the-richmonds.net

I wish I knew why stuff like this fascinates me....

It's gates had likely closed for the last time around the same time that I was born.  It was open for 100 years, surviving even through the Great Depression.  If I had to guess, I'd say that the advent of "super" amusement parks like Cedar Point, along with the ease of travelling longer distances over a better network of roads, led to the decline in popularity of "smaller" local amusement parks.

There's a lot more information about Chippewa Lake Park, as well as nine other abandoned Ohio amusement parks, on this page.

Two weeks ago, I received the original contract that I signed with RBS Citizens bank back in August 2004 for the purchase of our Silverado Duramax, marked "Paid In Full."  It's been a struggle (especially for the last two years), and there's been a time or two that I've considered putting it up for sale to rid ourselves of the monthly payment (which is as much as we're paying for rent now).  We decided to tough it out and get through it, and boy does it feel good to be done with that payment!  We bought the diesel for the long haul, and I'm hoping to get another good decade or so out of the truck, and if I can get my own business off the ground out here, I'll be glad to have a reliable vehicle completely paid for and available for heavy-duty work!

I haven't been active much on the computer lately.  Even the "quick" facebook updates have been few and far between...

The mad bookfair rush that led up to Easter has subsided, leaving me with "normal" 40 to 50 hour work weeks until the beginning of summer.  I have some side job leads coming in that I will be following up on over the next few weeks, and hopefully the supplemental income from that work will help get us through the summer again this year.

Since I hadn't been around much for my family during the last two months (really for the last 6 months if you go back through the Christmas bookfair season), I decided to make some family time.  The four of us spent Easter with the newlywed Britt and Manny in Columbus.  It was our pleasure to be a part of their first holiday entertaining event!  We all visited the Columbus Zoo while we were there.  Although it was cold, everyone had a great time.  The kids have both always loved animals!

We came home from our Easter weekend, packed for a day and then took off for a mini road trip to New York by way of Pennsylvania.  We spent a day at Hershey (touring the chocolate factory),  stopped to visit with Annie at Philadelphia,  spent another day in Easton (and the Crayola factory) before heading up to Albany to spend a few days with Katherine, Josh and Annabelle.  Grandpa Mark drove in to spend a day with us there, too, but we missed Grandma June....

There was a lot of travelling in a one-week time, and there were some moments when we were about ready to cut the trip short, it was all worth it to hear Hannah say in the car, "it was nice for you be with us for the ride, daddy."

I put in a 60 hour week last week, and decided to make the most of the long weekend by being with the family again.  On Saturday, Heather's dad asked if we could set up for a bookfair in Akron for him, so we took the kids (they were entertained by the empty Rubbermaid tubs and some of the children's merchandise).  After the bookfair setup,  we went out to Smithville to have dinner at The Barn.  We went through the shops on the property after dinner, where we got some spices for Heather at The Oak Cupboard and some goodies for the kids at Toyrifix.  We then spent a few minutes walking down by the duck pond before heading for home.

Sunday at church, we were surprised to see Britt and Manny come in with Mammie, Grandpa and Grandma Reel.  They took us out to eat at El Campesino for lunch, and after the kids went down for naps Heather and I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on housework.  Monday morning came with beautiful sunshine, so we decided to put together a quick geocache list and head south toward Navarre for the day.  I had 23 on the list, we searched for 17 of those and found 16.  One of our most (if not THE most) successful expeditions!  We took a break for lunch at Kremeland, a cute 1950's inspired diner on the main road through Navarre.  Good food at reasonable prices, and good ice cream for dessert!

I haven't been very good about posting pictures up here.  It's been a struggle enough to keep the pictures backed up to our online archive as quickly as we take them off of the camera!  Heather has been doing a great job of posting pictures up to facebook as we go on our adventures, and you can access all (as in "all")  of our pictures on the archive as well.  If you don't have access to the archive or have lost your access information and would like to see our life's photodocumentation, send me a message and I'll take care of setting that up.

As the bookfair season here in Ohio wraps up (Tuesday is the last day), I look to the Lord to provide for us through our off-season.  It's been a long and hard last three months, and we've been grateful for the work and God's goodness to provide!

I am looking for work to get me through until March when book fairs will be gearing back up again.  I'd like to use the time to build some references and a local portfolio here in Canton, laying groundwork for my own business doing handyman work.

I'm still in the Cyprexx database and am in the application process with Safeguard, both property preservation contracting companies that work for banks and real estate agencies, usually with foreclosed properties.  This would be a good springboard for my own business, so I'm hoping and praying that I will get some business from those leads!

