We've met Taylor...

...and she is a great kid. We've gotten to spend a Friday evening and a Saturday afternoon with her now.

The first time we met her, we went out to dinner and she talked non-stop the entire time. She is the oldest of 6 kids, is in the 4th grade, is very smart, and volunteers at her school reading to the smaller kids.

She looks SO much like Dan and Bob. Dan has finally met her, although I guess "hi" was about as far as they got.

This past Saturday we were at Wes' parents' house; all 3 Smith grandkids were together, and Taylor hardly said anything. I guess Kayli and Christian talking a mile a minute was a little much to compete with. But the 3 of them seem to get along very well. Shockingly, well, actually, considering all the circumstances.

Taylor wanted to learn to crochet, which made Kayli want to learn, so Mary was very excited to teach the two of them. They were doing quite well working on a blanket.

We hope to have her up to visit someday soon. It is hard to catch up on 10 missing years all at once, but she is definitely worth it.

Goodbye Oliver

We had almost ten years with him. He wasn't the cutest, wasn't the smartest, wasn't the bravest, but we all loved him. And I know how much dad loved his little "surprises". We won't be able to hear his toenails clicking on the kitchen floor anymore, but soon dad's will grow long enough to fill that void. We watched him grow from a shaking, quaking, underfed little puppy into a plump, white-bearded old man. He didn't care to be around little children all that much when they were awake and moving, but once asleep he wouldn't leave their side, intent on standing guard over them. He was always so happy to see us when we got home from work or came over to visit, and he always had a sixth sense about when we were about to get into a vehicle and he had a fighting chance of going along.
Think of how old you were and what your life was like when we got Oliver. I was in fifth grade, Mr. Kline's class, I looked like a boy and wore flannel fairly often. In our family photo that year, I wore a flannel dress that looked more like a nightgown and I was mortified because instead of buttons it had bra hooks to fasten it together. For some reason, the day mom got Oliver, I came in the front door of the house when I got home. Mom took me into the dining room and introduced me to this shivering little black dog that peed all over itself with fear when I tried to get him out of his cage. We tried to make him sleep in his cage that night, but he cried until I let him into my room, and then he scratched at the door until he was allowed to go into mom and dad's room, where he finally went to sleep. I guess he was attached to mom right from the start. The last time I saw Oliver, he was in the back of mom and dad's big monster van. They helped me unload my stuff at OU, I kissed mom and dad goodbye, and I petted Oliver and gave him a kiss before they drove away. So at least I got to say goodbye.
I'm trying to think now. That food and water dish he had, the water dish was all chewed up. Did he do that when he was a puppy, or did Toby do that before him? We've had that dish for a very very long time.
Anyway, goodbye Oliver, no dog could ever replace Toby, and no dog will ever replace you. I'm glad I didn't cut your toenails at the vet's visit just last month, because I wouldn't want that to have been one of your last memories of being with me. Although you were mad enough when I took you home and gave you a bath. Have fun in doggie heaven, and eat all of Mike's steaks that you like.

Sorry, I tried to put a couple photos on here, but I can't get them to load.

name dropping

Ok, we are letting everyone know that when our daughter is born she will be welcomed into the world as..................... Johanna Eden Miller.

I could not figure out to add text to the photos, so I had to do it this way.
In the second set of pics you see a turkey leg hovering above her. That is her left arm with her hand next to her face. Maybe she's picking her nose. ------- ---- Miller stop that right now!

...have some more sllloooppppy joes....

Say hello to granddaughter/niece #2 (Miller side anyway)

• 

Good News/Bad News

Hasbro has officially updated the Monopoly game with modern properties across America and new playing pieces.

THE GOOD NEWS:
Jacobs Field is one of the properties you can buy or sell.

THE BAD NEWS:
It replaces Mediterranean Avenue.

Special Holiday Guest

Steph is mentoring a student from Hong Kong this quarter. Her name is Angel, and she speaks English very well. She is eager to experience all things American while she is in the U.S. Would anyone object to taking her along to Orlando in November?

