All Packed

Our little Subaru is pretty much packed up for our big trip. I think we're taking everything we own. When we were young, with 3 kids and a dog, and full time jobs, we used to throw things in the camper and go camping for a week with not much fuss. These days, it takes us a week to get ready to go away for a week. Go figure.

Stopped in to say good-by to Mother - got her some new lotion (Gold Bond) for her itchiness. The beautician was alarmed at how much she has been scratching herself. We discussed Laurie, Chip and Dylan, Mother's assets, Concord Place, a little football, etc. etc. She seems fine - except that she's acting like we're going away for a month instead of a week.

Did some shopping at Meijer, Walmart, and Staples - now we have everything we need. (!)
We hope to hit the road before noon tomorrow. Sniders have been warned!

"Big Trip"

Hey! We're going to take a trip! It's been years! Since Dad died, we've stuck around to be near Mother, but now that she is comfortably situated, we feel free to wander again!

It starts tomorrow - we'll drive to Sniders and spend two nights. Saturday we go to the University of Michigan/Eastern game, and Sunday is the Kanitz Family Reunion in Saline. I've been looking forward to it because it's the culmination of my Family Tree Project - we're taking 41 books with us, and most of them are reserved already.

Sunday night we'll stay in Fremont, Ohio - Monday night near State College, Pennsylvania (Chip said "Don't forget to get your shots!") - Tuesday night in Frederick, Maryland, and Wednesday - our destination - JANA'S HOUSE in Washington, D.C.

Wednesday is Jana's b-day, and her boss gave us all tickets to the Nationals baseball game - how much fun is that?!? Thursday is Dick's b-day, and he will be allowed to do almost whatever he wants.

Jana wants to show us her new office, which I'm really looking forward to, and
she wants to take us to an Improv performance also. (She's on the Board of WIT, Washington Improv Theater.) And there are dozens of virtual caches in D.C., so we'll never run out of things to do.

We'll most likely leave Sunday morning, September 24 and drive as far as Youngstown, Ohio.
The next night we'll either be home, or stop somewhere around Midland.

We are just about all packed - just last minute items to stick in the suitcase tomorrow morning, and then we're off. Go Blue! Go Nationals!

Oh Boy

Oh Boy, yesterday the physical, today the dental prophylaxis. It's just a coincidence that everything is happening at once. So now I have the cleanest teeth in the neighborhood, and two more appointments coming up in October. One is for bleaching, and one is for making minor repairs.

While I was trapped in the dental chair, Dick went to the Library to find out whether our laptop works in a wireless environment. It does.

Today we had brunch at the Omelet Shoppe - best thing about having these appointments is going out for brunch!

Let's Get Physical

Yes today is the day I've really been looking forward to: the day that I get a physical exam and a mammogram - a veritable walk in the park. It helps that my doctor is the world's best doctor.
http://www.munsonhealthcare.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/mhc.woa/wa/PhysiciansListDA/DisplayPhysician?id=474&wrapper=physicians

In actuality, the anticipation was so awful that the reality was "not so bad". I had all of the tests possible to do on bodily fluids, and the mamm was not as bad as I remembered.

Dr. Burke is referring me to a dermatologist to take a look at a skin thing I have - no big deal. Coincidently, the dermatologist's name is Dr. Saunders, the same name as the pediatrician we went to for years in Ann Arbor. Cosmic.

And I got to meet Dick for brunch at Hard Luck, so that made my day.

My Daughter the Corporate Barracuda

BRAG, BRAG, BRAG!

Who's Who in the Leadership of the U.S. :

The following individuals are listed in the News Media Yellow Book and The Leadership Library® on the Internet.



