From PlanetRockA couple days ago we had a huge downpour and this was the result:
Luckily, it only lasted for about 20 minutes. As soon as some of our neighbors saw what was going on, they cleared out some of the debris that had collected in the storm drains, and the water drained out as quickly as it had come.
You can see pictures of this and other things that have been going on around here in the following photo albums in our gallery:
To get the background for this story, we have to turn the clock back almost seven years. It was the fall of 2000 and I was living in the famous “Deca Femme” house on Knapp Street. While hosting a banana split party to celebrate a Lifegroup multiplication, I had a can of Reddi Whip tragically and catastrophically lose its nozzle, rendering it useless after the first banana split was made.
Heartbroken at the loss of my Reddi Whip, I called the Reddi Whip hotline listed on the back of the can. An extremely enthusiastic man answered the phone saying, “Reddi Whip Hotline, how may I help you?” After explaining my predicament him, he offered his best attempt at a sincere apology and said he would put a coupon for a free can of Reddi Whip in the mail.
Why is this story of any relevance? Well, until today I still had the coupon. They made the mistake of sending me a coupon with no expiration date. I have bought many cans of whipped cream in the past seven years (most of them in past few years since we have been frequently using our espresso machine to make home made lattes).  Most of them have been generic rather than the more-pricey Reddi Whip. But somehow I was never able to bring myself to use it.  I just brought it with me each place I moved, careful to never lose this precious coupon worth “up to $2.75.”
Sometime since we moved to MN, I was pondering out loud to Tony why I had never used the coupon. The best way I could sum it up was to say that I was saving it in case of a Whipped Cream Emergency. Maybe I had a fear that some mythical day might come when I could not afford a $1.29 generic can of my favorite latte topping, yet would need one desperately.
Today we tossed out yet another empty can of Aldi brand whipped cream. The one thing I had to get at the store today was green onions, and Aldi doesn’t carry those. For whatever reason, I decided to take the plunge. I didn’t hold out. I used the coupon.
Unfortunately, this cause me to be one of those annoying people that holds up the line. The cashier tried multiple times with no luck to scan the bar code on the coupon. I was very worried that they might accuse me of using a fake coupon, so I nonchalantly mention the coupon is kind of old so maybe that would be causing the problems. (No need to mention exactly HOW old, right?). Finally, the cashier calls a manager-type over to manually enter the coupon.
And now, I have a yummy can of Reddi Whip Extra Creamy to enjoy!
I just discovered reCAPTCHA, and so far, I love the concept. I really love that they make it easy to use this on your own website.
I wanted to spread the word among the techie (and tech-interested) types that come by this site. reCAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA system from Carnegie Mellon University that also powers public OCR projects. The concept is simple. Public OCR projects generate tons of words that are difficult for machines to recognize. These are made a little harder and then used as a CAPTCHA for comments or email addresses to prevent spam. The results are then used to digitize books for the public domain. It’s totally win-win!
So, go check it out.
Also, while I’m at it. Everybody should be using something like the GRC password generator to generate passwords. Nice and strong. Useful for wireless access points and personal passwords. You just need a secure way of storing these, since I doubt you’ll remember a long one.
After being away for slightly more than 10 days, I think we are all happy to be back home. We left Atlantic on Saturday morning and then spent the weekend in Ames to see friends and attend Autumn and Jensen’s wedding.
It was definitely a hard week, but it was good to be together with Tony’s immediate and extended family as we went through this experience. Madeline had a blast playing with her cousins and Erik rarely had a shortage of people to hold him or play with him.
We started our journey home on Sunday afternoon around 3:15, and managed to cram a three hour journey into about five hours. 
Traveling with a baby who needs to eat every two hours or so always makes life interesting…with the added factor of four hot, sweaty and slightly crabby individuals in a car with broken a/c on a hot afternoon…extra stops are definitely a necessity.
We arrived home to a kitchen full of dirty dishes and spoiled food in the fridge. Having left in a real rush way back on July 5th, doing the dishes got cut from the daily schedule as I instead packed and washed laundry. We also never imagined that we would be gone for over 10 days, so all the rotten leftovers and no-longer-fresh produce were a sight I did not want to see! Tony is such a wonderful husband that he cleaned out the fridge for me and we then caught up on the dishes together.
And now back to our regularly-scheduled adventures…
In case anyone wants to join us or send condolences, here is the information:
Monday there will be a funeral service for Tony’s grandfather (his mom’s dad, Kenneth Schwartz) at 2pm. Tuesday night there will be a visitation for Tony’s dad (K.R. Hill) from 7-8pm. The funeral for Tony’s dad will be at 10:30am on Wednesday with a luncheon to follow at a church in the nearby town of Lewis, IA.
The both funerals and the visitiation will be at:
Hockenberry Funeral Home
1804 East 7th St.
Atlantic, IA 50022
If you wish to send a note of condolence to Tony’s mom, here is her info:
Margene Hill
61031 570th St.
Atlantic, IA 50022
I wanted to let everyone know that Tony’s dad died this morning after complications from gallbladder surgery. His grandpa died this past Thursday after being in poor health for quite some time.Â
While it is very difficult to have two deaths in the family at the same time, there was a small blessing in it as well. Because the whole family had been coming for Grandpa Schwartz’s funeral, all the kids were able to be present when Tony’s dad passed away.
The funeral will probably be Monday or Tuesday here in Atlantic, IA. We’ll update things here with the details when we know more. We’ll be here in Atlantic until at least mid-week.
Thanks for your love and prayers…the best way to reach us is probably our cell phones, but we will have intermitant opportunities to check email as well.