Our church hosts an annual St. Nicholas Breakfast event in December. Volunteers start making the pancake batter the night before, and get to the church early Sunday to set up. Before the service, you have pancakes, breakfast sausage, muffins, and bagels, hot apple cider, etc. After the service, the kids take a picture with St. Nicholas.
 Josh with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011 |
 Lily with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011 |
This was a pretty nice Father’s Day weekend. I purposely asked that we didn’t do any big dinner or gifts this year. I don’t need it, and we should try to save a little money. What I did want was some free time to hit the gym and go cycling this weekend. This past month (since the MS ride) has been a very long month, with little time afforded to me to work out in the evenings, or go riding on the weekends. We didn’t get to do everything on the potential agenda e.g. movie night, but it was close enough. We have Kung Fu Panda sitting in its Netflix mailer, but we’ll have to watch it next week instead.
Saturday morning, I hit the gym, then my wife had to run some errands. While she was out, Lily and I picked Josh, who had spent the past two days/nights hanging with his maternal grandparents. When she got back, we hit the animal hospital to check out some kittens up for adoption. Afterwards, we did some shopping. I made what some might call a Chinese dinner: chicken fried rice with veggies sautéed in a General Tso’s sauce. Next time, I’ll plan ahead, and have some scallions on hand for garnish!
Sunday was proving to be one packed itinerary. I planned to go cycling in the morning, then we would take the kids to the neighborhood pool, lunch at home, then get ready and go to my father-in-law’s *last* church service. I use the word “last” loosely, since he’s retiring from his primary church, but he’s not actually “retiring.” Ah, I’m not going to get into it again. Whatever.
Cycling
6/19/2011 - my Father's Day ride -- 40 miles
Sunday morning, the kids were sleeping, and my wife was working on her speech for later that evening. I got ready in my cycling clothes, made myself some eggs and stuff for a hearty breakfast, and mapped out a decent ride around the area. I used a book that my wife got me for my birthday last year with routes all around NJ. A little after 8 AM, I was out the door.
I rode for a little while heading up to Cranbury, when I realized that my cyclocomputer wasn’t registering any mileage. It still said 0.0! Argh, I said, and stopped to figure out what was wrong. Now, I figured that the magnet and sensor got jostled on the bus ride back from Tuckerton Seaport last month, but I took the bike for a tuneup last week, and specifically told them it may need alignment. It seems they never bothered to check this out. Speaking in the 3rd person, I will say that Joel was annoyed. I messed around with the sensor, and it started registering, so I got back on the road heading up to Cranbury, NJ.
6/19/2011 -- I've racked up 175 miles so far this year
I didn’t quite follow the route listed, as I decided to not go all the way to the “starting point” marked in the route. Instead I thought I’d try to find one of the streets, and just go from there. Unfortunately, using the route and my iPhone’s Google Maps, I still had issues trying to find some of these streets. I eventually found my way, but I wasted a bit too much of my morning trying to find my way back to the route. I was probably better off just going to the specified starting point. As the morning drew on, it got progressively hotter, but I rode decently. In hindsight, I’m very glad I went for the 2nd bottle cage and water bottle, as I finished both on the ride, and then stopped at the Clarksburg General Store to get another large water bottle for a refill. I was only eight miles away from home, which would get me at about 38 miles in total, so I figured that was pretty good for today. I, of course, after using Google Maps, still went the wrong way, and had to backtrack again. I reached home a little after 12 noon. In total? 40 miles for the day, and 175 miles on the 2011 odometer. I think I can hit 200 miles next ride, which I hope is very soon. Since my personal best is just short of 600 miles in 2004, I’d like to beat that this year. I’m 1/3 of the way there now.
Surprise Father’s Day Gifts and Pool Time
The family had a little surprise for me, with cards and gifts, which I appreciated. I can’t wait to try out my new Swiss army knife. We had a short but closing window to hit the pool, so my wife got the kids ready for the pool before I got there, and I showered and got into my swim trunks. We hustled over to the pool, and swam around for the a while. My wife stayed out of the water, enjoying the rays. In too short a time, we had to get back and get ready. I picked up a quick lunch from 7-Eleven for the kids and me, and then we raced to get everyone showered and dressed.
Some of my Father's Day gifts and cards. I like the Star Wars card a lot!
