It's Sabbath!

I got some kind of flu on Thursday. I left work early that day and spent yesterday mostly in bed. Last evening, we went to Romano's Macaroni Grill to celebrate James' admission to MHCC.

Joy and I made it to church at Pleasant Valley Church; the sermon this morning by Pastor Cory was very appropriate.

Tomorrow we're planning to go up to Mt. Hood Ski Bowl and ride the Alpine Slide to celebrate James' 19th birthday.

PAA won last night

Both the PAA JV and Varsity Volleyball teams won last night at home against Catlin Gabel. The Eagles would rally and get close, but each time, the Cougars would pull away with a win. The girls' next game is Tuesday at Oregon Episcopal School, one of our traditional rivals--and the Aardvarks are usually very good!

I woke up this morning feeling like I got hit by a truck--diarrhea, aches, etc. I hope this isn't a sign of getting old...

James is registered at Mt. Hood Community College. We're going to go out and celebrate this evening!

PAA Varsity Girls lost their first game

My daughters, Vainiaku and Selita, play on the PAA Cougars Varsity Volleyball team. PAA played a match against the Clatskanie Tigers last evening. The PAA JV Girls won their match 2-0, but the Varsity girls lost 3-0. Oh well, it was the first match of the season, so they should improve. They have another match today against the Catlin Gabel Eagles.

I am usually a line judge for PAA volleyball games.

9/11--Six years later, another Tuesday

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I had the day off of work to go on a field trip to The Maize at the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, with my youngest daughter, Selita. It was a very clear day (much like today, by the way), but I turned on the TV to watch the Weather Channel to get the forecast. They had a scrolling headline announcing that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. My first thought was that it was some kind of freak accident. I changed over to CNN to watch the coverage about the time the second tower was struck--and I immediately thought of Al Qaeda. I was glued to the TV until we had to leave for the school to start the field trip. While out on the island, a couple of fighter jets flew over, and Selita asked me if they were good planes or bad planes.

That evening, I was teaching a database class at the University of Phoenix. One of my students worked for Boeing in Gresham. He was very shook up, seeing their planes turned into guided missiles.

We lived in the flight path for Portland International Airport, and were used to seeing planes frequently out our front window. It was strange to have none in the sky for several days.

My heart still goes out to the heroic firefighters and policemen that risked--and lost--their lives to rescue others. This video still brings tears to my eyes (words).

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13.

A nice weekend

We're up at my parents' home in Glenoma, Washington for the weekend. We drove up Friday evening. When we got here, the stars were out, shining brightly.

Yesterday, after church, we drove up to Mt. Rainier National Park and took lots of pictures (they can be seen on my Picasa Web album).

This afternoon, we're going to a friend's wedding in Woodland, Washington, then heading back home.

The week is half over already

It is nice to have a 4 day work week. Only 2 days done at work, but only 2 days left! I can't complain about that!

Apple has announced their new touch screen iPods... They are finally getting interesting to me, as a non-Mac person (at least lately). If my Dell Axim ever dies, I'll probably go the iPod route, assuming that it can handle contacts and calendars...

Our labors on Labor Day

Yesterday, we did a lot of school shopping. We started out to buy a scooter for John to use to get from Portland Adventist Elementary School to the Tri-Met bus. We had to go to 7 stores before we found one at WalMart, a Razor Cruiser Scooter, that would last him for a year or so.

Then last evening, I went out with James to help him pick out a notebook for college. We ended up at OfficeMax getting an Acer Aspire 5610, with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium on it. He was wanting a bigger, better notebook, but that should do him fine to get through college.

I don't particularly care for shopping, so I was glad to get it finished.

It was raining when I woke up this morning, a change from the beautiful weather over the weekend. Oh well, they'd predicted rain yesterday!

A nice day on Mt. Hood

Yesterday, we drove up through the Columbia Gorge to Hood River, Oregon, stopping at the Mitchell Point Overlook, which we'd not seen before. From there we went up to Lost Lake, driving through orchards loaded with pears and apples; we'll have to go up there again in a few weeks and get some fresh fruit! On the drive, Mt. Hood was in front of us, and Mt. Adams was behind us.

We had a lovely 3 mile hike around the beautiful lake, seeing Mt. Hood across the peaceful water, snacking on wild blue berries.

