This week on FirstNews, we kick-off (how often do you think we will use that play on words...oh, there's another one-"play"-on words) Match-up Mania. Each Friday, during the high school football season, we will be live at two rival schools. We are looking forward to seeing and showcasing all the fun and enthusiasm of our area's great students and teachers.

It brings to mind my own illustrious sports career. First, let me list all the sports I lettered in, while at school:



There, now that that's out of the way, the fact is, I was usually the last one chosen in neighborhood games for the simple reason that I lack athletic ability, not to mention competitive spirit. I was okay at kick-the-can, but they didn't include that as a team sport in school. Two out of three of my brothers were actually quite accomplished at sports. My oldest brother, Randy, was an all-state wrestler. Forget, Aqua Velva, Randy's cologne was the Eau de ' Orange...he always smelled like oranges as he tried to maintain his competitive weight. Randy was and is a small guy but all muscle...and, frankly, body hair. (I apologize if you are eating as you read this and get queasy over the thought of...well...body hair, but it is a vital part of my brother's persona.) Put simply, Randy was furry. We think it happened due to a mis-hearing of doctor's instructions when he was a baby. Randy was small as a baby...I know, all babies are small...but I'm talking tiny. One of the supplements recommended was fish oil...eight drops. Well, instead of eight drops, he was just about to get the first of eight DROPPER-FULS, when a grandma jumped in...not sure how much fish oil he actually got but I do know he always could hold his breath for a very long time and had a strong fear of hooks, nets and men named Babe...as in Winkelman. Anyway, the fish oil incident may also explain his hirsute qualities, which, in turn, may explain his Samson-like strength as a wrestler.

Another brother was a multi-sport letter-winner. He played baseball, football and was on the track team. I remember him always being covered with sweat. He was also a class officer and got great grades. He was blond and blue-eyed and married the Homecoming Queen. He drove a cool, black Monte Carlo and, to the best of my knowledge, never had a pimple. When, many years later, he started to lose his hair, my other brothers and I figured it was pay-back for being so perfect as a youth. Turns out, he's one of these guys that is actually more handsome with less hair. If you are worried that I harbor resentments toward this brother, please, know that it has been years since I've egged and TP'd his house. I've even stopped calling him late at night and hanging up.

The remaining brother had more athletic potential than I, but chose to focus on music and wise-cracks. If our school had offered boxing, he'd have been a contender. I know because I punched him, once. When I was seven and he was 17, he did the old "hit-me-in-the-stomach-as-hard-as-you-can" routine. As he tensed his stomach, I began my wind-up and, then, with completely malicious intent, jumped into the air and popped him on the jaw. Now, even a seven year old fist to the face hurts if you're not ready for it. Naturally, he was livid...and I was quickly on the lam. I would have sought out the aforementioned perfect brother but he was busy giving blood or serving soup at the senior center or something. So, I found my oldest brother, the hairy, citrus-scented wrestler. He provided a safe haven for the time being but it was years before I would allow myself to be in the same room, alone, with the recipient of my cheap shot.

It bothered me that I had no athletic ability. I would pout about it regularly. Whine about it often. Complain about the unfairness of it all. I spent so much time doing those things, I really couldn't fit in any kind of physical fitness regimen or practice of any particular sport. Finally, after a long day of such verbal sour grapes, I remember my father setting down his copy of Wisconsin Cheese Weekly and walking my way with what I thought was great understanding in his eyes. He took me aside...and left me there.

This morning on FirstNews, we had a story about a rogue kangaroo hopping down a country highway in Oklahoma. The creature was being pursued by a police officer who eventually pulled the critter over. After being stopped and asked for ID, the bouncing beast, rummaging through her pouch, was heard to say "I'm sorry...I can never find anything in here." The story reminded co-anchor Donna Pitman of her early morning sighting of a fox on the way to work. (Donna was on her way to work...not sure where the fox was heading.) Donna gave a very complete, journalistically-driven, description...reddish fur...shiny little eyes...pointy snout...big bushy tail...suspect last seen carrying a bunch of grapes from nearby tree and looking for a lazy dog to jump over...fox knows many things but associates with a hedgehog who knows one big thing.

Donna's story turned the show into a compact version of Wild Kingdom, but without Marlin Perkins or Jim Fowler. By the way, when we were at Silver Dollar City in Branson a couple weeks ago, we saw the Jim Fowler wildlife show. It was educational and entertaining with lots of cute creatures. However, Mr. Fowler was not a live part of the show. At least, I don't think he was...his image would magically appear, to impart wildlife wisdom, from the trunk of a large tree on the stage. Frankly, it was a little unsettling, as if the Lion King had undergone some serious cosmetic surgery. If this is the way Mr. Fowler shows up under regular circumstances, it could become aggravating: "Good morning, dear...how about a cup of coffee?" "Jim, I've told you a hundred times: if you want coffee you are going to have to come into the kitchen like everyone else and not just 'appear' in the wood-grain of the cupboard door!" Well, after a lifetime of adventure and conservation work, Mr. Fowler deserves to enter a room anyway he wishes. Meanwhile, back on the morning news, we got several great e-mails about wildlife in the city. Deer, raccoons, possums (I've always thought spelling it opossums seemed a little snooty) and many more of nature's army were mentioned.

One viewer recounted seeing what she thought was huge rat in her children's room. Turned out to be a baby possum which animal control told her to pick up by the tail and put outdoors, to which, she replied "PICK IT UP!?!?" Her scream must of scared it back to where it came from because it was gone when she returned to the room. There was also a message from a woman who told of one early morning when a raccoon chased her poodle back into the house through the pet door. The raccoon ran into the bathroom, so the woman shut the door and waited for help. The poodle is still in therapy.

Surprisingly, nobody told any squirrel tales or tails. I've mentioned before that my mom had a close and ongoing relationship with a white-tail squirrel when I was a kid. In fact, she continues to connect with nature...just the other day she looked out at her bird-feeder and saw a huge turkey...just the rear view. Imagine looking out your picture window and coming face to feather with a giant turkey hinder. She told me this on the phone, saying the turkey tush encounter had somehow reminded her to give me a call. Anyway, my mother's animal stories are usually quite peaceful...especially about the old white-tail squirrel. The same tranquil attitude can not be attributed to the legendary battle between my father-in-law, Mike, and a seemingly bionic squirrel named Rambo.

My father-in-law is a bright, successful executive. He can take the most complicated, emotion-soaked, politically-charged business problem and smoothly navigate to a successful resolution for all involved. But, mention Rambo the Bionic Squirrel and his eyes turn red with remembered fury. The confrontation took place in a very beautiful, brand-new home with pristine walls and scuff-free floors. Not long after moving in, they heard the patter of little feet above them. At first, being a compassionate man, Mike decided to trap the furry intruder and release him back to the wild, while Born Free reverberated from the stereo. He climbed up into the crawl space over the living room and began looking for a place to put the trap. He's pretty sure he heard squirrel laughter as he maneuvered around the insulation and wooden beams. In the darkness he saw a small opening and thought that may be how the little guy was getting in and out, making it a perfect place for the humane trap he was using. He had to make the space a little bigger so he started to punch his way through. Next thing he knew, his body was in the crawl space, his fist was in the master bathroom and his tail was in a ringer. He had punched a hole through one of the sparkling new walls...right by the hot-tub. The squirrel immediately ordered a swimming suit, scented candles and moisturizing bath beads.

