Great Roundup Post of Winter 2008

I have been described as the clinical definition of a slacker with regard to the blog, but rest assured the world has not stood still in the meantime. The camera and the video have been rolling ever onward, so here are some highlights from the last few months.

Don't forget you can always go to recent updates on the Groenquist site for pictures (current up to and including our first snow storm of Winter!).

August found us working feverishly on the fish pond. Liner, rocks, waterfall, pump, you name it; all was in play in the heat of the summer. We were able to get water in the pond for the first time in August, a major milestone if you're building a pond (water is of course a prerequisite for fish that you want to live longer than a moment or two).

Birthdays, international trips, and yes, more pond work, filled our September days and nights. First off, we were finally able to let fish into the pond! We added several hardy goldfish and two baby koi loose. Di and I felt a strong feeling of accomplishment with our efforts thus far. We didn't expect the pond to be as dirty as it was when we first filled it, but over time it really cleaned up (thanks to filters and settling), and by the time I returned from a business trip (see below), it was crystal clear.

I made my first trip to Israel in September, and was able to piggyback a short but fun-filled stopover at Oktoberfest in Munich on the way back (more on that later). The trip to Haifa was one I had been looking forward to for a while. I actually didn't know what to expect from the trip (my first business trip to a country whose language I don't speak). Haifa sits on the easternmost edge of the Mediterranean, and even for late September, we could enjoy a warm sunset on the beach, sipping beer, and discussing work in a social atmosphere that's very open compared to the office. The trip was (in my opinion) a wild success, though the business takeaways were a challenge to get buy-in from management back home. It was wonderful to meet some talented folks from Israel, and they treated us to some a very informative and interestingly good time. More pics here (pics from the 19th through the 26th).

On the tail end of the trip, I worked out a deal (which amazingly was cheaper than a direct flight from PDX to Israel and back) that stopped over in Frankfurt for a few nights. I overnighted to Munich, home of Oktoberfest, where I met up with my dear friend Walter from Graz, Austria (about four hours south of Munich). We got to spend two beautiful days together, enjoying the Oktoberfest party, and the Munich Zoo (who could miss the zoo?). I took a very different tack on this trip compared to my last trip to Germany. Last time (with Eric from QAD back in 2000 before Ethan was born), I was very self-conscious about my German speaking, and I pretty much froze up (I even took Eric to the English Pub in Berlin, the stupid irony but indicative of my low confidence in the language at the time). This trip, however, I was determined to just enjoy it and make mistakes and have fun. Who knows the next time I will have a chance to return? And it was a blast! I spoke more German than I have in decades, and I must have made about ten thousand mistakes, but all the while I realized that people still knew what I meant, and that every small success enboldened me to engage people even more. I did all of the talking, even for Walter, who of course being from Austria was as difficult for the Muenchner's to understand as I was (just kidding, Walter!). On top of it all, I had great weather (though the change from Portland to Haifa to Munich really had my internal thermometer running overtime), and took in a day of sight-seeing in Munich. I even saw Wall-E in German! I am sorry I didn't get to see my old friend Nate (who was moving there from NYC in the next week so we missed each other). See pics here (27th and 28th).

More posts coming for October and November, including Halloween and Owen's fifth birthday. Enjoy the holidays until then.

Love + Hate in a Computer Age

Tonite I had just about the most fun time I've ever had with technology. This time, hi-tech brought my extended family closer together in a way that I haven't seen them get in real life, and that made it ever more special. And it almost didn't happen, which makes me contrarily so frustrated at gadgetry sometimes. The fact that it half-worked actually made the whole experience even funnier than ever. To wit...

Picture the scene: Grammy has sent the boys an elaborate "back to school" care package in the mail. The boys are excited to open it, and discover all sorts of goodies for school inside, practical and silly, just like our boys. Our normal family response to this is to fire up the Mac Mini on the HDTV and say our shy and dutiful thank-you's (the boys are appreciative but not very forthcoming about it).

Since Grammy is not always online at every waking moment, I usually call her to ask her to jump on the ISH (Info-Super-Hiway), and an idea struck me: what if she could find a book in the house of which we also had a copy, and she read a story to the boys? The boys had been clamoring for some story time today, and Di warned me when I got home from work that I would be bombarded with book requests. That's not a bad thing: whose kids pester them to be read to? I read one while making dinner but I could tell they weren't satisfied yet.

