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Of Music and Middle-Age…

So, I talked with a visitor at church last Sunday and she tipped me off to a coffee house (of sorts) at Kingshighway United Methodist Church. They apparently do it every third Saturday and bill it as a family evening, something to get some folks together for fellowship while also enjoying each other’s talents. There were a good 30-40 people down in this old fellowship hall about 10 min. south of us on I-55, in a neat area of south St. Louis City.

While I’m not sure I’d classify it as a “coffee house,” necessarily, it was still a good time. I mean, there was coffee there, and cookies and cheese puffs, but that was about it. And truthfully, it was more of a variety show than anything else. That’s not to say that it wasn’t entertaining, but again, I’m not sure “coffee house” was the correct moniker.

Either way, we had a surprisingly good time. There were a few kids that told jokes, one did some magic tricks, one guy sang “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” with a karaoke machine, a group of guys played some CCR and Elton John music…overall, it was a very entertaining evening!

The truly neat part about it is that many of these individuals that were getting up there performing were middle-aged, and this was probably their only outlet to share their musical talents. It’s difficult for me to imagine being in a similar situation, as I’ve been able to keep playing drums/guitar/etc. ever since leaving high school, but many of these folks graduated from high school and didn’t play with a group ever again. An opportunity like this allows them to get to practice their instrument and play it occasionally in front of a group, which is more than I can say for others out there with their instrument hidden in a closet.

Anyway, it was pretty neat. I can only hope I’m playing something in another 30 years!

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The Man

the-man
I had a few requests for an explanation of “The Man,” so here you go:

I’m not really sure where he came from, but a couple of years ago, The Man appeared at my parents’ house. I’m thinking that he was atop a birthday cake and then was stuck in a drawer somewhere since my mom rarely throws things away that she thinks she or someone she know will have a future use for. Anyway, when he came out of hiding, one of my sisters decided it would be a great idea to attach him to a 4th of July rocket and send him flying. So, we did. Over. And over. And over. It was hilarious and an adventure to track him and the rocket down after each launch. This year when I was there for the driveway fireworks show, The Man got caught up in a pine tree by the road so my dad had to go rescue him the next day. You can read my mom’s comment from a couple of days ago to see what happened after I came back to St. Louis, but there’s the story!

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The 11th Street Hill

11th-st-hilll-90This hill was to the side of Ma and Papa’s house in Louisiana, Missouri.  Well, actually, I’m quite sure it’s still there, but it doesn’t seem as big as it did to us back in 1990 when the picture above was taken, but anyway….  We spent hours on this hill riding (while sitting) skateboards down and avoiding cars.  There was also a hill next to Papa’s service station that served the same purpose, but had a nice grassy area at the bottom to stop us.  One of my favorite memories of Papa is of him riding down the hill next to the station on his wheely thing for working under cars, then falling off and Ma getting out the Bandaids to patch his skinned knees.

Here are two more from Christmas ’94 when the Baumann girls got skates:

11th-st-hill2-9411th-st-hill-94

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I was doing so well…

psychpineapple
…until I fell off the wagon and stopped blogging. More is on the way, I promise. I just have to get around to sorting through some pictures and I’ll have a plethora of funny stuff for you. Luckily, this week is way less busy than the last few, so while I’m looking for the pineapple in every episode of Psych, I’ll sort through some stuff I scanned!

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Some People Are Really, Really Dumb…

Apparently, a 15-year-old girl fell down an open manhole on Staten Island recently, so her parents are suing the city for damages. The catch is: the girl was texting at the time and wasn’t paying attention when she fell. Apparently, “sewer line workers are supposed to cut off pedestrian access to work sites or at least mark them with warning signs,” and that’s the basis of the lawsuit…but still…

Personally, I do my best not to walk and text if I can avoid it, and I certainly don’t text while driving (but I will occasionally while I’m at a stop light…if Brooke’s in the car, I just have her do it for me…). Talking on your phone is bad enough while you’re driving – just hit the interstates here in St. Louis and you’ll see plenty of crazies talking on their phones, not using turn signals, and just doing a terrible job staying in their lanes. Texting is pretty ridiculous, though, and even worse when you blame someone else because you’re an idiot.

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CSPAN’s Entertainment Network

It’s funny to watch Gratzer squirm. 🙂

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kucinich during the Primaries last year…he’s a little too left, even for me…but I like his stance in this CSPAN video (only 2.5 min long…). He’s calling out Dr. David Gratzer, the author of a book titled “The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Healthcare.” Apparently, Gratzer rails against the Canadian health care system, pointing out the typical, tired conservative arguments of “6 month wait times” to be seen by a physician. Kucinich isn’t having any of that, pointing out Canadian studies showing that the median wait time is 3-4 weeks for certain procedures (ones that aren’t life-threatening, otherwise they’d be done sooner), which is apparently similar to that of the United States. And, nearly all of Canadians have health care. And it’s affordable. I’m sure Gratzer has some good points in the book (which I haven’t read…because I don’t read…), and some of his statistics are probably sound, but there are a wealth of other statistics carried out by the Canadian government and other organizations that say otherwise. “Lies, damned lies, and Statistics…”

Although this particular video doesn’t bring it up, I’m sure you’ve heard various Republican congresspeople (specifically, John Boehner…) asking the question: “do you want a bureaucrat in Washington coming between you and your doctor?” Well no, I don’t. But neither do I want some profit-hungry businessperson doing it either, and that’s what we’ve got right now. Brooke and I are lucky to have some pretty good health care, as I’m attending a medical school-based graduate program and have it available to us. I can’t begin to imagine what other folks are going through, that have to pay and arm and a leg (sometimes literally) for coverage that is worse than ours with a substantially higher deductable. It just annoys me that they keep spouting off this “bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor” rhetoric like it’s any different than what I’ve got now.