Now, it was No-More-Mr. Nice-Guy. Forget trapping him...Mike would scare the little vandal out of the house. He made his way back down to the living room, went to the garage and grabbed his son's BB gun. Women swooned. Men took cover. The horses whinnied nervously and, somewhere, up above, Rambo just chuckled. With visions of a BB-covered husband, dancing in her head, my sensible mother-in-law disarmed Mike. Then, remembering the "redecorating" he had done in the bathroom just moments before, she considered her own BB gun options. The better angels of her nature prevailed and the gun went back to the garage.

To be quite honest, I am not sure how the squirrel was finally evicted. If I find out, I will tell you. I do know that Mike rigged some sort of electrical mechanism on the roof. He claimed it was to keep the squirrel out with a minor, non-lethal shock. However, that doesn't explain why he'd grab his BBQ chef's apron, spatula and large canister of paprika whenever he thought he heard something walking around up on the roof. The other temporary result of this battle was that all of Mike's kids seemed to obey him a little quicker than before...having seen the dark and frightening side of their, otherwise patient, father.

Maybe next season, Silver Dollar City can trade the Jim Fowler show for "Mike's Wonderful World of Nature...Putting the Wild Back in Wildlife!" I'm sure Rambo the Bionic Squirrel is still out there somewhere...ready for round two.

The other day on FirstNews, we had a story that featured a couple in their 80s who still enjoyed water-skiing. After the story ended, I mentioned to my morning co-horts, Donna Pitman and Jere Gish, that I used to water-ski quite a bit back in Wisconsin. Their jaws dropped...their eyes widened....and, nearly in unison, they said "YOU?" Okay, it is clear to even the most casual observer that I am older than either of these fine young journalists. Who am I kidding? I have ties older than they are. I have lots of gray hair. I have to wear my glasses more and more often and, even then, can't always see what I am supposed to see. My middle age has caused my middle to age...and spread. My chins and jowls weigh more than Donna and Jere combined. Just this morning, I noticed that when I am seated at the anchor desk with them, I look like Gulliver...a middle-aged Gulliver, both paunchy and punchy. So, my point is, I know I don't exactly look like an ex-Olympian, but I did water-ski!

My dad bought a broken-down, old fishing boat and fixed it up nicely with a 15 horsepower motor. It was behind that boat, that I learned to ski. My brothers all skied. My dad could ski. My mom tried once but took a tumble, held onto the rope and kept her mouth open...not a good combination. Well, learning behind a low-power engine made it very easy to pop-up out of the water behind larger motors. My eyesight wasn't great even then, so I had to wear my glasses with fishing bobbers affixed to the sides, so they would float if they fell off. I looked like someone they would not have saved on Baywatch. When we used to visit the Tommy Bartlett Ski, Sky and Stage show in Wisconsin Dells, all those skiers looked like they could glide off the water and onto the pages of GQ or Vogue. I looked like I should end up on the pages of Field and Stream in the fold-out section called "How to Clean Bull-Head Carp." But, I did water-ski!

It is also quite clear that my own children can't imagine the lump they find half-asleep on the sofa when they get home from school, up on skis or, even, up on his hind legs. Last Christmas, from my loving children, I received the following: three jig-saw puzzles, a couple books with large print, warm socks with a label that claimed they were "Good For Your Circulation!", a big-book of crossword puzzles with pens, a gift-certificate for new, more powerful reading glasses and coasters, no doubt, for the beer steins full of Metamucil they believe I require. All very nice presents and, truth be told, I use and enjoy all of them. But, there is no getting around that they are gifts for the man who has everything except any intention of moving about. Yes...I do spend a fair amount of time in a sitting position, reading or doing puzzles, wearing warm socks, but, once upon a time, I did water-ski!

Sometime, when we go back up to Wisconsin during the summer (admittedly a rather small window of opportunity) I fully intend to show my children that I can water-ski. I haven't attempted it for years and sometimes need at least a 35 horsepower motor to get out of bed in the morning, but I will show them. If that silly squirrel we feature on the news every six months can do it, so can I, even without a bushy tail. You'll know I did it when you see me doing the morning weather from traction. But I did and WILL water-ski!

We had some loud, rumbly nights over the weekend. That means, for lots of parents of little ones, there may have been a high premium on bed space, as the storms chased kids out of their own rooms and into mom and dad's. I received a couple e-mails about that very situation this morning. When I was a kid, the storms didn't scare me nearly as much as the idea of seeing my dad, shirtless and in his boxer shorts, so I tended to stay put.

Our own kids are pretty deep sleepers so there were very few times we ended up with all four seeking refuge. As an example of this deep slumber, while staying at grandma and grandpa's house in Wisconsin, our oldest, about six at the time, got up in his sleep and wandered into the closet where the water softener is kept. He had a big smile on his face and was laughing as we walked him back to his bed. He had and has no memory of his nocturnal stroll, however, to this day, when we really need to get his attention, we just yell "HEY, CULLIGAN MAN!"

There was a stormy night when I woke up with a great heaviness on my chest and trouble breathing...my eyesight also seemed to be impaired...everything was blurry. I opened my mouth to call out to my sleeping wife "Call 911...I'm having a heart attack or stroke or something!" and it came out "Camf 9brffbrff...m vinga mnart cack...." It was then I realized what had happened. The rumbles had forced both dogs onto the bed...the 90 pound one had taken up residence on top of me and the 50 pound one was sleeping on my head...not near it...on it. The "head" dog also tended to shed when nervous, so when I had tried to yell for help, I ended up with a mouthful of fur. It was as though I'd ordered one of those tall, Russian hats as an entree with a side order of vacuum-cleaner bag remnants, and a large glass of pencil sharpener shavings to wash it all down. Our older dog, the late, great Checkers, was by far the most skittish about storms of every creature in the household. I suspect she endured some noisy, scary nights on the streets early in her life and that fear followed her into our house.

When I think back about 11 years, I do recall a few nights we ended up with four kids and two dogs on the bed due to rough weather. None of them was shy about getting his or her share of the mattress space which left me with my head on the nightstand and one foot on the floor. It was after one particularly challenging night, that my wife, who is always looking out for me, decided we needed a bigger bed so I would always get a decent night's sleep no matter what else was going on. (During the decision-making process, one relative recommended we invest in a water bed because he and his wife had one and it was the most comfortable bed he'd ever slept in. His wife was less enthused and, for some reason, referred to it as "The Dead Sea.") Well, we did end up getting a bed more conducive to overnight interlopers.

Still, even with the extra space, my wife is often concerned that bad weather may lead me to having a poor night's rest before heading into work. She is so worried about this possibility that, if there's even the hint of a raindrop outside, she urges me to stretch out on the sofa downstairs: "You'll have it all to yourself...just in case!" She is always wanting the best for me!

Now that the kids in our house are well into their school-morning routines, it reminds me of how different they are when it comes to breakfast. According to nutritionists, it is the most important meal of the day. Around our place, it is certainly the most varied from child to child. I know that on Larry's Page, here at TheKansasCityChannel.com, Larry Moore has his famous pancake recipe available. He talks of the wonderful Saturday mornings spent making the delicious stuff for the whole family. For our family, however, breakfast is the only solitary meal of the day. (Also, I can't make pancakes and I'm not as good a father as Larry.) The fact is that, in the mornings, each person is on their own schedule and so the menu becomes very idiosyncratic. Wow! That's big word. This could almost be an NPR blog!

Let's take them one at a time:

Alexander, age 17, will take time for a bowl of whatever cereal is handy no matter what else is happening. If he is due at school by 7:45 a.m., and it's 7:43, he will pour a Jethro Bodine-size bowl and chow down. He leaves the milk out, in case he needs an emergency refill, and cereal out while he eats, because he loves to read the box. If they offer Rhodes Scholarships based on how much riboflavin is in a serving of Wheaties or how to get Cap'n Crunch through the maze and safely back to his ship, this young man should start packing for Oxford now.

