With Jodi and JD in St. Louis, I had to entertain myself this past weekend.  Of course, sleeping in never works because I tend to wake up early anyway so both days I was up before 7:30am.  At least I didn't have anywhere to be right away so I took care of the dogs and spent some time cleaning up and on the computer.  In the afternoon, I met up with my fireworks group to discuss the plans for the year over some dinner.  Afterward, I spent the evening watching TV which is something I rarely do.

Sunday was a baseball day with a parent meeting at the high school and then JD had baseball practice with his summer team that evening.  He and Jodi got home from St. Louis around 5:30pm and it was storming pretty good here when they arrived.  We had a lot of lightning and thunder and heavy down pours of rain which took care of much of the snow.  I took JD to ball practice and we got home around 10pm. 

Now, it's back to work for 12 days straight.  Only 10 days until profit sharing day!

It never fails.  We always get a winter storm right before high school baseball tryouts start.  Fortunately, the forecast calls for a high of 62 degrees with rain on Sunday which hopefully will take care of most of the snow we got yesterday.  It's very hard to fully evaluate a player unless they can be seen on the field, rather than inside in the cages.  Next week's forecast looks pretty decent starting on Tuesday so they should be able to get outside. 

Sorry to see Adam Wainwright go down.  Hopefully someone can step up and win 75-80% of the games Adam would have.  The offense better be clicking this year.

Law repealed

Just a quick update that the Kansas Senate voted to repeal the law.  Illegal immigrants can no longer get in state tuition in Kansas!  Now, how about kicking them out of the country?

Kansas Proactive in fight against illegal immigration

A bill that would repeal in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants cleared a major legislative hurdle Monday.  The Kansas House voted 69-49 to approve the bill, which would repeal a law the Legislature passed in 2004.
The law grants in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants who graduate from a Kansas high school and pledge that they intend to become citizens. Last fall, 413 students — including 84 at Johnson County Community College — received the benefit while studying at state universities or junior colleges.

This law now goes to the Senate where hopefully it will pass as well.  They are also debating a bill that would require a photo I.D. to be shown at the polls prior to voting.  I'm glad to see many States enacting laws and proposing bills that will address the illegal immigrant problem that our federal government refuses to.  Janet Neopolitan, Eric Holder and Owebama are allowing our country to be overrun.  It's time to put the National Guard on the border with weapons and stop the invasion of these cockroaches.

Now it's time to play Dumbass Illegal Immigrant of the Week! 

Two points if you can find the problem with this illegal immigrants Photo ID.



Another weekend of work behind me and another 5 days to go before I get a weekend off.  I have a meeting with my fireworks group on Saturday to discuss formalizing the group by electing a Board of Directors.  A larger Missouri group has shown interest in our group joining up with them in an effort to form a much larger group that would be able to put on large displays at conventions, etc...  It appears my group's members want to remain as a separate entity and form a more "structured" club rather than maintain a "group" status.  We will have further discussion on the matter this weekend.

Basebal tryouts at the high school start next Monday.  I have to attend a parents meeting regarding the tryouts and the baseball program Sunday afternoon.  The games will start in one month and run through mid-May.  One of the games will be played at Community America ballpark, which is where our Kansas City T-Bones play their games.  It's a really nice facility and I'm sure the players will get a thrill out of playing there.  Here's a couple pics of the stadium.



Baseball is timeless.  Children are priceless.  When the two meet, it can bring great joy to your heart.  It's rare that a story will warm your heart and break it at the same time, but that's what this story did to me.  Grab a tissue because you're going to need it.  God Bless Josiah.

Summer Travels

Jodi and I have been spending some time planning our travel as we prepare to take JD to college showcase tournaments this summer.  We will first head to St. Louis for a 4 day event at St. Louis University.  We will use this opportunity to take in our first Cardinals game at the new(er) Busch Stadium.  The Cards play the defending World Series Champion San Francisco Giants while we are there and JD is hoping that Tim Lincecum is slotted to pitch one of the two games we will be in town for.  The Cubs are in for the weekend but I'm sure those tickets will be tough or expensive to get.

The following week has us heading to Chicago and JD and I plan on going to our first game at Wrigley Field while there.  We also plan to visit my niece and her family while there as well as hit some of the local tourist attractions.  We've already been to the Shedd Aquarium, the museums and the Sears Tower so we'll be looking for some other things to do in between his games. 

Once the tournament is over in Chicago, JD and I will drive Jodi to the airport to fly her home and then JD and I will have three days to kill before he needs to report to the tournament in Cincinnati.  From Chicago, we'll drive to Sandusky, Ohio where JD and I will take on Cedar Point and all of it's roller coasters.  JD loves roller coasters and Cedar Point has 17 of them.  It should be a lot of fun.  From there, we will drive to Cincinnati where we plan on taking in a Reds game and maybe hit Kings Island to take on their 15 roller coasters.  32 roller coasters in 2 days?  I better take some ibuprofen and Vicodin with me.

