Weekend Plans

Here is what I have going on this weekend. Tonight I am headed to the Brewer Game with Tree. I think Tree wants to fatten me up before the race. I don't think that will help him. From what I have seen in the latest poll, the public is on my side for taking Tree behind the woodshed on Sunday. I appreciate the support. Not much is planned for Saturday. I would like to have my feet up in the air and relax most of the day and conserving my energy for Sunday. Sunday is the big race. I will be up at 5 in the morning and the race starts at 7. Now I am not going to guilt trip people into coming and watching. I will wait until I do the Pewaukee triathlon closer to home before I start drumming for support. Last night was my last training for the race. I was pretty happy with the results. I have a normal ride that I do that is about 12 miles. I managed that in just under 40 minutes. And then after a 2 minute break I started out on a 3 mile run, which I finished in 24:30. I am very happy with those results. Again the only thing that I am worried about is the swim. I have yet to swim a stroke in preparation for the race. But I was looking at the results from last year. And the slowest time I saw for the swim in my age group was no more than 12 minutes. Not much else going on. Stop back on Monday for the results.

Perfect Health

Yesterday was my doctor's appointment. All went well. No major or minor health problems. They would like to do some blood work on me. But that isn't until next week. I want to keep all of my blood until after my triathlon. I repeatedly asked the doctor if I was underweight and he laughed and said no. That being said, everyone can get off my back.
Looking ahead to this weekend, it is my triathlon in Lake Mills. I am doing it with Tree. The last time Tree and I did a triathlon in 2003, he beat me by 5 seconds. I talked with Tree last night, and he said that he hasn't been training as hard as he would like. After hearing that, I came clean with Tree. I had been telling him the same thing, when in reality I have been training pretty hard. I am getting in a 12 mile bike ride and a 3 mile run about 4 or 5 times a week. I am still worried about the swim. Here are my goals for the race. Quarter mile swim in 20 minutes. 15 mile bike in 45 minutes. 3 mile run in 25 minutes. Plus transition times, I am shooting for 1 hour 35 minutes.

Who will beat who in the triathlon this weekend?
	Tree
	Rickie
	The Lake Water beats both of you
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Memorial Day Weekend Recap

For me it was a good holiday weekend. The weather was great, I would have liked it a little warmer, but I am not complaining. So let me get right to telling you what I did. Friday night I went out in the Appleton area with Mark, Suzanne and Kevin. The highlight of the evening was stopping in to the Radison Hotel bar and playing trivia. I will spare you the details of how handily I won. Saturday morning, I headed down to the Milwaukee area. Saturday afternoon was my brother, Dan's, surprise birthday party. Earlier in the day, I stopped by my brother, Jon. I grabbed his wetsuit for my triathlon this coming weekend. I tried the suit on, it is a bit tight in the shoulders but it will be better than nothing. Here I am posing in the suit. Not flexing.On my way to Dan's for the party, I had to get there early to set up the music, I stopped at the Picnic Basket and picked up a Boomer. Look at this sub, Ham, Turkey, Bacon, Cheddar Cheese, Swiss Cheese, Pickles, Mayo and Oily Italian Dressing. That is one good looking sub.How many kids can you get on a trampoline.My dad congratulating Dan on turning 40. Here come the Coonens. Dan and Jody. 40 years old. Wow is that old. Grandma and Joey.Here is Sherman, digging into his wallet to change out a $5. Is it shocking that I cleaned up in Sheepshead? I don't think so.After Dan's party, I stopped by Preston's for some more cards. The creeps were altogether. We played until around noon, then went to the local watering hole for a drink and some pool. Saturday ended up being a pretty late night, much later than I had expected. Sunday I went to grill out with Chris and Rebecca. Brats and burgers on the grill, and throwing some horseshoes. Chris has been run a little ragged the last couple of days and the medicine he is on to help him stop smoking really messes with his sleeping patterns. That being said, Chris kept falling asleep all afternoon.

I have been told that I need to add more video to my blog. So in the future when you see me, say that you want to shoot a video, and I will post it, as long as it is within the bounds of good taste and somewhat interesting or entertaining. Here is Dan reading my card that I gave him for his birthday.

