swinging in the rain...

updated
we got in our round of golf despite playing through drizzle pretty much throughout and some serious rain on the front 9. the back 9 was better but the conditions were less than ideal and we lost zero chances of using the soaked landscape as an excuse for our typical stellar level of golf. among the casualties: a broken five iron (mine, surprisingly not lost in a fit of rage but rather through natural causes) and a lost 7 iron (al's). word is out in the clubhouse for the stray club and i might expect a call sometime this week to retrieve it. either way, we had fun with the golf and enjoyed the camaraderie just the same. viva la inatg.

today is our annual INATG golf outing (see last year). coincidentally, it may also be the day that our local streak of 1,265 dry days is concluded. a most inopportune time, but we'll see how it plays out. i pointed out that wet conditions isn't always bad in that it provides for a miriad of new excuses (club slipped, lost footing, etc.,) either way, i won't be working today or monday and there ain't nothin wrong with that.

fall forward...

today is the last full day of summer, at least according to the calendar. although we've enjoyed some warmer than average temps recently, there is no mistaking the twinge of autumn in the air. a little darker than normal in the morning, quite a bit darker in the evening, much cooler temps at night, and trees just starting to turn everywhere. if it wasn't for the seemingly endless raking season (we have a ton of mature trees in our yard) it might be my favorite season.

a teaching moment...

my oldest was recently involved in a minor accident at school. nothing serious at all, and although temporary, it was painful. details are sketchy but it turns out that a person of authority was partially responsible. this person felt horribly about it and unbeknownst to us, gave my oldest a more than generous monetary gift to express remorse. this presented a bit of a moral dilemma for us because it was neither expected, nor deserved (accidents really do happen). of course my oldest was excited to receive the gift - who doesn't like money? but it all felt a little bit weird and the wife and i actually had to ponder this one for awhile. of course the person responsible feels badly! - isn't that enough? what to do...gratefully accept and move on? graciously return and move on? it was a sticky wicket. after some careful consideration, my wife and i decided that we should have my oldest return the gift with an appreciative note, which is what is going to happen (maybe it shouldn't have taken us 2 days to come to this conclusion??) we presented the idea to my oldest and were pleased that it was greeted with understanding and agreement. we were told "it feels right" - a sign of maturity!

kicking off the school year...

alaina has made the jv soccer team at her school and their first game is tomorrow. she has had practice every single day since school started so i know they're looking forward to "real bullets". i'm hoping that it's a positive experience for her and that her squad is not the league punching bag that her cub basketball team was last year. historically her school does well in soccer so hoping that that trend continues. there's something a little more exciting about playing for your school than say, the city leagues, where it's all about learning and participation, and nobody keeps score. wins and losses are part of life and i think that they contribute to the character of the participant. just like real life, extra effort and team work are usually rewarded.

rough start...

the first day of school was a little bit of a downer. for starters, noelle developed a cold and fever the night before and she was a late scratch for day one. alaina had an incident toward the end of the day where she somehow mashed her thumb in a door at school - very painful. her thumb was swollen and her nail turned black. got to listen to her cry in her bed last night. owen had disturbing dreams involving some great white sharks which we had seen on the news earlier so he was up whimpering a few times. here's to day two.

summers end...

labor day is pretty much the end of it. yeah, we'll have some more warm days to be sure and i plan on golfing at least once more before we're done but the dog days are done. school starts tomorrow for the kids (except maybe noelle, who is kind of sick, we'll see) and we just watched the last flames of our annual summer end bonfire die out. we wrapped up are summer in style be going to the state fair on friday, which was largely documented above, a cookout at my folks on saturday, and some of us went to a pool party at one of my wife's friends house today. the kids are all looking forward to the school year (in varying degrees) with great anticipation and can't wait to get back in the routine.

a fair ball...

re-cap
we checked in at 9 hours at the fair today, a solid effort by the price bunch. we have seen a string a ridiculously gorgeous days, mid seventies and bright sun, and today was no exception. we ate the standards, breakfast pizza, pronto pups (i passed on that), turkey sandwich (still best of show for me) ect.,.the highlight was seeing governor tim pawlenty and getting our kid's photo with he and his wife. i twittered a variety of fascinating commentary throughout the day, the feed which can be seen to the right on this page. all in all a great day. we'll be back next year for more of the same.


my gang is preparing for our annual friday-before-labor-day visit to the mn state fair. it's trip that is always looked forward to with great anticipation, especially by the kids. it also means that school is just around the corner but we'll save that post for another time. right now it's all about looking forward to a 4 day weekend, starting for me in merely minutes. we'll hit the usual high-cal snacks, people watch, walk down long, dusty, and in some cases manure covered streets, and leave when we are tired and poorer. look for a state fair first, a couple of tweets and pics from me through out the day.
recap to follow.

happy birthday blogger...

the original blog publishing tool, blogger turns 10 today. as it turns out, blogger is the publishing tool i have used since april of 2002. we've had our ups and downs, good times and bad, but 10 years seems like a solid achievement and worth at least a mention.

some fun facts: (or at least some facts)

On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format.

In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. About a year later, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google.

In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hello into Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs.

On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features such as web standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email.

On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed "Invader", alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers and included some new features.

In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta.

By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google operated servers.

In October 2008, Turkey temporarily blocked access to Blogger