IF we were charting we would look like this:


For those of you not familiar with NFP that means that NUMBER FOUR is on the way!!!

Pretty bad too ... I had 9 in a row and buried it through the nose on the last shot to leave the Big 4. Then I whiffed on the whole thing. Oh well. A most disappointing way to bowl a 258. Any other way I would be happy with that score ... just not that way. The way I see it Michael Jordan missed game winning shots so I am allowed a collosal failure here and there. :) Last time I had pressure on (bowling my first 700) I delivered BIG TIME.

I ended the league with a 202 average. I am pleased about that. Still, chunking that 300 is a big disappointment.

I have not had much time to practice so sadly I am figuring things out during league that I would figure out in practice if I was doing it regularly. I just dont have the time. For 15 years I have mainly shot the arrows. It makes life easy. Tonight I started with a 192 and a 195 because I couldn't get the line I was throwing to carry. I decided to make a minor adjustment and throw 2 boards to the right of where I normally throw. I have done this sparingly in the past. The goal was to get into the dry outside to get a little more angle coming into the pocket. Good move.

I seriously had a shot. I got outside a little too much on that last shot. One stinking board. That is why they say bowling is a game of inches. Next time, I need to take advantage ... and as well as I have bowled the last several weeks I am convinced that I am improving and there will be a next time.

my blog is near the top on a Yahoo web search for the terms: excuses to avoid the in-laws

Posting from London BTW ... I have had an interesting trip so far. I wish work was less interesting. I will feel better when the details are worked out. I finally understand what is meant by the phrase "the devil is in the details". All of the major hurdles seem cleared. Its these little nuisances that seem to be interrupting things.

Hopefully I will post later. I ran into an article that is worth sharing.

Actually, I may end up posting more provided I can get a decent connection to the Internet at night. For a few days though, I am out.

On a personal note -- tonight I bowled my first sanctioned 700 series. As noted in the title it was a 726.

The bad news -- It was week one ... I set a 242 average. I have never averaged 200 before over a whole league for any period even in a short summer league. In fact, I have only bowled five or so sanctioned 600 series in my life.

The nine strikes in a row straddling games 2 (3 in the 10th) and 3 (6 in a row) are also a record for me in league. I had a string of 6 in a row in all three games.

Anyway ... I am thrilled. WOO HOO!!!

I had to pick a Top 5 for stories of the year ... at least as far as I was concerned.

5. Post-tsunami cleanup
4. Everything Iraq
3. Terri Schiavo
2. Death of JPII, Naming of Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI
1. Katrina and Rita

On Katrina and Rita ... in terms of major news stories I don't think any have had the impact on my life personally that these two had. Things are still far from normal but as time progresses the New New Orleans will take shape.

I also decided to do a quick timeline of this past year for us on the home front

Jan 19 - decided to sell old home, contracted to buy new home
Mar 30 - moved out of our old home, move into apartment .. deal falls through on selling old home which subsequently causes the new home deal to fall through
Jul 6 - Signed a contract on a second new house - "We are buying a new house"
Jul 26th - closed on old home
Nov 30 - closed on new home [see link above]

I have decided that it does little good for me to look back and complain about the many ills those events caused us. From our narrow perspective the first deal looked ideal: New neighborhood, larger homes, friends in the neighborhood AND it was within walking distance of a Regnum Christi school. At the time it seemed as if the hand of God was walking us into the perfect situation for raising our kids. Didn't happen. The second deal looked far less ideal: Far away from homeschooling parents, no Catholic school in the vicinity ... smaller than the first new house we intended to buy, but certainly nicer. It was close to work and at least we knew that if life forced us to use the public schools they were ranked "second in the state" ... whatever that means. It is what happened. So God has us here, in Livingston parish. We are starting to see the advantages. We are getting a vague idea of what God may have had in store for us and 10 minutes drive time to work regardless of traffic snarls elsewhere in town is NICE. It is time to really set up our domestic church. That is our plan right now. Focus on Christ and pray that the rest of this mess keeps falling into place.