Monday we got together at Preston's for another round of Sheepshead. Monday evening I got back up to Appleton and watched Saving Private Ryan. That just about takes care of my weekend. I would like to thank the Coonens for the early birthday present, Jon and Julie for always allowing me to stay at there place and Chris and Rebecca for dinner Sunday night.

Memorial Day

When I was in college, I had a summer internship working for an engineering consulting firm by the name of STS Consultants. Working for them, I spent the majority of summer testing concrete. It wasn't too bad of a job, in fact I was pretty lucky, I actually had a internship that paid me. I think I was making $7.50 an hour. Obviously I started right after classes which ended somewhere around mid May. As Memorial Day weekend approached, I was informed by my boss that I would be getting paid for a full days work despite having Memorial Day off. This was fabulous news to a college kid. I ended up spending all day Memorial Day drinking. I also spent most of the day telling people that I was getting paid to get drunk.
I have matured quite a bit since that time. Now instead of getting drunk, I have a new Memorial Day tradition. Every Memorial Day Weekend I watch Saving Private Ryan. It is one of the better war movies. The opening half hour of the movie is quite possibly the most intense opening of any movie I have ever seen. However, I believe the most powerful scene of the movie is when the priest arrives at the Ryan family farm to deliver the news of her children's deaths and Mrs. Ryan collapses on the front porch.
With all that being said, please take a moment this weekend while you are grilling out, attending a party, playing with the kids in the yard, or just outside enjoying the beautiful weather, to consider why it is you can enjoy this freedom. Realize that thousand of men and women gave their lives so that you could enjoy the freedoms that you have.

Dr. Jellyfingers

Here is a topic that will not interest most of you. It has been close to 10 years since I have had my last physical. I am not worried about my health at all. Well, my liver might not be the best, but otherwise I feel I am excellent physical condition for a 35 year old. But just to be sure, I am headed in to make sure all is working well. I have been told by a number of people that they feel that I am underweight. That will be the first question that I ask the doctor. If he says I am fine at my current weight, then I expect everyone who has given me grief about my weight that don't have medical degrees to shut up. This is all going down on Tuesday. You can be sure that I will post the results here on my blog, as I am sure you are all concerned about my physical well being.

I am not too excited about having my "plumbing" checked out, I am looking forward to using the following lines:

"Are you using the whole fist there doc?"

"Have you ever done time?"

Yadda Yadda Yadda

Well it is Wednesday, hump day. Not a lot going on for me right now. I have that triathlon with Tree coming up June 1st. Here is what I am really worried about. The swim is in Lake Mills. How cold is that water going to be? Looking at the 10 day forecast, which leads nearly up to the race, temps in that part of the state are to be lows in the mid 50's, and highs in the upper 70's. It is a 1/4 mile swim. Do you think anyone has ever got hypothermia during a triathlon? I might try to go for a swim this weekend.

I have been thinking that I need to get more pictures up here on the blog. I am going to make a major effort to get more pictures this weekend. I need to buy a watch for my triathlon, I might just set it to go off every 15 minutes and take a picture of whatever I am looking at when the alarm goes off. I hope for your sake that it doesn't go off while I am in the bathroom.

Preakness Follow Up

From the baltimoresun.com
"The infield, filled to its 60,000 capacity by 10:30 a.m., was the usual scene of youthful debauchery. Guys wrestled in the mud. Girls were exhorted to shed clothing. Sheets of plastic were turned into makeshift sliding devices. And full beer cans flew through the air for no discernible reason.v A few people climbed to the roofs of the portable toilets to reprise last year's infamous "Running of the Urinals." But with the toilets spaced apart this year, they didn't get very far.
From the roof of the grandstand, Pimlico staff and city police and fire officials monitored the infield with binoculars and used radios to direct security to fights or other disturbances. By the end of the day, 126 people had been ejected. It takes some effort to be tossed from the Preakness. Police walked under flying beer cans and through a haze of marijuana smoke without batting an eye.
Police made six arrests, said police spokesman Troy Harris. Two of the arrests were for assault, three for failure to obey police orders and one for disorderly conduct. Pimlico staff made 17 calls for medical assistance to the infield, though no major injuries were reported."

Here are some links to YouTube videos: Here is my warning, these videos are a bit disturbing.
Running of the Urinals
Beer smashing
Beer Can War

After what I saw, I find it incredibly hard to believe that "no major injuries were reported".

It was an experience to see, but I don't think I will be going back.

