Month: June 2004 Page 1 of 2

I took a nap after I made my phone calls last night. I was planning to mow the lawn, but it was very hot and I was not that motivated. After my nap, I read a little, then Kelly, Christian, and I listened to The Hobbit while I did my exercise. Before I went to bed, I read I Kings 18 in the bible about Elijah confronting and then killing the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. It was quite enlightening. I will read Obadiah differently now that I know that Obadiah and Elijah were contemporaries.

The kids went to their swimming lesson yesterday and then spent a lot of the day swimming in the pool of their little friends Hannah, Jacob, and Haley. They did their fifteen minutes each on Mavis Beacon and I let them spend twenty minutes each on a website they really like called Neopets.com.

We had a couple of big events yesterday. Probably the most important was that Kelly, Christian, and I went out and played catch for awhile together with a baseball and some mitts. I really need to teach them how to play baseball. Maybe we can get them both on a team next summer. Right before we went to bed, we listened to about a half an hour of The Hobbit. We are enjoying that VERY much.

Right in the middle of our playing, Ron called to tell me he almost had our new round corner shaping machine up and running. In talking he mentioned that with the exception of the mortgage on our building, we are debt free at Quality Corners. WOW! That is really a big deal. The other good part is that we have enough operating capital to not have to tap back into the line of credit.

We really have a growth path to take us to quite an amazing little company if we can just keep going like we are now. We need to add an office to our building, add a blower system to the factory, pour concrete on the grounds around the factory, and a few other things like that, but we really should be able to self finance that. After that, our main effort needs to be to get our sales about double what they are now and we will be in a position where we can both make money and sell the company at a good price.

The highlight of the weekend was the going-away potluck at Jim and Joann Waldo’s house that our Sunday morning meeting gave us. Most of the Ramsdell meeting showed up, too. We had a super time just talking to people. Cal Harper told us some surprising stories about his time in India, Burma, and Southeast China as a Secret Service officer for the Airforce.

We spent Saturday morning working on the lawn. We spread barkdust and buried a drainage pipe. There are really only two more things we want to do before we move and a third only if we have to, to sell the house. We have to finish the patio and get the drainage pipe extended through the curb. We have decided not to build a fence unless it is absolutely requried to make the sale.

Thomas, Stacy, and Seth Pedginski came over for dinner after the potluck last night and stayed until 10:00 PM. We really enjoyed having them. Tom told us how he prepares hamburger meat into patties to cook on the grill. We tried it and our hamburgers came out way better than normal. Kelly and Christian took Seth over to the neighbor’s house to swim and jump on the trampoline. After that, they all kept busy up stairs in the bonus room. It is great that we always have spiritual discussions with Tom and Stacy when we get together. We kind of expect to see them back up in Alaska after they do not have so much responsibility for Stacy’s mother, Mona.

I did a really lousy job with my eating this weekend. I am back up to 192 lbs. If I keep my intake down a little today, mow the lawn, and then do my normal Nordic Track workout, maybe I will get back down to 190. Discipline is everything when it comes to weight loss!

We just put up a “For Sale by Owner” sign in front of our house. We are planning to leave it there until shortly after the Fourth of July with the hope of selling the house without paying a big commission. There are a number of houses for sale in our neighborhood, so we might have a small chance of doing that. I made up a nice flyer that Lorena will copy. We are selling the house for $229,950. I am hoping that will move the house fairly rapidly.

Tonight I am going to start digging out around the services in the yard so we can put down barkdust on Sarturday. Hopefully, Dad will be able to come and pour the concrete to finish the patio. We are really hoping to avoid putting up a fence before we sell the house. We will have to see what happens.

I think I have finally gotten my weight down below 190 lbs. I need to keep banging away at it. The nights when I both work on the yard and spend at least 35 minutes on the Nordic Track are the nights that go best for me. While I exercised last night, we all listened to an audio cassette version of The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein. It was great and we will keep doing that until we get through the book.

The kids are still doing great in swimming lessons. Kelly is going to go visit her old friend, Vicky from the Emmaus Christian school kindergarten today. She will go over to Vicky’s house for an hour after her swimming class. She is very much looking forward to it.

