(8/13)
Wow - end of August already!!
Dream Cruise is next Saturday (the 21st) and if we have power this year, we will be partying AGAIN!!! As usual, bring your cooler, park it in our garage and we'll ramble on down
Woodward to check out the cars - we think they're doing a street carnival again this year!!!
Come around 1:00PM - if it's later, no biggy - the garage is open (and the house will be too) and we have a new refrigerator in the garage now!! We have lots of non-alcoholic bevs for the kids so don't bother with that but bring your adult beverage of choice - we have lots of Minute Maid lemonade for those cool beer/lemonade drinks Brian and Nicci Bower turned us on to three years ago!!
We'll be making burgers, brats and dogs and baked beans around 5:30ish - if everyone could bring some kind of side dish that would rock - just let us know what you're bringing!!!
Please feel free to invite other people if you'd like - just let us know if you're coming and how many so we know how much food to get!!! We look forward to seeing everyone. If you've never been to a Dream Cruise before, it's a lot of fun!!
Call us if you need to - 248.542.8555!!
(6/13) We suffered another power outage yesterday -- and it had nothing to do with a storm. A mostly rotten tree, a few blocks away, decided to give up and fall on some powerlines, snapping telephone poles on both sides and breaking a (big) limb of another tree behind it. We apologize for the interruption, but are happy to report DTE had the power restored before the Pistons/Lakers' game (which the Pistons won, 88/80).
(5/28) Tiffani, and now Tom, are having problems with with their email accounts. Tiffani doesn't seem to be getting all her's, and now none of Tom's is arriving. If you want to contact Tom, use @wowway.com instead of @wideopenwest.com. Tiffani's address was already @wowway.com. The ISP has been contacted and we're sure they're giving this issue their full attention.
(5/22) Normally we don't provide links to items that require registration, but this one is worth sharing a few of your personal details with The Washington Post.
"Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the /Brown v. Board of Education/ decision. To astonishment, laughter and applause, Cosby mocked everything from urban fashion to black spending and speaking habits."
You can read the whole article by clicking here.
(5/8) Congratulations to Jill and Roy Lamphier on the exciting birth of their son, Gavin, this AM. Why was it exciting? It happened at home in their bathroom!. According to reports, Jill woke up at 2:45 AM with that I have to go to the bathroom feeling women giving birth all know about. Well, going to the bathroom was not what nature was telling her. Unable to get up she suspected something was happening and reached down and felt the baby's head! She called 911 and their doctor to let them know their was an urgent situation. As Ferndale emergency personnel were dispatched Roy calls 911 back for instructions on what to do because the baby was coming now. Roy had to turn the head to clear the baby's shoulders and with only four pushes Gavin came into the world at 3:10 AM delivered by his father. Shortly afterward the doctor called back, "I hear we having a baby." "He's already here!", Roy replied.
Roy is still holding the baby when Jill tells him to go get "the sucky thing" and as he turns to leave the bathroom is reminded the baby's still attached and hands Gavin back to Jill. She's sucking the baby's nose and mouth when the doorbell rings and Roy rushes downstairs to let the police in. Their daughters, Sophia and Marina sleep through the whole thing.
Strangely, Tif wakes up when the emergency vehicles arrive but dismisses the flashing lights in the bedroom to the ceiling fan deflecting light from outside. She missed the whole thing!
Both mother and baby (9lbs 2oz) are doing fine and Royal Oak Beaumont. We think they deserve a medal, and certainly Roy has earned some kind of certificate or something!.
We think The Mirror should pick-up this story. We'll keep you posted with new developments. What a great day for the Lamphier's! Congratulations!
(4/13) Did you miss us? We know some of you did based on the email messages we received when our website disappeared earlier today. It was for a worthy cause. Our througput had fallen below 19.2kbps and our router had to be reset remotely by WOW technicians. We're now back to a peppy 300kbps which means your response time should improve when you visit us.
