My grandpa's out of surgery...

and resting *somewhat* comfortably tonight. Everything apparently went as planned and he survived the ordeal in good shape. There will be the usual round of post-surgical pathology but all is well for now. Thanks for praying!

An old tradition revived...

Back in the day, my family's church in Malden, MO put on a pretty cool Christmas show. It involved putting singers inside a "living" Christmas tree for an unusual twist on the traditional Christmas cantata. The church stopped doing the show many years ago and the tree's pieces sat in a storage locker outside of town gathering dust.

Until this year, that is. My dad convinced the music minister to revive the show at their church. $1 later, the tree was sold. Read about it here:

Trim the Tree--With Singers!

I can't wait to see it come alive again!

Prayer request...

If you're so inclined, please say a little prayer for my grandpa today - he's having fairly major surgery this afternoon. The move to Barnes has paid off with a certain diagnosis of the source of his problem and the surgery is unfortunately necessary.

The lights are on...

at my place. I returned from my parents' house this morning and found that power had been restored. I made a beeline for the thermostat and switched the heat on. The house is nice and warm as I type this.

For all the hassles the storm created, it left behind some majestically pretty winter scenes. The St. Louis area got mostly ice and a little snow so all the trees got a beautiful coating of ice that glistened in the sunlight today. Some trees didn't fare so well but my oak trees stood up to the ice just fine. That's why they're OAK trees. The Bradford Pear tree that formerly stood in my front yard would have gone down, though.

Woke up this morning...

...at 5 a.m. to find that the air in my house was quite...nippy. Yep, yesterday's ice storm knocked out power to my house, so once again I find myself at the mercy of the local power conglomerate. :) Thank goodness for my gas water heater, which delivered hot water for my shower. Hopefully this won't be an instant replay of July's prolonged power outage!

I must chuckle, however, at the fact that the temperature hovered near 70 degrees for nearly a week then in the space of 24 hours bottomed out like my voice did between the 8th and 9th grades. Spring one day, winter the next. Ah, Missouri!

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My grandpa was moved up to Barnes-Jewish hospital on Wednesday. His stroke recovery is right on track but his other problem is still a problem. The doctor treating him in Cape Girardeau couldn't do any more for him so we moved him to get treatment from some of the world's best doctors. We remain optimistic that he'll be home for Christmas. Fortunately, my brother and sis-in-law live near the hospital so they provided lodging to my mom and grandma last night during the ice storm.

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It's a rather strange experience, attending your boss' funeral visitation. I hope none of my readers ever have to do it. It was gut-wrenching, seeing him laid out in a casket on Tuesday night. I'd last seen him on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He was our department's heart and soul and our team feels a distinct emptiness now that he's gone. A "Dilbert" manager he was not, tough but fair. A little too "chummy" with us, frankly, but everyone loved working for him and coming to work in his department. I volunteered to stay behind and keep things running while everyone else attended his funeral; it was my final tribute to him. Gonna miss ya, RB.

The falling leaves / shaken on a sunday night...

***WARNING: bad haiku ahead***

The falling leaves
drift by my window
and make a crunchy carpet

I bagged *28* bags of leaves just from my back yard on Saturday. I reckon I'll do 10 or 12 more before the end of the year.

*************

I rented "Return To Me" on Saturday night. Did any of my readers see it? Not a bad little movie. It's a romantic comedy/borderline chick flick.

*************
So I was performing the Vivaldi "Gloria" last night with my community chorus when I got paged to call into work. I shut off the vibrate, then it went off twice more. (This had NEVER happened before.) The message said to call in ASAP so I left the stage at the start of the next solo movement. I work in IT for a newspaper so it wasn't entirely unexpected. I raced out to my car and dialed in.

What was unexpected was the news that my manager had suffered a fatal heart attack while at home. He was only 50 years old and left a wife and 3 young adult children. As you might imagine, this has left me and my co-workers stunned. This will be a difficult week and will certainly mean changes for our department as we come to grips with this loss. He was a good manager to work for and I enjoyed knowing him. He must have enjoyed me too, since I received a service award last month and he wrote part of the nomination. : )

************
Gene Eugene's words are wise and true: 'hang out with your loved ones while they're still around...'

Thanksgiving, done differently...

I'm safely home now after a decidedly different, special Thanksgiving day today. My grandpa is still in the hospital in Cape Girardeau, so I ate my Thanksgiving meal in the hospital! :) Really, where else would I have been? He couldn't come to dinner, so the dinner came to him! He was moved to an inpatient rehabilitation area last week and the area has a nice big sunroom with a kitchenette. My dad smoker-ed his usual turkey and my mom whipped up a few other Thanksgiving essentials, packed up a couple of coolers and off we went! With other attendees bringing various and sundry food items, we had quite a feast. There were 12 people, including my grandpa in attendance. It was just like having the feast at somebody's house, really. I looked around while we were eating and saw my wheelchaired grandpa sitting in his usual place at the head of the table, with his twin brother on his right and his wife on his left; it was a very comforting scene.