So I called and talked to Grammy and asked her what books she had to read from, knowing we didn't have a lot of mutual duplicates (this is by design, so that when we visit, the books there are fresh and fun and "Grammy-only"). We toyed with Berenstain Bears, Dr. Suess, and finally settled on "Are You My Mother?", by P.D. Eastman (true story: I found out she's a woman author just this year; I never knew!). We agreed to get online, I hung up, and started to get the webcam working.

As seems to always happen, we couldn't get things working right the first 9 or 10 times. I always am frustrated by this, as is Grammy, and I felt the brilliance of this idea fading away quickly. We could chat, but not share video. She restarted, then we could get video, but no sound (hard to read a book that way). I called her back, and she could hear us, but we couldn't hear her. I'm just about ready to call it all off, when I see the soundless communication start to unfold between Grammy and the boys. We had our book ready, and she was holding it up to the camera and waving it back and forth. Ethan, transfixed by the movement (reminds me of ravens and shiny things), clicks on the lightbulb over his head and gets his book and starts waving it. Meanwhile, Owen has started to make faces in the camera, and Grammy is miming him back. Our 42" screen makes for a fairly large display, so when she comes in close, there's a towering 3 foot wide head of Grammy suddenly looming in the living room, and the boys all scatter like we're playing "Run, Run, Tickle, Tag (tm)". 

The laughter is infectious, enough for me to try and salvage the story time idea, so I restart, and we get sound working, and the boys settle in for the story time. Grammy reads while Ethan turns the pages for Owen, and Ethan is quietly mouthing the words as Grammy reads them. The mix of hi- and low-tech is blissful to me: the boys sharing a quiet, concentrated moment with Grammy, and I get to share it in a "fly-on-the-wall" sort of way that I hardly ever get to do. They are captivated by the enormous head reading the words on the screen (Owen hardly looks at the book at all).

The book comes to an end, and that's when the magic really begins. Immediately, the boys are back to tongue-wagging, face-making, and jumping on the sofa, all in the hopes of garnering some sort of attention from Grammy. They're showing off, something they rarely do in her physical presence. The disconnectedness of the screen plus the familiar home surroundings coupled with miming for the camera sets them afire. Then Grammy joins in, and now there's the 3 foot head slowly zooming into the lens for a big wet kiss (how I wish I caught that image on camera!), and the boys scatter again in sheer delight and mock terror.

The fun isn't one-sided, either. Grammy's carried away by the screams and squeals of the boys running in fright from her antics, and she's bursting with unstoppable laughter. It's Billy Melton's dropped soda and Keith Banda's joke about a chicken all rolled into one (sorry, inside jokes), and I am trying hard not let the top of my head fall off from the grin on my face. The boys and Grammy are actually "having a moment", something I dearly, dearly miss about the physical distance between us. Tech actually brought us together tonite, stronger, closer, more intimately. 

As with all things that are sweet and enjoyable, we made our polite thank-you's for the care package, and wound down the encounter all too quickly. I dragged the goodbye's on too long, the boys getting impatient for 'the next thing' to do, me not wanting the moment to end, and feeling a strong moment of Sehnsucht for Mutti. Thanks, very much, Grammy, for making my boys laugh, and reading a story, and being, well, *you*. You didn't know it, but you were giving me a big hug the whole time, and I back to you.

Liner, Liner, Pond's On Fire!

We made some big progress this last weekend on the pond: the liner. A single sheet of EPDM rubber about 16' x 25' really weighs a lot. But, after 2500lb. rocks, we weren't about to let a little ol' chunk of rubber get in our way.


The hard part of the liner was installing the spill rock into place. We carved out a place for it, then realized we would be setting it too low, so we had to backfill the spot. Still too low. So, we had to prop it up with wall rock and stabilize it; all told, that took the majority of Sunday to achieve. You can just make out the edge of the spill rock poking from under the liner in this shot. 210 lbs is no big deal for a rock, but we had the added problems of manuevering it into the right place over the rubber without tearing it. We had to move it 3 times before we got it right. More pics here and here.

Once we got the spill rock in place, we added grey basalt into the pond to start hiding the liner and making it look like a pond and less of a large black hole in the ground. For this, we needed two trips to the rock store with the trusty truck (and undying thanks again to AKA Team for use of said beastie), at about 1300lbs of rock per trip. Ouch.

Finally, we set all the stone we had (still not enough!), when it started to rain. Now, Pacific Northwest rain is not like Austin, TX rain. Usually it's just an annoying drizzle, but we actually got more rain on Sunday than we have in a couple months! The pond started to fill up, and now has about 9 inches of water in it. It's a bit premature, don't you think?!?!?!

Next stop: waterfall and stream. We're working from the spill rock upstream to make sure we get the flow right. Stay tuned...

