Body Worlds @ MSI Chicago

If you haven't done so, do yourself a favor and get up to the Museum of Science and Industry and see the Body Worlds exhibit. It is a very tastefully done look at real human bodies, and just about every system and organ you can imagine. It might not be for the weak of stomach, but there is some really need visual stuff for something you may never encounter in your life. It is worth the trip down to MSI to check it out. Below is a link for those who are interested.

Body Worlds@MSI Chicago

AND THAT'S A WHITE SOX WINNER!!!

Big win today for the White Sox. After losing 3 straight, and looking rather pathetic doing it, the Sox pulled off a big come-from-behind bottom of the 9th victory against a tough California (just call me old school) Angels team. Mark Buehrle pitched a gem as usual and went into the 9th with a 3-2 lead. The Angels got the first two on against MB, and Ozzie went out and brought Marte in. Damaso got a taylor made DP groundball, which Tadahito Iguchi promptly flipped past Juan Uribe, loading the bases with no one out. Cali ended up scoring two runs and going ahead 4-3, while bringing in back up closer Scot Shields to finish things up.

The White Sox managed to get the first two runners on, and got them sacrficed over to 2nd and 3rd on a Scott Podsednik bunt. Tads was due up next, but Ozzie pinchhit Carl Everett, who promptly struckout on 3 pitches. Then by some miracle of God, Timo Perez managed to loop one into short left field to score two runs, and give the Sox a 5-4 win.

The Sox now stand 34-17 and lead the Minnesota Twins by 4 games, including 3 in the loss column. A stat I saw today stated that 70% of teams in first place on the last day of May, since the 8 team playoff format began, have ended up in the playoffs. Hopefully that bodes well for my southsiders.

One, Two, Three Strikes she's out...

So we went and took another long and hard look at the house that had emereged as a clear favorite for us, the one on Hoyt St. This time we brought along the wife's parents, who have little more handy, and house buying experience than we do, and boy did it payoff. Before we even got into the house, her dad had spied what looked like a crack in the foundation. Before we got done, there was tons of water damage that got spotted, in just about every wall in the place. Every level from the attic to the basement had problems.

Now for the most part, this kind of thing happens, but then we found out that our real estate agent had listed this place once before, and neglected to mention that fact to us. All she had told us was this place was "cute", and had been totally remodled in the last year. Turns out originaly the place was totally infested with cats, and reaked of cat urine on top of all of the rest of the problems. Our agent hadn't even hinted that she knew anything about the place. She was perfectly content letting us buy a lemon.

Let me just say this much. If you ever buy a house in Michigan City IN, don't use Middleton Century 21, and don't use Pam Navarro.

Tax deduction #2

We went and saw the doctor on Wednesday. Everything is looking great still. The baby didn't really want to cooperate too much to give us the cool ultrasound pics, instead we saw a lot of his head. It looked like we also must have woke him up, but he did jump around a little for us towards the end. Right now we are just short of 17 weeks along.

The doc also gave us the go ahead to schedule the "official" ultrasound where they take like an hour and inspect, detail by detail, all of the systems of the body. It will also be the first chance to tell whether we are having a boy or a girl. We go in after June 8th.

The Magical Tax-Deductions.

Well the house hunt is coming along nicely. We looked at 5 more places on Wednesday and actually had some places that looked like real possibilities. We finally did find one place that the wife and I both really, really like. It is a big and old house, that isn't too far away from where we live now. It has 3 full bedrooms, including two upstairs, a full basement, and really big spacious rooms in general. Here is a link for those who are interested.

613 Hoyt

The one issue is that it is definately at the top of our comfort range. We also have to wait and see what the disclosures all come back like. It is an old place, but was totally gutted and remodeled last year as an investment property. Everything has been redone, and all of the appliances are new, and staying, except for the washer and dryer.

We are going to look at places again this weekend, and there will be more updates to follow.

3-2

This was a bitch of a loss to swallow. We lost by a single stinking run, to the team that we blew out the first game of the season, and to top it off, we were missing four starters. We actually started a middle eastern foreign exchange student, a parent, and a semi-regular to field a team. If we had even one more of our starters there it would have been a blowout of epic proportions, instead we had a blackhole of 3 straight outs everytime up.

