Thanks for checking back in.
(last updated 1/10/2003)
This page started out as a way to introduce our friends to our (Jeanine, Lee, Lilah and Molly Hinde's) new home in the Laguna West subdivision in Elk Grove, California. Lee Hinde is your guide.
Molly hits a two-fer. Molly is student of the month for October, for her entire school! Wow! Molly also had a perfect point tally for her first qtr. in Science. That is, out of 1170 possible points, she got 1170 points. Wowser, Pt. II.
Hey, Dan Burton! Get a Life. Yeesh.
A Christmas letter in February.
Dad's Birthday. Give a guy a camera and watch out...
Earth. A very cool link from NASA.
Christmas 2000, or Guess who got a digital camera.
Molly Picture. That's sort of a redish orange.
Just checking in and bragging on Lilah..
An update involving babies, money and home buying.
Housecleaing, so to speak. And a link to Uncle Tim's.
Enhanced this section (links to each date - click on a date to return here), added seasonal decorations and gave thanks.
How it has gone - an ode to great neighbors.
A little bit about the move and a cute Molly story.
Fixed Typos.
Misc Ramblings. Added a link to the ElkGrove schools.
Added Counter
Added family picture (above) and picturesof our current house as well as a blow-by-blow account of our current glitch.Started a Vendor section.
Added pictures.
Did you miss me? Life is good here. Lilah and Molly are both doing well in school. Jeanine is enjoying being a housewife and I like work.
Lilah was in the paper for a good reason last week. She won a chance to have tea with Brian Jacques, one of her favorite authors. Here is her winning essay. (The limit was 75 words.)
You'll be happy to know that we started our back yard landscaping. So far the patio is in. We'll post pictures in a bit.
And, I am remiss in waiting so long to mention that we have our first cat, Imp. Imp is about 10 years old and was living in cat heaven (a couple with 5 cats, all in-door cats, all well cared for). For some reason Imp and another of the cats started not getting along and Imp couldn't defend herself since she doesn't have all her teeth. So the owners put a notice up in the local Mac User Group BBS and we came to the rescue. Welcome Imp!
I was looking on the net for a friend when I got the idea to look for me. Then I looked for Dad and Jay and Lynne and Laurie.
You can see that the search engine tries to help by checking by first initial, so there are duplicates for me and Laurie Hinde.
I thought it was interesting that:
Molly will be 9 tomorrow.
A picture of Lilah and Molly that Jeanine took in McKinley Park, in Sacramento.
This year's soccer season opened up like this. I'm on my way to Lilah's first game and I pass an adjoining field. A girl walks up to a pair of adults who are setting up a team banner. "Which team are you?" the girl asks. "The team that's going to beat you!" the adult replies with absolutely no trace of humor.
Lee's first soccer rule. Pick on someone your own size.
I was grateful that was someone else's team.
Lilah's team, this year, however, is a real challenge. The girls are 7th and 8th graders, with all the attendant alpha dog problems. (Remember the phrase Alpha Dog. This will come up later.)
The coach seems very knowledgeable, obviously cares about the girls, but is young and female.
And the parents. Oy. (The other parents. Lilah's parents are fine. :-))
Two of the dads are very vocal supporters of their daughter's team. I think that's how they see it. What they really are are over bearing boors. They taunt the refs and they taunt the other team's players. (12 to 14 year old girls. See Lee's first soccer rule.)
Our coach has received two yellow cards so far this year. A yellow card is a warning to the coach or player for unbecoming conduct. If a player is yellow carded they are yanked from the game for a 'rest'. If a coach is yellow carded, they are just embarrassed. A red card is the next step and results in immediate ejection from the game and banishment for the next 1 or 2 games, depending on the severity of the offense.
So, the coach gets the yellow card for the behavior of obnoxious parents. Not the parents. I'm sure there is a reason for this - they want the coach to control the parents.
But our coach is new at this and I'm not sure what her feeling is about the parent's behavior. She's kidded them about it, but I'm not sure if that's all she's capable of or if that's the extent of her feeling about their behavior.
She's also a women. Relevance, you ask, of that? Well, one of today's parental witticisms was "don't let those housewife's stop you!" I'm not sure these cavemen would (or will) listen to her.
So, I've groaned at some of this but never confronted the other parents. After all, I only have to put up with them for an hour or two once a week for eight weeks. Take a chill pill, right? Ride it out, right? Right. Well, until today.
One of our girls knocked the ball out of bounds right in front of me. This means the other team gets to throw in the ball. The obnoxious parents start in on the ref like he missed the call. I pointed out that the call was correct and the OP look at me like "who's side are you on."
I say to them, "This is the Role Model part of parenthood."
Oh Boy. Bad move, if the goal is to just ignore these bozos. One guy in particular takes offense. "Nobody tells me how to be a parent." And for the rest of the game he makes loud (I'm 15 feet away) comments about being a good role model. "Watch it guys, we have to be good role models. This continues even as I leave the game with Lilah.
So now what do I do? Well, I'm going to call the coach and suggest that one of us was wrong. If she thought I was wrong, I'll apologize. If she thinks the other guy(s) need to calm down then she needs to tell them that.
I'll keep you posted.
(updated three years later!) That was our last soccer season.
August 17th 1997Well, let's update the baby scene here at Sunset Bay.
We have at least one new kidlet. Tyler James is Laurie and Mike's newborn son. He is cute and adorable. And, Lilah ought to be able to care for him by the time he is old enough to be cared for by strangers.
We just discovered that our home model (the Trinity) has been reduced in price about $12k here at Elliott Homes Sunset Bay. (Along with the other models). That is, our home equity droppped about $12k. Put another way, we are much further away from getting out of our mortgage insurance premium. Fortunately we still owe less than current value. Just not as much less.
I don't think there is any real downside. I'm self employed, so it's not likely I'll get transfered and have to sell our house. Our new neighbors are getting a better deal, but to paraphrase Steve Jobs, they don't have to lose for us to win. And we continue to have the best neighbers that I've ever had.
Still, it's a drag to be in the one part of the state of California that has a declining market.
Next week I'm going to be pushing my luck and reporting some home damage that showed up outside our warranty period. We're getting cracks in the sheet rock in several places. According to the fellow who did our walk through, this is normal and is due to the house settling over the course of several seasons. The question, of course, is who is going to pay for the normal repairs. Given that we, apparently, left $12k on the table when negotiating for the house, I'm inclined to let Elliott pay. :-)
We moved this web site to our own domain from its first home at Larry's place. Thanks Larry! Since I was house cleaning, I put all of the first year's stuff on its own page.
Tim Beckwith is one of my main college buddies. I met him when we were on the student senate at CSUS together. I lived with him for about six weeks in the early eighties. Great guy.
It turns out he has been doing some house buying. His efforts made the Sunday paper last week! Read all about it here.