I was hoping to spend more time doing stuff with the kids this summer, but it does not look like that is going to happen with the move going on. I really hope we can sell the house quickly so we can get moved to Seattle and get our homeschool started in a reasonable way.

Kelly are well into their swimming lessons now. Both of them are performing excellently. I think they will probably both need only three or four more sessions before they can stop taking lessons to wait until they are old enough to take lifeguard lessons. Today is the day I am planning to write an email to MEI in Kirkland to accept their job offer. Now it is time to really work on getting the house ready to sell.

Last night after bible study, we went to the Ramsdell’s house to eat some watermellon. They are great folks and we really enjoy spending time with them. Jordan Ramsdell is planning to enter the talent contest with some fiddling. He played it for us last night and we were very impressed with his three song medley. He should do VERY well and there is a $950 first prize!

Last night Lorena spoke with our next door neighbor, Tina who lives behind us. Tina is a very nice lady and an artist who runs the LaSalles Stewart Center at Oregon State University. Tina said that she is trying to talk some of her friends into buying our house. That would be absolutely great. Now we have two potential buyers that might allow us to sell our house without having to go through a real estate agent. That would save us a pile of money and hassle and maybe even allow me to get the whole family up to Washington before I start work.

Our plan now is to let Michael know that I am taking the job tomorrow and then wait until after the Fourth of July holiday to give notice at ATS. I would really like to have at least a week and a half off between the time I quit ATS and when I start work at Micro Encoder. If worse comes to worse, I am sure I can crash at David and Diane’s place at night for a little while, while we are selling our house down here and finding a new house up there.

It was a cooler night last night, so I mowed the lawn and then put down some fertilizer on it. I think I actually got the mix right this time. After the fertilizer was down, we watered each side of the lawn for two hours. We are going to have quite a water bill, but I hope it will pay off with a green, nice-looking lawn. Tomorrow night, I want to dig out around the service area in one corner of the lawn so that everything will be ready on Saturday to spread barkdust. Maybe I will have time to bury the drainage line on Saturday, too. I really need to get someone out to cut a whole in the curb where the drainage should go. Tony Nelson told us there is a company called Brothers that should do it for us for around $100.

Kelly and Christian are in swimming lessons now. It sounds like it is going OK, just not quite as good as the YMCA in Sherwood. They put both Kelly and Christian in classes beneath their levels so they had to be moved up. They are taking swimming lessons in Corvallis where there seems to be an excessive lack of humility and not much of a spirit of service. Lorena got into a conversation with a lady who told her that homosexuality and divorce really were not that bad. It really will be nice to live in a little bigger and more cosmopolitan town where people tend to be less full of themselves.

Lorena took Kelly and Christian to Borders in Corvallis yesterday after their swimming lesson. A woman shopping there told a man who was looking for books for homeschooling that Oak Grove Elementary School in Albany was excellent and that it would be a shame for the man to homeschool his children when such a great school was available. Lorena told the man that our kids had also been in Oak Grove and that our children had learned absolutely nothing. The woman turned out to be a friend of Kelly’s teacher, Sheryl Gebhart and she told Lorena what a great teacher was Mrs. Gebhart. Lorena told the woman that both Gebhart and Grimmius, the principal were, in our opinion, very bad at their jobs, because they were mean spirited in the way they treated the children, had no idea about where the children were academically, taught the children ideas contrary to the sincerely held beliefs of the parents, and did nothing to inspire the children to learn. As the man left he thanked Lorena and wished her luck with homeschooling next year.

It is gettting harder and harder to find a reason to stay in Corvallis. My probable new boss up in Washington came through with a great offer and plenty of help to move up to Washington. David and Diane Joyce and Ron Egge have been a great help in talking to me about helping us to make the move. When I talked to my boss and his boss, I did not get very satisfying responses about whether the company was going to stick around and about whether I was going to have a decent career path.

The biggest issues is whether we can sell our house in Albany and whether we can find a good place to live close to work in Kirkland. Last night, I remembered that the parents of the little girl (Hannah) with whom Kelly and Christian play are living in the neighborhood with their parents until they find a house they like. They would really like to be close to their parents. It might be a great deal for both of us. We could lower the price of the house by $10000 by not having to pay real estate commissions and they could get a great house for a decent price that they really like.