David Steck, CNN
Craig Stedman, Computerworld
Bill Steiden, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jana Steiger, CQ.com
Paul Steiger, The Wall Street Journal
William Steigerwald, The News Journal
Tom Steighorst, Sun Sentinel
Valerie Steiker, Vogue


Copied from The American Press Institute: (The caps are mine.)
CQ.com goes from automated to custom made

While BaltimoreSun.com has migrated to the use of a shared database, CQ.com, the Web operation of Congressional Quarterly, has evolved from an almost entirely database-driven subscription service to a robust site that more resembles other newspaper-based Web sites.
"Because we first came from this database background, when we first went on the Web, we had a tradition of having everything being 100 percent automated," said JANA STEIGER, editorial product development director. "No editors touched content that was on our front page. We evolved from that and have a little more editorial control."
But while its home page has evolved, STEIGER pointed out that because of CQ.com's heavy emphasis on e-mail delivery, much of its audience remains oblivious to any home page changes.
"When we were going out to gather information from customers [in response to a redesign] we talked to people who had no idea we had redesigned the site. They thought we still had frames, because all they would do is click their email. [They would say] 'Oh, I never click through.' Because our customers are paying us, we're not ad-driven. We have the luxury of not being wedded to whatever gets the most [Web] traffic."


From the CQ Masthead:

Editorial Masthead

Editorial Product Development Director: Jana Steiger
Senior Editors: George Codrea, Camille Kurtz, Kit Unger
Federal Information Editors: Jorge Banales, Betty Richardson, Brendan Spiegel, Yee Ling Woo BillTrack: Jon Lewallen, Neil Ripley


Jana will be making a presentation at the September 29th meeting of the Washington D.C. chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association:

Congressional Quarterly Case Study
Date and time:September 29, 2005 (Thursday)7:00-9:00 p.m.

ProgramDinner: 6:00-7:00 p.m. at Meiwah for those who would like to join us (directions below)

Location: Congressional Quarterly, Inc1255 22nd Street N.W.Washington, D.C. 20037

Description:E-mail alerts are a handy way to let users know when new content has been added to your web site. But how do you make sure every piece of mail you send users is something they really want? How do you control the volume of mail and the pertinence of the content? Where is the boundary between giving users control over their own parameters, and making alerts easy to create and manage? And what about the special needs of BlackBerry users?

Congressional Quarterly has been addressing these issues since 1998, when it launched its first e-mail alert service. Now, after experimenting with many different approaches, our speaker, Jana Steiger, will share what she's learned along the way. In this case study, you'll learn the top seven usability problems of e-mail alerts, and the strategies one development team has taken to correct—or at least diminish—them.

Speaker: Jana Steiger is the Director of Editorial Product Development for Congressional Quarterly, where she oversees the development of new Web products and design prototypes, as well as ongoing improvements to CQ's market-leading online news and legislative tracking service, CQ.com. In her 14 years at CQ, Jana has filled a number of roles -- product editor, interface developer, newsroom operations manager, usability specialist, and product requirements writer. This broad range of experience gives her a multi-faceted understanding of product development, allowing her to balance the needs of users, developers, and product owners against project deadlines and cost.

Jana graduated from the University of Michigan. She has presented at Comdex and the Online News Association, and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia. She's excited about swapping stories with DC usability professionals, and looks forward to this event!
Registration: Advance registration is recommended.

Happy Birthday Mother

Today is Mother's 97th birthday.

It was very interesting to see how Concord Place celebrates the birthdays of the residents. After she ate lunch in her room, we wheeled her down to the dining room.

There was a beautiful large birthday cake inscribed to Marian, and all of the residents sang Happy Birthday. I cut the cake and Dick served it. Betsy dished up the ice cream and served the punch.

There were a couple of very gracious toasts from the residents. Mr. Petertyl, who is 102 years old, raised his plastic cup of punch and said, "I am honored and pleased to attend your birthday."

It was all very nicely done, and everyone had a good time. Mother was quite touched by the whole thing.

Labor Day Friday

We cached in and around Holland and Saugatuck. Both Saugatuck and Grand Haven remind me of Grand Bend, Ontario. Saugatuck is openly touristy - great shops, great beaches, great atmosphere.

