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Saturday, September 08 2007, 11:34 PM

Well, I'm back home. Boo. Vacations are never long enough, are they? I suppose not. The remaining few days of the trip were pretty uneventful. My dad and I finished replacing the rotten fence posts on thursday before the rains came. Other than that, my days were consumed with a lot of nothing. Perfect vacation activities.

I've got one more picture to post. It took a while to get. There were at least three hummingbirds cruising around the feeder while we were all eating lunch, but when I grabbed my camera, they mysteriously disappeared. I had the camera sitting on the tripod for a good twenty minutes before this guy showed up.

family photography upnorth vacation

Friday, September 07 2007, 3:22 PM

This one's nothing but pictures. Enjoy!

More flowers...

A solitary flower...

A pile of zebra mussel shells. Watch those feet, they're sharp!

A chipmunk hanging out in the wood shed... I needed the flash for this one, unfortunately.

Mesa, during an apparent drinking binge...

Mesa, totally hung over...

cats photography upnorth vacation

Thursday, September 06 2007, 1:04 AM

Partially because of the aforementioned relationship difficulties, I decided to take a vacation to help clear my head. I hadn't taken a vacation since before Jessica and I started dating (last October), so I was overdue. My parents have been taking their annual summer vacation around Labor Day for the past few years, so the timing was right.

My initial plan was to head out early on saturday, but that got pushed behind by a late night at work friday night. I ended up getting on the road around 1:30, and made pretty good time except for a twenty minute delay for a RV trailer that became forcibly seperated from the truck pulling it. It was totally smashed on the side of the road, and caused a pretty good delay. Once I was past that, my pace picked up again. I arrived around 5:30, about twenty minutes after my parents arrived. My cousin Carl, his friend Ryder, and Ryder's wife Missy were already here for the holiday. I was mildly surprised to see that my phone actually got service up here, and quite surprised to see that my phone internet service worked up here, which is allowing me to post this stuff in real time. Yay for technology!

The first few days were quite beautiful weather-wise, with sunny skies, temperatures in the 70s, and no wind or bugs to speak of. Yesterday (Tuesday) was cold and rainy, but nicer weather returned today. We've all been pretty lazy for the most part, which perfectly fits the general vacation motif. Today (Wednesday) involved some work of the sweaty and dirty variety. A couple wooden fence posts needed replacing, so my dad and I got to replacing them. We made quick work of the first post, but the second took a long while because it had a two foot diameter ring of concrete surrounding the base of the post about two feet deep in the ground. We ended up having to smash the crap out of it before we could lift the pieces out. What fun! That leaves three posts for tomorrow, weather permitting.

I've been taking a good amount of pictures during my trips up and down the beach, and I think I've got a few good ones. The first was actually taken inside. My cats discovered this guy before I did, and I think they pestered him for a while before I fought them off for picture taking.

This is a picture of bluicus flowerus, more commonly known as "a blue flower I saw on the beach." It's a cropped version of a much larger shot, but this is the best part.

I'll probably have some more pictures to post over the next few days. Stay tuned.

family photography upnorth vacation

Monday, October 16 2006, 2:59 AM

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I'm hearing it from my mom again, which means that I've been slacking. That isn't to say that things haven't been happening - I just haven't taken the time to write. I've actually got a decent backlog of topics, some which I will mention here. Others will get their own posts. Lets get started!

Last week started off with a trip up north for the annual closing of the cottage. This year's closing also brought with it some non-trivial repair work on the cottage itself. Earlier in the summer, during a pretty intense thunderstorm, a tree blew over and landed on the roof, breaking two rafters and punching a few other holes in the roof. The holes were patched up shortly after it happened, but the structural damage still needed mending.

I headed up sunday night, and was preceeded by my dad, my Uncle Rick, and Ryder, a good friend of my cousin Carl. Cousins Carl and Bill arrived mid-Monday, and second cousins Brian and Jeff arrived a little later. Ryder had started tearing the shingles off the roof by the time I woke up on monday, and I went up and helped when I had gained a sufficient amount of consciousness. We had a decent portion of the roof cleaned off by the time the other guys arrived and started helping. Things went faster with the additional hands, and once the roof was clean, Bill and Carl got down to the task of fixing the broken rafters. That whole process didn't take nearly as long as I would have expected, but that might be because I have absolutely crap for knowledge about this sort of thing. The whole removal process took Bill about 10 minutes, and once measurements were taken, installing the new rafters and replacing the boards making up the 'outer hull' of the roof took about 30 minutes if memory serves. Once the structural damage was repaired, we laid the tar paper for the new set of shingles, and called it a day.

