Luke’s Notebook

Things are winding down here, on the final day of July. Tomorrow, we begin the final week leading up to the Softball Classic. This is the home stretch, for sure. Things tend to be really crazy in the final week leading up to a year’s Classic, so I am praying that God will give everybody involved a great sense of peace, clarity and direction as we make last-minute decisions regarding the event, and just as we tie up any loose ends.

Monday morning is the beginning of the four-week stretch leading up to our trip. Our departure day is Monday, August 29th, so that vacation is really sneaking up on Mark and I, as well! Before we know it, we’ll just be a couple of days away. Yikes.

Speaking of the trip, lately I’ve been looking into a few different things to buy or learn about in preparation for our trip. For one, I want to get a wireless keyboard and optical mouse for this laptop. Mark and I will probably do a good deal of work on this, and it will be very handy to have a full-size keyboard and mouse to use. Also, I’m thinking of buying a firewire PCMCIA card for this computer. That would allow me to capture video from the video camera, meaning possible Videos Of The Day just days (or maybe even hours) after, say, visiting the Grand Canyon. That would be pretty cool!

Yesterday, Mark and I spent a good deal of time going through the trip calendar and marking off where we’re going to be stopping each night. It looks like we’ll hit KOAs most of the time. Grandpa likes this since they have the necessary RV hookups and conveniences. I’ve been at two KOAs before (Canandaigua, NY, and Gettysburg, PA), and I really liked those! I’m looking forward to visiting a bunch of new ones.

Another great advantage of the KOAs is many of them offer wireless Internet access. That will help us keep in touch with folks while on the road, and, more importantly, will allow Mark and I to send and receive depositions to and from home. Don’t be surprised if you find us blogging while in Yellowstone National Park, or if you find an update to this journal just hours after I visited Mount Rushmore.

I wonder what it it will feel like to be on the road for three-and-a-half weeks. Thankfully, we’ll have cell phones and e-mail that will help us keep in touch with the family and friends. We ought to even be able to e-mail pictures and videos.

Right before dusk this evening, Jude, James, Philip and I went out to our softball field in order to have a batting practice. We’ve been a bit frustrated with how we have been hitting lately, so we thought that taking some practice swings might help us.

Paul and John ended up joining us about halfway through. We batted in age order, starting with 15-year-old Philip. He’s the rookie of the team and has been steadily improving at the plate as he gets more comfortable. Anyway, he took some mighty cuts tonight and had some really nice hits. It looks like he has been improving significantly over the past couple of weeks! That’s really great news.

I was anxious to bat, since I have been struggling a bit lately. You wouldn’t have known it by watching me tonight, though! I was really happy with the way I was batting. I was hitting the ball much harder, and also hitting lots of line drives. Timing is so crucial in softball! When I consciously time the pitch in my head, make sure to keep my hands elevated, and also just watch the ball… good things happen then!

Well, I’m going to run. We are officially one week away from the Softball Classic! I’ve been making quite a few calls lately, rounding up different friends to help us out in the different food and game stands and such. I’m hearing from so many different people that they’re planning on coming, so I’m expecting a pretty big turnout. Please join us in praying for good weather leading up to and on the day of the Classic! Rain would not be good, but mild temperatures would be awesome. God’s will be done, though!

Well, we are one-month away from the August 29th take-off date for our western trip. This afternoon, Mark and I met up with Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Jane. She’s going to be with us for the first half of the trip before flying back home.

I’m getting really excited. We’re planning on hitting:

Mount Rushmore

Yellowstone National Park

Dinosaur National Monument

Flaming Gorge

Bryce Canyon

Zion National Park

Grand Canyon (North Rim)

Grand Canyon (South Rim)

And there’s probably more, too. One month is not very far off at all! Sheesh. It will be here before we know it!

Oh, yes… we played softball again tonight, losing in five innings. I batted 1-3, so I didn’t help out very much. Ah well… maybe we’ll have a family practice on Sunday. Those seem to really help out!

We lost last night’s game by a score of 8-7. I batted 3-4 with two doubles and a triple. Tonight’s game we lost 15-9, I believe it was. I batted 1-2 with a walk and a sacrifice fly. A couple of tough losses, so hopefully we’ll rebound nicely on Thursday. It seems that our offense has really been struggling lately. We stranded way too many runners on base tonight.

