CIF Semi Finals

Wow, what a week. The days just fly by. Several things of note happened this week. First of all I've been crazy busy writing proposals to get my hands on some of my money that Obama has stolen. There is $150 million available from DOE to develop transformational technology to either save or generate new power. We're going in for about $3.5M. I really think we are a shoe in for $2M and we have a very good chance of getting the other $1.5M.

Wednesday Westviews Volleyball team played in the CIF semifinals. We lost in three games but each of the games were very close and the third game actually went into overtime. It was a heart breaking loss to come so close to winning the whole enchelada but hey, we made it to semi-finals, that isn't bad is it? I doubt he would admit it but I think what was hardest for Alex is that it was quite possibly the last "real" volleyball game he will ever play. There are plenty of opportunities to play basketball and football with "the guys", but when will he ever play another serious volleyball game. He was one sad boy after the game and we all had to keep our distance. These athletes really take their games seriously. I figure that is probably why I was never a good athlete because it was never that important to me whether I won or lost.

Thursday of course was the temple and that too was a rough night. We were very short on help and it was all we could do to keep the sessions running. As always though we made it through.

Last night I worked late on my proposal. It isn't due until Tuesday but they are expecting up to 3,000 proposals and they will consider them on a first come first served basis. We want to get ours in before the big rush so we have a self imposed deadline of getting them submitted this weekend. That will mean working on Saturday. Yuck!! When I got home Lisa and Sarah were starting a movie but as I was sitting there the missionaries knocked on the door. They were walking down the street right in front of our house when they saw a little white mouse running across the road. Elder Duchene picked him up and put him in Elder Taylors pocket and they knocked on our door to see if Tom was hungry. Alex doesn't feed Tom nearly enough so he was quite grateful for the snack. It was only a little hopper but Tom wasted no time downing him. I thought I would video tape the whole event so you could all share in the experience. I haven't figured out how to edit/splice video's yet so you get two video clips.

Shortly after that Ben and Alex showed up and invited me to a movie. Ben was so excited to be going to a horror show. I personally hate horror shows and refuse to pay money to see one. I guess Sharley feels much the same so Ben never gets to go. I figured that I wasn't going for the show but rather for the company. It was fun to spend an evening with my boys but I'm sure glad I wasn't going for the show. It started out very creepy but eventually turned stupid. It doesn't say much for the movie when everyone is visiting with each other talking about how dumb it was.

As I said, there was no sleeping in for Fred this morning. I was up and into work as if it were a normal day. I worked on the proposal until 11:00 when Alex had his end of year Volleyball party. It was held at a local park but today it was a slow drizzle all day. Much like Kira's wedding day. We were indoors but not much was happening outside. Lisa had put together a pretty collage for Alex. All of the graduating seniors had one. The meal was very yummy taco's cooked right before your eyes. Alex received his awards and then I was back to work. I finally got my multi million dollar proposal squeezed onto 8 pages and so I just got home. How's that for a crazy week?

Zwindrecht

It was the spring of 1979 when I received a phone call telling me to pack my bags and head for Zwijndrecht. Zwijndrecht is a suburb of Antwerpen and the best thing about Zwijndrecht is that our apartment was above a laundry mat. This laundry mat wasn't anything like what you would be familiar with but rather it was a full service place. All we had to do was drop off our dirty laundry and then we would come back later and pick it up all clean and folded. I loved it. To get to Zwijndrecht from Antwerpen we would ride our bikes through a tunnel that went under the river. Have you ever seen an escalator for bikes? These were the longest escalators that I have ever seen. It looked like your were desending into a very deep dark hole and as you went down the stairs you would hold your bike beside you.

As you leave the tunnel you enter Linkeroever which translates as "Left Bank", meaning the left bank of the river. Zwijndrecht was just a few miles beyond Linkeroever. Linkeroever was our area and it was very strange.The entire area was only few miles across but it was filled with huge apartment buildings some of them virtually skyscrapers. There was probably more than 100,000 people living in an area the size of Penasquitos. For those of you who have never been to Penasquitos, the area was much smaller than Cardston.

