Hang in there!

Yes, a new post is coming. Yes, one besides this one. Expect a large update soon. In the meantime, don't give up. Mac Man Minutes will prosper once more.

DotD: Mac Man Minutes - Free - When I don't post for awhile, you don't have to waste time reading things that I wrote! ;-)

My Bad

You tried to warn me, but I didn't listen. You tried to tell me that I was making a mistake, but I ignored you anyway.

Turns out, you were right. Serenity is an awesome movie!

Mr. Da Coops and I got to talking about movies on our drive up to camping, and he brought up Firefly. I mentioned seeing one episode, but not liking it much because I had no idea what was going on. Well, Mr. Da Coops, I'm ready to start watching Firefly now. It might be a bit weird, since according to IMDB, Serenity supposedly takes place after the last Firefly episode, but I guess that just makes the experience somewhat like Memento. And there's nothing wrong with that!

For what it's worth, I'm also now just one episode away from finishing season one of Star Trek: Voyager, with season one of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine waiting in the wings (backwards again, I know). Yeah, I'm a bit behind on a couple of shows... ;-)

Oh, and if you run into Ms. Fiance, don't forget to tell her happy birthday. The official day is Sunday, but everyone except me gets a free buffer of a couple of days to let her know that you didn't forget. Because you didn't, right? Right?

And because I completely forgot about Deal of the Day in my last post, you get two today. And what better way to spread the savings than with two more Apple deals!

DotD: Apple iPhone - $399 - Just 2 months after being introduced, it's now available for $200 less. Plus, the people that already bought an iPhone get a $100 credit at the Apple Store because of the sudden and massive price drop. First time I've heard of that happening!

DotD Part 2: 40 free digital prints - Sign up for York Photo (a sister company of Snapfish) and get your first 40 prints free.

What have I done?

Well, that'll teach me to try to get people involved...

I just got a sad email about the next TEC. I'm on the waiting list. This, of course, comes after convincing some other adults to apply to work. And then they take my spot! Sheesh!

And then Cooper has to rub in the fact that Baron is overall Rector (read the candidates a bed time story!). Stop with the heaping coals already!

Okay, so I'm not exactly down in the dumps here. I just need to ham it up a little to get some attention, since you guys and gals have left my comment section dry recently (yep, and my posting has been too, I know). So I'm trying for a virtual hug here, and pity seemed like the best tool.

I am excited about those that get to work. It'll be a blast. And hey, if a couple adults have some unfortunate run-ins with Tonya Harding, well, it wasn't me. Mostly. ;-)

Bitten by a horseshoe

Camping last weekend was a ton of fun, even though Ms. Fiance couldn't make it. We were up at a resort on Mille Lacs Lake. Unlike the majority of the people we saw who stayed in cabins or RV's, we brought tents. Cooper and I shared my tent, which was quite spacious for just two people.

The four of us played horseshoes, croquet, 2 on 2 sand volleyball, went swimming, and went biking on the Soo Line bike trail. The bike trail was not my favorite thing. It used to be an actual rail line that was removed and converted to a combination bike and ATV trail, so it is perfectly flat and perfectly straight. There also wasn't a lot to see around us, but hey, it was exercise and we had fun biking on it as  a group.

The horseshoes, on the other hand, were fun. We played countless games, sometimes while watching the sun go down over the lake. The problem is that horseshoes are dangerous. Very dangerous. I had my camera along and was taking pictures of everything, including the games of horseshoes. I decided after awhile that I'd like to get a good action shot, so I squatted behind the horseshoe pit with the wooden  wall in front of me, and took a picture when Cooper was throwing a horseshoe towards the pit I was behind. I said to the friend next to me to tell me if I needed to get out of the way so I didn't get hit, but Cooper's horseshoe was clearly landing in the sand pit about 6 feet in front of me. I looked down at my camera, while still squating, to see that I had gotten the horseshoe in mid-flight. Sweet!

BAM!

PAIN!

