Canning Corn

Tay tried her hand at canning corn today (raw pack). About 35 ears of corn produced 6 quarts.

Bluey Obituary: Mary Jo Kopechne's Ghost

Just past midnight on Saturday, July 19, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his black Oldsmobile sedan off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard, just off Cape Cod. The "married" Senator escaped a watery death, but a passenger in his car, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not immediately call rescue services but wandered away from the scene, checked back into his hotel, called the front desk in the middle of the night to complain about a noise problem and then finally reported the accident 10 hours later!

Today, Ms. Kopechne's ghost can finally rest. It took 40 years, but justice has finally been served. Good riddance to Senator Ted Kennedy as well. He was a trainwreck of a man, a drunken, womanizing joke and lived too long of a life on his brothers' coattails.

Equal Time: Bluey's World Detractors

Old Trails Finishes Out Of Top Three

Our softball team finished our weekend tournament with a pair of wins and a pair of losses and missed placing in the top three.

All of the games were decided by one run. Our bats just proved to be too inconsistent to secure a top three finish. (6/12)

Next up, coed softball in a few weeks!

"Last Night On Earth: Billy's Redemption"

Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Cast

The Heroes

Jeffy as Amanda the prom queen, Sheriff Anderson

Tammy as Detective Rachelle Winters

Francois as Billy, the Sheriff's son

Poppinfresh as Father Joseph, Johnny the high school quarterback

Tay as Nurse Becky, Jenny the farmer's daughter

Cupcake as Sally, the high school sweetheart

The Undead

Irish as the green zombie horde

Kimee as the brown zombie horde

Bluey as the red zombie horde

The Scenario

Our six heroes show up outside of town on a pickup truck. They are charged with the task of searching the town for two biocannisters of virus cure and returning them to the truck with at least one hero. They have 17 hours (turns) to complete the mission.

The Game

The game began very ominously in a heavy rain storm (courtesy of the zombies) which initially slowed down the heroes' movements for several turns. All three zombie hordes spawned near the maximum amount of undead (6 red, 5 green, 6 brown), putting 17 undead on the board right from the start. It looked rather grim. As the zombies started their slow convergence on the heroes, Billy, Father Joe and Amanda shot out of the gate quickly and approached the center of town first.

As Father Joe searched for items a few yards away, Billy and Amanda dropped to the soaked muddy thoroughfare and went at it like wild feral cats (courtesy of the zombies playing the infamous "last night on earth card"), and forfeited a turn. With the zombies still not in striking distance, the tryst did not cost the heroes much and apparently inspired the normally weak playing Billy to new heights. Amanda, on the other hand, devastated by sleeping with such a "loser", went on a personal rampage with a hangun to the tune of 7 dead zombies on 9 successive turns. It was as if her personal soundtrack should have been "Every zombie run, the prom queen has got a gun!".

Nurse Becky and Detective Rachelle stayed fairly close to the truck and successfully fought off the first wave of zombies while protecting the escape path. Rachelle, a female minority, however, enhanced stereotypical ideas that quota hiring systems are not a good thing by not being able to hit the broad side of a barn with her service pistol and eventually, it ran out of ammo. However, the pair managed to stay alive fighting in the cornfields, partially hidden from the zombie horde. Nurse Becky was able to locate the first cannister quickly and fought off several wounds to return it to the truck. Thankfully, at this point, the heavy rain ceased.

As Amanda went on her killing spree, Billy was thwarted from searching an area by zombies and realized that he had left something (his condoms, according to Irish's narrative) at the high school, and had to make a mad dash to retrieve them.

Sally, the high school sweetheart decided to proceed deep into the town alone to check out the abandoned airport hanger. Upon entering it, she found an empty cannister and immediately the hanger was taken over by 3 spawning zombies with another blocking the only door.

Upon reaching the high school, Billy found the second cannister right beside his condoms. The trip to the school actually was a stroke of dumb luck. Immediately 4 zombies decended upon Billy inside the school.

Then the tide started turning the zombies' way. Nurse Becky finally succumbed to the brown zombie horde. Father Joe tried to clear a path for Billy outside the high school with a flare gun but took a wound from a red infected zombie. In an effort to cure his own wound, Fr. Joe took another wound which immediately transformed him into a Zombie Hero, controlled by the red zombie hoard. Nurse Becky, then fell to the zombie hoard. Lastly, the gun crazed and possibly pregnant prom queen, Amanda, finally fired an errant shot and was also swallowed in the wave of zombies creating Zombie Heroes, Becky and Amanda, carrying possibly a zombie child.

The Heroes were one lost hero away from losing. Billy was surrounded in the school by four zombies, Sally was surrounded in the hangar by her own four zombies and new heros Jenny, Johnny and Sheriff Anderson were just spawning and were no where near to help. Johnny had a 5 in 6 chance to kill Zombie Hero Father Joe with a flare gun and it clicked empty in his hand (with a roll of a 1).

Sally and Billy miraculously fought their zombies off and started their mad dash through town back to the truck. Billy met up with Johnny in the bank and formulated a plan to run an end around past the zombies. Jenny joined Detective Rachelle in her home turf, the cornfield, and helped clear a path for Johnny and Billy. Sally got stuck fighting Zombie Hero Becky.