OK, I said I was going to avoid posting on hurricanes but I have to post a family update:

My in-laws got back to Beaumont and are leaving again. They said it is a ghost town and that many of the trees have been defoliated. They have no idea how long they will be gone from their homes. Prayers appreciated.

Also, review these two pictures to get an idea of how bad Hurricane Rita damage was at ground zero.

Holly Beach before


Holly Beach after


So don't let anyone tell you that Rita was a nothin' storm. Just because it wasn't Katrina doesn't mean it wasn't an incredibly bad storm.

Bowled tonight ... no-tap again ... 255, 200, 257 for a 712.

I am stressing out about our home selling. I request prayer.

I am noticing that my time to blog is being eaten up by this home buying and home selling process, not to mention unexpected car repairs. I need something in life to tone down. Please?

Also, pray that Hurricane Dennis hits a freak cold front or something that totally knocks it out ... we don't need the storm and Lord knows the rest of the gulf coast can do without it.

First we decided on a smaller house but the monthly difference was not really that much so we sprung for this one which gives us several advantages. As we have learned any of the scores of contigencies can actually happen so we may not end up in this house, but we hope so.

Clearly this might explain why blogging has been light.

We close on our old house on July 26th. Lots to get done so I expect blogging to be light this month ... then I will breathe a huge sigh of relief knowing that this plan is less likely to be interrupted.

Bowled a 681 NT last night (256, 228, 197) ... I left the Greek Church** in the last game in the 8th spoiling any chance I had at a 700. The middle game was scatch except for the last shot. It would have been a 227.

We also went winless last night making up for the total thrashing we delivered the week before. Oh well, our visit in first place lasted all of a week.

** Greek Church: Split leave when three pins remain standing on one side of the lane and two on the other (the pins resemble church steeples) - from Bowling Glossary - Bowling Terms

We are about to start looking to buy a home. Our currnet home is currently under contract. Our last deal fell through so we are hoping this one works out a little better. They already seem much easier to deal with.

Back to buying a home ... We would prefer to have 4 bedrooms but house prices in the 4 bedroom range are totally outrageous right now.

Basically

1. DINKS can afford expensive homes and that is the primary market
2. ARM and interest only loans are big right now so people who want to buy above their means can. This helps people keep the property values high.... For a while...
3. No major builders dare step foot in Louisiana because of the good ole boy network so there are no builders taking advantage of economies of scale.
4. Almost all builders around here are "luxury builders" (see #1) ... i.e. you can't find a new home without marble countertops, triple crown molding and a large shallow ditch dug behind it to qualify it for the "waterfront property" price increase. Also, MOST of these so called luxury homes have yards. They are packed together like sardines and filled with gardens so you get all the maintenance headache of a garden with none of the advantages of having a real yard ... for kids that is.

Sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock when 4 kids was a more common family size. I could rant and rave about why large families have it difficult in this market but what is the point. This is reality. I have to deal with it. What concerns me even more is the numbers of ads I see encouraging loans that are quite simply a short term ticket to living in luxury. It gets the house built and the profits distributed. Then it sends people on a straight path to bankruptcy. If that doesn't happen, surely they will at LEAST lose the home. That is no way to live.

You know it is bad when you hear counter-ads on the radio about fair lending. Many folks are sold homes they cannot afford. Period.

Anyway, back to our decision ... Our choices seem to be

1. buy a ridiculously large house in ugly-ville that we will never be able to sell again. I have a feeling this market is set up for a crash in the near future because of #2 above. Houses in this category are going to lose even more value than they have now.