Personally I went 3-5 with a double and played flawlessly in the field. Our next game is Tuesday, a rematch against St Teresa's.

3-1

Awful game last night. The team played really well as a whole, but none of our regular pitchers were there and it hurt. We lost 20-15, but walked in at least half of those runs. I played pretty well myself going 3-3 with a walk at the plate, and had a nice diving catch in the field, to go with a solid defensive preformance.

We play again tonight, hopefully the result will be a little different.

Revenge of $160,000,000

So we went and saw the supposed final installment of Star Wars ("Revenge of the Sith") and were not disappointed at all. This movie was easily the best of the 3, all though I will qualify that by saying I don't think these last 3 movies were really made to be stand alone movies like the first three. My thinking on this trio was that they were always meant to be one seven hour movie, instead of 3, 2+ hour movies. And if they are watched with this in mind, it is an even better trilogy.

But as for the movie itself there was tons of action, all of the plots were tied up in a neat little bow, and except for a few contradictions from the "future" past movies, it was really well done.

One scene in particular that was incredible was after Anakin's near death, when the Emperor takes him back and rebuilds him as Darth Vader. The last piece is the helmet, which gets slipped over his head, only to hear that first distinctive breath get taken in. It gave me chills.

Definate two thumbs up, 4 star movie. Go see it if you have not already.

McCarthy spectacular in his debut

Brandon McCarthy did an incredible job of stepping to the plate, and going pitch for pitch with Chicago's former boy-wonder Mark Prior. Bmac ended up getting a no decesion after manager Ozzie Guillen made the move to go the pen in the 6th, ensuring Brandon no worse than a no decesion with his great outing. McCarthy went 5 1/3 innings, walking only one, and giving up just 3 hits, which led to one run being scored while he was in, and a second run scoring after he left the game. He also got 6 Ks in the game, many as a result of a nasty curveball which he didn't show off too much in Arizona during spring training. His fastball was crisp, but he stayed away from his change, only really using it to strikeout Derrick Lee.

All in all a memorable major league debut for Brandon.

The team note is that the Sox took two out of three from the Cubs giving them bragging rights on all accounts until at least June. The Sox also continue to have the best record in baseball at all of baseball at 32-13.

Congratulations to Brandon McCarthy:)

Many who know me, know that I like to hang out at a certian White Sox message board where I also help out as an administrator. One of the cool things about the site, is we have a cult following of White Sox minor leaguers, and even a few posters from them. Well the message board, soxtalk.com, was the first to break the news that one of its own, Brandon McCarthy was getting the chance to make his major league debut this weekend, at Wrigley Field. We were the first to both connect and confirm the various rumors that were floating around, beating all of the Chicago beat reporters to the punch.

McCarthy gets to make his first major league appearence at the urinal of a ballpark named Wrigley Field, aka the Deadly Confines. It will be a buzzsaw of a debut he will never forget as not only will he be in front of a sellout, hostile crowd, but he will also be facing one of the top young pitchers in the game, one Mark Prior. This outing is all gravy for Sox fans as they have taken the first two games of the series, and are hoping for the sweep tomorrow.

Lets Go Sox, and Lets Go Brandon!!!

Our House

Well things are moving along quickly. Two nights ago we went onto Century21.com and applied for a mortgage to see what we could qualify for. For first time buyers we actually qualified for a solid rate with 3% down, and also got preapproved for a 0% down FHA loan.

Then last night we got in contact with an agent, and now we are going to go look at our first house Sunday morning. We have a couple of places in mind. One of them is a place the wife fell in love with in the Pines, another is a repo that would be bigger, but needs some work to be done to it.

This is really wild with everything happening so quickly.

Also today is the first day of the Sox and Cubs series from the Deadly Confines of the Urinal. That is always fun, and the fun began early with a few of the Sox players ripping village idiot Carlos Zambrano for acting like a two year old on the mound. Should be interesting as always. The Sox go into the series with the best record in baseball at 29-12, and the Cubs are in 3rd place at 18-21 after beating Jose Mesa twice in two days.

15 more nanoseconds...

