December 2025

Nick and I had a weekend visit in Ft. Wayne for a guy's morning on a Sunday, where we visited the Ft. Wayne Zoo for a couple of hours, in between two meals so we had a separation in our consumption.  It's a nice place, and it was cool, breezy and quiet, my favorite environment. Nick chatted up the woman running the small train onsite. We found a decent pizza place on the north end. It's been rewarding seeing Nick spend more time at 'the shop' at the Historical Society and skin his knuckles a few times. He's getting the hands-on he needs to accompany his engineering background. On another visit he took me over to the shop now that he knows the place well from working there.  Gotta admit sitting up inside the cabin of a steam engine is pretty cool. He's also drawing again, and more than just trains, so it's good to see his art skills expanding, lots of animated characters from video games (now I know who Kasane Teto is.)

Grateful for another Thanksgiving at home. Brandi prepared a fantastic meal, which Nick is now old enough to appreciate for more than a few minutes.  Grandpa joined us.

Nick was quoted in the St. Francis Knight Life magazine saying nice things about the school from his time there. He made the grade (enough) to end his first semester at IT.  Now heading into a trigonometry class for his second semester, and says it's coming easy to him, so SFS prepared him well.

We had  Christmas at home, with a beautiful tree that brings us joy, dammit (Brandi had to completely re-string the lights.)  After a couple days at home resting, I took two quick trips (Nick didn't want to travel this year.)  First trip was to DC to see the Wings v Capitals with Brad for a weekend, brunch at Clyde's and the other usual stops, that was a road trip.  Second trip was a quick flight to Clearwater to spend a weekend on the beach, stayed at the new Hiatus hotel.  Donny and I did our usual long brunch... 14 hours from drinks until late night Mexican food.  Then I drove into Sebring to visit the crew, of which Miranda and Sue had just returned from the Rose Bowl Parade.  Miranda and I took a day at Universal Studios.  It was my first time on a roller coaster in thirty years, and the body held up well, those that we rode were fantastic (upside-down over the lake Velocicoaster is amazing!) A two-park hopping pass was $200 per person, which is nuts, but we managed to cram in two parks across ten hours of walking and riding, before dinner and a late trip home.  I continued on to St. Pete Beach for two nights before flying home.

Happy to see 2025 come to a close.  It seemed so far away when Nick was born, but 19 years later, here we are.

Photos from 2025 linked here. 

Fall 2025

We are thru the fall months and ready for winter. Pool is closed, most of the outdoors maintenance at both houses are ready for snow, maybe one mow left in the year. (Don has it right, he packed up and moved to Florida in ten days... sold, left it all behind, tossed clothes and dishes in a truck, bought a new place on the other in end in Largo. A master-class.) It's been a little more effort with Nick gone, but he jumps in to help when he comes home for a weekend here and there.  Bran is keeping Grandpa going, with his appointments and plenty of food.   She had him try a 'gummy' one evening, and he extended his arm to receive the remote upside down... said he felt like never getting out of his chair again.  Memo: a full gummy is too much for Grandpa.

I attended one more ballgame with Jay, Game 4 of Tiger v Mariners in the ALDS, which we won big, but then the they went on to lose the series. It was a perfect afternoon, good crowd, and good to catch up with Jay. 
Nick came home for a long weekend after he aced his mid-terms (drove home on his own), which turned into a full week since he can watch his class lectures online.  We took a weekend trip with to see him two weeks later, with Brandi preparing him party mix and rice krispy treats which he and Owen wiped out quick.  We had dinner at the Gas House downtown where Nick was treated to a $50 steak as a break from his campus meal plan. Then we just stayed in and watched bad movies for the evening at the hotel, booked two rooms.  We were able to get Nick's car washed at the self-wash near the diner on Sunday morning after breakfast, so we have that routine figured out. 

Nick's getting a rhythm now, volunteering each weekend, where he's sanding and stripping a train at the Historical Society. One Saturday he told them he came from a 'car washing family' so they had him power wash an engine and car... for five hours.. and he got half-way done. Neat, I can't image washing something that huge.

