One Decade Down

This coming weekend marks my 10 year Hickman High School reunion – The Class of 2000.  It took me awhile to find the Columbia Daily Tribune’s article about it (way back in their “archives”…that aren’t what I’d call “searchable”), mostly so I could remind myself of the statistics these kinds of things tend to include: 619 graduates, 73% of which were going on to four-year colleges, 13% to jobs, and the remainder to two-year schools or the military.

We’ll be heading down to Columbia this Friday to attend this year’s Hickman Homecoming Game, and hopefully we’ll get to see my old marching band play some of this year’s show while we’re at it.  Otherwise, the general “plan” is for people to get together for some Mizzou tailgating (which I won’t do, in favor of frolfing with Stu…) followed by a group dinner at Boone Tavern on Saturday night.  RSVPs for all of this were done over Facebook, so while I have some idea who is attending, I don’t know exactly because the invites were only sent to “fans” of “Hickman High School Class of 2000.”  If you weren’t a “fan” of that particular Facebook Group, you probably didn’t get the invite.  So yeah, to an extent, I have no idea who’s going to even be at this event, besides a few specific people I’ve chit-chatted with in the past few months.

That all aside, we’re due for a visit to Columbia.  We haven’t been down there for a few months now and Mom is itching to take Meg shopping for some winter clothes (which is good, ’cause Iowa is COLD).

But back to the Reunion.  This will be the first time most of my “Group of Friends” from high school meet Meg.  In a few cases, this will be the first time they meet Brooke!  I guess part of the fun of going to a 10 year High School Reunion is “reconnecting” with friends you haven’t seen in years (or a decade), but it’s going to be fascinating to see what trajectories we all ended up on.  I was friends with a wide variety of folks in high school, ranging from valedictorians to band geeks to space station simulators.  To date, I’m the only one I can think of from high school that was part of that group and also has a child.  I’m also one of the few that is married (although most have “significant others,” to some degree).  Considering 10 years has passed, I find those particular milestones to be rather interesting, as I’d argue that the preceding generations had a higher percentage of individuals that were married and had at least one kid 10 years after graduating high school (my Mom had 2 kids within 10 years of graduation).

I guess  I’m just reflecting on how I ended up here, as compared with others from my graduating class.  Whether it was always subconsciously in the plan to be married, have kids, and have a Ph.D. in time for my 10 year reunion.  Whether that notion was part of other people’s plans, or whether their lives took them in completely different directions than they’d otherwise intended.  Whether I will be considered the odd-man-out, or whether someone else’s shocking revelation will trounce anything I could come up with in this post.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not worried about going to the reunion.  On TV, you see people fretting about going back to their high school reunions, usually that they’ll seem somehow “less successful” than their brethren, or that they have memories of the “high school experience” that no one else remembers like you do (think of the season three 30 Rock episode, “Reunion“).  Despite my questions above, I’m just genuinely intrigued by the idea of how my experience differs from the experiences of the other people I hung out with in high school.  Personally, I think if we were to rate attendees based on their “successes” post-graduation, I’d rate fairly highly.  I guess I’m just wondering if I meet the expectations that my friends had 10 years ago, and if they will all meet mine.

I guess I just find it all to be “curious.”

Five Years

June 25, 2005 was our wedding day.  I’m not going to recount that day in particular (besides pointing out how friggin’ hot it was…), and I’m not going to write anything sappy in this post (as that really isn’t our style).  But, instead, I’m going to highlight a few old blog posts here as a reminder of various important (or less important) events in our lives over the course of the past 5 years.

(I’m doing this partially because I’ve been going through a lot of old posts, “tagging” them to make it easier for me to find in the future.  So, I’ve been reminded of quite a few things over the past few days of doing this!)

…and then…there were two…

“Yup, I’m married…crazy, eh? Brooke and I have moved into our new place in St. Louis and are almost done putting everything where it needs to go…by the end of tomorrow, we should be mostly done…until the next volley of wedding presents arrives this weekend…”

…fun with turtles…

“…and on a side-note, I get to play with my new praise band tonight at Webster Hills UMC…those drums won’t know what hit ‘em…”

Al…most…there…

“Otherwise, Brooke and I are preparing to move to Soulard (neighborhood in the City of St. Louis) from our current apartment.”

…what a weekend…

“Arguably the most pertinent part of the weekend, however, came on Sunday… Brooke and I were wanting to get a pet, so we finally did.”

Miracles Happen

“The moral is that it seems that this thing would have happened no matter what Dad was doing or where he was, so it’s pretty amazing that he was at the fire station with capable people instead of anywhere else.”

Meet Edie

“Well, we found Edith Ann at the Humane Society here in St. Louis yesterday…”Edie” for short…”

Yay!!

“So, I had a spur-of-the-moment interview today with a company called Bridges Community Support Services. It went really well, and at the end of the conversation, the CEO/owner offered me a job as a Community Support Worker.”

Edie: Wonder Dog

“We go downstairs to check out how exactly she got the door open. Apparently, as the picture above shows, she didn’t get the door open – she tore a new hole in the bars…”

Meet Meg

“Margaret Jean Linsenbardt (or “Meg,” as she’ll be called) was born at 8:57 am on Friday, March 5th. At birth, she weighed 6 lb 13 oz and measured 19.5″ tall.”

Fin

“Now that I’m out of school, after 22 years, one could argue that I’m finally ready to join the ‘real world.'”

Happy Anniversary, Wife.  🙂


Scion xA

Scion xA

Well, time to buy another car… Now that Brooke has a job, we can afford to replace her 1995 Nissan Altima with something a tad bit more reliable, and something that gets better mileage. Well, up until tonight, she was dead set on getting a 2007 Toyota Yaris. The draw to these cars is that they are said to get at least 30 mpg in city driving conditions and approach 40 mpg on the highway. Obviously, it’s a very small car, but it’s relatively cheap and, being a Toyota, it is reliable and has high resale value.

We went to Lou Fusz Toyota tonight because they had a Yaris sedan that we could test-drive, with automatic transmission (neither of us know how to drive a manual…more on that shortly…). They didn’t have a hatchback (which is what Brooke wanted) and they probably wouldn’t have one for 4 – 8 weeks because they’re in such high demand. The sedans are easier to come by, so we figured that we’d better test-drive one while we could. Brooke liked it, overall, and it had all the features we wanted, but no amenities like power locks/windows.

I asked the salesman about the Scion xA (’cause they sell both), as far as value goes. Essentially, we found out that the base model Yaris, without manual transmission, is $12,500. The sedan we test-drove, with an automatic transmission, was more like $13,500. That’s just for the automatic, not including things like power windows and locks, and various other amenities (seats, shocks, etc.). However, if we looked at an xA, you get a four door car (rather than two), automatic transmission, power locks, windows, nicer interior, better stereo system, and anti-lock breaks…for about $600 more.

So, we test-drove an xA that they had and Brooke liked it more. Honestly, the car had a smoother ride to it, the seats were more comfortable, the display was a little better, and there’s more room, due to the four doors. That, and the mileage ratings are almost equivalent to a Yaris (slightly worse…but what’s 1 mpg?). Also, Scions are tending to get higher re-sale value than a comparable Toyota…if you look around online, you’ll see that frequently, you can buy a new xA for the price of a used xA…usually because people have done some “upgrades” to theirs, but still…

Long story short, we put a down-payment down and they’re going to get us an xA. It’ll take about four weeks to get here (maybe a little less) and we’ll have the opportunity to test-drive it and decide for sure, so we’re not obligated to buy it…but we 90% will… The one pictured above is similar to the one we’re getting, minus the wheels and “spoiler”…

Hopefully it comes sooner so I can drive my Elantra again… 😛

Good week(end)…

So, we went on a float trip last Thursday with my lab…went pretty well and we generally avoided the tremendous downpour that descended upon St. Louis later in the afternoon.? The temperature was nearly perfect for floating (on the Huzzah River) and the sun stayed mostly behind the clouds.

Anyway, Brooke and I spent our First Anniversary going to Hermann for the weekend, again.? We drove in on Friday and went to dinner at the Stone Hill restaurant…good eats there, yo…? The next day, we went to Stone Hill and Hermannhoff for tasting, and then to the Robller Winery for more tasting and some blues music, which was pretty nice.? Then, we went to see the town production of “Damn Yankees,” which we’d never seen before…and honestly, it could have been a bit better…but hey, it was good entertainment.

Regardless, we had a good weekend, even without TV (not that we would have had it here…) and came back with four bottles of wine…and, the best part being, that we only spent some of our tax refund on the weekend…w00t!

Now, we’ll see if this past weekend lives up to next weekend… 😉

…is the semester over yet?

Well, I’ve got one more exam in my main class to complete, then two exams (one tomorrow, coincidentally…) in my “special topics” class, neither of which should be terribly stressful.? So yeah, my semester is mostly over…? Along with that, I now have keys to Dr. Macarthur’s lab and will be getting started on some tissue culture work next Monday, so I finally get to delve into some research, rather than just wasting away in classes…

Regardless, I’m on the “home stretch” to be done with my first year of graduate school, which is nuts…? The year went really quickly, it seems…? Heck, I’ve been married for almost 10 months!? …and how blissful they’ve been 😛

Anyway, I’m glad the semester’s almost done, as I’m sure many of you are, too (except Kristen, perhaps!).? Just gotta make it a few…more…weeks…

Tomorrow night in Kirksville, though…that’ll help tremendously… 😉

…busy, busy, busy…

Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy lately… This past weekend, Brooke and I drove to Sedalia for Anne Gumbel’s wedding…it was lovely, of course, but I didn’t get to see as many folks (i.e. Alex, Gavin, Jess, etc.) as I would have wanted to. Tony was along, so that was semi-entertaining… 😛 On Sunday, Brooke and I went with my parents to Lohman and showed some wedding pictures to my grandmas. I think they were happy to see us…but probably somewhat amazed by the technology I brought along (they’ve never seen a laptop, so far as I know…). I’m close to getting some pics up on the wedding website for download, but for now, many of them are viewable through this part of my website.

Otherwise, Brooke and I are looking into replacing one of our cars in the near future, I’m thinking… Both our cars are over 100,000 miles and we’ve had some issues with Brooke’s car recently, so it may be wise to get a better, lower-mileage car to use for driving to Columbia and Hannibal… So yeah, if you know of any cars under 50,000 miles that don’t cost too much and are semi-reliable, lemme know… 😛

But yeah, St. Louis is treating us well… Still keeping busy at work, but not doing anything particularly special right now. We got another shipment of turtles in today, so we’ve got more to “play” with in the coming weeks…hard to believe that tomorrow marks the halfway point of my summer lab rotation…

…on the other hand, Thursday marks my first payday…w00t… 😀

Wedding Pictures

So Nathan has been uploading to my Gmail drive all day and I’ve got some pictures, but it’s moving rather slowly…by the end of the weekend, I hope to have many of them posted online somewhere…it’ll probably be early next week before they’re up on the wedding website in a download-able fashion… As you may have noticed, the pictures I post in my Photos section aren’t able to be downloaded (easily), but the ones I’ll post on the Wedding Website will be sized for download and can be printed at Wal-Mart or something…

Enjoy…I’ll post more as I receive them…

…of tropical storms and homeless people…

I’ll try to make this mostly brief…but there is lots to tell… First of all, there are pictures posted in the Photos section now; click on “New Apartment” to see pictures of our mostly-set-up place and “New Orleans” for our trip down south… There are some pictures in “Hermann” of the B&B we stayed at a few weeks ago…

So yeah, we got down there in the middle of Tropical Storm Cindy…and needless to say, there was lots of water… There were over 250,000 people without power on Wednesday morning; thankfully we still had power, yet no cable…grrrrr… Anyway, the next day we walked around the French Quarter and explored a bit…went to a cafe, had some French food, etc… Essentially, we just explored a bit that first day…and it was gorgeous out, surprisingly… On Thursday morning, we went on the Nat’l Park Service historical tour, which was quite cool. We explored some more and then took the afternoon off (nice and humid), then went and got muffalettas (a New Orleans specialty…something like a Schlotsky’s sandwich, I think…but with lots of pickled olives)…which were also incredible… The cool thing about Thursday night was that we went to Preservation Hall and saw some really, really good jazz music…go buy a CD…it’s worth it… On Friday morning, we went on a cemetary tour, lectured by the guy who maintains the historic tombs. These tombs were above ground, so that was kinda cool…this is done for religious reasons, but also because the water table is very, very high in New Orleans. We also chilled Friday afternoon in the A/C and then went out to a nice place for dinner (mmmm…jambalaya…) and then walked around Bourbon Street for a bit…

Anyway, overall, the trip was good…the weather could have been a bit better, but I guess we did decide to go a). in hurricane season and b). when it’s really humid. It was certainly interesting to see people preparing for Hurricane Dennis; some people cared and others didn’t… The one thing I wasn’t expecting was all the homeless people. I mean, I’ve seen them before, but have never seen so many in a concentrated area and certainly had never walked by them before on the street…really kinda sad… Apparently, Louisiana has 1 in 4 people below the poverty line… Regardless, I guess it was a bit more shocking than I expected…

So yeah, check out the pictures…they’re online and all pretty-like… I’ll write more later…

I'm old…

It’s very amazing what the folks at the Columbia Daily Tribune can dig up on a person… Apparently, I was in an article on June 25, 1995…a full 10 years before my wedding… Scroll down the page to the June 25th listings…

Thanks, Dad, for pointing out this embarrassment… 😛

I’m old…

It’s very amazing what the folks at the Columbia Daily Tribune can dig up on a person… Apparently, I was in an article on June 25, 1995…a full 10 years before my wedding… Scroll down the page to the June 25th listings…

Thanks, Dad, for pointing out this embarrassment… 😛