Punk'd by the Pastor

We were running late to church one Sunday and we arrived right as service was about to start.  When we got there, the usher handed us a bulletin like he usually does.  Pastor Scott was standing at the door, and he quickly asked us for the bulletins and gave us two others.  We didn't think twice about it, but we should have.  We figured we were running low or he needed the inserts or something. 

Earlier in the week, I mentioned to Pastor Scott that I had an annoyance with a traditional offering prayer because it went straight from scattering grains of wheat to collecting them, totally skipping over the whole sprouting and growing thing.  He obviously listened, since he updated the wording slightly for the Offertory Prayer. 

 We didn't realize it until we started to read along with the version that he had printed in our bulletin. 

We soon realized why he had special bulletins printed for just us and that he had to figure out how we would get them and no one else. 

Well played, Pastor Scott.  

Maps

Keeping Nat'l Geographic in business

When Google first came out with Google Maps, I think my productivity went down by an order of magnitude.  For some reason, I am fascinated by maps.   Road maps, Topo maps, Satellite views, Street maps, it's all the same.  I can get lost in tracing roads, "discovering" places that are close to other places I've been, or more recently, seeing what something looks like from space. 

While we were in Virginia last weekend for  my Nephew's wedding we stopped by Shenandoah National Park for a visit.  We came down Skyline drive from the north, but unfortunately, it was cloudy and rainy.  The view from the road was a solid white cloud.

While we were there, I picked up one of my favorite souvenirs, a trail map of the park.  Never did get to use it, and will probably never use it for a trail, but its kind of like an obsession.  So, I brought it home and stored it in the box with the other maps I've bought but seldom used. 

Deanne

I like the woody taste.

Deanne was born a few months shy of three years after Valerie. With the experience with Valerie's labor, we didn't know what to expect.  Luckily, this one was more like the first two. 

Contractions started in the afternoon on a Wednesday during Advent.  A friend from church had just died, and I needed to practice singing Amazing Grace at her funeral.  The organist and I planned on meeting before church and going through it.  The contractions weren't too bad yet, so Gail said to go ahead and we would head to the hospital after practice.

So, we dropped the kids off at a neighbors and headed to church.  As I practice, the contractions started getting harder.  It was a bit disconcerning to the members coming for service to see Gail in the office in labor.  I never really lived that one down.

After we practiced, we headed off to the hospital and voila, another girl.  I was actually thankful it was a girl, since raising a boy with three older sisters would probably permanently scar him.

That evening, I went to the neighbors to pick up the older girls and I found that they had been throwing up all evening.  I sat with Valerie on my lap, something which brought out the jealousy in Corinne.  I still hear about that from Corinne when the subject comes up.

While we were pregnant, one of Gail's friends wrote us a letter indicating that all of our kids (to date) had names that started with a roman numeral, and asked us if we were going to continue the trend.  Once we were aware of the pattern, we had to continue it.  Xanthippe and Imogene were ruled out, so we settled on Deanne.   Something her Oma still has trouble pronouncing. 

Valerie

Valerie followed Corinne by two and a half years just about to the day.  With the third, we thought we had figured out this giving birth thing.  The others went quickly enough that I was wondering if she was going to be born in the back seat.

During baby classes, they tell you to pack a bag to keep yourself occupied in the delivery room in case it was a long labor.  We skipped that step.  We probably shouldn't have.  This labor started with Gail's water breaking, not so much the contractions.  The morning dragged on, still no contractions.  Finally, the doctor told us to head to the hospital. 

In the afternoon, they decided that it needed to induce labor, so they gave Gail Pitosin to speed things up.  By the time that kicked in, Gail was in serious pain but it was too late for a epidural.  (Gail likes to point out that I got annoyed because labor started right in the middle of a movie.)  Shortly after midnight, Valerie grudgingly came into the world. 

Three for three on the girl front.  Once again, our friend Jeff drew a beautiful drawing for the birth announcement.

Corinne

Corinne was born about a year and a half after Maria in the same hospital, fittingly, on Labor Day.  Labor started again in the early morning hours, but given the experience with Maria, Gail wanted to "make sure" it was time.