We closed October with Halloween at home. I handed out candy from Grandpa's house where there's more kids. I saw Tilly in her witch costume, had about 150 kids before I ran out of candy (two pieces each, I wasn't cheap), and nice weather this year for a change.  Some kid told me I had candy but no decorations, which I pointed out to him the real spider web under my candy table, because my father hasn't dusted in a decade. He says, "cool".

August 2025

Move-in Day for IT was mid-August, and we sorta just dropped him off and ran. We were roughly one of the first twenty students in line for our keys, and somehow his roommate Owen beat us to the room. Owen's parents are hyper-prepared, with every item their dorm room could need, from fridge to microwave to big screen TV. After a quick hour of unloading Nick's stuff and meeting Owen's family (he has a sister!), we headed home. He handled books and schedules on his own.

I had a clinic in Pasadena for Bronco Sport, quick one-day of sessions. I always enjoy the food when I travel to SoCal, and did a quick visit to the Petersen Museum to see the Totally Awesome 80s Display which is on the main floor for this year. I hadn't been to Petersen since I lived there in the late 90s, and had never been into the vault in the basement. I look back on my career and will remember traveling with the guys on these clinics, the Oaxaca Old Fashioned, and probably the Breakfast Burritos All Day in Pasadena, of course.

Brandi and I let Nick settle in over two weeks before our first check-in trip.  We took a nice walk around campus, where shockingly the only person we passed knew Nick by name... who would have thought that?  Nick and I traveled up to Elkhart on Saturday afternoon to attend the restoration meeting at New York Central for the 3001 steam engine, he was able to network with the leaders and some volunteers in prep for the Fall.  And we managed not to hit any Amish buggies along the way.

We filled in time with a quick show at Delkers with the Corvette, which I rarely take a car to these, but this was also the month the Monte Carlo needed an overhaul... refurbish the radiator, bearings packed, fluids and belts, enough work to make it last another 30 years. Brandi took a cookie decorating class, which I am saving the last one.  And she started a new job two days a week at an office just a mile from home.  We also walked the Glass City Riverwalk in downtown Toledo for the first time, which is a really nice park, and had lunch at Old Bag of Nails.

Visiting Nick roughly every two weeks, I went back for a guys weekend at the end of September. We visited the Auburn Cord Duesenberg museum for the afternoon, which Nick loved, and then drove north to Mayberry for the ultimate feast: the Amish buffet at Das Dutchman Essenhaus, where we both ate ourselves nearly to death, but oh, so worth it.  Never to declare an end to consumption, we finally found a good diner in Ft. Wayne, Liberty Diner, where we can become regulars for our breakfast activities. And coincidentally, there's a self-service car wash right next door. 

Pics here so far this year.

 

July 2025

Besides the trip to the UP, we did have a full month.
I was a little under the weather for a couple of days, and Nick offered to bring me lunch while Brandi was away at services for Nanny's memorial in Huntingdon.  "Go easy on my stomach," I tell him.  He brings home this deep-fried chicken sandwich, the size of my fist, with 3/4" of mac-and-cheese on it, smothered in cheese sauce and pickles.  It was good tasting, but I felt like I was committing the sin of gluttony just looking at it. He's made four visits to the Wing Snob since it opened nearby, they probably have his photo hanging in the lobby already.

He and I went to see the new Naked Gun film for an evening of mind-numbing distraction, and it worked.  Except that the young kid serving popcorn was so out of control with his butter that I had it all over my cup, up my elbows, on my shirt, it was a greasy disaster. These young people have a much more lackadaisical approach to everything.  Nick massacres an envelope when he gets mail, I feel sorry for the mail, it looks like a rabid dog opened it.

We are prepared to move him into school mid-August.  Kimberley picked him up a small set of dishes for his dorm.  We went to pick them up one morning after breakfast, and while he's good conversation, his pick-up lines are rough. "You smell like Coke," he says when he hugs her, as she'd just had a shower and it was probably soap or something.

