I stopped by Esther Price and they were handing out these samples. It's made in a heated fountain with a spigot. They slowly heat up the chocolate, then open the spout and fill your cup. Awesome!
2026-02-13
Julie got me a skyline puck!
It goes along with a Skyline themed Jersey she ordered me for Christmas :) That should be here any day too. Fun!
Just eating them like an apple!
I can enjoy onions about any way I can get them. In this case, I enjoyed some of the leftovers. I sliced them up like an apple and chomped away. I'm sure I stink now!
Not THIS was yummy!
Butter fried soda crackers with cheese and onion! Julie and I had to try a few. We managed to stay within our daily sugar limits too! :)
2026-02-12
Chloe is NOT walking in the deeper parts of the snow…
…I repeat, Chloe is NOT walking in the deep snow.
She's just too low slung so she opts for boat anchor mode…! Hahahaha.
This is gonna be fun!
It looks like Jeep officially licensed this set so I get some cool logos and branding for my Legos :)
Nice to know what size a Lego offroad tire is 🤪
56 x 26mm. There's even five! That's one more than my real Jeep had there for a while… hahaha.
2026-02-11
Close to two guns for every person in the US!
Peeps try and marginalize the numbers, but they're impossible to ignore. It's the majority by a really long shot! 
One more pic I deleted by mistake
I forgot to post this post ride pic from my January trip. It was a slippery day for sure. But everything went well, and I headed home after dinner. It gave me more time with Jewels, and kept me from spending the night camping when it was going to be 10º in the morning.
Speaking of Dinner, the bottom pic is Zoe just sitting at my feet while the group of us ate Mexican dinner. A lot of the restaurants have "outdoor" so they accommodate the dogs and off-roading that seem to go together so often 🐶
I decided to start over again with my Jeep build 🤪
Julie got me this cool Lego set for Christmas. I decided I better get busy over the winter so it's ready for the spring rides, hahahaha.
Let’s try out this little guy
CRKT made a bali that takes queues from their classic M16. As a bali, it's less then meh. As a knife, it's a nice blade, easy to open one handed and feels good. Hmmmm. maybe just part of knife history that you have to keep in your collection?
2026-02-10
Overdue for a replacement
The Pentastar 3.6 is famous for developing a leaking oil cooler around 80-100,000 miles. Mine was at 110K and leaking. So, this past weekend, I dug into the engine and replaced it. Wasn't too hateful of a job. I had a mechanic friend help me out. He knew the shortcuts we could take, what to be careful with, and was an extra set of hands. It took us about an hour and a half. Then I did an oil change, tire rotation, lube job, and inspection.
Cool new race car coming…
This is the concept for Matt's next vehicle. It's cool that they sketched up his new desert racing concept.
A big fight broke out 🤪
All the Cincinnati area mascots played a game of broom ball during one of the period breaks. A big brawl even broke out. The crowd loved it!
how big they are…?!
You don't realize how big these wheels are until you try and fit one in the back of another vehicle!
Doesn’t look quite right?
I have a new spare on order… In the meantime, I'm running around with a missing wheel on the back end. Julie doesn't think it looks quite right, in fact, she thinks it looks naked, or incomplete. I tend to agree, hahaha. It is lighter on the back end and tailgate for sure.
2026-02-09
We were speechless at how great the rings turned out!
John planned it out, thought through what Savannah would like, and mocked it up for Thuan. Then he planned how he was going to pop the question too. It was hard to have the necessary patience!
In the end it all worked perfectly. Savannah was surprised, pleased, and the ring was "exactly what she wanted and better than she imagined". Welcome to the family "officially" 🥰
We even managed to have some gold left
Thuan goes through a laborious process of melting, purifying, and casting the heirloom gold to maximize the beauty, durability, and value of the rings he makes from it. Most shops just give you the street value and send it out for melt. They don't actually use it in your rings, or give you the full value. We have a couple stones from Steve's wedding band for future use too. :)
A few weeks later, Julie joined us.
Another lunch date with John. This time to pick up the rings 💍 It was fun to be scheming around behind Savannah's back 🤪 All the time, she thought Johnny was dragging his feet and not making any progress on their plans. He did a good job of playing it cool. That was until he actually had the rings, then he wanted to run home and propose right away! But he knew he had to stick to his plan and make it special.
Early January
John and I made a lunchtime visit to our favorite jeweler at ACT. He's a fun guy and can craft whatever you'd like! By the time we finished deciding what he wanted, and came back to put it in motion, Thuan was hugging John since we was happy to see him again and excited to be part of John's plans. 
Back in July and August…
You might remember me posting some pics of past wedding bands and such. That was about the time that John had starting asking questions about getting married, discussing options, planning for the future, and wanting to see the rings we had offered if they decided they wanted to go that route. It was a fun summer of coffee and food dates, walks, and discussions. This is my current band Julie got me. Johnny has always liked the row of stones, and wanted a pic as we was thinking about what he might want in a ring. ❤️
2026-02-08
The announcement! The date is set too!
