Future in writing perhaps

After almost two years, I finally wrote something for the school newsletter (you may have to scroll to page 7 on the FlashPaper). We had some folks from John Deere come and talk about a career in engineering. It was pretty cool, and it was neat to see the kids reaction.

Yesterday I did an 8K put on by the University to raise money for the Athletic Department. Someone asked me if I had any qualms donating money to the UW after the bowl game. I thought about it, and yeah, I want my money back. Well, I guess it's too late now. Anyway, it was a fun event and I actually did a little better than I thought I'd do. Even more surprising, I'm not that sore today. Hopefully if Larry is preoccupied enough I can take him down this year!!

Speaking of Larry, how is the transition to the new house? Still haven't seen any pics.

Better late than never

One of my goals going into this school year was to have a webpage for my students and their parents. Well, I never was able to take a class on webpage design, and when I looked into teaching myself it just seemed overwhelming. A couple of weeks ago, my brother hooked me up with Nvu, a free program that is comparible to Frontpage and Dreamweaver. I downloaded it, and started to play around and I've finally got a pseudo-website. It's far from finished, but it's start. I hope to unveil it to the students next week. I don't have assignments up yet, but feel free to follow along if you need to brush up on your Algebra.

Nice Postcard, Boner

I would like to thank Boner for the beer coaster postcard. Nice! I wish I could drink beer around the world and laugh when I think about all of my friends hard at work. I can't wait for the real stories to come out (the ones that can't be posted to the public travels blog).

Spring glorious spring

Well, Spring appears to have arrived hear in Wiskey. It was up to 74 degrees today! Of course, it could very possibly snow again...who knows. Tomorrow starts my official "Spring Break". We get Friday, Monday and Tuesday off. I probably mentioned this, but our district opted not to go for the week long break this year. I've got a ton of work to do on my portfolio so that I can graduate and be an officially licensed teacher.

Just thought I'd put some feelers out for potential get-togethers in the near to not-so-near future. We will be heading down south at some point for sure, but at this point we don't have any dates planned. Maybe we should wait until later in the summer since there is a good chance the Moyer's (all 3 of them) will be in Huntsvegas. Since I didn't know that Phil took a yearly trip to the beach, I'll ask anyone and everyone, if they know the dates they will be in Florida. I may have mentioned before, but my folks have talked about getting a place down there for a period of time and I figured it would be awesome if some of yu's guys were down there.

Hope everyone has an awesome Easter.

Closing on the new hosue

We are closing on our new house on Tuesday afternoon. Yee haw. Life is crazy right now.

Midwest Swing

Nelly and Eminem aren't the only hardcore Midwest rappers. I was reading about this guy in the Madison paper. Apparently he is from Madison and is looking to create a buzz about rappers from this part of the country.

Parental Advisory: The lyrics aren't quite PG so use caution if little ears are around.

The IronFamily

Well, Ryan and Lace should have arrived in Arizona today. This Sunday is Ironman Arizona. I can't believe Ryan has gone from the Huntsville sprint tri to the real deal holyfield. The link will take you to the website where you should be able to track their misery...I mean progress.

Larry, what's the deal?? Are we doing a half this year or what? I'm contemplating a 20-mile run in May. It's associated with a festival celebrating this small town's Norweigan roots. It starts at the state capital and makes it's way to the downtown area of Stoughton, WI.

Slow motion

Well, the blog has all but come to a halt. I figured I'd post something just for the heck of it. Things are warming up here and with daylight savings time I've been able to get out and do some running. Hard to believe I've only got 10 weeks of school left. Hope everyone is doing well.

Cyclone LARRY

Boner, I can't take it anymore. Aren't you going to mention the greatest force in Australia - Cyclone LARRY!!! Come on, I totally interupted your vacation. Where is the story?

Seriously, Did LARRY interupt your trip?

More Utah pics

I was having trouble uploading the pics so I created a flickr account for sharing pics. Click on the link to check them out.

