Ha-Low ... Is This The Soady Deer Camp?

Its that time of year again. Yesterday, to mark the opening of deer season, we watched the classic big buck story, Escanaba in da Moonlight. This is the tale of how The Buckless Yooper got his buck. Yooper as in a person from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

The principals in this story are the Soady family along with their friend Jimmer Negamanee from Menominee, and a lost Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officer recently exiled from Detroit to Escanaba. The actors include Jeff Daniels, Harve Presnell, Joey Albright, Wayne David Parker, Randall Godwin, and Kimberly Guerrero.

We have both the regular DVD which is available from Amazon as well as the "making of" DVD, A Picture from Home: The Journey Through 'Escanaba in da Moonlight' which is available from Jeff Daniel's Purple Rose Films web site.

While watching this, my wife asked how old is Harve Presnell? So I looked him up on iMDB and found that he died this last summer at the age of 75 from pancreatic cancer.

This movie came out in the Spring of 2001 and played mostly in the Mid-West. It was released on VHS and DVD on 15 October 2002, at which time I ordered copies shipped to family all over the United States.

Looking back though my email archives, I note that Jimmer Negamanee looks quite a bit like one of the members of my Grandfather's survey crew from back when they laid out so many of the highways across the U.P. back in the late teens, early twenties.

Project Valour-IT Current Standings

Update: 13 Nov 2009 - Veteran's Day Finish Line

Project Valour-IT

This is part of the annual fund raising for Project Valour-IT.

My gift to them is to Team Navy, in honor of my father who served in the Navy SeaBees at the tail end of WWII and during Korea. As you can see above I helped to break the $100K barrier. The challenge to the Teams was to break the $140K barrier with each team raising $35K. A couple years ago, Team Navy raised the most. This year it looks like the Marines will take honors.

The name Valour-IT originally stood for Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. Seeing as many of our young service people use the technology of cell phones and the internet to communicate with family at home. This project was a way for injured troops to continue to communicate even though they were at Walter Reed and their hands were bandaged.

The back story can be found here, CPT (now MAJ) Chuck Z's blog can be found here, and Fuzzy Bear Lioness' (FbL) blog can be found here.

FbL's Selected Valour-IT Posts:

• Just Read This
• This is What It's Like
• More than Just a Laptop
• Three Kings and Valour-IT
• Bryan Anderson and Valour-IT
• CPT Ziegenfuss and Valour-IT
• Buzz Robertson and Valour-IT
• Travelogue II: The VA Hospital

Twenty Five Years Ago

Sagacitas and The Thomas
25 years ago


This picture was found while browsing through our old pictures.

Two Brothers

The Thomas (L) and CCPhysist (R)

They Did It

Today is the Day

Sagacitas-Rodney
Sagacitas and Rodney will be united in matrimony September 26. The bride-to-be is a graduate of Grandville High School and Michigan State University. She and her parents are of Grandville. The future groom is a graduate of Coopersville High School, Grand Valley State University and Western Michigan University. He and his parents are of Coopersville.

ArtPrize Grand Rapids

The full description of ArtPrize can be found at their Official Site.

This is an international competition backed with $450,000 in prize money. The top prize is $250,000, 2nd prize is $100,000, 3rd prize is $50,000, 4th through 10th prizes split the remaining money.

The public votes on the competition using an up-down mechanism similar to Digg.

The first week's voting determines the top 10 pieces of art.

The second week's voting determines the finish placement within the top 10.

Local coverage of ArtPrize can be found in the Grand Rapids Press on MLive.

Pictures of the art can be found in the Flickr: The ArtPrize Grand Rapids Pool.

I find the logo to be too cute. If you turn the logo on its side, you see "The Calder", La Grande Vitesse, which has become part of the official logo of the City of Grand Rapids:



Update:

The winner was Open Water no. 24



But personally, I liked the Moose welded out of many, many nails.

So where were we now?

Ah yes, several months ago I mentioned this.

Anyway, we are now about a month before the wedding and last weekend the groomsmen, Dads and such were measured for their tuxes.

We will be wearing something along the lines of the following:

My hair is not that dark.

Officially Summer

Last night I was greeted by my little friends as I worked on opening the pool.

I have fireflys, so everything is right with the world.

No Great Surprise Here

Your results: You are Mr. Scott

Mr. Scott 75% Worf 75% Mr. Sulu 70% Geordi LaForge 65% Will Riker 65% Chekov 60% Uhura 60% Deanna Troi 60% James T. Kirk (Captain) 55% Jean-Luc Picard 55% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 50% Beverly Crusher 50% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 45% Spock 30% Data 30%

You are a fun-loving foreigner with an amazing ability to get any job done on time. Often described as a "Miracle Worker".

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz
Must just be my purty face and rude engineering skilz.