So, for Father’s day, my dad (”Father”), brother and I went hiking in Jefferson Memorial Forest somewhere south of Louisville, KY. It hurt. Five miles of hurt, and that’s not counting the mosquitoes and ticks that we had to squish or yank. I know, I’m old, and I’m a wuss. Such is life.

Anyway, due to the nice people at www.GPSVisualizer.com , and a burning desire to play with my Google Maps API Key, and the cute little GPS I never use, you can see exactly where we walked here:

Oh, and pics — David Bell got Married! Yay! Excellent wedding, and the reception on the stage of the Kentucky Center was way cool — props I’m sure to Pete for that. Anyway, pics are up here:

Until I can get streaming media working from my own server (which is probably semi-trivial, but this was even trivial-er), we’re going to join the YouTube bandwagon (and band-width wagon).

Ang has a far more detailed write up of our trip to King’s Island than I’d ever dare write, but the streaming video is only available here! (Such is the division of labor between an English Major and a Computer Science Major):

Angela and I have been playing with the lathe quite a lot (thanks again, Joe!)… the latest fun thing that I’m enjoying is turning “green” wood. We had some trees pruned in the last month which left us with a handful of fresh lumber, mostly some paper birch of varying sizes. One piece, about 30″ long, 5″ thick or so was the first one we turned. For anyone that has the means I highly recommend green wood turning. On the first attempt we got some strips to peel off of the wood that were a good four or five feet long:

and the wood is just fantastic to work with. It was almost impossible to “snag” (something we’re improving on with dry wood, but it takes practice), there wasn’t any dust to bother you, and it went much faster, I think, than dry turning. Even the shavings were soft and pretty — we’re planning on turning them into mulch, or using them in place of hamster bedding.

Anyway, lots of fun… the piece in question yielded a small goblet and a rolling pin. We’re trying to dry them, although that may take some time — apparently that’s the only downside to turning green (other than martian jokes). I DID turn the pieces with the pith centered, more or less, so shame on me, but I’m optimistic that if we’re careful they’ll dry well. The Goblet is going in some paper bags, and the rolling pin is using Pentacryl. If I don’t forget, I’ll try and let you know how they turn out, drying wise.

The latest thing to keep running through my head and cause me to walk around with my head bobbing up and down in time to some tune that no-one but me can hear is this… listen to it and suffer the same fate as Chip:

So last night was bowling night, and we had quite the turn out, considering Heath is off on his honeymoon somewhere (Congrats Heath, BTW). Eric came up from Louisville to bowl in Heath’s absence and Ang stopped by to, well, drink (Pic Removed For Ang!)… all in all a late night with lots of alcohol and terrible bowling (such as Leah Bowling Backwards).

Anyway, after passing out, around 5:30 AM I woke up to the bed shaking. By “woke up” I mean I was conscious enough to realize it was happening but not enough to actually rouse any concern — I was asleep again within the minute and I didn’t think much more about it until the next morning. Turns out Eric had had the same house-shaking experience! Angela slept through it, and I haven’t heard Kory’s version yet, but it wasn’t until about 1:00 this afternoon that I talked to Li’l Bro Joe who pointed out that there was actually an earthquake this morning! Rock on. I live in San Francisco for a year and never feel one, then back in Dayton I feel one that started just over 300 miles away.

Crazy.

Also, one last word of advice: Never carry around $5000 in cash.