He continues to progress rapidly in his recovery from the stroke, but the original problem he was in the hospital for prior to that event, is still a problem. If he can get that cleared up, he should be home for Christmas.

Driving home, I passed my local Circuit City and Best Buy stores. Both stores had intrepid shoppers camped out, waiting for the opening bell of the Christmas shopping season. Someone please stage an intervention with me if I'm ever that obsessed!

Monday night and all is well...

Let's play catch up...

The GOP got what was unfortunately coming to them at the polls last week. It was like any punishment; it hurts but is ultimately beneficial. My Republican state representative bucked the trend and retained his seat in a tough race. I was disappointed to see Jim Talent lose, but his campaign tactics did him in. His attack ads set the wrong tone and I don't they reflected the true character of the man. He listened to the wrong people and it cost him. I'm not a McCaskill fan ,but I trust she won't embarass us.

My grandpa continues to recover from his stroke. He's made great progress in the three weeks since it happened. He's still in SEMO Hospital in Cape Girardeau but I'm hoping optimistically that he'll be out by Thanksgiving. He faces a long rehab and recovery but he will get back to almost normal in time. He has some other lingering ailments so keep him in your thoughts and prayers, if you're so inclined. The prayers of many people are carrying him (and us) through this time.

The Cardinals' world series hangover is almost a memory now. It was fun (and profitable) while it lasted! We're now facing a long winter of Rams and Blues games, unfortunately. The Rams are finidng ways to lose games under the new coaching regime just as they did with the old one. The Blues are in a rebuilding phase after being stripped down and sold last summer. This means they're not really good either. Is it February yet?

I experimented with the WordPress blog site today. It didn't quite meet my expectations and I deleted the blog I created. As spotty as the Blogspot blog site is, it's still more versatile and fun to use.

Guess My Costume!...

I attended 2 Halloween costume parties this year - can you guess my costume? I thought I was being clever but it backfired because it took everyone a minute or two to guess what I was! : )

The First One!...

My very first podcast is live on the Internet! Check it out:

http://mytoonz.podshow.com

I'm pleased with it, as a first attempt! : )

I Am a "Rough Terrain Forklift Operator"...

at least, as of tonight that's what my military job title might be! : ) My dad gave me that title after I helped him with a landscaping project today. He's building a retaining wall behind the family home in Festus. We never really had a backyard, as our lot sloped steeply downward into some woods. It was a challenge to mow in the summertime! : ) For years a major landscape project has been talked about but never came to fruition until recently. The solution is to build a retaining wall out of 2,300 pound concrete blocks and add some fill dirt and grass to level it off. The first 20 blocks were delivered today and my dad rented a jumbo forklift machine to move them down the hill and into place. I'm always a little leery about operating heavy equipment, but this experience was positive! Once I got the hang of driving it, and figured out it wouldn't roll over with me in it, it was actually kind of fun! : ) It will take about 3 more loads of blocks to do the whole job, he estimates.

Does anyone else wish the election happened last week? I'm beyond sick of all the attack ads currently polluting my television and radio stations.

I had a nice leisurely week off from work this week. I drove to Cape Girardeau to visit my grandfather in the hospital on Tuesday and Thursday, got in some great workouts and then helped my dad all day today. Tomorrow I'll rake leaves and clean up my yard. Tomorrow night is another costume party! I'll likely recycle the costume I wore last Saturday night.

Podcast update...

Hopefully you haven't been waiting with baited breath for my podcasting debut... : ) I spent a couple of hours tonight trying to put one together. Talking into a microphone is harder than I thought it would be. :) After attempting about 50 takes, I'm calling it a night. I'll try again tomorrow night.

So, Yes, I Did Dress Up For Halloween!...

appropriate character for a chorus rehearsal, eh?

Podcasts this week...

Oh and I forgot to mention that I have decided to try some podcasts based on my other blog. One song per day, short and sweet. I'll keep you posted if they get posted!

Monday, Monday...ba-da, ba-da-da-da...

It's a windy, mild day in St. Louis today. The weekend weather was unbelieveably gorgeous after last week's cold and rain. Unfortunately this weather goodness stops after today.

The weather was perfect for yesterday's victory parade and rally for our WORLD CHAMPION CARDINALS!!!!!!!!! A few days after the fact, the harsh reality is that it was an improbable title run for an average team. The World Series was pretty ugly, quite frankly. We won mostly because we made less mistakes than the Tigers did. Errors led to many of our runs and we ended up grinding out the Series win in 5 games. That said, I'm still giddy that we won it all. I have purchased a championship t-shirt like a good fan. My brother and sis-in-law were vacationing in Mexico last week and I hope they got a satellite feed at their hotel. I didn't get downtown for the parade and rally, regrettably. A concert with my community chorus kept me away.