I made many new friends in Linkeroever but my most memorable was Marleen. One day we were tracting which in Linkeroever meant that we would stand at the door and ring doorbells. It is very difficult to do a proper door approach to a microphone so if anyone ever just buzzed the door rather than talk we would just go on in and knock on the doors. One day as we were ringing bells we spoke to this woman and as soon as she realized who we were she said, "oh, come on up, my daughter will want to talk to you." As you may imagine, that was not our typical response. We went on up to the apartment and the lady told us that her daughter was a big Donny Osmond fan and she was sure she would want to talk to us. The daughter was Marleen Van Laere and she was interested. At the time she was only sixteen years old. She started taking the discussions and while at first she may have been more interested in a couple of Americans she soon became more interested in learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

During my mission I had many opportunities to "Bible Bash". Most people who are really into religion believe that to win "converts" they have to prove that the bible is the word of God. We on the other hand believe that the only way a person can be truly devoted to the gospel is if the Spirit of God witnesses to them that it is true. Nothing else will give a person the strength he needs to remain faithful through the good and the bad times. Even though every missionary knows this, it is still easy to get drawn into debating the gospel. Early on in my mission I did have an experience where I debated the gospel with a Jehovah's Witness and I trounced them soundly. Leaving from that appointment I felt worse than I had ever felt before. Sure, I believe that I caused the poor guy to have doubts about his own religion but I also knew that I hadn't convinced him that mine was true. Where did that leave him? He may have been worse off after I left him than he was before. I felt terrible and I have never since been involved in debating religion. I will teach if someone is truly curious but I will never debate.

During the time we were teaching Marleen we met a couple who invited us back for an appointment. When we returned we were quite surprised to find that they had also invited a Jehovah's Witness couple and a couple of Protestant missionaries from Holland. I had never met anyone like the Protestants. I'm not sure what religion they were but they were all about "Saved by Grace". My entire experience had always been teaching Catholics who I understood very well but I had never had to answer a question about "saved by grace". I was completely unprepared for it and even though I had no intention of debating I did want to present our beliefs accurately. We do of course believe that we are saved by the Grace of God and that through the atonement of Jesus Christ our sins can be forgiven. We do not have the power to return to God without his Grace and we also believe that the atonement will have no affect on us if we don't accept Jesus as our Lord. That is where we differ from the "saved by gracers". They claim that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Messiah and you're saved. We believe that you can say whatever you want but if you don't do everything in your power to become like Jesus and follow his commandments, then his atonement will not apply to you. How can a person mock everything that is holy and live a life of murder, lies and carnal acts and expect to be saved just because he claims Jesus as his savior while another person is kind and helpful to everyone around him but because he never came to know his Lord he is damned? I don't believe it but because I had never been faced with the question before I wasn't exactly able to come up with the scriptures on the spur of the moment to support my claim. That night I went home and learned everything I could about the atonement and the Grace of God.

Shortly after this experience we were sitting on our bikes in Linkeroever when we both felt prompted to go and visit the VanLaere's. When we got there Marleens mother about burst into tears when she saw us. She said "boy am I glad to see you". She was always friendly to us but this was very odd. We went on in and we were quite surprised to see a pair of the "saved by gracers" literally attacking Marleens mother. Marleens mother always claimed to be an atheist but she was the nicest woman you ever met. She would give you the shirt off her back (figuratively of course) if you needed it. These protestants were telling her that she was going to go to hell because she didn't believe in God. This was the one and only time I made an exception to my rule not to debate. That was because I was doing it for a different purpose. I was not at all interested in convincing them of the truth, I only wanted to protect and defend Mrs Van Laere. I was now fully prepared to challenge their arguments and I sent them packing with their tail between their legs. If Mrs VanLaere liked us before, she really liked us after that.

