Up Up and Away

My time finally came around to ride in the open cockpit 1942 Stearman. Many thanks to dad for winning the auction and giving me the opportunity to fly in that plane. It was quite the experience. You also don't get the chance to circle a couple hundred feet over Memorial Stadium 3-4 times either.

True Staplehurst Fashion

The deja vu of the LABL continued itself this year. The last two years: go through the losers bracket, win the first game of the championship, then lose the second one to finish 2^nd. This year: same result. Well, kind of.

In the first game, we scored in the top of the 9^th to win the game 3-2. We rode our pitcher all 9, and had him pitch the first 3 innings of the second game. So there we are, bottom of the 3^rd, 2 outs, bases full, and we're down 2-1. Vernon gets up and hits a triple to the gap to score all 3 on base. Close play at 3^rd, they want him out, umps call him safe.

Then the rain continues to fall. We take the mandatory 20 minute break to see what is going to happen. The umps finally call the game and we pick Wednesday to resume play. Then the guys in charge of the league (yep, a real cracker jack group of leaders they are) tell us that we have to start from scratch on Wednesday. That nothing carries over because we didn't play 3 full innings. Here's where we wanted our guy to get called out sliding into third. So, we call up the league president, talk with him, tell him no postseason games start over anywhere, but it's to no avail. We played 3 innings, and got a nice lead, and they told us nothing counted.

At this point, our coach (well, assistant since Clint was having a great time in the Niabrara ....) pretty much told them to go ____ themselves. That my friends, is what Staplehurst baseball is all about. We forfeited a game that we were winning. It was our 5^th game that week, and the postseason tourney carries on much longer than it should. But, if anyone knows people on our team, that's just how we roll. A second place trophy means nothing now that we've won it 3 straight years. We would've cleaned house on Wednesday (yes Austin, we would've kept on scoring on you), but it's more about the principle. Well, that and us being very tired of playing so much baseball. Those pros playing 162 games is very, very impressive.

Oh yeah, Bryce had a 9-1 put out in the first game. For those basebally savvy people out there, you know you don't see that every day.

Also, when I get a free second, I'll be posting some pics of the plane ride that I got to go on.

Chuck Norris > Google?

I know the Chuck Norris jokes get a little old after you hit refresh about 1000 times, but I stumbled upon something awesome about both Chuck and google.

It all started when Andy sent me an email telling me that when you type in "failure" and do an "I'm feeling lucky" google search, it brings you to the President's main page.

These are interesting things called Google bombs. It all started with "French Military Victories" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

But, let's get back to Chuck. As I saw the email, I started sending him all the old ones that we used to look at, and then looked up some new ones. I love seeing new ones, and the Chuck Norris one was pretty good.

For Mom

Every year growing up, mom always wanted a first day of school picture of Erica and I. Since I've been at college, I really haven't kept that up for mom. So, I figured on my last first day of school ever (unless there's some grad school), I'd take one final pic. So, here you go mom:

Poor Ol' Screech

Everyone knows who Dustin Diamond is. Everyone has seen Saved By the Bell. But why, why would anyone try to steal a playstation from Screech?

For some reason, this story doesn't seem real. Who, I mean who would try to steal anything from Dustin Diamond? Set your sites a little higher people. Maybe try Thiessen or Berkley. At least they have done things after the bell to make a few extra bucks on the side. Instead, they target Dustin Diamond ... Screech ... the "D-Man" (read the article) ... in Omaha of all places.

I have my suspicions, but there was a big clue Screech left for us: Find the "girl with her hair hung down." My only suspect now is Kate Hudson's child. Oh wait, her kid is a boy. Whoops. Nice hair cut.

Baseball and Colds

Baseball and colds go together like drinking and driving. I guess it's tough to do either without a little experience (no mom, I don't have that experience). Last night was really the first time I've played a game while having a cold. Usually you can sneak by that in baseball since colds really aren't the big thing in the middle of August.

Today's a big day at the 436. Apparently Watt and Adam are moving out. Or at least that's the word on the street. We'll begin a new tradition for a year with a couple of new guys. My old roommates were amazing, and this group should prove to be no different.

In amazing news, my DVD player finally came in last night, which completes my home theatre system. It's quite amazing, and massive props to Adam, the man who made all of the cabling possible. He should sell his services to people setting these up, since I'm guessing no one has a clue how much goes into getting everything hooked up just right.

