Ben’s Blog

Yesterday the GVSU webteam, and Holly, helped move returning and incoming students into their dorms.  As we’re almost all alumni of GVSU we opted to help as alumni rather than employees as the perks are much better.  It was a long morning but a lot of fun - always nice to meet the students and their parents.

Maybe it is my mischevious look, but two parent’s made sure to tell me to not look through their daughter’s boxes and one parent followed me to their kid’s room to make sure I delivered the items to the room promised.  I will work on looking more trusting next year.

We also got a look at the newest dorms on Grand Valley’s campus and they are nothing short of spectacular.  The honor’s dorms have air conditioning, individual bedrooms with a huge living area and a dishwasher.  Compare that to my experience: sharing a walk-in closet sized room with a friend who’s bunk was 3 ft above my head, and we washed out shared hot-plate in the drinking fountain.  We also had to walk up hill both ways when going to class.  Good thing we only stayed there half the year!

I made a quick trip to Tecumseh this weekend, leaving around dawn Saturday morning and returning to Grand Rapids in time for dinner on Sunday. Its been a while since I’ve been down there, but this trip was mainly to help my mom a little in the garden and to switch vehicles with her so she could use the truck to move my youngest sister to Aquinas next week. Aside from physical labor I played with the dogs and “helped” Bailey with his swimming in the pond. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after Bailey “jumped” off the dock he was able to swim by himself to shore. We tried this twice and it was evident that Bailey, a beagle, doesn’t like water.

I’m not sure how much I really helped with the garden - I think I just made more work for us since I wanted to take some vegetables home. The project turned even larger when I decided I wanted to can corn and carrots in addition to the normal corn for freezing. One trip to the store later, for the pressure cooker, we have the final product:

I started canning salsa last year and now I have the bug…I think I am going to try to advance my skills next to include spaghetti sauce and chili. I’m not sure why this appeals to me - it is really more expensive than buying stuff at the store; I suppose I like knowing what I put in the jar.

While I was home I also helped my mom fill the water softener with salt - the water softener is in the basement under the original half of the house. The original farm house that we added onto toward the end of my stint in elementary school is over 150 years old. I’ve always been fascinated by the old Michigan basement as you can get a real sense of how homes were built then. Notice the logs that are used as floor joists and note the bark is still attached all these years later. After that I am struck by the stone walls…

I’ve been meaning to post a couple pictures of my salsa garden for a while - you may recall the great flood of 08 nearly wiped everything out very early on.  I’m starting to get a ton of tomatoes, but they’re all still fairly small and green.  To catch everyone up, here is a quick history in pictures.

Here is a shot after first planting everthing

After the flooding, we thought all was lost

After all that, the garden flourishes

I hope that everything continues to go well so that i can make loads of fresh salsa!  I’ll keep everyone posted as the saga continues.

We have a position open at Grand Valley State University for a web Designer/Developer type person. If you know of someone please send them the following link!

http://www.gvsujobs.org/applicants/Central?quickFind=179264

I saw the following video this morning on Fox News while waiting for the shuttle to take me from the car dealership to the office. No one else in the waiting area found this as amusing as I did, but I was laughing out loud.

A Central Illinois woman is in hog heaven. She won the top prize at one of the Illinois State Fair’s most popular events. Doris Probst whooped, hollered and oinked her way to prize in the hog calling competition.