June 2022

June was a good month! But it went by fast as it usually does. School is out for the summer, which means that Rose will be a senior in the fall and Emily will be a freshman. This will be the only year that they both attend high school together. And it means that Rose will be graduating around this time next year! That's hard to believe. Also, she applied to Coe College and was accepted! Welcome, class of 2027:

Since Cynthia works at Coe Rose's tuition is free, so we're only on the hook for room and board (which isn't cheap, either). Even though Coe is close enough that Rose could easily live at home, we felt like Rose living in the dorms and being on campus full-time would be an important part of the college experience and a step towards becoming a fully independent grown-up living on her own.

For Cynthia's birthday one of the things she asked for was a series of drawings of each of the houses we've owned. It's gonna take a while to get all three done, but I had the Des Moines house done in time for her birthday. With some help from Alice:

The finished drawing:

Alice in a rare moment when she's not tearing the house apart or climbing the curtains:

I made the trip out to Boston for the first time since the pandemic (and I'll be going out again in July). It was good to finally meet so many people in person that I had only spoken to on zoom calls. Also, I feel like I barely know anybody there anymore. The company has hired roughly 500 people since the beginning of 2020, so there are a lot of new faces.

Somewhere over Ohio:

Random: this groundhog apparently lives under our shed in the backyard. We occasionally see him waddling around out there:

I made the 30-mile roundtrip bike ride to Center Point. A few years ago I made this trip regularly, but then got tired of riding the same route all the time so since then I've changed it up.

I usually turn around to head back when I'm just north of the Center Point train depot:

Cynthia went with some friends to see the Indigo Girls:

Emily and Alice taking an afternoon nap:

That cat is growing like a weed:

We went to Double Z's to see Stryper! I've never seen them before and it was a pretty cool experience. Those dudes are gettin' old, but they can still rock like it's 1985. I was impressed, they can still tear it up and Michael Sweet has an incredible voice. And the only non-original member of the band is the bass player. There were a couple stages set up and Fresh Fighters played the smaller one in the background of our lovely date night pic:

It was cool to see all the die-hard fans and people who knew the lyrics to every song. Out of their 90-minute set I think I knew about 6 songs. And they have a new album coming out this summer. Lots of energy:

I always heard that Stryper threw Bibles into the crowd at the end of their shows... and guess what? They still do. We caught this one:

National Honor Society and New Cat

Rose was accepted into the National Honor Society (Adastra) and attended the ceremony to receive her certificate on May 9th. She was one of 50 students at Washington HS accepted into Adastra. Go Rose!

She's to the right of the tall kid in the gray shirt:

And we got a new cat. Emily's best friend Cora gave Emily an 8-week old calico named Alice. Alice alternates between tearing the house apart and climbing all over us with her sharp claws... and sleeping peacefully. 

Seriously, when she's awake she doesn't sit still for two seconds:

But eventually she conks out again:

With all the rain we've had this spring I haven't been able to ride my bicycle as much as I usually do by now. I've also had to change my normal route on the Cedar Valley Trail because all the flooding has washed out the bridge I cross as I head north toward Center Point. It's great to be out riding again, though.

Slovo

Last October I was hired to design and publish the Czech Museum's Slovo magazine. What was originally going to be a one-time gig turned into an ongoing job, which has been both fun and very challenging. I'm given Word doc manuscripts for the text and then I have to create or gather the rest on my own – photos, illustrations, exhibits info, and store content. It's a ton of work, but well worth it and I'm enjoying this side hustle which gives me an extra creative outlet that I don't often get when working on textbooks.

Here's the winter edition of the Slovo:

The summer edition is in progress now and will be distributed in a couple months.

Spring Break 2022

Spring break, woo hoo! We took the week of March 14th off for spring break and Rose went with her friends to Puerto Rico while Cynthia, Emily, and I went to Chicago. It was a fun week, but first a picture of Rose and some of her friends before the WPA dance:

Rose, Kaylin, and her crew flew out of Chicago to Atlanta and then on to San Jose. It was kind of a long flight out over the Atlantic:

When she arrived she saw this and didn't know what it was. Not understanding what this was made it a lot funnier. Also, even though Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, it doesn't abide by U.S. laws, so pretty much anything goes there:

There were chickens and lizards roaming about everywhere, which I'm sure was weird, but the scenery looked pretty great:

This picture was taken from the balcony of the apartment where she was staying:

They spent lots of time at the beach, but also visited historical sites like a church built in the 1500s and went zip lining, too. Rose zip lining upside down:

In Chicago we stayed in an Airbnb that was almost identical to the apartment where I lived as a kid. Our first morning we went on a boat tour down the Chicago River. During the tour we passed the Marina Towers which are all parking ramps on the lower levels. You can kinda see a red car sticking out on one of the lower levels. When filming the movie "The Hunter" with Steve McQueen they drove a car off this parking ramp into the river:

You can see Willis (pronounced "Sears") Tower peaking between a couple buildings:

The Civic Opera building:

I don't remember what this building is called, but I like the reflections:

This building has condos at the top. Because of the wavy lines the building doesn't have as much stability as it would if it had straight lines, so they had to leave two floors open near the top to allow wind to pass through. This reduces the swaying at the top, reducing the likelihood of people living in the top floor condos from getting motion sickness:

This curvy building wasn't supposed to be built here. It's actually illegal to build any towers east of Lake Shore Drive, but the company that built it decided it was easier to apologize than to ask permission and for some reason no one stopped them. Brazen move:

The Museum of Illusions is a real place and we visited for the first time. Gravity and the laws of physics mean nothing there:

There were some really trippy rooms that were too dark to take decent pictures, including a hallway that rotates around you while you walk through it. It was nearly impossible to stay upright, even though the floor wasn't moving.

Too many Nodlands:

I took a few pictures of the Airbnb because it had almost exactly the same layout as the house where I used to live in Edgewater. It's decorated much differently, but otherwise it's very similar. The cassettes on the dining room wall were a cool idea:

A few pictures from the day we visited Millennium Park:

Everybody likes the bean. Far out, man:

For lunch, we walked across the street from Millennium Park to Wildberry Pancakes where they serve... pancakes. Really good pancakes. Just down the street is the building from "Adventures in Babysitting":

And we went to Shedd Aquarium, which is always changing and always fascinating:

The dolphin shows are free now, so we got to watch the show for the first time:

We did lots of exploring and ate some good food. Our last day we visited my old house in Edgewater. The houses look the same, but the neighborhood has changed a lot. When I was a kid there was a pine tree in the front yard: