Tubing
Another entry into the list of things the girls did for the first time in the summer of 2012: tubing on a lake. Thanks to some friends, the girls got to go out on a boat over the weekend. M. and C. both got a couple turns on the tube behind the boat. Both had great times. M. was the…
Racked And Ready
Two weeks down, two to go. Yesterday I racked and bottled my first batch of beer. Racking is the process in which the beer is moved from the fermenter into a temporary container, where it is mixed with sugar which will kick off the carbonation process once bottled. Everything appeared well with my nut brown ale. When I popped the…
Big Girl Gets Bigger
Today is M.’s eighth birthday. The kid is growing up and beginning to leave the trappings of early childhood behind. Over the weekend, we were in the vicinity of a group of girls I will guess were in the 12-14 range. M. kind of drifted away from the rest of the family and just stared at the party for the…
Baseball Hits
We’ve reached the time of the year when the Royals completely fall apart, before their inevitable signs of life in September that we will cling to over the off season in hopes it was a sign that the team’s fortunes are finally changing. I’ll call it now: Eric Hosmer is going to start hitting again in mid-August. Luke Hochevar will…
Velvet Hammer
The NCAA has spoken and now Penn State gets to deal with another part of the rebuilding process after the Sandusky Affair. A $60 million fine. A four-year bowl ban. The loss of ten scholarships per year for four years. And vacating all wins from 1998 to 2011. That fine is not insignificant. Neither is the loss of bowl games…
Rocky Mountain High
Four days in Denver. Sounds like a bad political thriller from the 1970s, no? Our weekend in the Mile High City was far from bad movie from my childhood. The highlights: The girls travelled very well on the way out. S. sat in a row with C. and L., while M. and I sat a row up. We were lucky…
BOOOOOOOO!!!!
For a crappy game, the 2012 All Star Game will certainly go down as one of the more memorable All Star weeks in recent memory. Thanks to the mini-controversy of Yankee Robinson Cano not selecting Royal Billy Butler for the Home Run Derby, the event turned into an opportunity for Kansas City baseball fans to unload 25 years of frustration…
Time Is Flying
What a busy few days. Let’s see if I can cram some of what’s happened, and is about to happen, into a post of reasonable length. We spent last weekend enjoying a fine Indiana freshwater recreation site with some good friends and family. The weather continued to be ridiculously hot, but being in the water was a fine way to…
This Is Interesting
Def Leppard is rerecording their back catalog because of an argument with Universal over the digital distribution rights of their original songs. Despite being the slickest of the 80s hairbands, it took some effort. ”You just don’t go in and say, ‘Hey guys, let’s record it,’ and it’s done in three minutes,” Elliott notes. “We had to study those songs,…
Off The Board
I love it when events coincide with specific dates so that they are easy to remember. Example: earlier this year we purchased a new lawn mower. S. wondered how long we had our old one1 and I said, “I can tell you exactly when we got it.” “OK, what game was that day?” She knows me well. “It wasn’t just…