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dead headphonist

Unbelievable.

Published
by
dead headphonist
on October 23, 2008
in Local
. 3 Comments

As many of you know, we are reluctant migrators to Grand Rapids.  At first, Kalamazoo was our home and it is a town that we dearly loved and felt like we had our place in.  When I got a job here in GR, we kept living in Kalamazoo and I commuted.  One day, it was pointed out to me that I had a moving benefit available to me that had a lot of advantage; basically moving Char and I up a notch in the housing scheme of things for absolutely no cash outlay of my own.  What a deal!

We decided to get an apartment first and get the lay of the land before buying a house.  We moved into the luxurious trailer park high-rise up on Alpine and went about our merry way, trying to find our place in this seemingly commercialized urban landscape that was rather unfamiliar to both us.

After a couple of years (and a baby), we decided it best to buy a house and we had a pretty good idea where it ought to be.  We landed here in Eastown, in what can only be described as a gem of a home on a great block with really great neighbors.  Life was good, but we had never built the sense of community that we had in Kalamazoo.

After a few years of being here (more than I’d like to admit to), we discovered an online social networking tool called Twitter.  It’s actually a really simple application with a very simple interface; send up to 140 characters at a time in “microblog” fashion.  The only other major feature is the ability to “follow” other users who are doing the same thing, getting a “blow by blow” list of everything everyone you’re following says.  You can respond to each others “tweets”.

Kind of interesting.  The geeks actually pointed it out and we moved the geeklist there first.  Then I discovered that there was actually a large group of local people (GR Twitterfolk) who were also doing the same thing the geeklist was doing.  I got intrigued and started following random people who looked interesting and who were local.  My lovely wife did the same and soon started to become a member of a local social group that discusses things going on around town, our common lives, good places to eat and get entertainment, and pretty much any other topic under the sun.

This has gone on for a while and we’ve been begged to come to what is known as a tweetup (a local gathering of online friends who use twitter).  We’ve been unable to attend for various reasons and always been sad about it.  Thus, we keep on communicating with these good folks via Twitter and hoping to get together someday, which is very exciting.

The reason this is exciting?  Well… this group has created that missing sense of community for Char and me.  We have just recently come to love our town for so many reasons, including the passion that these folks have for the great things in our city (and there are a lot of them).  But we’ll get to that in a minute.

As most of you know, we’ve had a hell of a couple of weeks around here.  A lot has happened.  My car got stolen a couple of weeks ago and showed back up with a crumpled roof and hood this week.  Last night, some hooligans stole a group of pumpkins from our porch, one of which was a pumpkin that Clare had grown from a seed this year.  It was heartbreaking after the emotion of having the car stolen and the pain in the neck that entailed.

Of course, we shared our woes with our community, the good people of the GR Twitter group.  Sympathy was given all around when talking about how our faith in humanity had been somewhat shattered by the goings-on of the past couple of weeks.  It made both Char and I feel better to vent our frustrations and talk about how some of the people in our town had really let us down.  It really was therapeutic.

Tonight, about 15 of them showed up to our place and left an amazing number of beautiful pumpkins on our front porch (as well as left us a couple of bottles of Dark Horse beer… yeah!!!).  Both of us are in complete and utter awe of the kindness of this group of people.  Shocked is a word, but it doesn’t point out the jaw-dropped, tears welling up joy that this act brought to our Eastown household tonight.  There are not words in the English language to describe just how we feel about our friends.  Suffice it to say that this is kindness and caring unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in GR and that we are genuinely moved at this self-less and random act of kindness.

GR Twitterfolk are one of the greatest things about this city, and after tonight, I feel more passionately about that than ever.

Here’s some grainy pics that don’t do justice to this.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadheadphonist/sets/72157608311613612/

dead headphonist

Car - Found

Published
by
dead headphonist
on October 22, 2008
in Funny, Local and Vehicles
. 4 Comments

I got my car back last night.  Certainly in worse shape than I last
saw it and with damage I couldn’t have anticipated, but we’ll get to
that in a moment.