Dave Ramsey suggests #1 - I have thought about this and have come to the conclusion that it makes a lot of sense provided you are planning on pouring a lot of cash into it to make it NOT ugly. If part of the home is to incorporate your faith into it, BEAUTY is of great concern to me. I need a place that is conducive to contemplation. If I am daily having to tell myself "well, we really did get a lot of bang for the buck" just in order to make it tolerable to live, then I have lost something in favor of a savvy financial decision. Ugly is a lie. I prefer to spend my days seeking and appreciating Truth.

2. buy a spec home in a flood plain that we will never be able to sell, once it floods the first time ... my parents live in a flood plain. I don't have the stomach for remodeling every 3 years, primarily because taxpayers foot the bill and I hate living in a hotel.

We already rejected #2 - Quite simply, we were going to get fast and tolerable construction on land that might flood with homes that likely wouldn't flood. New homes. A LOT of house. Good location, save my horrible drive to work. Still, for financial considerations, I know what the dreaded 100 year flood tag can do to a property value. It was a risk, bad timing on our part and we simply couldn't buy the house.

3. Buy a marginally larger house with a decent sized back yard and with a floor plan that is conducive to expansion.

Looking like our plan - We even found a waterfront home that is in our price range with a decent sized lot AND that is within 5 minutes of my office, which is outside of Baton Rouge. We found another a little outside of where I want to be with 2 acres of land, a swimming pool AND almost as large as some of the ugly-ville homes we were considering in nicer parts of the city.

4. Build

Long term goal, but likely not now .... (never say never eh?)

Anyway, this was a long roundabout way to say ... pray for us.

That is:
$1.97
$2.18
$2.49

for a 664 giving me a 221.33 average for the night and dropping my average to nice even 226. The competition is two guys on the same team who are carrying 235 and 240 averages respectively. I come in at #3. One of the guys on my team says they carry about 190 averages in regular league. That is where I WANT to be right now as my book average was about 192 when I stopped bowling 5 years ago. I know one of them bowled a 260-something tonight so I have my work cut out for me if I plan to catch them.

What is killing me is being square at the line on my spare shots and consistent speed (which was fine in practice this past week). My release is improved although I tinker with it when I realize that I have made a mistake elsewhere. I am hitting the pocket really hard right now. Strikes are NOT a problem. My first two games were 1 shot each from being scratch with a legit 4-bagger in game 1 (and two splits). I relied heavily on the 9-pin strikes in the 3rd game.

Did you know you could do math with Google? ((228.333333 * 6) + 664) / 9 = 226
You can do conversions too: 25000 sq ft to acres

In our league you get two points for a win and 1 point for total. It is 3-man teams. We beat our opponents by an average of 100 pins per game. We were just on as a team. 7-0 this week. We were in 3rd before this week. I am hoping we could make a move on the top two teams with that finish.

My wife and I made FIVE GLORIOUS YEARS on Friday June 17th, 2005. I never would have thought that I would be blessed with the wonderful marriage that I am in. My wife is perfect for met. She is nothing that I expected and EVERYTHING that I wanted and needed. God is truly wonderful. I always dreamed of being married as a child but the assumptions I made about what a "real" marriage would be like included minor to moderate levels of chaos and a distinct level of eggshell walking that "everyone knows" is just part of it. Prior to getting married I think 3 out of every 4 married couples told us how awful marriage was. The only ones who didn't were the older couples working on their 30th, 40th or 50th years of marriages. They had it right. Marriage takes hard work and it ONLY works if you work at it. If YOU sacrifice to make it work well, it will. I know that now. If anything my expectations were WAY too low about what marriage would be. I feel like we were married yesterday ...

Add three beautiful and active children to the mix and you have the blurr that is my life the past five years. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Personal notes

Work: I managed to get out of a fix at work. Work goes like this.