The Preakness

Well I was out in Baltimore this weekend for the Preakness. I am not a big horse race fan, so I wasn't sure what kind of experience it would be. In my mind, I thought, horse racing...that is sort of a snooty upper class sport. Wrong!!! I had to work on Friday because there was testing on my bridge. So I had to change my flight and leave Saturday morning. My Friday night was mellow, and I had to wake up early Saturday. I don't know what I was thinking, I was up at 5:00 a.m. in Appleton for a 7:30 a.m. flight out of Milwaukee. I got the airport at 7:05 a.m. and once I made it through security I heard my name was being paged over the intercom. It was a dead sprint to my gate. I was the last one on the plane and they closed door right after I got on. I got into Baltimore without any more problems and met up with the rest of my group, Joe, Gibby, Hedges, Shooter, Ebs and Kelly, at the hotel. The Preakness is different from any other major sporting event I have ever been to. They allow carry-ins. We came a bit unprepared and instead of bringing in coolers, we took hotel garbage cans full of beer and ice. The area around the race track is an absolute dump. Their were kids everywhere with shopping carts that would cart your beer for you to the entrance. We had seats on the infield in the bleachers right on the four turn. Here you can see one of the earlier races on the grass track. The main race was out on the dirt track. Great seats, Gibby came through big.
Our group was hanging out a good part of the day at the top of the bleachers looking out at the mass of people on the infield.
Here are Hedges and Shooter by our sections private bathrooms.
Now here is what I found so absolutely alarming. The infield was crazy. Like I said, I thought going to this race was going to be something of snob fest. Not true. Since you can carry in whatever you want, there was beer everywhere. In fact probably too much beer. It seemed to be all college kids in the infield by they are all idiots. As you can see from this video. These morons were throwing full beer cans into the crowd. I just couldn't believe that people could act that way.

I would call this ground zero. This was still early in the day, maybe 2 in the afternoon. Just trash everywhere. By the late afternoon I think the kids started running out of beer or just got sick of throwing beer cans. I went out in to the infield kind of early to see what it was all about. I found a pretty good viewing spot, and stood on someone's beer cooler and just watched beer cans filling the air. You could just track cans and watch them hit people. It was just so unreal to see people would act that way.Here is Hedges with a guy we ran into that got hit in the head with a beer can. Hedges is demonstrating exactly where this guy got hit.We made our way back to our seats for the race. This is a girl that I met in the bleachers who actually beat me in a beer slamming contest.This is the loading of the horse for the big race.Here is what your view would be if you were a horse at the starting gate.After the race, we headed to Camden Yards for the baseball game. We managed to get 6 of us in a cab. 5 grown men in the backseat of a cab. I don't know how that is even possible, but it happened. This is Shooter and Hedges playing the Brett Favre game. Here are our seats in the bleachers.The night ended up at the original ESPNZone. Hedges fell asleep in one of the recliners. Somehow, I ended up getting thrown out of there for whatever reason. I still don't know what I did wrong.

On a Serious Note

If you know me, then you know I rarely take things seriously. But just today I have gotten a couple of emails about friends of mine or their families going through some hard times. And I would like to pass on a bit of this information to you.

First is my friend, Spider's father. I met Spider through Kaker my freshman year of college. I have only met Spider's father once. It was freshman year while a group of us were up in Minnesota. Spider's parent's invited us (Krum, Kaker, Justus and myself) over for dinner. I recall them putting out a great spread of hamburgers and beans for us and treating us like their own kids. And then their family dog, Boomer, humped my leg. Spider, pictured below is a very good friend of mine. And I actually also played some soccer with his brother, Chip.Spider's father was recently diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer that has seemed to have metastasized to his liver. Spider's family has asked me to help spread their news to my friends & family so as to keep their father in your thoughts & prayers. Please check out this link to see Spider's dad's progress.

Secondly is my friend Trooper, see here with Krum. I met Trooper through Krum when I was living up in Minnesota. Every Thrusday we played indoor soccer and every Thursday Trooper schooled me in soccer. Trooper recently had brain surgery to remove a brain tumor. From my understanding, this whole tumor thing came out of no where. As I mentioned, I played soccer with Trooper about a year ago and he was in perfect health. Trooper is a genuine and good friend, it is hard to learn of his recent troubles. But as his name states, he is a Trooper. Here is Trooper's blog where he has been updating his condition.

