Picture Perfect!

1 | August 15th, 2008 | Posted in What's New
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Last night Melissa and I received our much anticipated wedding pictures from our photographer Betsy Cole. Let me first say that Betsy did an amazing job. If you live in Southern Minnesota and you need a photographer, she is your woman! She was so much fun and exceeded all of our expectations!

Looking through all the pictures we couldn’t help but smile and laugh as we relived the day one more time 1 month and 9 days later. People always say that the wedding day is one of the best days of their life, but it wasn’t until our wedding that I could really understand why. Honestly there wasn’t one thing that I would have changed about the entire day. All of our friends and family were there with us, and as you will tell from the pictures we had so much fun!!!

Please feel free to check out all our pictures and order as many as you want right through the gallery. You can add as many images as you want to the cart and it will remember all your selected pictures in your cart as long as you don’t close the window, or quit the browser.

Note that the “Our Wedding” album contains only 275 out of the 783 pictures Betsy gave us. We thought it would be better to put together a smaller album for people to look through to see some of the highlights from the wedding. However, if you would like to view all 783 pictures you can click here, or go to page 12 of the “Our Wedding” album and you will find another album called “Our Wedding All“.

If all the pictures weren’t enough Betsy also put together a little montage of photos in a slide show with some music. If you would like to see that go to http://betsycolephoto.net/STERN.

We hope you will enjoy them as much as we have.

Love,
Mike and Melissa

~~ Noodle Party ~~

3 | August 5th, 2008 | Posted in Entertainment, What's New

If you have seen the movie Patch Adams with Robin WIlliams, then you will probably remember the “Noodle Pool” scene with an old woman named Aggie Kennedy played by the actress Ellen Albertini Dow. In the movie Aggie is an older woman who’s one dying wish was to swim in a huge pool of noodles.

Well I have a friend named Andrea, and although she is not old or dying, she too has always wanted to swim in a big pool of noodles. So about 1 month ago Melissa and I were sent an evite to attend a party at Justing & Andrea’s house on August 2nd called none other then “Noodle Party”.

This past Saturday morning while I was playing golf in The City Open (post coming soon) Melissa cooked 24 pounds of spaghetti for us to donate to the party. When I got home from golfing, I walked into the space that previously occupied our kitchen. It looked like a scene from one of those old WWII movies, you know right after the dirty spaghetti bomb explodes. I am talking about pots, pans, and spaghetti everywhere. Not to mention it smelled like we were now living in a Barilla factory. It’s a really good thing Grandma Bev wasn’t around because I have no doubt that she would have called the Board of Health on us, and had us shut down immediately! Trust me… I’ve seen her do this before, and it’s scary shit!

We arrived at the party shortly after 4pm and walked around to the backyard where everyone was hanging out sitting on the patio. By the time we got there only 3 brave people had actually gone into the pool, and after seeing how nasty and oily they looked I thought there would be NO WAY I was going in the pool. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) they also purchased a keg of beer for this party.

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At this point I was like Farva from Super Troopers at the Mayor’s “Big Bust” open-bar Reception. Thanks to my inability to pass up free beer, lack of self-control to stop drinking free beer, and my poor decision making once I have drank lots of free beer, my shirt was off and I was in the pool. Let me tell you a little bit about this pool. First off, we had about 10 people help cook a grand total of 252 pounds of pasta that we put in the pool. To make sure the pasta didn’t stick or become too starchy we added at least a gallon of oil and some water. Needless to say it was a messy situation. I would also like to note that due to the dangerous nature of this activity we did have a registered lifeguard (I think he was registered but I never asked to see his certificate) on hand at all times. I don’t know about the rest of the guys, but I sure felt a lot safer with him there!

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After playing in the pool for about an hour, I got out and was then matched with my next great challenge. How the heck was I going to get all this nasty oil and spaghetti off of me. For this, Andrea was smart enough to have all the supplies you would have at a local car wash fundraiser. There was a big plastic container with soapy water and sponges, as well as a hose to help rinse off. The only unfortunate thing about the clean up (besides the fact that after 3 wash cycles I still had a crap load of oil on me) was that the water from the hose was ice cold. Let me just add that its been 2 days and 7 showers since this party and my skin still feels soft and oily to the touch.

After cleanup we hung around for a couple more hours eating pizza and playing Catch Phrase until it was time to go home. Before I got in my car I lined the seat with a garbage bag and drove off into the night. It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed some oil stains on the front of my driver side seat where my calves apparently made contact with the cushion… WTF…

Thanks Justin and Andrea for hosting a great party. It was a lot of fun and now I can honestly say I swam in a big pool of spaghetti.

Car Problems? Use a Hammer!

0 | August 1st, 2008 | Posted in What's New

This morning I started off my day the same way I start every other weekday… I woke up at 6:00am, showered, dressed, etc… Then I walked out the door and got into my car at ~6:50am to drive to work. Most mornings I don’t have a problem starting my car, however this morning was a little different.