While in the midst of my many random packages coming in, I had time to soak in all that USPS, UPS, and FedEx had to offer. As many know, USPS is by far the worst for online tracking. That is, if you can really call it tracking. I know they have to deal with delivering everyone's mail every single day, but it doesn't seem like that tough of a fix to manage.

This leads us to UPS and FedEx (sorry, still haven't received a DHL package in my life). I really have no opinion between these two at all. That was, until I sat and stared aimlessly at the packages in front of me. FedEx is amazing, and I will never look at their logo the same again. Check out their logo:



They did it. They fooled us all for all of these years by putting a hidden arrow in their logo. Wow. Simply wow. Each one of us has looked at that logo hundreds of times in our lives. Think of how many Orange Bowls you've watched. Now, you'll be like me and only concentrate on the arrow instead of the name.

After googleing this phenomenon, I obviously found out that I wasn't the first to discover what FedEx had done. This guy must've been the first to find out and had a Q & A with the creator of the logo.

More on Beck

Apparently Husker Nation is having a hay day with Harrison Beck leaving. Beck's even tried to act poilte on his web site (if you can call it that) .... that has to be one of the worst looking sites I've ever seen. All three of your pictures on there look amazing, Beck ..... next time try getting some shots from a real photographer instead of from your friend's camera phone.

He was going to update it with some nice pictures from last year, but between his 8 incompletes and his 1 interception, he couldn't pick one (no pun intended).

Also, there's a very creative Husker fan out there selling Beck's helmet on eBay.

The description and title (as well as one of the bidders) makes it worth your time to check out.

According to Ponec, we got some new JUCO donkey coming in to take his scholarship who's supposed to be just as good. If you're reading this, drop the name in the comments if you would.

Sad, Sadder, and Sadler

Sad: Harrison Beck. What more should I say? Boo to you Beck. Nice work copping out and having your mom do all of the talking for you. Nice work, and good luck finding a team where your 1-10 with a pick will land you more reps in the offseason.

Sadder: Zackary Bowman. Just when you can start to see the pieces of the secondary forming for the first time since the Brown brothers, our young superstar gets hurt in a half padded practice and will have to sit out an entire year. At least we'll get to see what Octavien has in store for us.

Sadler: The Doc's coming to L-town. At least that's what ESPN told me today. Nebraska couldn't land Jim Christian or Mark Fox, so they'll settle for their 3^rd pick Doc Sadler. How sweet is it to have a coach named Doc? That just might be the spark the basketball team needs to get on the right track. Although, I think everyone here would've been fine with saying Coach Majerus as well.

Picture Update

You can see the rest of the haymarket pics here and the townhome pics here.

Holy Crap people ... Holy Crap

This might be the stupidest thing on the internet. I know the web is filled with some off the wall crap, but this might be the knife that cuts the cake. At least, it's the stupidest-reality-video clip out there. Just watch it ...



I'm sorry that everyone who reads this had to sit through that. It's astonishing that we can live in a world where someone can have so much money and be so stupid. And then there's Britney who's married to him. She's pretty stupid too.

Britney, I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Haymarket History?

Not to build the drama through the post, so I'll just come out and say it: we lost. It's not much fun to lose 11-6 on the only chance that I'll ever get to play at Haymarket. It is a lot of fun to see Alex Gordon's younger brother hit a ball about 425 feet on the same field that Alex used to do it on. I know Alex had more mammoth home runs, but Eric's might've been the furthest in the family to left field. If someone wants a souvenir from the game, you could probably go on the overpass by the stadium and get it.

Now on to the whole history part. I only got one at bat during the whole game. I led off the bottom of the 7^th inning. Casey Culhane went into his delivery, threw the 81 mph fastball and I connected with it. Well, my upper left thigh connected with it. He drilled me on the only pitch that I saw on the field. I trotted down to first, and coach pulled me right away for a pinch runner. You don't get manager of the year for knowing who's got speed, and who doesn't on your team. So, I was in the game for a matter of about 10 seconds (not counting the top of the 9^th that I spent out in left field). That's got to be some sort of record for shortest outing at Haymarket.

I'm writing all of this from the new townhome in New Castle, Colorado right now. We moved Christi in last night, and hope to get everything else situated before the end of the day. The move went OK until we hit the mountains. At 10000 ft., we experience some heavy, heavy downpours that lasted throughout the night. It's pretty sweet to see lightnig bow between the mountain ranges only a few hundred yards above your house.

If you have a problem with looking at pasty white upper thighs, don't click the link below (you've been warned).

The Clique

Ben VanKat
Troy Bell
Chris VanKat

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