TOM’S BLOG

So we have all seen the episode of The Office where Michael drives his car into a lake because the GPS tells him to.  We have also recently had a great movie Wall-E try and teach us the dangers of relying to heavily on technology and not on our own minds.  Apparently this guy did not get the ‘memo’, great job!

29…

So you may think that croquet isn’t a sport, and well, you may be right.  Your opinion may change when you read quotes like this “The game really is like chess on grass; more than half of the effort that goes into winning a match is in your head“  and this:  “I’ve taught several hundred students over the past fifteen years. I don’t expect them to continue to play, but some just want to take it to the next level” from the players and coach of the National Collegiate Croquet Tournament.

I didn’t even know there was a ‘next level’ in croquet, did you?

Well there is and you can read all about, or even join it right here.

I have to say I am actually a big croquet fan.  I grew up playing croquet at the Ord’s and always loved it.  I looked forward to the croquet games at Craig and Denise’s when I got older as well.  The last few times at Jill’s parents I have convinced them to bring out the croquet set to play.

To finish I give my congrats to the Davidson Boys(?) for winning last year and wonder if Under Armor knows they make semi-pro croquet uniforms.

I need to go to this…

…and you might find that instead of the US Tom Mildenhall you all know and love coming up first, this Tom Mildenhall comes up.  Sadly he died in Iraq in 2006.  I found this about two years ago when I was vainly googling my own name.  One interesting thing is that he was actually born in 1979 only 21 days before me.  The other Tom Mildenhall or Mildinhall (depending on the news article)  sounded like a pretty cool dude.  It would have been cool to meet him.  Weird.

Here is some proof… I could go into more detail, but really this is a public forum and it just wouldn’t be appropriate.

I awoke this morning to read something that gave me hope that the world will be okay.  This new website full of amazing modest clothing.  With all the evils of the world it is good to know that some people still value modest 19th century style modest way of dressing and that when Jill and I have kids we will have at least one place we can buy them appropriate clothing.  BYU should take a page from them on modesty.  Since when is it modest for anybody to wear shorts?  Or clothing that doesn’t cover both ankles and wrists for that matter? Shame on you BYU for your weak standards of modesty, shame on you!

These are a few pictures from Phoenix, and Havasupai (Jill took care of our visit to Kennewick on her blog so this is all that was left…)

We celebrated my dad’s 55th birthday with cupcakes from Sprinkles Cupcakes. If your read their website you would think wow, these are going to change my life and how I think about cupcakes forever. Well, they won’t, at least in my opinion. I have been to places like Cake Love in D.C. and I know that something as common as cake can taste a million times better if done right. Sprinkles seems to me to be on the same lame bandwagon as Pinkberry, just some over-hyped L.A. crap packaged really pretty and frequented by lame reality stars. Okay, I just read about Pinkberry on Wikipedia, although I take some of what I said back, it still sounds over-hyped.

Jill and I spent some time by the pool in Phoenix. It was already close to 100 in Phoenix so the water felt good and we got some good sun. I got out on the golf course once with my Dad and Kevin down in the beautiful oasis of Casa Grande. I shot an 84 and had a few birdies and a lot of pars, and we had the course essentially to ourselves.

Jill left on Saturday morning since she had to be back to start school on Monday and I stayed behind to go hiking at Havasupai with Joey, Spencer, Travis, and Sean. We met at the Havasupai parking lot at 3am, dodging some stray Supai horses on the way in. We were followed the whole way in by some dogs and turned out two of them Dog Dog and Short Dog followed us all the way to camp. They slept there, followed us on all our hikes, and tried to kill lizards and squirrels during the day. They even waited for us back at camp when we went down Mooney Falls (you have to hike down ladders), needless to say dogs are very interesting. They then followed us all the way out of the canyon (10 miles in hot weather) and down to our cars. At this point it seemed that they found a new group to follow and they were gone. The trip was cool, we went to Navajo Falls above, which was really cool, took the river down to the rope swing, and swam around in Mooney and Havasu falls. I still have some pretty nice reminders of the hike from my blisters to the huge bruises I have from a hand stand that was never to be. Good times

After a few days of recovery at my parents in Phoenix, and after eating at Haji Baba’s and Ted’s I was on my way back to Chapel Hill.

Since then Jill and I have been renting movies, riding our bikes to get LocoPops and return movies (and save money not driving). Jill has done this all with me while balancing her duties as a Masters of Accounting student, while I have to balance it with my sleeping and reading time, which is tough.