Continue to keep my grandpa in your thoughts and prayers. I'm not at liberty to divulge too much but he had an unfortunately eventful week and will be hospitalized for a while longer.

WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!...

Stream of conscious:


WOW, what a feeling, what an experience!

How could this have happened? The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, against the highest of odds, are the WORLD SERIES CHAMPS!!! I'm still in a state of disbelief. The unthinkable really has happened. We really won the World Series. In the first season of a new ballpark, with a starting pitcher rescued from the mid-season scrap heap and a rookie closer subbing for our injured closer. We beat a good Padres club, a great Mets team, and then reached the mountaintop by conquering the Detroit Tigers and their fireballing pitchers.

In the end, fielding miscues and untimely hitting did the Tigers in, as much as our great pitching and timely hitting helped us. Baseball purists will lament that the two best teams didn't play in this series but it was a thrilling series nonetheless. The Tigers players lacked the Series experience that many of our players had and it showed. However, they have a great base of talent for the future and will be competitive for many years to come.

The Cardinals' history with 3-1 leads wasn't good. I really didn't want us to go back to Detroit to try and win the series. It would have been so much harder!

As I am employed at St. Louis' Only Local Metropolitan Daily Newspaper, I got a behind-the-scenes look at our preparations for the various scenarios that could play out. Our circulation, news, and production managers huddled often to coordinate strategy. Strategy, as in 'how would we print a Saturday paper, an early Sunday paper, and a Stadium Extra edition, if needed, all in the same night, at almost the same time?" Suffice it to say, all six of our printing presses are in operation tonight. The Stadium Extra edition got major display time as our local television news crews did their live spots after the game, so our management will be very happy about that.

An 83-79 baseball team that endured two eight-game losing streaks, and stumbled into the postseason courtesy of the Atlanta Braves wins the World Series. They win it with a skillet-handed right fielder and several players with holes in their swings. Who else would you give the MVP award to but David Eckstein? He's the 2006 edition of Rex Hudler. And did anyone notice that our heroic slugger Albert Pujols didn't do too much at the plate during the series? Gotta hand it to our starting pitchers - The Two Jeffs, Weaver and Suppan, both pitched unbelieveably well, our rookie starter flashed his potential at just the right time, and our ace Carp finally got the Series experience he missed two years ago. Unbelievable.

Congratulations to the Cardinals.

Monday...

The Cardinals rode the wave of we-defeated-the-Mets momentum through exactly one game, opening the World Series with a 7-2 shocker over Detroit on Saturday night. Of course, no one expected Anthony Reyes to pitch up to his potential but we're glad he did. The number of streaks that were broken as a result of this win are too numerous to mention(Tony LaRussa hadn't won a Series game since the 80's, we hadn't won on the road since the '80s, the National League hadn't won a Series game in a few years, etc...) so it was a great game all around. Last night, however, we crashed back to reality when another 40-year old lefty left us pretty much helpless at the plate all night long. The Tigers' closer did his best Isringhausen impression, loading the bases and giving us brief hope, but the game inevitably ended in their favor. I didn't think we had a chance, but now I think we could take it to 6 games before the Tigers win the series.

On a personal note, I'd appreciate your prayers and good thoughts for my Papaw. He was rushed to the hospital in Cape Girardeau late Friday night with severe abdominal pain. He'd been passing blood for a couple of weeks and was in between doctor visits for that but it got suddenly worse. He's in the hospital now and will be undergoing tests today to find out what's going on. My mom is optimistic but I fear something bad is wrong with him.

AMAZIN'...!!!!!!!!!!!

So a Cardinals baseball team that nearly choked away a huge lead in their division and backed into the playoffs is going to the WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!

I am stunned and amazed.

I watched the game tonight while channel-surfing (YES I was too nervous to keep it on all night!). How's this for a storyline: Our starting pitcher keeps it a tight game, against all odds. Our catcher, who struggled at the plate this year, hits a home run to put us on top. Our rookie closer loads the bases in the bottom of the ninth and then strikes out the Mets' last, very best hope LOOKING! I danced around and did get a little emotional; that situation is what every pitcher dreams of. Striking out the other team's best hitter with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning of a decisive game. Such validation!

I never thought we had a chance to do it and yet we did. This should be an interesting next 7 days at the P-D. Of course, our coverage will be ramped up and our circulation numbers will likely spike, which will make the management happy.

Of course, the harsh reality of our situation is we must face the might Detroit Tigers. The well-rested Detroit Tigers who swept the A's in their series. I hope we don't get swept as in our previous World Series trip 2 years ago.

But that worry can wait until tomorrow; for now:

I still can't believe it!

GO CARDS!!!!!!!!

If Rainy Days and Mondays...