Once again I was published in the Rapid Response second of the Michigan City News Dispatch. My note was in response to a local man who could not believe that the Republicans would have the gall to change the filibuster rules, and he in fact believed that the Conservatives were merely trying to silence their opposition. This is my comeback to that note.

Many of the same men crying about losing the filibuster were the same men trying to eliminate it while the Republicans were stalling many of President Clinton's judicial nominations. Ten years ago the liberals in Congress led a vote to completely eliminate the filibuster, and not just to change it to only needing 51 votes to end, as the conservatives are trying for now. They could only muster 19 votes for it and lost handily. I guess the shoes are on the other feet now.

3-0

Softball was again a thriller for the LBC crew. We played another of the best teams in the league, Duneland, and the game ended up being everying it was cracked up to be.

Two controversial calls were made by Duneland players in favor of their own team, despite seeming otherwise. These calls really got our team, and me in general fired up and playing an excellent game. We ended up winning 29-25 on the strength of a 9 run 7th inning to put away the game. Personally I went 5-5 with a double and two walks. I also was flawless in the field, by some sort of devine intervention.

Next week will be our first series of back to back games, and we will also be missing our capitian.

USCF Trip

Sunday, the wife and I packed up the fam and took them all to the White Sox game against the Orioles. It was the first time that my mom has been to the "new" ballpark since it was built. The last game she was to, was back in 1977 while she was pregnant with my brother, and she passed out at that game.

Too bad the outcome wasn't any better as Erik Bedard pretty well owned the White Sox hitters. What few chances they did have at sustaining some pressure were both broken up by double plays by Tadahito Iguchi.

The funniest part about the game is that everyone except me left for the 7th inning stretch. Promptly Carl Everett and Jermaine Dye hit back to back jacks for the Sox only two runs of the game. Sure enough then everyone comes running back in, and the Sox offense died.

Just keep winning...

Once again the Einstein Boys continue to roll on. The Sox are currently matching up with the 2nd best team in baseball, record-wise, the Baltimore Orioles. They took the first two games 3-2 led by Jon Garland on Friday night, and Saturday night the Sox overcame a 3-0 deficit to win 5-3 behind ace Mark Buehrle.

The Sox have also extended their major league baseball record of 36 games straight times leading a game starting at the beginning of the season. The all time record was set by the 1998 Yankees at 48 games.

Tonight the Sox continue their series with the O's as Freddy Garcia takes the bump against young flamethrower Dan Cabrera. The house should be rocking tonight as their were almost 31,000 tickets sold as of Wednesday. If the weather holds up we could be talking a sell out, or close to it.

My 15 nanoseconds of fame

Well yours-truely got published in the Michigan City News Dispatch over the crisis in our school system. It was just a quick note in the Rapid Response section

I have to laugh seeing the responses defending Gene Sweeney. Read them a little deeper and you will discover that not only did Sweeney insult teachers, he insulted his own management skills, all of the students in the MCAS, and the entire community. Remember, these are your kids that our assistant superintendent doesn't want his kids around.

It'll be interesting to see whether the schools system does something about this or not. Right now they aren't commentting on this, saying that is a "personnel issue". Blah. So I guess if the CEO of GM came out and said "Damn our factory workers suck, and I wouldn't trust these people to make me a car. That's why I drive a BMW" it would be OK. Yeah right, he would be out the door right away. But I guess since it is only kids we are dealing with it doesn't matter nearly as much, as if profits were involved.

Pat Buchanan, unplugged and unhinged

Once again the 1992 Presidential canditate, makes me wonder how anyone would have ever voted for this ass-clown. In this article...

Buchanan Write up

He makes the assertion that World War II wasn't worth fighting. Buchanan calls it "one of the greatest wrongs of history." He goes as far as to say that Germany didn't need to be liberated because they voted it Hitler was voted in by them. I know there are probably 6 million dead Jews, Gyspies, Homosexuals, and other groups who would argue with that.

Unbelievable that people like this still get to spout this crap in public, and that people still believe what he saids is true.

Blog under construction...

