Morton Malaise

First of all, I would like to thank PI, Peoria Pundit, Flam, Peoria Speaks, and Peoria.com for all of their help getting Kelly’s Kause out into the blogosphere. I would also like to thank everyone who has donated or plans to donate. My family thanks all of you as well.

My cousin, Kelly, is quite ill. Please read the following from the Kelly’s Kause website:

What is Kelly’s Kause
Almost one year ago, Scott and Kelly (Williamson) Burdette found out the exciting news that they were expecting their second child. Excited about the news, their son Carter who waited nine long months welcomed his baby sister, Hatley Elizabeth, on April 17, 2008. Just weeks after adjusting to being a mother of two and enjoying her time at home with her children, Kelly began to feel ill, making several visits to the emergency room with fever, weakness, and fatigue. She was then diagnosed with an infection and sent home on antibiotics. Near the end of taking her medicine, Kelly then began to feel numbness and tingling starting in her toes moving upward into her body resulting in a fall, along with her upper body becoming weaker. As these mysterious symptoms progressed, Kelly was admitted into the hospital being diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Guillain Barre Syndrome. This is a disease that attacks the nervous system and as it becomes more aggressive, the symptoms increase in intensity until the muscles cannot be used at all. At that point the person feels totally paralyzed. Not being able to hold her son and her newborn baby is what Kelly has experienced for a little over two months, one day walking, the next laying in a hospital bed not being able to move her body, not being able to smile, blink, or eat. Her speech has been impaired because her tongue is numb; therefore extensive speech and occupational therapy is needed for at least 3-4 hours a day to help her learn how to do all of these things over again. The recovery period could take months to years for Kelly to get back on her feet again. Unfortunately, Kelly has already had a relapse having to start all over again. There is no cure for this disease, but there are a few ways to treat it in hopes of reducing the severity and duration. Kelly has been through several high dose immunoglobin treatments to lessen the immune attack on the nervous system. Her hospital stay has become very costly climbing into the thousands; the treatments Kelly requires are unimaginably expensive already having 6 thus far. Her husband Scott is learning to share a little of his time with everyone. After spending the nights in the hospital with Kelly, he gets up, goes to work in the morning trying to work as much as he can, spending an hour or two with his kids, and dealing with the added stress of adjusting to one income versus two with the normal monthly bills, but also the hospital bills that have started to consume them everyday. Kelly is home from the Hospital now, but that will not be the end of her recovery. For a long time , she will have to work hard to learn to do the things she was able to do before she became sick. She will have mountains to climb, but not alone. Kelly has many family members and friends surrounding her with love and support, but she and her family will need to rely on this help for months to come as she goes through the process of getting her strength back….
….we have established an account at CEFCU and all you have to do is visit any CEFCU center and tell them you would like to make a donation to the Kelly Burdette Benefit fund. Also, Kelly’s sister Kris Hopple is also collecting donations and you can send them to Kris Hopple c/o Kelly Burdette Benefit 210 S Pekin Ln., Hanna City, IL 61536.

The Kelly’s Kause Benefit
Last but not least, we are planning a benefit on Saturday September, 13, 2008 from noon to whenever. It will be held at Pearce Community Center 613 Cedar Chillicothe, IL 61525. There will be food, games, a silent auction, live auction and a kids area. Also, a band will play during the evening hours. Everything we collect will go directly to Scott and Kelly to help defray all the medical costs that have and will continue to accumulate. One more way to help out is to donate something to the auctions. Nothing is to big or to small. Every little bit will help Scott and Kelly so much.

You may mail donations to the above address or e-mail Kris at tboyzus@yahoo.com or call 309-360-6694 to arrange a pick up for the auctions.

While those of us in Central Illinois wait patiently for a 3G network that may never come from AT&T, users in other parts of the country that are ALLEGEDLY covered by 3G are finding out that the new iPhone is not, in fact, better than sliced bread or the wheel. Surprise, surprise. Just because it’s got the cute little fruit with a bite taken out of it, doesn’t mean it’s going to be great. Do yourselves a favor. Stick with the Big Red V, get a Voyager or a Dare, and show those fellows at the fruit factory that they’re not quite as hip as they’d like to think.

For anyone who is interested, the Peoria Flickr group is doing a show @ One World. It runs from August 19th through September 15th and features 21 photographs of Peoria’s bridges from 14 different artists. These are all wonderful pictures, and I would highly recommend checking it out sometime over the next few weeks.

I was surfing around the Maxim website today and stumbled upon this list of dumb things baseball fans get excited about. We’re all guilty, so don’t even pretend you’re not.