The story goes like this : yesterday, we got a voicemail from a dude
calling who reported (to us) that there was a silver Nissan parked in
their drive and that they had dug through it looking for a phone
number because it had been sitting there for a couple of weeks.  They
found ours on an oil change receipt.

We called the guy back and let him know that we had filed a stolen
vehicle report on it and that we had to get the GRPD out before we
could anything about the car.  We called the GRPD with the location.
They told us we needed to go there and confirm that it is our car.  We
drove over there (two blocks away from our house) and called the GRPD.
They arrived, took this story, and dusted for prints.

Exciting, I know.  Some of you (who might have seen me this morning), are probably wondering why then am I still riding my bicycle to work.  Now we’re getting to the good part.

A flashlight inspection revealed the following “interesting” scenario:
doors unlocked, no broken glass (I religiously lock my doors).  The
ignition wasn’t punched.  The column wasn’t broken.  The car stereo
FACEPLATE was stolen (irony, I know, but it was a $75 stereo).
Couldn’t see anything else that was stolen other than I think they
took some change I had between the seats.  Weird stuff, but it gets
weirder.

The roof was caved in from what appears to be multiple people JUMPING
on it (good shoeprints… I don’t wash the car).  The hood is in the
same condition.  Yes, people, someone stole my car so they could ditch
it in a random student housing parking lot two blocks away and JUMP ON
IT.

I wish I could make this shit up…

I drove the car home and parked it. It started, car was in the off
position, doesn’t appear to have been hotwired, but I can’t be sure.
It wasn’t out of gas, but was as close as I had left it; floating near
E. In the dark, I can’t do an electrical inspection to try to figure
out how they got it started so I don’t trust going anywhere in it
until I determine that the wiring is still safe.

Un-fucking-real… that’s all I have to say.

Anyone want to buy a 97 Nissan Altima with a caved in roof and a hood
that looks like crumpled up paper?  Needs a little work, but it
runs….

dead headphonist

Eastowners moving soon

Published
by
dead headphonist
on October 17, 2008
in Annoucements and Work
. 0 Comments

We are moving to new hosting over the next couple of weeks.  Please bear with us as we pull this off.  In the meantime, here’s something I sent to the geeklist after a twitter post.

—

Marc brought up a good question on Twitter, asking if I knew what my
ideal job would be.  In fact, this is something I’ve considered as
there are parts of this job that I absolutely love along with the
generalized disdain.  First some background on exactly what I do,
because I don’t think most of you even really know (hell… sometimes
-I- don’t).

I have assumed the role of IT architect here at Dematic.  You know
that line that says “duties as assigned” in your job description?
Well… -that’s- my job.  I can’t even say I primarily do any one
thing anymore.  I’m a subject matter expert on just about everything
to do with enterprise IT at an engineering and manufacturing company,
up to and including the financial aspects of running a medium-sized
enterprise IT organization.

My highly opinionated, loud mouth gets me tagged for all sorts of
shit, but ya know… I’m not unhappy about that.

This includes project management, admin of all sorts (security, active
directory, sccm/sms, san, network, exchange, vmware, linux/unix, etc),
it system design and implementation, development, resource management
(including capacity planning), support, and education.

Not that I do this stuff alone.  We have a great team here who are
also generally highly opinionated and loud (except for Brandon, who is
just not loud).  :)

As an example of my varied life, my current task list includes
virtualizing a couple of servers that haven’t been yet, writing a new
PC database application (along with automating the data population by
writing a couple of client-side applications), recommending revisions
to the capital forecast for FY09 by restructuring project proposals,
and providing back office support that Brandon would otherwise be
doing if he were not off gallivanting around Mexico celebrating his
nuptials.  :)

I’m learning C# and Linq at the moment.