Bill, Carl, and Ryder were up on the roof somewhat early the next day attacking the shingling task. Those guys are machines, let me tell you. When I woke up, I asked my dad how long they had been at it, and how much they had done. His answer was about 45 minutes, and about 1/3 done. They certainly had a system, and had the bulk of the roof done in under four hours. The rest of us stayed out of their way, and took to a few other tasks around the property. My dad, Brian, Jeff, and I cleaned up a few fallen trees out of the wooded lot across from our cottage. We dragged the smaller stuff down to the beach so it can be burned at a later date. It will make one hell of a blaze, that's for sure.

Wednesday and thursday saw a lot of lethargy on our parts. Bill, Ryder, and Carl brought up a few guns for the trip, and shot them off into a big sand hill a few miles down the road. Brian and Jeff rode their four-wheelers for a while. The rest of just sat around the cottage watching movies, napping, or reading. The same pattern played out on thursday as well.

One thing that always makes the closing trips memorable is that we eat like kings. This time was no exception. Rick bought a 18 pound cut of ribeye steak before he came up, and that was prepared monday or tuesday night. Man, I've never seen steaks so huge in my life. I beleve the meat was cut into eleven steaks, which puts each at about 1.5 pounds pre-cooked weight on average. My steak covered about three quarters of my plate, leaving almost no room for the baked potato or asparagus spears. And boy, was it tasty. Wednesday night, we cooked up the 30-odd pounds of whole chicken that someone had brought up, and that was magnificent as well. Bill headed up that effort, and aside from pulling the birds off the heat a little early, they were perfect. Each of the five birds needed a short trip through the microwave to make sure they were cooked all the way through, but that did nothing to disrupt the flavor or moistness of the meat. Both were superb.

I made my journey home thursday night though the area's first bout with old man winter. My trip, which should only take about 3.5-4 hours, took more than 5 due to low visibility and snow covering the roads. There were quite a few points where I had to slow down to around 25-30MPH due to visibilities less than 50 feet. I have a harder time driving at night due to my eye issues, but this was many times worse. I made it though, after much annoyance, beef jerky, and caffiene.

I wasn't home for long though. This weekend was set aside for a trip to Toronto for Andre's bachelor party. The trip out had no major delays, and we arrived at the hotel around midnight. Following bachelor party protocol, no details will be provided about the debauchery that ensued except the following, which certainly merits recognition. A very special event took place saturday afternoon, and we were quite happy to be able to experience it as a band of brothers. The event? The Detroit Tigers defeated the Oakland Athletics to take the American League crown! Nobody would have expected this six months ago, but it happened, and we were all together to witness it! It certainly made for a special night. Our trip home was unnecessarily long. We ran into the Toronto Marathon on the way out of town, which blocked our planned escape route and forced us to take a long trip through the city. About 45 minutes and many side streets later, we met up with the highway and made our way back to the USA. Our trip came to a halt at the border, where things were very backed up. It took around an hour to make it through the last mile of Canada. Those two delays made the whole trip take around seven hours total.

baseball family friends frustrations tigers toronto upnorth vacation

Saturday, August 05 2006, 11:54 PM

I'll leave you to figure out that acronym.

It's been a busy week and a half. I was up north from last thursday to sunday for the second half of my vacation, which was a lot of fun. It was kind of hectic, but that's expected due to all of the people around. Alex and I weathered a fierce thunderstorm just as we were coming out of Lansing, which made the first 45 minutes of the trip slow going. The light show was amazing though. We got up to the cottage thursday night around 1AM, only to find that everyone else had fallen asleep. Not exactly what we were expecting. So we made the best of it, and unpacked the beer we brought and headed out onto the beach to have a few under the stars. The seeing wasn't very clear due to the humidity, but it's still an amazing sight to see so many stars. I never get sick of it. Living around the city makes the sight that much more spectacular. We also saw what we're pretty certain was a display of the northern lights. We thought it was city-glow from Cheboygan at first, but it seemed too luminous and stretched way too far out over the lake. That belief was strengthened by our observation of 'tendrils' of light eminating from and receeding to the greater luminous 'mass.' It was pretty neat. We got pretty ripped just sitting out on the beach in lawn chairs and talking about this and that and eventually decided that we should just go all out and watch the sun come up over the lake. It took its sweet time, but it eventually came up around 6:30. A few cottage-dwellers had risen by then, and David came down to the beach to watch it with us. A sunrise over the lake is a beautiful sight to behold.

The rest of the weekend is more of a blur, but it involved a lot of lounging around due to the stifling heat and humidity. The lake felt great, but as soon as you would get out, the heat became unbearable. The biting flies were out in decent numbers as well due to a breeze out of the woods. The combination of these factors made for a lot of trips back and forth between the lake and the cottage, without much loitering in between - for me at least. There were a few games of horseshoes played, and for quite a while, I was pretty wretched. I found my stroke eventually, and started averaging points on every third throw or so.

