thebolens.com

We took a trip a couple weeks ago to see Kyle. He's working as a strength and conditioning coach for the Altoona Curve, a minor league baseball team in Pennsylvania. We spent part of a day in the resort Kyle's living in, and went to a game that evening. Pictures are in the gallery.

We closed on the land purchase this past Tuesday. We’re very glad to have that behind us. Now we just have to start designing a house, building it, and paying for all this…

This is also a bit late, but Heidi graduated last weekend from MSU. It was pretty dark where the convocation was held, so those pictures didn't turn out too well. We got some nice ones in MSU's garden though.

These are pretty late, but you can see the pictures in the gallery.

Our offer was accepted recently on some land in the Ada/Lowell area. We took some pictures when we were looking around, and you can check them out in the gallery. We have plot two of three on the survey, with the private road (the farmhouse's old driveway) running through the center.

Remember the telephone game? Here's what happens when you do it with movie dialog, translating from English to Chinese back to English:
Star War Episode III: The Backstroke of the West

Thanks John, well worth the time spent reading.

This is almost a month late, but we hope everybody had a good holiday season. Ours was nice; very relaxing despite our yearly Odyssey across Michigan. Here are the pictures.

Heidi started her paid internship this month. She's responsible for more schools now, which results in more work and more driving. We're really looking forward to the added income though. Hopefully we'll finally be able to save up some money, and get out of apartments.

I attended a class at work called Introduction to Avionics, which was intended to bring up to speed those of us new to the aerospace industry. It briefly covered the technologies used to keep private, commercial, and military planes in the air. One of our last classes consisted of a trip to Western's College of Aviation, where we got to fly their 737 simulator. The pictures I recently posted cover our flight, and some of the other things we got to see.

The flooded apartment didn't end up doing a whole lot of damage. We have some peeling paint on the lower couple inches of the walls, and some of my books are a lot less flat than they used to be. The computer is also displaying some very strange behavior. Strangely, this is the computer that was off when the water hit, but the one that was on at the time was completely fine.

I still haven't heard anything from greyhound about my missing pack. When I called him about a month ago they told me they hadn't found it yet, but that they would contact me a month after I had reported it missing. That would have been around three weeks ago. Apparently I'll have to harass them to get reimbursed. I'm not looking forward to that, since I spent over an hour on hold last time I called.

Just a quick note: our apartment got flooded tonight. We'll be living in another one for a week or so until ours is less damp. Apparently a pipe burst while we were away today, and we ended up with around 3 inches of water on the floor. We won't have internet, but our phones will work.