'It's the right place'

Andrew, Kissy Missy and I ventured into the Great White North over the weekend, and Andrew confirmed for himself what he already thought he knew: He's committed to engineering at Michigan Tech.

Andrew fills out the inevitable paperwork as the day begins in the lobby of the Rozsa Center, Tech's fabulous performing-arts center. The Rozsa Center has the largest stage north of Midland. Engineers in costume, eh?

Andrew toured the buildings, met people and had a chance to explore the place. On the right is the R.L. Smith Mechanical Engineering building, the high-rise where Andrew is likely to spend an immense amount of time over the next few years. It houses Tech's world-class mechanical engineering program.

It's spring, so the cars frozen in over the winter are beginning their emergence. Actually, this is a piece of professional public art, created in conjunction with Tech's famous Winter Carnival. The whole story of the frozen car is here.

Now, Michigan Tech's student body is only 21.3 percent women, according to the university's public relations office. How does it happen that Andrew ends up having lunch with three women?

He's comfortable on the campus, even a campus where this is what "spring" looks like.

While Andrew was touring the campus, Kissy Missy and I took in some of the sites. We went to the Library. Capital L.

The Library began life as a student bar in the late 1960s. According to its menu, it was a beer and peanuts-on-the-floor
kind of place.

These days, it's a whole lot more upscale. It's a brew pub with a nice menu. It's a little pricey, and I don't think it's much of a
student hangout any more.

The professors and the parents, however, really, really like it.



Over on the other side of Portage Lake is Hancock. That's not a sidewalk; those are stairs leading down to the Lift Bridge.

I'm just glad the minivan had good brakes. Going up the hills was enough to make Kissy Missy scream a couple of times.

And the snow has melted back considerably, eh? Yes, this is "melted back."

Andrew had the chance to meet with a staff member at Mont Ripley, the ski hill owned by the university. He learned the facility hires committed, passionate, expert skiers as staff members - and they get season passes.


Andrew took a dozen runs down the hill and pronounced it "fantastic."


It was a 943.5-mile round trip, Friday through Sunday, but Andrew was in his element.
Send money.

Minden and München tour the new place

Nice counter! Is this where the goodies are going to be? Where are the kitty treats?

This is a great place for a sink! Nice wraparound counter, nice cabinets.

But you have to show me how to turn on the water.

Oooh! A gas-fired fireplace! Flip that switch on the wall, so I can stretch out and relax in front of the fire.
These are great! What do you call them? Stairs? And you got them for us? Almost as much fun as Cedar Point!

Yep. I love stairs. I really love stairs. Watch for me on the stairs. If you trip over me and hurt yourself, you'll deserve it for tripping on the cat.

A window just isn't complete without a kitty. Could you turn up the sunshine, Dad?

You know it's a home when the cats are in the windows. We'll let you live here, too, Dad, as long as you don't get in the way.

Moved!

The first load moves into the new townhouse
long after dark on Day One.

After years of hoping, hundreds of hours of work, months of delays and glitches and just plain weird stuff, we have a new home, a new address and perhaps for the first time ever, a home that actually reflects who we are.

It's a townhouse in town. It's brand-new, fresh, clean and terrific.
The move into the place actually came on Feb. 22. The deal for the house was complex and out-of-the-box. The real estate market has been awful, as everyone knows. But the developer of the condominium townhouses came up with a deal: An independent appraiser would set a price for our house in Lake Isabella.

Megan and Robert move my
grandmother's antique dresser.

We would market that house aggressively for 45 days, and if at the end of that time, the house was unsold, he would buy it. He gets out from under a high interest rate construction loan. We get a new home. This is, however, pretty far out of the box, and it took months for the developer to get the financing together. It finally came together.

Furniture, equipment and general debris
get loaded from the Lake Isabella house.

We proudly put the old house on the market in September 2005.
Ahem. The market tanked. The house just sat there. When this deal came along, it was too good to pass up. At one point, we were to close a few days before Christmas, and I declared that the first thing we'd do would be to put up a Christmas tree in the balcony over the front door. That closing date didn't happen, but I was able to keep my promise: The night we moved in, the Christmas tree went into the balcony over the front door.

