Nagel Family Website

I had a series of topics I wanted to write about, but I simply haven’t had the time. So instead I’m cramming them all in one. Sorry. Get over it.

Dad’s Retirement
My Dad retired last week. Not retired like he thinks I am (I work from home) but really retired. Like golfing every day retired. Keeping the nice people at NetFlix busy retired. Really retired. Of course the GM shareholders found out and started dumping GM’s stock.

Kiva
My Kiva loan (tortilla production in Honduras) was repaid the other day, and I reinvested it - this time in a chicken operation in Tanzania. Like the first loan, I should get my money back in 10 months when I’ll pick another operation to loan the money to.

Wicked
Steve took Laura and I to dinner & Wicked last week. I tried reading the book, but after about 1-1/2 hours, I was only about 8 pages in, and gave up. Some things I just can’t read. Anyway, the play was great - excellent storyline. I’d say there were a few songs they could’ve cut out, and Shea’s could have turned on the A/C - it was HOT in there! But we had a great time.

Fantasy Island
The next day, we went to Fantasy Island with the Fitzpatricks. This was the kids first day of summer vacation, so we wanted to treat them. I think we were last at Fantasy Island 2 years ago. The park was practically empty! After a long day on the rides & such, we went to Friendly’s for dinner. What a deal - 5 of us ate, with ice cream, for under $40. Can’t beat that!

Canada Day
Finally, yesterday we went to the Buffalo Yacht Club to watch the Canada Day fireworks at Ft. Erie. The club was closed, but we managed to get in anyways and had the balcony to ourselves.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Rebecca graduated from Pre-K today - congratulations!!! After the first day, I didn’t think we’d ever make it. Her class sang 4 songs for us, then received their diplomas. Only one of the songs made me tear up a bit (not as much as my mom!). Then we went to Pizza Hut!


Jason goes in for a few hours tomorrow, then the kids are done ’til September! We have so much planned for this summer - it’s going to be busy, but we’re going to have a great time!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Lots going on in the Nagel household now that summer is here - and it’s officially here! It was hot here this past weekend - hitting 82 on Saturday and 87 on Sunday.

We had plans to open the pool, so Saturday morning I was out in the yard at 6:30 to get started on things. Aside from a backwards check-valve causing a minor flood as the filter pumped the pool water onto my lawn, things went pretty well. I shocked the pool & got the solar heater installed, set the winter cover over the swing set to dry, and was pretty much done in time to take the kids to the monthly Home Depot workshop.

It was so nice on Saturday that they decided to hold the workshop outside! In the parking lot! In the direct sun! Man, it felt like it was well over 100 degrees out there. We quickly (very quickly) got the project done & went inside. I picked up a few things for future projects and we were home in 45 minutes. Just thinking about being out there makes me sweat.

Laura & the kids went to Art Alive at the Albright Knox while I stayed home & finished up the pool and got started on the hot tub. The hot tub was emptied, cleaned, filter cleaned, and fresh water put in. I can’t wait to get in there tonight! Being in the sun all that time made us all sleepy, so we were able to sneak in a quick nap before friends came over for dinner.

After dinner we drove down to Penn Dixie to look at the stars, the moon, and Saturn. We also saw the International Space Station zoom overhead. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty amazing. It looks like a really, really high plane going super fast. The Space Station travels at 17,000 miles / hour. Hopefully we’ll be able to see it tonight, too (at 9:47 here in Buffalo).

Sunday morning we were all up early and headed up to the cottage to have fun & get some work done. I was up on the roof with my father-in-law (who I still insist on calling Mr. Bishop, although my mother-in-law is “Mom”), finishing the front of the garage roof. That went pretty well, despite the hot temperatures. Hauling 90 lb. rolls of roofing up a ladder is much easier this year now that I’m in better shape. The hardest part is remembering where NOT to step, as we haven’t done the back side of the garage yet, and that’s where we were bringing the supplies up from.

When we were done roofing, Jason was out playing in the water and almost floated back to Dunkirk in his raft, and I had to run after him (fully dressed, mind you) before he was swept out too far. I think I went out about 150 yards - but the water was still only chest deep. Lake Erie, by the way, is still pretty darn cold these days! As soon as I got to him, Jason said, “I know… I’m dead.” How can I be mad at him when I get a response like that??? And besides, any 9-year old boy gets in situations like that. I’m just glad he’s OK.

