Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]
Meredith and Eric took first place at the National Championships with a flawless, beautiful performance… stunned the people online and the commentators with **OMG WHO ARE THESE GUYS!!!** reactions. They can’t go to World Championships until the elder is 14, which is next year. But my god, they were the best I’ve ever seen them, [...]
Went to the podiatrist/surgeon on Monday, and he’s leaving in the stitches for longer – I’m a slow healer, and there’s a couple of small gaps in the thing. He’s switched over to a much smaller bandage thing, essentially enough to cover the incision, and has to be redone every day with special silver gel [...]
* the kids have this insatiable desire to mess around with and ride on my walker, wheelchair and roll-about knee walker; Mere has been drooling over the idea of a swiss army knife for a while, bought one with her money, and proceeded to try to disassemble everything in sight – including the aforementioned AND [...]
Susan and Mere are doing a rummage sale today (Friday) at at our house: 577 Hitchcock, in Lisle, IL. (Roughly IL 53 and 55th/Maple Avenue.) I will either be inside hiding from the heat or outside in my wheelchair; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and selling more of the boxes of books I [...]
My daughter Meredith is a competitive roller skater, and her skating club is doing a big rummage sale Saturday and Sunday at the Lombard Roller Rink in Lombard from 9-3. I will not be there; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and I had an operation earlier this week and in no shape to [...]
At the present, my LEFT foot surgery has been rescheduled for the 5th of July; hopefully nothing else will blow that out of the water. My RIGHT foot – well, went to see a podiatrist on that, and he took new X-rays of my foot that show how crippled up it looks (which never fails [...]
We now have the schedule for Mere’s events in Cincinnati, (pdf) and it basically rotates around the following: We have to leave VERY VERY early Friday the 25th to be there at the arena by 9 in the morning (ick) – Mere has practices for each of her events from 10 to 6, and then [...]
(1) The surgery on my LEFT foot is still hanging fire, but this time, it’s because the various docs who had to give me clearance didn’t do so (first due to a goofy EKG that showed up nothing in a stress test, and then due to a white count that is pretty comparable with what [...]
This year, we consolidated our bank stuff from three different banks to one local credit union; two of those banks had just been eaten in big-fish eats littler-fish takeovers (one of which was handled by the FDIC as the bank went bust), and we were paying a hideous amount of money in fees for sneezing [...]
Going to the emergency room with another leg infection, this time from a gash on my right leg…been doing what I could to reduce things over the last few days since I got the gash, but it’s getting red and heating up. You can’t imagine how upset and annoyed I am about this. More later; [...]
Going off to the Dayton trip tomorrow (Monday) morning, coming back by dinnertime Thursday. Apparently, there’s going to be a ton of snow (6-8 inches) hit Dayton tomorrow, and I’m really not thrilled about having to do a long drive through snow…will check this carefully in the morning. Expect some reports on the road from [...]
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]
We’re facing a foot of snow or better in the next 24 hours, and the phone and internet are *already* up and down like a windowblind today. Highly annoying. Comcast says it’s weather-related failures – which makes me worry about what we’ll do if we get first snowed in and then frozen with sub-zero temperatures! [...]
Christmas Eve is usually the day we spend with Susan’s aunt and mom at Susan’s aunt’s house in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago; dinner is followed by passing out the presents (a small child is usually too excited to sit through dinner in any sort of relaxed fashion, and is the elf who supervises the [...]