|
|
Monday, July 28, 2003
Jenny and the kids left this morning for "Indiana Bible Conference" which is being held at the FCA Camp near Turkey Run State Park. Jenny and I attended camp there around eight years ago and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Lew Miller and his son Dave Miller do the teaching and are both phenomenal men of God. Camp involves excellent teaching as well as hilarious skits and talent shows and softball and volleyball and singing Christmas Carols outside people's doors at 1:00 am with Lew. Lew is probably around 80 years old, but often acts like and has the energy of a pre-pubescent teenager. He is without a doubt, one of the best examples of someone having the joy of the Lord, I've ever met. 7/28/2003 02:29:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
I gave the lady a printout of the chronology and information on the Dakota trials/execution. She seemed interested and thankful that I had shown genuine interest. She indicated that she would be moving soon to Connecticut to work for a branch of the government that deals with Native American affairs. According to her, the 2.675 million dollars that the U.S. government agreed to pay for the ceded lands has still not been paid to the Dakota tribe. She mentioned that the life expectancy on one of the reservations for women is approximately 53 and for males around 42. 7/28/2003 02:23:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Friday, July 25, 2003
Spoke with the native American lady at the "Forbidden Deli" today when I was buying some chocolate chip cookies. I asked her for details on the executions that Lincoln allowed which she had mentioned in our earlier conversation. She indicated that it was in Mankato, MN. I indicated that I was interested and planned on looking up some information on what occurred.
7/25/2003 03:50:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
Went to the Otters game last night. From the size of the crowd and the difficulty to find a parking spot, one must deduce that there is nothing better than a winning record to boost attendance - (either that, or they gave out a heck of a lot of free tickets.) When the Roosters pulled their pitcher, we heard, "Hit the Road Jack, and don't you come back, no more, no more, no more, no more! Hit the Road Jack, and don't you come back no more." I explained to Jacob that they were playing this song because the opposing team had to take their pitcher out and replace him with someone fresh. After about four minutes Jacob turned to me and asked, "Is his name Jack?" 7/25/2003 11:47:00 AM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Thursday, July 24, 2003
Finished the Lincoln book today. I had stopped into the "Forbidden Deli" (another story) yesterday morning and the native American lady who waited on me noticed the book with Abe's face on the cover. She stated that she knew two things about Abraham Lincoln: first, she proceeded to rattle off a fairly lengthy quote, the content of which I do not recall. Second, she stated that in 18XX he approved the death sentence of 20 or 30 something Sioux, or some other native Americans. I sensed she was not a big fan. I asked what the reason was for their execution and she stated, "Because they were Indians." I scoffed before I could catch myself and then kindly stated, "Oh, now there had to be more to it than that I would imagine. That is awful; I'll look into that." She then said, something to the effect of, "NO, really. There was some kind of massacre and the pioneers demanded it and so he allowed the execution." I shared with her the re-telling of the Confederate spy who some in Lincoln's administration wanted to make and example of via public execution and wanted to ensure it happened while Lincoln was away from Washington as he otherwise would not allow it. The secretary of war signed the orders for the execution to happen the following morning as Lincoln was not due to arrive until late the following day. President Lincoln returned sooner than expected and put an end to the whole affair and did not allow the execution. 7/24/2003 04:19:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Wednesday, July 23, 2003
We have this "big" problem at work. For some unknown reason, what seems at this point to be random, Medicare claims are not making it into the appropriate database. This is a significant problem because we are receiving the claims, but are never submitting them electronically for the provider. Unfortunately, we currently have no clue why or when this is happening. It is never a good sign when you are alerted to these kinds of issues by customers/clients. Thankfully, we can very easily go back and re-submit the claim, but this problem needs to be resolved soon. The boss has labeled this as "the biggest problem we've ever had." I just hope it's Jason's fault.
7/23/2003 11:59:00 AM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Started submitting the claims a little early today so that Robyn would have plenty of time to knock out the print and mail (I realize that probably means very little to anyone who doesn't work with me.) This allowed me to bolt out at a realistic time for lunch (1:00ish). I dropped my car off to be washed and to have the seats cleaned. While the carwash folks bathed my ride, I walked to the mini-golf, video game, pizza place and ate a small sausage/tomatoes pizza while reading "Lincoln, As I Knew Him". Once that task was completed, I picked up my clean car and headed back towork. After parking the car I went to grab the book to share a quote about Lincoln from Harriet Beecher Stowe with a co-worker and noticed it was not in the car. I realized I had left it on top of the car. I drove back and found it sitting in the carwash drive where I had merged onto First Avenue! Praise God that I found it and didn't have to replace it like that Bruce Campbell book "If Chins Could Kill" that was inexplicably water-logged in the floorboard of my car earlier this year. 7/22/2003 02:21:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
My incredible wife got older today. We started going together fifteen years ago and this October we will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. I'm thinking a cruise is in order for that one. Happy Birthday Jen! =o) 7/22/2003 02:08:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Friday, July 18, 2003
Praise God from whom all blessings flow; including the discovery that my friend and brother-in-law and his wife, (my friend and sister-in-law) will be having a much-desired baby boy! L.E. Burton, coming soon to a hospital near you!
