Author: John

Posted on by John

Today, I swung a golf club for the first time in my life.

A buddy of mine, Kevin, and I met at the Hank Hankey Golf Ranch of Austin tonight. Kevin asked me earlier in the day if I golfed, to which I replied “no” and he asked me to hit the driving range with him tonight. I figured “why the heck not?”

So, we met around 7:45, and rented a large bucket of little white golf balls for $13.00. There were about 100, maybe 150 balls in the bucket.

golf ball

The section of the driving range set aside for drivers was pretty full, so we headed over to the side that’s set aside for irons, and I got my first lessons from a buddy.

The first advice Kevin gave me was typical Kevin: “You wanna know what the first thing you need to know about your golf swing is? Just try to look cool!”

I laughed.

Kevin said “No, I’m serious. It sounds stupid, but try to look cool, and relaxed. Don’t get too tight, be conscious of the fact that you look cool doing this, and you won’t feel so silly making the small adjustments I’ll tell you to make throughout tonight.”

So, I took his advice. And I hit my first ball with a 3 iron.

It went pretty far (I think) but sliced way to the right … waaaaay to the right.

Kevin was just impressed I hit the ball.

We both nailed about 100 little white balls down the driving range with irons before heading over to the side for the drivers. Then we polished off the rest of the balls before retiring to our vehicles to polish off a beer.

It was a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to my future golf game. It can only get better from here.

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This past weekend we hit the Guadalupe. Loads of fun, but exhausting… I think I’m getting old.

Evan and Shadel came up on Friday night (with Ella!), and we had a few old friends over for dinner. There were 12 people at the house: Allan, Brandi, Janeen & Alfonso, Josh & Elise, Evan & Shadel, Marc & Cyndi (and Rowan), Christine and myself. It’s the first real gathering of friends we’ve had in the new house, mainly because the house wasn’t ready (and still isn’t) to have people over. We still haven’t painted most of the rooms or gotten things where we want them to be decorating-wise.

I grilled corn-on-the-cob and steaks. Josh made his famous sweet+russet mashed potatoes. They all turned out pretty well. The conversations centered around high-school and what we’ve all done since high-school.

The next day, we got up and headed to the Guadalupe River. It was a gorgeous Saturday, and I personally haven’t floated the river since last summer, so I was looking forward to it. Christine and Shadel stayed home to take care of Ella while Evan and I headed over to Allan’s to collect him, then to Josh and Elise’s to collect them, before making the 45 minute drive to New Braunfels with 5 adults in my Jetta. We stopped long enough to pick up Brad, Carlo, Erin and her friend Phil and Toni.

We met Janeen, Alfonso, Brandi, Adrian and Alex (Alfonso’s cousin) at The Shanty (in Canyon Lake, TC), got our tubes, and walked to the river (Next time we’re going to Rockin’ R again). Adrian hooked us up with cheaper tube prices so the walk was worth it, but the walk from The Shanty to the river wouldn’t normally… Where we usually put in, you don’t have to pay for the extra tubes for your coolers, and there are more people there.

So, on the river, much beer was consumed, much conversation was had, and we ran into a bunch of people. I managed to get caught up in a tree root system once and had to work my way out of it. I came out relatively unscathed.

We had two water-proof disposable cameras, and took a few pictures of the events of the day.

When it was time to get out of the river, we all stopped, except for Josh, Alfonso, Janeen and Evan… they floated about 30 minutes further down-river and had to trek their way back up to where we were.

After loading up the tubes on the bus, and turning them in, we headed over to the Clear Springs Cafe in Leon Valley (might as well have been New Braunfels to me). Good catfish. Really good catfish (then I wonder if being super dehydrated and hungry as hell didn’t have something to do with my opinion.

After dinner we said our good-byes and drove back to Austin.

On Sunday, I awoke to discover I had a helluva sunburn on my tummy and upper thighs. Gotta love the river!

note: Josh posted his version of the events, and a few pictures from Friday night on his website.

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Posted on by John

Frank (Christine’s Dad) scanned in a couple of old baby photos of Christine.

I put them online here and we’re both looking forward to finding more old baby photos of ourselves and scanning them in to put them online.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 212 user reviews.