Once the Cincinnati trip is complete, JD will be playing his next few tournaments within an hour or two of the house so we'll have some recovery time at home prior to hitting the road again and heading to the biggest tournament of the summer in Atlanta.  There will be hundreds of college coaches, major league scouts and MLB scouting directors patrolling the fields seeking out the best talent for the draft or to sign to college scholarships.  Every Division I college in the United States will have reps there as well as every MLB team.  At every game, there will be 30-40 scouts behind the backstop with radar guns and notepads.  It will be amazing and a great opportunity for JD and his teammates to showcase their talent.  We'll take in a Braves game while there and that will be our 4th MLB stadium visit in just over a month.   

Great weekend with my Sweetheart

Jodi and I actually had a weekend off together.  For now, she no longer has to work Saturday's so going forward, we will have every other weekend together as my schedule still includes working every other weekend. 

The weather was great and we celebrated Valentine's Day Saturday night by going out to an Italian dinner and then to the musical, "Grease".  The food was very good and the musical was very entertaining.  I need to get tickets for the Broadway production that is coming to town.

Sunday morning I did maintenance on my saltwater reef tank.  It was time to change the filter cartidges on my RODI (Reverse Osmosis DeIonized) water unit and change the DI resin.  I also cleaned the protein skimmer and did a 30 gallon water change.  I ran up to the fish store afterward and bought some food and a few Emerald Crabs to add to the system.  The tank continues to mature and the fish are getting larger. 

Sunday afternoon, Jodi and I took Angus and Harley for a walk.  It was great to be out in the warmer weather and get some exercise.  I've lost over 10 pounds recently by changing my soda and cutting back on snacks at work.  I've also cut back on my Lifesaver Wintergreen mints as well. 

JD threw a bullpen for his high school coaches on Fridaty and they were very impressed.  One coach proclaimed his curveball as "sick".  It was so "sick" that the catcher couldn't catch it and it hit him square in the mask.  Uh oh.  Sounds like the catcher needs to spend a lot of time catching JD before the season starts.  He's yet to throw him a fastball at 100% too so this could be interesting.

At work, our products are in huge demand but parts shortages are holding back additional production of our trucks and they are looking for additional opportunities to increase SUV production as well.  We already run 120 hours of production on the SUV side so there aren't many available opportunities to build more.  They actually would like to move one SUV shift back over to the truck side but lack of parts won't allow that.  This is going to get pretty crazy this spring and summer as vehicle sales continue to increase.

More snow and cold temps are on the way but the long range forecast is calling for a nice weekend and temps in the 40's next week.  With pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training shortly, I'll start to catch baseball fever soon.  High school tryouts are in 3 weeks and it will be interesting to see what kind of team LNHS can assemble their innaugural year.

Jodi and I will be going to a high school musical on Saturday.  JD's school is putting on "Grease" and that happens to be one of Jodi's favorite movies of all time so it was a no brainer to get tickets.  All of the performances are sold out and I expect it will be entertaining for both if us.

I got a nice shipment of coral in for my reef tank last week.  They all have acclimated well and I'm looking for4ward to watching them grow out.  These are some higher end corals that can be sold for pretty good money once they grow out a bit to where I can frag them up.





  

Well, we got a little bit of snow and a whole lot of wind and wound up with snow drifts of close to 3 feet in some areas.  I had to shovel an area out for the dogs in the backyard (what is wrong with us humans?) so they could do their business without disappearing in the snow drifts.  

Jodi got to stay home today as her boss shut the animal hospital down.  I went to work and put in 10 hours while the plant stayed idle as they didn't have enough people who could make it to work to start the lines up.  

JD got another day off from school and they are off again tomorrow, but every day they miss, they will have to make up since the Liberty School District didn't build any snow days into the schedule.  Wishful thinking or not thinking at all?  Doesn't really matter to me as long as he's out of school by June 1st so he can make his first summer baseball showcase at St. Louis University.  From there, we'll be heading to Cincinnati and then Chicago before staying local for a few weekends before heading to Atlanta for the biggest summer showcase of them all. 

I'm sure you've heard by now, since everything related to the UAW makes the news, that average profit sharing payments will be $5000 for the hourly employees.  That will be all of the news you hear about the UAW until this summer when contract talks begin.  After decades of this profit sharing plan, they now want to change the plan and make it contingent on other measurables that are out of the control of the workers.  Now that they are going to be turning large profits annually, they don't want to hand out huge checks any more.  Surprise, surprise.  I know that the $200 million they are paying out really kills the $6.5 billion profit they made.