The other day I took my kid to a baseball game. It was the Big Ten tournament, with the University of Michigan spanking the University of Illinois. Michigan went on to spank Purdue as well - twice - winning it all and moving on to the NCAA regionals. It was a great weekend... warm weather, but not too hot, sunshine, a breeze blowing out to left field, and even a couple evening games under the lights. It was a perfect start to a Memorial Day weekend.

Being a decent, patriotic American dad, I gave my kid a few bucks to go get some Cracker Jacks and a Coke. He came back to his seat, and shared some of the Cracker Jacks with me (I raised him right). This was a true American experience: a man and his son eating Cracker Jacks at a baseball game. It was right out of a Norman Rockwell print. Well, almost... the Cracker Jacks were in a bag, rather than the traditional cardboard box I expected, but I guess I can let that go.

As my son worked his way toward the bottom of the box, he started looking for the prize. After all, it says, "SUPRISE INSIDE!" right there on the box.. uh, the bag, I mean.  Would it be a temporary tattoo?  A pencil topper?  A shape-shifter?  A little joke book?  No, it was..... nothing. THERE WAS NO SURPRISE IN MY KID'S CRACKER JACK!  Just think of it: A man, a boy, a baseball game, Crack Jacks, and NO PRIZE. It's just not right.

My kid looked at me and started to cry. OK, I just made that part up. But he did stand up, and announce to the other people around us, "There's no prize in my Cracker Jack!"  A few of the other fans added some comments of their own. I think it was something like, "Sit down!".

My son wasn't finished yet, though.  A few minutes later, along comes the seventh inning stretch. Everybody stands up as the organ (rather, the CD player) leads us into Take Me Out To The Ball Game. After we sang the line, "Buy me some peanuts and Crack Jacks," my son yells out, "WITH NO PRIZE!"

I really hope he's not damaged for life, and I'm doing everything I can to make sure he pulls through this traumatic event. Perhaps taking him to see Field of Dreams yesterday on the big screen at the Michigan Theater will help. I hope he still goes to Little League practice when it starts up next week. Oh, wait, he has to go - I'm the coach.

Over at our house, we're certainly not noticing the effects of strike by the writers in Hollywood. Our favorite reality show, The Tom Brady Show, is still on. It's a fresh show every week, and it keeps getting better!

This coming Saturday night the undefeated New England Patriots will beat the New York Giants to wrap up their perfect regular season at 16-0 (not at all surprising, as they have a Michigan Wolverine at QB). The next three episodes after that will see them beating three other teams, beginning with either the Steelers or the Jaguars, then probably a re-spanking of the Colts (at which point they will achieve the greatest undefeated record ever, taking that claim from the 17-0 Dolphins of 1972), and ending with a defeat of probably the Packers in the Super Bowl.

Thanks to the wonders of Google, I have recently discovered that the world's other Duane Collicott, a guy up in New Brunswick, Canada, is Packer fan. I'm disappointed at that. It seems like a guy with such a quality name would make better choices. Perhaps he's the dark side.

It's time for Michigan to take back the land that Ohio stole from us back in 1837! It's not for the natural harbor, which was a nice thing to have back then, and it's not for the limestone quarries (our iron and copper mines say "meh" to that). Frankly, it's because they are obviously not fit stewards of this real estate and it's contents, as we can see by the outcome of the yesterday's elections.

There is a very fine children's hands-on science museum in Toledo, on the land that should have been part of Michigan, called COSI Toledo. Recently, they asked Lucas County citizens, a second time, for a small millage to keep the museum going, and, for the second time, they were denied. There are tons of us up here in Michigan who visit this museum several times every year (I even have my giant LEGO bridge on display down there), but since we couldn't vote in this election, all we could do is just sit on the sidelines watching the election results, hoping in vain that Lucas County citizens would come to their senses. Michigan citizens, of course, never would have let this happen, even though we're in the midst of new tax increases ourselves (we didn't get to vote on those... YET).

So, thanks to a 51% majority, my kids will no longer get to enjoy the Boy-yo, the roller coaster simulator, and the high-wire bicycle. Thanks for killing our fun, you tight-wad, anti-education, anti-fun sticks-in-the-mud!

Rally the troops! Grab your shovels! We'll meet down there tonight to dig up all the border signs and move them south!

(Note to any Buckeye fans living in this tract of land: you'll need to move further south after we annex this land, as you're not eligible for Michigan citizenship)

Everyone in Michigan has their own definition of what "Up north" means. For me, earlier in life it was the Indian River area, but these days it's the Leelenau Peninsula, and Northport in particular. but whatever "up north" is for each of us, one thing in common is that it always seems to provide great opportunities for photography.

This past weekend was no exception for me. After working on getting the boat ready for winter, I grabbed my camera and headed for Peterson Park, a small township park on a bluff on Lake Michigan, just northwest of Northport.  I took the opportunity to experiment with a time-lapse movie of the sunset.  The sunset fizzled toward the end, but it still worked out to be a pretty good movie. If you click on the picture, you'll see the movie. I'm sorry it's just a lowly WMV (thanks for nothin', Windows Movie Maker); I hope to convert it to an MPEG soon. For the curious, it's is a collection of images taken every thirty seconds. It was pretty cold, with that wind coming off the lake, but it wasn't too bad, as I had my little radio with me telling me all about the annual Sparty-Spanking as it happened.