Of those four or five items, three or four are doing things that I
generally love.  One, the restructuring of the capital forecast, would
be fine if it weren’t for the way in which I have to do it and the
reasons why.  Basically, there’s an expectation that we provide
something for which we are given no resources and expected not to
fail. When we point out the stupidity, we are laughed at.  It’s
maddening.  So we’re left with trying to do things the “least worst”
way instead of doing things right.
Continue reading ‘Eastowners moving soon’

charmaspice

Weekend Delight & When Things go Terribly Wrong

Published
by
charmaspice
on September 22, 2008
in Family and Updates
. 0 Comments

Was it a full moon this weekend?  Holy smokes!  Friday started out wonderfully, and we enjoyed our pay day by going out to dinner.  We’ve been cutting back on our dining out at the Eastowner house, and most nights it’s no biggie….other nights it’s painful not to be tempted to just go out and eat somewhere.  The habit of dining out began when I was pregnant with Clare, and cooking and smelling most anything made me extremely ill.  I didn’t have Morning sickness with her, I had 8 month sickness…I kid you not!  Because it was the 2 of us it was super convient most nights, and when we added Clare, it was just toting the baby carrier around.  Over the years we’ve slowly began cutting back on our eating out habits; sometimes we ebb and flow with it, buy now it’s becoming a matter of conserving money with the decrease in Brad’s raises and the higher cost of living.

Anyway, after I picked Clare up from school we came home to spruce up a bit, and then after Brad came home we headed to Graydon’s Crossing Derby Station.  Brad wants to write up a proper review, so I will leave that to him.  I’ll talk about all the fun stuff though!  It’s in East Grand Rapids, wich is right up the street from us, and if we were rambunctious and not having martini’s we could have rode our bikes there.  They have a great patio section for warmer weather, and inside is set up in an English pub style with hints of Indian infulences.  The bar is well stocked, as it comes with a binder full of alcoholic goodies ranging from wine to beer to top shelf liquors.  Their menu is divine, and it was hard to choose just 1 thing to eat!  There are even games sitting on the book shelf in the middle of the dining room, so if you plan on hanging out for a bit head over and pick up a deck of Uno cards, or the Cribbage game. 

The children’s menu is great, and the kids have about 10 items to choose from ranging in items like the usual Mac & Cheese fare to Grilled Steak.  They also get to choose their own side along with their meal, ranging in the healthy fruit cup to onion rings.  The only thing missing was chocolate milk, but lemonade was a nice substitute.  The Cosmopolitan’s are wonderful, and poured in the correct and tasty way.  Brad had the beer, he’ll have to tell you about that.  We started off with an appetizer off of their seasonal menu called Hairy Eyeball Cheese Dip.  The dip was wonderful, and I wish they had added some baby carrots to the plate that had deep fried green beans and 2 different style chips to dip in it.  Clare even liked it!  For dinner Clare had the grilled cheese & fruit cup; it wasn’t anything too spectacular other than the bread was not soggy white bread like you get a some places.  I had their Harvest Risotto, and it was absolutely wonderful.  Brad had the South Indian Shrimp Taco’s, and from the bite I had it was yummy!  The food is a cross between English pub food and Indian-style food.  Dessert was not in the cards for Brad & I, but because Clare had finished all her meal and had been extremely good we let her have a dish of vanilla ice cream. 

Afterwards we came home, shipped Clare off to bed, and had a nice, quiet, adult evening with martini’s and a movie.  Saturday was a different story though, we awoke to a pretty good start to the day.  We all got dressed, and went to Panera for some breakfast sandwiches and then did some errand running.  While driving around we noticed a small car show in front of Toys R Us on 28th street, so we stopped and looked around.  Clare enjoyed it, and then it was downhill from there - whis is the terribly wrong part.  We had asked Clare to be quiet in the car because Brad & I were talking and she needed to wait her turn.  She couldn’t seem to hold it in as she got louder and louder, next step was to have her sent to her room when we got home and not to come out until told.  Melt down continues deeper and deeper into her little 6 year old spiral, until I tell her if she comes out of her room she can’t attend a friend’s birthday party that was to happen later that afternoon.  We come home, she goes to her room, I work on things and am about to head up to talk to her when suddenly she appears on the steps.  “What are you doing I ask?”, “Coming to talk to dad.”  Nobody had called her, so I had to follow through on the sucky punishment I had put forth already.  She was distraught and beside herself, causing a bigger meltdown.  I offer her lunch thinking she might be hungry, so I made her mac & cheese telling her that if she finished her lunch she could have an apple…but the m & c had to be all gone.  I head upstairs for 2.5 seconds to grab something and she’s now asking Brad for the apple, he asks if her mac & cheese is gone, she says yes and proceeds back to the kitchen to empty her bowl to show dad an empty bowl.  Now we have to have a lieing discussion!  So, Saturday sucked, and we ended up punishing ourselves in the end by not attending Eastown’s yearly Street Festival because Clare was not behaving well.

