa Valley: We ended up renting a car one day and heading about an hour north on up to Napa Valley. San Francisco is the only town I know of where it is cheaper to rent a car and to park it overnight. Car Rental: $40. Overnight Parking: $42. Gotta love big cities! Anyway, Napa was cool, 1000's of acres of grapes, nothing was real green yet, as the grapes were just budding, but you wouldn't believe the rows and rows. We ended up taking a tour of the Robert Mondavi winery which was extremely cool. Its amazing how tedious wine making is. The tour also included some very good wine at the end and I ended up bringing just a bit back with me. I fell in love with a desert wine they had which was the 2004 Moscato d'Oro.
Golden Gate Bridge: No explanation required.
Alcatraz: Ended up taking the boat out to Alcatraz Island. Cool ride and got to see some good views of the city. This place is a lot bigger than I thought. Its also funny, because The Rock, happened to be on TV the night before we visited. It was pretty cool to walk the halls of the place where some of our nations criminals once called home. It surprised me to find out that the place has been closed since the 1960's and several of the buildings are in a state of disrepair.
ScootCar: We ended up having some free time our last afternoon, so we decided to rent this small little four wheeler and hop around the city. The first one they gave us, wouldn't even go up the smallest of hills, with two big dudes in it, so we ended going back and getting the big boy. This thing was awesome, it was a little intimidating to be surrounded by traffic, but you could go almost anywhere in it, and probably got up to around 30 mph. People were pointing and laughing everywhere.

A little cold, A little rainy

2006-04-17T03:30:00.000-04:00

Two days down in San Francisco, and we've yet to experience what I'd call a beautiful day. We've had some good times, but man it won't stop raining. When you think about California coming from the midwest, I always think of this tropical warm paradise, but in reality northern California really isn't all that warm. Its actually been warmer back in Detroit the last two days. At least we're supposed to see some sunshine in the next couple of days.
On to things about the city. Where do I start? This place is incredible and unlike any other place I've visited. I would still rank New York City as my favorite city of all time, but San Francisco has some good things going for it, and is quickly moving up the list. I've never seen a city so diverse, from chinese, to blacks, to gays, I've never seen a city so integrated and accepting of one another. Some of this may come from the fact that I live in one of the most racially divided cities in America, but SF is definately a very understanding place. Another thing about San Fran, is the unbelievably hilly terain. Its almost difficult to walk some of the streets. In fact when riding in street cars you almost become uncomfortable with the amount of slope on normal city streets. The whole streetcar thing is extremely cool by the way and in fact the public transportation here is absolutely incredible.
We've done an incredible amount of walking and have been able to catch some cool sites. Highlights so far:
Incredible seefood. Nothing like two guys putting down three pounds of crab, along with a couple of good ol fahsioned mojitos. A meal has to be good if you have to wear a bib, don't you agree? I think I look pretty good. We ended up eating at a place called the Crab House which is located down in Fishermans Wharf on Pier 39.
Chinatown: San Fran has one of the better Chinatowns that I've seen. Our hotel is right on the outermost edge of Chinatown, and I would say its probably a five block by five block area. Everything is written in Chinese, and everyone seems to speak chinese. Good food also. We ended up eating at a little place called the R and G lounge which was at the recommendation of our hotel staff. I know it sounds like a cheap nightclub but it was actaully quite good.Baseball: We had an opportunity to catch the Oakland Athletics at home this afternoon. So that now puts me with 6 stadiums down and only something like 24 to go. Not a real nice stadium, but good baseball none the less. One of the first games I've ever left before it was over, and we missed an incredible comeback by the Rangers in the top of the ninth. At least we got our free Huston Street bobblehead. FYI: If anyone is interested I happen to have a Huston Street bobblehead doll for sale for 10 dollars. If interested please inquire within. Architecture: One of my great joys of visiting any major city is just walking the streets and taking in the sights and sounds. Buildings amaze me and I could look at cityscapes all day. If I had one ounce of artistic creativity in me I believe I may have been able to pursue this deep down hidden passion of mine. Anyway, San Fran has some great buildings and along with the waterfront and hills, offers some outstanding views. Its hard to believe that just 100 years ago, this entire place was leveled in an earthquake and then the fire that followed. They said something like 28,000 buildings were leveled in the carnage.
The next couple of days should be good, we're planning on heading on up to Napa Valley tomorrow and then hitting some more city streets along with Alcatraz on Tuesday.
Toodles!

