What does one do on a sunny, Sunday afternoon? Why, take a walk to the nearest Dairy Queen of course! With the promise of a chocolate-covered ice cream cone, I set out with Danny and Jake for stroll (really more like a marathon) for some exercise. I should have known all was not going to go well when my body immediately started protesting by giving me a stomach cramp as soon as I stepped out the front door!

My body ached the whole mile and a bit (now don’t even say “it’s just a mile” because I have to admit that I’m a little, um, shall we say, like the pillsbury dough boy) and as we neared the restaurant Danny said “Hey, they might be closed Easter Sunday.” And wouldn’t you know it, the sign read “Closed Easter Sunday”. I’m so glad I walked all that way. No really, it was like’bonding time’ or something.

But all in all, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and seeing the greenish, brownish grass poking up between the last snow splotches. Oh, and we ended up stopping in the Burger King (shh, don’t tell the Allans),which is actually and ironically a lot closer to our house than Dairy Queen. And I still got ice cream in the form of a Hershey ice cream pie! Smile!

Thanks to Lindsay for the quick notification of the highly inappropriate content in the guestbook. Ever since I created the guestbook, I would check it daily to ensure no one was submitting content that shouldn’t be there. I had to delete content at a minimum of once per week because of everything from:

• 419 scams
• People trying to improve their search PageRank
• People leaving links to gambling and adult content

Over a period of time I was forced to slowly introduce more and more “security”. First it was a masking of email addresses. Then it was a notification system of review. Finally, I’ve had to lock it down to only show submissions AFTER they meet approval. This means a slight delay in your submission showing up if you sign the guestbook, but it also ensures that the guestbook submissions are clean. Thanks Lindsay. Even if I might disagree with some of your submissions, I’ll let those through the gates. 🙂

Well the snow if finally beginning to melt and Spring showing its colors. Finally. I have that itch to take my bike out on the open road. I think even Heidi wants on back this time. We’ve also begun after eight months to finally finish some of our house and I’m really excited. We hung the beautiful text that we received at our wedding from Revelation 1 and several other pictures. Curtains are on the way and its all reason to … Smile!

Heidi says that if you read back a few years, my updates were much more interesting and informative. Is this true? I certainly know that there is less time for writing updates, but it could also be for two additional reasons: one is that I’m quite busy with work and family and all, but the second and more plausible reason is that when I have something to pour out to someone, I can do it with my most wonderful wife instead of a website. True? Of course true.

These few days have me back to the airplane lane with trips to Atlanta and presently from the heart of midtown Manhatten. When I don’t travel so much I sometimes miss the trips, but when I do travel a lot, I certainly wish that I wasn’t. Hmmmm … where’s the happy medium.

The medium is found in that bouncing smily bundle of boy that the Lord has given for a time to Heidi and I. He’s growing like a beanpole and finally sleeping through the night. Now I just can’t wait till he’s big enough to help me shovel out from the mountains (and I’m talking six foot snowbanks) of snow in our yard. It’s March 13 and we’re still getting pummeled with a foot of snow every week. Smile!