More On Life

Well, things have been interesting for the past few days. There's been a lot of seemingly stressful stuff that would normally freak me out, but I have been just floating above it. I've had a big project at work which I'm trying to complete. It has a very short timeframe which is why I've been busy.

J and I did get a chance to hang out with some friends from church. This was a lot of fun to get to know some people better. Last week we ate at Joe's Juice and Java like every day. It was busy and Joe's always provides a comforting atmosphere.

Thursday we played some more Nocturnal Tennis with about 7 people! This was fun. Before the lights went out we did some round robin tennis. This was sort of a combination of musical chairs and tennis. This was my idea, but I must admit it whooped our butts!

Nocturnal tennis was fun, perhaps a little dangerous. The one side of the court had a lot of backlighting which makes many balls invisble. We are wanting to install blacklights on a court some day so we can see the lines, ball, net, and players teeth. This would make for an interesting game.

This weekend we are hosting Easter. J and I are both sick which makes it a little rough. But Jaime's mom is down and will probably help out in the cooking aspect.

That's all I really have to say.

Nocturnal Tennis

In the search for more evening fun, Jaime and I have discovered the joy of Nocturnal Tennis! I'm really not sure if this is an original idea, but it involves playing tennis in the dark! Yes that's right... Perhaps it was our desire to improve our night vision skills, or maybe it was to try to severely injure one another... or maybe it was we were too dang cheap to dig into our pockets and pull out another quarter. Who knows? Who cares? This is the way the sport was meant to be played!

The funny thing is, we actually played quite good! We had a number of volleys that usually ended in the traditional tennis grunting sound, but without the usual "whack" of a ball hitting racket. The winning shot involved me hitting the ball right at Jaime. Luckily she saw the ball when it was about 3 feet away and narrowly escaped a black eye (she maneuvered the racket in front of her face.) Phew!

Enjoy the pics. They really don't do the darkness justice... even the camera felt it was too dark and left the shutter open about 20 seconds.

Nocturnal Tennis 1 

Nocturnal Tennis 2 

Splice Within 

Wrapping up the Weekend

This weekend has had a pretty nice conclusion. I played drums at church and had lunch with the in-laws. Then, after lunch they left and Jaime and I wen skiing at Roundtop. The snow was a bit strange since temperatures have been above freezing. So the snow was a very smooth slush. I had a bit of fun doing some jumps and checking out the terrain park (which Jaime forbids me to do again until I get a helmet). Jaime tweaked her knee with an incident getting on the lift and I fell after a jump on the last. In all a nice, relaxing night after entertaining this weekend. Well, its back to work soon. Things may be picking up this week so I may not have too much time to add to this blog. In the meantime, I'll post some photos I took I thought were interesting...

Keeping Busy

Its been about a week since our New Hampshire trip and life is returning to normal. Jaime and I got some of our photos printed and framed from our trip and our house is now overrun by our self made artwork. We are hoping to show some of these pieces at our favorite coffeeshop "Joe's Juice and Java" in Mechanicsburg. Either way we need to get some of this art on our walls!

Work as been busy for me and Jaime will be shortly getting into spring sports at Gettysburg High School. This means we will probably see much less of each other over the next six weeks. But this is the life of an Athletic Trainer and a Software Developer. We have signed 3-4 contracts at the end of last week so I will definitely be busy soon. If the other large contract signs, we will definitely be looking for some extra help!

This weekend, Jaime's family is down and so doing some physical activity is out of the question. I want to go skiing again before spring makes its way back. I hope to get to Blue Knob and try that out. Roundtop is not cutting the mustard the year. I think next year we may not get the Advantage Card... we just don't use it enough.

One thing that I am still interested in even after the trip is learning Swedish. I still think its a beautiful language. I don't know why I'm so enthralled by it. perhaps I'm trying to fill my life with other expertise. Or perhaps its my desire to visit this country along with Germany some day. Either way, I have found a web site that really makes it easy for beginners... http://web.hhs.se/isa/swedish

Today we took my nephew to Middletown airport to be sworn into the Air National Guard. I'm excited for him with the prospect of starting a new journey in his life. It was quite a wait for us though. The process took more than 2 hours, all of which we waited in the car. (We really didn't fit in amidst the camoflage uniforms) We took a few artistic and non-security sensitive pictures. I'll try to post some, but nothing that would risk national security.

I am hoping to do something exciting that I can blog about, but this weekend may be a little empty.

The big scoop

Yesterday was an interesting day. Jaime and I thought our adventures had come to a close. Monday we went skiing at Roundtop near Mechanicsburg. We had about 4-5 inches of powder which made for wonderful skiing. The only trouble was, the snow really slowed things down. I ended up skiing straight down Minuteman (blue) just to have some idea of speed. We skiied the whole mountian in about 2 hours and started to really experience powder skiing. Pretty tough stuff if you're not used to it!

The big scoop happened yesterday when my mother-in-law called me at work. She works for a trucking company in Williamsport, PA and works with billing, taxes, etc. So she calls and asks "would you like 19 cases of ice cream?" Now this is the kind of question that you immediately must say "YES" to... however, I realized that this might be a logistical nightmare. The idea was for the ice cream to be donated to a food bank... which is perfect since my church runs one. But then I started thinking things like "how much ice cream is in 19 cases?" This ice cream was available because the cargo shifted and the pallet broke. So the ice cream was fine, but the boxes where a little banged up.

I did a lot of calling around, first to the pastor, then to the food bank director (who was sleeping, sorry), then to my wife. In all we coordinated slowly what was happening. By 3:00 PM we had figured out that each case was a 1 foot cube and there was half chocolate and half raspberry (with chocolate chunks). It was made for a "soft ice cream machine" but was perfectly edible if you take the lid off. We also found that the driver would be in Carlisle, PA at 6:00 PM. I needed to be in Middletown at the church by 7:00 PM. So I raced home.

Jaime and I drove to Carlisle and with a few phone calls, met up with the driver. He helped us load the ice cream (which basically covered the whole back of the 4Runner and then some!) And we were off to Middletown by 6:15 PM! And to keep the ice cream cold, we rolled down all the windows! It took us about 35 minutes to get to Middletown and by that time we were pretty much frozen! We met up with the pastor and family and unloaded the ice cream with just enough freezer space to fit it! Then, we tasted the raspberry... Hmmm.... very good stuff! Thanks CrossRoads Logistics!

So that's the scoop (ha ha).