Luke’s Notebook

I am here on my bed as I type away on my laptop. This is the first post I’ve ever made using this computer, and I am doing it without any wires whatsoever! I’m using my new battery and the wireless card to allow me to wirelessly surf the Internet from my bed. Pretty cool, huh?

Now let me get on to covering Saturday, since it was a very, very full day. Today (Saturday) morning, James and I drove out to Grandma and Grandpa Stock’s house near Freeburg. We arrived at 8:45, and our purpose was to help out for what’s called the Turtle Mulligan Party. If you’re unfamiliar with turtle mulligan, and you most likely are, it’s actually a vegetable soup of sorts made with chicken, beef and, yes, turtle. My grandpa has been hosting this party annually for the past several years, and this was my first chance to really participate and help.

When James and I arrived, we met up with Uncle Dan and Uncle Rob, who were busy stirring two 25-gallon cast-iron pots of turtle soup. James and I each took a paddle and tended to our respective bowls. Throughout the morning, Uncle Rob would add different seasonings, such as pepper, salt and bouillon, to the pots and taste the soup. James and I kept stirring away. Actually, let me make things a little less complicated. We stirred and stirred and stirred pretty much all day, and we ended up leaving the party near 9:00 in the evening. So it was a full day out there, and Uncle Rob estimated we made 60 gallons of turtle mulligan soup — wow! It tastes really good, though. I just try to forget that the turtle is in there.

I saw Jenny today! She was feeling well enough to attend the party, so she came with her family. I saw her playing games with cousins, and it’s just awesome to see her do “normal” things again. It’s amazing what we take for granted. I thank God that she is doing this well.

Mom and Dad returned home this afternoon from their trip. We were really happy to see them! Definitely glad to have the parents back home, and it sounds like they had themselves a great eight-day trip to the northeast.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day as we have some company coming over. It ought to be a lot of fun, but I need to get going so I can get some sleep. Those near-12 hours of stirring wore me out!

Let’s see… what did I do yesterday?

Well, aside from the surgery on my laptop and the scoping work, I did a few other things.

I got a haircut. I was a little bit overdue, but now my hair is nice and short.

I brought Seth, Jacob and Nathan (a/k/a Huey, Dewey and Louie) to my grandpa and grandma’s house near Freeburg, as they were helping my Aunt Jane set up for a big party they’re hosting on Saturday night.

We played softball at 8:30 against Classic Auto Body. Each team was shorthanded, so both teams had to play with three outfielders instead of the usual, four. I played center field, and it was pretty fun because there’s a lot more ground to cover when there are only three guys out there. Anyway, it was a close game, and we ended up pulling out a win, 19-18. I batted 3-3 with two walks and a sacrifice fly. I also hit an inside-the-park homer to right center.

Tomorrow morning or early afternoon, my parents are set to return from their eight-day trip. It sounds like they’ve had a great time, and we’re eager to welcome them back home!

I’m now about to leave with a few of my brothers to go eat lunch at Cici’s.

I am absolutely thrilled! Today I received the CD-ROM drive and keyboard for my laptop that I had won on eBay early this week. I managed to put both of them in my laptop, and after I put the computer back together I was able to test them out, along with my brand-new battery for the first time. I booted the computer up — from the battery — and the keys work! The CD-ROM drive works! Thank the Lord! I’m really ecstatic that I was able to figure out how to replace this stuff in the laptop, when just a couple weeks ago I would have been scared to try to open up the laptop. So for about $75, I got a replacement keyboard, CD-ROM drive and battery. Not too shabby at all. As soon as Mom and Dad return from their trip, I plan on testing out the range of the wireless card on the laptop. Dad took the wireless router with him, so I can’t use WiFi ’til he gets back.

Yesterday afternoon, I drove over to Collinsville to pick up two friends, Ethan and Ryan, to come hang out at our house. Ryan is staying in the St. Louis area until Friday, when he flies back to San Diego. I picked them up around 1:00, and then we headed back for our house. Once we arrived, I gave them a tour of the house, since neither of them have seen it before. Ryan visited our property years ago, back when it was just a big cornfield.

After the tour, we played some ping-pong and pool in our family room. I realized yet again how much I love ping-pong! It’s so much fun. I’m all right at pool, but I think ping-pong is a lot funner.

After the games, we went outside to throw some disc golf discs around and then fish off of our floating dock. We weren’t very successful, though, as the only bite any of us had was a small blue gill that Ryan caught and then released. For some reason the fish just didn’t seem interested!

