Good things

Some very good things have happened in the past couple of days. Sunday evening my mom, my dad, Lynn, Seth, and I went to a square dance at the YWCA, which was fun. Monday morning my mom, my dad, and I took a nice walk on the North Lake Whatcom "Ken Hertz" (my high school advisor Gary's brother) trail, before I took them to the Bellingham airport for their trip to Hawaii.

Since I was a teenager and played ping-pong at the summer camp where I was a counselor, I have thought that it would be cool to have a ping-pong table and play ping-pong with my kids someday. About five years ago I got a table and put it in our basement (I remember our neighbor Gene helped me carry it in and it was heavy!). I played with Seth yesterday afternoon for the first time in a while and he has gotten better so for the first time ever it felt like we were actually playing and it was fun for me.

Eric and Meredith arrived yesterday evening and we went to Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro for a celebration of our friend Jim Helfield getting tenure at WWU (congratulations Jim!). Lots of good friends, Huxley folks, and kids there.

Afterward Eric and Seth played basketball on the little hoop in the basement rec room (where the ping-pong table is). Eric said it reminded him of playing Nerf basketball at our friend George's house when we were teenagers.

Today Eric and I played basketball at WWU. Four good games of four-on-four half court. We went 4-0, although most of the games were close. Eric and I got to play together, which was great. We also had Ernie, my septuagenarian hero, and Dave Rystrom for the first three games and Max Lewis for the last one. I guarded Barry Potter and then Paul Dunn. I'm home now and feel good after playing.

Ethan