Task 1. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 2. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 3. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Not enough time to do it even if I worked 24 hours a day ... this is typical in corporate America

One of those tasks got pushed back until Friday but it ideally needed to be done two or three days earlier in order to meet a tight deadline and the glacial pace of getting work done in a massive corporate environment. I am used to small company life. We get things done when they need to be done. In mega-corp world, there is documentation that has to be in order, processes that have to be followed to the letter, scores of contacts that must be made to coordinate masses of folks being in the same place at the same time to open access to this resource or that ... all just to do one 15 minute task. Anyway, we were debugging a database that is used in Holland. I do not have direct access to it. It has to be fixed by Sunday night (Monday morning in Holland). My only quick access to the database is via calling someone who types in commands with me dictating on the phone. She gives me feedback either verbally or via email. Information is difficult to analyze that way. That is a hassle of a way to support something but it is what we have to work with for now. Fortunately we "accidentally received" a recent export of the problem database and I managed to get a look at it this morning and discover the problem in no time. Normally a request like that takes days so I didn't even bother. We didn't even request it but it sure came in handy. It just showed up with some other export information that we asked for eons ago. Last night when I went to sleep I was wondering what kind of hate mail I was going to be getting from a DBA that was going to get pulled away from his family to load an complete export of a database I know worked. I wouldn't be doing all the hard work. The DBA would ... Fortunately, because I had this miracle data, I was able to send out a quick fix to the problem without inconveniencing too many folks. There was much rejoicing.

House:

Still isn't sold. We are still living in an apartment. Too much typing to explain how that happened. I love having access to a pool. It will be on my list of things to look for in a new house ... provided paying rent and a house note doesn't kill us financially first. Prayers welcome in this area. St. Joseph, pray for us!!!

Reading:

It is taking me forever to read anything these days.

Still, I am forever working on Salvation Is from the Jews by Roy Schoeman
Just bought and started a book with a most controversial title: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Dr. Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The book seems to be a well researched counter to the idea that the Catholic Church HINDERED progress of all sorts throughout the centuries. In fact, it argues quite the opposite. It also spends time tearing down some of the clear prejudices about the Church that exist in the minds of most Americans raised on mild a diet of latent anti-Catholic bias. The most obvious example that I can think of is the rampant belief that millions were killed at the hands of the Catholic Church during the Inquisition. Reality is far from it and recent scholarship has pretty much vindiacted the Catholic Church from the gaudy claims of the Black Legend. I look forward to reading it.

Bowling:

I am bowling in a no-tap league, which for the non-bowlers stopping by means that if I get nine pins on the first shot, it counts as a strike. That’s it. If I get nine in two shots, it is still nine. I had to get a ball drilled and so with virtually no research and an undisclosed amount of cash I settled on the now discontinued Ebonite V2 Clean.



For the fashion conscious it violates all social norms: purple/blue ball, green finger inserts, white thumb insert. Then again, we are talking about bowling. One gaze down a few lanes of bowler’s shoes and butterfly collars will give one the distinct hint that fashion is not a high priority. I'm with it ...

My average after 6 games is 228.3. I have the highest average in the league but I am thinking that I wouldn't have higher than a 180 average without the no-tap advantage. I am also expecting reality to set in sooner or later. I am struggling with spares but I am not shooting at very many. The good news is that a high percentage of my strikes are legitimate and not of the 9-pin variety. For having not bowled seriously in five years, I must admit being pleased as punch that I haven't forgotten how to bowl. I did not expect to come out of the gate shooting 180's in practice and averaging near 230 in a no-tap league. Like I said, reality will overwhelm me at some point and I will have to work back up to the 190 average I used to carry with much patience.

Weather:

There was ANOTHER tornado down here on Friday. It was sighted at I-10 and 74 which is south of Baton Rouge in Prairieville. There were no injuries but it was blamed for an accident that happened on the Interstate at the time it crossed the road. My keen web search skills turned up ZERO fancy pictures of the twister.

Speaking of skills



Fathers Day is tomorrow ... woo hoo!!!