We taught several people in Zwijndrecht and Linkeroever and I loved the area. We had a nice apartment and it was a friendly community. It was summer and that made everything more pleasant as well.

Alas the time came for me to go home. I was very conflicted, I wanted to go home of course because I missed everyone a lot but at the same time I knew that I may never get back to Belgium again. I'm a bit envious of my boys who could get back to their mission areas cheaply and easily. I had been gone for two years and that made the memories of my family and friends fairly dim but I had many friends in Belgium and I was going to really miss them.

By the time I left, Marleen had acquired a very deep conviction of the truth of the gospel and she wanted to be baptized but her father was very concerned that she wanted to get baptized for all the wrong reasons. I was a bit resentful at the time but now that I have daughters of my own I can't blame him one bit. Putting myself in his shoes, here are these two young American boys from a very strange religion spending a lot of time with my daughter. I would be very suspicious of their intentions. This was also not too long after Jimmy Jones and his cult all drank the koolaid so that made things even more difficult for a father who loves his only child with all his heart. If he'd talked to us more perhaps he would have felt different but he was a quite man and I was too young to realize his concerns or I would have gone out of my way more to get to know him. I gave Marleen a big hug and wished her the best and off I went over the big pond back home. One of the most wonderful era's of my life had come to an end.

--------------------trivia--------------------

You are 15 percent more likely to become happy if directly connected a happy person; 10 percent if it's the friend of a friend who is happy and 6 percent if it's the friend of a friend of a friend.

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Memorial Day

Monday was memorial day and boy did we have a great time. The ward had a picnic at 11:00 so we went there and filled up on hamburgers, watermelon and barbecued Ahi caught by Bill Casper. We then went to a movie and following the movie we had another barbecue here at the house. Ben had to work but after work he and Sharley came over for the barbecue. I barbecued a tri tip roast and if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good. The movie we went to as a family was "A Night at the Museum". It was actually pretty good.

I do have to brag about my bowling skills with the Wii. Ben brought his home for the summer and I rarely play video games but I smoked everyone bowling. I'm not so good golfing though.

--------------------trivia-------------------
For every inch you are above the average height you make $750 above the average wage.
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CIF Volleyball

Today has been a fairly productive day. Just to share my "to do" list with you.

buy Sarah's medicine (done)
fix the broken sprinkler (done)
mow the lawn (done)
fertilize the lawn and flower beds (done)
dig weeds out of the dirt beside the driveway (done - mostly)
transplant the flowers (done)
put the registration on the car (not done)
clean out the trunk of the car after the fathers/sons camp (not done)
turn in the recyclable bottles (not done)
build bench in the garage (not done)
set up Lisa's laptop (not done)
buy me a bike (not done)
find Lisa some volleyball pictures (not done)

I always have more on my to do list than I ever possibly have time for but I got lots done today. Tonight Alex played in the high schools quarter finals for CIF's. They played very well and I have some really good shots of Alex. He had the most "kills" of the game. They go to semi-finals on Wednesday. It should be fun.

Eagle Court of Honor

Monday was Brandon and Serene's last day here. They were pulling out Tuesday morning. Serene wasn't terribly interested in watching Star Trek (I can't even imagine that) so Brandon was hoping that I would go with him. I don't normally go to a movie more than once. If I really love the movie I'll wait and buy the DVD but in this case I was more than willing to make an exception.

Since Brandon won't be here in June for his birthday we decided to celebrate his birthday on Monday while he is here. Lisa made a ton of pizza's and we all ate way more than we should have.

Tuesday morning I kissed them all goodbye and went to work, they headed down the highway a few hours later. Tuesday evening was Alex's Eagle Court of honor. We piggy backed on the court of honor for a few of his friends in 2nd ward. Boy do they go all out. It was a pretty fancy affair. It was my job to do the program and it was an eight page document. For your edification I've copied the part about Alex here.