When I got back to work on monday, it was like I hadn't left. Lots of stuff to do, pressing issues everywhere. Wednesday sucked especially due to the events outlined in my previous post. I planned on taking thursday off due to the long day on wednesday, but something started going haywire with my monitoring stuff that was actually crashing servers, so I had to head into work to squash the bug. I think I found it, which is good. My day off ended being yesterday, for the most part. I did end up going in to work later on, but it was for a much cooler purpose - cleaning out the room that will soon become my office! Whee! I guess that means I'm cool now. Between last night and earlier today, another guy and myself cleaned the office, taped everything off, and put on a few fresh coats of paint to brighten things up. I'll probably be able to move in sometime in the coming week, which is cool. It should give me a lot more peace and quiet and less interruption.

family upnorth vacation work

Thursday, July 27 2006, 12:46 AM

Everyone needs vacation. Even me. One might think that I don't because I don't seem to vacation enough, but I do. That's one reason why this week rules. I'm free from work, free from its stresses, free from dealing with stuff I would rather not deal with.

My vacation actually started later than planned due to said things I would not deal with, but not by much. I was planning on leaving for Cincinnati to visit Jon and Michelle friday night, but I got caught up with some important last minute stuff, and had to postpone the journey until saturday. It was all right though, as it gave me some time to get some things taken care of that would otherwise be postponed.

The trip was a lot of fun. After I got down there saturday evening, Jon and I got totally ripped with a few of his neighbors while sitting on their driveway in lawn chairs. We talked a lot about music of various timeframes, which was really neat since they were a bit older and had some different insights and perspectives. After his neighbors hung it up for the night, Jon and I must have spent a good hour and a half listening to music out in my car. Mostly we were marvelling at Dragonforce, and wondering how people could keep up such an insane pace without falling over dead.

Sunday involved a lot of lounging about, and not a whole lot past that. We rented "The Devils Rejects" and watched that. We had all heard surprisingly good reviews of the movie, and figured it would be a decent movie to rent. It was a pretty good movie as far as scary flicks go, but nothing I would really have any need to see again.

Monday was the coolest day down there by far. After another slow start to the day (requisite for vacations in my book), Jon and I did something we both have wanted to do since he moved down there almost two years ago - check out the Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. I visited it with my family many many moons ago, but have no memory of it other than getting a SR-71 poster and a space shuttle book from the gift shop. Well, I'll remember this visit a lot better. I took my camera, and took as many pictures as my batteries would allow. Pictures are in the gallery. We saw all the planes we would have expected there, including the beforementioned SR-71, and a few that we wouldn't expect to see. They had a YF-22 there, which I believe is a prototype for the F-22 Raptor that will come into service sometime within the next few years. They also had a B-2 there, but it may have just been a mock-up or a prototype. I can't imagine the Air Force (or the taxpayers) would be too keen on stuffing a billion-plus dollar plane in a hangar, only to rot away under the constant glare of camera flashes.

After we got back from the museum and had dinner, Jon and I decided to play some pool, and that quickly involved into many games of pool. At least 10. We used up the beer in his fridge during those many games and did a lot of reminiscing about times long past, which was pretty cool. Afterwards, we decided to hop on the internet and look for people we used to know on MySpace (one of two good uses for that piece of crap site). We had a pretty good time doing that, and stayed up until at least 6am hunting people down.

I came back home yesterday, and I've been taking it easy at home while enjoying my lack of work. I head up north tomorrow for our annual cousin's weekend, which should be a lot of fun. It'll be hectic due to the sheer number of people involved, which is one of the reasons I'm only shooting for a three day weekend. Being subjected to lots of people wears on me rather quickly, especially when there is chatter waking me up long before I want to every morning. Oh well, it'll still be a lot of fun.

cincinnati dragonforce friends upnorth vacation

Wednesday, September 07 2005, 11:02 PM

This past weekend found me up north with my family for the Labor Day holiday weekend. I went up thursday night with my sister. The journey went pretty quickly - only three and a half hours. My parents were already up there on their summer vacation. We did a whole lot of nothing, and it was stellar. I slept at least 10 hours a day each day except monday. I guess I needed it. On monday we partook in the annual Labor Day Mackinac Bridge walk. It was my first time, and it was pretty neat. The morning was beautiful and pretty much perfect. I can't say I enjoyed waking up at 5:30 to head into town, but you've gotta take your lumps every now and again. Pictures from the trip are up in the gallery.