When we got to the emergency room to admit Gail, they calmly took her away in a wheelchair to prepare her for delivery.  A short while later, a nurse came running from the back to me and said "You'd better get up here, you're wife's having a baby."  About 90 minutes later, Corinne was born.

All of our children were baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Chapel in St. Louis in a very special baptism gown.  It was the same gown that I got baptized in as well as my father.  The gown was worn by all of our children and about a hundred other relatives.  It's become a tradition to find out who's got the gown when the next relative is born.  There is a list that goes with the gown of all the people baptized in the gown. 

Our friend Jeff drew a nice picture that we used for her birth announcement.*

* For those of you who may be reading this in the future, those were actual pieces of paper that we would mail to friends and family announcing the birth.  Mail as in paper and stamps.   How quaint.  

Maria

Practicing for the chorus line?

Maria was born about 2 1/2 years after we got married.  We went through all the newly pregnant parent stuff, like baby classes, buying a house, outfitting the baby's room and buying a station wagon.  We had a couple of ultrasounds, but we decided we didn't want to know the gender of our child.

Maria's labor was a somewhat interrupted.  Gail woke up early in the morning with contractions, so we went to the hospital where they strapped a baby monitor on her and made her lay on her back.  So, the contractions went away and a few hours later, we found ourselves at home.  We had a regularly scheduled OB/GYN appointment at 1 in the afternoon, so when the contractions started again later in the morning, Gail just suffered through them and went to our doctor's appointment.

Luckily, the hospital was right next to the doctor's office, because when we got there, he told us to get in the wheelchair and head over to the hospital.  By then, labor was well underway, and a few hours later, we had our oldest daughter.

I first heard the name Maria from the musical West Side Story.  Gail liked it as well, but thought it should be pronounced Mar-eye-a.  I guess I won that one.

Life comes full circle, with Maria and her husband Chris now expecting our first Granddaughter in September.  (They decided to find out sooner.)

Happy Mother's Day

joie de vivre

In the summer of 1990, We vacationed at our cottage in central Wisconsin.  At the same time, Gail's cousin was summering at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.  It's a pretty cool place if you've never been there.   

We were in the stands watching the trapeze artists perform and you could just see my Mom looking on with envy.  Then the emcee started his call for volunteers.  "Does anyone want to try the trapeze?"

I reached over to raise her hand.  I'm not certain if I got her hand up first or she got her hand up first, but when the emcee saw this lady in her mid-fifties volunteer, he jumped on it.

Spry as a kitten, she climbed the ladder and stood there while they strapped the safety belt on her.  When they were ready to go, she calmly stepped off into the air and started to swing.

The crowd was delighted.  There she was, swinging back and forth in the air.  The emcee was trying to talk to her to tell her what to do, but she was in her own world.  She swung back and forth being the star of the circus.  Finally, when she got tired, she called out that she was ready to get down.  They lowered her to the net in a round of thunderous applause.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. 

Circus Memories

One of Gail's cousins ran off and joined the circus.  Really!

Sorry Roy, the elephants always wanted to be in front

Both Gail and I have a horde of cousins, and one of her cousins, Roy, joined the circus when he was young.  He found out he was good with animals, so started training them.  He gradually worked his way up to training elephants.

Being in the circus, he was always traveling around the country, so every couple of years the circus would come to town and we would visit Roy.  And of course, when we went to the circus, Roy treated us like royalty, including the obligatory elephant ride. There's nothing like a good circus to bring out a smile in a kid.

I was reminded of this recently when Ringling Brothers retired their elephants due to pressure by animal rights activists.  I can't say I agree or disagree with them, but I do remember that Roy loved his elephants.  He treated them with respect and cared for them as best he could.  I remember he got mad at one of the handlers when he thought they were treating his elephants poorly.

He's retired now from his circus life and living happily with his family, but I'll always remember his hospitality when the circus came to town. Thanks, Roy. 

Patio Furniture / Corporate Culture

Still has silly string stains, Teresa

Every year when the weather gets nice and I get out the patio furniture, I think about corporate culture. 