Sunday was slightly better, and because Clare had good behavior all day we ended our weekend with a trip to the bowling alley.  Despite my argument with the a$$ hat that told me I was a coupon abuser at the alley, we had a good time and it was a good way to end our weekend.

dead headphonist

GR Press Propaganda DVD Followup

Published
by
dead headphonist
on September 22, 2008
in Local and Politics
. 0 Comments

There was an editorial in Sunday’s press about how they made the decision and they interviewed a couple of Muslim folks here in town and presented their arguments against the DVD.  I wrote The Press’ editor a thank you note for writing the article and he wrote me back; short and sweet, but it’s a response.

from Mike Lloyd <Mlloyd@grpress.com>
   
date Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 9:46 AM
subject Re: DVD Response
 
     
Thank you for your note. It was not and was never an easy decision\.

Mike

>>> “Brad Watson” <…> 09/21/2008 10:45 AM >>>

- Hide quoted text -

Mr Lloyd;

Thank you very much for the response in today’s paper to my (and many
others’) outrage over the inclusion of what I view as a piece of
racist propaganda included with The Press.  I appreciate that you
included the opinions of those that this material directly affects and
I hope that you weigh these thoughts a little more heavily when
reviewing incendiary material like this in the future.

Thank You.

–Brad Watson
Grand Rapids

charmaspice

Paw Paw 2008

Published
by
charmaspice
on September 19, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Current Mood:Happy emoticon Happy

For the past 5 or 6 years we’ve gone to Paw Paw for their annual Wine Festival.  For those that have been long time readers you may have remembered my post from last year.  This year we went for the full weekened to enjoy the festival with our parents.  We met up with them on Friday Sept. 5th at a campground just North of Kalamazoo.  We’ve gone “camping” with our parents for the past 2 or 3 years…I can’t remember how many exactly, but we’ve never really camped.  We would just go back with them after the festival activities on Saturday night for dinner and a campfire, and bunk in their campers (Clare in my parent’s, and Brad & I in his parent’s) leaving on Sunday morning after breakfast.  This year we opted to try tenting!  We as a family have never been camping, and this was a good way to find out if we could in fact do it on our own. 

Brad’s brother had bought a tent and some gear from a family friend 4+ years ago, and they never used it - leaving it to sit in my in-laws garage.  Being the adventures we are, we opted to try it out as we had remembered it being a large 2 room tent, and that was the kind of tent we had wanted to look into getting.  It is an old tent, it’s been well used and abused, and has served it’s purpose for many people in their camping fun.  We weren’t told we might want to water proof it before using it, which might have been helpful for the 2nd night of camping, but in the end we survived despite the tons of wet laundry to do on returning home. 

That Friday I busied myself with errands to run, packing to do, and prep work for our weekend.  I had everything all piled up by the door so by the time Brad got home all we had to do was load the car, and hit the road after scarfing some pizza.  We had a small plan worked out that we needed to arrive well before dark to put up the tent, as we had never put it up before and had no clue on how to do it.  We arrived at the campground, found our parent’s, and began to set-up.  It was kinda nice because we were right in between our parent’s campers, so it made for easy potty runs with Clare, and food prep was a snap with our mom’s fridges holding our goodies!  We didn’t exactly rough it though, as we had bought a double high areobed at Costco to sleep on, and had our comfy cozy down filled comforter to sleep with.  Clare was like, “Where’s my bed”, and I replied “You’re sleeping bag on the ground”. 