The next boy, Taylor, loves the toaster. When I was a kid, I don't remember ever having to replace the toaster. In Taylor's nearly 16 years of breakfasts, we've gone through what seems like 8o of them. Pop-tarts, Eggos, toastable pancakes (sorry, Larry), French Toastables which he calls Freedom Toastables, bagels, bread...you name it and he will toast it. He likes his stuff well-done...everything is Cajun style when it pops up. There are times we've had to refer to dental records in order to determine if the result was toast or a bagel or a waffle. The upside of Taylor's love of all things burnt, is that we know our smoke alarms work. Like the guitar player in Spinal Tap, Taylor would love to add an 11 to the darkness knob. If his mother catches him about to eat the charred remains of a once recognizable breakfast, she will scrape the top layer of ash off into the sink. Once we thought we saw the faint visage of Art Garfunkle in the sink, but we couldn't convince anyone to make pilgrimages to view it, so we washed it down the in-sink-erator.

Samantha is not a big morning person. She doesn't really like to eat traditional breakfast foods. However, if she can have something like rice with a bunch of vegetables and spices thrown in, a sleeve of saltine crackers and a strawberry smoothie, she will eat...and eat...and eat. Somewhere out there, there are future college roomies who will never know what to expect when they open the dorm mini-fridge. It must be good fuel for her as she doesn't really stop moving, talking, laughing, running, dancing the rest of the day.

Our youngest, Harrison, is pretty open to any menu for breakfast. He will eat an omelet or cereal or toast...all without complaint. However, he does insist on having the television on The History Channel. Something about grainy black and white footage helps his digestion. We had to curtail the viewing and eating combo for a time when he started calling his mother Field Marshall Rommel and telling me to ignore the ticking brief case he kept sliding under my chair.

Speaking of my lovely wife, she believes in a very healthy breakfast. There's so much fruit piled up in her bowl it looks like Carmen Miranda is trying to resurface after a diving mission. She doesn't go in for the brightly-colored, highly-sugared cereals. Her choices have unpronounceable names like Murpenflaka or Nutsberriestwigsandleaves. She never has to worry about the rest of us stealing her breakfast foods.

As a baby, I'm told, like a lot of little ones, I liked Cheerios. Then, as I got a little older, my breakfast was usually toast with peanut butter and a class of chocolate milk. In college, I usually grabbed a handful of Oreos on my way out the door. Truly, the breakfast of champions. Today, having come full circle, and circles, I am back to Cheerios. Every night I pour some into a plastic container which I grab at 2:30 in the morning as I head to work. I eat them, dry, on the way to the station. If that sounds kind of pathetic, don't worry. I also surprise myself by throwing in two dark chocolate Dove candies. I do this because my mom says dark chocolate is good for my blood pressure and because the wrappers have inspirational messages inside like "Go to your special place" and "Smile more today." This was all well and good until this morning. I ate the chocolate and checked out the wrapper which said "Maybe you should try eating a better breakfast and knock off the sweets, tubby."

Over the next several weeks, homes all around our area will shift into a new gear and new year, as schools get up and going again. The first step has to do with supplies. When I was a kid, you got a couple pencils, a notebook, which, in my politically incorrect youth, was usually a Big Chief Tablet, some Crayolas...the hoity-toity kids had the 64 colors with the sharpener in the back...a ruler and that was about it. Today, the schools make sure we get lists...long lists of what's needed to excel. While helpful, these lists are also a little exasperating. You need a particular kind of three-ring binder...made with titanium in the former Yugoslavia. You need a disposable camera and a calculator so complicated that even NASA has passed it by in favor of a less intimidating model. You still need pencils and pens but also colored pencils, various bits of charcoal, paint-brushes and, if possible, a stoic, rural couple, one of whom is holding a pitchfork. You need to bring foam. Yes, foam. You need lots of file folders and notecards. You need a gallon of distilled water. You need safety goggles. (We've purchased enough pairs of goggles in the last dozen years or so, that, if bi-planes ever come back in style as the main mode of air transportation, we will be a very wealthy family, having cornered the market on eye-gear.) Over the years, I've learned that the list is only a starting point. The "I need this for school" refrain is ongoing and doesn't end until the last day of school. With four kids spread out in three schools, by the time my wife is done with the supply shopping, I feel like I am living in an Office Max. (She's a teacher, too, so that adds to pile of stuff. Although, this year, I have found the Mr. Potato Head "Let's Get Ready for the Day" poster helpful and the "What's The Weather" velcro-ized forecast board, invaluable.) Once you load the pack-mules necessary to carry all the supplies to school, you're about ready for the first day.

In our house, the first day went smoothly. All the kids got up on their own, or at first call up the stairs. This helpful eagerness usually lasts until day two. One by one, the four of them came down the stairs...washed, brushed, combed, dressed. They had some breakfast...grabbed their lunch bags...prepared the night before!...made a final check of back-packs and headed out the door. It was really quite phenomenal. When it goes that smoothly, it is the work of my wife. When it goes wrong, it is the work of her husband. For example, last year I was concerned about the kids being turned away at the door because I had not yet paid the additional fees...for books, activities, yearbooks, etc. With the four of them, this amounts to just a little less than the Gross National Product of Latvia. It took a lot of extra time, getting them all in disguises and then sneaking them in through the loading dock.

All of our kids are too old for us to actually walk them into the classroom anymore. When our oldest son, Alexander, was going to kindergarten, a co-worker warned me, that my wife and I would be crying when we left Alexander's classroom that first day. We didn't. Alex was so excited and ready for school we didn't have a moment's doubt. The same was true for numbers two and three. But, when we took our youngest to his first day of school, my wife did, indeed burst into tears as we got to the parking lot. "Well, it took four kids but it finally got to you, didn't it? Our last little one off to school...." I said, with tears welling up in my own eyes and a lump in my throat. "No, " she sobbed. "It's not that, exactly. It just hit me that now I'm stuck with just you at home."

Eventually, my wife solved even that problem by using the day for "work-related errands" and a "preparation meeting" with her co-teachers at a coffee shop. She left me at home alone but with a stack of construction paper, round edged scissors and a box of Crayolas...64 colors and a sharpener. I've come up in the world.

Thank you for all the e-mails while I was on vacation. However, despite the overwhelming number of requests, I am writing another blog. Takes me back to the days I played piano at a Sheraton Hotel and would ask the crowd "Any requests?" "Yeah, please, play somewhere else." To which I would reply "Never heard of it but hum a few bars and I'll try to pick it up." This has been your old, bad joke moment of the day.

*While I was away, the FirstNews team showed pictures of themselves back on their first days of school. I'm glad I was away. I'm not sure I have a photo from the actual first day of any particular school year. No, not because they were being chiseled out of limestone and were dropped on the way to mastodon-riding practice. The fact is my mother had a Brownie. One of those you would hold down in front of you and look through a foggy view-finder on top of the boxy camera. We once got an entire roll of film back that featured nothing but shoes and light fixtures. My mom was not going to give Ansel Adams a run for his money. There was another time...at the homecoming parade...when my brothers asked her to use the Kodak Super-8 and capture the event on film. We got a fleeting glimpse of some of the queen's court and a fuzzy look at the band but, mostly, we saw stop signs. Completely in focus...not shaking at all...stop signs. We counted about eight shots of stop signs in the three minute docu-mom-entary. So, our family was a little photographically challenged...in some ways, I liked it much better than today.