Sunday Evening’s Church Service / My father-in-law’s Retirement Service
Naturally, we out of the house a little later than expected, and still had to get gas for the car. However, we now had less than an hour to get up there and get seats. I won’t mention all the details, but… the good news is that we made it there before 4pm, and the bad news is that I certainly made some enemies on the northbound NJ Turnpike that day. It was hot that day, but the kids were mostly behaved. After all the speeches, we went downstairs to eat and talk. We got out of there around 9pm, but then we had to get a few groceries (and pool shoes for Josh), so we hit ShopRite around 10:15 pm with the whole family. By the time we finally got home and got the kids to bed, we were all very tired.
Today was our church’s annual International Sunday. Folks dress up in tradional or homeland dress, and bring in foods from their native lands. In the past few years, I haven’t seen too many people come dressed to impress. I myself dressed in traditional Indian business casual, which was a dress shirt and pants. A large number of people brought in appetizers, entrees, and desserts. Unfortunately, I was too busy taking photos for the church website, so I never got a chance to eat anything before the food was gone.
After church, I drove the kids to our local KFC to celebrate International Sunday with a two-piece individual meal. Sad, I say. Just sad. At least fried chicken never disappoints.
International Sunday
The weather has been one of extremes. In the Northeast, the weather this spring has fluctuated between unseasonably warm and unseasonably cold. Just a few days ago, it was cold, then nice, and now hot and humid. Global warming supposedly results in extreme changes of weather. You may not believe it, but I do.
On Saturday, I was up early and at the church to help out with the Spring clean up. Every season, church members get together to help tidy up the church. Cleaning up branches, weeding, removing leaves, etc. With all the late winter storms, we had a lot of fallen branches (and trees.) I spent the morning working on removing fallen tree branches and leaves, using the blowers to clean the parking lot, and sweeping. I opted out of weeding, as I don’t enjoy doing that at my own house, so I wouldn’t want to do it here either. We finished around 12 noon, and I came home to have lunch with the family.
I took Josh out later in the afternoon to accompany him as he rode his bike around the neighborhood, and we hung out at the playground for a while. An ice cream truck was down the street, so I encouraged him that if he did some serious pedaling, I’d treat him to an ice cream cone. Wow, he rode fast, so another example that it’s all about the incentives. I bought him a $2 soft serve ice cream cone, and it was a race between him eating and the ice cream melting. Unfortunately, the ice cream was winning, so I helped him out by eating some of his ice cream. He’s not ready for riding sans training wheels, but he’s getting better at pedaling.
22 miles to Jackson NJ roundtrip
On Sunday after church and lunch, most of us took an afternoon nap. Josh seems to have inherited the Ipe energy genes, and he rarely naps in the afternoon anymore. Around 4:30pm, hoping to beat the predicted isolated thunderstorms, I jumped on my bike, and took a ride. I missed an opportunity to ride last weekend, and certainly didn’t want to miss another one this weekend. I rode to the Jackson Outlets 22 miles and back, which I was proud of. That’s certainly an improvement from 17 miles I rode two weeks ago. It’s a far cry from the 50 miles I hope to ride later this month at the MS Bike Tour, but it’s a start. Riding wasn’t too painful, but there was a terribly long hill on the ride home that had me alternating between swearing profusely and crying like a little girl. I had a stitch in my side that hurt like hell. At certain moments up the hill, I looked around and hoped there were no children around to hear me swearing and crying.
Sunday evening, the family made a run to our local ShopRite. My wife has been doing a lot of cooking in the kitchen this past week, following new recipes, and it’s been a delicious week of experimentation. Prior to the supermarket run, she made a big list of grocery items to pick up, and I’m looking forward to this week’s culinary experiences. This is an example where being a guinea pig ain’t so bad.
I seem to be back in the website administration business. Just when I get out, they pull me back in. Well, not quite, but I’ll explain.
For the uninitiated, through the years in addition to my personal ode to self-indulgence (this slice of life called joelipe.com), I have managed various websites for non-profit organizations.
Yes, I said “a free man.” Now I’m just challenged to continue to indulge myself here, on this website. It didn’t last long. At my church, they are in need of someone to take over administrative responsibility. Long story short, I agreed to do it. Before I agreed to take it over, the lingering question was how would I avoid not getting overwhelmed with updates?