...always get you down, then I hope you stayed in bed today because it's Monday and it's raining here in the metro area. It's just cruel to have to get out of bed on a cold, rainy Monday! I have a sinking feeling that my basement will have water in it when I return home. I got estimates on fixing the 2 troublesome wall cracks but never got around to having them fixed. [EDIT: NO WATER! I was shocked to find no water came through the cracks!]

but the weekend was fun. I spent much of Saturday out shopping again. I think I finally have my fall/winter wardrobe taken care of. In the past I didn't much care about things like a fall wardrobe, but for some reason, I'm thinking about things like coordinating colors and such. Is it a little bit of my brother's style sense invading my psyche? Maybe he left part of himself hanging around my place when he moved out around this time last year.

I made it back in time to see the Mizzou Tigers lose their first football game, to Texas A&M, 25-19. Ugh! They should win the majority of their remaining games, so a big-time bowl game is likely in our postseason future.

Saturday night was the annual barn dance with my monday-night bible study group. It's always held in a horse barn at the Rocking-J Ranch in High Ridge, MO. They provide a square-dance caller to lead the dances. (This year was a new guy, as the beloved Earl finally had to retire.) It's always so much fun, if you can stand the copious dust clouds that get kicked up. Part of the fun is learning and re-learning all the moves in a big group setting. Everyone gets to know everyone a little bit, and if by chance you hit it off with someone, you can always adjourn to the bonfire out back and watch the sparks fly, if you know what I mean. I should clarify that the bible study class doesn't sanction or sponsor this event; it's sort of an "unofficial" fellowship.

Sunday afternoon was my community chorus' first fall concert, in Waterloo, IL. We sang well enough, I guess. Later in the evening I met my parents and bro/sis-in-law for my dad's birthday dinner at Tucker's. We ended the evening with dessert at my house.

So our Cardinals are locked up with the Mets at 2 games apiece. Last night's game went as I knew it would, with our un-playoff-tested rookie pitcher not lasting but 4 innings. The Mets lineup feasted on all our pitching and shifted the momentum back to their side. I still say the Mets will take the series in 6. It looks like tonight's game may be washed out if the rain doesn't let up soon. That would be nice to give the pitchers an extra day of rest. Our guy Weaver is due for a meltdown after throwing 3 unusually good games and I hope it doesn't come tonight.

Monday morning, sunnybrightandcheery!...

At least it is in St. Louis this morning. It's been over a week, and yes, kmom, before you ask, I am still alive! : ) Let's recap: It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon, my hometown..wait, that's somebody else's line. I've settled back into my fall routine of Monday night bible study and Tuesday night chorus rehearsal. BSF is studying the book of Romans this year, which has made for markedly more difficult lessons than last year's study of Genesis. There's lots of doctrinal stuff to chew on and it doesn't always make sense on first read. Next Saturday night is the annual fall tradition, the BSF Square Dance! I'll write more about it after it happens, but it's always a hoot!

My chorus is preparing for two fall concerts featuring Robert Ray's "Gospel Mass." It's a black gospel-style Mass that has been really fun to rehearse and will sound great in performance. The concerts will also have us performing an Swahili processional, two Copland numbers, and an ode to the "River In Judea." It's all about variety, people!

Saturday, I did a little shopping for fall wardrobe items, which proved only partially sucessful. Later, I headed out to Castlewood State Park and spent the remainder of the gorgeous afternoon hiking among the falling leaves and gentle breezes. The only downer was that my Leatherman multi-tool fell off my person somewhere along the trail. I'll call the park office to see if anyone turned it in, but I'm not optimistic. I spent the evening at a bonfire with friends. The bonfire was huge, and emitted heat similar to that of a small nuclear device. We couldn't toast marshmallows for over an hour. [EDIT: My friend G. who hosted the bonfire called me tonight and said he found my Leatherman in his backyard, where I must have dropped it in the darkness. YAY!]

It was a good sports weekend for the local teams. Mizzou's Tigers rolled over Texas Tech's Red Raiders to run their record to 6-0 this season. I see a bowl in our future. The Rams won yet another game they shouldn't have, taking the Packers 23-20. Brett Favre was leading his team to sure victory when we made a desperate defensive play to end the game abruptly. To top off the night, the Cardinals finished off the Padres to win the division series 3 games to 1. Our ace pitcher was on the hill but started off shakily. He started breathing after the first inning and settled down to his usual greatness. Hated to see Woody Williams go out like he did in the sixth inning; he's a nice guy. Can't say our chances are good against the Mets, but at least we advanced, which is more than the Yankees can say. What did a $200 million+ payroll get them? Nothing!

Yay! my buddy M. of What is Possible is now home from his job assignment in India, this time for good. It was good to talk to him at church yesterday.

The picture above was taken on Saturday from the bluffs overlooking the Meramec River within Castlewood.