I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when .......

2006-04-09T19:11:00.000-04:00

Hey its a week before Easter, and next Saturday I leave for a small four day vacation to the beautiful, scenic San Francisco! This was one of those last minute trips that me and my buddy Mike planned just a couple of weeks ago. San Francisco won because a) I handn't been there before b) we got pretty cheap plane tickets. So there you have it, my secret behind planning trips. We're staying downtown and so far the list includes the normal, Alcatraz, Fishermans Wharf, Golden Gate, etc. We're going to try to do most of it relying on public transportation so that should be interesting. Will catch the Oakland A's one day, and the day we leave, we are planning on renting a car and heading on up to wine country, before we take the red eye back on Tuesday night and hopefully head into work on Wednesday morning.

Was doing some web browsing this afternoon and came across an item I couldn't resist purchasing. The Omni by Sumo Lounge. Its basically a huge bean bag, but modernized. Anne you're going to have to figure out how to incorporate this into my house once I hire you on. I'll let you all know how it works out, but from the reviews and pictures it looks really comfortable, and I've been looking for a decent oversized bean bag for a while now. I'm also hoping this may help in the babe department, because from the pictures I didn't see one unattractive person using this thing.

Tried doing my first physical activity this week after straining my calf muscle 2 weeks ago. Lets just say things didn't go so well. I was ok as long as I didn't run at full speed, but lets just say I'm back to a slight limp and probably set back the healing process a week or two. I also got to ride in a new 2007 Suburban this weekend. These trucks are selling very well right now, and I believe this one goes on sale in the next month. Pretty much the future of GM depends on these things. Its funny that we're coming out with redesigned trucks in a year when everybody is starting to worry about fuel economy, but if you're looking for a SUV, I believe we offer the best product out there.

Happy Easter!

And I shall now be known as Head Band

2006-04-03T01:15:00.000-04:00

Ok, I picked up another nickname this week. Yeah its stupid, but you can now refer to me as Head Band. I kind of like it, I'll say its original at least. Here's how it came about. Earlier in the week, I went with some friends to a local pub after work, and we were flirting with the waitress a bit. So we go around the table and introduce ourselves. I'm last and say in this suave manner "and Ben" at the end of the introductions. Well, me being me, and tending to mumble my words, she thinks I just said my name was Head Band, and starts to rib me about it. My buddies got an extreme kick out of this, and for the past week have been calling me Head Band. So feel free to join in on the party.

Well, if you're wondering, yes, I still have a job. At least for another month or so. There are rumors flying again that more cuts are coming. Tuesday was ugly, and everyone was on pins and needles. Overall it sounds like they got somewhere between 400 and 500 individuals. I'll say I personally knew 4 or 5 of them. This one was weird because some decent individuals with over 20 years were walked out the door, and is the first time that GM has actaully fired anyone outright in years. It seemed like it was mostly managers and others with company vehicles. The next round is supposed to dig more into the "grunt" workers as I call them. The media coverage was intense, it was all you heard about on the radio, tv, newspaper, news vans were everywhere, you would have thought that a major murder or something had gone down. On a positive note did anyone catch 60 Minutes on Sunday night? If you did you got a sneak peak at what will hopefully be my next vehicle in about 2 years. I didn't catch the show, but overall from what I've heard, they gave us some decent press, which would be a first in a while. Theres a small snipet here. Click on the GM's push for Better design video on the right hand side of the page.

I got to catch my beloved Pistons in action for the first time live this year on Sunday. A good time all around. It was a special GM deal, and at halftime we got to go eat a bunch of free food, in a fancy conference room. I always find it funny, how people act when the prospect of free food is presented to them. It makes what I would call normal indivduals behave in strange ways. Hey, who wants to see if they can eat six hotdogs? How about a handful of five cookies? You can't make this stuff up. Good game all around though, they were down big in the first half, but came back and pulled it out against the Phoenix Suns in the end. They also ended up cliniching home court advantage through the Eastern Conference finals. Sorry Chris, but your Pacers are fading fast.