These are two good friends of mine that are going through some hard times. If possible, keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

My Engagement

You people really don't like the proposal pictures? Why? You don't believe me? Do you really think it is getting old? My brother in law, Tim, said it was old after the second picture. Is it as old as the M.K.A. pictures? I can go back to those. Although I can promise you this, when M.K.A., or M.T.O.O.H.A. as I like to call him, really does K.A. when and if he rollerblades against me, there will be plenty of pictures and video of that.

Another Proposal

This will probably come as a shock to many of you, but I got engaged while I was in town for the Crohn's Walk last Saturday. It all happened so fast. I have known Vanessa for about 6 years now. We had been talking to each other on the phone quite a bit going into the walk. Then once we met up at the walk, things between us went really well. Before we did the walk I got down on one knee and I decided to propose. I had this picture taken while I was popping the question. It was pretty spontaneous, but then again so am I. We haven't set a date or anything like that. We are going to wait to iron all of that out once I move back to Milwaukee. Sorry Butch, I meant to ask your permission before hand, but as I said, it all happened so fast.

Crohns Walk

Saturday evening, I did the Crohn's Walk with the Bahr girls. Missy has Crohn's Disease. And in a show of support we did the walk with her.

Here is a group shot before the walk. Angela, Trinity, Rite, Missy, Dillion, Rebecca, Nevaeh and Vanessa.
Here is Dillion. I am not sure if he is crying or laughing in the picture.
After the walk, we stopped at a local watering hole for a drink or two. I suggested I get a picture of all the girls together, you know something nice that their parents would be proud of. And how do these girls act, they all grab a beer bottle and start sucking on it. Nice manners.
But I did finally convince them to take a nice picture, Missy, Trinity, Vanessa, Angela and Rebecca.The highlight of the evening was while we were at one bar. Vanessa got up to go to the bathroom. I managed to convince the other four girls to get up and leave the bar. To my surprise, they followed my lead and we all ran out of the bar with Vanessa in the bathroom. We then all hid around the corner of the bar and waited for her to walk out. I know, real mature. Here I am at the next bar with Angela.

I got a lot of positive reaction from the video I had of me and Vanessa in a beer slamming contest. She was unwilling to give it another shot. She said that he tummy hurt.

That is actually all the pictures I got for the weekend. I didn't take any on Mother's Day. Mother's Day was spent at my brother's house. Both my parents were there that evening for dinner. I hope every one wished their mom a Happy Mother's Day, because they all deserve it. And to my mom I would like to again wish her a Happy Mother's Day. How she dealt with us 5 kids I will never know. We were far from the best kids and I consider it a miracle that she didn't have a breakdown of some sort while raising us.

Weekend Recap

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was relaxing as always. But I am still a bit disappointed in this weather. It is just a bit too cold for me yet. I am not asking for much. Just temps in the high 70s.

Friday night I stopped by my brother, Dan, and we grilled out and watched the Brewer Game. I left at the end of the 7th inning. I stayed with my brother, Jon, all weekend. Once I arrived at Jon's, we saw the last 1/2 inning and the Brewers come from behind win.

Saturday morning, I went to my nephew, Nick's, soccer game. Here are some pictures of Pickle in action.

Pickle just before striking the ball on an indirect kick. This resulted in Nick's only goal of the game.

Saturday afternoon, Jon went and picked up his new car. He bought a Saturn. He told me, and I quote, "I just want to be a bit more like Stegall."More of the weekend recap to come tomorrow.

M.K.A.'s Weak Challenge

For those that might not be a regular reader, earlier this week, my cousin, M.K.A., (which stands for Mike Kicking Ass) threw down the gauntlet. And challenged me and my skating ability based on my posting reviewing my niece, Sarah’s, birthday party. After stating that I lost in a race to a 9 year old, I did make the claim that no one that reads my blog could have beaten this 9 year old. And I went a step further by stating that none of my readers could beat me either. M.K.A. took exception to that statement and challenged me to a race on rollerblades.

M.K.A.,

You have a thing or two to learn about making challenges and trash talking. I am happy that you made your challenge here on my blog because I can use your own words against you. As well as show you the error of your ways.

Please follow this link to help remind yourself of what it is you said / wrote.