I took off up north last weekend to go winterize my in-law's motorboat, and to have a weekend off on my own for a change. This is why I haven't been updating my blog; I've been writing the posts, as I planned for every day November, I just haven't been posting them, as it would have publicly revealed that I was out of the house for the weekend and my wife and kids were there by themselves. Anyhow, on the way up north I was reminded of one of the reasons I don't hunt.

It's not what you might assume, for a person from Ann Arbor. I have no problem with hunting; I understand why it's needed. There are two reasons I don't hunt, though. The first reason is that I'm not tough enough to do anything with the animal once I get it. Heck, I barely have what it takes to take the hook out of a fish's mouth. The second reason is represented by this sign I saw along the highway. On opening day, coming up later in November, there will be about one million people out in the dark woods waiting for the sun to come up so they can start shooting. That in itself isn't a problem. The problem has to do with how many of them have been drinking. I'm guessing it's somewhere around 50%.

I like guns, but I'm not too fond of drunks with guns. For me, I just think it's a good time to spend the next couple weeks in the city.

One day after my previous post about the local McDonalds restaurant having problem setting their flags properly while flying the American flag at half-staff (here), I see they have fixed one of the two flags, that of the state of Michigan. However, the result is now their corporate flag flies above both the American flag and our state flag.  This is interesting, as it pretty much signifies how many people feel our country is operating these days: corporate interests trump the interests of the people.

The McDonalds restaurant on my way to work (2310 West Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI) has a chronic problem with their flags when it comes time to lower the American Flag to half-mast. It is nice that they took the time to lower the American flag. However, as seen in this picture, they're not bothering to set the Michigan and McDonalds flag lower than the American flag, as specified by The Flag Code: "No other flag or pennant should be placed above ... the flag of the United States of America."  I've brought this to their attention a couple times in the past, and in the rare case I actually get a response, it's just a shrug of the shoulders.

Here's the picture from this morning:

That's not sarcasm - I really do love the weather here. I'd even like to live further north (Say Ya to da UP, eh!), but the eternally cold person in my family would never stand for it.

It's interesting what we see in the weather around here. In December, before heading up north to the old homestead to go Christmas tree hunting, I visited my favorite weather Web site (Weather Underground, wunderground.com), to check the forecast for that area. What I saw were two weather bulletins: the first was a notice listing the record high temperatures from the previous day, and the second was a warning about blizzard conditions, dangerous wind chill temperatures, and a traveler's advisory for the coming evening.

Then, today, the day after I was outdoors in a t-shirt, I receive in my email a warning about snow, sleet and the first spring thunderstorms, all in the same bulletin!

LOCAL SEVERE WEATHER OUTLOOK
WASHTENAW COUNTY EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER
1045 AM EDT WED MAR 14 2007

A SURFACE COLD FRONT DRAPED ACROSS CENTRAL LOWER MICHIGAN WILL MOVE SLOWLY ACROSS THE REMAINDER OF THE STATE TODAY AND COULD COMBINE WITH SOME WIND SHEAR, A PLUME OF MOISTURE, AND PERHAPS JUST ENOUGH SURFACE HEATING TO GENERATE A FEW STORMS UNTIL THE FRONT MOVES INTO OHIO.  BEHIND THE FRONT, TEMPERATURES WILL FALL DRAMATICALLY AND PUT THE CHANCE OF SNOW AND SLEET BACK IN OUR FORECAST.

SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS ARE POSSIBLE THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING WITH 40 MPH WINDS, ONE HALF INCH HAIL AND HEAVY RAINFALL AS THEY MOVE TO THE EAST AT 25 MPH.  SEVERE STORMS ARE NOT EXPECTED AT THIS TIME, AND SKYWARN SPOTTER ACTIVATION IS NOT ANTICIPATED.

This is how a "Block M" should really be built - WITH BLOCKS!  The LEGO builders in this household are very clear about their favorite for Big 10 and National Champion...

GO BLUE!!!

(click on the picture to see a bigger one!)

And in fairness to the other side, here's a very clever creation by a Buckeye fan (who lives in Michigan... that must create a serious identity crisis!)...

The Great Lakes Modeling Association has posted an article about my LEGO model of the STEWART J CORT, which was the first 1000-foot ship to sail the Great Lakes. I recently went to show it at a Great Lakes modelers show, and while I was there I was amazed at the real models I saw there. Those guys have an amazing level of detail that I could never accomplish with the LEGO medium, like ship-board workers, little tiny capstans, and complex 3D curves. However, I do have one advantage over them: when my model experiences damage during transit, I can just press it back together!

You can see the article, and more pictures, here:
http://www.greatlakesmodeling.com/museum/dc_stewart_j_cort.htm.