Ben and Jenelle DOT COM

There’s a picture up from our cottage trip last weekend on the BenCam. It was taken shortly after the six of us completed a round of putt-putt fun at Island Golf in downtown Minocqua. I’ll have pictures up soon, but tonight, I’d like to tell a more recent story.

It’s been very hot here in Wisconsin lately. When I was out running this morning, I noticed that the local Speedway gas station was offering a fountain or frozen drink, any size, for only 79 cents. Shortly after dinner, we were looking for something to do, so Jenelle and I walked the 3/4 mile to get a slushee-style beverage. The deal was still posted on the sign outside, so we were somewhat eager to enjoy this treat, especially because it was still pretty hot out. To our surprise, all that we found by the slush machine was the phrase:

OUT OF ORDER

How very frustrating. No chance for a refreshing 79-cent frozen drink. We walked out of the building without purchasing a thing, and we walked across the street to a BP gas station. There wasn’t as big of a slush machine as at the Speedway, but it was there. Two flavors — cherry and blue raspberry. For whatever reason, the cherry side contained blue slush, and the blue raspberry side contained red slush.

Ben: “So, what flavor do you want? Cherry or blue raspberry?”
Jenelle: “Er, um, the red one.”
Ben: “Okay, one blue raspberry — sounds good to me!”

As we were about to pour, one of the station employees stopped us, notifying us that the slush wasn’t tasting quite right today. He said to put a little bit in a cup and try it. His assessment was correct — the slush was VERY sour. We thanked him for letting us try it, told him about the Speedway across the street with the same slush outage issue, and made our way to our next destination.

A few blocks west was a third gas station — a Kwik Trip. VICTORY! We walked out with a 32-ounce wild strawberry slush, and it was quite good. It was $1.26 including tax, but that really didn’t bother us at this point. We walked over two miles total (roundtrip) to get our frozen drink, but we did it.

And so ends the story of another small triumph in this thing we call life.

So, what’s been happening with Ben and Jenelle in the days since the previous post? Here’s a recap:

Monday, June 12 through Friday, June 16: The usual work + Tuesday small group + Wednesday church. I think we did have someone come by our house on Friday to give us another estimate for a deck. Jenelle and I are still pondering our options — with luck, we’ll have both a deck AND a fence installed by the end of the summer.

Saturday, June 17: I braved 80 degree temperatures and managed to complete the 10-mile Lighthouse Run in about the same time as last year. Details here.
This is also the day that Andrew, Holly, Ella, and Lily arrived in Wisconsin. We had dinner at my parents’ house to welcome them.

Sunday, June 18: Happy Father’s Day! Did you know that Jenelle was born on Father’s Day?

Monday, June 19: This was a semi-interesting day. Back in 1997, I gave two small vials of blood to get myself on the national registry of bone marrow donors. Having received a call that I was a potential match for a leukemia patient, I went to LifeSource blood services in Gurnee, IL to undergo confirmatory testing. Bascially, I gave more blood — about six vials this time. There’s an 8% chance that I will be compatible with the patient in need. I probably won’t find out the results until mid-to-late July.

Tuesday, June 20: Since we moved in to our new house, all but the two coolest phones in the house would ring when we received a call. After a few calls over the weekend to convince the AT&T guy to pay us a visit, we finally got the problem fixed. Something about a bad card at a relay station. Our Uniden something-gigahertz cordless phone with built-in digit-all answering machine is once again working as designed.

Wednesday, June 21: Happy Birthday, Jenelle! After a busy day at work, I gave the message (formerly known as the “sermon”) at the evening church service because Pastor Tracy was gone on a camping trip with the high school youth group. There wasn’t a big crowd, but those who were there said I did a good job. I think I could do a little better with a bit more preparation. In any case, it was definitely one of those “outside my comfort zone” experiences that I need to have every once in a while.
After church, Jenelle and I had a low-key evening together, which included a trip to Arby’s and a stop at Pick & Save for frozen confections. Yum.

Thursday, June 22: We had our family birthday dinner at the Chancery in downtown Racine. We had the back room mostly to ourselves, which is nice, especially when two of the people in your party are less than three years old. It was lots of fun.

Friday, June 23: We spent a bit of time hanging out with Andrew, Holly, Ella, and Lily in the afternoon, and then we visited Aunt Liz, Uncle Randy, Amanda, and Tony after dinner, who we haven’t seen in quite a while. More family fun times.

Saturday, June 24: Another “outside my comfort zone” experience. Today, Jenelle and I got to watch Ella and Lily for most of the evening while Andrew, Holly, GrandTom and GrandPat were at a friend’s wedding. It wasn’t too difficult a task, but it is something I would have to adjust to if I was doing it every day. Shortly after our babysitting adventure began, both Ella and Lily went to sleep, which made our job easy for the first two hours. After that, taking care of Ella wasn’t too hard. She’s not really talking yet, but she’s fairly good at using gestures to explain what she wants. She also has a habit of switching the DVD in the player very frequently. Her favorite movie seems to be Lady and the Tramp. We watched this one several times. The funny part is that whenever we put it back in, we could not resume from the point where we left off — we had to start again at the beginning! Oh, well. Lily was a bit fussy after her nap, but we managed to keep her busy with a variety of things. In any case, I appreciated the opportunity to spend more time with my favorite nieces.

Sunday, June 25: Happy Birthday, Ed! Jenelle took me out to Tenuta’s for my birthday lunch (one day early), and then she baked me a delicious cinnamon swirl cake. We spent a fair amount of time just relaxing and hanging out to gear up for another exciting week.

Monday, June 26: Happy Birthday to me! I brought donuts to work, which were devoured at the usual quick pace. After work, I enjoyed leftover Tenuta’s for dinner. I also got a cute card from Jenelle which included a $100 “gift certificate” to RaceReady, which I used to buy most of the stuff on my wish list. It wasn’t exactly a “gift certificate” — basically, she told me I was cleared to spend that much. That works for me, since it all comes out of the same bucket anyways. 🙂

Tuesday, June 27: We recently finished a big project at work, so I received a bonus gift at a celebration in the evening. It will probably go in the savings account to be spent later on a fence or a deck.

Which brings us to today, when I posted this message. Have a great rest of the week, everyone!

My ten year reunion was this past weekend. Here’s a photo of everyone from the class who showed up. Yes, I know, it’s only ten people, but considering that there are only about forty in the class, the turnout was pretty good.

If you’re one of the people in the picture, I’d like to say WELCOME to benandjenelle.com. Thanks for dropping by!

Our house is about 20 minutes away from the condo where we used to live. It’s interesting to look at the approximate travel times to all of the places we sometimes drive. Here’s a table that lists the place, the travel time from our condo (“before” the move), the travel time from our house (“after” the move), and the difference between the two. In general, we think our new location is a lot more convenient than our old one.

Here’s a few pictures from yesterday evening’s celebration at Roma Lodge.