The problems with all the previous websites were performing the weekly/monthly updates. The designs were aesthetically pleasing (yes, I can say that), but it was all manual. The posting of content and formatting would take forever, and my old version of the joelipe.com website was no better come month-end when I had to archive the previous month. If I was going to take on another website, the update process had to be streamlined. The current website is located at www.stbarnabas-sbnj.org, and you can tell it’s a bit dated. Callling it “dated” is okay, because everything gets dated after a while.
My answer? WordPress to the rescue! I’m exploring a streamlined design, and using WordPress as the content management system. WordPress could do for this website what it did for my personal domain:
Me smart. It’s not an overnight process, but I’m researching in my limited free time. I want to put something tangible in 30 days, and move to WordPress officially in July.
Today was an eventful today. First off, the kids’ school was closing at 5pm today, instead of 7pm. In order to make the pickup in time, one of us would have to leave work early to get there by 5pm. In the evening, we had the big farewell dinner for our rector (25 years of service) at Pierre’s Restaurant in South Brunswick. My wife was decorating, so she had to leave work early to help decorate, then get home and dress up. I left just before 4pm, and rushed through traffic to get home. Why are the busy days always the busiest they could ever be?
Somehow, everyone was home and in various stages of getting ready by 6:30pm. One of our friends came over to babysit, and we were out the door to get to the restaurant by 7pm. We made it with some sanity. How, after all that complexity? I have no idea.
Back to the big dinner. Yes, our church rector announced a few months ago that he would be moving on to other work in the diocese. Why does this stuff always happen just after we join and get settled? Aw, I guess stuff is always happening at one point or another. I really liked our pastor, and now there will be a long search process to find someone else to replace him. We’ve been attending St. Barnabas Episcopal Church for the past two years, but we’re getting more involved this year.
I don’t have all the statistics, but Rev. Hubbard had done a lot of work in the past 25 years since 1984. He helped double the average attendance to around 100 people per most Sundays. A larger congregation led to more Sunday services for people to choose from. The creation of a regular choir. A multitude of outreach programs. Certainly one of the most significant successes was leading the fund raising and final renovation of the church. Before our time, the church was smaller. In the 90′s and the early part of this decade, they built up an entire new chapel, converted the old chapel space into a fellowship hall / kitchen, office, and classrooms, and enlarged the parking lot to accommodate the larger church congregation needs.
The dinner featured a slew of guests speaking anecdotally about what Father Hubbard has done, and what’s he has meant to them. There were plenty of gifts. The neatest, I think? They presented him with a plaque, which will hang over the fellowship hall, as they are dedicating the hall in his honor — The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard Hall. I wish I had the stats, because what he’s lead the church to do in the past 25 years is so admirable in my book. I couldn’t have thought of a nicer way to show our appreciation for building up the church, figuratively and literally.
Farewell dinner with Father Hubbard
Quick update:
This has been a weekend of highs and lows.
Friday night, we went out with Num’s parents to celebrate her mother’s birthday. A little belated, actually, but better later rather than not at all. We went to a south Indian restaurant not far from Princeton.
On Saturday, Josh had his usual gym class, then a quick lunch, then we were all home packing for the day. Num’s long-time friend from high school Barbara was getting married to her fiancé John. (BTW, did you know there is a difference between fiancé and fianceé? I had no idea the French were so complicated.) The kids were staying with my wife’s parents, as it was going to be a late night.
After we dropped them off, we were off to Wallington, NJ for the wedding. Nice wedding, but we had a 2 hour gap of thumb-twiddling time between the end of the wedding (4pm) and the reception starting at 6:30pm in Morris Plains. What to do? We considered a movie, but nothing quite fit. We drove over to Clifton Commons in Clifton, ate ice cream sundaes at Applebee’s, and dispersed at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore to occupy ourselves until 6pm. We were the best-dressed couple at Applebee’s on that Saturday afternoon.
The reception was at the classy Bretton Woods house.We stayed until about midnight, dancing up a storm. We went home to change into pyjamas, pack clothes for church the next day, and slept over at the grandparents’ house. Photos for the whole event are now online for your viewing pleasure.
Sunday was all about attending the early 8:30am church service, breakfast at McDonald’s, taking an afternoon nap (all of us!), then Josh and I went to the pool.
Now for the lows. A family friend passed away unexpectedly this weekend, and we got word late Saturday night after the wedding reception. Tonight we went to his wife’s house for consolation with some of the family. More details to follow, funeral set for later this week. Very depressing, and hard to figure out.
