Dale-Time

It’s time I write a little bit about my life outside of funeral service. Yes, I do do other things than work. It’s been a great summer here in Michigan. The weather has been hot, Lake Michigan has been warm and we’ve had a bunch of company come and visit.

Jodi & Dale

My wife, Jodi, and I have a cottage in South Haven, Michigan about an hour south of our home base in Muskegon. This summer we’ve been able to spend more time there.

I’ve done a bunch of projects around the place. I built shelves in the shed, a new built-in linen cabinet upstairs, installed a new vinyl floor in the kitchen and constructed a homemade system of little cement dikes in the basement to hopefully channel the water that leaks through the walls into the floor drains. I had the professional waterproofer guys give me a bid to do the job but the $5000.00 price tag was a little too much this year. Not that they were asking too much.

South Haven Shelves

I really wanted to have them do it right, once and for all. But I’ve been listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio and his message about buying stuff on credit got to me. So I’ll save my nickels until I can pay cash for the job and hope that my band-aide job will do the trick for a few years.

Now some people may look at all of that as work, but I really enjoy building stuff.

We also helped a friend put on her wedding and I played piano for her while she sang at the rehearsal dinner. And I did some voice over work for a PowerPoint presentation for Jodi’s publisher. Here’s a photo of my professional recording setup.It’s a real MacGyver set up of wood, coat hanger and old screen. But it did the trick to keep the pop’s out of the recordings.

Home Made Windscreen

Jodi is writing a book called “Keep Your Money – a guide to helping your parents handle their assets during their golden years”. Jodi has been in the funeral pre-need business for 25 years now and is a real expert on the ins and outs of Medicaid, Nursing Homes, Insurance and end of life planning. The book is due out in January of 2011 (If she can finally buckle down and crank out the last 2 chapters).

And last Saturday was a real full day for me. I was the Master of Ceremonies and celebrant for a Life Story Memorial Service at the Funeral Home. Here’s a short video of the intro to that service to give you an idea of what we do at our place.

As soon as I finished that I got in the van and delivered a truck load of stuff to my daughter, Kellie, who was moving into her dorm room at Michigan State, in Lansing for her Junior year. She’ll be there for the first semester and then off to the Czech Republic in the spring for a semester of foreign study.

Dale and Kellie

Then I drove back to Muskegon for a reunion gig with “Out of Control” the band I used to play piano for 20 years ago. It was great to see the guys and play again. The bar was packed and it was a late night and I remembered why I don’t do that anymore. My body can’t take closing the bar at 2am like it could when I was in my 20’s. But it was a great time.

Now it’s moving into Fall and football season is upon us. I hope all of you had a good summer.

I’m Dale Clock. Thanks for listening.