Then it was off to Battle Creek by way of Allegan.

Off to Ann Arbor

Labor Day weekend - and first Univ. of Mich. home football game weekend - so we decided to leave a little bit early and do some geo-caching on the west side of the state. The weather is predicted to be spectacular for the entire weekend, so we think we'll have good luck in that department.

We're listening to NPR so we're keeping current with developments in New Orleans. It's so chilling to hear the reports of constant suffering with no help in sight. Our government may be guilty of human rights violations. No one seems to be in charge of relief efforts.

We found 7 or 8 caches today, saw a couple of deer, and thoroughly enjoyed our drive.

We're not staying with Sniders this weekend, because I don't feel confident about how I may feel after going to the game on Saturday. I'm still a little nervous about it, although I'm also excited to see our new reserved parking space and gauge the distance between the parking and the stadium. We have reservations in motels for all three nights that we'll be away - Holland, Battle Creek, and Flint.

Observations on West Michigan cities - Pentwater is a nice, tourist-friendly small town right on Lake Michigan. It was crowded with people, shoppers, bathers, and cruisers like us. It reminded me of Leland.

Grand Haven is a marvelous place! http://www.lakemichigancam.com/ It's a combination of a Larger Leland with a smaller Traverse City, and it's right on Lake Michigan with spectacular beaches, city parks, and very upscale shops. We love Traverse City and Leelanau, but I have to say that Grand Haven is strong competition. It's so lovely. The drive from Grand Haven to Holland was beautiful, shady, calm, and relaxing. The homes were so well-kept and attractive. The road was winding and lush with trees and flowers. We were impressed.

Holland is a nice city - really pleasant city parks and magnificent beaches. I like Traverse City better.

ATMs, Roma, Sears, and Seuss

While Dick was working at the Visitor Center, I went over to the Huntington Bank and made myself the account manager for Mother's account - I will be getting the statements instead of having them sent to Concord Place. I also arranged for an ATM card for that account - Hooray!! It's so much easier than writing a check to myself every time Mother needs something.

Visited Mother - we had a great conversation. She's relieved about not receiving bank statements - she gets a little agitated every time she gets one because she thinks she's supposed to do something and she doesn't know what to do.

I tried to explain ATM cards to her, but it's going to take a while for that to sink in. We decided that I should get an ATM card for the 5/3 bank also. Hooray!!

I told her about Dylan's spelling test - he was having trouble with the words "purple" and "brown". I told him to just remember that purple ends with an e. His response was "But what about the infamous "brown"?" He keeps us grinning every day.

I met Dick at the Visitor Center at noon and we went to Roma for lunch. It's in a brand new building, and it was very nice. The food was especially good - my meatball sandwich was huge - half of it is still in the refrigerator. Roma would a good place to meet someone for lunch, or to take someone out to dinner. We gave it our stamp of approval. (The Official Okie Dokie).

Picked up the GenFest Test Master DVD at the Camera Shop, went shopping at Sears and bought a small freezer to replace our 30 year old big freezer (which has sprung a leak). Dick also picked out a new griddle to replace the one that has provided breakfasts too numerous to count for our guests.

We are still trying to figure out Whitard's Dr. Seuss cache - we spent some time at Horizon Book Store trying to find specific pictures in 8 different books. We still can't find 4 of the 12 pictures require to figure out the coordinates. It's a challenge. We had a really good time trying!

Escape to Leelanau

We left at 10 a.m. and got home at 6 p.m. In between, we found 5 caches, did cache maintainence at 2 of our caches, ate lunch at Boonedocks in Glen Arbor, and drove around the entire county of Leelanau.