At least, if I’ve got a bureaucrat between me and my doctor, I have the opportunity to vote them out of office. I can’t do that to a CEO.

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Projects

I have been administering the Webster Hills UMC website for a year now, largely making basic content changes and adding Newsletter information whenever it comes out on Wednesdays. I’ve never really been very happy with the system, personally, as it isn’t really a user-friendly system. We are using ACS Technologies Extend, which is specifically designed for churches, to allow full integration between web content, online calendering systems and financial systems (i.e. the ability to make automatic withdrawals as an offering each month, or see how much you’ve donated that year, etc.). That’s all well and good, but the back-end system is so arcane that you need to go to training seminars to fully understand it, let alone get the people at your church to deal with it. Since I’m a bit more comfortable doing web content management, I just kinda took it on, but I really don’t understand how half of it works.

Anyway, we’re moving to a new system. ACS is difficult to deal with, and not particularly cheap. We already had an account and server with GoDaddy.com, and they provide many useful FREE tools, like WordPress (which my site runs on), to install and update automatically. Very, very user friendly once it’s set up. I chose Joomla to use for the new church site, as it provides a bit more flexibility with themes and plugins, allowing me to make it look how I want it to.

The site is currently sitting at http://whtest.websterhillsumc.org/ (now defunct, as of 09.02.09). It doesn’t quite have the bandwidth I’d like, so it may seem a bit slow, but it’s much more functional. The other benefit, as the guy that’s been putting information up there for a year, is that you can log in and simply click “Edit” on any article you want to. Very, very easily. This means that the church staff can just go on and change information themselves rather than sending me an e-mail and hoping I get it done that day. Articles can be uploaded by anyone and approved by an administrator. I can do polling. I can move the poll from one spot to another. I can have a rotating banner at the top of the screen. I can make that banner as large or as small as I want. These are all things that I was unable to do with ACS, which made life truly annoying…

Anyway, check it out and give me suggestions. I don’t have all the content on the new site yet, but I’m hoping to shift it over to “www” sometime mid- to late-July. You should check out the regular site first, though…keep in mind that I didn’t design that…just been managing it…

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McDonald’s Feeds You on your Break?!

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag – Cynthia Davis & Fox News
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis (R-O’Fallon) has been making a few headlines around these here parts because of her newsletter June newsletter that stated the following:

“Who’s buying dinner? Who is getting paid to serve the meal? Churches and other non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer if it is warranted … Bigger governmental programs take away our connectedness to the human family, our brotherhood and our need for one another … Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals? Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.”

A variety of “liberal rags” picked up on this, including our own Riverfront Times (where she was voted “Ass Clown of the Week”…hehehehe…), and Keith Olberman’s show, “Countdown.”

For a more amusing take on it, however, I leave you with Stephen Colbert, above. He talks about her for the first minute or so and then goes on to discuss Mark Sanford (which is also funny, but not really pertinent to Rep. Davis).

Anyway, I’m just glad she’s not my representative.

Side-Note: Davis was also mentioned in an article yesterday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch saying that she, and a few other Missouri Republicans, have been attending meetings called by a California Dentist, Orly Taitz, that calls Obama’s citizenship into question. And even if his birth certificate is genuine, she says “he can’t be president because his father was Kenyan.” Seriously.

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Thanks, Rabbi…

…so, I pick up 3 CSA shares every Tuesday for our clients so that they can get a little closer to where their food comes from and eat at least an occasional healthy meal.  Yesterday, I picked up this:

csa-63009You might not be able to see them, but there are three bags of peas in there.  While I was loading up my produce, a lady asked Rabbi Brad, who was in charge, where peas come from.  His response?  “I don’t know, a pea tree?”

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I want my Tylenol!

This is just crazy talk.

According to that blurb, the FDA has voted to reduce the maximum amount of acetaminophen (Tylenol) that can be administered over-the-counter to 650 mg. For those that don’t know, “Extra Strength” falls around 1000 mg per dose. According to CNN, “a 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention population-based report, that estimated that acetaminophen was the likely cause of most of the estimated 1,600 acute liver failures each year.” Also, “overdoses of acetaminophen have been linked to 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations and 458 deaths during the 1990s.”

Now, I’ve got mixed feelings about this… First of all, if I have a headache, I take the maximum dose (1000 mg) and it goes away. Simple as that. Done it for years. Regular strength usually doesn’t work as well, hence why Extra is kinda nice. Now, I’m just going to have to take three pills of Regular Strength (equaling 975 mg) to get the same efficacy.

Here’s the issue: people that have liver issues probably shouldn’t be taking acetaminophen. Alcoholics shouldn’t take acetaminophen. People that are drunk shouldn’t take acetaminophen. EVERYONE ELSE is probably okay (please correct me if I missed one there). The reason it’s a problem is because acetaminophen is metabolized in your liver by a specific enzyme, CYP2E1 (and others, but that’s the biggie here), and this enzyme also metabolizes alcohol. Problem is, it’ll take care of the alcohol first before going after the acetaminophen. Therefore, if you take acetaminophen while you have lots of alcohol in your system, it will hang around in your blood stream. If it stays in your blood too long without being metabolized by CYP2E1, it is converted to a “free radical,” which then goes on to wreak havoc to your liver, amongst other organs, causing acute organ failure. Chronic alcoholics also have less glutathione in their bodies, and that compound is very important for clearing the other dangerous metabolites of acetaminophen.

So yes, you don’t want acetaminophen hanging around all that long. And if you have liver problems, you shouldn’t take it. Or if you’re drinking, you shouldn’t take it (take naproxen or ibuprofen instead).

But making me take an extra pill, when I detest taking pills, is just dumb.