The first night wasn’t so bad, despite the temps dropping down into the 5o’s.  I actually kinda liked it that cold!  We had some dew seap in on the sides, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.  Clare woke up for a 2 am potty, which we ran to my parent’s camper to take care of, and she complained of the cold.  My dad sent over an old heater, and even though it didn’t warm up the tent too much it seemed to satisfy her.  We ate a quick breakfast of bagles & coffee cake, and did some hanging around before packing our lunches to head into Paw Paw.  It was the usual crafty street fair for the mom’s, Clare & I, and the dad’s & Brad hit a car show that was set up accross the street.  My mom, Clare, and I bought some cool Ya Ya hats to wear around, as well as the usual crafty things that one buys.  After our wine tasting adventures we went back to the campground for dinner, a campfire, and wine!  I think the wine helped us in thinking our hats were cool, although I will say it was kinda fun to wear them around town listening to people ask us about them.

Clare actually went to bed early, and we sat around the camfire for a bit before heading off to bed.  All was well until about 2am when it started to rain.  I did a quick look around with the flashlight to make sure all was well, and it was despite a few wet spots.  Clare’s pillow was soaked because she pushed it against the tent wall in her sleep, so I folded an extra blanket to put over the top of it so she wouldn’t have to worry about feeling it.  I went back to sleep for a bit, and then the rain was coming down hard so I woke up only to find a big sag in our tent over Clare.  I quickly wisked it off the top of the tent in hopes of making it better, the sag only filled with water again, and the door we were using for our main entrance was not working the greatest and was pulling and separating and water was coming in around the extension cord we had brought into our tent.  We fixed the poles the best we could, Clare woke up to say “Are we going to die?”  “No” I said, “but we might get a little wet!”  The rain finally let up, and we had a pile of wet dirty clothes & bedding, and a crabby 6 year old on Sunday morning. 

We packed everything up, said our good byes, and headed home.  Despite the few mishaps we had with our little tenting adventure, I would have to say it was a good weekend and left us feeling kinda relaxed.  I think next year we might buy a new tent though, while this one while it was free to us, just has a few too many problems for us to want to deal with.  Especially if we go on our own, and don’t have our parent’s 25 feet away from our tent to help us! 

charmaspice

Quips from Clare

Published
by
charmaspice
on September 18, 2008
in Funny
. 1 Comment

Current Mood:Red Face emoticon Red Face

An insight into the mind of a 6 year old.

Most of you that know our daughter Clare, know that she’s a pretty funny and intuitive girl.  She’s not afraid to ask questions, and she’s always asking us about things that I’d never expect.  The other night after dinner she started up a conversation about our bodies.  I think part of it is because we bought a human body learning toy with part of her birthday money this weekend.  It has parts that come out of it - like the lungs, heart, stomach, liver, ect.  Here’s a link…it even comes with questions - some hard, some Clare could answer, and a real stethoscope! 

So, the conversation started out with a question like:  “Where happens to our food after you eat it”, and “Why does it take a while for you to pee after drinking?”  We talked about digestion, and how things get filtered through our bodies…the good nutrients stay with us, and the bad get passed on either through peeing or pooping.  Ugh…am I really blogging about this?  Anyway, Clare procedes to tell us about a little science experiment she did of sorts.  Apparently she learned that if you sit on the toilet, and drink a cup of water while sitting there, it doesn’t come out right away.  Yes, she really did sit on the toilet and drank water!

charmaspice

Clare’s in First Grade?!?!?!