7/18/2003 03:58:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
Something came over me today and I mentioned to my friend/boss that Jenny and I would like to have their boys (5-3) spend the night with our kids. He liked that idea. I've no problems watching kids, boys especially, who I can tell, "No. It is time to go to bed," without fear of them breaking down crying. So, I never really thought to invite their daughter (17 months) as well. When I ran the idea of watching the boys by my lovely bride, she indicated that it would be great for her and Emily (4) if we could watch their little girl as well. So, we'll have a six-pack of kids tonight. 7/18/2003 03:34:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
Played some PS2, NFL2k3 last night with Big Game James and it has whet my obsessive-compulsive appetite. I'm eager to play again, although I need some stiffer competition (someone please relay that to BGJ). Smile.
7/18/2003 03:26:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Update on the pool: With my lovely wife's assistance we were able to get the pool set up. At her suggestion we pushed the sand from the center out towards the edges at a slight angle down toward the center. I then took a 2X4X10 and placed one end in the center of the circle. Jenny held that end in place as I rotated the board around the circle attempting to smooth out the sand. I held my level on top of the 2X4 at the outer edge of the circle, leveling out the sand until the bubble on the level just started to move down towards the center. This (in my simplistic mind) would supposedly ensure that the higher points at the outer edges of the circle would be approximately the same height all around the circumference. We then shoveled excess sand into any low spots that the edge of the 2X4 didn't touch. This worked very well and our pool has been up for a couple weeks now and the kids love it. 7/15/2003 03:21:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Monday, July 14, 2003
Met at the Deaconess Women's Hospital right off the Lloyd Expressway and I164 at around 7:35am on Friday, July 11th. After talking with Big Game James (who had met us to loan us his portable VHS player) for a bit and transferring our luggage and other goods to Shawn and Angela's Camry, we rolled out just before 8:00am.
7/14/2003 04:11:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Thursday, July 10, 2003
Ever try to find a hotel when you don't really know where you want to stay? Sure, staying right in the city you are visiting would be great, but who wants to pay $140 per night? Not me. Definitely not my much more frugal than me partner. Who knew that just because there's this Guinness Book record holding amusement park nearby that all the hotels could charge so much? Basic economics I suppose. More power to them in my opinion. Capitalism is alive and well and I ain't complainin'! But, I'm not paying that much either.
7/10/2003 05:45:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments
So, my lovely wife and I and another couple are heading out tomorrow morning around 8:00 am for the long haul to Sandusky, Ohio. I've heard it's about a seven hour drive. I've heard it's about a 9 hour drive. I'll keep good time and confirm the actual drive time for our trip.
7/10/2003 04:38:00 PM by Todd Bacon 0 comments Thursday, July 03, 2003
Have you seen the swimming pools that are basically a big bag with an inflatable ring at the top? The directions say to spread the thing out on level ground, inflate the ring and fill with water while spreading the base out to remove wrinkles in the bottom. Well who has level ground? Jenny and I set ours up and I threw caution to the wind (against my lovely wife's wise advice) to quickly get it set up. Well, the area in which we placed the pool sloped a bit and unfortunately the slope was directly away from the pump inlet. So, by the time the edge of the pool at the low end of the slope was nearly overflowing with water, the inlet for the pump was only about halfway under. Not good. We left it up for a few days with the 3000 some gallons of water in it for the kids to play in. Then I drained it Tuesday night with the plan to simply get a load of sand and level off the low area. I took the chain link fence section down on the side of the house so I could pull a pickup truck with sand all the way into the back yard to lessen the shoveling of sand. Have I mentioned that I don't like doing this kind of stuff even one time? Jason Frederick kindly offered to use a flatbed trailer he owns to pickup the sand for me at Mulzer's - that was a blessing. Glynn Beck came over to assist us in off-loading the sand. We drove stakes into the ground and tied twine to the stakes across the area for the pool. We used a level to roughly level the string from one stake to the other. We attempted to build the sand up to the string in the low area. Everything looked good as we raked the sand out flat. We laid the pool back down and started to fill while replacing the fence section and gate. Unfortunately the pool did not fill evenly as expected. Now the water was running along a slope in a different direction. We tried to move the pool, move sand around for what seemed like 12 hours. Currently the pool is sitting wadded up in one section of my yard and I have a huge circular cat crapping area. 7/03/2003 10:13:00 AM by Todd Bacon 0 comments | ||