It really would be nice to be able to sell the house quickly. Micro Encoder wants me to start working by August second which is Grandpa Milo’s 75th birthday. Grandpa Lauro, Grandma Conchita, and Cousin Hectorin are going to be arriving in Portland on August 3. It sounds almost impossible, but it would really be great to be able to receive them in Kirkland, Bothell, or Monroe rather than in Albany.||It is gettting harder and harder to find a reason to stay in Corvallis. My probable new boss up in Washington came through with a great offer and plenty of help to move up to Washington. David and Diane Joyce and Ron Egge have been a great help in talking to me about helping us to make the move. When I talked to my boss and his boss, I did not get very satisfying responses about whether the company was going to stick around and about whether I was going to have a decent career path.

We had a great time in our visit to Washington state. I interviewed Micro Encoder and met a lot of nice people there. Lorena and the kids stayed in the brand new Marriott (opened just last week) in downtown Redmond. It was absolutely super. I am supposed to receive an offer today sometime. I still do not know whether I should take it, even if it comes.

Lorena really does not want to go. We are in our beautiful new house. Lorena is enrolled in the community college here. Oregon is a very homeschool friendly state. We are closer to family. We love our Sunday morning meeting. There are lots of reasons to stay here. The only reasons I have for not staying are that I would make a lot of money in Washington with a much better title and I would have what appears to be a more stable job. That is a lot, but I do not know if it is enough. We really like living in Albany.

One thing great that happened over the weekend is that we finished seeing Around the World in Eighty Days and then went and saw the movie. The movie really was pretty pathetic compared to the book and that is exactly what I wanted the kids to see. We had a super time doing the reading and were quite excited about seeing the movie, but they changed the movie from the book so much that it was almost not recognizeable!

he thought of moving to Washington has taken the whole family on a little bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. I guess we probably should reserve judgment until after we return from the interview and our chance to look around a few neighborhoods where I would be working in Kirkland. There are lots of worries associated with this that will take care of themselves if we just have patience. Getting the Albany house sold, finding a decent house close to work that we can afford, making the move, etc. etc…

I looked over the homeschooling regulations in Washington state at the HSLDA web site. It looks like the regulations are somewhat more onerous (and odious) than they are in Oregon. We have to notify the school district every year that we will be homeschooling, we have to give standardized test every year and keep them on record, we have to have a record of our curriculum and progress on file at all times. The thing that is frustrating is that the people who administer this are part of the government school system and probably do not have the best interests of my children as their priority. Beyond that, they probably have a degree in some sort of teacher education which pretty much disqualifies them from knowing how to teach. Such is life.

Lorena had a pickup load of dirt waiting for me when I got home last night. It was the last load we needed to fill in the area between the street curb and the sidewalk. It looks nice. Now all we need is to dig out some grass to give the yard some form and put in some barkdust and that part will be done. I am hoping I can get to that next week. We are houring each side of the lawn an hour per night right now so that we can get the lawn green in case we need to sell the house. The next and maybe last project (if we move) beside the patio and fence will be the burying of a drain pipe at the side of the house. We have to get a hole cut into the curb and dig a trench under the sidewalk, but it should not really be that big of a project.

It was really odd not to have Kelly in the house as she went to the sleepover at her friend Skyler’s house on Monday night. She slept fine! We were a little worried about that, but she had all her little buddies right there with her the whole time. Nevertheless, it was great to have her back.

Right when we were about ready to read our chapter of Around the World in Eighty Days, the doorbell rang. When I went to the door, Jay Nelson was there. He had the whole family in the car because they had run over to Jim and Joann Waldo’s house right down the street to pick up a stove because Jim had gotten a new one and given the old one to Jay. They came and and we had a really good time talking about this and that. The kids mostly played upstairs, but Kelly, Christian, Neil and Lenore put on a play for us as is Kelly’s wont! Only Jay, Karen, Lenore, Miles, Neil, and Phillip were there because Osten was staying with Karen’s folks for a couple of days. They kept trying to leave, but we were having a good enough time talking that they ended up staying until about 10:30 pm. It was great!