Published
by
charmaspice
on September 17, 2008
in Annoucements and Updates
. 0 Comments

Current Mood:Surprised emoticon Surprised

 

On Sept. 2nd Clare began her year in first grade.  I can’t believe how grown up she’s gotten, and how much energy she has.  We went for our 6 year doctor appt. and she is 64 pounds now - I think we’ll be working on that this year as she’s gotten a little too much of a tummy from all those yummy summer snacks and too little exercise not being in swim lessons, and growing taller each day coming in at 42 inches or so.   She’s also lost 4 of her bottom front teeth over the course of the past year.  Hopefully we won’t loose too many in a row this year, the Tooth Fairy gets pretty poor paying for all those teeth!

This year we have many new things that come along with a full day.  Packing a lunch every day; being that we’re mainly vegetarian and school lunches offer very few choices in that arena.  Coming up with as many things we can think of to put in a lunch bag so it doesn’t get boring for Clare is tops for me.  We also have to pack 2 snacks, and she has homework every night.  It’s not anything huge, being that it’s 1st grade, but it’s still homework.  Most night’s it’s an easy predecodable book (well, easy for Clare anyway), or a math page.

Oh, and this year we are into big girl school accessories.  No more Strawberry shortcake back packs, it’s all Hannah Montana from her lunch bag & thermos to her gym shoes.  That girl has got to be raking in the big dough from all the money us parents get suckered into spending on stuff for our kids. 

charmaspice

Where Did the End of Summer Go?

Published
by
charmaspice
on September 16, 2008
in Family and Updates
. 0 Comments

Current Mood:Happy emoticon Happy

Fireworks from Mom & Dad’s partyI honestly have no clue where the month of August went, well maybe I do.  Our weekends were booked pretty much back in May or something silly like that.  I think we were home for 1 weekend last month, and were busy filling up the end of summer the rest.  We started out the month with my parents big bash.  I wrote about that here, and you can see from the pic on the left that we shot off some cool fireworks.  Nothing like big fireworks to celebrate! 

Then I went off to Chicago for a bachelorette party the 3rd weekend, and it was probably the best bachelorette party I’ve been to - no offense to the other parties I’ve been to, but we had way too much fun.  It was the Geek Girl’s weekend of mischiefness , well some of them don’t like to be called Geek girls - but we all met thorugh the Geek Guys, and most of us gals are with one of the guys in some fashion or another so it’s how I separate that group of friends from others.  Deal with it girls!  We had our lovely driver Amy pick up all of us local folks in her styling mini-van, and we hit the road to the Chicago burbs were our gracious host and friend Katie lives with her hubby.  The ride was full of laughter, and jokes, as well as catching up since we don’t see each other that often these days.  We arrived to some late night pizza for dinner accompanied by drinks andGeek Girls silly games.  On Saturday we did some shopping, and then got dressed for our big night on the town.  We took the train into downtown Chicago, all dolled up in our pink & black boa’s.  Everywhere we went it looked like we massacred a pink chicken!  I sincerly appoligize to anyone we left in our path of feathers, it was our way of finding our way home if necessary.  We dined out at Carnival, and the music on the page, is exactly how it is in the restaurant!  The food was delish, and the atmosphere was awesome.  Our waiter was absolutely awesome fantastic wonderful, and did a great job in dealing with a table of 8 giggly women. 

From there we took a train to a tattoo parlor.  That’s right readers….Char is now tattooed!  Originally we were all going to get the same style of heart just in different colors, but when we got to the tattoo shop some changed their minds and we ended up getting our own designs.  All but 1 of us were tattooed that night, no she didn’t chicken out…she has a medical issue, and wanted to check with her doctor before doing something so brasin as getting it done on a whim like the rest of us.  If I had a picture of my tattoo I’d post it, but alas I can’t take a picture of my back all by myself, so you’ll have to settle for a description.  On my left back shoulder I now have a cute little pink heart with 2 eighth notes in it (music notes for those that are non-musicians).  No, I did not cry - although 2 people did, and we still love them because they joined in the fun reguardless of their fears.  I did have a sensation of almost passing out, but Sara our resident nurse in the group kept talking to me and kept me breathing.  I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for about 3 years or so now, so it’s not like it’s anything I didn’t want to do.  Even though I love my little heart, it will not be the only one I get in my life time, as I have one planned for another time…when I loose all the weight I want to I’ll get it done.  After our tattoo fun we got on another train and headed to Mother’s to shake our booties all night long.  It was tons of fun, and we met some rather interesting people while dancing and handing out bead necklaces.  Our trek home wouldn’t be complete without riding back to our hostesses in style in a limo. 