Now, there are cameras everywhere taking pictures and videos of everything at anytime. Cell-phones with cameras are standard equipment. In this digital age, we can capture a moment and send it around the world in a seconds. My wife takes great digital photos. At least, I think they're great. Usually she never gets around to actually printing any of them so I am going by what the images look like on the tiny, in-camera screen. (I look thinner in the small pictures so I'm okay with that.) After family get-togethers, everyone e-mails their photos which is nice but I miss actually holding a picture in my hands, fondly remembering the good times together and, then, using a Sharpie to give my brothers Groucho mustaches, crossed-eyes, horns and tails. To this day, I have trouble walking by a magazine on anyone's coffee table without wanting to do a little magic-marker-makeover on whomever is on the cover. I have to wear a cow-bell anytime I enter the magazine section of a bookstore.

*Before wrapping this up, I have to make a quick correction on a previous blog in which I accused my father-in-law of grazing on grapes while shopping. He insists he never took a grape but pleads the fifth on pea pods, beans and the occasional half-gallon of chocolate ice cream.

*Congratulations to all the great runners, walkers, strollers and, like me, standers at the Fifth Annual Stroke, Stroll and Run yesterday morning. It was a cool, cloudy, comfy morning to be out for a wonderful cause!

*As I mentioned in the last blog, the main reason I was off last week was to help get the kids off to their first day of school. More about that tomorrow but I do want to mention a little exchange my wife and youngest boy had last evening. Harrison is ten and in the fifth grade. He saw a commercial about parents dropping off their child at college and said to his mom: "That makes me a little sad." "Because, your older brother is only a year away from going off to college?" she asked. "No. Not because of him. Because of me. When I go off to college you and dad will be very lonely because you named me and that means you've gotten attached to me." He's got that right.

I have been at KMBC Channel 9 for many years. They continue to investigate the possibility of some sort of gas leak in the building to explain why I was hired in the first place. In the early years, people watched FirstNews by candlelight. We had traffic reports, back then, that included horse & buggy back-ups on I-435, and, if you've ever had a horse back up on you, you know that's unpleasant. My forecast was based exclusively on the wooly caterpillar and if my left knee ached. (Frankly, there was not much difference in my accuracy level.) I share all of this by way of saying that I am on vacation next week. My kids head back to school and I like to be home for the first morning. When they were little, it was to offer moral support...now, I just laugh and point. "Guess who gets to sit home all day and watch TV, NOW!?! HA HA HA!" I have, however, quit my former practice of dancing through the neighborhood, holding the television remote over my head while chanting "It's mine. It's all mine!"

I've been around so long, I have quite a bit of vacation time. In fact, the powers that be here at Channel 9, strongly encourage me to be on vacation as often as possible. Bryan Busby has also been here awhile and has a lot of vacation time. When he is off, we get worried e-mails asking where he is and when he'll return. When I am off, we get e-mails of thanks and the "what took you so long?" type. One time, there were several...six, to be exact...e-mails begging KMBC to get me back on the air. I was flattered until I realized the six messages were from my wife, four kids and dog. (Until then, I didn't realize the dog used the computer but it did explain all the visits to www.cutepoodles.com.)

Before giving you all a break for about ten days, I'd like to share a great idea for you and your family, for next weekend, Sunday August 20, to be exact. The 5th Annual Stroke, Stroll and Run is taking place at 7:00 a.m. at the HyVee at 122nd and State Line. You can find out more at www.soskc.org. It is a terrific way to help stroke survivors and their families right here in our area.

Okay. That's it. The saddest part about not writing these things for a week is that, according to our records, readership goes way up when I stop blogging. Enjoy your vacation from me and keep my poor family in your thoughts as they have me around even more than usual!

It is school physical time! Whoopee! Yahoo! Okay, the enthusiasm is forced and false. Yesterday, I accompanied our second oldest son to his sports physical and I can't do justice to his obvious excitement. Let's put it this way, if he'd run into a zombie on the way to the clinic, the zombie would've said "Hey, lighten up." To his credit, he did make the effort to shower and brush his teeth. He even put on clean socks...such is his respect for the medical profession. He's doing fine...gained an appropriate amount of weight and grew a decent number of inches. I could have told them that, just based on our grocery bills. There are evenings when we actually catch him wearing a snorkle and working his way through the pantry, fridge and freezer. I did ask the doctor to check to see if his legs were hollow, as he must be putting the food somewhere. We have gotten to the point where we don't ask him or his older brother to help bring the groceries in from the car since the purchases tend to disappear before even reaching the cupboard...bags and all. (We often wondered why they insisted on paper not plastic at the store until they said that, while the plastic had a "nice bouquet and fruity after-taste," the paper bags are more filling.) Speaking of grocery shopping, the boys are not allowed even in the stores anymore. They learned, from their grandpa, the art and science of "grazing" while walking through the supermarket. His "Free Samples" radar is finely tuned and, every now and then, he grabs a grape or two. He does it with style and grace...the Cary Grant of the produce aisle. The big boys have taken this subtle behavior to extremes...a broasted chicken here...a "Happy 85th Birthday, Myron" cake there. After they'd visit, the store looked like there had been a pre-ice storm run on the place.

In any case, the boy is in good health. His eyesight is great...his hearing, selective.

From infant to toddler to pre-school, it feels like you are at the doctor's office more than home, at times. Immunizations are a big reason for some of those visits. No matter how fun the scene painted on the examination room wall may be, the needles still hurt. Of all four kids, our daughter never screamed or, even, teared up due to shots for two possible reasons. One, she didn't want to give her brothers the satisfaction and, two, females are tougher than males. (See, dear, I have learned something over the years.) I knew the boys were growing up and shifting their priorities, when they made a point of not making a sound at inoculation time because the nurse was cute. So, you've got all the well-visits on the calendar to which you add the inevitable sick-visits and, pretty soon, you're including your doctor on birthday and Christmas card lists and asking him or her to co-sign on your second mortgage. With a first child, you tend to run to the doctor at the first sniffle. By number four, while still vigilant, you are less likely to over-play the situation. Kind of like, if a first child attempts to eat a Cheerio off the floor, you knock it from his hand and begin the de-tox procedure which may very well include a call to poison control. When number four comes along, you are actually encouraging him to fight with the dog over spilled food both to "build his immunity" and avoid getting out the mop.

When kids start school they become Petri dishes carrying backpacks. They bring home everything and share it. I don't want to get too graphic here but there were periods of time when all four kids were sick at once and the house was like a cruise ship after a buffet of bad shrimp. The Haz-Mat team showed up on several occasions just because of the odor and brownish haze that had formed on the outside of the place. As unpleasant as it could be to walk from room to room and hear what sounded like auditions for a remake of The Exorcist- it was far better to have them all sick simultaneously, than get into the games of germ tag that kept us knee deep in used tissues and stumbling through a seemingly permanent cloud of Lysol for weeks on end.

With four kids, having all the regular kid/health situations and a few not-so-regular...we were at the offices so often, my wife had a mini-fridge installed and brought her own TV remote for the waiting room. The staff drew the line when she tried to put up different wall-paper. I found the waiting room somewhat nostalgic and comforting because of the presence of Highlights Magazine which seemed about the same as it was when I was a kid. As a slightly strange child, I always thought it would be interesting if Goofus would jump onto the Timbertones (that family made of sticks) page and start taunting them with his Zippo lighter. You just knew Goofus had a lighter. Goofus would be about to shove one Timbertone into a pencil sharpener, when Gallant would appear and save the day.