God has been and will continue to be good to us in all things!  We're faithfully waiting on His provision, and know He will bring us through whatever may come, all for HIS glory!

Moving in the middle of the busy season for books has been a challenge for sure!

Each move up until now has been into bigger and bigger houses.  We were fairly comfortable in our home in Milford at just under 1900 square feet (possible future expansion to around 2500 sq.ft.).  We moved from there to a gigantic old victorian that had about 3500 finished square feet (plus at least 1500 square feet of usable unfinished space).  Fortunately, in the six months that we lived there, we didn't come close to filling that space!  Our current home is somewhere around 1200 square feet, and we're getting creative about where stuff is getting put!  I'm not sure how long it will be until the car will fit into the garage...

There's been a small list of projects around the house that have NEEDED to get accomplished.  I think there is only one thing remaining on that list, after installing the kitchen cabinets from Maine into the basement for storage, mounting the microwave over the range, hanging some of our art on the walls, hanging the curtains (or at least the curtain rods, draped with fleece blankets for the moment), and as of last night, we now have a cooktop again!  All that remains to be done (somewhat urgently) is find the futon hardware or buy some new hardware so we can get the futon mattress off the floor and use it like a couch again.  It's awfully hard to get up off of the floor after sitting there for an hour or so!

I have taken pictures of the house and will upload them shortly.  We've also got some size comparison pictures of the kids to update as well, although there are a few that we missed taking.  We were very faithful about our pictures until spending July in Maine (we forgot to bring the teddy bears), and after that we got busy with work and moving.  Now that we're kind of settled, I hope we can be a little more diligent!

I have made use of all of those kitchen cabinets that we brought with us from our Maine house (a kitchen's worth of base and wall cabinets, plus the additional base and wall cabinets that we had in that oversized laundry room).  I built a wall to partition the basement and filled the laundry side of the basement with those cabinets.  I installed them in such a way that they are not permanently attached to the house, so they can come with us when it is time to move again! They're just about filled and keeping all of our overflow stuff (formal kitchenware, cake making stuff, vases, candles, stationary, games, puzzles...) neat and out of harm's way.

Somewhere between the move out of Milford and the move into Massillon last month, there are two small but important appliance parts that were misplaced.  The range that we used in Milford came from the factory equipped to run on Natural Gas and needed to be converted to work with LP for that house.  I knew I had kept the Natural Gas orifice spuds that were swapped out at that time, but I didn't know where they wound up after we packed up and moved to Maine.  The other thing that was missing was the two screws used to hold the microwave to the upper cabinet over the range.  So for a couple of weeks, Heather has been VERY patient with me as I tried to find those things, putting up with the microwave sitting on the cooktop (the microwave worked, but the range was disconnected).

I stopped at Home Appliance in Massillon the other week to look for the Natural Gas orifice spuds to convert our range back from LP to Natural Gas.  They did not have anything that would work for the gas, but they did give me several microwave mounting screws from his big box of miscellaneous parts, knowing that at least one set would fit.  Sure enough, I was able to mount the microwave when I got home.  I was also able to convert the oven to work on Natural Gas (only adjustments needed to be made, no parts needed to be replaced).  So for the last week, we've been able to bake, broil, microwave and crockpot... and as of last night, I found the gas oriface spuds (in the refrigerator owner's manual, of all places...), and we now have the stovetop as another cooking option again!  Yay for being able to boil water for pasta and brown hamburger!  I was glad to have found them, since it would have cost me over $25 a piece (need 4 of them) to replace, and it would have been over a week to get in!

There were a few small projects that were nice to finish, making the house feel a little more like "home".  Putting our cutain rods up and hanging our art is just what we needed to give it our personal touch.  It's amazing how well all of our stuff goes with the neutral taupe walls throughout the house!

Two weeks ago, my throat started feeling scratchy and over the course of that Monday, I was exhausted just doing a light day's work around the warehouse.  The last two weeks have been a struggle, and it's been frustrating to get so wiped out doing a normal day's labor (I have a feeling that what I was fighting off would have wiped me out if I was sitting around the house resting), and still having to find some energy to accomplish a project or two around the house.

I guess this is where I put the cliché "We've been busy so I haven't had a chance to post" post... We have been busy, but not so busy that I couldn't find a couple of minutes to update the website.  It's just that when I get two minutes of downtime, I've been taking the downtime to spend it with Heather and the kids, and not uploading photos or updating here or facebook (in fact, I don't think I've even logged on to facebook in the last two weeks, except to respond to some email notice that was sent to me).  Most of the time I spend on the computer now (when I'm not at work, and even sometimes when I am at work and it's slow) is at geocaching.com.  We're over 50 finds now, and I think it's safe to say we're hooked.  Well, I'm hooked anyway - I think the rest of the family enjoys the time out together too!