Alex Leavitt

Alexander Thomas Leavitt was born in Alberta, Canada on March 12, 1991. He started his scouting career when he joined Troop 644 as a Cub Scout at eight years of age. He advanced through all the ranks of the scouting program until he became a Life Scout at the age of fourteen. Alex enjoys the scouting program and camping in particular. While he loved all of his camps, his favorite was camping in the sand dunes and sliding down the dunes on body boards. Alex also attended several summer camps including Catalina Island, Emmerson, Taquitz, and Shaver Lake. Alex has earned twenty seven merit badges and is grateful for the skills he has acquired in doing so. He believes his most important merit badge is the Life Saving merit badge but his most enjoyable badge was Wilderness Survival. It was a rewarding experience to be able to build his own shelter and spend the night in the wilderness.

Alex’s Eagle project was to make visual aids for the Primary Chorister to use. When a primary chorister is called she is often forced to acquire her own visual aids and it can take significant time and expense to assemble an adequate number of aids. Alex organized a team of volunteers to make over a hundred visual aids and a sturdy wooden box to store them in. Alex loves sports and in addition to playing Football, Basketball and Volleyball in high school he has refereed RPB basketball for several years. This year Alex coached a team of fifth grade boys and enjoyed watching their skills improve throughout the season. Alex will graduate with the class of 2009 from Westview High School in June and will be attending a year of School at the University of Utah before he goes on a mission for his church. Alex is the third of three boys in his family to join the ranks of Eagle Scout.

Senior Prom

We got home from the Father/Sons campout Saturday afternoon and immediately we were in Prom mode. Alex started showering and I had to make sure the camera was ready and the vehicles were cleaned out and meanwhile Ben had until 6:00 to get his stuff in their storage unit. I felt terrible abandoning him but you only get one Senior Prom and so off we went. Someone decided that they had to take pictures at Poway Park and we had to be there by 4:30 so without even showering we were off smelling like a campfire. Personally I like the smell of a campfire. Even though it is very inconvenient and quite a ways out of the way Poway Park is a beautiful place for pictures.

We took the pictures and wished them well and the kids headed out for their very expensive dinner. I'm just glad that they had the sense not to rent a stupid limo. Those get very expensive and I think they're a total waste of money. We headed back to the house and I was very excited to see my little granddaughter. Yes, I was also excited to Brandon and Serene as well. Brandon has an internship with a Patent Judge for the summer in Beaumont Texas. Where in the world is Beaumont Texas you ask? Well, I had never heard of it either. Apparantly for some bizzar reason Beaumont Texas has become the best place in the States for pantent cases and it is very presigi0us for Brandon to be able to get this summer internship. Even more so for a first year law student. Or as they say in the trade, a 1L. Brandon and Serene packed all of their stuff up for the summer and they are now making the road trip to Beaumont Texas. He starts his new job next Tuesday.

We let everyone settle in a little and then we called Ben over and we started an evening of Settlers. We finished up around 3:00 AM when Alex got home. At this point I was very sleep deprived. Alex's Eagle Court of Honor was tonight (Tuesday) and I was up late Wednesday night getting pictures for the slide show and then Thursday it was the Temple and then Friday was the Fathers/Sons campout when we were up until 2:00 and now 3:00 AM I was really struggling to stay awake in church on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we had a nice roast beef dinner and again another late night of Settlers. I think it was about 1:00AM when I got to bed that night. Somehow I got roped into doing the program for Alex's eagle court so I was up late doing that. It turned out very nice but it was a lot of work. I'll tell you all about that in the next post.

----------Trivia----------
The average cough expels 20,000 viruses.
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Father Son Camp Out

You can always tell when my life gets crazy because I don't post anything. What a wonderful weekend this has been. Let me start with Friday. This weekend was father and sons campout. We do that every year in May and I really look forward to it. This year was especially exciting for me because I thought I might have both Brandon and Ben home. Brandon wrote his last final Friday morning and Ben was supposed to walk on Friday night. He just finished off three AA degrees and his last semester was straight "A's" while he carried a load of 16 credits and worked part time. He decided to skip walking for his diploma so he could come on the camp out with me. I felt bad that he would miss walking because I felt he deserved it but he assured me that what really mattered would be when he got his Bachelors degree since that is really what counted.

