I have braces. At 30. I am terribly self-conscious but I know in the long run (that’s 18 months to two years for you folks keeping track) it will be a good thing. I’ll have straight teeth that won’t break when I’m older and a clean bite, not this open-bite craziness.

One of the weird things I found out is that braces come with a lot more stuff then they did in the early ’90s. I have an assortment of floss threaders, wax, special toothbrushes, etc. The staff gave me a soniccare toothbrush (but wouldn’t take it back or refund money off my bill when I said that I already had one and didn’t want it). One of the oddest things is my new Powell Becker and Scott “Get It Straight” t-shirt. Yes, braces now come with  t-shirts.

But honestly, I have really great orthodontist who has an awesome office staff. They’ve been easily to work with, been willing to explain everything clearly and to take on a challenging case. Hopefully I’ll end up with good teeth and they’ll end up with someone to write an article/study on.

And since E asked for a pic, here you go: Mo, with braces (I’m still learning how to smile with these things on!)

Mo and Mike five days after getting her braces

UPDATE: The sales tax passed by a 55-45 margin. Wow. I’ll write more later; for now I am simply relieved.

It’s Election Day in Springfield and the City has a 3/4-cent sales tax referendum on the ballot. Some of you may have heard me talk about this at some point over the last year or so. It feels like it’s the only thing we’ve been talking about or working on for a year now. Our Police-Fire pension fund is about $200 million underfunded for a variety of reasons (no, no one stole it or misappropriated it) and now we’re asking voters to join us in taking the issue head on. We’ve done lots of other things besides propose this tax in order to help fix the problem over the last few years. In February, a 1-cent increase narrowly failed, and after an independent citizens group (chaired by a guy who voted ‘no’ in February) spent the whole summer looking at the issue, they came to the conclusion a tax was indeed needed.

Because the pension is laid out in our City Charter and was affirmed by voters in the 1940s and 1950s, it’s a legal debt of the City. That means if we don’t have the money, Police and Fire employees have the legal right to sue in order to make sure the fund is whole. Which means a judge would have the power to step in and impose his own sales tax, and/or force the city to sell off assets like our locally-owned utility that provides some of the lowest rates in the nation.

Oh, and I could lose my job next year after Mo quits hers to go back to school. Fun!

This is about the toughest time ever to sell this kind of thing to voters. But it’s going to be close either way today. Needless to say I’m anxious enough to vomit right now. We’ll see what happens tonight….

Congrats to our friend Travis Mowers, who ran his first marathon today in Springfield – the Bass Pro Marathon. We’re not sure of the official time but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours. We cheered for him at three or four places along the route.

The New York Marathon was also today. The NTY has the story of the first American to win the race since 1982. Sounds like it was a great race.

Of all the American contenders to try and break the 27-year men’s drought in the New York City Marathon, Meb Keflezighi may have represented the American dream more than any of them. Born in war-torn Eritrea, one of 11 siblings in a village with no electricity, Keflezighi now wears his American citizenship on his chest. He was the one American contender who wore the letters U.S.A. on his running top Sunday.

Our friend Mark ran in the NYC race, too. Not sure how he did, but he’s a serious runner so we’re eager to find out his time. Meanwhile, I’m still sore from Thursday, when I had my second “boot camp” class at the Y. It’s kicking my butt! I really hate exercise, but it’s a necessary evil.

UPDATE: Travis’ time was 4 hours, 17 minutes. Great time for a first run if you ask me. Mark’s time was an incredible 3 hours, 4 minutes.

At the top of Himeiji Castle

Mike says this is the best of Japan – a blend of the old and the new. This photo was taken from the top of the Hemiji Jo, the oldest original castle in Japan. Below is the Hemeji, which wa a modern city. The castle is a world heritage site (they were all over the place in Japan) and we were allowed to go all over and explore just about every part of it. Hemiji is about an hour away from Kyoto on the shinkansen, so we spent an afternoon there. The white out buildings were where the women lived.

Just a sneak preview of some Japan stuff – we’ve got tons of photos and some wicked jet lag so it will take a while to get everything organized. But here you go. This is on the top of the Park Hyatt Hotel Tokyo in Shinjuku, where Mike and I had our anniversary dinner. The view of the city went to the horizon in every direction. You could even see planes line up to land at the airport. The food was wonderful. I had a raw tuna and apple appetizer, a cream duck soup, lobster with caviar, a sirloin steak for the main course and a chocolate tort and coffee to finish. It was fabulous!

Out the window at the Park Hyatt Tokyo

We’re sitting at Gate 123 at the LAX international terminal right now, and are about 2 hours from leaving the country for Tokyo. If anyone cares to follow the trip I am going to do my best to update my Twitter feed from my iPhone when I can.

Mata ne!
Mike

Last week I filled in for the regular host of the City’s weekly information and news program, City Beat. I can’t embed the video in this post, but you can click here to watch it. I’ve done several voice-overs for our TV folks in the past and they thought I was good enough to give being on camera a shot. I’m no David Gregory, but I did pretty well. It was definitely fun to give something new a try. The show airs several times throughout the week on our cable access channel.

If you want hear one of my voice-overs, and see the back of my head while I pretend to program the TV in our apartment, check out this 30-second spot from a few weeks ago.

I was on KY3 yesterday, too, although part of this video goes black at the end of the story.

You know how you live with people for a while and you discover some of their little quirks? Well, Mike loves to take photos of the oddest things. I’ve always known this, but after the multiple photos of large brown recluses, I had to share. Anyway, it’s never people, just odd stuff.

Mike likes to take photos of:

brown recluses

Those tiles are an 1"x1", so that's a large spider!

technology

yes, it's a game boy and an iPhone

food

onion rings = awesome!

it's food!

our cat

Dizz looking only slightly evil

ugly pants

pants!

his ever changing media library

tv!

Researching our trip (right now!) and orthodontist appointment tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have all sorts of updates soon!

I’ve turned my collecting habit into a productive piece of publishing. I contributed to the “101″ series over at retrogaming site Racketboy.com. I’ve been writing some for them since discovering the site a couple of years ago. This the longest piece I’ve done for them by far. The site is a side project for the guy who runs it, not a source of income, but I did make a little scrap from my knowledge of old-school consoles in this case. Always fun to write about something you’re interested in.