The SchmidtHole

Lou on Channel 9

2010-04-26T02:37:00.000-07:00

My former coworker/buddy/drinking companion, but most importantly inventor of the Spark View Engine, Lou DeJardin, has a video interview up on Channel 9. Check it out.

4 Month Checkup

2010-03-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

Calvin had his big 4 month wellness check this morning and he's doing great! Weight-wise, he's up to 15 lbs 3 oz, which kind of surprised me at first although it only puts him at the 50th percentile. That means he actually slipped a little on the curve from his 2 month check where he was at the 65th %ile. But the doctor said nothing to worry about, that still means that he's average (in weight only!).

In terms of height, he's staying pretty constant. He measured 26", putting him at the 81st %ile. At his 2 month, he was 23.75", at the 80th %ile.

And now what you've all been waiting for, his melon. Here's where the boy shined. His head now measures a solid 18", which puts him proudly at the 99th %ile! At his 2 month, he was 16.5", at the 91st %ile. Before you make any slanderous comments, the doctor said that's good since that's where his brain is developing. So that's why he's such a smarty-pants!

He also got a couple shots which he was NOT happy about! ... for about 5 minutes and then fell asleep. Poor little guy!

Also, check out the startling discovery Denise made yesterday!

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T05:28:00.000-08:00

Denise and I certainly know what we're thankful for...

Calvin

2009-11-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

Denise and I would like to officially welcome Calvin Jacob Schmidt to the world. He was born Saturday, November 21, at 3:58pm. He was 8lbs 10oz and 21" in length.

Goodbye, Grandma

2009-11-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

In honor of my grandma's passing on Oct. 30th, I'm posting a copy of her obituary...

Oneeta Reuter

Funeral service for Oneeta Wanda Reuter, 96, Tucson, Ariz., formerly of Anoka, took place Nov. 16 at Thurston-Lindberg Funeral Chapel, Anoka. Rev. Gary Wilkerson.

Reuter died Oct. 30. She was born April 13, 1913 in Kiota, Mo., to Charles E. and Fanny F. (Gault) Tracy and was a retired nurse at the state hospital.

She is survived by her children, Charles Reuter, Dallas (Nancy) Reuter and Mary Kay (Larry) Schmidt; 13 grandchildren; 19 great-grandchildren; eight great-great-grandchildren; and nieces and nephews.

Interment was at Forest Hill Cemetery, Anoka. Arrangements were by Thurston-Lindberg Funeral Home, Anoka.

My grandma was also famous in our family for having a quaint colloquialism for pretty much any situation. Here are a few I could think of off the top of my head:

"Excuse the pig, the hog's out walkin'." (used when one of us burped, a personal favorite of mine.)

"I'm so hungry I could eat the north end of a southbound horse."

"I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throat's been cut."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

"It's like straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel."

Updated 12/2:

I haven't . . . since Hector was a pup.

. . . 'til who laid the rail.

. . . (doing/going something) hell bent fer 'lection.

He's as thick in the muck as she is in the mire.

I've gotta pee so bad I can taste it.

She already had a stallion in the paddock.

Still No Kid...

2009-11-17T06:18:00.000-08:00

Well you had to think that any offspring of Denise and I would be a little on the stubborn side... the little bugger is 5 days late today. So just to update everyone, Denise is tentatively scheduled to be induced this Friday.

Full Term

2009-10-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

Denise hit 37 weeks today so according to the OB this morning, she's now officially considered full term...

Auto-Tune the News

2009-10-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't yet discovered the genius of Auto-Tune the News yet, here are a few links to get you started:

Auto-Tune the News #6: Michael Jackson. drugs. Palin.

Auto-Tune the News #8: dragons. geese. Michael Vick. (ft. T-Pain)

Auto-Tune the News #5: lettuce regulation. American blessings.

Auto-Tune the News #7: texting. rhyming. pat buchanan fail.

Auto-Tune the News #2: pirates. drugs. gay marriage.

The see them all, Michael Gregory (co-creator) posts them all under the YouTube account schmoyoho.

Auto-Tune the News #6: Michael Jackson. drugs. Palin.

