Goodbye Cardinals

Albert Pujols and Tony LaRussa appeared with Glenn Beck at his Lincoln Memorial rally on Saturday, doing their part to legitimize this racist demagogue. I can no longer give my love and support to the team that they are on--it's too embarrassing.

I am in the process of boxing up every piece of St. Louis Cardinals memorabilia that I have. I want to apologize to everyone who has given--in some cases (Mom!) even made--me items with the Cards' logo on it. I very much appreciate your kindness, but I can no longer stomach them.

Letting go of the Cardinals after almost 50 years of following them is one of the hardest things I have ever done, but continuing to support them is impossible.

Sold!

Lori and I knew we needed to think long and hard about our next dinner party after Tapas Night, but other matters were pressing: the Broadheads had people coming over the next afternoon/evening to look at their house, and they needed to be elsewhere for the duration.

So Lori and Marlis went out to the movie ("Eat, Poop, Love" I think it was called), and Glenn came over and sat with me while I smoked a chicken. When the girls got back, we were sitting out back before dinner when Marlis got a phone call with a serious offer, and they accepted it on the spot.

So, suddenly the Broadheads were moving to Kansas City--in three weeks.

Yeah, we were all a little "Holy Crap!" about that. But we celebrated the sale with a smoked chicken Sunday dinner.

I'm not sure how I failed to get any pictures of Lori this evening.

Tapas Night with the Broadheads

After our Friday night Sox game, we went to Glenn and Marlis' house for Tapas Night--it was spectacular!

Check out the menu for your guide to the many, many courses--I forgot to take a picture of the the first one, but did get the rest.

Carl got to come out of exile for a little while, until he became too excited by Lori's presence and had to go back in his room. I thought Glenn might have to join him, but he got it back under control.

Later we played Quiddler and I came in last, as usual.

You Can't Beat Fun at the Old Ballpark

Friday night we went down to the ballpark to see the Sox play the Tigers.

In addition to the game, it was Elvis night, with lots of people dressed up as Elvis, plus a whole host of Elvis impersonators, plus a team of skydiving Elvises.

It rained in the 7th inning, and it was pretty late, so we went on home.

I did a little umbrella wrangling on the L platform.

Lori got a new Sox bucket hat.

Hope you like the pix and videos.

Busy Weekend

I'll say it was busy, but the weather actually cooled off for several days before Sunday saw the heat and humidity come back.

Thursday evening was very nice, so Lori and I had supper on the back deck. We didn't hang too long out there after dinner because the mosquitoes were really bad.

Saturday morning Lori had her interview for the new position being created at the library. She thinks she did pretty well.

When she got back, we biked up to the library's annual book sale, held this time in an old repair garage instead of the high school. We could only buy what we could bring back on our bikes, but given the fact that I have a milk crate on mine, and Lori has three baskets, we could have gone a lot crazier than we did. We just filled the crate and one of Lori's three baskets.

Saturday night Marlis and Glenn came over for dinner. We sat outside for about a half-hour while I was cooking (blackened catfish, corn on the cob on the gas grill), but went inside away from the skeeters to eat--notice folks wearing long-sleeved shirts for bug protection.

Sunday we met Glenn and Marlis for brunch at the Wishbone, then Lori and I went and got a rug shampooing machine. Lori now refers to me as the Reverend Rug Doctor Pulliam.

That's me using the machine in our bedroom in the basement--which got a bit of water in it the morning we were leaving for Drummond. Lori thought I would look much better doing this if I had a cute beret in my hair. She was right--the picture is indisputable.

The other pictures are of the big room in the basement, which now has everything from our bedroom except the bed, the vanity and the bookcase.

Now that the shampooing is done, we'll begin moving things back in when the carpet dries--think we're gonna rearrange things a bit to suit Lori's feng shui requirements.

Sunday Brunch with Sams

Sam and his fraternity brother Sam came by around noon on their way back to Peoria, after a weekend Delta Upsilon meeting in Chicago.


We took them to brunch at the Wishbone, where we were met by Glenn and Marlis.


Sam had shrimp and grits, and I had eggs Florentine. The other breakfasts weren't nearly as colorful.


The photo of Glenn and Marlis is blurry--my fault. It's better if you don't enlarge it.


Sam and Sam left right after brunch, but we enjoyed our 2 hours with them.


Happy 20th birthday, Sam!

Saturday Morning

We were up and out of the big house (pictured) by 8:30--down to the cabin where Mom had made us breakfast.

There was a sausage-eggs casserole, fruit salad, sliced tomatoes, English muffin, with juice and coffee. I gained 5-7 pounds on this vacation because of all the great food we had. Luckily, it has now melted away again.

Katie DeGood dropped by to say goodbye and to show off her daughter, Gracie.

We left at 9:00 to catch the 9:10 ferry, and we just made it.

We said our goodbyes to Kevin and Pat there, and then it was back to Chicago.

Friday Night

On our last night on the island, we started with happy hour in the cabin.


At seven, we had a reservation for dinner at the Northwood restaurant at Four Corners.


I think we all had the all-you-can-eat whitefish that's their Friday night special. I'm pretty sure that Kevin is the only one who had a second piece.


A couple of videos from the evening help capture what it was like to be there. I hope you all especially enjoy the discussion of what sort of husbands we are.

Friday

Lori went in swimming again, first dragging the raft back out to where it had been before the big blow we had had overnight one night.

While dragging the raft, she had spotted a piece of wood on the lake floor, and she came back later to look for it--that's the video at the bottom. She finally did find it and dragged it up to the shore. Lori: stop being such a drag!

After she had dragged and them swum awhile, Lori took some time to catch some sun on the raft--she felt she deserved it after all that work.

While she was draggin' and swimmin' and sunnin', Dad, Mom and I walked around on the beach.

I think Dad was noticing how well Kevin, Pat and me had cleared off the baby trees on the beach a day or two earlier.

Mom seems to just now be noticing that big rock out in the water.

I was taking pictures of a couple of the numerous bench-in-the-woods spots Dad has created around the cabin.

Dad loves to make benches, especially out of stuff he'd just have to throw out, if he didn't make a bench out of it.