As some may have noticed, I have taken to tinkering around with the blog a little bit. I have finally taken the time and found the coding for adding colors, and links to here. I have done some alterations to make the site a little easier on the eyes. Hopefully everyone enjoys, then again I might just change things again, who knows.

2-0

Well the machine that is Liberty Bible softball rolls on... We defeated rival and tough team St Teresa's 14-13 by coming up with 6 runs in the last two innings. It was a great preformance, that almost got killed by a rookie baserunning blunder of Carlos Lee proportions. But none the less, the team was up to the task. We trailed by 5 runs at two different points in the game, and still hung in and fought it out. This is the 2nd year in a row we beat these guys in our last AB, beating them in extra innings last year.

I was 2-3 with 2 singles and a walk. In the field I was flawless, except for getting creamed by our LF, while trying to chase down a pop up, who probably has 50 pounds on me.

Next up, Duneland next Monday.

Congratulations and Happy Birthday

Some kinds words are in order for today...

First to a couple of our close friends who got married this weekend, Congratulations!!! All of the best wishes on the rest of your lives together Stephanie and Jim.

And to a fellow Sox fan who just hit the Big 3-0 this weekend, the AARP card is in the mail. Happy Birthday Ilk :)

FIRE GENE SWEENEY

Once again the ugliness of ignorance reared its head in Michigan City politics. Assistant Superintendant of Schools Gene Sweeney opened his mouth to the local newspaper, the Michigan City News-Dispatch, and singlehandedly united an entire union and most of a community.

Sweeney was quoted as saying that he wouldn't trust his kids to City's teachers, and that he also didn't want to live in the community for that reason. He also went on to say that he sat in meetings with MC teachers and couldn't believe how bad they were. There was also a line where he was supposedly quoting union officials, who said "screw the kids, we're union."

Now as I have posted before Michigan City has some problems in the school system, because the administration has become obsessed with statistics, instead of what is actually best for the kids of Michigan City as a whole. But this goes way past that. This man single-handedly insulted an entire town and all of its citizenry with his comments. These comments are coming from a man who lives in an nearly all white town, the other side of South Bend, and has already been fired from another nearly all-white school district under a cloud of suspicion.

First of all, Michigan City needs to apopt a policy of hiring people who are willing to live in our town. If they aren't willing to live here, we don't need to be paying them the salary of 3 teachers to not have any real investment in Michigan City. What does it tell me when a person doesn't even believe enough in his own management abilities, that he won't even send his kids here? It tells me he only cares about the big paycheck.

Second of all, if you really are interested in making progress, don't run to the newspapers and contradict the actions you have taken, with the words you are speaking. Sweeney spoke of problems in the school, but it is the policies of he and Superintendant Harding, who also does not live in Michigan City, that have caused many of these problems. This staff is only focused on the numbers that come out of the schools, as was evidenced Sweeney's mention of ISTEP scores. Another number that Sweeney did not mention was the suspension/explusion rates of MC, which had exploded to amongst the worst in Indiana, after their shortsighted decesion to close down the Alternative High School. Then combined with that, they forced the school level administration not to suspend or expel students, even in situations that put teachers and students in direct and immenant danger. Of course students are going to suffer when kids who have no reason to be in classrooms, are disrupting the learing of other students, because they know they won't be disiplined for their actions.

There is no doubt in my mind that Michigan City needs an administrative staff for its school system that actually has a vested interest in seeing MCAS succeed, and become a building block for rebuilding an entire community. The first step to that is firing Gene Sweeney, and Ed Harding, and finding people who are actually sold on our community, and want to see it reach its potential.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs...

I love office drama. Somedays I swear that we are the cast of the NBC show "The Office" and no one told us. This is our latest office drama...

Lunchroom thieves have long been the bane of existance here. Once someone got their Hot Pockets pilfered. They left a sarcastic sign thanking the thief for eating their lunch, and someone wrote back "where is desert?" Another time the security guard got on the office intercom and announced to everyone that "Whoever took the package of all-beef hotdogs, would they please return them to (so-andso)" Yet another time, someone opened up someones pizza slices, took one bite, and then decided they didn't like it, so they put it back.