Claire's soccer

Claire is playing soccer this year. I was waiting to receive a schedule and then I was going to post all of her games here, but I have yet to get one from the coach. Anyway, she has a game every Saturday through mid to late October. They are either 10 am or 11:30 am. If anyone wants to come feel free. They are at the fields behind the elementary - just like softball was.

BLOGGING

Well hoodah-I have now blogged. I feel better already.
That is it for now.
Dad

American Idols LIVE! Tour Report

For those who didn't hear, Carrie won tickets to the American Idol concert on Friday. Floor seats, about 8 rows back. The evening included a 'Meet & Greet' with the performers. There’s way too much information to get into real detail about any one thing, so I’m just going to list a bunch of random thoughts and impressions I got, starting with the ‘Meet & Greet’ portion of the evening.

-A representative from the tour met a large group of us at the Will Call of the arena. I was expecting for the meet & greet to happen pretty quickly, but we were all kept waiting just inside Will Call for 30-45 minutes or so. I’m guessing they had problems rounding the performers up and getting them to the meet.

-Now, I’ve never been to a concert meet & greet. Maybe I’m naïve, but I figured we’d get a chance to talk and mingle with the Idols. No such luck. We were ushered downstairs into a large room where the Idols were seated behind a long table with a box of Pop Tarts in front of every other person, signing autographs like an assembly line. If we didn’t have anything to sign, we were given picture of all the Idols.

-We were expected and instructed to keep the line moving. We were not to touch the Idols. We were not to ask to have our picture taken with the Idols. We were to not ask the Idols to say hello to our grandma (which is what I was hoping Elliott would do for a friend of mine).

-Even with the short time we spent at the meet & greet, the Idols behavior was consistent with what we had seen on TV. Taylor seemed to be humming along to a tune only he could hear. Ace made sure to make contact with every person in line and thank him or her for coming.

-I asked Katherine if she was getting tired of doing all this publicity. She smiled and said no, but she actually mouthed it. So, for what it’s worth, it did appear that her voice problems are genuine.

-Almost all the Idols seemed very pleasant. There was only one who seemed annoyed or bothered to be there. And, no, I won’t say who it was, other than to say it wasn’t anyone I’ve mentioned so far.

-I was hoping to get a bag of loot from the concert. A free hat or program, maybe a meal. Other than the cast photo, we got diddly.

-This is an indicator of the audience. Between the meet & greet and the concert, Carrie and I had supper at a pizzeria near the arena. Out of maybe 150 people in the dining room, maybe a dozen were men. The number of people under 16 was about equal to those above 16.

Now, the concert:

-I’d like to apologize to all the Idols on behalf of the audience. Mandisa started a trend of all the Idols of asking the audience to get on their feet. This is Columbus. Unless you’re singing the OSU fight song, we don’t do ‘get on your feet.’

-Mandisa mistakenly called Columbus ‘Columbia.’ Understandable mistake when you’ve been touring for a month and don’t know which state you’re in, much less what city. Still the audience let her know of her mistake.

-She dedicated one of her songs to the bass player in the band. He didn’t seem to be expecting it, so it makes you wonder what’s going on back stage.

-I would say the note of the collective scream the audience hit when Ace appeared on stage would be a B-Sharp.

-By the time Ace finished singning ‘Father Figure,’ every girl under 12 had achieved puberty.

-His version of ‘Harder to Breathe’ is a lot better than I expected it to be. I could see him doing well with that kind of music.

-Even though he did this weird thing with his chest that simulated a heartbeat. The girls seemed to love it, but I thought it was a little creepy, and Carrie couldn’t stop laughing.

-He’s awfully fond of the arms-outstretched-Messiah pose on stage.

-This is just my opinion, but Lisa got voted out a lot sooner than she deserved. She’s got a professionalism that’s beyond her age. I think if she had waited to audition until she was 21, she could have taken the entire thing.

-And she plays keyboards.

-On the flip side, she like mellow 70s hits of Elton John.

-Lisa called Paris her best friend.

-During ‘Waterfalls,’ they had fairly complex choreography.

-It’s something about Lisa’s smile. More than any other Idol—including Taylor—she looked like she was having the absolute time of her life the entire evening.

-On her own, Paris danced like she was getting her freak on.