First I noticed the break pedal was very stiff and hard to push down. I then went to start the car so I put the key in the ignition, but the key wouldn’t turn at all. I made sure I put it all the way in the ignition, but it was like there was a safety or something preventing me from starting the car. I then tried some highly complicated and technical troubleshooting techniques I like to call the “Wiggle and Jiggle”. Children please do not try this at home. These are highly technical maneuvers that require someone with a little common sense and zero mechanical car fixing knowledge. The Wiggle move is when you jerk the steering wheel from side to side making sure its not locked. The next move, AKA the Jiggle is when you jiggle the keys while in the ignition just to see if it was caught on something. Unfortunately neither of my troubleshooting exercises worked so I had to resort to my next best option/resource…. I called Melissa. In the past this has proven to be a pretty safe and successful option, however this time she didn’t answer her phone. Thanks a lot hun! It might be because she stayed in Rochester last night so she could hang out with some friends and go to a bar and apparently she had too much fun and was too hung over to answer my call.

So lets quickly summarize where I was at this point. I was late for work, my car would’t start, my wiggle/jiggle didn’t work, and I don’t know where my wife is… OK, that sounds about right…  onward with the story…

I then went back into the house and searched the internet to see if anyone else had this problem before. Sure enough I found several forums with people talking about this exact same issue. Many of them said they had their vehicle towed and it cost them several hundreds of dollars to fix it. Immediately I start thinking that this sounds about right, since I am only a couple months away from having it paid off, so why wouldn’t I need to throw a ton of money at it to fix something that could have gone wrong right before my extended warranty expired?

Anyway I came across this 1 post from a guy that said to put the key in the ignition and hammer the end of the key as if you were trying to to hammer it into the ignition. At first I thought bad things would come from this. All I can picture is my key breaking off in the ignition and having to pay additional costs because now I have a car that won’t start and a broken key in the ignition. Before I did anything I decided to call the local Jeep dealership since it was now 7:30am and they just opened. The nice man from the service department confirmed the forum post I just read and told me that this is a very common thing and that 90% of the time hammering your key with a rubber mallet will fix it.

So I walked back out to my car with a hammer in hand, put the key in the ignition and started hammering the key in using the rubber handle of my hammer. Amazingly enough it worked. The break pedal went back to its normal state and the car started. AMAZING!!!!

So I guess the moral of this story is…. (1.) Don’t let your wife go out drinking/sleeping over in a different town because you might need her for something really important the next morning and (2.) if your car doesn’t start, hit it with a hammer!

Holy Gas!

0 | July 30th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized

Wow, gas prices are dropping like crazy in Owatona, MN. Just 2 weeks ago it was almost $4/gallon. Hopefully aren’t done falling yet. What are the prices doing by you?

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iPhone 3G, its here and its MINE!

1 | July 30th, 2008 | Posted in Technology, What's New

As everyone is probably aware by now the iPhone 3G is “Twice as Fast, and Half the Price”. As a result I saw no other option but to buy this awesome phone for myself. After a week of rationalizing and selling the idea to Melissa… by the way I think this is a perfect time to say I have an awesome wife!… I made the plunge. Over the past week I have found some things that I really like and then a bunch of other things that I really hope can get addressed soon. Below are my top 5 for both categories.

iPhone 3G

First off the Good…

1.) Beautiful vibrant screen

2.) Seamless integration with my MacBook Pro, all my pictures, music, contacts, calendar etc… are all synced on the fly every time I dock my phone.

3.) The real internet, EVERYWHERE. I hate how other smart phones downgrade the internet to make it fit on their screens. With the iPhone the internet works the same as if I were actually sitting in front of my laptop.

4.) The App Store. There are so many awesome games, utilities and other great features free to download and install.

5.) Awesome integration with Exchange. All of my work contacts, email, calendar, etc are synced with my companies exchange server.

Now for the Bad…

1.) No local search. You would think Apple would incorporate their spotlight functionality into the phone, it needs it! There is no easy way to find pictures, emails, calendar events, etc…

2.) The battery life is not great. If you use your phone a lot during the day you may not make it the entire day.

3.) No FREE VoIP App yet. There is a product called iCall that is supposed to come out soon that will let you seamlessly transfer phone calls to a WiFi network (if you are connected to one) so you don’t have to waste your minutes.

4.) Speaking of minutes, the next bad thing about the iPhone is you only have service through AT&T. I have found their network very spotty driving between cities. Also their nighttime minutes don’t start until 9:00pm. Boooo!!!

5.) The Mail application stinks when dealing with multiple mailboxes. There is no central mailbox to collect everything so I find myself constantly navigating in and out of my mailboxes to check my email.

So there you have it… All in all I really like the phone. I am sure over the next couple months there will be updates that come out to help address the issues I stated above, but until then I will get by. ;-)

Welcome Caden Hanke!

0 | July 30th, 2008 | Posted in What's New

Caden & Nick

On Sunday, July 27th Melissa and I drove down to Albert Lea to meet Caden Hanke for the first time. Caden (only 6 days old) looks almost identical to what his older brother Gavin looked like when he was born. Melissa and I were both able to hold him, and unlike the first time I held Gavin, my shirt remained dry the entire time! Way to go Caden! I can tell you and I are going to be good friends for many years to come.
Congratulations Hanke’s! You guys have another awesome member of the family. We hope to see you again soon.

The Official Launch of SternCast.com

0 | July 30th, 2008 | Posted in What's New

Welcome to SternCast, the official site of Mike and Melissa Stern. This purpose of this site is to keep all of our friends and family up to date with everything going on in our lives. Along with this Blog we have also created a web gallery full of pictures from places we have gone or things that we have done. Please come back often and feel free to post comments and/or posts.

Take care and we hope to see you soon!

Mike & Melissa

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