After work Erin and I met up with Greg and Corey at the Crescent for some hot wings.  They have a deal on Wednesday nights so we met up there to have a little dinner and visit.  It is always nice to hang out with them.

The lake sure is nice right now.  Its the perfect temperature for swimming and right now its pretty calm out so there are reflections of the trees hanging over the water.

Sure is nice living on the lake.

I also put in for a BWCAW permit today.  The lottery for the 2011 canoeing season has opened and will close on the 15th.  We put in for the Nina Moose entry point hoping to get into Lady Boot bay on Lac La Croix for some fishing.  We hear its pretty amazing there.

We are also planning on a Quetico trip this summer as well.  This will be my first trip into the Canadian version of the BWCA.  After doing some research on the web it looks like their permitting system is shut down right now for a revamp.  We’ll apply for the Canadian permits when they open back up for business.

Its back to school tomorrow.  Its crazy how fast the first half of the year has gone.

At home Erin and I have been enjoying our time on the lake.  Weekend boat rides dubbed the “Apple Cider Tour” are taken frequently.  We have been using the suana on almost a daily basis.  It is so nice to come home from work and relax in the sauna.  We are still jumping in the lake to cool off from time to time, but those swims sure are getting shorter and shorter.  We’ll see if I am crazy enough to jump in this winter.

Here is glimpse of what our neck of the woods looks like this time of year.

I’ve really enjoyed using the iPad finding it great for consuming information. I didn’t have it long enough to truly enjoy books on the device, but I can imagine it’d be great on trips.

Well I’ve got to get on the treadmill.  Its already almost a quarter to 8.

With all this rain coming down and some milder temperatures I am getting more and more anxious to be finished with school.  I have 24 more days with kids and 25 more days of work.  Not like I’m counting.  I really can’t wait for our trip to Austrailia.  It will be nice for Erin and I to get out and about again.  We had a balst over in Ireland, and I think three weeks in a little camper will be a perfect way to start our summer break.  We will be in Southern Australia, so it won’t be a tropical vacation being their winter and all, but watching the penguins run up on shore and checking out the occasional winery will be very relaxing.

We went down to Baxter yesterday for Axton’s second birthday party.  He sure is getting big.  It was nice to catch up with the Svirs.  They have another little one on the way, so they will be busy for sure when the new one comes along.  Wonder what Axton will think of having a younger sibling.

On a sad note, my little dell mini bit the dust today.  I had it set up taking a time lapse for the last 5 days.  It was taking a picture every 5 minutes and when it did it would make a little beeping noise.  I woke up this morning and didn’t notice the beep at all through out the day, so I went over to check on it.  The screen was black and usually it would have the screen saver going, so I tried to move the mouse and no go.  I did some further checking and after a little chat with Dell support Im sending it back in sometime this week.  So for my first Dell purchase this doesn’t boad so well.  Im thinking its just the power board in the laptop that went bad preventing it from powering up the battery or running the computer.  So it shouldn’t be too difficult to fix.  It’ll be interesting to see if the time lapse was saved at all.  We’ll see I guess.  The support guy said that the turnaround time would be about 7 – 10 days, so we should have it back in time for our trip to Australia.  I’ll update you when I find out more.

Well time to get to my school work done.  Have a great week.

School has been going pretty well.  The kids are fun to work with.  They always have a great attitudes as we work on our projects.  In my broadcasting class we are about to take a week to work on shooting cooking shows.  Using multiple camera angles and an upbeat host I’m hoping they’ll get to try out a different type of shooting and editing.  Im not sure what we’ll make, but I’m hoping its not too elaborate.  The goal is the tech side of things, not the food side of things.  I’m thinking cookies may be on the docket.

My web design class continues to install php msql systems, and hack the themes to look a certain way.  We are in desperate need of Photoshop, but our lab doesn’t have that, so we skimp by.  I’ll be starting them on a new system tomorrow called glfusion.  I’ve never worked with it, but it seems to have a lot of nice feature sets, so I’m hoping it will be something they may actually use on a real project for a client.

