Headed on over to the windy city this past weekend with my buddy Mike and his girlfriend Kara, to visit her friend Tracy who’s going to grad-school at U of C. The girls spent Friday afternoon shopping so Mike and I hit some museums. I hadn’t been to any of the Chicago museums since our sixth grade field trip, where our group, led by my lovely mother, was accidentally left behind by the school buses for about a half hour. Those were some tense moments as I recall. We visited both the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. The Shedd has recently been expanded and they now have an awesome dolphin exhibit along with some Beluga whales. Highly recommended. The Field museum had a traveling King Tutankhamen exhibit which was really neat although I was disappointed. I expected to see some sarcophaguses and they just had a lot of the treasures and artifacts that were found in his tomb. So the picture you see was not seen by me. Saturday, we did some more exploring down town and just taking in the hustle and bustle. One of my favorite cheap things to do in town is that there is a lounge on the 96th floor of the Hancock building that you can get up to for free. Its actually a bar, so I usually end up ordering a drink, but it offers an absolutely breathtaking view of the city. Over the years I can’t believe how much I’ve grown to love big cities. Growing up in Amishville, USA, I never imagined that I would come to appreciate the city more than the country.

There’s big news in the Carpenter/Smith household. We now have a dog! Kyle inherited a 110 pound golden retriever from one of his friends, and I can’t stand the thing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love dogs. I just don’t enjoy living with them. A large dog in an 1100 sq. ft house is a little crowded for me. I also may be allergic to the thing, in that I’ve had cold like symptoms since he showed up three weeks ago. I’ve had a ton of dogs in my life, but this is the first house dog, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m starting to get the housing itch a little, so I may have my own place anyway by next spring hopefully.


Heading back to Indiana this coming weekend for the big Fairfield/Jimtown football sectional championship game. A couple of friends are also coming into town so it should be a good time. Fairfield, my alma mater, is 11-0 for the first time in school history, and I also believe may be going for their first ever sectional championship in football. If only I hadn’t quite playing football as a freshman things may have turned out a little differently! So instead I played basketball, and became the best 12th man this side of the Mississippi.

Made the trek down to Ohio this past weekend for Cedarville's homecoming. I had never been to one of these and it turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. It also happened to be our five year reunion so a ton of friends happened to be coming into town. I even managed to attend my first ever soccer game there (yeah, thats pretty sad, but I've never been a big soccer guy).
Some Highlights:











Happened to run across the ol' Ethanol Truck that has since been decomissioned back to a regular old truck. Shes looking pretty rough at the moment and its sad to see all those hours that everyone put into this thing and now this thing is just sitting around not being cared for that well. The picture on the left was taken at the Detroit Auto Show I believe in 1999.

The best part of the day was the banquet they had for our class. I'm guessing there were approximately 100-120 people there, which I don't think is too bad when you're graduating class is around 700 I believe. It was amazing how many people had children! I'm guessing 40-50% of them and most seemed to be in the 6-18 month range. It was also funny to see how many non-Cedarville spouses there were, I could only pick out a few. I had the idea that everyone who was single should where an "S" next to their nametag, but this didn't seem to go over so well with the couple of people I mentioned this too : )



Nelson Lewis and I
















Amanda Marriage and Jenn Lewis(Nelsons wife)









Some of the ol gang: Me, Spencer Phelps, Spencers wife, Neslon, baby Emily(Nelsons), Jenn, Amanda, Nick Tucholski,
Chris and Lia Reichiell (and yes, I know I screwed up your last name).






Chris Reichiell and I










*Some photo credit should go to Lia and Jenn who I stole a couple of photos off of their blogs*
I also got a great photo with our past president Dr. Dixon. They created this bronze 80% scale replica of him and hes sitting among some benches in a hallway in the chapel. A little wierd if you ask me, but I guess its the thought that counts.
Jenn, Nelson, Emily, Amanda, and I ended up finishing up the weekend at Amanda's parents. They did pretty awesome, with me giving them 4 hours notice that I needed lodging for the night. (Plans, I don't need no stinking plans!) Got to spend some good quality time with Jenn and Nelsons daughter too. Don't I look like a natural. Their baby is one of the cutest most well mannered children I have ever seen in my life, and shes only 4 months old.




Ok, Time for the funny story of the week. This one involves three guys, a Saab, and a late night. Some of you may remember that I ran out of gas a couple of months back due to a faulty fuel gage, well it happened again. My buddies Kyle, Mike, and I had just gotten back from a day of golfing, eating, and drinking, and right after I drop them off back at work, the Saab dies on me. Well turns out my estimation of what I thought was empty on the faulty fuel gage, was just a wee bit off. I manage to get off the road which happens to be 4 lanes of traffic with a turn lane in the middle. The guys stop to help and we debate our options. Do we tow it, do we go get gas, or do we push it to the nearest fuel station? Well men being men, we decide to push it approximaty 1/4 mile down the road in the middle of a 4 lane road. Its around 10 pm so traffic is still pretty heavy. It was quite the site to see, I was riding in the Saab, Kyle was pushing, and Mike was driving his truck behind us for protection. We made it all the way to the station, filled up and continued on.