SPHH

A map of Kansas - with the route I’m going to take to Bike Across Kansas (B-A-K) June 4 - 11.  I’m definitely excited about this trip!  Tonight, I went to several of the hotels here in Emporia looking for a Kansas map so I can highlight this year’s route.  After the 4th hotel, I hurried home to highlight the road I will soon take.  Now, I just need to find a good used road bike for my 9-day adventure!

Right before my Christmas break I felt I should take the opportunity to clean my desk, so when I came back from Maui, it would be ready for me to do some serious grading!  My desk no longer is in this organized state.

My all-time favorite beer.

This picture is of my grandfather, Norbert Henry Heiman with a rainbow cascading in the background with the milk barn behind it.  He and my grandmother on the Heiman side have been an intergral part of our close family.  Not to mention, my twin sister and I being the only grandchildren on the Heiman side a wee bit spoiled, too. 

We lost Grandpa Heiman this August in 2010.  It was definitely unexpected (for me anyways).  He had always had his health problems, but no doctor was going to tell him what he couldn’t do, haha. 

The most memorable moments with Grandpa are invaluable and as vivid as the day they happened. 

- Milking Cows:  This could have been possibly my earliest time I can remember listening to country music over the radio and knew right then and there…. A little country music goes a looooong way.  I would plop my tiny hiny on top of the grain bin piece of wood that kept the grain from spilling onto the tainted manure ground in our big red barn.  I knew every part of the ‘milking cows’ operation that a 7 year old could do… I had my bucket of grain in hand ready to pour it in the stalls for the next group of captivating cows to fill one or more of their three bellies.  My favorite part had to be hookin’ the ‘milk suckers’ up the udders.  Sometimes I was amazed by a cow only having three instead of four udders… HOLY COW!! (I know, it was a bad joke…)  And, of course, the sweetest, and the most delicious part of helping my grandpa milk cows was taking a big pitcher of milk back to the house to use for our cereal and to have a tall, glass of milk.  My sister and I for many years felt special that our grandparents did not have to buy milk in the grocery store.  We could go get it whenever we wanted just by taking a small jot down to the milk barn. 

 - Other many memorable memories include the none-other: John Deere Scoop Tractor…. Those memories, I shall save for another time…

I had the pleasure of traveling to Phoenix, AZ to run my 2nd ever half-marathon.  Thinking that I was a lucky guy for having the opportunity to run in 75 degree weather in January, I found that to only be just the beginning of my day.  Later on Sunday (1/17/11), I found that in 10 short minutes (thanks to the handy-dandy Hertz GPS in my 2010 Toyota Prius Hertz rental automobile), I would be hiking up and around Echo Canyon.  I only hiked about 3 miles total hiking up and around the canyon, knowing that I could have gone farther.  But, with have already running 13.1 miles previous to that hiking adventure, I needed to take it easy. 

This painting was done by a co-worker’s parent.  I had this photo that was taken by the local paper that I thought was really cool of a past student and myself.  The co-worker’s parent actually saw me teach through the my window by my classroom door and said it was like a magician and his magic wand.  From that viewpoint, that was the inspiration for the abstract painting.  As abstract as it is, the details of my face and the student’s face are amazing.