We drove back over Lolo Pass to Sandy, where we ate dinner at Calamity Jane's Hamburger Parlour Restaurant. James ordered a 2/3 pound burger and he claims that he could have eaten their 1 pounder, but he was groaning when he finished his! The rest of us were full after eating their 1/3 pound sandwiches. John couldn't finish his chocolate milk shake.

For pictures from yesterday, see my Columbia Gorge, Lost Lake, and Mt. Hood albums on Picasa Web.

This afternoon, we're going up to Vernonia to visit Joy's sister, Tammy, and her family.

It's Sabbath

It was a long week, somehow. I'm glad that the weekend is starting. I've been adding more entries to my biography. Everything I think of make me think of something else.

I woke up early this morning to see a meteor shower, but didn't see a one....

We're probably going up to Lost Lake today and maybe Mt. Hood Ski Bowl to ride the alpine slide.

The week is almost over!

It is Thursday evening. I'm still tired; I think it's because of the lunar eclipse the other night.... I'm not as young as I used to be :-) I'm looking forward to having a 3 day weekend off--for Labor Day.

I've been working on fleshing out my biography. I keep coming up with new items to remember. My brother Jimmy sent me his contributions.

Childhood memories

Seeing the eclipse made me remember the 1st eclipse that I saw (or at least remember seeing). That got me started in thinking about my past--childhood, teen years, college, etc.

I've started writing out my memories, schools, etc. so that this information will be documented. I just wish that I had this kind of information from my grandparents to put into my Family Tree Maker genealogy database. I'm going to try getting this kind of information from my parents, aunts, and uncles, so at least the next generation will have this available, too.

I've been using Google Docs & Spreadsheets to enter this information. It is nice to be able to work on this anywhere that has web access available. I am also tying the cities and schools into Google Maps to show where they are located. I'm going to investigate getting some of my old slides scanned into digital photographs so that I can add these, too.

A total lunar eclipse

We got up at about 2:30 to see the lunar eclipse. I got out my Meade 4.5" Newtonian Reflector Telescope and we looked at the moon through it.

Of course, now, I'm tired and need a nap.

A busy Sunday

We spent most of the day cleaning up our kitchen. We finally got to unpack our new Cutco knives and put away the contents of the boxes that we moved from my apartment. Last evening, we went to the Regal Division Street theater, the one where James works, to watch Rush Hour 3. It was a good, funny way to end a busy day. Jackie Chan does such a good job in these films.

A trip to the coast

Yesterday we took a drive to the Oregon coast near Tillamook. We went along the Three Capes Scenic Drive. It wasn't Hawai'i, but it was still beautiful.

A new bed

Joy and I got our new Select Comfort Sleep Number 5000 bed on Wednesday. It was a little complicated to get set up, partly because one set of the instructions was wrong. It is very nice to have individual controls for hardness. Joy likes a very soft mattress, while I prefer a firmer one, so this way we can both be happy.

Vainiaku, a senior, and Selita, a junior, started school at Portland Adventist Academy yesterday. John starts 8th grade at Portland Adventist Elementary School on Monday. James will be starting his freshman year at Mt. Hood Community College in September.

Installing Squid

I spent last evening installing Squid, an open-source caching proxy for the Web. I am attempting to filter out porn, spyware, warez, etc., from my son's computer. I think I finally have it working, after downloading a blacklist from SquidGuard. I couldn't get SquidGuard to compile under Win2K/Cygwin, so I wrote a quick and dirty perl script to convert the blacklist urls and domains into regular expressions.

It's been a long time

Since my last post, a lot has happened.

On July 14, 2007, I got married to Joy Halleson. We went to Hawai'i for our honeymoon!

I'll try doing better at keeping up with this.

A Multimedia Sabbath

I'm on Multimedia Duty this Sabbath at PVC. It is a pretty day outside. I'm having to cover a memorial service for one of our church members. Very sad, but at least Glenn isn't suffering any longer....

Web page redesign

I've spent the last couple of weeks redesigning my personal web page. What do you think of it?

Fall has arrived here in Oregon. It was a sunny day, but very windy--with the wind from Columbia Gorge.

HOT in Oregon

Wow--we've had some hot weather out here. Three 100 plus days in a row; I think it set a record. On Saturday, we went over to the coast and played in the ocean--the cold water felt great!