Ben's Blog

Let me preface this with the fact that I watch and listen to a lot of news.  If I am in the car I listen to talk radio, when I am at home I watch either NBC news or Fox News about 50% of the time that the TV is turned on.  Given this I was a little suprised when I heard this on the news the other day:

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress and a strong critic of the Iraq war, died Wednesday after a brain hemorrhage, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Tubbs Jones, 58, died Wednesday evening of a brain hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm that burst and left her with limited brain function, said Eileen Sheil, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic, which owns the Huron Hospital in East Cleveland where Tubbs Jones died.

I wasn’t really shocked by the news, but rather that the only reason I know of Stephanie Tubbs Jones was because of her appearance on the Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert.  This reminded me of a conversation I had with a coworker once who got most of his news via John Stewart…  I wonder how many people are like him – relying on comedy central for news, or like me – retaining more information from these shows than I ever would have expected.  Anyways, just thought I would share as I found this interesting.

Verizon shipped a couple new phones to my office today – one was Holly’s new phone, the other was a replacement for my Samsung i760 which has a perfect imprint of my ear in the touchscreen.  Holly’s phone came well packed, surrounded with air packets; mine on the other hand came with a single bubble pack in a big box with my phone bouncing around.  What gets me is that someone had to make look at my box and make a decision…”Yes, I think one bubble pack will do…close up the box and ship’r out.”  Here are pictures for your viewing pleasure, click for larger images.

Note: one bubble pack on the right, phone in white box on the left...good enough for Verizon I guess.

Note: well packed phone

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.