Hey folks, it’s Christmas list time. I always feel so greedy when we do this but honestly, the list is what makes us so easy to shop for. Mike has’t posted a whole lot of what he wants yet. But don’t worry, he will. And I’ll add a bit more to mine. I’m honestly finding it hard to find things because I’m very happy in my life right now. But next year I think wanting things won’t be a problem!

Merry Christmas!

Oh, and let us know what you would want to or  who knows what your gift will be …

Mike:

A dress brown belt

A dress black belt

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (new or used) it’s a PS3 video game

Forest green v-neck sweater

PSN card for playstation online games

Mo:

Any costume jewelry by Kenneth Jay Lane – I love all his stuff!

Speaking of jewelry – these small gold bow studs are cute

Black long leather gloves – I have a few bracelet sleeve coats and I get cold!

Red flats size 6.5

satin pj’s for winter

T-shirts, I could always use some, size S

A v-neck cardigan in forest green

satin pj’s for winter

Not quite a Herve Leger, but this is just as nice!

UGGs, if you’re feeling generous, and only to see if Katie, Mom, Nancy and Jamie are correct in their raves!

Both of us:

A non-slotted serving spoon

WWI posters (talk to Mike, he knows which ones he wants)

A blog post isn’t nearly enough to thank the few hundred thousand who volunteer to on behalf of more than 300 million, no matter what is asked of them. But I’m doing it anyway. THANK YOU to all who serve and have served, at home and abroad.

Check out this amazing photo essay I saw recently. It follows a guy named Ian Fisher from high school graduation through Army basic training and a tour in Iraq.

Almost every baseball fan I know thinks the MLB playoffs drag on for far too long. We always refer to the baseball postseason simply as “October” because for 100 years the regular season ended as the calendar flipped to the 10th month of the year. These days what we call “October” actually goes into “November” because of the added rounds of the postseason tournament and all the off-days built into the schedule. This is goofy for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that you have guys playing a summertime game in 40-some-degree temperatures in night games on Halloween. Oh, and by the way, they’re the most important games of the season and likely these guys’ careers and lives. Ridiculous.

So can it be changed? It’s a tough task, as there are stipulations on how it’s all done. I’ve heard a few ideas — maybe contract a few teams, ditch the Allstar Game, or go back to a 154-game schedule from the current 162-game schedule (which has been in place for about 50 years now). Or just get rid all those off days in October. The first three aren’t very realistic at all, and the fourth isn’t too realistic, either — for now. I’ve said for years that I have a few simple ideas for shortening the season — not by much, but enough to make a difference. Moreover, they’re realistic suggestions. So because I’m bored I’m going to blog my idea so I can take credit when Bud Selig steals them.

1) Start the season on the Friday before the what is now usually Opening Day.

This year MLB began on Monday, April 6. For the last few years the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game has kicked off the season the day before everyone else. Why not start on Friday and begin the season with a three-game Friday-Saturday-Sunday series? Opening Day could be a day game on Friday afternoon, and everyone knows if you’re going to ditch work to down some beers at the game, Friday is an infinitely better day to do it. Give the marketing people all three days and call it Opening Weekend. And the showcase game could move to Thursday as a kick-off. Works for the NFL. Yes, you’ll have poor baseball weather in those early days, but we deal with that now and the individual games don’t matter as much in the first week, even if the W’s and L’s count just the same.

Total days saved so far — 3.

2) Play one double-header a month on a Sunday during May, June, July and August.

Yes, I am aware that the Player’s Union rules say no team can play more than two double headers (hit the first link above) in a single season. In my scenario those guys would just suck it up and agree to play two more. Baseball used to do this all the time. Maybe they add a rule where an off day that would come up anyway would have to fall after a double-header day. Playing the DHs in May through August means they wouldn’t fall at the beginning of the season when pitchers are just getting into a routine or during the last month when teams are making playoff runs and rotations are being set heading into October. This would be a bit of a concession for ownership, too, because it would mean four less game days, but you can’t tell me they wouldn’t be able to find a way to market and up-sell double-header days.

Total days saved so far — 7.

3) Make the postseason schedule look more like the regular season.

With a full week saved at this point, we could just let the postseason play out as it does now and end the season around Oct. 22 or 23, or about where it used to end before the Divisional round was added in the 1990s. That’s pretty good, but I think MLB could do one better and ditch the insane amount of off-days during October. It looks like an NBA schedule. Baseball is a “daily grind,” right? Then why is it that the Phillies had six days off between the NLCS and World Series when their series went five games and the ALCS went six? And this after a “snow out” in Denver in the round before. It’s dumb. I’m sure managers and pitchers love all that rest, but it isn’t true to the way the game is normally played.

The real reason for the insane gaps in scheduling is television. But baseball ratings have been going down for years. And, seriously, TBS? You can’t say you’re serious about ratings when you have the NLCS on TBS and Tim McCarver is still in the booth for Fox. Sorry, that just doesn’t compute. MLB is actually smart about using the Web with things like Game Day and the the At-Bat iPhone App. People have ways of keeping tabs on baseball that don’t include TV these days. MLB should beef up streaming capabilities and even think about playing some day games again during October. Back in the day, kids would sneak radios into school to hear the daytime World Series games. These days they would be on the Web using their cell phones checking Game Day. And the circle is complete.

So that’s it. No radical changes and we can keep the Allstar Game. Now if we could just get them to stop using the ASG to determine home-field advantage for the World Series ….

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.