Nathan Perry and Crystal Wang Wedding

My nephew, Nathan Perry, married Crystal Wang on August 4th, 2023.   The ceremony was performed at the terminus of the 4.5 round-trip Angels Rest trail in Corbett Oregon which they hiked on their first date.  They will be hosting a wedding ceremony sometime in the near future that Sue and I will attend and visit Virgil and March Perry.

We first met Crystal when they visited Bostwick Lake this summer during July holidays and hope to have both of them return often.

I’ve assembled a collection of images related to the wedding in this photo album:

We Buy A New (used) 2018 Harris Pontoon!

Sue and I purchased a replacement pontoon before returning from Memorial Day vacation.   Our very-old 2001 Plabuoy finally was just too much to maintain.  This winter while in storage a racoon tore up 3 seats and urinated all over the boat. The motor decided to not run well above 4K RPM (probably needed a gas line filter cleaning).   It was time to upgrade.

We purchased a used 2018 Harris Pontoon from a local marina.  It was not even listed yet as it was only delivered a day before we stopped by.   Hopefully this one will last another 20 years like the one we currently have.

Here is a link to pictures we took at the marina…

http://edbergnet.com/2023%20-%20Harris%20Pontoon/

The marina will clean the boat, validate everything is working and change all fluids, filters, etc on the motor.  

We also traded-in our existing pontoon as it would be hard for us to sell if Sue and I were not around.   The mechanic stated they probably would just rebuild the motor next winter and sell it separately from the base pontoon which would go to a builder to refurbish.

Sue and I will arrive around 6/18 and schedule them to deliver the pontoon within a couple days.  They will take the old pontoon then too.

Edberg & Gernes Tour Whiskey Acres in DeKalb, IL. 5/5/2023

We toured the Whiskey Acres Estate on 5/5/2023 to learn about the distillery and sample a few of it’s products. It’s located just out side of DeKalb, IL. which is an easy 35 min drive west on I-88 from Naperville. Sue and I arrived for our 6pm tour at 4:30 and had a picnic lunch in their courtyard. It was the first 80 day, breezy and relaxing. The Gernes family arrived soon thereafter (Deborah, Lee, Adam, Ren & 2 other friends). On the tour we learned that Whiskey Acres distillery opened about 2014 on a corner of the 2000 acre farm to diversify income. They are only the 2nd Artisan distillery in America to grow all of the grain (corn, wheat, rye & barley) they also use in their products. They specialize in Bourbon and Rye. The master distiller retired from Makers Mark. I took Tour Pictures showing the distillery during the tour. At the end of the tour we sampled a Bonded Bourbon, Straight Rye, and their Artisan Series Bourbon. I liked the Bonded Bourbon best (honey notes – dare I say similar to Makers Mark) best. The Straight Rye was lightly flavored for the new rye drinker. The Artisan Series Bourbon was the smoothest but lacked body IMO.

Katherine Metz & Garrett Quick’s Wedding – 04/22/23

Eric Edberg’s niece, Katherine Metz, married Garrett Quick on Sat 04/22/23. The wedding was held in Elgin IL. and attended by close relatives. Click <HERE> to view pictures of the wedding taken by several family members. I will be adding additional photos when I obtain them. If you have any that you wish to included in this repository please contact me.

VHL Charlotte County Property Records & Sales

The URL below will download an Excel spreadsheet that I created on 3/7/2023. It contains an export of all registered properties in VHL and another tab showing the last 10 years of sales records. It was obtained by performing a crafty property search using the Charlotte County Property Appraiser website.

I use it to review who the legal registered owners of specific properties are and what sales prices have been recently. I assume that recent sales are not current due to reasons we can only speculate.

Hurricane IAN Casualty Loss

I sent an email to my tax accountant in Dec 2022 asking how to claim a “Hurricane IAN” casualty loss on my 2022 federal taxes. Since hurricane IAN is a federally declared disaster, with an approved FEMA disaster code (DR-4673-FL), individuals may claim a disaster loss on their federal tax form (under certain conditions).

Note that I’m not a tax expert and provide this information as-is. You will/should contact your own tax accountant for additional information.

My tax accountant responded with 2 attachments that help explain this issue:

  • Hurricane IAN CPA Tax Assistance Guide. This guide was provided by a service my tax accountant obtained that provides business advise.
  • IRS Booklet 584. This booklet is published by the IRS and provides instructions and help guide on how to calculate a loss that you may deduct.
  • DR-4673-FL. FEMA Hurricane IAN Quick Links

Most of the requirements necessary to calculate your loss state that you must calculate the loss suffered by comparing the pre-IAN residence value to the post-IAN value. Additionally, this paragraph was included in the brief sent to my accountant which implies that you can claim a loss on the “cost to repair or replace” damaged items.

So, read the information above and contact your tax specialist for clarification.

Send email to me if you want me to correct or alter this information at: ele@EdbergNet.com

DuPage Forest Preserve Clam Propagation

Jacques Hooymans, Sue and Eric Edberg took a tour of the DuPage Forest Preserve’s Clam and Dragon Fly propagation facility in Blackwell Forest Preserve.  We learned how the staff are propagating native clams to keep populations stable and how Dragon Fly’s are grown.

The tour was interesting in that we learned that clams depend on, and initially grow attached to, the gills of fish for a couple months before they drop off and continue to grow.   This facility normally grows a new crop of clams each year using fish caught in the local streams.  They are release at then end of the year if growth permits.  The fish are also released at the end of the year too.

New Image Repository: Bird Family & Grand Rapids

After collecting, scanning, and inventorying many photo’s of the Bird family, relatives, and friends I finally uploaded them to this new image repository.  Thanks to Marcy Perry who helped re-name and correct date’s for many images of Dick and Leone’s relatives.   If you want to see these images click the URL below:

https://www.edbergnet.com/Bird%20Grand%20Rapids/album/index.html

Exporting An Outlook Contact Folder As A Collection Of Vcard (.vcf) Files

I recently wanted to export my contacts to individual .VCF files for backup purposes and also have the ability to import them into other programs. There are ways to do this for a few contacts at a time by forwarding them in email to yourself or performing File -> SaveAs operations, but they suffer from scaling issues when you have many contacts export.

I authored this VBScript Outlook MACRO to export any Outlook Contact folder one afternoon.

View the article and code at this URL:

https://www.edbergnet.com/exporting-an-outlook-contact-folder-as-a-collection-of-vcard-vcf-files/