The start of this new week is a life changer for all of us as JD leaves for college in just three more days.  He has most of his things he'll be taking packed or laid out and we'll be loading up Wednesday afternoon to make the drive to St. Louis where we will spend the night before heading to the college the next morning.  He wanted to say goodbye to his friends so we're going to have an open house on Tuesday evening for them to stop by, have some refreshments and say farewell.

I spent a fair amount of time helping with our community dumpster this weekend.  I had suggested to the HOA Board that bringing in a large trash dumpster for the residents to throw their bulky items in would be a well received service since our city takes forever to get out to you when you call.  With their approval, I arranged for a 40 yard roll off to be delivered on Friday and people started using it right away.  I made quite a few trips to the dumpster to ensure that it was packed well to maximize the space and to make sure we weren't disposing of items that were not allowed.  We had a couple people throw some tires in there that aren't allowed but there's always a couple morons who don't like to follow the rules.  If they can be identified by the video, I told the Board President that I would be glad to return them to their owner via a personal visit.  The dumpster was full by Saturday night and the board is considering doing this now on a quarterly basis.

I enlisted Jodi's help to paint the gray trim on JD's truck black.  I had already done the grill and wanted to finish the trim off before he left for college.  Jodi handles the more tedious tasks better than I do so she masked off the trim and I prepped and painted it.   I'm very happy with the results and I think the truck looks a lot better.   I always forget to take a before shot of my projects but here's a couple afters.

Happy Birthday, Justin!  19 years old today!

With the summer baseball season over, our focus has been on getting JD ready for college.  His move in day is next Thursday and we have spent the last couple evenings purchasing some clothing and other items he will need for dorm life.

Tomorrow is his 19th birthday and he got his present a couple days early.  He has been wanting a bike to ride around campus so we took him to the bike store and he picked out a new mountain bike to take with him. 

With not much baseball to talk about until spring, I'll have a lot of time to talk politics so expect to see more of that in the future.  We'll kick things off with two of the dumbest quacks in U.S. government. 

Time for an update on Harry Reid and his imaginary friend who’s telling him Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for a decade. The charge is so transparently bogus that even the White House press corps tried to pin Obama spokesman Jay Carney down on whether Obama repudiates it. But Carney dodged every question and kept telling them to talk to Reid. Or you could just take Nancy Pelosi’s word for it. She said, and I quote: “Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him it is a fact.” So to Nancy Pelosi, if Reid claims that an anonymous phone caller made an unsubstantiated claim and said it was true, that makes it a fact. I think I’m starting to understand the level of research that went into the Obamacare bill.  You'll recall that Nancy said prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that we would need to "pass it to see what is in it".  This is the kind of leadership we have on the left.  This women is a nut.

Here's a couple photos I took and then video from the All Star Game.  I recommend clicking on the video to play it and then click the "Watch on Youtube" icon.  Once there, click on the settings icon and select 720p for the highest quality video.  Click on the images for full size view.

A recap of the weekend:

Saturday morning I got up early and went and helped clean up our neighborhood lakes.  I met up with about 10 other residents and we walked the shorelines picking up trash that gets washed into the lakes via the storm drains or blows across the common areas into the lakes. 

Later in the afternoon, Jodi and I drove down to Belton to attend my friend's Boom Boom BBQ.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much Boom Boom as the fire marshal put the kibosh on it since it is so dry.  We did have a club meeting and then we ate BBQ while others swam. 

Kyle came into town to visit a friend as well as to see JD pitch last night.  Jodi's mom came and brought our nephew Austin with her.  We drove down to Kauffmann Stadium and waited for the Royals game to end so we could enter.  JD got to say hello to Bruce Chen while waiting at the gate. 

The game started around 6:30pm and JD was chosen to be the closer for his team and pitch the ninth inning.  His team jumped out to an early lead and wound up leading 5-0 by the time JD came into the game.  He struck out the first batter he faced and then he induced the next two batters to ground out weakly to second base to end the game.  It was a fun experience for all of us.  I have video and photos I'll post later but here's a shot from the Kansas City star webpage and a link to the image and slideshow from the game.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/06/3745460/ban-johnson-all-star-game.html#slide-2

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington

It was quite impressive to see all of the people who showed up at Chick-Fil-A last night.  I figured it would be an hour wait to get our food.  We wound up getting to the front door in an hour!  By the time we received our order, we had been there an hour and fifty nine minutes!  They had already ran out of wraps, strips and ice cream earlier so we enjoyed some very good chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.  JD loves their food and is very happy that SIUE has a Chick-Fil-A in the campus food court.

While in line, we saw people paying for the next car in the drive thru and that continued all the while we were in line near that area.  Every car kept paying for the next car behind them, not wanting to break the chain of good will.  A few protesters showed up with signs while we were there but most people just ignored them although they were trying to engage the people in line, offering to answer any questions we might have.  I was going to ask them the score of the Royals game but stuck to my plan to ignore them.

It was cool to be a part of the show of support for the chain and let people know that free speech and Christian values are going to be stood up for and protected. Here are some photos from last night.