In the end Brandon couldn't make it because Serene had something Saturday morning so it was just Ben, Alex and myself. We packed up Settlers of Catan and headed to William Heise park. We ate dinner at this really good Mexican place "Cotija's" and headed up the mountain. We got there after dark and visited around the fire for a while and when the little boys started heading for bed we fired up the lantern and played Settlers until 2:00AM. Only once did one of the dads get up and ask us when we were going to bed so we did better than I figured we would.

Come time to go to bed and we decided it was a beautiful night so we didn't bother with the tent and we just slept under the very beautiful stars. The moon was bright so we missed out on some of the stars but it was still wonderful sleeping out in the wild.

Saturday morning I woke up to Ben and Alex jumping on me. It was a beautiful morning. We ate breakfast and then the plan was to go give my guns some exercise. I don't get the chance to shoot them much living here in California but since we were so close to the desert I decided it was time. I'd heard that you can just go out in the desert and find a secluded spot and shoot so off we went. When we dropped down out of the mountains into the desert we soon passed a sign that said we were entering a park and "NO SHOOTING". After seeing the sign I figured it would be hard to feign ignorance so we turned around and headed south. We didn't see any signs that way so we found a little trail that headed into a canyon and packed in my 22, 30-06, 30-30, Winchester 12 gauge pump and Bens 22 auto and his 12 gauge side by side. It was a great morning but my shoulder is throbbing a bit still and it is now 48 hours later.

I was particularly happy to see that I haven't lost my touch. I was worried about the shot gun though. Ben and I went shooting once before and I couldn't hit anything with my shot gun. This time I set up a target that wasn't moving and saw that I was shooting high. I then just dropped it down a foot and by the time we left I was shooting about 80% hitting the clay pigeons.

At one point as we were lighting up the canyon a poor unfortunate crow decided to fly by and see what was going on. Ben happened to be shooting at that time and took out the crow. The big fellow didn't feel a thing and dropped like a rock. I was quite surprised to see how BIG those things are up close.

The cactuses (cacti?) out there were vicious. No matter how hard you tried you ended up getting some of them stuck into your body. They would even go through the soles of your shoes. It is Monday and I'm still pulling them out of my body.

After we wore ourselves out we decided to come home and unpack Bens moving truck. I really feel bad about that. Poor Ben and Sharley had to pack up their entire worldly possesions in Arizona all by themselves. When they got here I assured them that I would help but they waited until Saturday (I offered to help on Friday) and Alex had his senior Prom. I had to be there to take pictures so there was Ben and Sharley all by themselves with no help on this end either. I was much relieved however to learn that Patrick Carey did show up to help them out. Thank you Patrick.

I now need to talk about Prom and about the arrival of Brandon and family but since this posting is running on I will continue the account later.

Dixie sent me this cute Dilbert cartoon. I love Dilbert, he is probably my favorite cartoon. You can probably tell why. Thanks Dixie.

Mothers Day

Today was mothers day and as has become the tradition we all got up before Mom did and that is not easy. She of course wanted to get up too but we told her she wasn't allowed to and made her stay in bed. Lisa does not like breakfast in bed so we set the table with pretty plates and made pancakes, bacon, eggs, cereal and put it all around her plate with juice, milk and water. She then helped herself to what she wanted and we cleaned up the rest.

We didn't have time to open presents so we went to church where the youth sang along with the choir to their mothers. Since Lisa is both in the choir and works with the young women she sort of sang to herself. This year they gave out chocolate bars to the mothers. It's better than the flower or the little chocolate they used to give but I think she'd still prefer the big cookies we always get on fathers day. I cooked a roast for dinner and we had roast beef, potatoes and gravy and a veggie for dinner and then Lisa wanted to go for a walk on the beach. It was a lot of fun. I love the beach. We walked along Torrey Pines under the cliffs. I think Lisa had a good time today. We even got most of the dishes done.