As Billy tried to dash out the front door of the bank, the zombies locked the door, but Johnny pulled found keys out of his ass which allowed the pair to escape the building. The heroes were running for the truck as the zombie horde chased them through town. But, a bottleneck at the junkyard entrance finally deterred the heroes from making a clean escape. Billy took multiple wounds that he was able to heal twice before dying. Sally was able to continue to fight off Zombie Becky. Jenny was an absolute force in the cornfield fighting alongside Rachelle and was able to heal Billy a moment before he was about to take a deadly wound. Zombie Amanda had an impossible time finding them in the cornfields.

With 5 hours left in the game and many of the heroes one wound away from death, Billy made a very courageous decision. Sensing an imminent hero death, he raced into the cornfield into the zombies and Hero Zombie Amanda and handed off the cannister to Rachelle. Rachelle, then, made a mad dash to the truck and left with the two cannisters, leaving the surviving heroes, to die in the town of Woodinvale...

No zombies were harmed in the making of this film.

All in all, a very enjoyable night! The game took four hours to play with 9 people and was absolutely riveting. This game did not disappoint. The game momentum kept going back and forth all game and a handful of individual decisions absolutely made the difference in the outcome of this game. Thank you to all that attended and made the evening an absolute blast!

Please feel free to add your comments, memories and favorite moments from the game.

Thank Jesus! ObamaCare Seems Dead!

Anybody who believes a public government run healthcare option is a win for all Americans is either horribly misinformed, retarded, too busy gulping the Obama kool-aid or some combination of the three.

The government public option would eventually become THE only option once the government used it's massive power to achieve price control. Once that happened, the private option would become relegated to a pay for service, black market healthcare, where only the very rich would get the best doctors and procedures. This doesn't take a genius to figure out.

This government healthcare scare has already chased some doctors into offering separate fee for service plans and out of mainstream healthcare for good.

The government run option didn't even cover tort reform. If you are wondering why this is, it's because you can continue to sue private healthcare while you can't sue the government. This becomes even more of an arm twist to get everyone in the public fold.

All I have to say is thank God that enough Americans woke up to realize that we were on the precipice of throwing away the BEST healthcare system in the world. We work our whole lives to make sure of our financial security (where paying into government social security is about to yield us nothing as it fails), why would we also place our health security in that same basket? Haven't we watched government run every social and public program into the ground or into bankruptcy? Our public healthcare would have become the VA.

Isn't it much better to be a customer with choices of healthcare options with insurance companies vying hard for your business? Competition breeds performance. The government would have turned healthcare into every other institution it runs. A huge bureaucracy with out of control costs, where one has limited choices and no recourse in navigating through the system. I would offer that the uninsured get better treatment now, showing up at an ER than they would with the government run public system.

Do we work our whole lives to be lumped in with folks unwilling to provide for themselves?

Maybe it's time to take the "Death Panel" and turn it into a "Welfare Panel". Once you are collecting government welfare for 10 years (the time period is negotiable), then "end of life" discussions can begin. It's about time we "culled" the deadbeats in our society who are costing us a fortune.

Socialized healthcare is one of the greatest trades of liberty for security that I can imagine. Very, very short-sighted and very, very stupid indeed.

But, be careful. In this era of government takeover of banks, auto and insurance companies, who's to say that they won't takeover the first failing health insurer and then convert it into the public sector healthcare option. This government is smart, crafty and has patent disregard for what the majority wants in this country. In other words, keep very careful watch over what they do, and ignore what they say!

Bluey-Tay 1st Anniversary

I've officially added the first link on the "ball and chain"!

Tay and I are away this weekend at Cheat Lake in West Virginia at the Lakeview Golf and Spa resort. We've had a day sitting poolside, getting pedicures and finished up with Tay caddying for me during 10 holes of golf!

She is the best!

The Giles Open at Penn National

Beukey and I at the Giles Open this past weekend!

The Giles Open began when I was a freshman at Saint Francis University in 1985. After all these years, I was contacted and told that this tournament had continued for the past 24 years! Of course, when we heard that, Beukey and I said "road trip"! The weekend did not disappoint as it was great to reconnect with old friends.

I shot a practice round 98 on the Founders course at Penn National on Friday, and a 94 on the Iron Forge course for the Giles Open for a middle of the pack finish on Saturday.

Our team tied for Saturday's scramble championship with a -5.

Finished Sunday with a 95 Stableford scramble for another middle of the pack finish.

Landscaping 2009: Day 2

Day 2 of clearing brought more excitement over the possibilities of our new "found" space! The clearing is just about done and now comes the hard part. Clearing the roots, debris, trunks and all of the wood cutting. After most of the debris is gone, Tay's Dad will till the soil and then we will stake out a plot for our future garden and seed the rest with grass. I'll update again when significant changes are made.

Landscaping 2009

Here are several Day 1 pictures of our recent landscaping project. Tay's uncle provided the bulldozer and his personal services to help open up about half an acre or so of underbrush and sickly trees. Tay and I want to create a garden, a small fruit orchard and a patio area that now faces a new western facing open area that will allow for some stunning sunsets.

Old Trails Drops A Heartbreaker

After opening with a 10-run first frame, the Old Trails bats went cold in a nine inning doubleheader against first place Bellefiore. Bellefiore answered with their own 10-run seventh inning and went on to win 18-12. (2/4)

A few weeks shy of the playoffs, we'll probably see them again real soon.