Cooper's horseshoe had hit the sand in front of me, and then instead of settling in the sand, it bounced up, over the the wooden barrier, and hit me directly on the knee cap. Remember, he had just thrown this horseshoe about 40 feet, so it had a lot of momentum on it and is made out of solid metal. MOMMY!!!!!

I survived, but my knee was really sore the rest of the day. I couldn't really bike because it hurt to push down on the petals, so we moved biking to the next day. It even hurt when I was just sitting down. Luckily, my knee felt much better by the next morning, so we could continue with our biking plans a day late.

I dominated at croquet, to the point that we decided to change the rules a bit on how many extra shots you could accumulate by hitting other people's balls. Of course we were playing croquet out in an open field in the middle of the day after playing sand volleyball and swimming, so at this point we realized that we were getting crispy. Oh yeah, we kind of forgot to put on that sunscreen I had brought with me...

We did an awesome job with our food. The highlight of the weekend's cuisine was Saturday night. We built up a big fire and then cooked corn on the cob and a special potato, carrot, and cream of chicken concoction by wrapping everything up in tin foil and sticking it directly in the fire. It took awhile to cook, but boy was it good! We also cooked some pork loins on my gas stove, so in the end, it was quite an extravagant meal.

We played a little poker Saturday night as well, inside the screened-in part of my tent. Everyone lasted quite awhile, but as the night wore on, it was getting really cold. I was in the final two, so I decided to just bet everything on one hand, and ended up losing by a hair. Oh well, great fun!

Our last camping adventure took place on our way home Sunday. We stopped by Grand Casino initially just for lunch. It was my first time in a casino, and Cooper's as well. I watched everyone lose a couple dollars at the nickel poker machines, too odds-inclined to actually play a game myself. Total lost between my 3 companions: $9. Total time spent playing games: An hour? Not too shabby.

I, however, won the big one. There was a 2 cent poker machine behind where the others were playing and I saw that it said there was half a credit available. Someone had apparently left and decided cashing out a penny wasn't worth the effort. I thought otherwise, especially since it gave me a story to tell about my first casino trip. I went over to the machine (no one had been there in the 15 to 20 minutes we'd been in that area) and hit the cash-out button. A paper slip was printed saying I had a $0.01 credit. Sweet! I had Cooper take a picture of my glorious winnings, and later went to the automatic cash-out machine to claim my winnings (I didn't want to waste an actual human's time at the counter). I then took another picture outside showing my new-found riches with the casino in the background. 

So yeah, if you need some good luck, ask for me. I'm the guy that wins money at the casino without actually playing a game!

DotD: Buffet lunch at Grand Casino - $9.99 - Great food and plenty of it. And then free pop while you walk around afterwards.  And then for me, free money at the casino!

Used gallbladder for sale

Ms. Fiance just went into surgery a little bit ago to have her gallbladder removed. She had a lot of pain late last week, but because it got better after a few hours, she was able to wait to do the surgery today. I'm sitting in the lounge at the hospital right now, and expect that she will be all sewed up within the next hour. Please keep her in your prayers, that everything will go swimmingly well, both now and over the next couple of recovery days.

Because of the pending surgery, Ms. Fiance wasn't able to go on the camping trip this weekend that we had planned with some friends since early summer (more on that in another post). She was really bummed about missing out, so I brought camping to her last night. After getting home from the weekend camping trip, I immediately put the tent back up again, this time in my backyard (Ms. Fiance was waiting at my house after helping little sis move this weekend). I surprised her with a little camping adventure, including the tent, a small campfire, smores, and croquet.

It was all well and good until the storm went through last night. Wow! Ms. Fiance abandoned her air mattress and blankets at 11:00 to retreat into my house because the wind was so violent that it was keeping her awake, and she wanted to be fully rested for surgery. I stayed in the test, bunkered down with my air mattress and sleeping bag. 