Brandi and I got up to the DSO to see them on a hot rainy evening at the Meadowbrook Amphitheater, which was nice as we were under the structure up front.  Around all of the family events and school prep, that was our only date night.
We had a day where Grandpa was feeling rather strong and swam with Nick in celebration of turning 84. It's impossible to get a photo of them both smiling as those are such rare occurrences independently, so this photo here is close enough.

Schnartons UP 2025!

  

Nick a I took a summer trip north to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, first time for each of us that far north. We planned these four days almost six months ago, and it was quite the logistics to get five households in the same place at once.

We left mid-afternoon on Tuesday and stopped in Higgins Lake to see Duncan for a couple of hours, which Nick was very patient while I gossiped with my former boss. He napped in the car while I sat along the beach with a beer and Jasper, seeing the sun drop over the lake's west beaches. Duncan's grandfather built the cottage on the north side, east shore in 1926, and it's really something.  He encouraged us to stop at Gobblers on the way to the UP for a turkey sandwich but the sign on the door said 'closed - out of gravy' so we rolled into Big Buck Brewery in Gaylord, which worked out fine (see large bottle of beer in the photo.)

Having checked into St. Ignace on Tuesday night, we awoke Wednesday morning to our own adventure, as the other boys wanted to parasail and we weren't ready for that just yet.  Nick wanted to visit Sault Ste Marie, so we booked a locks tour and visited the Museum Ship along the shore before and after, which is inside of a retired tanker ship.  Very cool all around.  Lunch was spectacular battered perch at the Lockview Diner, which was the best meal of the trip.  By evening we caught up to the rest of the family for dinner at Dawson's, a little show at the Lumberjack event, and finally ice cream in downtown Mackinaw in the evening. A little holler of 'Timber!' was enough to make conversation with the group of teenage girls nearby, my effort to help the three teenage boys in my circle network a little.  Mason got a phone number, Noah smiled and declined, and Nick disappeared to stock up on more candy from the store nearby.  Nick and I wrapped up with a nightcap at Keystone Bar, and nearly bought an $1,800 sheep made of car parts, until the price was obvious.

Thursday was a travel day to Newberry for our second hotel.  When we pulled in, Nick accurately described the hotel as 'Bates Motel or Schitt's Creek' but either way, we weren't staying.  We'd lost Earl and Sue along the way when Carrie called an audible and redirected us from the Falls to the hotel. They all backtracked, but Nick and went forward, finding a much nicer hotel in Munising, and Pictured Rocks Pizza.  I sat along the bay in the evening watching the ducks and relaxing, far from the circus back in Newberry. And because we love to eat, we tried Eh, Burger along the bay in Munising, which was busy as the only late place in town to eat. There was also an uneventful hour cruise around the Seney National Wildlife Park squeezed in there, but we saw nothing, maybe a dozen different species of housefly if you count those.

Friday was the main event, we took a five-mile kayak tour of Pictured Rocks, which was amazing. We had perfect weather, the tour was well organized, we stayed dry thanks to some aprons I'd never seen used before, and the views were breathtaking.  Robin brought us snacks, and there's no shortage of pics and videos to capture the scenery.  Half the gang joined us, the other half watched us from a boat tour at a distance.  Following lunch at the DogPatch in Munising, we needed to entertain Carrie's 8-year-old twins for a few hours, which was why I booked a hotel with a pool and waterslide, which easily passed 4+ hours for us.  We went back into town for an evening drink and pizza.

Saturday was the ride home, we brought Jessica along with us since we passed DTW along the way.

Photos here.