Dad and Kissy Missy look on
as Robert finishes placing the
Christmas tree in the balcony.

There have been all the dozens of little things to take care of as we've moved in - including a misbehaving furnace, satellite TV (I will NOT use cable), WiMax Internet (I will NOT use cable), and the everyday stuff of living. The living room and garage are piled high with stuff. The first part of putting away stuff is to figure out where "away" is, and sometimes that's tough. All in good time. We're home.

It will be a very nice living room
once it stops being a storage shed.

Happy V.D.

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A Valentine's Day gift from us!

Winter guard

Until I saw a guard competition, I had absolutely no idea that such a thing went on.
I got asked (drafted, really) to drive six teen-agers to Grand Rapids Northview High School Saturday so they could take part in a Michigan Color Guard Circuit competition. The Mt. Pleasant High School guard finished second in Class AA with a score of 48.2 - behind Portage Northern, a comparable-sized school outside Kalamazoo.


The guard warms up in the Northview auxiliary gym.


Guard is an interesting combination of modern dance, military-style drill, marching-band flags and pure athleticism. In band season, it complements the marching band. On its own, it's three to four minutes of fun to watch.


The Mt. Pleasant guard "blossoms" during its show.


The guard swirls and twirls on the floor and produced some solid crowd reaction.


Coach John Demkowicz gives some advice to the guard, left. At right, Katherine listens intensely.

The pep band

Just because football season's over doesn't mean the band goes home. Robert's happily engaged in being part of the Mt. Pleasant High School pep band.
True - they just kind of sit there and play in the stands during basketball games, but it's fun, and adds to the atmosphere of the games.


Big Brother Matthew talks to Katherine as they soak up some of the atmosphere of a game in the Oiler gym.








Sun photographer Ryan Evon pays attention to something out on the floor. Ryan! The real stars are up here!











And why isn't it a surprise that Katherine finds a way to be a part of it all?

The Highest Honor

I had the high honor of speaking at the court of honor for three new Eagle Scouts last week.
It was 13 years ago this month that Troop 798 came back to life. Blessed Sacrament Church in Midland had a strong Cub Scout pack, but too few boys were crossing over into Boy Scouts.
The troop began with the blessing of the church, a hundred bucks, five Boy Scouts and a rookie Scoutmaster – me.
It changed lives, perhaps none as much as mine. Over the past 13 years , 10 boys have become Eagles from Troop 798, earning Scouting's highest honor.




I was humbled when I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the court of honor for Adam Beach, Stephen Bischoff and Garett LaChance.




I talked about success – and how it's elusive, how it sometimes has to be redefined in light of reality, how we learn the most from our failures, and how, when we succeed once, we prepare ourselves to succeed again..
I have to judge Troop 798 to be a resounding success.


Eagle Scouts Adam Beach, Stephen Bischoff and Garett LaChance take the Eagle Pledge.


Junior Assistant Scoutmaster Patrick Sandoval speaks at the court of honor. I also had the honor of speaking at his court of honor; his two older brothers were among the first five Scouts in Troop 798, and also are Eagle Scouts.

A plaque names all the Troop 798 Eagles: John Ballard 1998; Jeffrey Sandoval 1998; Steven Sandoval 1998; Brendan Eash 1999; Eric Gustafson 1999; Erik Rakus 1999; Patrick Sandoval 2005; Adam Beach 2007; Garett LaChance 2007; Stephen Bischoff 2007.

(Photos by Katherine Ranzenberger)

... and for a limited time only ...

Gee, earlier this year, Andrew got an invitation in the mail to apply to MIT.
What kind of invitations is Robert getting in the mail? Hmmm.
I wonder if anyone should tell the good people at Playboy that Robert is, um, 14.
Although that's a little older than I was when I first began, er, reading the articles. Yeah. That's right.
But Robert just shrugged when I pointed out that the offer included a DVD.
And his grandmother is worried about dirty pictures on the Internet.

Snowball fight!

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Happy holidays from all of us!