Well with the scene appopriately set, yesterday was someone in the backoffice's birthday so there was a birthday cake brought. Well the hated lunchroom thief evidentally got out the cake and had a piece. Well that person wasn't bright enough to put the cake back. Now when a birthday cake gets left sitting out in the lunchroom, that is code for; we didn't finish the cake, so whoever wants some, take some. So obviously, the whole birthday cake gets ate up. Then later in the afternoon, this sign shows up on the door of the fridge. "Thanks to whoever ate my birthday cake. I didn't even get to have a piece. I hope you enjoyed it" It was unsigned.

John Kerry makes the news again

This time the John Kerry for President campaign decided that parking tickets were a campaign expense, 15 months after the fact.

Boston Herald link

I always remember the saying "People in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones" Well as the democrats rushing to roast Tom Delay (granted it is probably rightfully so) they had better make sure all of their houses are in order. I have the feeling that we will start to see a lot of this stuff come out. Especially when we get into friends and family working for campaigns, is when it ought to get real interesting.

1-0

Well the first softball game is in the books. We ended up winning 12-1 in 5 innings. It was a cold night, but we played a pretty solid game. Granted the team wasn't very good, and didn't belong in A division, but we did what we had to do.

I went 1-3 but stung everything right at someone. I also took a walk last night, which is pretty funny because I only took two walks all of last year. I hate walking, and only did it because I couldn't get anything to hit in my last AB.

The only down note was that the opposing teams 3B took a one hopper off of his forehead and had to go to the hospital for stitches. He was bleeding at a pretty solid clip, but seemed to be with it at least. Hopefully he is OK.

Trimester two here we come

The wife had another ultrasound last week, and things are still looking really good. For the first time I wasn't there, and of course it was the best out of all of them. The baby put on a show for everyone, moving around and being really active. Supposedly it looked like he was walking or running in place. Plus we got some real good pics, and the heartrate was heard loud and clear.

She was supposed to meet with the doctor for the first time, but the doc had an ememergency so she met with the nurse practictioner again. We go back in a month for another check up.

The good news is that anyday now we officially hit the 2nd trimester, and the chances of something going wrong go way down. We have had some nervous times early and apparently they classified us as high risk early on, even though they didn't tell us that. The NP told us that as long as the next appointment goes all right, we won't be high risk anymore.

As of now the due date is November 5th, and we are just over 13 weeks along.

Opening Day Part Duex

So today is the 2nd opening day for me. Softball season kicks off for us tonight. This is the 4th year for me of playing softball with this group. I really like playing with these guys, as the team chemistry is just incredible. We had a very good year last year, but faded at the end. We opened the season 9-0 before losing a couple of games at the end. In the tournament we ended up getting bumped up to A division and had a rough time, but finished 5th out of 16th teams.

This year the team is getting back the old starting 3rd baseman who took off a year due to a new baby. We are playing A division all year though, so it will be a much tougher road for us. I can't wait to get out there and play.

Sox resume winning ways

Well April is in the books and the Sox had one of the best in their history. They set two amazing marks for franchise history, one of them tying an MLB record that has stood for 50 years.

The Sox went 17-7 in April, including an 8 game winning streak. They lost only one series the whole month, which had a controversial ending in Oakland. The 17-7 mark tied for the best April in White Sox history. Even more impressive, with the Sox win over the Tigers yesterday, was that the Sox have led in all 25 games they have played in this year. The 1955 Brookln Dodgers set the mark originally in their run to the World Series, when they started out 22-3 out of the gates. The Sox have a chance to break that record Tuesday against the Royals at home. I think that this streak is a great testimony to the top of the order, with Scott Podsednik and Tadahito Iguchi doing a great job of getting over and getting in.

The pitching has also been outstanding, led by Jon Garland, who has won all 5 of his starts, including back to back 4 hit shutouts. The one real disappointment on the staff has been Shingo Takatsu who after achieving cult-hero status in 2004, has looked very human in 05. The starters have all been excellent, including enigma Jose Contreras, who has no decesions, but an era of about 3.00. He has looked much more dangerous this year featuring the fastball, instead of the forkball.

And finally for the attendance junkies, the Sox had their best April attendance mark in 11 years, dispite some crappy weather and crappy teams.