Goin' South

Greetings from sunny Orlando, Florida. I am down here for a week to visit my nieces. I'd say I was also visiting my brother and sister-in-law, but let's be honest here and acknowledge up front that they are not the actual reason for the trip. My nieces are about 3 1/2 months old at this point, and they already show different personalities and preferences. I got to see them for the first time in person at Easter, when they were in St. Louis, but I only got a few hours with them at that time. Now I get a whole week. Rumor is that I will be put to work doing various things while I am down here, like helping to move furniture around the house, but that just goes with the territory.

Clean Up Time

Today is the first day of my two-week vacation. Many people plan far in advance all of the cool things that they will do on their vacation. I, however, spent most of the day organizing and cleaning in my house, to get ready for the carpet cleaning crew coming in tomorrow. I figured this was a good excuse to do some cleaning up and sorting of things, which did not happen much during my three month stint in Detroit. I'm not totally done, but I got through a lot of it. Tomorrow I am going to go through my clothes and select stuff to give away, as my church is having its twice annual "community closet" this coming Saturday, and that is a good way to get rid of stuff I no longer need but is still perfectly usable. Once that is done with, I should be pretty much done with that. Then I can really just relax for a few days, which should also include some hiking in local parks, something that I don't do enough of.

This Joke Almost Writes Itself

In the "headlines I never expected to see" category: Russian leaders to visit St. Louis to examine government. It's because our city government is such a model of openness and civility, I'll bet.

Ignore This Post

I'm just getting an image up on the web for linking from another site.

Baseball is Here

I don't care if the Yanks and the Sawks played the first game of the season on Sunday, just about everyone else played their first game on Monday. That is also the day of the first Blue Jays season (a major choke job of a game, I must note), so I'm declaring that the first real day of the baseball season. My hometown Cardinals out-slugged the Cincinnati Reds, so people in the Lou are pretty happy today. I mean, Albert Pujols is on track to hit 324 home runs this season, so what's not to smile about? Also of critical importance is the fact that the Cubs started their season with a sixteen run performance! Don't get too excited, this IS the Cubs I'm talking about; they gave up those sixteen runs, they didn't earn those points themselves. Thus, all is right with the world.

Not in Detroit

For the first time in almost three months, Monday morning today did not find me flying to Detroit for work. Instead, I got to simply get in my own car and drive to my own office in downtown St. Louis for work, instead. It was a nice change, I must admit. Not much else to report; I had a nice weekend with the recently expanded family, but I was also sick, so I have a bit of a hazy memory about parts of it.