--------------------trivia--------------------
Drinking two glass of apple juice a day may delay the onset of dementia
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Star Trek Movie

One of my favorite memories from my childhood is coming home from school, making a sandwich, pouring a tall glass of milk and sitting down to watch Star Trek. I loved that show. I grew up and went to school and on a mission and then got married and while I still held those fond memories I never thought much about it until just a few years after I was married when out came Star Trek the Next Generation. Then they started coming so fast I could scarcely keep up, there was Star Trek Deep Space Nine and then Star Trek Voyager. I loved them all and only thanks to the invention of the VCR and now DVR was I able to keep track of them all. I was sad to see them gradually fade away but "Enterprise" kept me going for a few years when very suddenly in 2005 it all ended. I suffered through major withdrawals so today with the new release of the movie Star Trek it was quite an emotional day for me. I woke up this morning to a text message from Mackenzie wishing me a "happy star trek day". How thoughtful of her. I've been on pins and needles all day long in anticipation of tonight. Lisa was so accommodating and let us go out for dinner early. That way I could get in line an hour and a half early so I could get the best seat in the house. And I did, there we were right in the very center of the theater sitting on the second row up in the stadium seating. Pretty much dead center in the screen and what a great show it was. Being the trekkie that I am sure I would have loved pretty much anything but I definitely rate this movie 5 stars. I won't ruin it for any of you who haven't managed to see it yet but I'm sure there has to be a sequel coming and that is just fine for me.

--------------------trivia--------------------
When Captain Kirk kissed lieutenant Ohura in one of the original Star Trek episodes it was the first inter-racial kiss ever seen on television.
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Car Wash

Even though not much of excitement has happened this week I want to keep current so I'll give you a brief update of the week.

Monday - I went for my six week check up for my knee surgery. The doctor was totally amazed at my progress. I told him that the only time I felt any pain at all is if I knelt on my knee or squatted all the way to the ground. As I explained this I did a squat and he was amazed. He said, "look at that, you're doing a catchers squat!!". He said I still have a little fluid on the knee and asked me not to start running just yet.

Tuesday - I flew to San Jose to meet with one of our customers who is the second largest defense contractor in the world. We had some good discussions.

Wednesday - Today I spent most of my day writing up a couple of patents that we're trying to get submitted. The problem is that I keep getting side tracked. A big RFP (request for proposals) just came out from the Department of Energy. They are giving out $150M from the "stimulus package" so I'm hoping to get some of my tax dollars back. I think our quantum well technology is a shoe in for this. They're looking for what they call, "transformation technology" and that is definitely what we have.

Tonight was scouts but we had a combined activity. They honored some of the "unsung hero's" in the ward and then washed their cars for them. People like the nursery teachers, music chairman and scout committee chairman. Of course the car wash turned into a major water fight and Sarah was right in the middle of it all. Of course once she was completely drenched she felt it necessary to give me a hug. Here is a picture of her with our bishop.

--------------------trivia--------------------
In the history of the world about 10 billion human beings have been born.
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Deerlijk part III

I loved working in Deerlijk. We lived in a rural area and we talked to many farmers. We were tracting one time and we knocked on an old house and this very old man came to the door. When we told him that we wanted to talk to them about Jesus Christ he said, wait while I go get my mother. It was an entire family with the mother, father and three or four children all living together except that the children were in their sixties and seventies. They still worked the farm and the house they lived in was three hundred years old. The United States isn't even that old. When you go into the typical thatched roof house you enter a small living area about ten feet by fifteen feet. To your left (they are all the same) you have a door that goes into the barn which is a bit larger than the living area and on the right wall you have a pot belly stove and on either side of the stove is a door that goes into bedrooms. On the far wall opposite the door is a small closet which in some of the houses has been converted to a bathroom. That is it. They all live together with their cows in the same building. You can smell them too. This family invited us for dinner one night and as we were visiting the woman was peeling potatoes. Boy was she whipping them out too, you could scarcely see her fingers moving. I commented on why she used a knife and didn't she think it would go faster if she used a potato peeler. She was quite offended by that comment and started showing off and was peeling potatoes even faster. You should never show off if you have a sharp knife in your hands, she slipped and gashed a huge gash in her hand. There was blood everywhere. I was ready to haul her off to a hospital but all she did was calmly wrap a rag around her hand, washed the blood off the potatoes and continued peeling. I was amazed.