Faster, faster, faster

I just checked the speed of our high-speed connection from Lake Isabella, and I'm pleased.
That's a lot faster than when I checked it last March, shortly after it was installed. Not bad for the boonies, not bad at all.
This is one downside of moving to town. The Internet connectivity may not be as good.
There's always Charter Cable, but after listening to a myriad of complaints about the service, I think I'd rather revive the Verizon dial-up.
Verizon doesn't offer DSL in the new neighborhood. (What is WRONG with those people?)
There are a couple of wireless providers who might be able to provide a connection. We'll have to check.
Meanwhile, I like that speed from Winn Telecom's Motorola Canopy.

There’s no forgetting Christmas

It’s a quiet Christmas morning.
We’re still in Lake Isabella, which wasn’t the way the plan was originally made.
(Make plans. Don’t plan outcomes.)
The original plan called for us to close on the townhouse last week, make a mad scramble to move in, and celebrate Christmas at the new place.
That didn’t work.
We’re not really sure what happened, but the closing got hung up in legal stuff on the end of the townhouse seller. The sign on the townhouse porch’s railing says “sold,” but that’s not quite true.
We’ve had two closing dates, and they both fell apart at the last minute. Part of me wants to use the word “nightmare,” but that’s way, way too strong.
“Nightmare” is what I saw on the way back from learning that the latest closing date had evaporated: A medical helicopter swooping down to land at Central Michigan Community Hospital, preparing to take someone to a trauma center or neurological intensive-care unit. “Nightmare” is what happened to a 17-year-old Mt. Pleasant High School student on Christmas Eve, when he rolled his 2007 Ski-Doo at high speed and suffered severe facial injuries. That also involved a helicopter ride.
“Nightmare” is what happened in Martiny Township last night – a 34-year-old woman is in jail facing felonious assault charges after deputies answered a “shots fired” complaint. (Usually that kind of stuff doesn’t happen until Christmas night, after people have spent all day getting drunk with the relatives they don’t like.)
“Nightmare” is what I saw as I drove by the cemetery across the tracks from the newspaper on Christmas Eve – a burial. There were probably 100 people gathered in the snow around a new grave, laying to rest a loved one they obviously did like.
Business has been good for my friends in the funeral business the last week or so. On Christmas Eve, six brand-new obituaries popped into my inbox.
Those kinds of traumas will echo for a very long time down through the generations of many families.
My own grandfather died 15 years before I was born. Ordinarily, that would make him a vague, shadowy figure I never knew – but he died on Christmas Day. I have to look up and make sure of the dates of my father’s death, my mother’s death, my brother’s death. But there’s no forgetting Christmas, and despite – or maybe because of -- my parents’ best efforts, that sheen of sadness and loss still permeates the holiday.
It doesn’t help that I work in two industries – the media and education – both with insanely busy times during December. The year’s profit for a publication all comes in December – and the college semester ends in December. Even without the holiday, everything’s busy, exhausting and mentally draining.
Add on the expectation of a Sparkle City Christmas, and things move close to the edge. Now toss in a mortgage and a move. Those are listed by a lot of mental health professionals as almost as stressful as the death of a loved one, physical illness or trauma, or divorce.
No, this delay isn’t really a nightmare. Maybe it’s a salvation, keeping all our heads from exploding. The closing delay is a paperwork problem, and it’s someone else’s problem besides. It will work, but it takes patience.
But tell that to Kissy Missy, who had dreamed of a perfect Christmas in the new house. Tell that to Andrew, whose last Christmas at home will be among the boxes stacked in the living room. Tell that to Katherine and Robert.
So we’re still here at Lake Is, the living room stacked with boxes, half of our stuff inaccessible, the rest unlocateable in the turmoil. The decorations remain packed – they were supposed to go up at the new place.
There are such great expectations for Christmas – a perfect family, perfect cookies, perfect decorations to complement a perfect meal in a perfect house. Well, we didn’t make it this year.
But what we have is a white Christmas, gorgeous snow in the woods and the fields. We have quiet, instead of stress. We have gifts, not lavish, but gifts nonetheless. A ham will go in the oven, potatoes on the stove, and the house will be warm.
And perhaps the biggest gift of all: A chance to rest, recuperate, be with each other without deadlines, without schedules, without trauma and tension and tardiness.
Besides, now we have 365 ½ days (2008 is a leap year) to get the next one right.