(4/1) Some of us woke up this morning in a better place. Today, one of those people was Lee Allen. Known as squeedunk to his Yale classmates, he was a husband, father of five, and a man we were privileged to know. "His example," Tom said, "encouraged me to simultaneously stand straighter but not take life too seriously."
The funeral will be Sunday, 4PM, at Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian.
![[ Yahoo! Maps ]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/mp/gr/mplogo.gif){kind=small}
Map of 8625 E Jefferson Ave
Detroit, MI 48214-2710
April
(3/31) We're playing with some interesting calendar stuffs and have published a calendar for Ferndale's various government events including City Council meetings, Board of Ed. meetings, and a few other items. If you use an iCal-compatible calendar tool (like Apple's iCal or Mozilla's mozCalendar) your welcome to check-out webcal://gagne.homedns.org/calendar/FerndaleMI.ics.
We've started a discussion group on the upcoming election in November, 2004. You're wecome to join it. To read more about it or even join it visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/2nov2004. We hope to see you there!
(3/12) You can help detect breast cancer! The Breast Cancer Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day. It takes less than a minute to visit their site and click on "donating a mammogram" for free (see image at left). It's free for you and comes out of their sponsors' pockets.
While you're there visit some of the other "click-to-support" sites for world hunger, rainforests, children's health, and animal rescue.
March
February
(1/29) A few days ago in Crain's Daily Update came this item from Bob Allen that caught our attention.
Speaking of reporting, if you have some time, you really ought to check out this link. A 19-year-old German student, as a requirement of his English class, wrote an essay titled An Ailing Patient The Decline of Detroit, Motor City of the USA. Folks, this is one exhaustively researched work. I'm not sure a 19-year-old American student could have done this. I'm also not sure that many of us know this much about our community. Even if you dont have time, go to the final paragraph of the PDF document of the essay. If only some Detroiters were so gracious about Detroit.
(1/24) Last night on 20/20, John Stossel reported on 10 Lies, Myths, and Downright Stupidty. One of our favorites:
The rich don't pay their share of taxes.
The top 1% of income earners (earning more than $300K/year) pay 34% of the nation's income tax. The top 5% (earning more than $125K/year) pay over 50% of the nation's income tax. So it makes sense that tax refunds would go to those that pay the most income tax.
Visit them online (above link) to read more
(1/20) Yesterday's Iowa caucuses and the press is all surprised Massachusett's John Kerry beat Howard Dean. Since Al Gore's endorsement of the VT governor all we've heard is Dean this and Dean that. Dean, apparently, is so far left only the press could love him. Comparatively, Dean makes the others look almost conservative. But don't be fooled--they aren't. They're Robin Hood politicians ready to engage in class warfare and as we've seen in other election years--aren't afraid to bait the races.
(1/13) The Michigan Civil Rights petition drive kicked-off today with the expected duet fanfare and protest. We'll have more commentary later.
January, 2004
(12/30) So many things to to catch up on! Most exciting is Michael's first tooth! One more tooth on top and we won't have to chew his meat for him. His favorite form of locomotion is to simply roll in the direction he wants to. He's learning early physics lessons from walls and corners.
(12/26) Merry Christmas! We hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas Day and if you're lucky, there's more to come. Feast of the Epiphany is only 12 days away (remember, the 12th day of Christmas?) and Joshua has even more presents then!
(12/18) Awesome! That's how Joshua and Tom described The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on Wednesday, after seeing the 4:10PM show on the movie's opening day. Tom posted Joshua's bail around 3PM and together with Tom's friend Victor Curatolo hid out at the theatre for 3 1/2 hours.
With these movies once is never enough, and they're already planning to see the movie again with Tom's nephews Jonathon and Nicolaas Allen, Tom's sister's sons. Or as Tolkien might put it, "Jonathon and Nicolaas, sons of Lee."
(12/16) Only one day to go until the release of Return of the King, Peter Jackson's last installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tom's worried it won't live up to his expectations--based on the dismal failure of the last two Matrix movies. According to this review from the NYTimes:
The last chapter of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is a meticulous and prodigious vision, the product of impressive craft and energy.