It starts in Cedar Rapids, when Norand, the company I was working for, was doing some remodeling.  We had an old storage room that we wanted to make into a small conference room.  We got it cleaned out, painted up, and then Leslie in facilities told me how much office furniture cost.  I didn't have the $1xxx that was needed to buy a table and some chairs, so we got creative.   I went to the local store and for less than $200, I bought a patio set (complete with umbrella) for our conference room.  Naturally, we called it the patio. 

After the company was purchased by Intermec, I was part of the team that needed to combine the two IT departments into one.  Eventually, the company moved me to Everett, Washington to take over the IT Operations.  A part of the attempt to change corporate culture in Everett, I bought a patio set and brought it into the office.  We set it up in the middle of the cube farm and it gathered dust for five years. 

When I left Intermec, I brought it home with me.  (The company never paid for it, so it was still technically mine.)  It gets well used on the back deck.  We eat supper outside on the nice days and I remind myself that there are always missed opportunities in life. 

VT T-Shirt Quilt

Before the baby boomers came along, t-shirts were white and you wore them underneath other shirts.  By the time we were kids in the 70's, t-shirts became much more:  art, personal expression, souvenir.  It seemed a shame to turn them into rags as they wore out or got too small. 

Not certain who's idea it was, but quite some time ago, Gail started making t-shirts into quilts.  Nothing fancy, just cut out the interesting bits of the shirt, sew them together, and use them as a casual throw.   So we started saving shirts instead of turning them into rags. 

Last summer, Gail started going into the 5 boxes of t-shirts, pruning them out, and making them into memories.  There were enough of them, she started making them into different themes.  This quilt documents some of our experiences at Tech, from band trips to Memphis in 1979, the Peach Bowl in 1981, Marching Virginians' Anniversaries, and other fond memories from when we were young. 

Graduation

"You know nothing, Jon Snow."

I graduated from Virginia Tech with Bachelors of Science in Computer Science in 1982.  My journey there from Wisconsin was unexpected to me.

When I graduated from High School, my father was the Vice Chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He made it clear to me that the selection of where to go to college was up to me, but his position did have an influence on where I looked.  He had an unspoken perception of UWM compared to other universities in the state.  Not wanting to offend him in any way, I decided to go to college out of state. 

My father and I made a visit to Virginia Tech, and a few things stood out to me.  First, the setting was wonderful.  Blacksburg is located in the mountains, the campus was very open and architectually consistent, and they had all the programs that I was thinking about majoring in.  But what really sold me was the band director.

One of our visits was with the director of the marching band.  Dr. Heath had come to Tech from Purdue, so he could give us a perspective about how the school and region differed from the midwest.  During our discussion, the door opened, and a red warthog stuck its head into the room.  The student who was wearing the razorback helmet on his head didn't realize we were in there and turned as red as the helmet as soon as he saw Dr. Heath had guests.  We all shared a laugh, and it occurred to me that this is the kind of place that I would enjoy. 

I have no regrets. 

Marching Virginians

Many of my fond memories of college revolve around the marching band; the Marching Virginians.  Nowadays, they like being called the Spirit of Tech because Virginians sounds too much like ....

The band started in 1974 and it took a few years for it to become successful.  I had some influence into that success.  In  1979, the band director, James Sochinski, arranged "We Will Rock You" by Queen and the Tuba section started playing around with a dance.  He saw that and the following year, he arranged the Hokie Pokie and presented the Subculture (i.e., tuba players) with a challenge.  Could we dance the Hokie Pokie?

Well, we got together as a section and did a bit of choreography.  When we broke into the chorus line for the first time during a halftime show, we got the crowd's attention.  The routine has changed little over the past few years, and it has become the signature song for the band, and to a certain extent, the university.

Every so often, they have an alumni weekend where old MV's are asked to return.  The photograph above is from practice at the 30th anniversary in 2004.  I'm the one after the gap in the line.  I learned that dancing with a tuba 20+ years after graduation is not as easy as it was. 

Just to give you an idea, the 2009 version of the alumni band is shown in the attached video.  It's a bit jittery.  The Hokie Pokie starts at about 3 minutes in.  The chorus line is about a minute later.

Their official web site goes into more detail about the history of the band.