Tonight we had a storm pass through the area, and it brought with it some cooler weather! It’s 70 degrees as I type, and the high temperature for Wednesday is only supposed to hit 78°. That’s nearly 20 degrees cooler than the past several days have been. I think things will start to heat up a little more at the end of the week, but it seems that our mid- to upper-90’s days are over! Good deal.

My Braves won tonight, defeating the Washington Nationals 3-2 in the 10th inning. For the first time since early June, the Braves are in first place! They haven’t led the NL East division for nearly two months. But they’ve taken a one-game lead over the Nats, and hopefully tomorrow they can extend it to two. Go Braves!

Talk about having a practical application for instructions in the Bible.

Matthew 12:17-19

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

Amen.

Another busy, yet fun, weekend has come to a close.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, Mark and I visited with Grandpa Stock. During the trip out west, he is planning on using the RV to tow a minivan of his, which will have the two front wheels elevated on a trailer. Grandpa wanted Mark and I to learn how to secure the minivan to the trailer, how to remove it, and also how to attach and detach the trailer to the actual two-inch trailer ball that will be on the back of the RV.

So we spent some time with Grandpa and Uncle Joe, learning exactly how to do it, where to connect certain chains, straps and wires. We went through the process a few times, and I think we both have a pretty good understanding of how to do it, and the more practice we have with the procedure, the more it will be come second nature to us.

After the work with the trailer, the three of us went inside, where Grandpa gave us a basic outline of how the trip is laid out up to this point. We looked at some maps, a road atlas, and a KOA directory, and we got a pretty good idea of where we would be staying, the duration of each stay, et cetera. I’ve actually got a little bit of work to do now, as Grandpa wants me to calculate the mileage from stop to stop, so we can determine if anything needs to be tweaked, in case we are miscalculating the mileage from one place to another.

In the evening, most of the family headed over to Bayless High School in St. Louis in order to watch a production of “The Music Man.” Some friends of ours (from the Balassi family) are in the play. Kathleen Balassi actually has the role of Marian Paroo. Her son, Joe, plays Marian’s younger brother, Winthrop. And Jessica Balassi had quite a few dancing parts in the play.

All in all, the play turned out really well! It’s also a bonus whenever you have friends in the play and you get to watch them on stage. Also in the play was Jessica Perkins, one of the girls who was involved in the car accident in late December. She seems to be doing awesome, by the way! Praise God for that!

Sunday

This afternoon, Paul, John, Jude, James, Seth, Jacob and I went over to Six Flags. We first ate lunch at Cici’s, which is about halfway to Six Flags from our house, and I was actually going to split off with them and head on home, because I just couldn’t convince myself to go to Six Flags. (I suppose it’s a bad sign when you don’t want to go to Six Flags, huh?)

Anyway, so as I was on my way home, I realized that those guys forgot one of the bring-a-friend-free coupons that they were planning on using. So I called them up, and Mark and I started driving back towards St. Louis to meet up with them and give them the coupon. I decided to just go ahead and go, since I had a chance to reconsider.

We ended up spending our entire stay at Six Flags in the water park, Hurricane Harbor. The temperature topped out near 103 degrees, so it was hot. Thankfully, once we came into contact with the water, it was pretty pleasant from there on out. The weather certainly was no unbearable, and we ended up having a really good time!

The park was at capacity (which is 5,000 guests, a lifeguard told me), so there were some pretty long lines. Though we did manage to ride on our two favorite water rides, the Big Kahuna and the Tornado.

I’m glad I went to Six Flags, and I’m still a bit unsure why exactly it was that I put up such a fight! I can think of a few reasons:

It was really hot, and I imagine it would have felt pretty miserable had we not have been in or near the water.

My right knee has been bugging me lately. I don’t recall injuring it at all, but I’m suspecting that it’s just sore from all of the softball I’ve been playing lately, especially with the five games last week.

I’ve had quite a few things on my mind lately, and I suppose I just wasn’t initially in the mood to go to Six Flags.

My hard drive dilemma has really had me concerned lately. Thankfully, it seems I have managed to recover almost all of the important files. Thank You, God!!!!!!!

Whatever my excuses were, I’m glad I was able to overcome them and “make” myself have some fun. Because, it was fun.

FOX 2 anchorman Tom O’Neal and reporter Andy Banker are going to be playing for our opponents, the FOX 2 softball team. I hear there’s a chance anchorman Dan Gray will come, along with sports director Martin Kilcoyne.