So, aside from GeoCaching, what's been going with the Richmonds?  Well, the biggest news is that we'll be moving in to a place of our own in October.  We are very VERY grateful to Heather's parents for allowing us to stay with them, but we're anxious to have a place of our own again.  We found a nice little 3 Bedroom place in a quiet neighborhood, and our favorite part of the house is the big fenced-in backyard!  When I do finally get around to uploading photos, there will be some of the house there.

Hannah and Mason are both growing up so quickly.  The hardest part about bookfair season is being away from them for most of their waking hours during the week.  By the time I see them at the end of a week, they seem so much more grown up than the last weekend!

Mason is now running everywhere, and he learned to go down stairs on his own last week.  It's cute to watch.  He'll lay on his tummy about 6 feet from the top of the stairs and slide back until his feet find the first step.  I guess it's good that he's so cautious!  No accidents yet!

Hannah is becoming such a big girl!  She started AWANA a couple of weeks ago and is just eating it up!  She's got four verses memorized already!

Bookfair sales have been off to a good start this season.  Heather is helping her dad run the Aultman event in Canton.  I've been unable to help with many of his bookfairs this season since Rick's got a full schedule from the start of September right through Christmas.  I've been putting in 55-60 hour weeks for the past few weeks, and they're only going to get busier as the season progresses. I'm thankful for the hours, as every dollar counts for us right now, especially with the added commitment of renting a home!

I've loved my Garmin Nuvi 200 up until about two weeks ago.  In the midst of work, one day I went to plug my GPS unit in and it didn't recognize being plugged in.  Then it went into data communication mode.  I tried swapping the power cords and got the same symptoms.  (It's been my experience that cords are often the weak link with electronics like this).  After googling around a little bit, I found some forums where others had posted regarding a similar problem.  The USB/power port on the back of the unit has come loose.  And since the port is surface-mount soldered, it is not anything that I'm going to even attempt to repair myself.  I need to send it back to Garmin, which is a $59 service according to the Garmin website.  Too bad I'm about two months out of warranty.

As much as I loved the Garmin product, their customer service leaves a bit to be desired.  In addition to what now seems to me to be a major design flaw (no strain relief for the USB/power port), I'm frustrated that I can't get ahold of Garmin to obtain an RMA number.  Calling the support line gets me one of two messages: "current wait time of 30 to 35 minutes" or "current wait time of over 30 minutes".  The message on the phone also encouraged me to use the website for a faster response. So I emailed support using the online contact form, and was redirected to a page that tells me that they respond to most messages within three business days.  I guess that means I would have been on hold with them for more than three business days?

Hopefully this will turn out to be a better experience than it's started off to be.  It'd be nice to have my GPS for our upcoming trip to New England!

I've been keeping busy with bookfairs for the last few weeks.  The Easter sales rush is over, and so should my 70+ hour weeks (until the Christmas rush starting in late October).  I should have 40 hour weeks for the most part from now until mid-June.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.  I was hoping to find something that would allow me to be home with the family more, but I am grateful for the work that I do have.  It is work that I am familiar with (no training required, just some minor adjustments to accomodate the way Rick runs his fairs), and the hours that I am used to running (it's nice to be paid for the time away from the family instead of hoping to break even at the end of the day after putting in those same hours).  In the off months I'm going to work on establishing a handyman business.  Doing odd jobs when I have time (whether remodeling, repairs, property improvements, light construction, or even mowing lawns) will help to keep bills paid during the slow bookfair time, and each job that I do will be another reference that I can have for my portfolio.  Maybe after a year or so of doing jobs during the off-time (gaining local references and building up my inventory of tools), I can start advertising and working on going full-scale with my own business.

Having the regular job, even though it may be added family stress because of the long hours right now, will allow us to be chipping away at some of the debts that we owe.  The extra time I have during the summer will allow me to start the pursuit of a career that is satisfying to me.  I don't mind the bookfairs, and Rick is great to work with.  But as I've been saying for the last three or four years, it is not really fulfulling work for me.  I like working with my hands, applying my efforts toward something constructive.  I enjoy looking at what I've done over the course of a day or week and seeing a job well done.  I don't really get that with bookfairs (at the end of the day, I see a room that is exactly the same way that I found it at the beginning of the day).  I've pretty much stopped throwing my résumé out to CareerBuilder, Monster, and HotJobs listings.  The only interest that I was getting from those venues were from companies that found me (not companies that I submitted applications to) that I would not want to work for, for some reason or another (I don't want to be an independent insurance salesman, or sell financial products or real estate.  And I don't want to work for any company with a questionable reputation.  But those seem to be the only companies that are looking to hire former independent contractors/entrepreneurs).