The Pow Pow is Schwank at Brighton

An actual quote on the back of the shuttle that runs people from the base of the mountain to the resort. Wow, what a trip to Utah. I think it snowed over 20 inches during the three days we were there. Of course, this is becoming standard for Utah. Nothing against other locations, but it is amazing to wake up and look at 6 different snow reports and make your decision on where you want to go that day. Anyway, we had a blast and no one got hurt, which is good, especially for Ryan since his Ironman Arizona is less than a month a way.

Here are some pics to docmument the adventures:

It's hard not to smile in conditions like this.










Ryan dropping in.

Quick Hello

Hey Fellas! Hope everyone is doing great. Good news about the house Larry. I can't wait to check out the new pad. I'm sure Kevin is happy that he gets to repay your efforts in moving him in. Larry...I have a couple of songs for you to download and check out. The Living End is an Australian band that is pretty good. Check out their song, "Wake Up". It's pretty solid. Also try and find a song called "Flaunt It". It's so bad it's hysterical. It's a total dance club song. Just terrible.

We just got back to Canberra from Tasmania, Melbourne, and the Great Ocean Road. Great week and a half trip. We've done a lot of great little day hikes and seen some amazing scenery. We have about 600 pictures so far and we'll start uploading some pics on our blog soon. Larry, even if we had made it to Uluru (Ayer's Rock) we couldn't have seen your name. Since they turned it back over to the Aborigines they have stopped letting people climb the mountain. It's a sacred area to the Aborigines and they don't let anyone up there anymore. Oh well...your name is sacred now. Don't let Hollywood hear about that.

Have a good one fellas...we'll talk to you soon.

Future Larry's of America

Well, I just got home from the Conference Math Meet. Our students don't take as much pride as other school's, but it is fun to watch teams compete. For example, there was a guy who had totally dressed up as a "nerd." Classic stuff. Then, in the room where I proctored the test, these guys were discussing the individual test, comparing what they had done. All I heard was, "I knew it was a phase shift to the right" as they high fived. Typically we don't fair too well, but had some 8th graders place in the top 5 on the Algebra I test. I had them last year and often felt intimidated by their quest for knowledge. Ok, not really, but they are fun students to teach.

Great 50th Anniversary Weekend At Church

You guys missed a great 50th anniversay weekend in church. Saturday night service was lead by Mac Buttram. Gibson BBQ dinner Saturday night - they are also celebrating their 50th anniversary as a company. After dinner was a multimedia celebration in the New Room. The multimedia celebration had pictures from over the past 50 years. A few nice ones from choir tours from years past. I participated in a short drama. The drama was about the original three deciding to start a new Methodist Church in the south part of town. Jane Daniel loaned me one of her dad's skinny ties from that era - Coolest tie I ever wore. I greased the hair back and wore Harry Carry glasses. I could have been a great rocket scientist in the 50's. Claire didn't even recognize me.

Sunday had Larry Dill leading the sermon in the New Room and Willis Vickery leading the service in the sanctuary at 11:00. Vic lead the choir. The service ended with our favorite "Walk Along". Jeremy, Amanda, and Carrie represented our choir tour era.

Overall, it was a great celebration for a great church

YES! Another Round For the Boys.....

Finally, Beer drinking is justified and even supported scientifically!

Support your local (Wisconsin) teacher

Typically I'm not a big fan of online polls, but hey, what the heck.

Well, We sold our house........in three days

God has a really funny way of balancing out the highs and lows of life.

High Point: We sold our house, and almost got our asking price (Which was a heck of a lot more than I thought we could ever get out of the house)

Low Point: I left work today with explosive ..... uuhhmm you get the picture. I've been in bed since 3pm this afternoon. Hopefully its only a 24 hour bug.

We will be moving around April 12 (Happy Birthday Amanda, here's your house). I can't wait to have the entire gang over to break-in the new house.