Wild Preseason Game

2009-09-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

I got to go to the Wild preseason game tonight. Not only were they amazing seats (in the corner, only 3 rows up) but they were free thanks to my brother-in-law's girlfriend (thanks again, Missy!). And if that weren't enough, it was against the Chicago Blackhawks which means you can always count on plenty of intensity (read: lots o' fighting).

Even better, the Wild won 3-0!

I posted some pics from my cell phone on Facebook here.

Back from the Dells

2009-09-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Denise and I took a weekend road trip to Wisconsin Dells with our friend, Gredd. No occasion really, other than it being most likely our last little vacation before the baby arrives, which is also why we had to drive. But despite Denise being pregnant, we did manage to play no less than 271 holes of mini golf!

And while we're on the topic of statistics, although it started off as a kind of sad commentary on modern life, it's actually becoming a road trip tradition in our family to count Walmart trucks. One which began on our honeymoon. The funny thing is we only saw 51 on our entire 4,365-mile honeymoon road trip. Last weekend, we saw 55 on our little 574-mile road trip... and 35 of those were on the way there!

See the pictures here.

9 Weeks and counting...

2009-09-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

Denise officially hit 31 weeks yesterday. Crazy!

New Deck

2009-08-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

After a few weeks, due to a complication or two, our deck is finally done! Thanks again to Nick for all his hard work in building it!

See the pictures here.

Back Home

2009-06-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

We're back from a very relaxing vacation... 10 days, 3077.3 miles of driving and 5 states. Highlights include seeing Colonel Mustard at a rest stop and Denise almost getting blown off a mountain.

Pictures are here .

Our approximate route is here.

Southwest Road Trip

2009-06-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

Denise and I are on Day 5 of our southwest road trip. After landing in Phoenix, AZ, and spending the first couple days with my parents down in Green Valley, we hit the road. Day 3 took us up to Laughlin, NV. Kind of a funny little version of what Vegas should be... or used to be before the Strip took over.

Day 4 brought us up to St. George, UT. On the way, we visited another cool little city, Mesquite, NV. Today, the plan was originally to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That was before we saw that the drive is over 5 hours... each way! Obviously that's why most people visit from the south side.

So we decided to alter our plans a little and hit the Grand Canyon on the way back into AZ. Instead, we made our way to Grand Junction, CO. On the way, we saw Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks.

Crash Update

2009-03-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

Denise is feeling pretty sore today but in general she's doing remarkably well. Anyone who would've been with us earlier and saw the Explorer at the towing place today would have to agree! Here are some pics of the aftermath.

Bye Bye Explorer

2009-03-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

I had a very long, very stressful night last night. Denise got in a rather nasty accident with the Explorer last night. She appears to be fine, except for some bumps and bruises. Thank God for that!

Unfortunately, the Explorer wasn't so lucky. Oh well, it had always been a beater anyway and now its been officially put out of its misery. And it gave its life for a good cause.

Honeywell IAQ

2009-02-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

I spent the last couple nights rewiring a good share of our furnace room. A little background, when they built our house they installed a very basic thermostat. It wasn't even programmable. But after a gas bill that I would consider to be excessive, it was time to change that.

I could've just swapped it out for a $20-30 5-2 programmable model you can get anywhere but that's before I heard of the Honeywell IAQ from the fountain of all knowledge. It's a state-of-the-art system that controls everything to keep it running as efficient as possible. You can only find them on eBay since they're only sold to contractors. But since the cheapest I saw them for on eBay was $130, I had to talk to the wife. After telling her the whole story with absolutely no bias whatsoever (I swear!), she surprisingly said, "well I live with a geek, we pretty much HAVE to get the cool one!"

Fortunately, I managed to snipe one off eBay for a mere $96. Tonight, I got the fun of drilling a hole in the side of the house so I could run an outdoor temperature sensor. Check out the attached pictures. This little beauty is now controlling our furnace, A/C, humidier and air exchanger.

(No comments about the outside temperature!)

One More Day!

2008-11-25T00:54:00.000-08:00

That's right, the big move-in day is tomorrow! We have our final walkthrough this afternoon and Denise and I are beyond excited!!