Around 1:00 am, it started to sprinkle. I woke up to the rain, closed all of the windows and doors in the tent, and tried to go back to sleep. Then the rain changed from a sprinkle to a wicked downpour. It was pretty loud in the tent, and the wind was still whipping the tent around. And then the lightning and thunder started. Lights were flashing everywhere and constantly for about an hour, with incredible booms and rolls of thunder. I also started hearing louder plops on the roof of the tent that I assume was small hail mixed with the rain. At this point, I was pretty much stuck where I was, a bit afraid that I should not be outside in the storm, but also thinking it was not a good time to walk outside the tent. 

The storm finally finished passing through about 2:30 am, and I raced inside in case there was more to come. 

Ms. Fiance slept through the entire thing.

DotD: Gallbladder removal surgery - $15,000? - Insurance is a good thing...

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

The great and powerful families have finally met. This past weekend Ms. Fiance's parents met my parents for the first time. It went swimmingly well. Not that we were worried or anything, but it's nice to have that past us.

We did a little steak and corn-on-the-cob grilling on Saturday, and then played a few games of cards. No, Cooper, not THOSE cards. ;-)

On Sunday, Ms. Fiance and I were on worship team at church, and we sang a duet during offering. It went really well. We had some issues getting to that point, however. The first plan was to sing along to an instrument-only CD track, but the range was too high in a couple spots, and if I dropped down an octive, it was too low in a couple spots. Basically, the worst possible range for me. The other option was to have someone play the piano (actually keyboard), but then Ms. Fiance had some trouble with the harmony since it was in a different key. In the end we slowly worked out the harmony and sang with the keyboard, guitar, and drums from the worship band backing us up. It was really cool that both of our sets of parents were there for our duet debut.

After church, we headed down to the Metrodome to see the Twins play. Wow, what a game! This was the Johan Santana performance you may have heard about, where he struck out 17 people in 8 innings. Think about that. He had to get 24 outs, and 17 were strikeouts. Crazy! And only Sammy Sosa caused it to not be a no-hitter, as he had both hits that the Twins allowed.

And you thought all it did was rain this weekend!

DotD: Refurbished iPhone - $399 or $499 - For a hundred bucks less than a brand new phone, you can have a just-like-new, factory-refurbished iPhone, in either the 4 GB or 8 GB version. Yes, it is still expensive, but it's an iPhone! Why aren't you running yet? Oh...yeah...it's on the internet... Why aren't you clicking yet?

You can sleep when you're dead

So, yeah, I'm the church treasurer.

This glamourous job has lots of perks. You know, like total control (at least on paper) over the finances of a large organization. Keys to rooms in the church that other people can't get into. Combinations for the safes. Passwords and admin access on the computers. Oh yeah, and the responsibility to keep things running smoothly and error free.

That error free thing can be a pain sometimes.

I just spent last night down in the basement of the church re-reconciling the main church checking account back to January of this year. If you think that would take awhile with your checkbook, think of how long it takes for an entire church, including payroll, bills, mission checks, donations, etc. I started about 9:00 pm after worship team practice, and finally left around 5:45 am this morning. And yes, I did have to get up for work this morning. Two hours of sleep, color me rested!

All because somewhere along the line a couple entries were put in wrong (I'm innocent!), but in such a way that they didn't rear their ugly heads until we were preparing mid-year giving reports. And in QuickBooks, if you change a transaction that has already been reconcilied, you can't just fix it without undoing all of the later reconciliations and then doing them all from scratch again.

Now technically, I could have left the transactions the way they were. I could have manually corrected the reports and added an adjustment in the current month. But that pains me greatly. If you haven't noticed, I have a little flair of perfectionism flowing in my veins. I bit the bullet and spent the entire night at the church in the treasurer's office.

Again.

By my count, that's three times this year. 

Next time, I'll invite you to join me. You just might want to be treasurer too!

DotD: Sudoku toilet paper - $7.16 - In honor of Greg's sudoku post. Sorry, Greg, it isn't binary.