Stages...........1949-1970

We took 3 of 3 last night at Dartball...getting a piece of revenge from Mendon, a team we dominated in year's past...but lost to in the tournament last year, and whom we lost 2 of 3 to at home earlier.....

My oldest Sam had the hot hand last night going 7 for 14 with 4 RBIs.....playing part-time he now leads the team in average....I finished 5 for 13 3 RBIs and a rare "walk"...and also threw into a double play, my 3rd career base on balls, and my first ever double play in 13 years.....I stand 2nd on the team in average and also in RBIs...recovering from a real slow start, due in part to my earlier back problems. Those still haven't gone completely away, but I've learned to work around them....and am throwing much better.

Sam left with my mom this morning for Naples...she will stay with youngest sister Kelly for a few months....Sam drove her car down and will fly into South Bend from Fort Myers on Saturday.....I usually take her down, but with the back, decided not to test it just yet, and Sam took over.

Back to Doc Bergman tomorrow...my regular doctor...check up on how my blood pressure is doing....and with the home monitoring system and one pill a day...it has been doing well...usually in the 120-130 over 70 range...much better than a month ago.

Note: In case you read the Hermit's Helms Deep Blog....he informed me that it has crashed....and he will be bringing it back in a different(non-blogspot/Goggle) format....he's is not happy....he puts out good stuff, hopefully he'll have it back up and running real soon.

Stage One_________

I've always looked at life in stages....not so much where you live, but age wise, or state of mind wise.....the first state I guess, began when I was born in Van Wert, Ohio, some 59(in March) years ago....we lived in the little burg of Scott(dad's hometown) until 1952...moved to mom's state of Delaware for a year. Then back to Scott, before heading to the Florida west coast, Venice, Florida, for the next 9 years. Back we came to western Ohio, this time Celina, where I was to stay until joining the Air Force at the age of 19.

This was stage 1....actually, I consider stage 1 up until the day I left for Vietnam....Stage 2 was Vietnam and several years after....not that Vietnam was a horror story for me....I was a Air Force Cop(Security Police), and yes that was the most dangerous job on the ground(being in the air was far worse as far as AF duty was, in my opinion) in the USAF...but I can't complain...I grew up, didn't end up with PTSD(post traumatic stress disorder), didn't come down with AO(Agent Orange) problems, and didn't become a total drunk or druggie....I drink no more now than I did before my time in the service...so I've always liked my beer, since I was 18.... a year of so before I joined.

It was just a different, not necessarily better me, that came back....more confident, less likely to take crap from anybody, as I tended to go along to get along before 1970...after I got back stateside in July of that year....I was a changed person.

Stage one-The Photos(1949-1970)..........(top left) Mom and me in the fall of 1949 in Scott, Ohio(2)Brother Mike and me holding up some kind of fish, I'm sure we didn't catch, in Grandma Houseworth's living room in Scott...summer of 1954(3)Guess this was mom's idea of a "glamor" shot...I actually remember getting this and a stack of others taken by a professional photo guy...I think it was our first full summer in Venice that would be 1955(4)Mike and me with Uncle Forest(Smokey), dad's oldest brother(1912-1964)(5) Back in Scott for summer vacation in 1957....that's me on the right with my buddy Al Foust....we were both 8 and had gigged these bullfrogs out of my Uncle John Houseworth's pond.(7)Summer of 1958...Mike was on the Venice Elks Varsity Little League Baseball team....I was on the Junior Elks.(8) Summer vacation in Ohio in 1960....Dad and me fishing in the Auglaize River, near Defiance, Ohio.(9) Sitting on Dad's Dodge Charger...the day before I was inducted into the Air Force....I rememer it well, June 22, 1968(10) June 29, 1969...me and mom...a final farewell photo, before I headed to Dayton for my flight to San Francisco and sunny Vietnam(11)...the large one at the bottom...me in the fall of 1951 in Scott...Grandma Houseworth had a bunch of these blown-up to 8 x 10s...so she must have liked them.

