Summer Fun, Flooding, and DHL

This will be my last summer as a student where I am free of educational and occupational demands. Even though I am working on a research project this summer I still am taking full advantage of the summer. Two weekends ago Megan and I went camping with our good friends, the Schmutz family to kick off our summer. We went to Pike Lake, WI and had a wonderful time. Interestingly enough, we left right after some tornado warnings expired for our area, and we returned the next afternoon right before we received more tornado warnings. Good timing on our part!

Last weekend we had a camping trip that we had planned for a few months up to Door County, WI to visit the Peninsula State Park. The night we arrived it was raining but the trees kept most of the rain from falling on us, at least until we would experience a wind gust. We ended up playing Skip-Bo in a large tent with friends after dinner to wait out the storm. The next two days were absolutely gorgeous. We hiked, saw Lake Michigan, went to the beach, and enjoyed our trip. I would love to spend more time in Door County as we didn't visit the small towns up there, nor did we get to go fishing or boating on Lake Michigan.

With these two trips, summer vacation has officially begun. My brother Danny will be flying in to Milwaukee to see us for a couple nights and we will be going to the friday night Brewers v. Orioles game here at Miller Park. We will also go down to Chicago for a day trip and see some sites before sending him off to Uruguay for his work. There is much, much more going on this summer, but I'll fill you in later.

Unfortunately, due to the horrible storms about a week ago, much of Southeastern Wisconsin remains underwater. The devastation is unimaginable. Entire towns sit under feet of flood water. I have never before lived in a county that has been declared a federal disaster area. Our main interstate has even been temporarily shut down in areas, requiring hundreds of miles of detours for many people. The LDS Church sent some semi-trucks filled with disaster response kits that arrived at our church building over the weekend, and many more trucks were sent to Iowa where the disaster is even worse. I hope that the midwest can dry up soon.

Lastly, something odd has happened with a package I am expecting to get today, perhaps it is even slightly comical. I have never really understood the effects of time travel or Casimir effect-type wormholes, but I believe my DHL package has experienced them firsthand:

6/17/2008 6:35 am Arrived at DHL facility. Milwaukee, WI
6:32 am Arrived at DHL facility. South Plainfield, NJ
5:59 am Depart Facility Niles Regional Hub, MI
3:59 am Depart Facility Allentown Hub, PA
6/16/2008 9:20 pm Processed at DHL Location. Niles Regional Hub, MI

Amazingly enough, my package made it from Michigan to New Jersey in 33 mins, and then from New Jersey to Milwaukee in a short 3 mins. It also took a short trip to Pennsylvania early this morning. With this kind of technology in its grasp, DHL should be focusing on more important things than moving my package to each of its east coast facilities on the same day. (Sarcasm noted)

BTW, pictures from camping coming sooon.

~Sp