It seems CBS has inadvertently leaked its television schedule for the 2008 College Football season. CBS usually releases this information a week and half or so before the game is played. The veracity of the leak has yet to be determined, but the good folks at Deadspin via Saturdays in the South seem confident so far:

09/13 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Georgia @ South Carolina (CBS HD)
09/20 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Florida @ Tennessee (CBS HD)
09/27 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Tennessee @ Auburn (CBS HD)
10/04 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Florida @ Arkansas or Kentucky @ Alabama (CBS HD)
10/11 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Tennessee @ Georgia (CBS HD)
10/11 – 7:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m. LSU @ Florida (CBS HD)
10/18 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. LSU @ South Carolina (CBS HD)
10/25 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Georgia @ LSU (CBS HD)
11/01 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Georgia-Florida (CBS HD)
11/08 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Alabama @ LSU or Georgia @ Kentucky (CBS HD)
11/15 – 11:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Notre Dame @ Navy (CBS HD)
11/15 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. South Carolina @ Florida or Georgia @ Auburn (CBS HD)
11/22 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Ole Miss @ LSU or Tennessee @ Vanderbilt or Arkansas @ Mississippi St. (CBS HD)
11/28 – 1:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. LSU @ Arkansas (CBS HD)
11/29 – 11:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Georgia Tech @ Georgia (CBS HD)
11/29 – 2:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Auburn @ Alabama (CBS HD)
12/06 – 11:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Army @ Navy (CBS HD)
12/06 – 3:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m. SEC Championship

Tonight, the Village board or council or whatever the hell they call themselves will be voting whether or not to allow beer and wine to be sold at grocery stores in Morton, expanding the hours of sale for beer, wine, and spirits, as well as dropping the fee for beer and wine tastings. This vote, unlike 90% of the other votes in Morton (because I’m a renter), actually has an effect on my life. Wal-Mart is extremely close to my apartment. Going there for beer would be a ton easier than having to drive ALLLLL the way to Main St in town. Furthermore, it could mean more tax revenue for the village, because those of us who would normally be forced to drive to East Peoria to get alcohol after 9 PM during the week and 10 PM on weekends will now be able to spend that money in Morton. And I don’t want to hear that “You don’t need to be buying alcohol after 10 anyway” bullshit. Different people keep different schedules.

There is a large contingent in Morton of religious fundamentalists and grumbling old coots who seem to think it’s still 1950. These are the same people who wanted to block the construction of Wal-Mart and the business park on the east side of the Morton Ave overpass because they didn’t like all the fancy electric lights in their end of town. You can see evidence of this by travelling south on Morton Ave from Lakeland. One side of the Kenworth sign was painted black because certain homeowners in Ossami threw a shit fit about it being too bright and disturbing the neighborhood. Give me a fucking break. If you want to live in the middle of the 20th century, move to Arthur or some other such town. Morton is growing into more than a bedroom community, and will need to lure young families if the village is to continue to succeed.

Oh yeah, and being able to get beer right across the street will be fucking sweet.

Update: HOORAY! Passed, 4-2. But, as the PJ Star points out, I won’t be able to buy beer at Wal-Mart this morning. Like I have time to go to Wal-Mart before work.

I get a lot of spam email at work. By alot, I mean several hundred a day. It can be quite a nuisance, but the junk email filter on Outlook does a pretty decent job figuring out what’s junk and what’s not. Sometimes, however, I like to peruse the subject lines of the junk emails for my own amusement. Among the subject lines in today’s batch of shit:

No Pumps! No Surgery! No Exercises!

Batman & Robin: “We’re gay”

Angelina Jolie Set To Destroy Own Vagina

Jason Kidd Feels Guilty After Stealing Ball From Chinese Point Guard

Police Raid Donut City

Sidenote: This is my 200th post. Whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo.

There are five Tuesdays in September, which means there will be another Blogger Bash on September 30th. I’m beating Billy to the punch and taking suggestions for a location. In order to keep the bitching from Mr. Dennis to a minimum, let’s stay away from chain restaurants, shall we? Hopefully this is enough time for everyone to find a sitter.

Update #1 (8/12 9:35 AM): I should probably check my moderation queue a little more frequently now that responsibility has been passed to me. So far we have the following locations nominated:

Ludy’s Kickapoo Creek Saloon (That just SOUNDS far away)

TnT’s (I, along with many of my friends and family, have been boycotting TnT’s for several months due to what we feel was the wrongful dismissal of a good friend)

Gorman’s

Firehouse (On Galena, not in Morton)

Schooner’s on War

Donnelly’s (They get my vote, because they’ll make ‘em extra sloppy!!)

Kelleher’s

Eamon Patrick’s

Richard’s

Update #2 (8/13 10:28 AM): Richard’s seems to be the leader right now. There are plenty of tables and plenty of room, and yes, it is locally owned and not part of a chain.

Update #3 (8/15 2:35 PM): Barring any unforeseen circumstances, it appears we’re taking Richard’s FTW. Customary start time is 6 PM. Please try to be prompt, TAILZ AND SONIC AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO ISN’T KATE, PI, RENO, OR ME.

(Now that I’ve said that, there’s certain to be some unforeseen circumstance that makes me late.)

While my friend Brandon’s parents are out of town, I have agreed to let their dogs out, bring their mail in, etc. They live right across the street from me, so it’s not like I have to stay in a strange house, and the dogs only need to be let out once in the morning, once when I get home from work, and once before I go to bed. On the surface, this sounds like a very simple task. On the surface

One dog, Sammy, is a very old, VERY good dog. She stays in her yard, comes and goes as she’s told, and can be left to roam free in the basement and the yard. She knows where her yard is. She listens. She’s predictable. When it comes to dogs, predictable is good, except when they do funny things like chase hoses and stuff like that. Sammy is too old to chase hoses.