As you first stated "I will take you to town any day in a rollerblade race". That is a great start on trash talking, but you do have to realize that you have to back it up.

I accepted your challenge by with my retort of "Name the time and the place". This statement puts the ball in your court and allows you to call the shots. Basically you could have been the home team and picked when and where you want to have this little race.

This is where you should have said “Saturday. 2:00 p.m. at Bob’s roller rink in Whitewater.” But you didn’t, you procrastinated and restated that "anytime is cool with me." By this statement, you put the ball back in my court and gave me the right to name the time and place. Since you said “anytime is cool with me”, I assumed that "this Saturday” would qualify as “anytime.” Apparently it is not. Your definition of “anytime” is obviously different from mine. Aren’t you currently an honor roll student in college?

To be truely accurate, what you needed to say was “anytime is cool with me as long as I don’t have football practice or I am not having dinner with my parents.”

I, as well as my readers, can clearly see that you are back peddling on your initial challenge to skate against me. That is understandable. You are obviously in a "lose lose" situation in challenging me. If you win, well you should win. You are 21 and in the prime of your athletic life. I am an old middle age man who is well past his athletic prime. But if you lose, well then you just lost to a man nearly twice your age. If you want to back down on your challenge, I will accept your apology and we can go about on with our lives. However, if you are serious, and you still think that you can “easily” beat me, I will set aside time in all but one of the next 4 or 5 weekends to take you on. Here is the schedule at Skateland. As far as I can tell, all of the weekend times, should qualify as "anytime". You let me know when you aren’t practicing football or having dinner with your parents. Mind you, next week I will be out of town, but if you can make it out to Baltimore, I am sure I can find a rink to race.

I know that this posting will no doubt spark another rebuttal from you. But please do me a favor before you leave a remark. Think about what you are saying, and make sure you can back up any statement you make. I full expect your response to not include the word “anytime”. I am however, expecting you to craft a response which is further procrastination that will include such phrases such as "weekends aren't good for me because I have football" or "I am spending the weekend with Katie." Step up to the challenge and back up your words or apologize and admit your inferiority.

I already know that the chances of you backing down from your challenge is highly unlikely. That being said, I would like to make this little race a bit more interesting. I.E. I would like to place a little wager on the race. No, I don't want money. I want public humiliation. If I win, you read a public statement, prepared by me, at the 4th of July party, which will detail the challenge and the result, to the entire family that will also be video taped and aired on my blog. And if you win, well I have to be honest, I am not worried about you winning. But if you pull off the minor miracle of beating me, name what you want.

Antonio Freeman Party

The word has been out for a while now, but I might as well make it official. There will be no Antonio Freeman Party this year. I realize that this is a disappointment to many people. There a number of reasons why I have decided not to throw the party this year. First, I am living out of town, which makes it a bit harder to plan. Second, I like to oversee every little detail and with the number of people attending continuing to climb, I got pretty stressed out last year. Third, and most importantly, Tammy is living in my house right now. I really can't have my party there with someone living there. I know other people have offered up there houses to have the party, but I do not feel comfortable having my friends trash someone else's house. I can just hear it the questions after the party. "How can Justus go through 3 LP tanks while cooking?" "Why did Preston pass out in kids bed?" "Who told TT he could eat the two pounds of bacon in the freezer and the three jars of mayonnaise in the pantry?" "How did Jay manage to burn not only all of our fire wood but also three chairs left over from the musical chairs?" Plus the party just wouldn't be the same if it was held somewhere else. Once I am back and living in my house, I will be throwing the party again on a regular basis. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Rollerskating

Saturday afternoon after the Breast Cancer walk, was my niece, Sarah's, birthday party. It was at Skateland in Waukesha. I was pretty excited about this party. Originally this was just a party for Sarah and her friends. But when I heard that they were going to Skateland, I told them that I was in. It has been a while since I strapped on the rollerblades. It didn't take long and I was back to true form. Here are the pictures from the party. Here is one of my other nieces, Abby.

