The Center for Disease Control in Toronto has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically.

This virus is called Weary Overload Recreational Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues, or anyone else via any means whatsoever - DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely.

If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises. Take two good friends to the nearest grocery store and purchase one or both of the antidotes - WORK Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life. (Thanks, Shana!)

Happy Anniversary, Eric and Brenda!

Happy Birthday, Helen!

Well, my softball season is over with as of last night. No, not because we played our last game. Last night was a two game night. We had a game at 7pm (which we lost) and later we had a game at 9pm. Our opponent didn’t show for the 9pm game, so we won by forfeit. Then most of us decided that we needed to have batting practice because we had hit so poorly in the 7pm game. So we split up into two teams adding a few kids from the “crowd” and began to play a practice game, with about 7 on a side. I hit the ball pretty well and was trying things while pitching, all in all a good thing. Then, one of the guys hit a line drive and…

Happy Anniversary, Adam and Angie!

I can’t believe this. The Daily Iowan (the University of Iowa’s daily newspaper) is all worried about the environmental aftereffects of the flood. What a load of BS! Environmental aftereffects!? What ever did we do before there were environmentalists to cry about natural disasters? Really, people! Floods have happened for millions of years to the Mississippi valley in the Iowa/Illinois area and it has led to some of the most fertile soil in the world. Then in the past century or so, man has come along and put up levees, dams and other structures to prevent flooding. So the hundreds of centuries before the past century was all damage and loss of phosphorus? Really? And the Mississippi valley has had poor topsoil until then? Really? Let’s keep our eyes on the ball here, people. We need to get the thousands of displaced families taken care of. We need to clean up the downtown area of Cedar Rapids (Iowa’s second largest city at about 125,000). We need to reconstruct many of the roads that were washed away in the flood. Heck, we need to find out where the small town of Oakville (population 438) is - we have heard it was last sighted about 40 miles downstream from where it was originally located. We have an entire “laundry list” of items to tend to before we worry about the phosphorus in the topsoil. Of course, they don’t call it “The People’s Republic of Iowa City” for nothing. It’s a “beehive” of political correctness, misguided leadership and lack of common sense.

It was about time. The flood waters are receding here. Everything is still kind of brown and “river-stinky” if you know what I mean. But it was time to change themes. Plus, with baseball season in full swing (pun intended!) and the great history-making run by Fresno State to be the lowest ranked team to ever win an Division I NCAA tournament of any kind and to set records for runs scored in the College World Series, I simply HAD to change it to the Baseball theme!

Happy Birthday, Adam!

I don’t have any of my own pictures, but the flood waters that I posted about earlier are receding. They have taken roads all around us. US6 is going to need major work before it can be used. So is IA22 and County F70. I do have a picture of US6 where the water has receded a bit:

Louisa County (just south of us) has been declared an individual Federal Disaster Assistance County. I was pretty sure it was going to happen. I’ve seen pictures that are hard to believe. Ken Purdy, former teacher/coach at Columbus Community High School and current Louisa County Board of Supervisors member, has a lot of good pics on his site. Click here to go to Ken’s main page. Click here to go to his first page of flood pics. Click here to go to his second page of flood pics.

I’ve seen a lot more pictures than Ken’s but his are very representative of what’s going on here. President Bush was to tour Cedar Rapids today - it was very hard hit by the flood. I’ve heard that over $80 million in damages so far. While the places in his pictures are harder hit, there are a lot more people and businesses in Cedar Rapids.

An archaeological team, digging in Washington DC, has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains.

Happy Anniversary, Zach and Jessie!

We’ve had flooding here again this year. I had pictures back on April 30, and thought that was the end of the flooding around here for this year. Boy, was I wrong. We have roads closed; I’m not talking just the county roads or gravel roads either. I80 is closed east of Iowa City where it crosses the Cedar River. US6, US92, IA22, US30 and IA1 were all closed for several days. Some of these may be open now, but they were called closed yesterday. Downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s second largest city, has been evacuated; a lot of Iowa City, where the University of Iowa is located, is evacuated. I didn’t go see my dad yesterday because to travel the 17 miles from Muscatine to West Liberty I would have actually had to drive almost 250 miles.

Yesterday Breezomatic and I went 7 miles west to see the flooding at the Cedar River on IA22. This one seemed pretty funny to me. “Restoring America’s Wetlands”?! That seems to be what the flood is doing without any help from the government!

This guy needs to read the freakin’ sign. I heard that he was trying to drive back to his place in his pickup. I thought those kind of people only lived in Arkansas or Mississippi but I guess I was wrong.

This is a nice view of why the road is closed. You can see a tractor and a Jeep that were on the road two days ago but were carried off by the current and by the road collapsing. Off in the distance about a mile or two away you can see where the road comes up out of the water.

And finally, like anyone needs to know this, the road is a dead end. Of course, you can’t even drive to this point without going through a patrolled road barricade.