Category: family

awhile back pam said i needed new clothes. this is a big deal because i rarely buy clothes. my clothes usually come from birthday and CHRISTmas presents. until recently this system had worked pretty well for me. i had clothes and i didn’t have to go shopping. it was the best of both worlds.

a few weeks ago pam said i had to get some new clothes because i had worn out most of my better looking outfits and the others were working terribly out of date. i looked at what i was wearing and determined that she was right. so pam took me shopping and i came back with nice looking clothes.

i know the clothes are nice looking because today everyone has been telling me so. seriously, i have had two different groups of people say “you’re looking very good today.” it’s not something that i am used to. i will probably have to take pam’s advice more often.

since we live 5 minutes away from three different river/creeks we decided we would take the canoe out after supper and see how roux would respond to being on the water. roux liked the canoe a good bit less than montana but apparently felt much more comfortable with the idea of walking around in the canoe. i’m not sure that we ever got real close to tipping the canoe over but we moved enough that it scared me a little. the video above is one of those jerks.

the good news is that both of the basset rides were good enough that we are going to keep on trying it. who knows after a month or two of basset training i may be able to go out and fly fish for smallies with a basset companion.

my run for the day
distance – 6.0 miles
time – didn’t take a watch
weather – 68º/night run

 

pam and i decided that me fulfilling my basset version of “a river runs through it” was a worthy enough goal for us to work on. therefore, i went to the pet companion today and purchased a basset size live vest. then pam and i grabbed montana and the canoe and headed out to mcdill pond for a little trial float. we decided to try montana first because she is a little more calm than roux (very little). we put her life vest on and put her in the canoe. it was at this point that i kind of expected things to run out of control. i pictured montana bouncing from side to side checking things out and maybe even deciding that she was michael phelps and going for a purposeful swim. i was wrong. instead, was frozen in fear. she stood as straight as possible. she barely moved for the first 30 minutes we were out there. she wasn’t shaking but i tend to think that was because she was afraid it might be enough motion to tip the boat over. after 30 minutes she was a little more used to the situation and began to move around a little bit. not much mind you, but enough to tell pam and i that she was feeling a little more comfortable. thus, it was time to see what would happen when i started fishing. for my first 5 casts montana jerked every time the lure went flying. canoes were not meant for sudden 50lb low center of gravity jerks. thankfully these canoequakes weren’t to bad, so other than a slight heart palpitation on my part there was no real harm. i didn’t plan on catching any fish during this float and that part of the plan went exactly as i had thought it would. not a bite. so i still don’t know how she would respond to a fish. we’ll have to try that later.

i’ve got a 20 second video that i’m uploading to flickr at the moment. until it finishes you’ll just have to be satisfied with this photo.

pam is connected with a couple of different forums. one of these is pastor’s wives which as you could probably guess is a group of pastor’s wives who talk about various things relating to their lives. anyhow, every now and then we end up meeting someone from around the country that pam knows from the forum. yesterday we met the leader of the foru and her husband – larry and romona griffith. they are from thorndale, texas and the cool thing is that they have their ra’s praying for us. ra’s is a kids program that is kind of a combination of boy scouts and a missions program. since, adam and noah were at one time ra’s we all find it pretty cool that these little guys are praying for us.

we ended up eating at the safe house in milwaukee which was a blast. the  food was decent but if you like espionage the atmosphere was great.  basically the restaurant is made up like a spy safe house. it’s in an alley, there’s no real restaurant sign out front (instead there are a couple of signs that say “international exporters ltd” as pictured above and to the side), you have to know a password to get in (or you have to perform some task they give you – which is caught on closed circuit tv and broadcast all over the restaurant for everyone to enjoy), the rooms are full of spy stuff and there is even a secret exit through a phone booth. it was quite cool. touristy but that was fine and dandy because we were tourist.

SIDE NOTE – i have a friend’s rss feed that for some reason is every now and then showing a long list of less than savory links at the end of his posts on just the rss feed. i’m not entirely sure that this is not an issue with two of my computers but as of yet the virus and spyware software is not finding anything. if you read my blog through an rss feeder and a list of such links comes up would you please notify me. has anyone header of someone’s feed being spammed?

SIDE SIDE NOTE – bastille days in milwaukee began yesterday and therefore we stopped by for a little while. we were there last year and loved it and the boys loved it yesterday. the greatest part (for me) was the fact that the wisconsin basset rescue society was there and they gave us information on bassetfest. i desperately want to take montana and roux to bassetfest. imagine 300-400 basset hounds running loose in a park. oh what fun.

for the fun of it the family and i decided to make my mom’s day and take some friday the 13th photos. you see my mom is just a tiny bit superstitious. 😉

anyhow, here they are:

 

today is my dad’s birthday. on a whole i would describe him as a great dad (other than his extreme cheapness and love for bad country music).

happy birthday dad.

SIDE NOTE – i’m coaching noah’s soccer team. i just typed this so that you could all have a good laugh for the day.

jim and jill, pam’s brother and sister-n-law, are up here for the a few days while we run the green bay marathon (in two days, woohoo). we went fishing today with andy (a great a generous guy) and had a pretty decent day of catching fish and enjoying nature. i think each of us caught 15 or so.

below are pictures from jim and jill’s first fish in wisconsin.

my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 54:45
pace – 10:57/mile