Another time we tracted out a house that had a real live windmill on their property. I asked if we could tour the windmill and they showed us inside. It was very fascinating to me. I managed to find a picture of the windmill on the internet. On one P day we rode our bikes to a walled city called Ieper. I guess Ieper was a real hot spot during world war I. The original city still had a wall around it. It was quite fascinating. There were some shell holes in the wall of the city. It was a great place to tour.

One day I received notice that I was receiving a new companion. Elder Maughn was from Bensen, Utah. Elder Maughn was perhaps one of my most sincere companions but the poor boy struggled with the language. I had greenies that could speak better Dutch than Elder Maughn. One day Elder Maughn and I were teaching this family that had two very beautiful daughters. I found it quite funny how when I first got to Belgium there were very few pretty girls but the longer I was there the prettier the girls got. These two were clearly exceptional. We had taught this family once already and on our second visit they had invited two of the married children and their spouses. In the middle of the discussion the phone rang and while the mother (a widow) was on the phone I was making small talk with the kids. The family had a little toy poodle and on our first visit the dog had very long hair but his time I noticed that the dog was all trimmed with the typical little balls on the end of his tail and on his ankles. I commented on how their dog had been trimmed but I wasn't sure of the word for trimmed so I used the word that would translate best as "clipped". I had plans to get my hair cut the next day so I added. "Yeah, I'm going to get that done tomorrow". Everyone was instantly silent. One of the older boys was pouring me a glass of water and he about spilled the water. I could tell by the stunned looks on everyones faces that I'd said something wrong. Finally realization settled on one of the cute girls and she almost yelled out, "his hair, his hair". That is when I realized that I had just told all of them that I was going to get casterated the next day. Oops. The funny thing is that the dog was actually casterated so when I said that I see their dogs been "clipped" they thought it was an odd thing to say but not too crazy.

I had many other wonderful experiences in Deerlijk but alas the time came that I was transferred. Some of my best friends are in the Kortrijk area and it is perhaps my favorite area in Belgium but now it was on to Linker Oefer.

Just another week

I don't know why I suddenly feel I have so little to say but when I get a chance to sit down and write I can't think of anything that I you will find interesting. This week has been a fascinating one for me but I can't imagine you want to hear about it. I love my job and I'm doing stuff that is very stimulating. I guess I can leave it at that. Alex is doing very well in his Volleyball and Sarah PR'd on Thursday. She qualified to compete in a Freshman - Sophomore tournament today also and even though her time was only a hundredth of a second behind her personal best she came in last place. She wasn't too awfully upset because she knows she ran well but she said she felt very slow. It was a very fast race.

So that was my week. Tiffany sent me some very fascinating pictures this week so I thought I'd share my favorites with you.Hang in there little froggy

Lisa thinks that these pictures are fake but I like to think there are some very quick photographers out there.

This seems like such a peaceful picture to me. I think I'm going to photoshop myself a picture like this one. I love it.

Birds are such disgusting things. Let me add a bit of trivia for you here. Did you know that birds don't urinate? Their urine is mixed in with their feces and that is why bird poop is so runny. Very disgusting.

Dinner time...

run bunny run


I'm beginning to see a theme here. I seem to like to see animals eat each other

That must have been quite a surprise for that poor fish. Sitting there swimming calmly along and all of the sudden he's ranked right out of the water.


I think that mouse is in trouble.


Surprise!!!