Stage 2 will be coming up later in the week.......

Life in the Slow Lane

Still resting the back(hip nerves in reality), the weekend consisted of watching football Saturday and Sunday, Duke Basketball Sunday Night, and on Saturday evening heading down to the Dayton Airport in Vandalia to pick up Sam from Orlando, after his latest road trip.....his car is in northern Indiana, but the air fare was so damn cheap from Orlando to Dayton at $79 non-stop, he elected to take that one and leave his car in Nappanee. Since he's driving mom down to Naples in her car tomorrow, and will fly back to South Bend Saturday(the Fort Myers to South Bend flight is much cheaper than the Fort Myers to Dayton one...go figure), then pick up either his car or another RV at that time....life on the road!

While heading down I had some things to drop off at the younger son Hal's place...he lives in Dayton, and is finishing off his final two months at Wright State(for now), he gets his BS in High School History Education in March...takes a couple months off then begins his Graduate Program in July....anyway he met me in Vandalia and I dropped off his Christmas stuff that came in the mail late....he presented me with a 6 pack of Sam Adams Black Lager...a little more heavy than the regular large, but tasty none-the-less....I sampled a couple watching football Saturday Night and Sunday......

I was never into dark heavy beers until a year or so ago...then discovered by drinking them you could enjoy the taste and not over do it.....so now in the cold months it's mostly Sam Adams or some other 'highbrow" beer, in summer after umpiring or mowing the lawn, it's back to Miller Lite, where I can down a more appropriate number....

Worked in Greenville for a couple hours this morning, a board meeting at Mercer Residential at noon(where I was elected President, gets me out of voting, so that's not bad), watching the Hawk intimidate the little birds on the feeder, until Reagan chased him off....he always comes around when the snow starts. Tonight it's Dartball in Mendon...a team until last year's playoffs we had beaten 36 straight games...now they have taken 4 of 6, including knocking us out of last years tournament....time for some revenge.

{Photos)Life's simple pleasures....two different Samuel Adams Lagers, Regular and Black.....a nice moderate tasty torpedo, and my internet blog flashing in the back.....It's snowing, and the Hawk is hanging around the garden feeder.

Football Photo Essay

Now the "excitement" of the week long taking down of the Mersman 107 smoke stack coming down is over...back to other more mundane things.

When I headed off to college at the ripe old age of 26, after 4 years of Air Force duty, including a couple of stops in Vietnam as an Air Force cop, and several years of managing and toning my fighting skills running a 18 through 20-something nightclub in Celina, I wanted to major in Natural Resources, but with few jobs available, especially for a white straight male, I ended up in Environmental Health, which I was to make my career for 20 some years, but not without being sidetracked into the glamours world of radio and TV broadcasting.

After college Patricia and I moved to Wausau, Wisconsin, her home state, but some 180 miles north of her home town of Oconomowoc....she worked in the hospital and for an investment company...while I worked as a bartender and in the winter at the local ski slopes running the lifts.....in my spare time I took up what one of my college English professor told me..."You have a perfect voice for broadcasting.....you should give it a try"....I enrolled in Trans American Broadcasting School in Wausau, because I still had a year or two left in my GI Bill Education benefits...so why not? For the next 5 years after graduation, I toiled in small markets like Merrill, WI, Kokomo, IN, and Dodge City, Kansas, before heading back to Ohio.....where I would work in radio as a program director, until the local health department finally had an opening in Environmental Health....which I took in 1983.

From 1978 until 2004 I was to work full time(78-83) and part-time(83-04) in the broadcast world, as a Program Director, News Anchor and Director, Sports Anchor and Play-by-Play guy....it is a cut throat business, but it does have it's upsides. One of those was as a Sports Anchor and News Director at a local cable outlet in my old birth hometown of Van Wert, Ohio.

