We learned last night that JD is having a team scrimmage game, full uniform and under the lights on Friday evening.  The team is doing it as a food drive and the public is welcome.  Admission is a canned good.  Jodi, along with family and friends will be attending, so if you want to go see the first glimpse of JD in a Cougar uniform, here is your opportunity.

He also told us that the coach told him they had a spot for him in the Jayhawk Summer Collegiate League.  This league is where Roger Clemens, Ozzie Smith, Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds and others played their collegiate summer ball.  He would stay with a host family and play about 50 games in two months.  It is a wood bat league and the league has an automatic berth to the NBC World Series each year. 

We're heading to St. Louis tomorrow afternoon for the fireworks fest.  We've put a lot of hard work into our club show so I'm hoping it goes as planned.  I've spent a couple nights building some additional racks we may need.  We have some 8" shells in our show as well as 6" titanium salutes that people will probably hear 5 miles away. 

Here's some baseball pics.  First is a picture I found on the internet of JD's teammates and coaches at the All Star game.  The second is the Cougars at practice.  This look is apparently called "Showtime".

Both the print and web edition of the Liberty Tribune came out today and two of my photos from last weekend's footballs game made both.  I like seeing the print edition more than the web version but either way, it's cool to see more of my work published.  Click the link below to see the article. 

Liberty Tribune Article link

It's my anniversary

Today marks 24 years at Ford Motor Company for me.  I remember getting to my 5th year  and thinking that I would never see 30 years and retirement.  Well, almost 20 years later, I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I had to sacrifice a little to stay with the company by moving to Kansas City but all has worked out well for my family and I. 

Here are some shots from the Jewell game on Saturday.  I received an email from the editor that his sports section has been cut down to three pages so it doesn't look like I'll have two photos in the paper due to those constraints.  He said he'd do what he could.  If nothing else, I have some good shots for my sports photography portfolio and I proved to him that I'm up to the task when given an assignment.  Click on photos for much larger view. 

Jewell's first touchdown of the game.

Going down field..

Headed up field.

 Game winning touchdown.

Punt return.

Quarterback scramble.

I spent Saturday afternoon shooting the William Jewell football game for the Liberty Tribune.  It was my first pro gig for a publication and I had a lot of fun doing it.  I arrived early and got my media sideline pass and went down to the field and prepped my gear.  The sports editor for the Tribune met me shortly thereafter and we talked high school and college football until the game began.  I roamed the sideline from end to end and took about 700 shots.  I am real happy with my shots and I'll be providing a disc of images to the editor today.  Since they won, he said he'd probably use a pretty big photo in the paper and it will have my photo credit under it. 

The night before, Jodi and I drove over to Kansas and spent an evening at The Legends.  We first went to Nebraska Furniture Mart and we wound up buying a new mattress and box spring for our bed.  I have a real hard time spending over $1000 on a bed and we've been debating on buying one for over a year now.  As we went through the clearance section, they had just put out a number of bed sets that day and we found a brand new set that we liked that normally sold for over $1500.  We got it for $499. Deal.  It's being delivered on Tuesday.

We then went shopping for a shirt JD was looking for.  We didn't find it but we did find a pair of baseball training shoes for him at the Adidas outlet store and then we picked up a couple Under Armour tshirts for him as well. After shopping, we went to Hooters for a late dinner.

We spent some of the weekend catching up on Sons of Anarchy.  Season 5 just started but we had only seen the first three.  We bought the DVD of season 4 and watched 8 or 9 episodes over the weekend.  We should be caught up by the second episode of the new season on Tuesday night.  

With our St. Louis fireworks shoot fast approaching, I thought I'd post a video of the show that I worked on last year with my good friend, Scott.  He designed the show and is one of the best pyromusical guys out there when it comes to product knowledge and how to use it with music.  My club is going to do something similar to this with our own twist.  Spoiler alert: The ending will be quite loud. 

Click the link to view the show.  St. Louis Pyro show

We received a call from Justin yesterday evening after he had finished up his first official team scrimmage.  He said each pitcher faced four batters and he faced all upper classmen when he was on the mound.  He said the first batter popped out to center and he induced ground balls out of the final three.  That should give him a lot of confidence going forward as he battles for a spot in the rotation.   

Fall is my favorite season and it will be arriving shortly.  We had a preview this morning as it was in the upper 40's when I went out the door and I could see my breath.  Soon the high's will be in the 60's and low 70's, my kind of weather! 

Saturday I had about 1/3 of our pyrotechnics club over to the house and we built comet racks and other mounting fixtures for the show we are doing in St. Louis at the end of the month.  We had the sawdust flying and we got quite a bit accomplished.  I grilled up brats and hot dogs for our lunch and Jodi had Mac n Cheese and baked beans to go along with chips. 

JD said that official fall scrimmages start today.  They've had him throwing short bullpens and other  throwing work in preparation for it.  He seemed to be pretty excited about getting to throw to live batters again.   The coaching staff will use the scrimmages to determine who will be their go to guys this spring.  They will start their 2013 campaign in Nashville and we're planning on going.  I haven't been down there in a very long time. 