The most bizarre happening of the day was finding the Brundage Wilderness Cemetery in Benzie County. This is a cemetery accessible only by two-tracks, and way out in the middle of nowhere. We strolled around looking at the grave sites, which were few and far between. The oldest I saw was Mary Brundage, who was born in 1853 and died in 1903. But the bizarre find was the grave of Dr. Thomas C. Hall, TCHS class of 1953 (my class, by the way). See above link. It was very strange just coming upon his memorial by accident. The whole city was aware of his death last year because his life was reported on in the Record-Eagle when he died of cancer. He had a most unusual life, and his resting place is also most unusual. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/mi/tsphoto/benzie/brundage.htm

It is high tourist season, and the town of Glen Arbor was jam-packed. There were no parking places. I thought they should give out numbers and let a car enter the village when another car left. Many, many people were out walking around and shopping and eating at Boonedocks.

Leland was pretty much the same way - loaded with people. We drove down to the marina to admire the big boats that had pulled in. One of the boats could only be referred to as a yacht.

We enjoyed our day - it was a hot one. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.

Help! Laundry! Help!

Laundry followed by laundry. I got it all washed, folded and put away (4 loads plus sheets). Eek!

Grocery shopping - oh boy! Thrills a minute. We shopped at the Kingsley Food Mart because of the Chum's Corners detour. We can't really get to Glen's. (Tom calls it Glenvo's).

That's the bad news - (laundry and groceries). The good news is that we bought steaks and sweet corn and had a great dinner.

Ice Cream and Little Old Ladies

We surv... um... attended the Ice Cream Social today at Concord Place. It was held in the Albany Room (dining room). There was not enough seating for everyone, so people were sitting all up and down the hall. Mother went assisted by her trusty walker, and had a little ice cream, and a little cake. She had a chance to greet some of her acquaintances, and everything was fine. We stayed at the Social for about an hour.

NMG Picnic at Higgins Lake

Had a nice phone conversation with Dylan this morning to start our day off right! He wanted to talk about a dinosaur game he is working on.

Drove over to Higgins Lake to the Lyon Twp. Park #27 for a meet and greet picnic of the Northern Michigan Geocachers. This is a group which is kind of a break-off group of MiGo, the official Michigan Geocachers Organization. We belong to both groups, and we don't play favorites.

The picnic was delightful - good food - good friends - good conversation. And the day was cooler and not so humid. So it was delightful all the way around.

After the picnic, Dick and I did a dozen caches in that area - that's a lot to log! Thank goodness that Dick takes care of that!

It was almost a perfect day, except we made the mistake of stopping in Kingsley for dinner at the Pine Tree Cafe. Don't.

But the good far out-weighed the bad!

For Rent

I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe....we drove past Mother's ex-house today, and there's a big For Rent sign out in front. The window treatments have all been removed, and there are mini-blinds in the front window. What a strange feeling!

I know there will be a lot of changes yet to come. Like I said, it's now in a parallel universe.

Banker's Hours, or Hours at the Bank

Dick and I spent 2 hours at the bank today setting up 2 CDs with the check for Mother's house. It wasn't really that complicated, it's just that it was time-consuming. Plus we had to wait a bit before the banker was free to see us.

We deposited that big check, and got a free box of plastic storage containers. Whoopee!

Visited Mother with the details - she's relieved that everything is over and taken care of. And so are we all.

Closing

Jim arrived this morning to go to the closing meeting for Mother's house. We had good conversation, and then had to leave for the meeting. We were in the waiting area when John and Jillian arrived, and we all introduced each other. The meeting was not too lengthy, the papers were all signed, the checks were distributed, and all was well. The house is now sold. A fait accompli.

The buyer, Jennifer, is a real estate agent and a renovator. She plans to fix the house up and then sell it. She does most of the renovation by herself, surprisingly enough. I think it will be interesting to see what she does with it.

Jim went to spend the afternoon with Mother. Dick and I went on a Subaru Cruise until it was time for his haircut. I dropped him off and waited at Horizon.