Let's hope Tom stops worrying about the movie and instead worries about waiting in line!
(12/5) Dang it! So, Tom's working downstairs today and whining about how cold it is and Tiffani, to shut him up, tells him to turn on his space heater. Apparently, two computers with monitors, a laptop, desklight, phone charger, DVD player, VCR player, cable modem, five-port hub, two external speaker pairs, printer, and space heater are too much for a chain of three power strips attached one to another. We're unsure why because there's still at least five outlets on the last strip with nothing plugged into them...
As a result, we had to reboot our web server which was assigned a new IP address. It will take about 12 hours for it to refresh across the galaxy. Our apologies, well Tom's actually, for making it difficult to find us.
(12/1) You may have already received in your email a letter presenting a scathing review of President George Bush's résumé. To the indiscriminating reader it seems fairly accurate, but in reality it is poorly researched and is intellectually lazy and misleading. If you've read it, or worse, forwarded it, you owe it to yourself to read both this and this, and forward these links (or this page) to whomever you've shared the original with.
December
(11/28) Happy Thanksgiving! OK. We know we're a day late wishing everygody the best, but like many of you, we've been busy. Tom celebrated his 39th birthday (for the 1st time) on Wednesday. On Thursday, we packed up the gang and headed to Tom's sister Jeannine & Adrian Allen's house to watch the Lions game. Oh, and celebrate Thanksgiving.
We hope your meal was as good as ours. Now to finish shopping. Well, Tif's close to finishing. Tom, like every year, hasn't started yet.
(11/20) This piece of information is too go to let sit in the inbox. Maureen Crandall wrote to tell us:
Hello Everybody!
This is an easy way to help out those in need this holiday season. Campbell's is donating a can of soup to the needy for every person who goes to their site and votes for their favorite NFL team!!! Pass it along.
Over 800,000 cans already donated.
Please, go to the site and it is right there, very easy to do. http://www.chunky.com/click_for_cans.asp
Thanks, Mo!
(11/15) Our thanks go to Jack's Garden Fresh Salsa for sponsoring Joshua's indoor soccer team. Click on the link to see the great team uniforms! Molly had a few extra pictures taken because she stuck around to help me figure out the camera. Thank you, Molly!
(11/8) Our Halloween pictures are ready!
(11/5) We're proud to report the arrival of Dylan Mitchell Meek born at 11:52pm yesterday to Todd & Pam Meek. As Todd put it in his email:
Dylan was born at 11:52pm on November 4th 2003 and tipped the scales as a welterweight with 6 lbs, 3oz & 19 inches of rippling body.
Mom & baby are doing great at Royal Oak Beaumont while Dad is still trying to recall the delicate intricacies of swaddling.
Call Tif at home for Pam's number at the hospital.
November
(10/13) State Representative Andy Meisner will lead a discussion about Michigan's Proposal A and Headlee Amendment and the impact (negative?) they've had on inner-ring cities like our's. Pleasant Ridge City Manager Sherry Ball, Ferndale City Manager Tom Barwin, Hazel Park City Manager Ed Klobucher, and Jim Townsend, Executive Directory of Michigan Suburbs Alliance will participate in a panel discussion.
| Date: | Thursday, October 16, 2003 |
| Time: | 7:00 - 8:30 PM |
| Location: | Hazel Park High School Cafeteria 23400 Hughes Avenue Hazel Park (off 9 Mile, west of Dequendre Rd.) |
Reservations preferred but not required. Please contact Bob Burns at: (517) 373-0478 or at: rburns@house.mi.gov
I forget exactly when we visited Ric & Sharon's house, but we took pictures of Vicki, Amanda, and Ali holding the little ones. Why did it take us so long to get them online?
(10/6)
Micheal's (left) cousin Ryan Smith (right) stopped by Saturday night for
Chinese food. We thought this was a great picture of the two of
them. More will be online soon.
For anything before October 2003, please check out oldnews.