Speaking of the gallery, I've updated my gallery installation to Gallery 2, and I have to say it is pretty sweet. It seems a tad bit slower, but there are a lot of cool features that counter that speed decrease. I set up a template that uses the general layout of my site, so the appearance shouldn't be any different than what you're used to. The RSS feed update thingy is gone for now, but I'll probably have it back up there once it's implemented in gallery2. Until then, you'll just have to make due with the cool javascript tree thingy for album navigation. Wheee!

gallery2 mackinacbridge rss upnorth vacation

Saturday, July 23 2005, 1:15 PM

It kinda stinks when you're on vacation but can't relax. I really enjoyed the first few days up here when it was quiet and people were few and far between, but now that I'm dodging 19 other people and being woken up by kid voices at 7:30am, I'm finding it much harder to take it easy. I've been taking some long walks to try to find some peace and quiet, and it's helping. The weather has been almost perfect the whole time, which makes going out for a walk quite easy. Last night I walked all the way down to the Black Mallard River, probably a good mile down the beach. I was skipping stones for most of the way, and now my arm feels like it's hanging by a thread. I guess that's what I get for not warming up! I'll take a sore arm though, it just feels good to get outside. I definitely need to get my ass out of the house more when I get back home.

This coming week is going to be a pain. Not only do I have to go back to work, but I get to move as well. I'll probably have to take a day or two off to move the big stuff, but it shouldn't be that bad really.

family upnorth vacation

Friday, July 22 2005, 11:15 AM

Alex and I made our journey up north tuesday night. We left shortly after 5pm and made it up here a little before 11pm. My mom said that there was a lot of construction on US-23 and I-75, so we thought it would be better to dodge that particular stretch of road altogether and head up US-127 via Lansing. It made the trip about an hour longer, but since there's hardly any traffic on that route, it wasn't bad at all. David and Marty had a nice chicken dish waiting for us when we got here, and it was very good. Marty crashed out relatively early, but Alex, David, and I stayed up for a while talking about various things.

The next day we woke up gingerly. I emerged around 10:30, and Alex was in bed until around noon. We spent a few hours lounging down by the lake. I decided that it would be fun to dig up moderate sized rocks from the lake and move them in close to shore to make a pile next to the large rock that's already sitting on our beach. I just have to say it.... yah, rocks are heavy. I probably moved a good 800-1,000 pounds worth of rocks. Beth and Dawson arrived while we were out in the lake. Dawson immediately threw on his suit and helped me find every rock in the bay and told me to move them. I was rather tired by that point, and wasn't really having it. I was less than intelligent and forgot to wear sunscreen, so I got a decent sunburn. That's ok though, at least its coloring right? Anything that helps to counteract my car-drivers tan is a good thing. Jim and Judy arrived later in the night.

I awoke early thursday morning (around 7:30) to the sounds of Dawson shouting... it was something about going swimming if I remember correctly. Beth was up as well, and she wasn't having it. I wasn't having it either, so I did my best to fall back asleep. David and Marty had already cooked and finished breakfast when I woke up the next time. Dawson was eager to go out swimming once everyone woke up, but the rest of us were just eager to lay around. So, we compromised. We took out the raft things that my mom sent up and tied them to anchors, and then laid out on them for a while. Even Beth got in on the action. She mentioned that it was the first time she'd been out in the lake in almost 15 years. A good number of people showed up thursday. Bill, Inger, and their troop showed up around 8:00 or 8:30, Stacey and Jay showed up around 10:30, and Steve and Brandy showed up sometime after midnight. My sense of time was rather skewed by then, so I'm not quite sure when they showed up.

This morning was rather miserable for sleeping. There are 6 kids up here now, and with the various other early-rising types, sleeping in has become a chore. I guess I should expect that though. There are 20 people up here now along with two dogs, so commotion is a given. The quiet part of the journey is now over. I'm just glad I got a few days of peace and quiet.

I've been taking quite a few pictures of this and that, so when I get back on a decent connection, I'll post them.

family upnorth vacation

Wednesday, July 21 2004, 7:50 AM

Yup, I'm on the night shift again this week. Oh well. It happens. I've been pretty occupied for the most part without a whole bunch of consecutive empty time. This past weekend was spent up north with just about every one of my cousins from my mom's side of the family. At one point there were 18 of us up in the cottage... good thing it's a big place. It was a lot of fun though. The weather was gorgeous, and the bugs were hiding out in the woods where they should be. The lake was like a sheet of glass on saturday and sunday, which provided a great venue for water-based activities involving Bill's boat. I went tubing for the first time in ages, and I was reminded how out of shape I really am. Keeping myself on the tube proved to be quite the chore. Oh well. I had a great time though all in all. Pictures are up in the gallery, with descriptions to follow sometime, maybe never.

Some tidbits... Greg and I signed the lease for the townhouse today (tuesday - since I haven't slept, I'm still on tuesday). We can start moving in tomorrow (today?) if we'd like, but neither of us have to be out of our current places soon, so it'll probably be a gradual move.

Also... things are looking up. I'm not going to elaborate, so go ahead and revel in the mystery. It's fun.

family ramblings upnorth vacation work

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