This work gave me a chance to interview everybody and anybody from the sports world, pro and college, plus follow the local high school teams to the state championships....usually when covering the pro or college games I would sit in the press box(football and baseball) or on press row(basketball)....at times though I would grab a still or video camera and head down to the side lines....with 60,000 screaming football fans and players that dwarfed me, and I'm not a runt, running at break neck speed it was quite a show.....the photos at the top of this post are some of those.

(Photos....I always have found sideline and fan shots more interesting than "action", heck you find those anywhere and I have plenty of those in my files.....from the top: (1) "The Dog Pound" in Old Cleveland Municipal Stadium....sitting there in the 1987 playoff game between the Browns and Colts....you got a sense of "The Criminal Element" in pro football...not the players...the FANS! (2) At Ohio State when the Buckeyes beat the Hoosiers to secure the 1993 Big Ten Championship, yep the right side photo is me in the rain....and I could have been high and dry in the press box(3) Hall of Fame WR Steve Largent and Seattle QB Dave Krieg in 1986 at Cincinnati(4) The Bears after their Super Bowl season played at Riverfront in Septemeber 86....I remember the temperature was about 110 on the AstroTurf...photos include Walter Peyton on the bench, The "Refrigerator" Perry, what a ton!, and Jimmy McManhon and Steve Mac...Macmichaels went on to become a "bad guy" in the former WWF Wrestling(5) Boomer Essiasin and Chris Collinsworth of the Bengals....both went on to broadcasting careers....Collinsworth is a real jerk, and not much of an announcer(IMO)(6) Me, on the sidelines at Riverfront before a game,sometime in the mid 80s.....and(7) my sheepskin from Trans American Broadcasting...hard to believe it will be 30 years this February that I started my broadcasting "career" at that little school located in the Wisconsin Northwoods}

The Stack is no more!

Dartball last night, we take all 3 for the 2nd time this season against Bethany United...too bad we can't have this record against the rest of the league....to come from behind wins in the final games to sweep....7-0, 6-5 in 10 innings(scoring 3 in the 9th to tie), and 5-2 scoring 3 in the bottom of the 8th to finish them off....I had a decent night, but nothing special, going 6 for 16 with 3 RBIs.

Best news was...in my first games since the epidural, the back pain was not a factor....bothering me this morning? Yes....but last night it held out.

The final blows are going on as I type for the century plus smoke stacks at the Mersman Plant....not sure when or if the water tower will be taken down.....

Almost Done

The largest brick section of the old Mersman Smoke Stack is now almost completely down...the "Hot" area, that being the reinforced area of the hottest spot, is still standing....the ball and chain may or may not be used there.....107 years and it tis no more....the rest of the old factory will be a chore...and my front view will be a mess for sometime....but what the Hell? Cigars, Beer, and Airedales, don't give a damn about front porch views.

Back to Dartball tonight...I was playing better as the first half ended over 3 weeks ago....we delayed our usual Monday night games this week to watch the Buckeyes lose another National Championship game....the 2nd year in a row we've done that mistake....with almost everybody back...can they(OSU) hope to finish in the top 2 next year?....I'm sure the media is hoping not. One thing for sure, LSU won't be back...25 seniors gone compared to Ohio State's 3(how many juniors leave for the NFL is another thing)....look for some new blood in the finals next year. Anyway Dartball the 2nd half begins anew....we finished 2nd in the south last half...with are mixed bag of guys getting old and the new guys without much experience, we will see how it works out.

Tomorrow...a photo essay

{photos today-the stack nears ground level}

Spring in Ohio=January!

After a couple of days of 60+ degree weather, the temps have started downward. Heavy rain come through last night, even the basement had some water in it, which has not happened of late, tornado watches and thunderstorm warnings in early January?....sunny, windy, and about 40 right now, with cooler weather to continue for the next week or so.

The slow work on the Mersman smoke stack started back up this morning....after Sunday the crane ceased work, but it is back towering into the blue sky today.