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Christine and I visited the Grand Opening of the Barton Creek Apple Store today, and while there, we spotted a Fischer FVD-C1 CameraCorder. The CameraCorder is an amazing little piece of engineering and swayed me with it’s tiny form-factor and great specs.

The machine is small (very small). It’s less than 3 inches front to back, 4.3 inches tall and 1.3 inches wide. It weighs about 6 ounces (about a third of a pound)

The specs from the sales website look like this:

  • DVD-Like quality video resolution (VGA:640 x 480; Full-motion 30 frames per second)
  • True 3.2 Megapixel digital still images
  • 3.2-Megapixel CCD
  • CD-Quality stereo sound (AAC Audio)
  • Up to 30 minutes of DVD-Like quality recording or 80 minutes of VHS-quality recording (with supplied 512 MB memory card)
  • Up to 491 pictures in high 3.2 megapixel resolution (2048 x 1536) mode or up to 3931 pictures in normal 0.3 megapixel resolution (640 x 480) mode (with supplied 512 MB memory card)
  • 5.8 X Optical zoom lens; 10 X Digital zoom
  • Lithium-ion battery and AC operation
  • Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD, with 110, 000 pixels of resolution

The specs and manual say that the battery should last an hour under normal video shooting conditions, and the 512MB SD card that came with the CameraCorder should shoot anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes of video, depending on the quality setting being used (actually, it says it can shoot a lot more than that, but I don’t anticipate shooting at the worst quality setting available ever). It also supports USB 2.0 transfer of data, so it shouldn’t be too slow to use (I was afraid it might be USB 1.1 or slower at the store). So, I’ll play with the CameraCorder this weekend and see what I really think about it.

The Apple Store will take a return for a 10% restocking fee, so even if I only use the thing for a week and take it back, I figure it’s a great price to test it out for a full week.

If I like it alot, I’ll turn to Amazon.com to buy a bunch of 512MB SD Cards for ?$75 each, and I’ll start looking for an extra battery for backup use.

Here’s what’s funny about the whole purchasing process. While at the Apple Store, I was able to go to Fisher’s website, Apple’s website, Amazon.com (and any other shopping site I wanted to) to research the product and the price at different retailers for the CameraCorder and the SD cards that it uses. I found the CameraCorder at Amazon.com for $40 less than Apple was selling it (and $140 less than Fisher was selling it directly). The 512MB SD Cards for $75 at Amazon, while the Apple Store was selling 256MB SD Cards for $99, so I waited on buying that at the Apple Store, while buying the CameraCorder for a slight premium, because it’s easier to return something to Apple than it is to Amazon.

It’s interesting to me that Apple allowed me to price-shop and compare other retailers while at their store, knowing that I’d still choose to buy things there if the benefits of doing so were worth it to me. Granted they lost a SD card sale, but they didn’t even have the 512MB card I wanted, so they’d already lost that sale.

Anyways, the new CameraCorder is charging now, and we’ll test it out this weekend to see how we like it.

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One of my best buddies from the Army visited us in early May.

Bob and Jen were our best friends in the Army.

You might remember some pictures we posted of Bob’s beautiful daughter Sophie Kate from back in 2001 (gosh that seems like so long ago).

We missed Bob for the last year while he was in Korea, so when we heard that he was coming to visit we were super excited, and then we found out that he was leaving for Iraq in less than a week. Man, that sucks… Bob was home for 3 weeks or so before he shipped off to Iraq.

While it sucks that Bob’s in Iraq right now, I’m also very proud to call him my friend, and one of my dearest friends at that. We had a good time visiting a few hot spots in Austin, and seeing the sights with him.

We want Bob to come home soon, and thank him for his service to his country.

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Christine and I went to Fayetteville the weekend of May 21st, to attend the Fayetteville Crawfish Boil with Evan and Shadel, and a few friends.

Boy did we have a wild time! There must have been 800 people there, and 4, 000 pounds of crawfish at least.

Amber, one of Shadel’s closest friends from high-school, brought her fiancee, Jason, from Phoenix in for the weekend and we all introduced him to crawfish with big warm Texas-sized crawfish boil. Jason didn’t have a single problem slopping down the mudbugs with the rest of us, and even learned how to suck the heads.

suck the head

Ryan was there with his friend Jack.

