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Neil and Rene could not have asked for a lovelier day for a big party. The weather was perfect, as was the band, the food and especially the people. Thanks so much to Rene and Neil for hosting this lovely event. Happy Birthday Neil! (Hope with like your new knob as much as I like mine!)

Not using Opera yet? Here’s my advice to you. Get it. Learn how to use it! Love it.

On my last full day in Burlington, I set the Wayback Machine to the late seventies and shared a few memories with friends that I haven’t seen in a l-o-n-g time. I can not say for sure when last this group was in the same place at the same time. My best guess is that it was probably at Uncle Steve’s birthday party at Dunkel’s White Oaks. Wow. That’s a long time ago. So long ago that I’m not even sure if this event was really Steve’s birthday party. Oh well… functional brain cells are getting harder to come by these days.

Happily, I AM able to remember some awesome times with all of you. I’m going to have to try and get back to Wisconsin soon. We still have a lot of catching up to do…

You know, I just have to say this - Jeff deserves better. No headstone? No marker of any kind? What the shit?

Clearly, he made many, many bad choices. But I’m pretty sure that I will never laugh as hard as I did with Jeff. I am very sure I will never meet a human being quite like him again - no matter how long I live.

I miss the guy. If it’s all the same to you, I prefer to remember him like this.

And now - for those who say their aren’t enough pictures of my family on my web site…

Then of course, there was this class reunion - Burlington High School Class of ‘73. Yikes! I’ll admit that I was a bit nervous before the big party. I was afraid that I would not recognize anyone. It turned out that I did recognize about half of the classmates who attended - and most of them were blonde, it seems. :-)

I could say a lot about the event, but let me just say that I’m glad I flew back to Burlington to attend. See you all in five years!

If you’d like to see more pictures from thedude’s reunion and the rest of his visit to wunnerful Wisconsin, click here.

Whew! I have a lot to say about my trip to Wisconsin. Lucky for you, I don’t like to type. I’d rather let my pictures do most of the talking. I will say that my trip was pretty well scripted before I even got on the plane. I had three hours here, exactly four hours there, 30 minutes of driving between each time slice. The bottom line is that the trip was too short. On the other hand, I was happy to get out of there exactly when I did.

Many, many thanks to Steve and Karen for their incredible hospitality. Dinner with you is the best part about visiting my home of 26 years. (I’ll get that Prager Port out to you asap.)

James - great to see you! Those 700 sit-ups every other day are working for you. Thanks for the big laughs. Kelly and I are looking forward to March!

Thanks so much to all who came to thedude’s party. Jim and Kelly are blessed to have the best friends (and neighbors!) in the world. We love you all!

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So, I had a really good time yesterday with my fellow sysadmins from work. We took the afternoon off for a “team building event”. I know - sounds horrible, but our new manager Karl came up with an excellent idea! He suggested we try our hand at bocce ball. Turns out the game suited us perfectly. Aside from some confusion over the name of the little white ball, (it’s a pallino, Jim) bocce was a perfect choice for us. The game requires little expenditure of energy, almost no skill, and has a relaxed pace that allows plenty of time for beers, which - as you can clearly see from the photos - actually helped to improve my ball handling technique.

And now a bit of bocce trivia:

Q. What is the term for “a throw which is thrown with sufficient velocity that it would hit the back board if it missed the target”?

A. A Spock!

We threw a load of dirty Spocks yesterday.

Our dear friend Bruce dropped by in the middle of his annual trip to the states. Kelly and I took him out for dinner one of our favorites - Le Cheval. We had a hoot reminiscing about the past and planning for the future. Unfortunately, it does not look as though we’ll have time to visit Bruce in Bali this year - thedude’s race for governor is consuming a lot of time and energy, ya know!

On the way home from the restaurant, we discovered a brand new restaurant two doors down from Le Cheval. Anita’s Mexican Restaurant on Clay Street is still under construction, but looks promising! We just hope the food is as inviting as the colorful interior. We’ll check it out as soon as they open and post a review here.

By the way, you may have noticed that I’ve begun to post images differently. Now, instead of opening all images in a separate popup window, I am embedding them on the page. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method. Let me know which you prefer.

Is this ridiculous? I think so…

I did it!