June 2025

It's a little tougher to report on Nick's month, for the first time, he wasn't around.
He spent June in a Summer Bridge program at Indiana Tech, which was an abbreviated summer semester for incoming freshmen. Only 22 kids enrolled (well, 23, but Hector, Nick's only roommate, bailed out after a couple days), so they got to know each other as a small group.
We dropped him off, and in classic IT fashion, they weren't prepared for us... the staff that enrolled Nick had left the university so they had no record of his participation. Same with four other kids, but we got there early, giving Dr. Tim Raines a chance to sort it out.  Nick and Brandi were well prepared, packed, and ready for him to survive three weeks: clothes, laundry supplies, tech tools, and she assisted in the room setup.  We stocked his fridge (trunk) before leaving town, following a meeting with the fourth admissions counselor he's had in the past year.  This one, Emily, is a keeper: good listener, took good notes, and got Nick and additional $2K in scholarship money based on his HS final grades.
He communicated occasionally over those three weeks on campus, about the Math and Psychology classes for which he got a few credit hours, the wet trip to Cedar Point, evenings in the Rec shooting pool, and of course the food. He even made a few human connections this time, which is a maturing step for Nick, as people aren't his thing. I was bummed he had a room to himself, so he still hasn't had much roommate experience, but he will in the Fall.  He'll remember the event for leaving his dashcam plugged in and draining his car battery, but it was no big deal, one jump got us going again.

He and I did a short adventure at the end of June, we drove up to Detroit Eastern Market for Burger Bash, and voted for our favorite local burgers, after taste testing about seven of them. It was a hot Saturday, but nice enough, and we stayed hydrated.  We also caught a Mud Hens game earlier in the month.  And Brandi and I visited the Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg Museum in Indiana after dropping off Nick, which has been on my list for some time.

Photos here from graduation and early summer.

 

Nick's Piano: End of an Era

Heading to college this coming weekend, Nick finished his final lessons with Kevin and Mrs. Rutter last week. He's going to miss the last recital of his young career as it's the same day as the first day of Summer Session at Indiana Tech.  Here are links to the last few years of his best pieces, where it's clear the progress he's made over time.

Spring 2025: Maple Leaf Rag

Summer 2024: Poirot 

Spring 2023: In the Mood

Spring 2022: Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Summer 2021: War Thunder

Summer 2019: Top Gun Theme

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's good to see that piano we bought when we moved into our first home twenty-five years ago served its purpose!

 

SFS Graduation May 2025

Memorial Day weekend was graduation weekend for the seniors at SFS. The theme was 'Bread' (not really) and the usual events with a morning mass at Gesu and afternoon commencement at the Toledo Museum Peristyle.  The entire production is a reminder of how well St. Francis has handled these boys for the past four years.  Despite regular frustrations (like the trebuchet assignment in the last two weeks of classes) it's clear they've prepared this group of young men for their future. The numbers:
116 different universities being attended across the graduation class of 124
Nick is 1 of 48 recognized with Honors based on GPA (just shy of a 3.7, posting a 4.2 for his Senior Year)
And he is 1 of 15 that received a high award, as voted on by the faculty, for him it's Artistry (a reflection of the artwork that was the centerpiece of their wine-and-cheese fundraising event earlier this year)

There's five kids in his graduating class who are sons of SFS grads from my class in 1990. And during the commencement we sat alongside one of my grad school colleagues who also had a son graduating this year. (And she has another in two years, who attended my presentation on Marketing at SFS Career Night and apparently now he's set on that field, so my pitch must have been pretty good!)

As usual, the event ended and Nick was quickly fifty yards down the sidewalk headed for the car. He's done with high school, and onto the next adventure.

Brandi planned a small gathering in the evening, we hosted about ten people for a kitchen-full of food and small talk. Moose and Ba traveled up from Alabama for the weekend, and his friend Aiden came down from Ypsi. I entertained from the garage, my happy place. And Brandi made me a cheese ball.

SFS Graduation Class Photos

Nick is front and center, which is why I couldn't find him in the photo.  Professional photographer shots from the day.

 

Spring Break 2025

Last spring break before Nick goes off to college, so we took a long weekend trip to see some sights.