It's got to end some time

Well, the mighty Trojans saw there basketball season come to an end tonight. We won our first regional game, but then ran up against the 6th ranked Marshall Cardinals. We fought hard, but in the end they just had too much for us. It's tough to look at the seniors and see that pain when they realize there high school career is over. It's like our coach said, only one team gets to finish the season with a win. On a positive note the freshman (my guys) ended the season on a three game win streak including a win over our arch rival's JV squad. It wasn't an "official" game, but we crushed them. The great thing was that there is a 6'4" freshman that played for our JV all season, but came and played with us for this game. He was a stud, scoring 17 points in limited action. It wouldn't have helped him be a better player, but if we had him all year I'm not sure we would have lost a game. It's like Coach Stapler used to say, "you can't teach height."


Did you see this story? Nice. Are guys saying, wow, he's lucky, or man, she's giving herself an out to hook up? I just don't understand why people get married if this is there outlook.

LARRY Update

Next time you guys come to Huntsville, don't go to the house on Willingham. We won't be there.

Five people in a house with 3 bedrooms and no office was starting to get crowded. We knew we needed to move, but we didn't know where we wanted to move to. We are not big fans of Hampton Cove or Madison. We really like English Village, but most of the houses are too small for what we wanted. We weren't in a big hurry to move.

Last Friday Amanda got a call from a friend that lives one street over from us. She knew of a 2 story house in the newest part of the neighborhood (2 streets over from where we currently live) that was opening up. We went and looked at it Saturday. Amazingly, it met everyone of our criteria: 3100 sqft, four bedroooms, office, play room for kids, side entry garage. One of the biggest benefits is that the back yard opens up to the soccer fields at Redstone Park - the little park at the end of Redstone Road. I can't wait to come home from work, grab the ball and kick around with the kids - sweet!

We talked it over, and made an offer on Tuesday. The family selling accepted the offer as is. We are closing on the new house on April 12th. Yee Haw! The only down side is we now have to sell the hoise we are in. Holy Crap! My entire family is coming over this weekend for our own version of Extreme Home Makeover. Lots of paint, tile, and mulch. We are trying to get our house on the market March 1st. Let's hope it goes fast.

Funny, 7 days ago I didn't really know we were looking for a house. Now I've got 1 and am on the hook for another. Funny where life leads you sometimes.

That's the LARRY update. It would be nice to hear how the rest of the gang is doing.

Calling all Henley's, Calling all Henley's ........

Down to the wire

Well, the Trojans won a thriller on Monday night. We were playing a team that we've played three times already this season. The first game wasn't that close, we got thumped the second game and then we lost the third game by one. So we went in with nothing to lose (except another game). Anyway, we were on fire in the first half scoring 26, which is pretty high for a freshman game. Then we started to pull away in the 3rd quarter, going up by 9 at one point. However, in true Trojan fashion, we allowed them to get back in the game and eventually go up by 3. Still, we didn't quit and we scratched and clawed until we were down by 1 with the ball in our hands with 25+ seconds remaining. We worked it around, showing patience, almost too much. I'm screaming that we've got to get a look before the buzzer. Well we pound it inside and get a great look...no good, we rebound and go right back up, basically a freebie...no good, same guy gets the rebound goes back up and is fouled with 4 seconds left. He hits the first, nothing but net and the call a timeout. So I draw up the defense, clearly explaining what we will do "after the make." So we're back on the court shot goes up, cling, clang, dink, donk...it drops after hitting the rim what seemed like a dozen times. They try a last second heave, but come up short. It was a real confidence booster going in to the final game of the season this Friday.

Larry, I just received my copy of Donald Miller's new Searching for God Knows What. I've only read the first couple of pages, but I think it's going to be as thought provocative and entertaining as Blue Like Jazz. I highly recommend Blue Like Jazz, as I think Larry would as well. It's a fresh view, that causes you to think and laugh (out loud at times) about being a Christian in today's world.

The camera work is amazing in this commercial. I just don't know how they were able to superimpose that guy in place of Phil.

Hope everyone is having a great week. We've got Friday off. Paarrrrttttaaaaayyyyy. Well, not really. I still have to drive to school for our b-ball game.