We had some excitement here yesterday

459
WFUS54 KLIX 092339
TORLIX
LAC033-047-100015-
/O.NEW.KLIX.TO.W.0062.050609T2337Z-050610T0015Z/

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
637 PM CDT THU JUN 9 2005

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN NEW ORLEANS HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH IN SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA
THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF...BATON ROUGE
IBERVILLE PARISH IN SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA

* UNTIL 715 PM CDT

* AT 634 PM CDT...LAW ENFORCEMENT SPOTTED A TORNADO 11 MILES SOUTH
OF BATON ROUGE...OR ABOUT 7 MILES WEST OF GONZALES...MOVING
NORTH AT 15 MPH.

IF YOU ARE CAUGHT OUTSIDE...SEEK SHELTER IN A NEARBY REINFORCED
BUILDING. AS A LAST RESORT...SEEK SHELTER IN A CULVERT...DITCH OR LOW
SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

IF IN MOBILE HOMES OR VEHICLES...EVACUATE THEM AND GET INSIDE A
SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. IF NO SHELTER IS AVAILABLE...LIE FLAT IN THE
NEAREST DITCH OR OTHER LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

LAT...LON 3029 9121 3028 9105 3039 9099 3048 9100
3050 9117



Click on image for a larger version

My sister lives in St. Gabriel and she could not get back to her home because of downed power lines until after midnight. My neice was home by herself and it scared her out of her wits but she is fine as is the rest of the family. Priase be to God!!! This morning my sister emailed me and said that a home was moved 8 feet and destroyed. My guess is, without seeing the damage, that it will come in around F1 to F2 damage. (revised based on media accounts of damage) ... We should pray for the victims of storms yesterday as I know there was a number of tornadoes in Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin yesterday. Not to mention hail and high wind damage.

With a tropical storm headed our direction we may not be out of the woods yet. The storm season is officially in full swing here.

Sun
Drive to Beaumont
Life Teen mass at St. Anne in Beaumont -- see my musings on the topic of Life Teen

Mon
Mall ... always a fun place for the kids on a dreary day
What about Bob? is still a very funny movie

Tue
Drive to Galveston
visit St. Marys Cathedral - visit the tour page
eat at Rainforest Cafe ... comfort children every 12 minutes when the thunderstorm comes
visit beach .. comfort children every 12 seconds when the waves come
Drive to Brenham
notice number of doughnut shops in west Houston ... comfort children every 12 miles when the traffic comes
take bite of worst doughnuts ever after passing unusual number of doughnut shops and settling for gas station doughnuts ... kids thought they were great

Wed
visit St. Marys in Brenham - WAY impressed with their web site BTW
visit althletic complex / park on outskirts of Brenham
visit Blue Bell / tour ... listen to oldest son charm the pants off the adults on the tour
notice two doughnut shops in town of 15,000 ... rest in room
get the usual stares while eating dinner at Casa Ole in Brenham
miss out on great outdoor adventure and fun at the Blue Bell outdoor aquatic complex ... because it opens next month
hot tub at hotel

Thu
visit Poor Clare nuns or rather, visit their sign indicating they open in 2 hours .... stare at miniature horses through fence
drive through Chappell Hill, Texas
listen to youngest son rant on about windmills
get doughnuts that are actually worth eating

Sensing boom in Texas doughnut industry. Becoming convinced that Texas is seriously rebelling since the lo-carb craze has fizzled

Fri (plan)
Our Lady of Sorrows in China Texas
Astros baseball

They had a thread on DCF about wanting to see where folks lived. I thought it was a good idea so I participated and I thus give you a quick tour of Baton Rouge.

Mark Twain called this the ugliest building on the Mississippi. It is the Old State Capitol.


The tallest state capitol in the US (still I think) ... Huey Long met his end here.


The Stockade Inn off Highland road


Bluebonnet Swamp


But this is what we mostly see ... (my son standing in what we set our clocks by around here ... afternoon thunderstorms)


So there ... a quick tour around my hometown.