Last night was my 29th workout on the Nordic Track machine since May 2. My weight is down right about 10 lbs. and I am feeling a lot better for having exercised. I am not losing weight as fast as I would like, but that has more to do with the fact that I eat too much when I get home from work than anything else. It is really a little bit of a marvel that I have lost any weight at all given how much I eat. It seems like I drop the most weight when I both work in the yard and work out on the machine in the same day. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with a doctor for a routine checkup. I think everything should be OK. I will have him check a little skin growth I have on my back, but I think that is about the only really problem I have right now other than that I am getting older and cannot see as well as five years ago.

Kelly stayed over night at her friend Skyler’s house last night. It is really the first time we have ever let her do that. Lorena is supposed to go and pick her up at 11:30 this morning. We really do not like to leave her for those kind of things, but she really wanted to go and Lorena knows the family pretty well from having helped out at Kelly’s government school. They went swimming at a neighbor’s swimming pool and that scared us, too. We are going to have to let loose more and more now, but it surely is not going to be much fun.

I am down to about 190 lbs. now. Wow! It took quite awhile to hit that 10 lbs. lost mark. I have really been pretty faithful in doing my exercise, but I think I can do more in terms of eating better. I hold the line pretty well when I am at work, but just eat way too much after I get home. It seems like when I take the time to work in the yard after I get home and then do my exercises after that, I lose more weight. As usual, I did my exercise during Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey radio program. It does not seem the same, though, if both Kelly and Christian are not there. I let Christian play Zoo Tycoon while we listened.

Last night I mowed the lawn. It had gotten pretty long and ratty. It is starting to fill in a little more, but there are still lots of brown spots, weeds, and clover that are going to take me a long time to clean out. I have really been enjoying this a lot. Tonight, Lorena is going to bring me a load of dirt to do the final pass on filling in the deep area between the sidewalk and the street curb. After that I need to dig out a bunch of grass and weeds and level an area around the services at the edge of the yard so we will finally be ready to put in the barkdust. After that, will come a drainage pipe we need to bury under the sidewalk and get a hole bored into the curb so the water will run into the street. We have an area by the driveway that we want to fill in with sod and after that, the main big items we have left are the patio and a fence along two sides of the house. I will take some pictures as we move forward.

Last night, because Kelly was not home, Christian and I did not want to read any of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days because we did not want Kelly to miss anything. Instead, we started in on C.S. Lewis’ A Horse and His Boy. First we started with Christian reading. He thought it was pretty hard, but after I read about half a chapter, Christian asked what I thought about the idea of each of us reading every other chapter. I thought that was great. Kelly and Christian both started in on fifteen minutes per night of Mavis Beacon Typing. Both of them are doing great on it and they enjoy it, too. After we finished reading, Christian and I talked a little more about him making another step in serving God. All in all, it was a super night.

Well, we had a very nice day at the Chapman/Duerst family reunion on Saturday. Virtually all of Grandma Sarah and Aunt Janet’s kids except Craig showed up for the party. Craig was out doing what he loves, driving a tractor for one of the local farmers. There was way to much food to eat and everyone had a great time reminiscing about old times. Cousin Ann had put together some GREAT albums with old pictures, Cousins Kathy, Jon, and Neil were all there, too.

Aunt Julia and Aunt Jean had done a twelve mile run (no typo – that is EXACTLY what they did) the morning before the reunion. We were all so proud and sympathetically sore for them. I guess the plan is for Cousin Amy and Aunt Jean to run a marathon together later this summer. I would really like to be there when they do it. Cousin Charlie finished up college for the year at Oregon State on Friday, so Lorena went over to pick him up at his dorm. He stayed with us for the night and we all had just a GREAT time. We ate and talked and carried on about all kinds of things like you can only do with an inquisitive college kid.

On Sunday afternoon, Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I went to Wendy’s after meeting, then we went on to Kelly and Christian’s last recital of the year at the big Baptist Church in Jefferson. It was a great recital. This was the end of Kelly’s fourth year of piano and the end of Christian’s second year. They both did great. Everyone commented on Christian’s use of dynamics in his piece and on Kelly’s composition. The Ramsdell’s, the Doolittles, and Tony and Martha all showed up to hear them play. If we go up to Seattle, we are surely going to miss them all.