New Line 6 Jersey!

I am now the proud owner of one of only 10 racing jerseys from Line 6! The team back in Calabasas wanted to make some jerseys, so I gave them some advice on style and zippers, and I ordered a couple for myself. I love how they came out! I can't wait until I can wear the long-sleeve about town. I wore the short sleeve and already got two comments from fellow riders about it. Of course, it is August and already in the low 70s....

There Be Rocks in the Frontyard, Captain

After a scorching dirt-filled attack on the fishpond Saturday, Seth unwittingly stepped up to the Alter of Punishment for our Sunday of rock rolling. There's no good perspective on how big these mother-loving boulders were, but here's a shot of Seth, Di, and me sitting on the largest (and Owen sitting on one of the *8* smaller ones). The rock store estimated the largest at 2500lbs. With Seth and Matt on pry bars, and Di on the much scarier job of leverage rocks underneath, we were able to move it about 8 feet in 20 minutes...

Once we figured out how to really properly use our collective physics lessons, we made much better progress. The rock, being a semi-regular hexagon of basalt, essentially "rolled" into the backyard. Except rolling it was like trying to get a napping 2500lb tiger to get off the roof of your car without ruining your car or getting killed by the now-annoyed feline. Sometimes we got a lucky bounce and were able to roll it two or three edges at a time. But we still had the Bridge of Lucridity (Ludicrousness?) to traverse.

There was some additional dirt to remove for Deck II, so Seth took some swings on the dirt-crete we have in the summer, and made short order of it. After hauling as much dirt as we could out of the yard, we took the trailer over to unload, and bought back 3 yards of crushed rock to lay in the Deck II hole to make a bridge for the enormous boulder. We still weren't sure how well that would work. Without the dirt to use for pry-bar leverage, we used leftover wall rock as fulcrum points and finally got the biggest boulder into place at about 2pm (we'd been pushing, pulling, cajoling, swearing at it since about 8am).



The boards under the rock along the gravel were an inspired idea of Seth's. I really think that helped us stay on the path and move more quickly over the gravel.

The smaller rocks are now in a pile in the backyard but the largest boulder is now in place. We have some fine-tuning to do, but we can now proceed to work on both Deck II and the fish pond at the same time.
More pics here.

Deck I Complete! Set Phasers on Frappe

We were able to get the first patio done in the end of July, but, alas, no rest for the wicked. We got a great deal on end-of-season patio furniture, and we've eaten in the backyard for dinner a couple of times now with a great sense of pride.

We immediately went to town on the granite-hard dirt for the fishpond, making great progress with a tiller for the initial hole layout. We were able to remove three truckloads with this process, but the heat and total volume conspired against us, and we had to rethink the plan. I began to finish the dig-out with a pickaxe and shovel. I managed to get the average depth to about about *half* what we needed.

Enter Andy and his crazy-elite pickaxe skills! Together (with a trailer to double our dirt-towing capacity), we ripped apart that bad old earth, and all before we wilted in the oppressive but arbitary heat. Meanwhile, Di was hauling away dirt from our previous endeavors. All in all, we unloaded two trailers of dirt Saturday and Sunday for the pond.

Having burned through poor Andy (who, I know, would have kept at it had he had some sleep from baby endeavors of late, thanks!), we rested for a while before hitting it back up later that night to be ready for our next insanity: rocks! More pics here, here, and here. To be continued...

Baby Stacey At One Year (or thereabouts)

I'm starting to wonder where that girl's hair is.... Well, I guess it's the same place mine is headed (get it? headed?), so I suppose I shan't complain. Here are a few pics of her from early July. She's a cutie. More pics are here, here, and here.

Groenquist.com was down for a while

Today was our registration expiration date, and GoDaddy decided to "park" our domain rather than remind me that the expiration was coming. I renewed, and the site is up and working for me. You might have a small delay while the rest of the world is catching up.

I will add some links to the blog page so you can get to them more readily.

Dillon's Trip to Omaha Video

Ok, not technically related to the Groener's in the NW per se, but Dillon and family are back from the 2008 Junior Olympics in Omaha, Nebraska. He finished 13th in the event, not bad considering that makes him one of the top 20 pole vaulters in his age in the entire country.

