Friday, November 24, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving to all. It was a great day. We had a 20 lb turkey, so the sandwiches will be many. Since there is a five year tradition of Thanksgiving alternating between being hosted by the Mulders and the Stimmells, Sean and I have created a competition of who had the bigger bird. I fear eventually we will be eating ostrich just to keep the competition going. For dinner this year we had eight people: Nate, Tracy, Sadie, Sean, Sarah, Joel, Angela, and Kata (left to right). Kevin and Kelly showed up after dinner for games. Lily and Charlie, the four legged ones, made the day quite lively. The only mishap was that we forgot the traditional green jell-o in the fridge and nobody got any. To give credit where credit is due, Sean is the card champion of Thanksgiving 2006. The guy seems to have a gift when it comes to playing hearts.
Sarah and I started Thanksgiving day with the five mile Turkey Trot race. It was a beautiful day and we got to do a lovely run around downtown Cleveland. We also both had very good running times. However, the first 100 across the finish line got pumpkin pies and we didn't get one. I actully placed 363rd. Sarah was a little behind me. There was a total of 1982 runners. Because we ran 5 miles in the morning, we felt justified while feasting that afternoon. All in all it was a great day. If anyone is interested in leftovers, we have plenty.

Monday, November 20, 2006

OK so it took two weeks for an update this time. The reason for this is simple... nothing happened the first week. Now there is plenty to talk about. Sarah starts a new rotation today, ER. I assume it will be just like the t.v. show. The great part about this rotation is that she will come home to me every night this month (Don't get your hopes up, Bo). Most days it's a normal 9 to 5 job. This will be nice during the Thanksgiving/ Christmas season. As for me, I have been teaching like crazy. I run back and forth between high school and middle school. I printed up some business cards which I would leave on the teacher's desk when I leave, and they worked like a charm. I have so much work that now I only leave cards on the science teachers desks. The learning curve for the substitute teacher is sharp. Every day I impliment new tactics to manage my classroom, but still some days I come home feeling like I just spent the day in a wrestling ring. There are rewards though (besides the meager paycheck) Last week when I got lunch in the cafeteria, a table of students begged me to sit and eat lunch with them. Now that's a good feeling. By the way, cafeteria pizza hasn't changed in 20 years.
Another exciting time for the Ohio Mulders is the event we attended this weekend, a fish auction. Yea, just like a regular auction, only everyone there is a fish geek, including me. We spent a better part of the day in bidding wars for African cichlids. Using some Christmas money from the Grevengoeds, (THANKS GRAMPS!!) we got some nice one's. The pictures aren't great, because taking pictures through an aquarium has been rated as one of the most difficult things to do. It's right there below hearding cats. However, you can get the gist of our great acquisitions. The first picture (from top to bottom) shows brichardi, julichromis, compressiscep, and another brichardi. The next picture shows the hazards these new little guys have in their tank. Note the new fish below the striped one. Sushi anyone? All in all we got 20 new fish, and the tank is hoppin'.
Now to finish up this post with a quick movie review. Having half the genes of our fathers, we felt compelled to venture forth to view the new bond movie on opening night. Believe it or not, Sarah had to convince me... yup, Sarah's idea. I must say I liked it. It is a pre-quil, and it definitly shows a less refined Bond. He doesn't even know how he likes his martini's yet. It's a little more action and intensity then previous Bond flicks and definitely not for kids. However, the suspense and the plot twists make for a great film. The Ohio Mulders give it two thumbs up.
Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!! We are thankful for all of you.
-Mulders

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

It's another rainy day in Cleveland. This is the start of the "sun? what's a sun?" season here. This season will last until around May. Today is election day here in these beautiful United States of America. I hope all who read this have done their civic duty. Well Ok, perhaps some readers are too young to vote yet, but when the time comes you know what to do... and if you don't, find out. I will say no other political commentary here, other than vote for who you feel is looking out for you, and not themselves. Besides if I did make some commentary, I probably would get a red flag and a government log started on some mainframe in the pentagon's basement. However, living in Ohio I do feel I have the most right to complain. Has anyone looked into our election lately... many people vote by absentee to protest poorly secured voting machines and mysteriously the absentee ballots disappear. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the person in charge of running the elections is also running for governor? Nah, why would a conflict of interest alarm go off? Just because half of Ohio's incumbants have criminal records.... enough said about that.
On a happier note, I'm working more steadily in the substituting trenches (and I thought construction was hard.) I really enjoy it and am getting a lot of good feedback. The substitute office at the C.H. board of Ed. is already getting request for me from some teachers. I've also had students ask when I'll start teaching at their school. I've found that the middle schoolers are easier to manage than the high schoolers. I think it's because I can still strike a little fear into the middle schoolers. It's hard to intimidate someone twice your size. I'm not saying I haven't done it... I'm saying it was hard.
We had a visit from Bo and Cindy this past weekend and it was delightful. It's always nice to see Cindy. We would love any more visits from anyone reading this blog. We bought a big house in order to make guest feel welcome. We haven't seen most of you in Cleveland since the first summer we lived here. There is so much more to see and do here at the Two Loon's Lodge.

We'll leave a light on for ya.

Oh yea I changed the Photo Gallery link so that it is now a shutterfly website. There are more pictures to view and (per request) you can order prints if you'd like. Have fun.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Annnnnnnnd. DONE!!! I managed to rebuild a corrupt boot volume within my computer and she's online again. Although from the amount of comments (either on the blog or any other means) I receive, I pretty sure no one even noticed that my beginning of the week update didn't occur. I set up the blog to receive anyone's comments. Halloween came and went and we saw all kinds of kids at our door. It is fun living in a neighborhood. I must say, however, that the general public is getting quite ridiculous. We had many a kids and teens who had no costume and just walked around for candy. Worse than that, we had many parents who had their own bags (still no costume) and would pocket some for themselves. I even had one mother whom after I told her cute little girl to take one piece of candy from the bowl helped herself to three candy bars greedily saying, "MMMM these are good... Oh I like these too!!" The little girl followed instructions and took only one, but looked heart broken when she saw that mommy had three. On the off chance that that mother is reading my blog... You should be ashamed. Anywho, Sarah is working in the nursery these days and often exclaims upon arriving home, "There are some really cute babies in the nursery." I don't quite know what she's getting at. For me... I finally will be teaching 9-12 grade math tomorrow. Anyone remember what the Pythagorean theorem is???