I have a couple pictures of the family renunion that Cousin Neil sent me follow. I will try to put up a couple of pictures from the recital, too over the next couple of days.

The whole crew

Neil’s son Nicholas doing a play with Kelly and Christian

The family will be visiting Kirkland next weekend. On Thursday night we will be driving up to stay at a brand new Marriot Hotel near where I would be working. I will interview for four hours on Friday and then we will look around the area, stay there again on Friday night so we can look a little more on Saturday. It really should be interesting, but the property around that area looks very, very expensive and the traffic looks really, really bad. I hope God gives us some clear direction on this. Maybe I am already getting it. ATS is looking very weak right now. They are losing money on operations in Corvallis and the prospects really do not look very good.

Lorena picked up Charlie at his dorm at Oregon State University in Corvallis today. He will be staying with us tonight and then running on up to Newberg to go to the family reunion on Saturday. I will need to go with him to help him load all the stuff he has in his dorm into the pickup because he is going home for the summer. All Mom’s side of the family is going to be at Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah’s place tomorrow for a family renunion. It should be a lot of fun.

I had an interview last night with a man named Michael Nahum. Michael is looking for a person to manage a group of Ph.D.’s to do machine vision research for a large privately held Japanese company. I have agreed to go to Kirkland for an interview. It would be quite a good job, but the thought of uprooting my family after we have been in Albany less than a year is not very appealling.

It is the kids last day of school today and we went to out bible study at the Meyer home out in Jefferson after my phone call. Both of those things make me feel pretty bad about the idea of moving to a new place so soon, but if that is what God wants from me, I am certainly willing. I am going to try to take a look at other opportunities along with this one. I just need to remember that God’s plan is always best and he will give my family and me exactly what we need to serve him well.

Last night our remote camera arrived from X10 and we got it all hooked up so that we can view who is at the front door from our computer upstairs. It is very cool. After I did my exercises, I looked at the webpages Kelly and Christian have been developing using Microsoft Publisher. They are amazing!

Michael Nahum from Micro Encoder called me this morning. He wanted to talk to me about the possibility of taking a position as an Engineering Manager in Kirkland, Washington. Micro Encoder is a division of Mitutoyo, the large Japanese gauging and metrology company. If they make me a strong enough offer, I will have to take it. I will ask for at least three weeks of vacation with the potential of taking an additional week with out pay if I need it to visit Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita in Mexico. I will also ask that they guarantee that I have at least a year of work if I make the move. My plan is to tell them that we already have a plan to visit Mexico over the holidays and that I need a couple of days off for Saginaw convention. Housing will be a lot higher in the Seattle area, but if they make me a strong enough offer, it will be hard to resist.

Kelly and Christian had their last piano lesson of the year. Lorena and I have really enjoyed taking the kids to the piano lesson in Jefferson, because after we drop the kids off, we go out for dinner, go for a drive, or just the two of us sit and talk or read books and magazines. It has been really great.

Last night, while the kids were at their piano lesson, Lorena and I ran out to Scio to look a the piece of property Warren Bone is trying to buy. It is an 82 acre farm through which a beautiful river flows. There is a view of the foothills of the cascade mountains and it is all quite beautiful. It will be very nice for him if he gets it.

Martha came over again and stayed with us last night. We stayed up very late and talked about the situation she will be in when she gets married. It will definitely be different for her with lots of lifestyle changes, but we really believe it will be good for both Tony and Martha.

I have been giving lots of thought about the best way to stay in Oregon. I really do not want to take the new job in Seattle if I do not have to. I like my work here in Corvallis a lot, but I just do not think it is very secure over the long term. If I can last here long enough to get some of the benefit of having stuck it out at Quality Corners and if Quality Corners is able to grow to about double its current size, I will not have to worry about it so much, because we will have enough money coming in that I will not have to earn so much in my job.

To that end, Dad and I have been talking about finding a new product line to that which already exists. Dad is planning to call Orepac, ECMD, and some of our other customers to find out what they struggle to acquire for their customers. If we are patient and continue to work with them closely, I believe we can find some additional products to augment what we already have and grow the company to where it needs to grow to make life a little more financially secure here in Albany.