Jim spent the night with us. Dick did burgers on the grill and we had sweet corn. It was fun to have Jim here - I really enjoyed it. Mother enjoyed it too.

Active July!

Laurie, Chip and Dylan arrived on July 8th, and Laurie and Dylan left yesterday morning (August 2).

During that period of time, for one long weekend, we had our whole family here at one time, a very rare occurrence. Tom and his friend Conni arrived on July 14th, and Jana got here on the evening of the 15th. Tom and Conni had to leave on the 18th, but Jana was able to stay for a week, leaving on July 24th. Chip left soon after because he had to go back to work.

The entire month went by in a blur of activities - it seemed to go so fast!

During July, we watched the Cherry Festival Parade, attended the Harry Potter Book Release, and the First Annual Traverse City Film Festival. (Laurie and I went to see "You, Me, and Everyone We Know" at the Opera House. And Dick, Laurie, Dylan and I went to see "The Princess Bride" at the Open Space. Such fun! Both times I wanted to see more movie! I wasn't ready for either of them to end.)

Laurie, Chip and Dylan went to the zoo (see Dylan's post) where he actually took marvelous pictures with his digital camera. His Mom put his zoo pictures into a little photo album.

We played in 4 counties - Leelanau, Benzie, Grand Traverse, and Antrim.

We went to the Sleeping Bear Dunes, shopping in Glen Arbor. Everybody visited Mother - Laurie and Dylan about 6 times, Tom and Jana once each. Mother was delighted. Altogether, Sharkie Crew and Basswoodbend found 15 or 16 geocaches all over the place. We boated on 2 lakes, Torch Lake and Long Lake. On Long Lake Shelly, Autumn and Brooke came with us. On Torch Lake we played on the sandbar, Dylan got to pilot the boat, and we pulled Chip and Dylan on the tube.

Dylan visited many playgrounds - Darrow Park, Kids' Cove, East Bay Park, Bryant Park. We played miniature (immature) golf twice at Pirate's Cove. Dylan loves it! It really was fun, even though the temps were in the 90s.

We ate out at every restaurant you've ever heard of. Well, maybe not. Mongolian Barbecue, Scott's Harbor Grill, Apache Trout Grill, Green House Cafe, Cafe Amical, North Peak, Dinghy's in Frankfort, Friendly Tavern in Empire, Docksides on the Clam River, Rico's - I know I'm forgetting something - oh yes, Mancino's pizza twice and subs twice. We really helped the economy in July!

The Basswood Bend Film Festival really turned Dylan into a budding director. We were subje.... um.... privileged to watch several Dylan productions after Gen Fest. There was Return of Pig, Sharkie Adventures I & II, Everquest videos too numerous to count, and a couple of videos showing Dylan saving the world. Whew!

In the meantime, Mother's house has been sold - the closing is today. Mother has already signed all of the papers - the title company was kind enough to send a notary to witness her signatures. Jim is coming up from Saginaw for the closing, and he will be staying with us tonight.

Tomorrow is my day off.

Bye Bye

Laurie and Dylan flew away back to Florida this morning. We returned to an empty and quiet house. Washed sheets and changed beds. Dick moved back into his bedroom. Heavy sigh.

Dylan's Day at the Zoo

Dylan says:

Today we went to the zoo. The thing I liked the best was the wolf and the coyote.

The first thing we saw was turtles. I took a picture of the turtles. My camera went click, click. I also took a picture of a swimming turtle. My camera went click.

Next we went to the birds. When we got to the birds, the first bird we saw was the bald eagle. I took a picture. My camera went click click clickety click click. Next we went to visit the turkey vulture. I took a picture of it. My camera went click. Then we visited the barn owl. I took a picture of it. My camera went click click clickety click... click.

Then we found the beavers. They weren't out. We went into the beaver dam. We saw one. I took a picture of it. Except the flash bounced off the glass and it was a picture of a big white thing. I deleted that picture. I forgot to tell you that my camera went click.