First Lady Michelle Obama’s pitch to voters last night relied on the premise that she and her husband understand what it is to struggle to make ends meet. She spoke movingly about their early years–about how a young Barack Obama drove a car that was “rusted out” and found his furniture “in a dumpster,” how they both came from families that had to “scrape by.” Her fairy tale–however well-delivered–was one great, big, colorful lie.

Both Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama began their adult lives with a leg up on the rest of America. They attended elite schools: Michelle went to Whitney Young, the public magnet school for Chicago’s upper class, while Barack attended Punahou, the private prep school for the top stratum of Hawaiian society. They were accepted to Ivy League schools despite undistinguished credentials, and both attended Harvard Law School.

“Believe it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage,” Michelle said. That sounds like a raw deal–but in fact reflects their fortunate circumstances. They had both just graduated from a very expensive law school, and their combined income from cushy law firm jobs dwarfed the repayments. Barack also soon enjoyed a second salary from the University of Chicago.

They had expensive tastes, reflected in the $277,500 two-bedroom condo they bought in 1993–a high price even by today’s standards. Several years later, they moved into their $1.65 million mansion in Hyde Park–with the help of fraudster Tony Rezko. Barack often told a story of hardship on the campaign trail in 2008 about having his credit card declined–once. The fact that he thought this counted as real hardship speaks volumes.

As her husband moved onto the national political stage, Michelle Obama began to enjoy a lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense, directly and indirectly. When Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, he obtained a $1 million earmark for the University of Chicago Hospital–and his wife’s salary as Vice President for Community Affairs jumped from $121,910 to $316,962. Her job: pushing poor, uninsured patients to other hospitals.
 

On Thursday night, a friend called and asked me if I wanted to go to a concert with him as his son had bailed on him to stay at college to go to the football game.  The concert was at Livestrong Sports Park and featured  Journey, Pat Benatar and Loverboy.  I had never seen any of them live so I agreed, although I knew we were going to get wet from the remnants of Isaac.

We arrived about 45 minutes before showtime, guzzled a few beers and headed in.  Loverboy had just taken the stage as we arrived at our seats, which were third row off the field, in the rain.  We were wearing our rain gear and laughing about the conditions.  Twenty rows back, the seats were covered by the stadium overhang and dry.  Loverboy was actually still very good.  I thought Mike Reno would no longer be able to hit the higher notes but to my surprise, he did.  They played the songs most know from that era and it was a short half hour or so set.  When they finished, we headed to a dry area and consumed some more beer, although this time it was $9 a bottle!

Pat Benatar hit the stage about 20-25 minutes after Loverboy left and we were back in our seats in the rain.  About a third of the way through her set, we moved up about 10 rows and got mostly out of the rain.  Pat commented on how she was going to look like Alice Cooper by the time her set was finished.  She played all of her hits plus did her own rendition of Johnny Cash's "Burning Ring of Fire" which was quite good. Her husband,  Neil Giraldo, is her lead guitar player and that guy can wail.  He even did a little Zeppelin riff at the end of their show.  Pat's set was great and received a great deal of appreciative applause at the end.  Store this away in the useless information category: Pat Benatar's birth name was Patricia Mae Andrzejewski.

Journey hit the stage and as you can imagine, it was one big hit after another.  The only song I didn't know was the very first one they played which was off their newest album.   The crowd favorites were the big ones as expected, such as "Faithfully", "Open Arms", "Don't Stop Believin'", and "Separate Ways".  Mixed in between was everything from "Wheel in the Sky" to "Stone in Love".  They finished off the set with an encore serving of "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" that had the crowd swaying with their arms in the air side to side and singing along. Arnel Pineda has been the lead singer of Journey since 2007 and I have to say that he may be actually better vocally than Steve Perry.  The guy sang effortless for almost two hours straight and was amazingly strong on the power ballads.  I've always been a Steve Perry fan but I came away from this concert very impressed with Pineda and his ability to sing the original Journey songs.

After walking back to our vehicles, we found the grass parking lot to be a huge, rutted, sloppy mess.  Cars were already stuck trying to get up the hill to leave and we tried pushing one lady with no success.  I knew I would probably share the same fate so I took a huge risk and went down the hill toward the main street that was already clogged with traffic.  I figured I'd have to jump the curb at most. Several others were doing the same and there were a couple already stuck going that way too.  Little did I know that at the bottom of the hill was a concrete spillway with fairly steep sides.  One car had gone in and had the vehicle hung up on one of the banks of the spillway  I evaluated it for a minute and decided to take the chance by traversing it at an angle.  I was just hoping the front fascia of the Edge wouldn't scrape or hang up on the embankment.  I made it to the bottom without any issues and started up the other side.  I goosed the throttle as I headed up the embankment and popped over the top rather easily.  My friend in his F-150 followed without any issues.  That hillside was going to be completely destroyed and I'm sure most vehicles had to be towed or pushed out of there.  Glad I wasn't one of them.

JD came home from SIUE since he had a long weekend.  Naturally, he brought all of his laundry with him.  He spent much of the weekend hanging out with his friends which I think he misses the most.  Most of his friends are going to local colleges or working so he's a good distance from them and doesn't have the option to come home every weekend.  Well, he does but I'm not paying for it!  He drove home in the rain on Friday which took much longer due to accidents and slower traffic but he made it back in the normal time yesterday.  We'll see him again when we go back to St. Louis at the end of the month for the fireworks fest I participate in every year.