The set up this cute pic to tell the family their news. I loved it!
They are getting married on March 19, this year! We couldn't be happier. That sounds fast, but it's been in the works for quite a while. Now things are falling into place and they are rolling with it❣️
The rings turned out great!!
John bought her stone (top hand) and designed the gold band to go along with it. Then our jeweler friend hand crafted it.
The stones in his ring (bottom hand) are from Julie's grandma on her mom's side. The setting and band were made from a custom wax mold and then hand finished.
The gold is all from other family pieces including Julie's Dad's wedding band, a necklace of her mom's, and one of Julie's old rings. It all turned out great, saved them some money, and has great sentimental value❤️
They are using them as "all-one-rings". They will serve as both engagement and wedding rings for each of them. A cool idea!
We even managed to have enough remaining gold, and other rings (my original wedding bands for example) in case anyone else ever needs them)…
Guess who’s engaged??!!
John and Savannah!
This is Julie and me on FaceTime finding out it's official! It was down to the last minute whether he was going to be able to pull it off or not. He was trying to surreptitiously recreate a fun early dating moment of SpeedWay, hot chocolate, snow, and a parking lot. It worked, and she said yes! We're thrilled for both of them and happy to them taking this next step in their lives. Our daughter in-love is set to become our daughter in-law :)
And speaking of weddings… What’s this?❣️
The lighted box was a perfect finishing touch to these custom crafted rings made using gold and stones from family wedding bands and some from Julie's mom's rings…
2026-02-07
Storm chasers are getting crazy footage these days…
Julie found this video that captures a terrible tornado really clearly! It's worth watching! These guys are crazy! Even worse, is watching how the storm just destroys whatever's in its path… I grabbed this freeze frame that I thought captured the mood pretty well…!
I like the three perspectives…
We came across a washed out piece of the trail (basically the ravine running through the driver mirror in the top pic. Nobody was going to make it through that, so we had to take the improvised bypass. That wasn't much better. The group guide said, "I think pretty much everybody is going to have to winch up that last bit". That is where I am sitting in the top pic just above the driver mirror.
There was ZERO traction coming back up onto the trail after the bypass, so we ALL winched. I like the perspective from inside my rig where I can see them hooking up my cable from both through the windshield and from my front bumper/winch cam. It was a good time having everyone help. We all got to make sure our recovery gear was all in working order.
I got to practice changing a wheel on the trail…
Somehow, I managed to catch the inside of one of my tires on the sharp end of a culvert. I got three rotations of the wheel before it was completely flat. Everybody chipped in and 20 minutes later we were rolling again.
What goes up must come down…
Somehow, I deleted a few of my "to blog" pics from a few weeks ago. This was our Hollerwood trip from the end of January. We all went up Holiday Hill (white Jeep in the top pic), then ended up turning around to avoid all the mud bogs. So we all went back down. It was a fun little climb that looked a lot easier than it was. If you remember a couple weeks back I posted a video clip. It was on this same obstacle. Only a couple made it up without winching. In the bottom, one of the guides is watching me walk it back down one of the areas below the main obstacle.
2026-02-06
Cool early morning shadows
The moon and the snow combined to make a nice bright 3a photo. Not sure which is more creepy, the shadows or me being up wandering around at 3a hahaha.
It sure was cold when we woke up last weekend!
NOT feels like temperatures, these are real temps, Alaska style.
Oh yeah, don’t forget the nacho helmet!
I decided to splurge for an evening and feast on this helmet full of loaded nachos. I eat around the chips and thoroughly enjoyed the multiple kinds of meats and fixin's.
What a fun hockey giveaway night
A weekend ago, we had quite the souvenir weekend. First, I picked up an autographed puck from the points we get in the Cyclones app. They also handed out savings banks that night. The next game, they handed out trading card packs and the frenzy of trading ensued. We enjoyed ourselves in spite of the meh performance of the team of late. 🤪
2026-02-05
Just a cool pose of a neat little knife from years past
We got this from the Great America Outdoor Show during my five year anniversary trip to Philly a few years back. Julie and I have passed it back and forth between us a couple times. It's currently "mine" 😂
All the mascots are out celebrating
It was Twisters birthday (31) last week. So all the area mascots got together to celebrate.
Leading companies
It's nice to see my work get this callout. I've said it since something like 2020, we're out there ahead of the competition with a useable product on the factory automation floor where AI works, and is easy enough to use to be practical. That's served us well. Now we just need to take it to the next level and keep the competition in the distance behind us. Hopefully the future is bright.
2026-02-04
Battle at the Bunker, haha.
During Battle at the Border, they were jokingly changing the name during our competition. We locked ourselves in, sheltered from the weather, and pushed through all in one day. After the fact, they even modified the schedule to the way it went down. Fun memories.
I got my snow blowing down after John finished.
He got the daylight, but I got to enjoy the beautiful starry night! It was COLD, down into the single digits and windy. But it was still pretty. Enjoy the view. :)
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