-That reminds me, I just wanted to say that all the performers seemed much more comfortable on the tour stage than they ever did on the show. But Paris was the most noticeable.

-Not much to say about Bucky.

-Bucky and Kellie, on the other hand… During their duet of ‘You’re the One that I Want,’ neither one of them seemed like they wanted to be there, like they were more concerned with their choreography than with the song. In comparison to Paris and Lisa, Kellie and Bucky could barely do the box step.

-No offense to Kellie, but I have a jar of pennies on my desk that has more stage presence than she did. She moved gracefully but stiff, like she had adopted her training as a high school beauty queen as a way of life.

-To her benefit, when she took off her leather jacket to reveal a corset underneath, I totally forgot about her stage presence.

-She ended the first half of the show before the intermission, saying she couldn’t wait to get out of her corset so she could breathe again. But when she reappeared in the encore, she was wearing another corset.

-Before the concert started and during the intermission, people were encouraged to send text messages to a number and have their messages projected on the video screens. There were plenty of messages of people proclaiming their undying love for Ace and Chris. ‘ace I love u marry me,’ ‘chris have my baby,’ stuff like that. But I think my favorite was ‘Marry me PopTarts.’

-Oh, and evidently someone actually proposed via text message before the concert started. And she said yes, so that was kind of cool.

-At the beginning of the concert and at the end of intermission, they played the title sequence of this last season, followed by a fast-cut montage of moments from the season. Maybe it’s just me, but I was bugged by the fact that they didn’t actually put Taylor in the title sequence. How hard could it have been, and it would have been a way to acknowledge his place among the Idol winners.

-If the note for Ace was a B-sharp, the one as Chris took the stage was High C. And if the girls went nuts for Ace, all their mothers went straight into heat for Chris.

-Chris had more solo songs than any performer other than Taylor.

-Since smoking has been banned indoors in Columbus, and is generally frowned upon by society, most people don’t have lighters to wave anymore. But what do we have? Cell phones.

-Note to Elliott Yamin: Next time you duet with Chris, YOU pick the song. Nickelback just isn’t your gig, man.

-By the end of the series, Elliott had cleaned himself and looked really snazzy with his ‘Rat Pack Nouveau’ look. For the concert he looked rumpled in black jeans, a black button-down and backwards baseball cap. Totally the wrong look for the kind of music he soloed with.

-I was surprised by the fact that there were no back-up singers on stage with the Idols. Were they backstage, or were they on a backing track?

-Best Song of the Night goes to the quartet of Elliott, Chris, Ace & Bucky on ‘Patience.’ It deserved to be the bonus track on the CD, as it showcased the best skills of all four performers.

-Number of men who played musical instruments: 3 (Taylor on guitar, harmonica and tambourine; Chris and Bucky on guitar).

-Number of women who played musical instruments: 1 (Lisa on keyboard)

-Katherine is still under restriction and could only do two songs, ‘Black Horse and a Cherry Tree’ and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’

-She was in a cast from breaking her leg. How did I miss that in earlier posts?

-While almost everybody else either dressed casually or ‘stage casual,’ Katherine stood out by wearing a long, flowing black gown reminiscent of her infamous yellow gown.

-Another notable song missing from the line-up: the girls’ ‘Man! I feel Like A Woman.’ Which is too bad, because I was really looking forward to it. I wonder why it was cut.

-Taylor just rocks. He may not be the best singer of the bunch, but he is easily the best performer.

-He came charging through the audience from the back of the auditorium to the stage, passing right past my aisle seat. Yay me!

-I was close enough to touch him as he passed if arena security hadn’t jock-blocked me. Boo security guy!

-However, I was close enough to get a good look at the seat cover with lapels he calls a jacket.

-Here’s the reason Taylor deserved to win American Idol: he makes every song his own. All the other contestants were singing covers of a famous song. With Taylor, you forget he’s singing a Stevie Wonder tune about racism.

-And I finally figured out what his dancing style reminds me of: Elaine from Seinfeld.

