Our Family

This afternoon us boys watched Lipscomb play Belmont in basketball on ESPN2 for the Atlantic Sun tournament championship and a bid to the NCAA tournament. Lipscomb had a short shot at the end of regulation to win it, but missed. Belmont then won the game in overtime. Since they were the number 1 seed in the Atlantic Sun after the regular season, Lipscomb gets the consolation prize of making their first trip to the NIT. Too bad they won't be going to their first NCAA tournament instead.

Finn came home from the hospital today. He's obviously doing much better...pretty much back to his normal self, though the cough still lingers. He's on breathing treatments and antibiotics.

Garden Fresh Salsa Inc.'s "Jack's Special Salsa" is my new favorite, after being recommended to use by some friends from church. Give it a try if you can find it in your local grocery. There's a good article about the company in The Detroit News, including tales of salsa secret thievery and the fun fact that salsa has now passed ketchup as America's number one condiment.

Aronson ruefully recalls hiring two men in 1999 and entrusting them with some of his secret recipes. The pair -- Charles Maiorana and David Kernya -- set up a partnership and corporation, Buddies Foods, while still employed at Garden Fresh Gourmet. They also contacted Garden Fresh's customers about their line of products, all suspiciously like Garden Fresh Gourmet and similarly packaged. "It was quite a coincidence," said Aronson. Garden Fresh Gourmet filed a lawsuit against the pair in 2003 alleging unfair competition and theft of trade secret recipes. An Oakland Circuit Court jury found in favor of Garden Fresh Gourmet for more than $500,000 in damages. Since that verdict Maiorana has filed for bankruptcy. Garden Fresh had to file another lawsuit recently against the company when it was determined that a third partner existed. Buddies Foods is specifically enjoined from using a particular brand of tomatoes and vinegar used in Garden Fresh products.

In the middle of the night last night Lisa took Finn to the emergency room. He had been coughing, breathing rapidly and shallowly, and seemed to have a rapid pulse. It turns out that he has bacterial pneumonia. They tried to give him an iv for fluids and antibiotics, but they never could get one despite several attempts at poking. He seemed better to me when I saw him tonight than this morning. This morning, he seemed rather listless. Tonight he was perky and talkative and jumping around.

From an article in The Midland Daily News:

Consumers said it finished restoring power Monday to more than 252,000 customers who lost electricity last week due to severe weather. The company said more than 340 crews worked to restore power, including 84 from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. Some 5,800 customers, including 700 in the Midland area, were still without power as of Monday morning. Here's basically how the power system works. Electricity comes from the generating plant over high-voltage lines to a substation, where voltage is reduced but still remains high. The power is distributed over a series of circuits, then goes through a transformer where voltage is reduced to household levels. Crews had to deal with a variety of problems: a small number of broken poles, broken cross arms atop the poles, high-voltage lines and distribution circuits that failed, and wires that came down with ice-laden trees. For each broken wire, someone had to climb the pole, splice the broken pieces together and get them high enough in the air so they wouldn't tangle with trees. One crew member working in mid-Michigan fell and suffered a broken leg, Ebelt said.