Brother Mike is now back in Columbus, being tested and getting his "mask" fit for his radiation treatments which will begin on his vocal cord next week....with that process taking at least 7 or 8 weeks, we all agreed that mom needs to be back in Florida until spring....so Sam will be driving her car down to Naples to stay with Kelly until sometime in April or May....Sam will then fly back.

My back epidural is now almost 3 weeks old(December 21st)...it didn't do the complete job I wanted, that would have been pain free, but it has helped out...I am back dressing myself in the early morning, my blood pressure is down to normal range(see my back pages blog)...and if I lay down for 15-30 minutes once or twice a day...my movement is pretty normal....am I ready for 1000 mile RV runs or even doing spring baseball yet? Not really....but am still much better off than I was, I can avoid surgery for now, and if things don't fully improve, I can always get another cortisone injection....you are allowed 3 per year, and for now, that would beat open back surgery.....but it all depends on how the next month or so goes....at least I am mobile and able to get around with less pain and more movement than before.

The college football season ended with Ohio State getting thumped....the NFL holds little interest for me(I'll watch, but with little rooting interest, except the hope that New England, the media darlings, tank it).

Working on my plan B to lose 10-15 lbs before baseball begins...that is part of the pain reduction plan....when semi-retired, working only a couple of mornings a week, and limited movement, the pounds don't come off at my age, quite as easily as when I was 25 or 30.....I turn 59 in March and always considered myself in pretty good shape, especially for my age.....these next few months should test that theory.

While I heal, I have started posting more stories out of the family genealogy files on my Houseworth Ancestry blog:

http://israelhouseworth.blogspot.com/

Part 2 of the Murder In Waldo is posted today.....

{Photos} Mersman stack, the slow process, ball and chain continues.

Another Buckeye Downer

For the 4th time in a year Ohio State has dropped a National Title game in a varsity sport...twice in football, once each in basketball and soccer.....a year of being runners-up never sits too well with the Buckeye faithful.

LSU manhandled OSU in the 2nd quarter last night, and that was the advantage they needed.....not much to hang your hat on Buckeye Nation.....but they did play better than last year against Florida, small consolation.

Final 38-24 Loo-zee-anna State!

125+ years ago most of my Houseworth ancestors lived in the small village of Waldo, Ohio.....located 25 or so miles north of Columbus, Waldo sets on the Marion-Delaware County Line located for the most part in Marion County, Ohio.

Having 2 sets of Houseworth brothers as Great-Great-Grandfathers makes almost all the Houseworth clan living in and around Waldo back then my close cousins....one of those was Gilman Houseworth, Gilman was a younger brother of my Great-Grandmother Mary Ann Houseworth, and a a first Cousin of her husband Nelson Houseworth(that's what happens when cousins marry)....Gilman, like many of the Houseworth men at that time was a Civil War Veteran, he served with the 26th Ohio Voluntary Infantry and was wounded in the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia....his brother Henry was killed in the same battle.

Anyway after the war, Gilman returned home to Waldo where he became a horse trader and twice married....apparently Gilman liked to have a nip or 3 as well....and that is where he got into trouble with his brother-in-law, Enoch Young.....A Murder in Waldo resulted.....Enoch and Gilman were both charged.....Enoch was tried in Waldo, Gilman was tried later on in Kenton, Ohio....and was aquitted, Enoch was not.

The story begins on my Ancestry Blog at:

http://israelhouseworth.blogspot.com/

I'll be posting this story in several installments over the next couple of weeks at that site.....as they say, "truth is more interesting that fiction"....and that(IMO) is certainly the case with my Houseworth Ancestors.

{photos} The famous G & R Tavern in Waldo(population 325)...home to the world famous Bologna Sandwiches....think outside the box when thinking of cold cut bologna......and my GG-Uncle Gilman Houseworth around 1885.

The National Championship

Back to work at Greenville today....also tomorrow....took Sam up to Nappanee to pick up his car, talked with the staff, saying I may go back to driving...short runs before baseball season begins...we will see.