We departed on Friday evening and drove in miserable rain all the way to DC.  Made a stop outside Baltimore at Nick's favorite diner, the Mountain View Diner, for some fish and a bucket of mac-and-cheese. Then continued on to our hotel in Old Towne Alexandria where we struggled to park but otherwise arrived without event.

Saturday we met up with Brad and ventured into the Mall to the American History Museum. Being the weekend for cherry blossoms, the volume of people only increased as the day went on, and we escaped with our sanity by mid afternoon having coaxed a pizza sub from a packed Potbelly off the main run. Nick took an afternoon nap while Brad and I had drinks at Theismann's near the train. And of course then we ate more, having pizza at Bugsy's along the water in Alexandria, and then a nice walk back.

On Sunday we started with breakfast at Bob and Edith's Diner, then Nick rested while I went to the Nationals game with Brad. Game was a nice rest, aside from the annoying people around us, and Brad's ability to drown a hot dog in pickle relish until it was ready for an eating contest. We then met Nick back in Crystal City at the Sports Pub to watch the MSU/Auburn game. This was Nick's first time taking the train on his own so he got a little adventure.

We packed up early on Monday and drove to Virginia Beach to the Air Museum, which was buried in a remote area, but very much worth the trip. The grounds had multiple hangars, and all of the planes were fly-ready. The WWII era hangars brought in from Germany and then replicated in lumber from France were very cool to see. Nick was essentially the co-tour guide, as each time the gentleman directing the tour couldn't recall something, he looked at Nick who filled in the details. We stayed on the beach for a couple days, but it was too windy to walk with the blowing sand, so our walks were mostly along the boardwalk and streets. I got my cucumber margarita at Las Palmas, which was incredible food, to wind down another travel day.

Last day we toured downtown Norfolk (after eating, again, of course... pancakes at Pocahontas Pancakes!), walking the USS Wisconsin, and taking a boat ride down the river to see the Navy Shipyard. While the site of the ships was amazing, the highlight of the tour was still Nick and I getting misdirected out a locked door and stuck in a restricted area trying to get back in. The events were poorly organized, but the sites themselves were worth the trip. And one more meal, we finished with a 'wave' pizza at Dough Boys along the beach.

Nick was helpful in driving us home while we went out of our way to avoid storms throughout the Midwest.  Longer drive, but uneventful.

And photos here.

Winter 2025

Busy winter months without much snow again this year. We did get just enough for Nick to slide around the corner in our neighborhood and hit a (small) tree.  He texts me, "Fender bender" and that was it. A wrinkled bumper is the extent of the damage, and some nosy neighbors. The house where he hit the tree has two teenage girls living there, but he didn't see that as an opportunity, so no connections made, for Mr. A-romantic (yet.)

Most events for us remain focused on college preparation, we're down to a two-way race between Indiana Tech and Western Michigan. We did an overnight stay at IT, where Nick slept on a dormitory floor without proper gear  (he didn't read the email... doesn't read any email, really), but had a picnic blanket from the car. Was a worthwhile connection with more campus staff, and a chance to tour the engineering facility again. Their unannounced schedule changes didn't make it easy, but we figured it out.  Then there was a day trip to Kalamazoo to WMU. Uneventful except for losing a cornering lamp along the highway (a casualty of the tree accident).  We liked what we learned, need a little more admissions info. The campus is nice and Benny D's pizza is good, which is what matters.  Ultimately Nick feels he could do well at either place, I don't think there's a wrong decision here. We also visited the Air Zoo while in Kalamazoo, another warplane museum.

And we attended a toy fair in Toledo which was a pleasant walk down memory lane, so many toys from my youth now worth something, but I've tossed most of them. We got lunch at Perrysburgers since we were on that end of town.  We also attended an Art Fair at SFS, where Nick's drawings were prominently placed at the center of the event.  Of course he didn't tell us it was happening, and he doesn't sign his name to his work, just initials. But it's clear he has a talent above his peers, if he can put it to good use.