When we were through fishing, we went inside and I grilled some hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken burgers out on the deck. We ate supper, played some more games and just hung out for a while until 9:00-ish. That’s when we hopped in the truck and started driving back to Collinsville, to drop the guys off at the coffee shop that Ethan’s family runs. It’s called The Journey, and it has an adjoining church. In the church they have a large projector and screen on the wall, and we watched the end of the World Series. Let me tell ya — it looked awesome! It would be so great to someday buy a projector, but those things are pretty pricey.

Anyway, we watched the end of the game (congrats to the Red Sox, by the way), Ethan showed off his drumming abilities, and I tried my hand at the drums and realized it’s pretty hard! But I think it would be fun to learn how to play them.

The three of us spent some time talking for a while as we sat and sipped on our strawberry smoothies. Finally, around midnight I decided that I should probably head on home, since Collinsville is a good half-hour away from our house. I said goodbye to Ryan and Ethan and hit the road.

It was a really fun day, and it was cool to see Ethan’s family and Ryan again. By the way, yesterday I received a new battery for my laptop (the one I purchased on eBay), and now I’m just waiting for the replacement keyboard and CD-ROM drive to arrive in the mail.

Once again, I find myself with lots to say but not a whole lot of energy to type it all out! So I’m going to go ahead and type while I can before I start making too many errors and my yawns become more and more frequent.

This morning, John, Mark and I went to the visitation and funeral for my Aunt Berni’s mom. We were glad to see different family members again, and we had some time to talk and such afterwards during a luncheon out at the Shrine Restaurant off of Route 15 in Belleville.

Ugh — I think I’ve hit a wall! I’m going to head on off to bed. Tomorrow should be a fun day as we plan to spend the afternoon with Ethan and Ryan, a couple friends of ours. Ryan is visiting from California, so we wanted to make sure to meet up before he flies home. Anyway, I’m going to go to bed. By the way, our softball game was rained out. The Cardinals played, though, and lost Game Three, putting them in a 3-0 hole. They’re in deep trouble, and unless they can pull off something amazing it looks like the Red Sox will win their first World Series since 1918. I’m sure they’d be happy to end that drought.

I installed Windows XP this evening on my desktop (main) computer. I’m now able to use my laptop for scoping, so I no longer have to have Windows 98 installed, and I jumped at the chance to install XP. So far I’m liking it. I haven’t had a chance to do a whole lot of exploring, but it looks nice and from what I’ve heard it’s a lot more stable and even faster than 98. I still have plenty of software left to load. I didn’t realize all the programs I accumulated over the months! Now I’m starting anew, and I’ll just install things one-by-one.

We played softball at 6:30 tonight and didn’t have a good game at all. We lost 8-5, but it just felt like we played a lousy game. Our team made some big errors, and aside from Paul’s two-run homer, we didn’t do a whole lot of hitting. I’m as guilty as the rest as I batted 0-3. Ironically, I had three deep fly-outs to the left center fielder. Oh well! A tough loss, but it’s just a game. When I put it into perspective with everything else going on in life, it seems so minor. I need to keep reminding myself what really matters!

This afternoon as I took my sister, Mary (or more commonly known as Wizzy) to her gymnastics, I brought a book along to read for the hour and 15 minutes that she would be there. It’s a book called One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven, and it’s penned by Mark Cahill. It’s a book about evangelism and reaching out to tell people about Jesus without cramming the message down their throats. I love it so far. I managed to get to Page 75 or 80, and I’m anxious to get through the entire thing. It’s very sobering to read. I’ll try to post later on what hit me about the book. For now, though, I must hit the hay. Thanks for reading!

Late last night/early this morning I won two items on eBay — a keyboard and a CD-ROM drive for my laptop. The total, shipping included, is under $45, which isn’t bad at all for such specific parts. All in all, I’m paying roughly $75 for a battery, keyboard and CD-ROM drive, when I originally was ready to pay $80 for only a battery and an AC adapter. I love eBay!

This morning, the four oldest drove over to Golden Corral in Alton for breakfast. We had a fun time there, and then we made it home in time for church. I didn’t do a whole lot this afternoon, other than watching parts of football games (specifically, the Rams’ loss to the Dolphins — yuck). This evening, I’ve been watching some of Game Two of the World Series, and I also had a volleyball game at 8:00 in Belleville. The first game was pretty ugly, and I made a few costly mistakes. I just wasn’t as sharp as I can be, and it hurt us because the game was so close and yet we lost. We managed to win the second two, though, and in those games we (and I) played much better. We don’t play next Sunday since it’s Halloween, but then we have two more weeks after that to wrap up this eight-week session.