Erin and I have been hanging out.  I picked up a couple of steaks from F&D Meats in Virginia last week.  We had a nice sunny day and fired up the grill after work.  The steaks were the biggest I’d ever seen, and shockingly enough we pretty much finished them off with a little wine.  We hope to be doing more barbecuing in the future once this random spring weather decided to clear itself up.  They are forecasting for freezing rain and snow all week, so that’s nice. 

We have officially begun the countdown to Australia 74 days and counting.  We can’t wait to fly half way around the world and begin our lazy 3 week road trip along the great ocean road. More posts on that when we get there and maybe a few more leading up to it.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with believe it or not, the thought of buying a new laptop.  What may surprise you however is that “gasp” its not an apple.  I know, I know…. There really is nothing wrong with me.  Here is my thought process…. I am super happy with the macbook pro I currently use, but I don’t know if I really want to take this with me to Australia.  We are going to try to go as light as possible on that trip, with our full intention being to go carry-on.  So the extra weight and size of my slim macbook pro has me thinking smaller…. Much smaller…..  The computer that has caught my eye is the Dell Mini 9.  Its a tiny 9″ laptop and here is what I like about it.

• Small form factor
• Built in 3G (Can connect to Internet via cell tower)
• SSD (Solid State Hard Drive)
• Built in web cam (for skype video)
• WiFi
• Comes with Ubuntu (Yeah no XP or VISTA)
• CAN BE HACKED TO RUN OS X (Apple’s operating system)

The last one is the biggie for me.  To be able to have such a tiny laptop running my favorite OS with iphoto and everything would be phenomenal.  There are some drawbacks, the biggest being the condensed keyboard and the apostrophe key being moved down by the space bar.  So this can cause some troubles when trying to type out something really quickly.  So how much does this hot little number cost?  It starts out at $250.  After you finish configuring it it comes out to about $555 which if you think about it is not too bad.  So im asking all my readers to donate $30 to “Bill’s little laptop fund”  I figure if I can get 20 people on board then I’ll be good to go.  Something to think about with my B-Day coming up next month wink wink.

So Monday night Jesse and I met up in Hibbing where he helped me pick up some linoleum for our kitchen and we used his truck to bring it back to the house.  Jesse was then kind enough to help me do the install.  Which turned out perfect.

Tuesday back in class, three of my students came up to me asking if I had installed Windows 7 on my Mac the night before.  I told them I hadn’t, because I was too busy installing linoleum.  All three got a very confused look, and then almost at the same time one said “How do you install that?”, while another said “Is that an operating system?”.  I said no, its my new kitchen floor.

It was pretty funny how the terminology was the same, and they were mulling over in their mind how one might install linoleum on their computer.

I feel I accomplished a lot over break with a new bwcacast episode being shot, five episdoes edited up, some snowshowing on the lake with Erin, and some skating at the outdoor hockey rink in cook.

We went to a couple of movies “Yes Man” and “Marley and Me”.  Both were fun movies.  Erin and I unfortunetly got the gigles at the end of Marley and Me when there were people in the theater that were so caught up in the movie that they were actually sobbing.  Let me tell you its not good to get the giggles in a “quiet” theater surrounded by very upset people.  Luckliy we were able to control ourselves enough to not cause a scene.  The movie was a little sad, but man… Its a movie folks, its not your dog. 

I am hoping that the new year of work will go by as quickly as the last few months.  I am ready for another summer of adventures.  If you haven’t heard, we booked tickets for Austraila in June.  I can’t wait for the trip.  Its going to be a ton of fun traveling the Great Ocean Road with Erin for three weeks.

I have also strated planning trips into the BWCAW.  I need to get some dates from people that will be going with to see what will work out best entry permit dates.

For now I have another few months with students and teachers to focus on.

I hope everyone has a nice January.