We had a quiet weekend, but I got a couple of pictures. Martha is here visiting Tony from Houston. Martha stayed with us a couple of nights and should be staying at least one more before she leaves.

Tony, Martha, and the kids

Lorena and the kids were all a great help in putting two pickup loads of dirt in the area between the sidewalk and the curb. Next weekend, we are hoping to put in one last load of dirt, and bury a drainage pipe. After that, we will put down some plastic sheet to prevent weeds over our new dirt and then put barkdust on top of that.

We went to Lake Oswego for a short visit for cousin Julia’s graduation party. She will be going to Dartmouth next year. I invited Ron and Wonlyn to our house for Thanksgiving next year.

Here is another fun picture:

Rubiks and I

We are goig through a very ugly hayfever season this year. Kelly, Christian, and Lorena are all suffering pretty bad right now. Through all that, we had Tony and Martha over for dinner last night. Lorena put together a beautiful dinner of barbequed salmon, salad, white rice, and garlic bread. I ate way too much and did not do much exercise, but it was great.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that Christian gave the first of two oral book reports for the end of his second grade year at Fir Grove School and Mrs. McCool on Wednesday. He was VERY worried about getting up in front of the class to give the talk. Kelly is always very well prepared for that sort of thing and is a natrual when it comes to public speaking.

I told Christian that the key to this sort of things was preparation and index cards. He did not know what to write so we discussed the facts about the book and what he needed to accomplish in his talk. He wrote a bunch of those facts down on a piece of paper. Then, he prepared his speech on index cards. We did not have index cards so he just printed them out on card stock.

When I got home the afternoon after he gave his speech, before I asked him how it went, he came up to me and said “I gave my speech today.”

I asked, “How did it go?”

He said, “EXCELLENT!”

I said, “Why do you think it went so well?”

“Because I was so well prepared” was his reponse.

I think it was a super lesson. After I had gotten him going with a list of facts and talked about how the index cards would be a good aid for helping him to give his speech, Christian just took off and did the rest. I fully planned to review what he had written, but for whatever reason, I did not do that. The speech was really all his and he obviously felt quite good that he had done what was necessary to get ready for it. It reduced his fear level greatly and taught both of us a lesson.

Maybe I am going to need to start looking into homeschool rules in Seattle. A few months back, the research arm of a large Japanese gauging company offered me a position as a researcher in their Washington state office. It was a good offer for a pure research company, but not enough to get me to uproot my family from Oregon and make up the difference between the housing prices around Seattle and in Albany.

A guy with whom I had worked on a project is a neighbor of the division head up in Seattle. The guy mentioned to me yesterday that a higher position than the one offered to me was coming open and the division head wanted to know if I would be interested given that he could make me an offer better than the previous one. I told him that I would be interested. It was a difficult choice last time, so if they make a good enough offer I would probably go. It would depend on the whole package; vacation, salary, and moving package, but it might be a good move for me.

On a business aside, I have been talking with Dad and Mike Martyn about the possibility of putting together an offering to some of the large retail chains such as Michaels and Home Depot for a birdhouse that contains a wireless camera which can be linked into a television. Video could be viewed inside the birdhouse using an infra-red LED light source. It would be very cool.

Kelly and Christian are up to their eyeballs in the events celebrating the end of the school year, so we have not been doing much other than final projects, work around the house and yard, and the reading of Around the World in Eighty Days. The kittens, Kiwi and Rubiks are in the middle of everything just being very cute.

Tonight is the last piano lesson of the year as well as our Wednesday night bible study so we will all probably run over to Jefferson for the piano lesson, try out the Mexican food place, and then go on to the bible study at the Meyer’s place. Lorena is going to try to find a place for Kelly and Christian to take swimming lessons for the summer today, too.

Last night, I put some insect killer on the lawn which required doing a little bit of watering, too. We are going to get some dirt tomorrow to fill in the area between the sidewalk and the street curb. If we get the dirt put in OK, we will try to put in barkdust on Saturday. The sad part is that we missed out on getting some trees in this spring so we now hope to do that this fall.||Kelly and Christian are up to their eyeballs in the events celebrating the end of the school year, so we have not been doing much other than final projects, work around the house and yard, and the reading of Around the World in Eighty Days.