Nothing tonight except watching the BCS National Championship game between Ohio State and LSU....the Buckeyes are taking a low key approach this year, after getting swelled heads then getting blown out by Florida last year.....I've hit about 75% of my pick so far on my Yahoo Fantasy Bowl contest.....but not so well in the BCS games(1-3 so far)

Go Bucks....

Prediction OSU 26 LSU 14

107 Years and coming down!

The Mersman Table Manufacturing Plant in Celina, largest table manufacture in the US for many years closed down about 15 years ago...I've been posting photos of it's demise over the past weeks....the wrecking ball has now topped off about half the height of the 107 year old smoke stack.....the process is tedious and slow.......a bit of Americana is coming down....one brick at a time.....I've got a front row seat....my house, the former First Church of God parsonage is right across the street.....the view, albeit pretty ugly right now, is none-the-less interesting.

Find Mersman history here:

http://www.icollectorbazaar.com/qa/messages/1760.html

Photos as the stack comes down......more as the tedious process continues.

The Political Mess

Is there any doubt the American political system is broken?

Millions upon millions of dollars being spent on a campaign that started barley after the 2nd Bush Administration began.....24 hours of constant biased reporting from the likes of CNN, NBC, MSNBC, etc....and we get a list of candidates that are better suited as having their mug shots on the local post office bulletin board.

Inbetween commercials during the Ohio State-Illinois basketball game and then the Orange Bowl, I would flip over to Fox News and catch the latest updates from that hugh bell weather state of "Iowa"? Iowa???? a couple thousand white farmers falling on the swords voting for folks that no more care about or have their interests in mind that Fidel Castro....can we say IDIOTS? Now I've said I would not make this blog overtly political and I won't, but with the primary season beginning....January 4th? I will break down the candidates from my usually biased right wing position(since there are no true right wingers in this race, I can be pointed in my comments).

The Democrats_______

There are no Democrats that I would vote for in the Presidential Race.....so let's look at the 3 Anti American morons running........

Hillary Clinton.....the women who blindly followed her lying, cheating, impeached husband, through 8 years of one of the worst administrations in US history. If Hillary is nothing else, she is even more corrupt and evil than that fool husband of hers....If Hillzilla were to be elected, our already in the tank economy would be thrown into a 1930s style depression....she would tax everybody to the max(if the lame congress would go along), and the stock market would crash, with everybody who is anybody pulling their money out....a Hillary Presidency would quicken the pace towards Armageddon. The only thing to her credit is, I believe she would be tough on defense if needed...they don't call her the "Iron Dyke" for nothing.

Barrack Osama Obama......What has this guy ever done? I mean besides hide his true "colors"...you know the story...I was a poor black child, well kind of, my white mom was from Kansas, she married this Muslim from Africa, he left us, and I was raised by my white grandparents in Kansas.....because mom was running around the world on her save the earth tour, and dad, well dad was back in Africa, and Hell, I never saw him again....but I'll claim to be black, that's a good fit for the media......forget this liar, but you know, lying and being a Democrat was good for the last Dem President(the aforementioned Billy Clinton), so this may work.

The Breck Girl Edwards.......Can we say Ambulance Chaser? This hick tries to play on his so-called poor folks past and visions himself as a champion of the working class....can we say "Bullshit" this lying bastard was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and has sunk so low as to use his cancer stricken loud mouth wife to deflect any criticism of his views...if this guys campaign was not a total disaster, he might be more of a danger than Hillary or Barrack....but it is and he's not.

Vote for any of these 3 and you probably should not be reading this blog.......otherwise you will be real pissed off before November.

The GOP_______

Where do we start?

Well "The Huckster" won Iowa, so let's begin there....First off Mike Huckabee is a former Arkansas governor, enough reason to not support him right off the bat. A former Methodist Minister...he's a little too Liberal in his social stands for me...you know the story. He's pardoned over 1000 criminals, including 19 convicted of murder...says it's his calling as a Christian, I say Bullshit, I'm a Christian, I say if you're a first degree murderer, you need to be (1) executed or (2) live at hard labor with no parole for life.....if you are to be pardoned, let God do that come judgement day. He's also raised taxes, coddled illegal immigrants....OK that's enough "The Huckster" does not get my vote.