Video Link (Warning: 11MB - hosted on elvis.groenquist.com)

Wines of the Northwest We've Enjoyed

We've been having a pretty good time with some more recent wine experiences, and I thought I would catalogue them a little better so that we kep track of the best (and worst). To the right are three wines we shared with Noelle and Steve and family when they travelled to our fair state this past week. The leftmost, "Brandborg 2004 Pinot Noir", was my favorite so far. I believe I liked the "Ayoub 2006 Pinot Noir" next, followed by the "Secret House 1999 Pinot Noir" (quite a range of vintage there). Alas, as we imbibed the grapy goodness, details began to get a little fuzzy, and since all three were Pinot's, it's now difficult to grasp the fine differences between the three. I am certain I will try all three again, but next we will be trying some Pinot Gris' we picked up.

WaCo County Fair - Monster Truck Madness

Keeping a tradition alive is something we try and take seriously in our family. There are so many "new" distractions in our lives, that we often don't take time to remind ourselves of things that are "sacred", or at least predictable, comforting, to be looked forward to. In that vein, we shamelessly plunked down our 1s and 0s to enjoy some carny carnality at the Washington County Fair.



Growing up in SoCal, we spent many a summer day at the "World's Largest County Fair". And, being from a rather agrarian locale, it was not uncommon or "zoolike" to see barn after barn of domestic livestock, crafts, and "country living" minutia. The Washington County Fair is a stipped down cross between a country fair and an organized shakedown, in that everything on display is fair-like, and priced like a movie theater soda. Ride tickets are 50 cents each, which harkens back to "the good ol' days", until one steps up to the first ride and is rudely reminded it's a down economy in Aught-8.

Di cleverly decided that, in this year's rendition of the fair visit, we would be better prepared for the financial assault, but add a new twist to the mix: get tickets for the Monster Truck show. I'm already a little embarrassed to say that going to the Fair is akin to purposely subjecting oneself to a baser class of local compatriots (red necks, white trash, insert-your-favorite-stereotype), embarrassed because I look down upon my fellow fair-attending minions while still thoroughly enjoying a Polish dog (while costing more than my last car payment, was heavenly), monster trucks, and, well, going to the fair. I'm an agrarian red neck at heart, I suppose, though I don't often remind myself of my roots.

The boys thoroughly enjoyed the rides, simple and expensive though the parents knew them to be. We arrived well after lunch time, and saved dinner costs by packing in sandwiches, Doritos, and juice boxes. Instead, we shovelled our money into the show tickets, blew out our eardrums on decibel levels that would make an airport runway sound like the library in a monestary with a vow of silence, and marvelled in another year's duty to tradition squared away.

Bike Rodeo With the Boys

Well, I figured it was just karma that the boys would take to bikes so avidly as long as Daddy wasn't involved. As it was, I did make it to the tail end of the rodeo, but to be sure that I have been an overbearing twit, I made sure not to be there at the beginning. From the looks on their faces, they had a great time. Ethan even designed himself a little impromptu course out of chalk lines in the street at our house and "raced" his friend Matthew. All in all, it was a good day for the bike nut in me.

Backyard Project Continues Apace

In case you were wondering, the backyard project is still a going concern. We have been working out the details for almost a year now, and to be really picky, we've been toying with this since we moved back in '06. Now, we see some of the fruits of our labor (and hard earned cinquecentos) springing to life. See many more pics here, here, and here.



So far, we've saved a pun-tacular truck-load of those little coin thingys by taking shameless advantage of Katie and Andy's vehicular hospitality. We'd have spent several hundreds on truck rentals alone at this point, so we are molto grato to the new Hillsboro threesome (sorry, Nerv, forgot you).

We've moved about 15 tons of rock, gravel, and sand, and we're barely getting started so far. That's besides the 18 full truck loads of sod, fill dirt, and yard debris that we have hauled away.

The early year's extra rain delayed our start on this project; I started stripping sod in February by hand only to have the 20x10-foot patch practically regrow itself before we could strip any sod again in June. July hit us like a brick oven, and we're now working under wilting heat (for us poor "forgotten-our-heat-derived-SoCal-roots" who enjoy the cooler temps of the NW now).

We're nearly done with the raised patio with the pergola, and then work will begin excavating for the pond and waterfall area. I expect that to be another 20-40 truck beds worth of dirt. No shortage of exercise this year...

Lincoln Penny Portrait Project

I've been working on a portrait with the boys for some time now, and although it started out fairly well, things have slowed a bit as we shifted focus to the backyard project.

Here we see nice pretty rows of 51 pennies across going in. As successive rows went in, some pennies, with microscopic differences in diameter adding up, the rows have progressively gotten out of true. It's a fine adjustment to correct the problem, so this has slowed my progess quite a bit.

Oh, and the fact that I have exhausted my supply of older pennies for the dark patina needed for the facial features.