Yesterday's visit was a little different than the early days. First of all, our son drove himself to the doctor. Secondly, he politely asked me to stay in the waiting room rather than sit in for the actual exam. (I was happy to oblige as there is something disturbing and a little intimidating about your son having more hair on his legs than you do. Also, I have made it a special mission, once my children hit puberty, to never see them wearing anything less than long pants, three shirts and a top-coat. It makes trips to the beach uncomfortable but that's the way it goes. By the way, the feeling is mutual.) The third difference in this trip from little kid appointments, was that our son insisted on paying the doctor bill with his own money. Okay, that one is a lie. I'm still a little delusional from revisiting my "Terror in Timbertone Town" scenario. As a matter of fact, I don't think I paid the bill either. I asked them to send it to Gallant....since he thinks he's such hot stuff!

When you watch the afternoon and evening weathercasts, you hear about the Weather Watchers. Well, not to be out-done, FirstNews also has some folks out there who take time, at five in the morning, to e-mail their weather conditions and many other things. One regular is named Bill, but we call him The Big Wind from the North! He lives in Platte County and lets us all know when his "cooler relatives" start to blow in. Evelyn, near Smithville, is great about rainfall and snowfall reports, as well as the best cake-baker in the universe. Then, there is Kerry of Tonganoxie...and, his mom, Connie. Sometimes I feel a bit like a cyber-Dr. Phil, as the two of them doing a little, good-natured sparring via the world-wide-web. The other day, Connie scolded me for sending wind but no beneficial rain in the weekend storms. She wasn't totally surprised that I'd be full of hot air but provide nothing helpful. Connie also gets after me if it rains too much and she can't hang clothes on the line!

BLOG WITHIN A BLOG ALERT! Clotheslines!

We interrupt our current blog for BREAKING NEWS just into the blog center: I miss clotheslines. I know some folks still use them...like Connie...but most of us just toss the wet stuff into a dryer. When I was a kid, everyone had one. Many's the night, during a spirited game of Kick the Can, I found them...neck first. My mom's first and last time on a horse, involved a clothesline. But, most of the time, seeing sheets, pants, shirts flapping in the breeze is soothing. At our first house, my wife and I tried to put in a clothesline just to achieve that effect and save money on utilities. We were so proud. Our first house! Our home-made clothesline! We took the first basket of clothes to the line...marching majestically...took the initial t-shirt out of the pile and clipped it to the cord. As we stepped back to admire our achievement, both ends of the line fell inward and the whole thing collapsed. One little t-shirt and it was a soggy Armageddon. I still like clotheslines as long as I had nothing to do with their construction.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

In addition to climatological info and family concerns, Kerry also keeps everyone posted on what's going on in his neck of the woods and, this week, that means the Leavenworth County Fair! It will be warm but fun on the fairgrounds. When I was growing up, the Sauk County Fair in Baraboo, Wisconsin, was as close to Disneyland as I ever got. (Just saying the name "Baraboo" over and over while speeding up the bluffs toward the fair was an "E" ticket for me. Try it today...as you are going up or down in an elevator starting saying "BarabooBarabooBaraboo." It's fun and has the added bonus of giving you plenty of personal space.) It was at the Sauk County Fair, that I learned what happens when you take cotton candy, a hot dog, a chocolate ice cream cone, a bag of cheese curds and mix them with eight rides on a Tilt-A-Whirl. It was at the fair that I won my first pet: a gold fish swimming in bright purple water in a baggie. He endured the Tilt-A Whirl better than I. It was at the fair that I saw young people my age with drive and determination...showing their sheep and pigs and horses and winning ribbons and acclaim. I was inspired to show my pet but they didn't have a category for gold fish in purple water in baggies looking nauseated. It was at the fair I learned that girls are not impressed by someone afraid to go in the haunted house or on the Ferris Wheel. Unfortunately, I was 22 years old at the time. I was not allowed to attend the Demolition Derby at the fair because there were too many "roughnecks" hanging around, as my mom would put it. A "roughneck" is several steps above a "ragamuffin" on my mom's scale of characters of whom to be wary. All-in-all, I loved going to the fair because a kid could approximate what it must be like to be an adult...all the bright lights, interesting smells and slight feeling of "anything can happen." Now, that I am an adult, I realize, some days, those bright lights belong to oncoming trains, those smells usually mean there's something that needs to be cleaned up and that "anything can happen" feeling may quickly translate into "how did that happen?"

The best thing about a fair is that it can make everyone feel like that wide-eyed kid again. So head on out to the Leavenworth County Fair, see the sights, drink plenty of water and, if you run into Connie, tell her I'm sorry about the heat. I'm pretty sure she'll blame me.

Thank you to all the great gentlemen at The Grand Court in Overland Park for a wonderful morning, yesterday. They have a men's club second to none and it was my honor and pleasure to visit with them over donuts and other breakfast goodies. I've visited The Grand Court before and I am always impressed by the beauty of the place and the friendliness of the residents and staff. Their motto is Exceptional Senior Living, and they sure live up to it. A trip to a place as terrific as The Grand Court, takes me back to childhood...my first...not the second which I hope to begin any day now.

Up until the age of six, I lived, for the most part, at a retirement village. It was called Bluffview Courts and my dad was the manager. The barracks-like apartments had been used by workers at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant during World War II and the Korean War. By the late 50s, it was a plot of land overgrown with weeds and over-run by snakes. The buildings were falling apart. My dad and some partners made a deal with the government, bought the property and created Bluffview Courts Retirement Community with my dad acting as on-site manager. At first thought, you may think it was a boring place for a pre-school kid to live but that was not at all the case. It was like having 500 grandmas and grandpas!

My real grandmas worked at the little grocery store on the property. So, no matter what time of day I'd wander in, I was sure to get a free treat. My temptation of choice, at age four, was a fudgcicle. To this day, a whiff of overly-cooled air takes me back to the MidWay Grocery and I must find and devour a box of fudgcicles. They issue a special alert at area stores when I approach the frozen treat section. If you ever hear "Code Ice Dweeb" you'll know I am in the vicinity.

There were big pipes that pushed through the ground at one end of our apartment building. They were from the septic system. They had been painted and decorated like giant toad-stools which seemed to invite a child to play there, as whiffs of past glories filled the air. Many times I would sit by those pipes and drop Lincoln Logs...Matchbox Cars...the occasional stuffed animal down the tubes. I'd let them go and then run from pipe to pipe to hear them land with a "splush." I like to think it was all done in the name of science but one of the maintenance men didn't appreciate my pioneering spirit. He was a retired mailman, named Bill, but worked part-time helping keep Bluffview looking good. Just as I was about to send GI Joe on the mission of his life, Bill pulled up in his truck. "Hey! Stop that. This is not a playground. You could fall in and then what?!" Well, I had never considered the fact I could be a pawn in my own twisted experiment and, frankly, the pipes seemed a little small for such an occurrence. Still, being mostly an obedient child, I stopped sending my toys hurtling into the pits and gave up whatever chance I may have had to be the Baby Jessica of my generation. Years later, that same Bill, married one of my grandmas. He was 70 and she was 73. My grandma said they were looking for a house near a school. Hope springs eternal...kind of like the fumes from the brightly colored septic pipes of my toddlerhood.