I also experiended my first ever live comedy club this week. Mark Ridleys Comedy Castle on amateaur night. There was a gentlemen from work performing and out of the 12 acts that went, only one guy truly bombed, which I though was pretty impressive. His Enema Man routine was pretty good. Lets just say, if you can't accept humor about sex, religion, racism, or did I say sex?, you probably wouldn't be a fan of comedy clubs.

Until we meet again,
Toodles!

Down Goes Ben

2006-03-26T21:25:00.000-05:00

Well, the title of this post refers to several instances that have occured and may be occuring in the near future.
#1: Right now I'm barely able to walk - We started our spring flag football season today and I've either strained or pulled my calf muscle. I was running a route and suddenly something grabbed in my right calf. Lets just say I was out for the day. Its quite a site to see me hoble across the floor on one good leg right now. Should be an interesting week trying to get around, I'm going to see if I can pick up some crutches, because right now I'm moving at about 1/2 speed, plus it hurts like a *?&* when I walk on it.
#2: Well as many of you probably know, and have already reveled in, my beloved Duke Bluedevils lost on Thursday. A small tear formed yes, but I've moved on. I think people take great pride whenever they see this team lose, especially when one of its superstarts has a horrific game. In some ways I wish I could move on to a different favorite team, but at the same time its hard not to root for such a classy organization. My original fascination with Duke started in the late 80's when I was at that stage when you're just starting to experience sports and I couldn't choose IU since my dad was a huge fan. So I started to root for the team that was as far from the Hoosiers that I could think of, and thus began my love affair with Duke.
#3: I don't know how many of you read the business section or even the paper, but times are not good at GM right now and this week according to rumors is supposed to be pretty exciting. This coming Tuesday has been refered to as "Black Tuesday," due to the fact that a lot of people are supposed to be let go. I'm not too worried about myself but you never know when things like this start occuring. Things have been pretty rough now for the past 6 months, and it is finally nice to see that they are starting to take some pretty drastic actions. They only problem is when they start getting rid of deadweight, it seems like they take quite quite a few of the good people with them. It also looks like things are starting to improve with Delphi, who we used to own and is currently going through bankruptcy. Hopefully if things work out we'll lose a little less than the 10 billion we lost last year.
Have a good one, the week promises to be interesting.

You win some, You lose a few more!

2006-03-21T00:08:00.000-05:00

Well, tonight we finished up our flag football season, good times all around. While we finished with a loss in the playoffs, (Screw you, Channel 4), we probably finished with one of our better games, giving up the winning score with about 2 minutes left. We had 3 trips to the endzone in the final 8 minutes, all of which left us with 0 points, including the final one with around 18 seconds left. Oh, well, next season starts this weekend. Playing in the Pontiac Silverdome (former home of the Lions) was quite an experience. You have no idea what its like to play in front of 85,000 empty seats! The night ended with a good ol trip to the hospital, in support of one our players (Chad), who right before halftime was trying to make an awesome defensive play and ended up coliding with a bench and a wall. The offensive player ended up making one of the most amazing grabs, I've ever seen on any level, and Chad ended up trashing a bench, as well as being the recipient of 7 or 8 stitches.
I can't say the week was a total loss however with a huge taking at what has now become our weekly poker night. Well huge may not be really huge but 100 bucks on a Wednesday night ain't bad. So make sure you turn into the World Series of Poker next year, if things continue to go this well, I may be up for a spot!
Also I shouldn't have bragged about my perfect 1st night of the NCAA tournament, that same bracket now has me in the bottom tier of all ESPN brackets. Thank you very much Big Ten. Oh, well, Dukes still alive so all is well in the world.
Until next time!

Not a Blogging Virgin Anymore

2006-03-16T22:29:00.000-05:00

Well after having several friends start blogs in the last several months, I've finally decided to start my own. Frankly I was getting jealous and want people to start reading about my life. No babies or house projects to talk about, or at least I hope not, but we'll see where this thing goes. NCAA Tournament is fantastic. 16 for 16 on my bracket so far. My favorite time of year. Go Duke!