Rudy______

Rudy is tough on crime and defense, would blow the Hell out of Islamic terrorists...that's good. He would also do his best to ban guns, and let the murder via partial birth abortions..aka infanticide continue...sorry Rudy, I'm no hypocrite, as a Christian, I believe, 99% of abortions should be outlawed, and any "doctor" performing the vile procedure of "partial birth" abortion should be charged with first degree murder(see punishment in Huckabee file).

John McCain______

American hero, fellow Vietnam Vet, POW......tough on the War on Terror....those are his pluses, he's also weak on Immigration, a butt boy buddy with John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, and worked with that Anti-American Wisconsin dupe Russ Finegold on an attempt to quash free speech via campaign financing.....I could hold my nose and vote for him, his age is a drawback, the pro illegal stance pisses me off.

Mitt Romney_______

Slick is the word. A Governor of the liberal marxist republic of Taxyer2shits. He has found Conservatism of late.....he's a Mormon. Do I trust him? No, not really(but it has nothing to do with being a Morman, they are good people), but if it came down to it, I could vote for him.

Fred Thompson_____

For some reason the media, including the so-called Conservative Fox News, is trying to Deep Six Fred's campaign.....I plan on voting for him in the Ohio Primary....even though I'm not sure what he stands for....I do know, if the media wants you gone....you can't be all bad.

Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo_______

These would be 1 and 1a, but alas, they have no shot........so by the time Ohio votes, these two true Americans will be out of the race.

And finally Ron Paul_________

What can you say about Ron? Let's see, he blames America first in the war on terror, thinks Muslims are just fine and dandy people who would live in peace, if only the evil US would leave them along....."Beam this one up Scotty". I like the idea of closing the borders(after we deport those that don't belong here), getting rid of the IRS, and even shutting down public education and letting the private sector run it(without Government regulations)....but Ron is a little too nuts, even for me.

There you have it, take it for what it's worth, that isn't much......I promise the political posts will be few and far between....plenty of other places for that.

Snow Storms I have known

Snow is still on the ground and we have actually had 3 decent snows so far this season....total accumulation probably in the 15 inch area....In my years I have went through some pretty good storms and storm seasons.

The winters of 62-63 and 76-77 in Ohio, 70-71 in upstate NY, and the winters in northern Wisconsin of 77-78 and 78-79 stand out. Throw in some of those winters in the 1980s out on the farm south of Celina and I've seen it just about all since we left Florida when I was in 8th grade.

March of 1979 in Wisconsin was not as cold as the previous winter of 77-78, but it had a couple of major storms....the one I remember best was on the weekend of March 25th....I was working the 5 to 10 PM on-air shift at WJMT in Merrill, Wisconsin, Anissa was a month old....Patricia stopped by the station with her and was telling me that she and Anissa would stay at the station because the roads were getting bad....we had a 1976 Jeep Cherokee and a 74 AMC Hornet...as it was still daylight, I told her to go home in the Jeep, a call me when she got there, if I didn't hear from her in 30 minutes, I would leave and follow the route. {the station was located in the Merrill House Hotel and one of the other DJs lived there, I could use him to sub if needed}.

As it happened they made it home OK, but she called me and told me to stay at the station, I had the Hornet and the roads were getting worse by the minute.....10PM arrived and shift ended, and I was closing up shop...a trucker called the station and told me to tell everybody to stay off the roads because they were awful and becoming untravelable..I told him "thanks" and put a public service announcement up on the air for the "canned" overnight shift(which was run without a local DJ and on tape)...I did not heed his warning myself however.