-My number one pet peeve about any concert: Forced encores. Why do performers continue to insist on trying to fake out the audience? Taylor says good night and leaves the stage. The rest of the band leaves the stage, but nobody turns up the lights. Are we really supposed to believe that they’re NOT coming back? Encores should be spontaneous, when the audience just will NOT let the performers go without one more song. When they’re pre-planned, it makes the whole thing feel disingenuous.

-But even I have to admit this: I actually got chills watching everyone on stage doing ‘We Are the Champions.’

-On the other hand, I got the distinct impression that Taylor had totally forgotten the words to ‘Living in America.’

-Oh, one last thing—what I said at the beginning about Columbus not getting on our feet for anything short of a BCS Bowl… we got on our feet for Taylor and stayed on them.

You know, Brian, you could do this...

Who's the big winner?

I won two tickets to the American Idol concert coming to Columbus on 8/11, INCLUDING backstage passes for meet-and-greet.

Guess what Wes and I will be doing next Friday?!?!?!?!?!?

Try not to turn too green!

I bet it was Dad who stole this cat

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/07/18/20060718-B3-03.html

Homecoming, poison ivy, and X-ray vision

Helllllloooooo.... Is there anybody out there? WELCOME HOME, TESSY!!!!

I have poison ivy on my face. By Sunday morning it had gone to my eyelids. The left one was all swelled up. I didn't go to church on Sunday. By Monday I had it in my throat. I went to the doctor and now I'm on the roids, so try not to be too jealous of the toned physique and cute little goatee I will shortly be developing.

I was framing some pictures to hang, and I showed one to Wes. "This is the goods," I said. He looked at it. "What is this, your dad? he asked. "Yup", I said, "but more importantly, look at what he's holding -- that's good blackmail right there, that is!" Wes said, "You mean the rabbit he's holding?"

Dun dun DUN.

I looked closely.

Wes and his stupid Superman X-ray vision. He's right. It IS a rabbit that dad is holding in that picture. And all these years I thought it was a cat. Stupid me. Stupid no more blackmail.

A Basket of Poo

Today I happened to notice a short story that I wrote exactly a year ago. Although you've seen it before, I thought I would post it for your enjoyment:

*********************

A Basket of Poo


Mr. and Mrs. Smith bought a house. “Look, look,” said Mr. Smith. “It is a nice house.”

“It is a very pretty house,” said Mrs. Smith. “We should have pets to live in this pretty house with us.”

Many pets came to live with Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the pretty house. Some of the pets were big. Some of them were small. All of the pets were stupid.

“Look, look,” said Mrs. Smith. “See our stupid pets. We have a stupid dog, and two stupid cats, and stupid fish.”

Mr. and Mrs. Smith did not know that stupid mice also lived in their house. One day Mrs. Smith came home. There was a mouse in the kitchen.

“Look, look,” screamed Mrs. Smith. “Look, stupid cats. There is a mouse.” The cats did not say anything. They were too stupid.

Another day Mr. Smith said, “Look, look, Mrs. Smith. There is a mouse running around the living room.” Mrs. Smith stood on the couch. “Look, look, Mr. Smith,” she screamed. “Catch the stupid mouse.”

Mr. Smith caught the mouse and put it outside. The next day Mrs. Smith went downstairs to feed the stupid cats. She put her hand in the bag of cat food. She screamed and ran up the stairs.

“Look, look, Mr. Smith!” she said. “There is a mouse in the bag of cat food.” Mr. Smith went downstairs. He was down there for a long time. He did not tell Mrs. Smith what he did with the mouse in the bag of cat food. She did not ask.

After that, Mr. and Mrs. Smith saw many stupid mice. One day Mr. Smith said, “Look, look, Mrs. Smith. Our cats are too stupid to catch mice. We should not have stupid pet mice in our house. We should buy mouse traps.”

“You are right,” said Mrs. Smith. So the next day she bought mouse traps at the store.

Mr. Smith took a mouse trap. He put peanut butter in it. He took it downstairs and put it in the closet next to the bag of cat food. “Look, look, Mrs. Smith,” he said. “I will catch the stupid mouse that likes to eat cat food.”