The weekend after that we celebrated Clare’s 6th birthday in Hannah Montana style.  Well, as stylish as our small budget could handle.  We had both her grandparents, Brad’s brother, wife, and their soon to be 1 yr old, and 5 of Clare’s gal pals over.  It was way more girliness than I had bargained for.  All they cared about was opening presents and eating cake, and I had a different adgenda!  I’ve never seen presents opened with such furry as they all “helped” Clare see what was in the packages.  I wanted to know who it was from, and what it was so I could get the appropriate thank you’s to the right person, but apparently that didn’t matter to a bunch of screaming 5 and 6 year olds.  Thankfully 2 of the girls went home, and the other 3 spent the night.  First of all we had to clean-up the upstairs…I had no idea we had so many toys up there!  Then the girls settled in for a movie & popcorn in our bedroom upstairs so I could sit in peace and have adult conversation with Brad and my dear friend Holly that helped me keep my sanity that night.  Afterwards we played some Wii, and then it was time to get ready for bed…..finally!  They all brushed their teeth around the sink spitting all at once on the count of 3, and they of course had to have a pillow fight before settling down to bed.  We told some not so scary stories, and then a princess story to get them to sleep.  I think I only had to go back in the bedroom 5 times to get them settled down to fall asleep, oh…and I definitely crashed way before they did!  The next morning they were all up at 7 am and ready to start the day, so Brad and I set to work making waffles and readying them for their day.  After breakfast highlights (as well as the previous night’s highlights) included lots of girly screaming, more girly screaming, and my favorite quote “Naked Party” from when I sent them upstairs to get dressed on Sunday.  I now know why my dad used to come booming into my room as a child telling all of us girls to go to sleep during sleepovers…completly.

To end our summer of fun during Labor Day weekend we went down to Elkhart, IN to celebrate Danielle’s first birthday (Brad’s brother & wife’s daughter).  She was oh so cute on her big day, and did okay with her cute little individual cake (she mainly wanted to play patty cake with it)…although I think we made her cry a couple of times because there were a lot of people there.  It was a nice afternoon, and we enjoyed the last bits of summer sun hanging out with family as Clare played in the sand box with some kids.  We came home to finish up our lazy summer fun with some activities around town on Sunday & Monday.  Nothing too big, but it was just what Clare wanted - some Wii time with her Lego Indiana Jones game.  August has come and gone, and it’s hard to believe we are almost half way through September! 

dead headphonist

Propaganda, The GR Press, and Our Community

Published
by
dead headphonist
on September 14, 2008
in Local and Politics
. 1 Comment
to jprice@gr-press.com
   
date Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM
subject Propaganda, the GR Press, & Our Community
mailed-by gmail.com
 
     

Hello;

Thank you for taking the time to read my complaint.  As a subscriber
of the GR Press and a supporter of local media, I read something this
evening that deeply disturbs me.  Apparently, the GR Press has taken
dollars to forward a DVD of racist propaganda from a group/individuals
known for spreading hatred and misunderstanding of members of our
community.

If this is in fact true, I ask that you review your process for
vetting advertisers as I believe that the people of Grand Rapids are
tolerant and understanding of world cultures which runs contrary to
material such as this.  A good many people of all colors, creeds, and
religions call Grand Rapids home and it is an affront to the community
for the local media to be used to distribute this kind of material.

For your reference, here is a web link that may give you an idea of
what I’m talking about.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-ose/pro-mccain-group-dumping_b_125969.html

If the inclusion of the Grand Rapids Press in this list is in fact
incorrect, I suggest that you contact the Huffington Post and ask for
a correction.  I would also be interested in an official response from
the Press regarding this issue.

Again, thank you very much for your time and attention.