I started off towards home....located on the Marathon-Lincoln County Line out in the middle of nowhere, 20 miles from Wausau, and 8 from Merrill. The Hornet actually traveled in the snow pretty well for a rear wheel drive vehicle....problem was I could not see the roads. I spotted what I though was a road a few miles out of town and turned...wrong! It was a driveway to a farm building....I stopped and backed out, and continued to head south until I finally found my turnoff....going west I had to go a mile or so and then backtrack to the north for a couple of miles until I hooked up with the county line....few farms and I had about a half tank of fuel.....about a mile(my guess) from the county line, the AMC started to slide off the right side of the road(which of course I could not see anyway)...as I dropped down in the ditch, I thought to myself..."shit, this might be it", as I pulled the wheel towards the road, I took one last chance and gunned the pedal to the floor, as it would happen the car slammed though the drifts and back on the roadway. A few minutes later I took the west turn and drove the final 2 miles towards the farm without incident.

As I pulled into the drive of the rented farm house....the car struck a drift, I didn't care I was home, I jumped out and made my way to the porch door.....we had 4 dogs at the time, the house dogs Rags and Max the Airedales, and two mixed breed small mutts, Jenny and her daughter Dixie...the small dogs were in the basement during the storm, the Airedales were in the house....Max was a pretty damn good watch dog, and at 100+ pounds not something to mess with....I hit the porch and opened the door..Max, not knowing I was home and thinking(?) this was his domain hit the floor running, with bad intent...I was bundled up and all I could do was yell..."Max, Max, It's me God Damn it"...the big goof slid to a halt..and I was saved from further stress......

We were pretty much housebound for the next 3 or 4 days until the wind died down and the roads were cleared.....here it is almost 29 years later, and I can still remember just how stupid I was, and how close to disaster I came....I respect storms much more these days.....and even with the Jeep Wrangler, I know better than to travel unprepared.

(photos from the Storm of 79}The Hornet Buried in the Driveway, The County Plow digs out my driveway, Rag and Max looking for Jenny, who was safe and dry in the basement, and finally the sun comes out and I dig out Jenny's dog house.

Holidays Done.........

Spent New Years Day up in Auburn, Indiana, at my childhood friend Rick's house....usually Hal and I go over, this year Hal was late getting back from Columbus...so Rick and my college buddy Clint, who now lives in Kenton headed over...with snow in the forecast, we took the Jeep....usually I only have couple of beers we eat well and watch football. As the wind picked up we decided to stay overnight and sleep in the den....that way more beer was consumed and more foods eaten.....Chili, Hot Wings, Sauerkraut and sausage....with a few cigars during half time of the Rose Bowl....good thing too...the first 2 BCS Bowl Games were snoozes....although the early Michigan-Florida and Wisconsin-Tennessee games were classics...especially Michigan's win over the hated Gators. Needless to say I am no Michigan fan, but was glad to see overrated Florida give up 500+ yards to the Wolverines(after Michigan only got 91 total yards against Ohio State)...and Lloyd Carr go out with a win....if Ohio State can thump LSU, it will be a pretty good bowl season. The Illini lost to USC was no surprise, I think they are at least a year away....I was shocked at how bad Hawaii played against Georgia.....that game looked like men against boys.

Snowed pretty good, not a lot of total(except north and west), but the wind was blowing pretty good through the Jeep this morning on the way back.

As you can see from the photos....the old Mersman Building continues to come down....the main area around the 120 year old smoke stack is gone.....will try to get photos as the work continues....and our resident Hawk is still keeping us entertained around the back yard and garden area....keeps the feeding birds nervous(the pigeons left long ago, those he didn't eat)...however, the squirrels don't seem too bothered by him at all.

Happy New Year 2008!

One of the best things about New Year's Day these days is....no hang overs. I gave up the New Year's Eve party style many years ago...I did manage to stay awake until 12 Midnight then headed off to bed.

Off to northern Indiana this morning to watch football and eat food, drink a couple of beers with my friend Rick...our usual New Years Day tradition for the past 20+ years....

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!