We moved on to the bear. I took a picture of that too. My camera went clickety click click delete, clickety click click delete click click. Then we moved on to a bob cat. I took a picture. My camera went clickety clickety click click clickety clack clack click. Then we moved on to the wolves and the coyote. I took a picture. My camera went click. Then we went to the big elk.
My camera went click delete. We moved on to the cherry buffalo. They were gone! No where in sight. So we walked back past the elk. I took another picture of the elk. Past the wolves and coyotes... to the minks! I took a picture of the the minks - click, click. Then we moved on to the red fox. I took a picture... click.

Then we went into a big building. There were animals in tanks there. We saw a snake that was fake. I didn't take a picture of the snake that was fake. We saw a real snake, a real frog, and I saw some crickets. I did not take a picture of the crickets. Then we went to the raccoon. So, because the raccoon wasn't there, I tried to take a picture of a chipmunk outside of the cage. But the chipmunk was behind the fence and I couldn't get the chipmunk into focus. I ran around the fence to get closer to the raccoon cage that would bring me closer to the chipmunk. But Mommy and Daddy yelled at me. They said it was time to leave.

But before we left, I took a picture of the most important thing of all.... Mommy and Daddy. And they weren't in a cage.

Then we went to the Boardman River. [Union St. Bridge at 6th St.] We went down the stairs to the Boardman River. I threw huge, gigantic rocks into the river. Ducks and a big fat dog came swimming by. A man shouted Lucy and whistled. The dog made a big splash and jumped out of the water. It ran towards the man and they went right up the stairs. And when they went up the stairs that gave me an idea.

I picked up a rock, and I climbed the stairs to the top of the bridge. I pushed the rock off the edge of the bridge. Ker-plop.

Then we went home and played with Auntie Jana on the computer playing Everquest. Then we were looking for Jloubelle's corpse. Grandma's advice was to cast enduring breath but we didn't have any fish scales. I sang an encouraging song to Auntie Jana:

I know you're gonna find the fish scales
I really know you are
Come on now, Don't give up now
Keep looking - You're going to get those gnolls back for what they did to you.
You're gonna get them back I just know you are,
You're going to find the fish scales,
You're searching the downtown streets,
Searching the uptown streets,
You're going to find the fish scales.
Oh yes those fish scales are yours!
Yeah yeah yeah.

So then Auntie Jana decided to go to the fishing supply store. No fish scales. Then we went to the other fishing sell-guy - no fish scales. Then we went to general supplies number one - no fish scales.

Long story short, we found Jloubelle's corpses with the help of some other druid.

Dylan's Report on the Making Of "The Piggy Mystery"

Dylan says:

Dylan liked the movie making the best. [The Piggy Mystery]
The movie we made was about two detectives. The detectives are 2 boys - one 7 [Dylan], one 11 [J.P.] They're visiting their grandma and grandpa [Uncle Doug].

The two boys were playing Toss the Pickle. The 7 year old had a bad throw, kneeled down to pick up the pickle, and they saw a red pig. The 7 year old picked it up. The 11 year old said What's that? I said It's a pig. The grandpa said Hey give me that pig and snatched it from me and walked right out of the room. We pulled out our detective hats, nodded, and got to work. We had every intention to figure out what was in that pig that grandpa didn't want us to get.

Grandpa got into the car, but it was tricky because there was one thing that the Wonder Boy Detective Agency didn't teach us how to do....and that was learn how to drive. We had to think of something, and really, really fast.

We ran into the house. Mommy [Jana], Daddy [John Lichtenberg], we have to follow grandpa - he's getting away with the pig. Dad said, the pig? Mom said, OK.

Following Grandpa was hard because there were no other cars on the road and we were only 10 feet behind him. It was also hard because we didn't know which way he was going to turn because he always had his left turn signal on. Grandpa parked the car. He threw the pig off the bridge!

After that, Grandpa reeled it back in after we went back home.