Bluffview was filled with characters. Leo had a cute little Sheltie dog and loved to talk with me about fishing. Spike had worked for Chrysler and had some scale model replicas of the cars he'd help build that he let me play with...under supervision and far from the aforementioned pipes. There was a guy, named Guy. I think he, in the dead of night, put fish in the pond so I'd have something to catch. A family named Provenzano used to come up from Chicago for weekends. Grandpa Provenzano would sit on the front steps of their apartment in his t-shirt and smoke giant cigars. The fact that a grown man would sit, in public, in his undershirt, fascinated a Lutheran country boy like me since we didn't even say the word "undershirt" for fear of it leading to "underwear" from which it was a short hop to impure thoughts. He could blow smoke rings and make smoke come out of his ears. Really, he could. There was one woman who must have sat by her front window all day, just waiting to run outside and offer passers-by apple juice. Another lady, named Cecil, was an artist and created some of the most unusual paintings anywhere, for which she won awards but about which she would never divulge her technique. Another woman, again from Chicago, named Harriet was one of smartest people I ever knew. She seemed to know something about everything. Remember Ken Jennings...the super champion from Jeopardy...the guy that looks like Brain from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain? Harriet would have cleaned his intellectual clock without batting an eye.

This was a very social group. Sometimes they would head into town for shopping or to keep appointments. They would pile into what they lovingly called The Varicose Van. They, also, had a bowling team called the Pepper Pots. My grandma threw the slowest rolling bowling ball in the world. She could let it fly...go to the little girl's room...stop at the refreshment stand...visit with some friends...balance her checkbook...finish whatever mystery she was currently reading....and still get back to the lane before the first pin grudgingly tipped over. Sometimes the pins didn't budge. They actually seemed to be laughing at the ball. In addition to the bowling team, they had an organization called the Bluffview Neighbors Club that held socials frequently. I would sneak in to eat the food and listen to the stories. Back then there was a show on TV starring the mustachioed Mitch Miller. He had been a record producer in the fifties and had earned Frank Sinatra's enduring hostility by having the singer record a song, during a career low-point, called Mama Will Bark. By the sixties, Mitch Miller was the host of a sing-along program. He'd pretend to direct all of us at home as we followed the bouncing ball to "Sing Along With Mitch!" At the Bluffview Neighbors get-togethers, I would guzzle some chocolate milk...to get the right facial hair look...and then lead the residents in song...using a spoon as my baton. I was about four and it was the last time in my life I ever got a group of people to follow my lead.

So, thanks again to the Grand Guys of The Grand Court for the good talk, good fun and good memories. Now, I have to get started on my second childhood.

Back in the Rat Pack days, Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin often looked out over the nightclub audience, and said, "Who are all these people and how did they get in my room?" Lately, I could say that and mean it...in my own home. It is called the SLEEP-OVER! My wife and I have four children but some nights it swells to five or six or more and other nights that number shrinks to one or two. I know that sleeping over at a friend's house is nothing new but, at least in our house, it seems to happen more frequently than when I was a kid.

I was not a great sleep-over guest. Once, I went to a friend's house for a long-planned not-too-much slumber party. We were going to stay up late, eat lots of junk and look up naughty words in the dictionary. (Webster's was about as close to adult content as we could get.) About 10:00 p.m., I got homesick. I wanted to be in my own bed. I didn't want to stay up late because I knew bad things happened when you were up past midnight. I was sure the pastor, in Sunday's sermon, would refer to us as examples of warped young minds if we used the dictionary in a sinful manner. I missed my dog. I felt so far from home. So, I made up an excuse about having forgotten something...leaving the impression I'd be coming right back. I made the long trip across the street to my house and stayed there.

Part of my problem with sleep-overs, when I was young, was that I just couldn't seem to stay awake late enough. Even on New Year's Eve, when my parents would be out and my grandma stayed with me, the two of us would settle in to watch Guy Lombardo and his orchestra from the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. (Lombardo was sort of like Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve but wearing tuxedos instead of t-shirts and having sponsors like Geritol instead of Mountain Dew.) Grandma and I didn't even make it to the New Year Eastern Time. When my parents got home, they would wake us both up...we'd toast each other with the grape juice we'd poured about three hours earlier. Since we were both mostly asleep, the toasts went something like this "Frappy Schmoonear." "Shtame to yourff!" "ZZZZZZZZ." Sadly, this described my New Year's Eve blowouts well into my college years. Well, that's not exactly true. My grandma remarried and was out on the town on New Year's Eve and I have boycotted TV on December 31 ever since Guy Lombardo died.

Despite my problems with sleep-overs, I kept trying. Usually, the events were scheduled for Friday nights. School nights were obviously out and Saturday nights were unlikely because everyone was expected to be up and awake for church Sunday morning. Sleep-overs were also a rare deal so, after much planning and anticipation, when the big day arrived it was not taken lightly. My best friend and I had a couple of modestly successful sleep-overs. We would make sure we were stocked up on Cheetohs and chocolate and ice cream. We'd watch all of the shows on ABC. (Note to Channel 9 management: even as a child, I was a loyal employee.) The Brady Bunch was up first...I liked Jan...my friend liked Marcia. Years later, I interviewed "Marcia" aka Maureen McCormick. I told her her nose seemed to be mostly healed after that football throwing incident, asked her if she stayed in touch with Jan and said I thought cousin Oliver was a twerp. As the security guards dragged me from the room, I whined (do it with me) "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" Later, Room 222 made us feel socially relevant and The Odd Couple let us feel like we were in the big city. (When I had the chance to talk with Jack Klugman, I thanked him for being a good companion on those Friday nights and wondered why I'd never received my winnings from the poker games we'd played with Murray the Cop. He smiled a Quincy-like smile and said, "I know you...Maureen McCormick warned me. Security!") The show we liked best, though, from the ABC prime-time line-up, was Love, American Style. It seemed pretty racy to a couple of grade school kids with all those bedroom doors slamming and women wearing pajamas and men making comments about the birds and the bees. Besides, we knew all the words to the opening song.

After filling our heads with TV...we filled our stomachs with goodies. Ah, for those days when you could eat anything without heartburn or weight-gain. Now, if I eat a hot-fudge sundae after 6:25 p.m., I automatically gain 12.7 pounds by morning. We played some cut-throat games of Monopoly and talked about making crank phone calls. It was all talk since we were scared to death that someone would know it was us. Once, we pretended like we were going to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night but it looked pretty creepy outside at 2:00 a.m. and what would we do once we were out there? Mostly we just ate and waited for midnight when Lenny's Inferno sponsored by Crazy TV Lenny, would hit the air. It was hosted by a ghoulish looking fellow named Mr. Mephisto and featured really bad horror movies. Not the ultra-violent stuff. Just visits from your friends Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein. The movies were incidental...it was the silliness of Mr. Mephisto that made us watch. He'd come up out of a coffin and start cracking jokes. Many years later, I'd find myself laughing at something Mr. Mephisto had said...just then getting the full meaning of his jokes. The movies didn't usually scare us, but one time, after Dracula A Go Go or something like that, I awoke at 3:3o a.m. to find my friend, pale as a ghost, staring right at me. "You look like a vampire! You really do...are you still Joel...are you going to kill us all and drink our blood? Answer me!" I leaped from the couch, spread the blanket out like wings and ran around the room...laughing maniacally. Until his father came in and told me to pipe down. When a father entered the room, then, you knew real fear. Still, from that night on, my friend got would eye me nervously whenever I opened a ketchup packet at the A&W. Ironically, this same guy earned spending money in college by selling his plasma.

