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19 08, 2015

This Was Not the Blog I Planned to Write…

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:00+00:00 August 19th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

It was 5:44 a.m. Our dog, Bear, had just woken me up for the eleventh time over the past six hours. We had a storm in St. Louis, and with every thunder clap, he came running to smack me with his paw as if to say, "Did you hear that? Those bastards are lighting fireworks [...]

3 08, 2015

What If Your Life Boiled Down to One Day?

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:00+00:00 August 3rd, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

So our cable has been on the fritz for the last few days. I turned on the television, it said to hold down the power button. So I held down the power button. For a long time. And...nothing. It was still doing this last night when I went to bed, and to be honest, I [...]

29 07, 2015

How Some Choices You Make Change Everything…

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:00+00:00 July 29th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

It always staggers me how one decision made or one risk taken sets off a sequence of events that you never see coming. For instance, one time about two years ago, I decided to take a day off work and bring our boys to the pictures. That choice turned into picking the Smurf's Movie. This [...]

11 07, 2015

I Really Can’t Talk My Way Out of Things…

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:00+00:00 July 11th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

Once upon a time, there were two little boys whose parents went out of town. These two little boys were not supposed to be driving their parents' cars. The older little boy put seven hundred miles on his dad's Benz. Valet key? What? The younger little boy wanted to take the other car for one [...]

16 06, 2015

My Body Makes My Brain Look Like an Idiot

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:00+00:00 June 16th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

I'm getting older. I hurt more. I creak more. My ankles sound like they're each having their own personal fireworks display every single morning when I walk downstairs to feed the dog. He's getting old, too. We commiserate. "Another gray hair?" I tease. "Pot, meet kettle," he'd respond if he could. Touché, Bear. Each day [...]

29 05, 2015

Cancer Is Like Your Uncle Ted Who Never Really Leaves…

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:01+00:00 May 29th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

"There's something up with Righty." Steph, the boys and I were driving home one Sunday from Effingham, Illinois about three years ago. For the past half hour, I'd been dancing like a fart in a skillet. No matter which way I moved, my right testicle wasn't feeling the joy of a summer Sunday, not even [...]

14 05, 2015

68 Hours in Haiti, Part 6: Epilogue

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:01+00:00 May 14th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

"Dan, I'm leaving Soles4Souls, and you had something to do with it." I almost coughed up a spleen when Wayne Elsey dropped this bombshell, two months after we last saw each other. Our last day in Haiti was a mix of sadness and relief. I was very much looking forward to getting home to see [...]

8 05, 2015

68 Hours in Haiti, Part 5: The Miracle

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:01+00:00 May 8th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

We pulled on to the dirt lane. You couldn't see the entrance to the school from the sea of little people. The line of children was easily two hundred deep. They were here for shoes. I tried to think of a single thing that I would wait behind two hundred people to do. Besides waiting [...]

4 05, 2015

68 Hours in Haiti, Part 4: The Breakdown

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:01+00:00 May 4th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

"Yuup!" This had now become our greeting for one another, and it was coming through on Wayne's I-Pad with the help of the less-than-optimal wi-fi at the Plaza Hotel in Port Au Prince. It was my first shot at seeing Dave Hester, the biggest breakout star of the breakout hit, Storage Wars. For the uninitiated, [...]

24 04, 2015

68 Hours in Haiti, Part 3: The Orphanage

By | 2017-05-24T01:38:01+00:00 April 24th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

One of the coolest places we visited in Port au Prince was an indoor market filled with artists and their wares. Todd immediately found one woman, Yvette, chatted her up, and talked her into letting him pay way less than her asking price for some Haitian toys for his kiddos. Sadly, I'm not quite as [...]