Ella was just a tad fussy once, but was a model child most of the night, especially when Kelly held her.

All in all, I think the girls had a good time, but didn’t eat as many crawdads as the big boys, or drink as much beer (evidenced by the fact that Jason was caught relieving himself in the parking lot before the ride home)

We retired to Evan and Shadel’s house in Sealy and kept the party going into the wee hours of the morning, out on the front porch.

We had a great time and hope to do it again sometime soon.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 202 user reviews.

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We went to the State UIL Track meet this year to watch Kari “K.K” Burt run the 300 meter low hurdles. Kari ran a fantastic race against some fantastic hurdlers and came in 5th place overall in the state.

That’s quite an accomplishment and we were glad to get to go watch her run and visit with her, her mom, her sister, and Nanny and Bussy. Seeing Coach Seals and Mrs. Seals again were a delight.

Bussy and I remarked on how much of an accomplishment just making it to the State level was, before the race. All of us are very pround of Kari’s performance. 5th place in the whole state sure isn’t a bad place to be in, when you consider just how many athletes that means Kari beat to get to where she is in her game.

Kari’s going to start attending Texas A&M later this year, and we wish her the best of luck there. If she shows half the competitive spirit there that she did running track in high-school, we know we can expect great things from her.

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Got this in an email from Dub today:

From: The People of Texas

To: All Concerned Voters

With the presidential campaign in full swing, Texas has a message for all those complainers out there. After seeing the whiners, the folks from Texas have decided that we might just take matters into our own hands.Here is our solution:

  1. Let Kerry become President of the United States (all 49 states).
  2. George W. Bush becomes the President of the Republic of Texas.

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic?NASA is in Houston, Texas. We will control the space industry.We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States.Defense Industry – we have over 65% of it. The term “Don’t mess with Texas, ” will take on a whole new meaningOil – we can supply all the oil that the Republic of Texas will need for the next 300 years. Yankee states – sorry about that.Natural Gas – again we have all we need and it’s too bad about those northern states. Mr. Kerry will have to figure a way to keep them warm.Computer Industry – we currently lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications: Small places like HP, Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, EDS, Raytheon, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Intel, AMD, Atmel, Applied Materials, Ball Semiconductor, Dallas Semiconductor, Delphi, Nortel, Alcatel, Etc, Etc. The list goes on and on.Health Centers – We have the largest centers for Cancer research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world and other large health planning centers.We have enough colleges to keep us going: Texas A&M, U.T., Texas Tech, Rice, SMU, University of Houston, Baylor, UNT, Texas Women’s University, etc. Ivy grows better in the south anyway.We have a ready supply of workers. Just open the border when we need some more.We control a good portion of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc.In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard. We don’t have an army, but since everybody down here has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an army in 24 hours if we need it. If the situation really gets bad, we can always call Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over a couple of Texas Rangers.We are totally self sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs and vegetable produce and everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good. Don’t need any food from anywhere else.This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic of Texas in good shape. There isn’t a thing out there that we need and don’t have.Now to the rest of the United States under President Kerry: Since you won’t have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only President Kerry will be able to drive around in his 9 mile per gallon SUV. The rest of the United States will have to walk or ride bikes.You won’t have any TV as the space center in Houston will cut off your satellite communications. You won’t have any natural gas to heat your homes but since Mr. Kerry has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas. Signed, The People of Texas

Too funny… Thanks Dub.

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Posted on by John

This weekend Evan and Shadel brought Ella to Austin. It was their first trip to Austin since we moved into the new house, and Ella’s first trip ever (there are going to be a lot of those ‘firsts’ aren’t there?)

We had a great, relaxing and fun weekend.

On Friday night, we stayed home and watched a movie, then Christine and I took turns watching the baby during the night.

On Saturday, Christine and Shadel treated themselves to a visit to the salon. Evan and I spent the day visiting Home Depot, killing wasps nests, mowing the yard, replacing a few sprinkler heads, playing PS2 and Nintendo, and watching the baby. We all then went to Hula Hut for dinner before calling it a night at 8:30 or 9:00.

Sunday brought french toast and Lil’ Smokies for breakfast courtesy of Christine, and then Evan and I took a trip to Home Depot again before getting the garage somwhat into shape with the addition of 3 nice shelves and a little organization.