Like I mentioned, when I was a kid, sleep-overs were a very "sometime" sort of thing. Today, it seems to happen almost every other day. This morning, for example, I went downstairs at 2:15 a.m....on my way to work...and I discovered our youngest son on the sofa, playing a hand-held video game...Game-Boy DSPlus-extra-super-dooper or something and half-watching cartoons. "Hi, Dad...be careful driving to work, " Harrison happily chirped. I was half-way downtown when I realized there had been another kid sitting in the living room, also playing a hand-held game. Now, it is quite possible I was told someone was sleeping over but I don't remember. A couple days ago, it was our daughter that had someone over for what seemed like several days in a row. She also stayed at other kids' houses for a few nights. At some point, mark my words, we are all going to sit down for breakfast and have other peoples' kids staring at us over the cereal bowls, while our kids are making small talk with some other set of confused parents.

There was one time, last fall, when Harrison went to a friend's house...Taylor was staying with his buddies because they had an early start at some forensics tournament the next day....Alex was out of town on a field trip...my wife and I thought we'd be down to just one child for a Friday night. In fact, we encouraged her to stay with a friend. She had other plans and ended up inviting two or twenty friends over to stay at our house for the night. We went from three boys and a girl to a sorority house.

Honestly, I do, occasionally, feel I am trapped in a full-size, human shell game...never too sure whom I may encounter when I walk into my own kitchen. Most of all, I'm a little jealous by how many times my kids are the invited or invitees and how comfortable they all are with the whole sleep-over scenario. In fact, I feel inspired. I'm going to try and recapture that youthful moment and, this time, I will not get homesick. So, if your doorbell rings, and you see a pudgy, graying, 45 year old man, standing on your front porch with a sleeping bag and a sack of M&M cookies, before you dial 911, please, make sure it's not me.

Though they'd probably not readily admit it, I think I have proof that the kids are starting to get a little tired of being off from school. Yesterday, they asked me to play a bored....I mean, board game. It was my oldest son's idea. I choose to believe it was because he wanted to spend some quality time with dear, old dad and his delightful siblings rather than because he was temporarily not able to access the internet on his lap-top. His game of choice is Trivial Pursuit. I remember when the game first hit the store shelves. The sister of a friend of mine worked in the factory where they printed the question cards. Whenever some "irregular" cards came through, she'd give them to my friend and he'd pass them onto me. You'd have to keep an eye out for some obvious mistakes like knowing that Madame Curie did not win the sumo wrestling championships in 1966. (That's an easy one...everyone knows Madame Curie was not a sumo wrestler. Her passion was curling.) Back before I was married, I used to play marathon sessions of Trivial Pursuit with my next door neighbor. He was much smarter than me. Or should that be I...no, me...no...myself. See, just thinking about that guy makes me...uh, I...me... self-conscious about my obvious lack of brain power. We would drink milk, eat a bag of store-brand chocolate chip cookies and play the game. Talk about your wild times. He always said I should be better at the game since anything with "trivial" in the title is right up my alley. I think that was a compliment. Or not. I'm not....I mean "Me" not sure.

Frankly, I've been told by my wife and kids, that I'm frustrating to play games with because I just don't have much competitive spirit. I really don't care if I win or lose. Maybe it is because I am such a good sport or it's a defense mechanism or a way to cover up my deep disappointment or just because I lose a lot. My wife, on the other hand, plays for keeps. Once, playing Scrabble, it looked like I might actually pull one out. Quickly, her words of choice changed in tone: "pain"..."injury"..."hemorrhage." On that last one, I just didn't have the nerve to point out that she was not allowed to pull whatever letters she needed out of the bag. I put "hi" on the board and then passed on the remainder of my turns. She won.

When the kids were little, we'd play CandyLand. Even if the little ones got tired of playing, my wife would insist we, the two of us, finish the game to see who would win. I never knew there was such a violent edge to that game until we played, one on one, what she referred to as "Commando CandyLand." All of a sudden, the Peppermint Stick Forest was more like the Rambo National Woods. I was picking those gingerbread people out of my ears two days later. Don't even ask how Chutes and Ladders used to unfold...I'm still having flashbacks. I have no doubt, she'd reduce Donald Trump to tears if they ever played Monopoly: "Okay, Donny Boy...I've got four hotels on Boardwalk so I want forty bazillion dollars and your hair." She takes her game-playing so seriously, that one little-known provision of The Patriot Act, prohibits her from even owning the game Risk. Once, we were playing Battleship at Grandma and Grandpa's house at the lake and she had successfully hit all my vessels. That wasn't enough for her, so she went down to the shoreline and sunk the pontoon boat.

As for yesterday's game of Trivial Pursuit, just about everybody (not me...I...Joel) had a piece of the pie. All four kids were nailing questions about art and literature, history, science, you name it. My little wheel of misfortune looked pretty sad and empty. It was particularly embarrassing to get beaten so soundly in light of the fact that we were playing the oldest deck of question cards possible...the original set from 25 years ago. This is stuff I should know and these little late-comers should not. I kept hoping for a question that would have the answer "Soviet Union" just because I was the only one old enough to really remember when it existed. Apparently, there is some show on VH-1 called I Love the 70s which has leveled the playing field with regard to trivial information. Not everything can be blamed on that show, however. I mean, how does a ten year old know who Nietzsche is AND what he believed? Why would a 13 year old know the rules of cricket? How did a 15 year old know the theme song from the TV show, My Mother the Car? What in the world is a 16 year old doing with knowledge of the chemical make-up of the whirligig beetle?

Just as it appeared I would be the only player not to get a piece of the pie, I got a question I could answer: "What is your middle name?" Now, I will admit, I've never heard that question before, during a game, and it seemed odd that that question would fall under the geography category, but I didn't argue. I took my blue pie piece and quit while I was on top. Okay, you're thinking that my kids took pity on me and gave me an obviously bogus question. You may be right, but, at this stage of the game...the big game, not just the board game...I will take any break I can!

Hey! Relief is here! No, not from another one of these mind-numbing blogs...from the triple digits. By this afternoon we should be almost 20 degrees cooler than we've been the last few afternoons and we even got a little rain in the bargain. Certainly, it will get hot again and that's when we all want to remember the Channel 9 Fan Club (there's more info right here on the website) to help our friends and neighbors stay safely cool. Heat does kill more people, worldwide, than any other weather situation. I am lucky to live and work in cool comfort. Okay, having said all of that, let me say this: I have never quite warmed up to a/c.

It goes back to childhood. I don't think I knew one family with central air when I was little. When you did see a portable unit hanging out of a window, you usually felt kind of bad, figuring someone in that house was sickly and couldn't have the windows open. We never had any kind of a/c, in the house or car, when I was growing up. My mom didn't like it, anyway. She said that closing up all the windows and doors made her feel like she was living in a cave and, despite being a little batty, she didn't want to do that. I almost always slept with the window in my room wide open. You could hear the crickets and other creatures. On Friday and Saturday nights you might hear a neighbor yell out "EUCHRE!" That is pronounced "yooker" and is a card game everyone in Wisconsin knows how to play. In fact, you are not allowed to get a driver's license, graduate from high school or buy a house until you know how to play and what it means to "trump your partner's ace." If you take all the tricks, without any help from your partner, it is called having a "loner." The successful completion of that effort will sometimes cause a player to yell "EUCHRE!" One night, the open window allowed me to hear a car slam into one of the elm trees out front. This was just as Dutch Elm Disease was starting to move through our town and the trees were showing the signs. The uninjured driver insisted the tree had jumped out in front of him in a suicide attempt.

As for air conditioning in the car, it was the 2/65 kind for us: open 2 windows and go 65. It's actually a good thing I never got very used to the moving chill since in every car I've ever owned, the air conditioning has been weak and, eventually, non-existent. I just roll down the windows, open the vent, crank up the fan and sit in an ice bucket-seat.