The other dog, Jazz (Named before they got her) was given to Brandon by a friend. Brandon’s roommates decided that House (Capitalized because that’s what House’s name is) and Jazz couldn’t cohabitate. Apparently, Gibson- who has bitten a couple of people, including residents of House and me, and shits all over the place- can stay, but Jazz must go. So, Jazz has been relinquished to a kennel in Brandon’s parents’ home. I, along with any reasonable person, feel that no dog, ESPECIALLY an active breed like a Lab, should EVER have to spend most of its day in a cage. Labs have to run. If they do not run, they misbehave. Especially adolescent dogs.

Case in point, Jazz. Let’s take a trip, you and me. A trip to the parents’ house at 7:20 this morning. I figured 10 minutes would be PLENTY of time to get the dogs out, let them have a BM, and get them back inside. Technically, I was right. I say technically because the mayhem didn’t start until Jazz was back in the house. After Jazz did her business, I put her back in the house and went back outside to call Sammy in. She had wandered to the backyard, where she can’t hear me calling from the garage door. I took Sammy down to the basement, checked her water and food, and gave her a cookie.

When I went back upstairs, I was greeted by Jazz running full steam out of the garage into the kitchen with something in her mouth; a something I assumed was a shoe from the garage. She likes to run with shoes in her mouth. She blew past me, through the kitchen, and into the living room. After several laps around the living room, she came back through the kitchen running directly towards me. As I crouched in preparation to grab her, I saw what she had in her mouth. Apparently, at some point while I was outside, she had grabbed the loaf of bread off the kitchen counter. The dog was running through the house, carrying the bread, dragging her leash, and running into everything she could find. I finally wrestled the bread away from her, which at this point looked more like flatbread with drool all over the bag. Then she took another lap through the house.

When she reached the basement portion of her lap, I got on the stairs and closed the basement door. I then went down the stairs and grabbed a cookie in preparation to lure her back into the kennel. While she may be Satan incarnate, Jazz is not a dumb dog. She’s figured out this “Get her in the cage by throwing a cookie in the back” thing. She definitely wasn’t going for it today. Thankfully, there’s a fairly narrow path through the basement. I was able to grab her by the nape of her neck mid-stride. I led her over to the cage, where she promptly laid down and rolled on her back, making it virtually impossible to put her in. I took this opportunity to take the leash and choker off. Up until this point, she had been alternating between carrying the leash in her mouth and dragging it behind her. My opportunity to take the choker off was Jazz’s opportunity to wriggle from my grip. Then she took several more laps through the basement.

I managed to catch her again, nearly breaking my finger in the ring on her collar. By this point, I’m running 10 minutes late for work, and this stupid bitch has just about sunk the boat. The whole time, Sammy is staring at me and Jazz, almost as to say, “What the fuck is wrong with that stupid dog? Why won’t she sit the fuck still?” I grabbed Jazz by the nape with one hand, and used the other hand on her haunches to shove her across the floor into her cage.

This process I get to repeat for the next three days. Morning, evening, and night. It’s a good thing I’m such a patient, easy-going person.

PH tagged me with this thing. Here are the rules. I will state now that rules 4 and 5 will be ignored, partly because pretty much everyone has already been tagged, but mostly because I’m lazy.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random facts about me. Hmm.

1.) I have driven my current car 132 mph on the Washington Blacktop. I will never drive that fast again on public roads. The acceleration got a bit hairy between 100 and 110, but right around 115 the pure force of air resistance glues the car to the ground. It’s amazing how long it takes to SLOW DOWN to 55 from over 130. I guess when you think about it, it’s like going from 75 to a dead stop, only with a little more momentum.

2.) I know enough about the concepts of quantum physics (Uncertainty Principle, Wave-Particle Duality, etc.) to talk about it, but not enough to demonstrate it mathematically. I’m not Will Hunting.

3.) I feel that there are two types of people in the world: Rolling Stones people and Beatles people. Listening to the Beatles nauseates me. I respect what they did for pop music, but I would rather have my fingers filed off than listen to Sergeant Fucking Pepper. I think they were pretentious assbags, and if Lennon had his way, we’d all be standing in bread lines and living in the People’s Apartment Towers. Obviously, I’m a Rolling Stones person.

4.) I was adopted at birth. Before you ask, no, I’ve never met my biological family, and I still don’t know if I want to. I do know I have biological siblings in the Peoria area. I have an unreasonable paranoia that I could end up being intimate with a sister. It freaks me out sometimes.

5.) I’ve been cuffed and put in the back of a police car before, but I’ve never been charged with a crime. I was marginally involved in a fight between 5 of my friends and about 15 Mexican migrant workers, many of whom were carrying pipes and bats. It was not a fun evening. I escaped unscathed, but a few cars had their windshields busted out, and at least one migrant worker had his head planted in a car door.

6.) I have a collection of over 200 rave flyers, several of which are autographed by performers. I don’t have them displayed in my home anymore because that part of my life is over.