Annie In The Kitchen...

Here's a rare case where Annie is in the kitchen and not just passing through. She was busy this afternoon between homework and her closing shift at Whit's making Ghirardelli Classic Brownies. SPOILER ALERT - if you are a college friend of Annie's, a care package of cosmic chocolate goodness is headed your way.

Annie Turns Seventeen!

Can you believe it? Annie is seventeen today. I forced her to pose for this archival photo.

Yesterday we made a visit to Wittenberg College in Springfield, OH, and it was a beautiful day. Here are Annie and Lee Ann touring campus.

Since 2003 I have put on a recurring safety training session called Safety School. It is three days long and new supervisors from my company's scattered locations come here to Cincinnati to attend.

The photo is of the belt and buckle we just started giving to participants at last week's Safety School. I think these are pretty cool. I found a custom buckle manufacturer on the internet and sent them a sketch of the design I wanted. Now here it is, in cast brass!

I am thinking that, because of this, some little bit of my creative energy might survive into the distant future. Archaeologists could be digging these buckles up a thousand years from now and saying, "What the heck is this thing - and how was a primitive culture able to design an object of such beauty and perfection?" Hey, it's not the Great Pyramids, but it's something.

Lacrosse - 2009 Season Begins

Annie's lacrosse team, the Lebanon Warriors, played scrimmages on Thursday and today (Saturday) to sort of kick of this year's season. The first actual game is Tuesday, but the scrimmages are pretty much like the real thing. These photos are from today's contest at Loveland, about 10 miles from here. Annie shared goal time with the JV goalie, and both looked pretty good although Loveland (a Class 1 team, which I guess means they are way out of our league) won easily by a 16-8 score.

Lee Ann and I both watched the Thursday game and froze in a brisk wind. I don't know who won that night but the opponent was Fenwick and the teams were better matched that day than this. Today Lee Ann was working so it was just me and a handful of other Lebanon fans cheering the lady Warriors on.

Other news: A week ago Lee Ann sent her horse Ruler back to his previous owner's farm to be put out to pasture. Poor Ruler was lame for almost the whole year she has owned him and didn't show any prospect of recovering much, so she made the difficult call to give him back. We wish him a happy retirement with his old buds!

First Of Our College Visits

On Monday we attended Junior Preview Day at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. I had never heard of this place until a few weeks ago, when I found it while searching online for colleges with strong Japanese Study programs. It is a small Quaker affiliated school, enrollment about 1,200. (One funny thing about Quaker schools - everybody, from the students to the professors to the college President, are called by their first names.) Annie got a chance to talk to the head of the Japanese program, and he gave us a lot of good information. She also sat in on a Japanese class, had an interview with an admissions officer, and we all toured the campus. It was fun, and I was impressed both with the facilities and with the staff we met.

Over the next several weeks we will be visiting three more schools - Wittenberg (Springfield O), Kent State (near Akron O) and Roanoke (Virginia) - to attend similar preview programs. Annie also is interested in UCLA and BYU, but these are long shots and while she may send an application we don't plan to visit those. I think Miami (O) and Ohio State would be good choices too, and along with Kent State those are schools we might actually be able to afford. It would be great if Annie were to end up at a place like Earlham - small classes, personal relationship with professors, super charming campus - but it would take a Hail Mary scholarship of some sort for it to happen.

Camera Is Back

Select the true statement:

1) For the past several weeks an ALIEN DISGUISED AS ME had taken my place and was living my life while I was held captive in his/its ooortiapod, which is...well, that's too complicated to explain. He/it was able to mimic my daily routines but did not know about my blog, so of course failed to post. Eventually I was able to access the pod's security software protocols, trigger the self-destruct sequence and leap to safety (and freedom) amid a horrifyingly powerful series of explosions. So now the alien me is dead, and I am able at long last to update my blog - yay!

2) Not much of note has happened since the holidays, and I have been too lazy to reinstall my camera software since a laptop crash in January - hence the long gap between posts here.

If you picked #2 you are MOSTLY RIGHT. Actually a few things have happened. Lee Ann has been hard at work patching, painting and wallpapering the small bedroom here at East Main Street. This is the last room in the house needing work, and now it's about half done. The wallpaper pattern has little gold dragonflies - cool.

Annie has started lacrosse practices and the first scrimmage is a week away. But in an unrelated accident involving a stormwater grate, she sprained her ankle and is recovering at home today.Here is a photo of her with her fat ankle looking wretched.

The Big 5-0

...and I don't mean that cop show based in Hawaii!

Now that the day is safely passed I (Scott) can reveal that I have turned 50. My birthday was yesterday. I'm not really that sensitive about it, but I didn't want to advertise the fact and get a flood of humiliating gag gifts either. Instead I spent most of the day with daughter Annie (who was off school for President's Day) and did fun self-indulgent things. We visited a local historical site, the William Howard Taft birthplace. Shopped among the cool antiques and architectural salvage at The Wooden Nickel without seroiusly considering buying anything. Bought a new book of Sudoku puzzles by Will Shortz, which are the best. Read some of the Andrew Jackson biography that Lee Ann gave me. Made pizzas at home and played Scrabble. It was the perfect day.