News from MN, 7/23/2006

iH,

bw reporting in. All is well on the Eastern front. Got nasty hot last
weekend, but we finally got some rain this week.

Helen and I have been having fun on various adventures. In the first
photo, you can find her dog Toosi taunting her as she is stuck knee deep
in mud and her not-so-valiant boyfriend takes a picture rather than
rescues her. This is because he was also just stuck in mud and did not
want to get stuck again.

We had to go back up to Ikea last weekend to exchange a futon mattress.
This time we stopped in their food section and bought exotic Swedish
food stuffs (I think it used to be a fish), which we enjoyed in our own
private dining area (parking lot, 2nd/3rd pics). The encrypted numbers
on her hand are the secret locations to a cool chair that we bought for
my living room. They have papers available for writing down such
numbers, but Helen's hand seemed less losable.

Mom & Dad, very much enjoyed my birthday cloths and video rocket! The
4th pic shows Zach setting it up at the bottom of the hole. We had a
perfect launch and it managed to avoid both sides of the hole and every
tree and rooftop in the neighborhood, landing in the church parking lot.
The rocket recorded a great video, which I promptly mis-deleted. But
I did get a video from the ground of the rocket. Posted it to
http://brucewinter.net , in the videos link.

Zach is sad because he is Jessy-less for 10 days. She left yesterday
for a backpacking trip in Colorado with some friends. She bought a new
1 person tent, tested in the 5th pic.

I was lured back down into the hole last weekend. They then pulled the
ladder up and made me dig 75 buckets of dirt (a new record) before they
lowered it back down. I got a little bit dirty.

I can not say much about the 7th photo, as it involves a secret, not to
be published science experiment. But fear not, the experiment went off
without a hitch (boy did it go off!), and that is not hot magma from the
center of the earth bubbling up about to engulf Zach, but rather a light
bulb that we discovered after some digging.

Helen had a Mayo Neurology social event at the Foundation house last
week, so she invited her daughter Aya and myself. Dress was 'informal',
which meant suit jacket. I was the only tie-less guy there. Afterward,
we had fun touring the house. It was William Mayo's house, very fancy,
with a pipe organ that Aya played. The last 2 pics show us conducting
ourselves in proper conservative Mayo fashion.

Bruce

News from MN, 7/08/2006

Happy 4th + 4,

I celebrated the 4th by watching the Miles City 4th of July parade live,
from my living room. One of my MisterHouse friends who moved to Miles
City a few years ago sent me a link to a live Internet feed he had set
up. He zoomed in on Mom and Dad and the 2 beagles as they watched the
parade and as Mom gave Mom hugs to 2/3 of Miles City who walked by to
say hi.

Nick as been doing well at work, finishing all the tasks thrown at him
faster than expected. The 1st picture is of where we have been having
lunch, outside in an IBM courtyard. In the 2nd picture he is doing
pull ups in an IBM dungeon basement where they send all new recruits for
basic training.

The 3rd picture is of Z friend Mike baking up one $800 custom built
manifold. It baked well and Mike's car is now a functioning member of
the car clan, making my driveway happy. I'm down to 1 nonfunctional
driveway car and 2 garage cars.

The hole now has a fat bottom. Still about 17 feed deep, but wide enough
at the bottom to sit the entire convention of smart scientologists, with
room left over for South Park's Cartman (a chubby 10 year old). I was
lured to the bottom so do some digging last weekend, so I added some
cave art (5th pic.). I'm convinced that if real cavemen had had car
keys, they too would have carved such elegant structures.

After a digging session, Nick has a jumping ritual where he proves he
can fly over the dirt pile, no matter how high it has gotten. If I would
have taken that 6th picture 7/100ths of a second later, you would have
witnessed the mountain top being clipped. Not by his feet, but by
another part of the body that is not normally recommended for use in
clipping mountain tops.

The last 3 pictures are from adventures with Helen. She, her daughter,
and her border collie Tusie, drove out last weekend from New Hampshire.
On Thursday we drove up to Minneapolis and picked up a U-hall full of
beds and chairs from Ikea, a huge Swedish furniture store. The 7th
picture of us testing out the biggest item, a 9 foot round bed for her
10 foot square bedroom.

When backing the U-hall out of her driveway that night, I managed to
drive over her entire collection of not so fresh pile of bags of
garbage. So we crawled under her Suburo Outback and bit by bit
re-assembled the collection (last pic). It was quite romantic.

Bruce