Here are two of Sarah's friends, my sister in law, Sue, Sarah, and one of my other sister in laws, Jody. This was before Sue broke her wrist.
Sarah and Abby.
My nephew, Zack. It took him a while to get started, apparently his rollerblades he brought from home weren't good enough for him to use. After he whined for a while, my brother gave in and they rented another set of rollerblades that seemed to work.Sarah again. Sarah's friend (I should have learned their names), Sarah, and my brother, Jeff. I really just went to the party because I wanted to skate. I didn't spend all that much time sitting by the food, or skating with anyone. I was just out skating by myself. And I was very happy with that. It gave me plenty of time to work on my backwards crossovers.
Abby and Zack back at the table. Sarah blowing out the candles on the first of her two birthday cakes of the day. I will say it and I don't have a problem saying it either. Kids today are spoiled. Before anyone takes major offence to this, let me first say that I am part of the problem. Yes, I am a hypocrite. Did you read that Borky? I admitted that I am a hypocrite. See it isn't that hard to do. I spoil my nieces and nephews quite a bit. But I am an uncle, not a parent, I am allowed to do that.

Now I know I am going to take some grief from a number of you about this next video. This is from the races at Skateland. Of course I had to get out there and take a shot at the title. I ended up finishing second by about a foot to a 9 year old. Before any of you start in on me about me losing to a 9 year old, let me first say that none of you would have beat him. And I will also throw the challenge out there that none of you could beat me either.

I did manage however to win the adult race, in spite of the fact that I was forced to start 1/4 of a lap back. They blackballed me because of my superior skating ablity. As I eluded to earlier, over the course of the afternoon, Sue, fell down and hurt her wrist. I say it is broken. But as of Saturday evening she still had not made the trip to the hospital. Nor was she able to pick anything up with her left hand.

Here I am with the Party Panda at Skateland. I really wanted to dress up in the Party Panda costume. But I have a feeling that it wouldn't have fit.It is really too bad that Sue hurt herself, because that will only help ensure that future skating parties will not take place. I had a great time. I know that it was Abby's first time skating and I have a feeling that one of her birthday parties will be at Skateland. If anyone else is having any skating parties please feel free to send me an invitation, I am down for sure.

Later in the evening was Sarah's second birthday party of the day at my brother's house. Here is Sue's friend's husband digging a couple frog skins out of his wallet to pay me in Sheepshead. Fish on. It probably doesn't need to be said, but I will say it anyhow. I cleaned up at the Sheepshead table. That is right Dan, that is what I said, I took you to the cleaners. It isn't luck, it is called skill.The party was a combination party for Sarah and Erin. Here are Sarah, Erin and Abby while the girls were opening presents.Here is Joey Jeffery less then enthused with the present opening.

Camping

It isn't even the beginning of summer yet and I am already planning it out. It has been a while since I have done some state park camping. Liquid and I decided that we should do it this year. I have already sent out email invitations, but I would also like to sent out a public invite on my blog. To all my loyal readers, I am extending you all my warmest invitation to go camping. Liquid and I have reserved two camp sites so far, with a maximum of 6 people at each site. There are 2 more sites that are available in the same area 32 and 33. We decided on Buckhorn State Park, which is located halfway between Minneapolis and Milwaukee. And just outside of Tomah. We picked the weekend of July 25th - 27th. Here is a link.

If you are interested in going or have questions just leave a comment on my blog. As always, the more the merrier. I would like to get a decent size group of 10 -12 people.

The current attendance roster is : Me, Liquid, Doug, Eric and Flo.

I know that Mark, Suzanne and Jota have all expressed interest.

Breast Cancer Walk

Saturday morning I did the Breast Cancer Walk at the Lake Front. Some people are surprised that I would do this walk every year. I do the walk for two reasons. #1. I am a big big fan of the breast, what guy isn't? #2. And more importantly, my friend, Linda, whom I met through Michel, and stood up with in Nate and Michel's wedding, was diagnosed with Breast Cancer about four years ago. I have done the walk with Linda and her group every year since. I am still waiting for the year when the weather is nice. Every year it is highly overcast and it always rains during some part of the walk. Here are Nate and Michel. Here is Elery walking in circles with his stroller.
Here is a group shot of the girls with the lake in the background. Starting in the back left and working clockwise are, Amy, Linda, Michel, Julie, Nicky and Kim. I did learn while we were on the walk that Kim is actually a reader of my blog. I am always surprised when I come across a reader. I find it hard to believe that people are actually interested in my life. Kim went on to tell me that she read about my washing my baseball hats and told her husband that he should do the same. Kim, I am happy to have you along as a reader.