Then we had a late lunch at Freebirds World Burrito before the three of them headed back to Bellville.

Ella’s all of three weeks old now, and is a wonderful baby.

Josh and Elise came over for Sunday night dinner and Suprano’s. Josh made a mean queso for all of us, and we enjoyed the show while catching up on each other’s varied happenings.

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Posted on by John

Baby Ella turned one week old this past weekend… and she had lots of visitors all weekend.

Christine and I went down to Bellville and spent the weekend with Evan and Shadel, and had some fun times with the new little girl of the family. She’s truly a darling little baby, and is extremely well mannered. She makes the funniest faces, and poses for the camera well:

Ella has many caring people in her life, and we’re all blessed to know her.

There’s more pictures of Ella here to look at… see her taking her first car ride, taking a first bath, thinking hard and looking beautiful.

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 265 user reviews.

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Posted on by John

Well, she did it. Ella Christine was born to Evan and Shadel on Saturday, March 13th, 2004 at 10:22 pm.

She came into this world after about 18 hours of labor… poor Shadel was a trooper through all of it…

Ella is a beautiful little baby (see all of the photos here), and very well mannered.

She’s passing all of her tests with flying colors while at the hospital.Evan and Shadel are being model parents, and all of the grandparents, uncles and aunts and everyone else are very proud of them and Ella.

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 292 user reviews.

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Evan and Shadel are close to having their baby… only 9 more days until Shadel is due.

Shadel is doing fine… enjoying these final few days…We’re all looking forward to March 17th.

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Posted on by John

Christine and I have spent the last two weekends getting the house in a livable condition.

Our first task was to paint the second bedroom. We only changed our minds on the color scheme once (okay, maybe twice)… After two (or is it three now?) weekends, the room is painted, and we’ve moved the furniture into it.

I finally got around to installing the water filter on the line running to the ice-maker on the refrigerator. But, after installing it, I realized that the brass pipe running to the fridge was a) connected to the hot-water (bad according to the filter paper-work) and b) was crimped, meaning the pressure through that line was too low. So, after two or three trips to Home Depot, I finally got all of the pieces that I needed to tap a new line into the cold-water, and run a new line to the fridge filter… Good news: we have filtered water and ice again.

As spring rolls around, I’m looking to get a ton of top-soil or so delivered, so I can spread it across the yard… The yard is generally in great shape, but there are a few bare spots in the back under the trees, and I figure a good coat of new top-soil will help the grass grow in better this summer.

The house is finally taking shape, and feels like a home (instead of a small old house filled with boxes). We still haven’t found our silver-ware, and so, we’re eating with plastic forks and knives, but they work, and they’re pretty easy to clean up.

One last thing we’ll have to do soon is buy some dainty ‘grandmother’ type furniture for the front living room… the house just seems to want an antique couch or chair in the room.

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 196 user reviews.

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Chip and Christi had their baby last Friday (February 20, 2004) at 6 p.m at 6 lbs. 10oz and 19.5″long. I talked to Chip today, and he sounds like ‘the proud papa’ that I know he is. Mom is doing well, and Grandma and Grandpa were in town for the festivities.

Chip sent two pictures and a movie for all to enjoy…. update Chip sent along a second movie, this one taken 5 minutes after the first.

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 234 user reviews.

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Posted on by John

Received this email a few days ago, just now getting around to posting it:

From: James Teaff

To: Family

Date Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 12:45 PM

Sorry for the mass-email, but I need to run out and go buy a couple of items
we had no idea we actually “needed” for the baby.

Matthew James Teaff was born yesterday at 2:17pm of a c-section. Caro was in
labor for 12 hours, but the doctor made the call at the last minute because
the kid was having trouble fitting through Caro’s cute, but small pelvis.

Matthew was 7 lbs 15.6 oz, 21 inches long, and a head and chest of 13
inches.

Thank you all for your well wishes, and we expect we will be telling you all
how beautiful, smart, friendly, non-crying, helpful around the house Matthew
is in the next week or so. If we begin to make you all nausious with all the
“my kid is the best” notes we will be sending, let us know and I will take
you off the mailing list… jejeje.

James

Congratulations James and Carolina.

Photos posted here.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 216 user reviews.

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