The Fighting I-L-L-I-N-I

The fighting Illini is exactly what they weren't on Saturday. They got run over by MSU 61-14 on their home field.

I went down to U of Illinios on Friday night to visit my old roommate and good friend Michael Bloem. He showed us the campus, his office, we did some tailgating, and enjoyed some college football.


We tailgated at a party put on by a local radio station. For some reason it was free and everything inside was free. No complaining here, though. We even had the marching Illini play for us for awhile. Check out that dude in front of the left Tuba. No one else in the entire group even reached his shoulder. He had to be 7 feet tall.

Like I said, it was a lopsided game. Here is a before and after of the fans:

When there was still hope in the first quarter...

And halfway through the 3rd quarter...

Addiction to Stupid Games: Part 3

This week's installment is in relation to Tony Hawk, Pro Skater 3. It is a sweet skateboarding game that I originally got hooked on when I played it on N64 and later Playstation 2. Not a whole lot cool to say about this addiction. I basically played it a lot, set good records, and eventually moved on.

It is the same story as SSX so I won't repeat it. Plus, most people don't know these two games all that well so commenting on my addictions to them isn't all that interesting. However, they are merely prerequisites to my real stupid game addictions. The whole series is 7 parts and we've got the two boring ones out of the way now (SSX and Tony Hawk). I have a feeling the next few games will be very relatable to most people as nearly everyone has played them. The countdown to #1 continues... Next week is Yahoo! Pool.

And Notre Dame Loses another Heartbreaker

As a diehard Michigan I have suffered great pain the last two years watching the filthing Irish spank us both in South Bend (I was at that game) and in the Big House. My only redemption is that I get to watch Notre Dame lose absolute heartbreakers from the student section.

The weekend started with a Chemical Engineering bash at Eric Smith's house in South Bend. There were some Calvin alum and a bunch of foolish grad students. The party was great and a bit wild. Here are some pictures of the night, including the proud century club members!






Saturday, Notre Dame played the nearly as filthy Spartans. Seeing as Michigan just lost to ND and had an absolutely awesome comeback win last year against the spartys I had to cheer for the green and white. They played a solid 3 quarters and were up by 21 over ND with about 18 minutes to play. The Irish had an amazing comeback only to have their hopes of a dream season dashed when they lost in overtime. Charlie Weiss, their instant legend coach after starting 2-0 has finally been brought back to earth. Ty started 8-0 and look where he is 4 years later. It may be a short stint for the overhyped offensive coordinator. Last year I witnessed the awesome (for me, not the rest of the student section) collapses of ND vs. Pitt and BC. Both games were basically in the bag for the touchdown Jesus team if they could've stopped a single 4th and 12 inside 3 minutes left. Gotta love college football!

Dead Trees = Pain in the Rear

The biggest complaint Erin and I had with our house after we moved in a couple of months back was that two big trees in the back yard were dead. We bought the house in late March before there were any leaves on the trees and moved in at the end of May to see that one tree was dead and another tree was very dead. The bark on the "very dead" tree was falling off and when I tried to take a few of the lower branches off they basically just snapped. So I had a few tree removal companies take a look at them and quotes ranged from $380 to $1100 just to get them on the ground. Well we finally had them dropped and now the back yard is safe again. I had much appreciated help from Erin and Reuben. We removed everything except the small twigs in about 3 hours of work.

Bobo Gets Married

Joel Bosch, aka Bobo, has been a close cousin all my life. On Saturday he got married to Lindsay Talsma. The wedding was nice and the reception was awesome. The Talsmas really threw a great party. The wedding was in Pella, Iowa. Pella is a dinky town in the middle of a thousand miles of cornfields. It is also known as a "Dutch" town. I never knew just how dutch it was. It clearly wishes it was a town in the Netherlands in the early 1900s, fit with narrow brick roads, brick buildings, a windmill and a canal. The Church was also clearly European.


But, the canal left something to be desired, as it was only about 12 inches deep and it ended rather abruptly.


The reception was a riot. The food was awesome, especially the chocolate fountain and cake. The dancing went till 2am. The Soper family really tore it up.

Addiction to Stupid Games: Part 2

Second installment of my addiction to Stupid Games brings us to SSX, a snowboarding game for playstation 2. This addiction started about 6 weeks after my Tetris addiction ended. My roommate at the time, Michael Bloem, bought playstation 2 and SSX the weekend before interim started our freshmen year. This turned out to be a great decision as interim is basically just a month of a little bit of class, a little bit of homework, and 8+ hours a day of messing around.

Well SSX started innocently as everyone who I hung out with started getting into it because playstation 2 was new and our room was about the only room with it. After awhile though, I began really putting effort into it and started working my way through the game. As I said before, I get addicted to the games where I can do the same things over and over and set records. Well this game offered about 6 different levels where you could either race or get points for tricks. I loved setting points records and would play a level over and over until I had a great score. After you beat the final level of the game, a new stage opens up, which is appropriately named "pipe dream." This stage just happens to be the ultimate for points. It is set up to do amazing tricks and so naturally I set some goals and dove right in. My goal was to get half a million points on this level within the time frame given. It took quite awhile but I eventually met my goal. Very fun game but on my addiction rating system I would rate SSX as a 4 out of 10.

Stay tuned next week for Part 3: Tony Hawk, Pro Skater 3

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend is always a great time, but also very bitter sweet. Everyone is there and we have a great time, but then on Monday we have to pack everything up for another year. The boats, the docks, and everything else is winterized. But enough about the negative, here is what this year's Labor Day weekend was all about:

-18 mile run
-golf for the men and women
-tubing
-skiing
-MICHIGAN FOOTBALL!!!
-volleyball
-badminton
-basketball
-euchre
-up and down the river
-more golf
-pleasant walks
-frisbee golf
-and so much more

One major change took place this weekend. For as long as I can remember, the family room at the cottage has had an electric organ. As little kids we'd love to turn the thing on, mess around with the different sounds, and dramatically change the volume. I don't remember ever hearing anything "pleasant" coming out of the organ, but we had fun with it. Well those days are long gone for me and finally my aunt Judy wanted to take it to their cottage where she could actually get some use out of it.





Here are some of the pictures of the end of summer




Oh how I love the cottage...The countdown for Memmorial day begins