Tom O’Neal and Martin Kilcoyne have been to past Classics, and the one year O’Neal even played on our team. This time, unfortunately, there are no open slots for the Safe At Home All-Stars. It should be really fun to play against these guys from Channel Two!

On Wednesday night, I went to the Cardinals/Brewers game with Jude, James and Philip. We had pretty nice seats, as we were in left field (Section 285), real close to the visitor’s bullpen. It was an extremely hot day, but it got much cooler as the sun set and the evening went on.

The Cardinals ended up winning 4-2, thanks to John Rodriguez’s solo home run in the first and then Albert Pujols’ two-run shot. We had a lot of fun! I also took a bunch of photos, a few of which I think turned out pretty well. Maybe I’ll put one or two up here later.

Tonight, we had another double-header, this one an 8:30/10:30 setup. We lost the first game against Buzz by a score of… 8-4, I believe. I batted 0-2 (blech) with a walk. In the second game, we played Classic Auto Body, and we won 12-2 in five innings! I was 1-3 with a single.

You know, Dave, one of the guys who played with us tonight, pointed out a flaw in my swing. He said that I was always out in front of the ball, swinging way early with a bit of an uppercut. That was after my second at-bat in the second game, so on my third AB, I consciously stepped up a little bit in the batter’s box, and I hit a single past the second baseman.

I think 90% of my hitting problems are caused by my impatience at the plate. If I could just train myself to wait that extra split-second, I suspect that I would be getting more hits! I need to make a habit out of that. So this is my new assignment on what to work on…

I’m still working on recovering my files from the recent hard drive crash. I think I’ll be able to salvage a good deal of the files that were lost, but it might end up being a big mess, as I’m not sure that the original filenames would be preserved. And when dealing with tens of thousands of photos, that can make things confusing. So … we shall see what comes of this!

Well, it’s been a couple of busy days, and then on top of that, last night I ran into some serious computer problems. First, though.

On Monday night, we had a double-header. We lost the first game but won the second. I batted 5-6 on the night with two walks, two inside-the-park home runs, two singles and one double.

Last night, we played at 7:30 and we were pretty listless, scoring one run in seven innings. We simply didn’t hit well, hitting weak pop-up after weak pop-up. I was guilty of committing two of those myself, and my third at-bat was a ground-out to the second baseman. It’s funny how one night you can reach base seven out of eight times, and the next day you can’t reach base in three attempts! Oh well… that will keep me humble.

And then last night. To spare my time here, I’m not going to get real technical. Simply put, my weekl-old 160 GB hard drive went berzerk, essentially wiping almost everything from its memory. So now I’m in a bit of hot water, as all of a sudden tens of thousands of photos are gone, along with other important files. Thankfully, a lot of this stuff should be archived on a DVD, but I’m still hoping that I’m able to recover it here and now. That’s what I’m working on at the momeny, anyway.

Please keep this situation in your prayers! Whatever the outcome, may God be praised. Even though this is certainly bad news, I figure that if having a hard drive fail is the worst thing I have to complain about, then I’m really not in that bad of a situation! That means I don’t have a friend or a relative in the hospital, our house isn’t on fire, or so many other bad things that could happen have not. So, thank You, God!!!

Today, I read Matthew 24, and this excerpt from the chapter really struck me. (The bold emphasis in the three paragraphs is mine, by the way.) Matthew 24:36-51 “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That’s pretty astonishing, isn’t it? I love the part right before the bold text starts. It doesn’t say, “That is how it might be” or “Experts project that this is how it will probably happen.” It says, “That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man”!

If you’re not sure right now where you’d be in that situation, you need to right yourself with God and become positive that you’d be taken and not left behind. We’ve all learned at one time or another how short or fragile life can be. Our next breath or heart beat isn’t guaranteed, so take action right now.

I never have the goal to needlessly scare somebody. However, if somebody was about to walk off a cliff but they weren’t aware of it (or even sternly disagreed with you, claiming that there was no such cliff), you would still want to warn them and try to save them from meeting their doom!

If we would be so concerned about saving somebody’s life, then all the more should we be concerned of our friends’ soul, and where they’re going to spend eternity. Some people may say, “Well, I don’t believe in heaven or hell.” That… doesn’t really matter. If I was about to walk into a fiery inferno, my saying, “Oh, I don’t believe in fire” wouldn’t change much. I would still get burned. Truth is truth, regardless of whether we want to believe it or not. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Please… take the narrow path. Make sure you’re right with God.