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