I have no proof and I may just be completely off the beam, here, (not unlike my weather forecasts) but I think, in some ways, air conditioning may make us a little more likely to get summer colds. In the course of a day, from the house to the car to the store to the office...we are moving from the hot stuff to the big chill a lot. Our own personal thermostats never have the chance to adjust. I read once that some historians blame air conditioning for the growth and inefficiency of government. Before a/c, everyone got out of Washington DC, for example, because of the stifling heat and humidity. It kept representatives back in their hometowns and more in touch with constituents and limited the time Congress was in session. Please, feel free to insert your own "full of hot air" joke, here.

Around our house, I try to set the temperature at 78 because I read, once, that that was a good number for conservation and expense purposes. Mysteriously, it seems to end up closer to 75 by the end of the day. Everyone denies touching it. Maybe it's the dog...I mentioned before that he likes to sprawl out on top of the vent. The desire for a cooler indoor climate may be my fault. When we first moved into the house, back during a hot July, I accidentally bumped the thermostat while carrying in a box-spring or something. It set the temperature around 60. By morning, it was like October in the house. We actually had to rake the carpet since all the plants had lost their leaves. My first thought was "Wow...we've got some really powerful a/c and great insulation!" The family was excited...thinking "Dad is loosening up on the utility bills!" As I walked by the reindeer and penquins that had migrated into our kitchen overnight, I glanced at the thermostat and saw the 60 degree setting. After making the proper adjustment, I immediately started the process of taking out a second mortgage to pay the next electric bill.

Well, thanks to our temporary cool-down, I won't have to try to chase down the thermostat vandal. However, I am still on the trail of whoever is leaving the lights on at night and water dripping in the kitchen. Right now, I have to go feed the reindeer...he never left.

Over the years of doing FirstNews, I've heard lots of different ways that people deal with working odd hours...from co-workers and viewers. For example, one overnight producer here at KMBC, goes home around 8:00 a.m., stays awake until 1:00 p.m., then sleeps until 7:00 p.m. Some of the co-anchors I've worked with are big believers in naps...others are disciplined enough to hit the hay by 6:00 p.m. I don't think Maria Antonia slept at all for the eight years we worked together on the show. The other extreme was Jim Flink, who actually slept through most of the actual broadcasts. A few viewers have told me that the key is to maintain the same sleep routine on the weekend as you do during the week. Still, others, pledge allegiance to coffee and soda pop.

I never got into a good napping routine because none of our kids were really too big on naps. There were times, at lunch, when I would stretch out on the floor next to the table and fall asleep, against my will. The kids would then use my unresponsive body as playground equipment...a Jungle Joel. There were several times when my wife would come down to the basement to check on me...I was supposed to be exercising...and find me sound asleep. The sleep part is not surprising...that I would even pretend to work-out, seems highly unlikely. I've never liked the idea of going to bed at 6:00 p.m. because I felt that defeated the purpose of working the early shift. The whole point of doing the odd hours is so you have family time...well, that, and earning some money so you have food, shelter and clothing...but, what would be gained if you're sawing logs when everybody else is doing stuff. Especially, as the kids have gotten older and have so many different events and performances, being awake in the evenings is even more important. True, there have been a couple of grade school concerts where I started yelling "Auntie Em. Auntie Em," and, I'm still not sure my oldest son has forgiven me for the time, during his dramatic scene in his high school's production of The Grapes of Wrath, when I ran across the stage, screaming "The bears are going to get me! The bears! The bears!" I once nodded off during a school awards ceremony and woke to find my head on the shoulder of the guy next to me. As much as he didn't like that, the sleep-drool on his suede sport coat is what really aggravated him.

The fact of the matter is that, the time I head up to bed, is only remotely related to the time I actually fall asleep. It is almost Pavlovian: I say good-night and the parade of children begins. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I read the great Doris Kearns Goodwin book about Lincoln earlier this summer. In the book, she writes about how President Lincoln would spend hours greeting and talking to just regular folks as they made their way through his office. I can relate. This is the normal routine:

Approximately 8:30 p.m.: I let the dog out and back in. Pour some Cheerios into a plastic container for the morning. Say my good-nights. Head up the stairs.

8:35: Having brushed my teeth...and flossed, just in case my mom reads this...I give the dog a treat...set my three alarms and get in bed. So far, so good.

8:36: My daughter enters the room, supposedly to say "Good night....again!" but that seques into a complaint about something one of the boys did or, more often, a request to have a sleepover or go to some friend's house or "earn" (read: borrow...really read: take) some money or inquiries about how much it would cost to have a horse or questions about when we can go to grandma's house or Branson. This more-or-less monologue continues for five minutes or so.

8:41: Daughter leaves...oldest son comes in, to explain the many different ways I've been unfair in my decisions and discipline during the previous 24 hours...having laid the groundwork of my fatherly failings, he then asks if he can go to a friend's house at 10:00 p.m. to watch a movie. When I mumble that 10:00 p.m. is a little late to be starting an evening's fun, I hear a more impassioned exhortation about the hours he and his friends work and how everyone is going to be on vacation...or going back to school...or too busy with volunteer work to ever get together to watch a movie, ever again. After about ten minutes, he gives up and searches out his mother.

8:51: Second son moseys in with his guitar..."I know you're trying to go to sleep but listen to this...Does that sound like the beginning of a Buddy Holly song?" Having softened me up with music, he starts the request process regarding practice driving tomorrow and can he go to a friend's house and, if he can, can they walk down to the store and play the store's video games and, if that's okay, can he then eat at the friend' house and then would I come and get him, but let him drive home. He says all of this while accompanying himself on the guitar. It's like having a wandering minstrel from Camelot appear out of nowhere. He never really waits for any answers...he just plays himself out the door.

9:00: The littlest boy sneaks in and climbs up on the bed. He cuddles up and I think, finally, someone without any problems. He doesn't say anything but will occasionally fake a snore. Just as I am about out, I hear a click, notice a blue glow filling the room and comprehend the not-so-soothing tones of Gene Rayburn saying to Charles Nelson Reilly "The Jolly Green Giant said 'The last time it was this cold, I froze my BLANK off.'" Then, I hear a whisper "Dad, can I have the TV on?" (Just FYI, the winning answer for the MatchGame quiz was "niblets.")

9:15: My wife enters the room, shuts off the TV and gets the boy into his own room. "I'm sorry if they kept you awake...I didn't realize they were up here...I was (choose one)
a) Getting ready for work tomorrow.
b) On the phone.
c) Engrossed in a Lifetime movie starring Tracy Gold called "Everything Is Horrible and It's Mainly the Fault of Men."
d) all of the above."

At that point, she will remember something she had to talk to me about..."but, no...it's late...it will probably turn out okay, anyway, so never mind...we'll talk tomorrow...I don't think one more day will matter...too much. Just forget I said anything. Don't worry. It will probably work itself out."

45 minutes later, the room is finally quiet. The dog has been sleeping through everything. The kids are onto other things or off to bed themselves and, being kids, will be asleep before their heads hit the pillows. When they were babies and waking us up in the middle of the night on a fairly routine basis, I would say that, when they get to be teenagers, I am going to go into their rooms at 2:00 a.m. and start wailing. Now, years later, I've actually done just that...and they don't even twitch! Frustrating. My wife is downstairs doing her exercises and watching the news...picture in picture...until the Lifetime movie is over. I am wide awake.

It is in those times that I remember the words of the great Edward R. Murrow: "Good night and...good luck!"