Over the last eight months, I've done a lot of soul searching.  It's been neat to see how God speaks to the concerns of my heart through different means at just the times that I need it.
     When I was struggling with my self-identity last fall (no one wanted to hire me, and I couldn't even afford to pay for the food that was on the table before us or the roof that is over our heads), our pastor did a multi-week series of sermons on finding our identitiy: in Christ.
     So many nights I would lie awake at night, unable to sleep because of things that were running through my head: how to pay off the debt that we owe, what can I do to help counter the direction that our society is moving in, what can I do to be a better husband and father, how can I provide for my family, and the list goes on and on...  I came to realize that in the eternal perspective, all that matters is what is done for God.  There's no way I can get through the trials of life on my own.  All I have today is only by the grace of God.  He'll get us through our trials and we'll be able to give him the glory through them and after them.  Even since I've come to this realization again (it seems like life keeps coming back to remind me of this every so many years), things have started to fall into place as far as work and finances go.  We should be seeing some major headway in this area within the next few months.
     Over the last few weeks, I've made a list of things that I would like to do with my time (I won't share that list here, the post is getting long enough).  I've decided that I need to make family a priority (the financial debts and economical concerns I won't be taking with me into eternity, but the seeds that I plant in my children's hearts and minds will make an eternal difference in their lives).  And I need to make sure that I am meeting all of my wife's needs through everything else that is going on.  I am guilty of letting my concerns get caught up on things of the world, temporal things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things.  With my preoccupations, I have been neglecting many levels of support that Heather needs, and I hope that she finds that I have come to that realization, and she is the top earthly priority in my life.  I appreciate everything that she does as a wife and a mother, and don't feel that I deserve her love most of the time (especially lately).  I hope that going forward I can show her the love that she deserves from me.

I love you, Heather.  You're an incredible woman, a wonderful wife and mother.  You are beautiful inside and out.  I love your tremendous heart for service and your compassionate spirit.  I love to see you growing closer to the Lord through our circumstances.  Thanks for hanging in with me through the tough times.  Here's looking forward to better times ahead!

I know it's been a while since any updates here, and it may be a while before I get to update again.

There were three Books Are Fun/ImagineNation reps in Canton, including Heather's dad (not counting my "active" contract for the area last season).  One of the other reps sold out to the other.  The remaining rep effectively doubled his account base and was in need of someone to help him run his additional events.  I was the first one that came to his mind when he was trying to figure out who to fill the spot.  So I've been putting in some long hours with Rick to help him through the transition.  It's especially long hours right now because we're working through two inventories, and I'm on a slight learning curve.  Yes, I'm familiar with the business, but I am working on learning the ways that Rick runs his business, and what inventory he has and where it is in the warehouse and at the show....

I'm just getting on the computer for long enough to check emails every night, do a quick facebook status check, and if I'm feeling ambitious I'll log on to Google Reader to see any updates on the websites that I like to check regularly.

So if you don't hear from me for a while here, now you'll know why!  It's hard to be putting in these hours again, but we are very thankful for the work!

Is it just me, or is a certain current United States President making it hard to Google for anything that is not him?  I won't be mentioning his name in this article, because I don't want to contribute to the web index that already brings his name up at the top of all search queries.  Even typing a letter into Google prompts the drop-down "suggestion" box for top results.  Just type in "O" and his name is right up at the top.  Out of curiosity, I typed in "B" to see if the former President has the same effect on Google.  Guess not, because the current President came up in that drop-down list too!

After reading one of my magazines that had dedicated an issue to President Abraham Lincoln and his role in defining the American Railroad industry, I was trying to search for information on Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural train ride from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. (specifically, I was trying to find a map of his route through Ohio).  All that comes up in Google is articles about how the new President retraced Lincoln's train route on his way to the inauguration.  At first this interested me, because I hadn't heard anything about his intent to retrace Linclon's 13-day, seven-state journey. Upon reading a couple of articles I learned that he only "retraced" the last 137 miles (referred to as a "slow" 6½ hour trip) from Philadelphia to Washington.  I guess this was just one more publicity stunt to create similarities between our new President and Lincoln.  It's not the first time that I've heard the two Presidents compared.  I suppose it is an effort to reinforce some notion that he will do for our country today what Lincoln did for the United States nearly 150 years ago.  I'm sure that Lincoln would be thrilled by the comparison.