Puppy Adventure, Pt. 2

2008-10-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

A couple days, a successful surgery and a healthy chunk of change later, our little patient is home and doing fine! She gets her bandages taken off on Friday. Then her sutures get removed in 10-14 days and she'll be good to go. She's supposed to have "restricted activity" for 8 weeks but if today is any indication, she may have other ideas. Oh well, at the very least we're keeping her from doing any jumping.

Oh, and she also successfully went #1 and #2 outside today!

The Puppy Adventure

2008-10-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

Apparently discontent with the already high number of changes in our lives recently, Denise and I took the plunge and decided to get a puppy that we both fell in love with yesterday. She's a 10-week-old American Eskimo/Papillon mix named (Captain) Morgan.

Oh, but that's just the start of the adventure! After only owning her for a mere 2 or 3 hours, Denise came back downstairs with her after showing her to her parents. As she was bending over to put Morgan down, she suddenly kicked away and fell awkwardly onto the berber carpet downstairs. She immediately started to yelp loudly and her front paw seemed to dangle oddly.

So... off to the vet we went. We learned that she had a clean break of the two bones in her lower limb and she'll need to have surgery tomorrow. As you can probably imagine, that won't be cheap!

It's now 11:30pm and we're home... puppy-less. She's staying overnight at the vet and probably tomorrow as well. Denise is obviously a little broken up over the whole matter and she feels a little guilty for "breaking our puppy". But hopefully in a week or so, she'll be good as new. Both of them. :)

Building in Blaine

2008-09-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

For those that didn't know yet, Denise and I are building a house up in Blaine. We were fortunate enough to stumble into a really good situation and we're really excited about it! We have a tentative closing date of November 26th or sooner (obviously we're really keeping our fingers crossed for the "sooner"). They should be able to give us a firmer date in a couple weeks when it all gets framed in.

So far, we have the beginnings of a foundation complete with basement walls. They just backfilled it a few days ago.

Officially Homeless

2008-07-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

After a series of delays for various paperwork-related reasons on the buyer's end, we finally closed on the condo and moved out yesterday. We've now officially taken up residence (temporarily) with the in-laws in Cottage Grove. We expect to get some good news from the bank within the next couple days on the short sale we're pursuing up in Blaine. So hopefully we'll be living here a month at the most!

For some post-move pictures of the condo, click here.

Goodbye Condo

2008-07-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half ago, we completed a task that we began over a year ago when we undertook a whole series of home improvements... we finally put our condo on the market. Quite shockingly, we got an awesome offer on it a mere 3 days later! And just like that, a 12-year chapter of my life will come to an overdue close when we move next Thursday, 7/10.

Making the transition somewhat difficult is the fact that we may not be able to move into the house we fell in love with last week up in Blaine until the middle of August, although that could possibly change (knock on wood). So the tentative plan is to have the movers store our stuff while we shack up with Denise's parents which is, unfortunately, way down in Cottage Grove!

Chocolate Rain!

2008-06-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

I experienced a definite highpoint in my life tonight. The wedding? Not even close. I actually got to meet Chocolate Rain guy (Tay Zonday), perpetrator of one of the most viral videos of the last couple years! We were at Leeann Chin and he just happened to walk in. So, much to the embarrassment of Denise and my mom, I went and asked if I could get a picture with him...

For the uninitiated...

Back Home

2008-05-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

It's good to be back but at the same time, it kinda sucks that it's over. Here are some stats from the road:

Total distance driven: 4,365 miles.
Number of states driven through: 17, not including the District of Columbia (MN, IA, MO, IL, KY, TN, GA, FL, SC, NC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, OH, IN and WI).
State capitols driven through: 7, once again not including D.C. (Des Moines, IA; Nashville, TN; Atlanta, GA; Richmond, VA; Harrisburg, PA; Madison, WI and St. Paul, MN).
Most expensive gas seen: $4.19 somewhere in PA.
Number of Wal-Mart trucks seen: 51.
State with most dangerously conservative drivers: Iowa.
State with most dangerously insane drivers: Florida.
Money spent on tolls: somewhere in the $30-40 range... stupid northeast.
Philly cheesesteaks consumed by yours truly: 2.
Number of viscious sea gull attacks resulting in loss of pizza: 1.

Our full approximate route can be seen here.

Pictures can be seen here.