“Why don’t you look in the closet and see if you can find the mouse nest?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“You are right,” said Mr. Smith. So he looked in the closet. In the closet were many things. There were baseball gloves and volleyball knee pads and jump ropes. There were knee braces and shin guards and baseball bats. There was also a large basket to put all those things in.

Mr. Smith took the basket out of the closet and looked in it. When he had taken out the baseball gloves and volleyball knee pads and jump ropes and knee braces and shin guards and baseball bats, there were still several large lumps of something left in the basket. It looked like thousands and thousands of tiny somethings that had clumped together into three large piles.

“Look, look, Mrs. Smith,” he said. She came downstairs and looked.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It is a basket of mouse poo,” said Mr. Smith.

Mrs. Smith said a word. She said the word in Dutch.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Smith. “Poo.”

My thoughts

I think that all grownups should get a 3-month summer vacation. With pay.

Teenagers could continue to run Dairy Queens for us, so we'd be able to get our ice cream. And that's all you really need in the summer, right?

I saw a dead possum this morning

Is that thrilling or what?

We finished our winter projects on Saturday. Only about 3 months or so behind schedule, eh? But there is now a bannister in the upstairs hallway along the stairwell, making it much more difficult to fall down the stairs from the side, so that's nice.

We watched 4 movies this weekend:

The new Pirates of the Caribbean
Swingers
The Princess Bride
Hitch

This is what we are forced to do now that we have finished the high-pressure need to work on that particular remodelling project -- relax. It is a strange sensation indeed.

Update on Paul Janssen

The latest update from Chuck late Thursday night:

Paul is being kept in an induced coma in order to stop him from fighting the ventilator and other tubes going into and out of his body. The primary problem is his lungs. They were badly bruised in the accident, and he inhaled water while lying unconscious in a ditch. The ventilator and induced coma are to allow his lungs to begin healing. The idea is to gradually bring him out of the coma and encourage his lungs to work by themselves.

He went through a crisis on Wednesday evening. His chest cavity began to fill up with air, and his blood oxygen, pulse and blood pressure readings went down. The doctor (the doctor who was on call that night, who "happened" to be the chief of that department) called in Chuck and Shelley and said, "We are running out of options here." He did, however, say that as a last-ditch effort, they would change the ventilator tube. Chuck and Shelly went back out to the waiting room while that was being done and began to storm Heaven with prayer.

Within a few hours, Paul's vital signs had improved to a point where they were even better than before. Later that morning, the doctor saw Chuck in the hospital cafeteria and told him that he was amazed at Paul's recovery. He confessed that the night before, he had not had much hope of Paul's survival. The doctor recommended that Chuck and Shelley continue to pray, because "we are seeing a real miracle here." The doctor, by the way, is Jewish.

In the meantime, Paul's regular doctor (the one who has been in charge of his case since the accident) had expressed concern that no one had seen Paul move his legs. He told the Janssens he was going to order an MRI to see if there was a blood clot in the spine. Now, that morning, before speaking to the doctor, Chuck had suddenly recalled an old song we used to sing, that goes something like this: "Every place on which your foot shall tread, I have given it to you, I have given it to you..." Chuck was impressed to sing this song over Paul and pray for fulfillment of that promise---this was still before the doctor had expressed concern about Paul's legs. After the doctor talked to them about it, Chuck told Shelley about the song. Shelley's mouth dropped open, and she said, "But the Lord reminded ME about that song this morning, too, and I sang it over Paul!"

They laid hands on Paul's legs and began to pray. Paul moved his left leg back and forth. They ran out to tell a nurse, and she went in and saw Paul's leg move, too. When it was reported to the doctor, his mouth fell open. He cancelled the planned MRI.

So for now, prayer continues to be needed for Paul's lungs to heal. The plan, at this point, is to gradually bring him out of the coma over several days and see if he can breathe on his own.

a few photos

sorry, right now i'm too tired to explain in detail these photos. the one of me and naoki was taken my last night at Helan's house. notice the short hair. Naoki gave me his baseball hat from his Japanese team, that's what I'm wearing.

and the other two photos are from Ingrid's homestay, it's a really nice house, lots of old and antique stuff...i'll explain it later. just thought you might like to have a peek at it. okay, nitey nite for me! enjoy the 4th of July.