From what I hear about Jenny, she is doing real well in the hospital, and they are thinking she’ll be able to return home tomorrow. Thank God! I think we might see her this weekend as we have a family party on Saturday.

I have some e-mails I need to reply to, so I need to wrap this up now.

Jenny is back in the hospital for a few days as she is receiving more chemotherapy treatments for her leukemia. I think if all goes well this will be her second last stay at the hospital for quite some time. Her cancer is in remission, which is very good news. I’m praying that it just completely disappears from her body and never returns.

This afternoon, James and I finished the network/cable wiring in the basement, and John and Paul stapled up the insulation around the walls. What a difference that makes! All of a sudden, our next step is drywall. I don’t think it’s even been a week since all we had up were some two-by-four studs. Now it’s wired for electricity, Internet, TV, phone — nearly everything! It’s encouraging.

Cardinals lost a slugfest today by the score of 11-9. It wasn’t a pretty game, with both teams combining for six errors. Hopefully the Redbirds can bounce back tomorrow and beat the Bo Sox before heading back to St. Louis.

I need to get going now, because I’m about to bid on an eBay auction that ends very soon. I hope I win!

This entry was supposed to be made last night, but the Internet was unavailable all night. I think I mentioned this before, but we are on satellite Internet, and it is just not that great. It’s unreliable, has a lot of temporary outages, and it’s not nearly as fast as, say, cable or DSL. So I’m constantly looking and praying for an alternative that we can get out here in the country. Hopefully something will open up.

Anyway… let’s go to yesterday. I did quite a bit of scoping in the morning. In the afternoon and early evening, I ran some network and coaxial cables (cable TV cables) in the basement, as we are working on finishing the basement. James and I ran several CAT-5e and coax cables through the studs, getting the basement wired for TV, network, Internet, etc. It takes a little work, but it sure if worth it, once you’re able to use those wires. We must have used about 3,000 feet of wire altogether.

Also, I went to the YMCA yesterday with Paul. We sure didn’t feel like it, but we made ourselves go. I’m definitely glad I went, and I’m hoping to go a lot more often as softball season comes to an end.

In other news, Mom and Dad hit the road early yesterday morning, and last night they arrived in Canandaigua, New York. They’re taking a brief trip, and we are holding down the fort and taking care of the chubs here. I’m glad they’re able to get some time to relax, get refreshed and just have some fun. One of Dad’s big concerns about leaving now was to make sure he could find a way to watch the Cardinals in the World Series while they’re away. You can tell where we get our love for baseball from!

It is my pleasure to announce my resignation from the Low-Carb Club! After Mom and Dad said they thought that I was where I should be weight-wise, I decided to finally throw in the towel and stop the 22-day low-carb diet. The final total for Thursday? 32.7 carbs. I’d say I lost a good eight to 10 pounds, and now my aim is to just build more muscle, because I’d say I’m right around my perfect weight. This morning I was 189, and on Sunday I was 185.5. So I think I reached my goal, and I’m eager to eat normal foods, such as cereal, bread, fruits, veggies, etc. I do intend to frequent the YMCA more often to try to build up muscle a little bit more, and I’ll of course try to eat sensibly so as to not gain this weight back.

The diet wasn’t fun, really, but it did seem to be effective. What really seemed to help were a few things: Low-carb snacks. At stores you can find low-carb candy and cookies that are a good treat and are well worth it to have once in a while to have something sweet Another thing is to have diet soda or Kool Aid, along with lots of water. Thirdly, counting the carbs literally really helped, as I’m not able to cheat or give myself a “bulk discount,” so to speak. And lastly, it was crucial that I let myself take a break every now and then. Sundays were my “off” day, where I allowed myself to freely eat carbs, eating cereal, pizza, cookies. I didn’t try to go nuts with it, but I just think it was key to have a change of pace. It would have been extremely difficult to go 22 straight days with less than 50 carbs. Your body really gets to miss those foods.

My hope now is to keep those irritating pounds off. But boy, if it isn’t a satisfying feeling to look back to my near-250 days and realize that I have lost 60 pounds and gained lots of muscle since then. All it took was a change in lifestyle for the most part, and the low-carb diet helped me shed the last pounds.

Bring on the carbs!!

By the way, we lost our 7:30 game tonight by the score of 9-1. We really didn’t play well as a team, but that was partly because we were missing two of our regular guys and were shorthanded the entire game. I batted 3-4, which is pretty good, but it was just rough to get beat like that when we just didn’t play well at all. Ah well… at least the Cardinals won.