Coming home from the cottage is always an adventure, but we pulled right into customs (no line on a Sunday night!) and got though after answering hardly any questions at all (just “Citizenship?” and “Anything to declare?”). It helps having the packet of paperwork all neatly presented for customs.

Then there was Monday… boy, was it HOT. And there’s no A/C in my office yet, and my office is in the attic. Well, I wasn’t very effective at work yesterday. It was just miserable. I took some time to get in the air conditioned car and headed to Best Buy to buy a new camera. Ours is dying, and with Rebecca’s pre-K graduation coming up, I didn’t want to take chances. I’ll write a review on the camera soon - so far, I like it.

This morning I signed on to the computer, checked email, etc. then turned off IM, email and all other distractions. I worked ’til lunch, ate and quickly checked in, then back to work ’til 4:30 before checking in one more time for the day. I had a SUPER productive day today and can’t wait to try this again tomorrow. Some things still take time, like working in PHP, then realizing I need a header, so going to Photoshop and making it, then editing the CSS to display it, then back to the PHP task I was originally working on, but I feel like I got a lot done today.

OK - this is a long post. Quickly - the vegetable garden is coming along very nicely and we’ve already harvested some spinach for a salad the other evening. I think Laura is getting some of the lettuce out today. Fresh picked spinach tastes far superior to the stuff you get in stores!

This long post is proof I need to blog more often. I’ll try to get 1 more in this week!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

The other day we were watching an episode of Hannah Montana and they showed some photos of when Miley was much younger. I think she looks exactly like Rebecca! Check this out:

Miley:

Rebecca:

It’s hard finding a photo of Rebecca not showing off her beautiful teeth, but what do you think? Rebecca thought they look similar, and she loves the idea that she looks like Hannah Montana!

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Remember I wanted to blog 5x / week? Well, if you couldn’t tell, that’s not happening. I guess I’m just too busy working and living life. It’s now been a week since my last update, and its been a busy week at that.

I’ve picked up 9 geocaches recently; one evening I went out with Becca and this deer thought we were going to feed it:

Then Friday night out with Ray & Theresa. Here are some photos from one of the caches we found:

Then Sunday I hit up Grand Island:

While on Grand Island, we placed Jason’s Cursed Pirate Booty - our first geocoin. I also picked up a few ticks, but got them off me before they buried in. Next time I’ll have to wear long pants. Finally we found a quickie on Monday while taking a break from a party & introducing a muggle to the sport of geocaching. It’s amazing how people don’t know about this, but are instantly hooked when they go out & do it.

It was a busy weekend with 3 parties & a parade; tonight Echo is coming over to spend a few days with us. Echo is one of my mom’s border collies and it adorable. When mom gets home, I may not answer the phone so Echo can stay with us longer!

The kids are excited about the school year ending in about 4 weeks. I’m excited about no more tuition payments!

The Lost finale is on tomorrow night, which I can’t wait for. It’s always a tough decision… do I watch in HD, or hook up the projector? Either way, I have to get the surround sound working. Then it’s back to no TV again - I got so much done last year when I gave it up.

Finally, I apologize to everyone in Buffalo for the recent cold & frost advisory last night. It’s all my fault because I packed up my sweaters for the summer. Now we’ll probably end up getting snow!

OK - off for a busy day of work - later!

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Family, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Last night Laura, Jason and I went rock climbing last night w/ my gym buddies at the Niagara Climbing Center in N. Tonawanda, which I haven’t been to in 10-11 years. Boy, have they changed things.

Last time I was there you’d have to tie in each time, get it inspected, and your belayer would have to actually work to keep you up. Now you just quickly clip in and the belayer has a safety latch to keep you from falling to your death (or, at least from getting hurt). That gave us a lot more time to climb, instead of goofing around w/ strapping in.

I wasn’t too fond of being up so high - I have to get over that. There were a couple climbs I just couldn’t do because of the lack of places to grab onto. But, overall, I was quite happy w/ how I did. Jason was a maniac, flying up the walls (and sometimes flying off of them!).

Both Jason and Laura want to go back, and since it’s pretty cheap ($10 all day pass, $2 harness rental) I’m sure we’ll be going back soon.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Family, Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.