Masters Update

Well, time for a Historical Fantasy Baseball League Masters Tournament update.
Each time a manager wins a round (Division, League or WS) of the tournament another manager is eliminated. That also means that each round is harder. I killed in the first round, won the AL in the second and I am in last place in the third round.

The third round consists of an "open franchise" draft. That means that each manager selects a franchise and any player that had at least one at bat or one inning pitched is eligible. I drafted toward the end due to my stellar record in the first two rounds and took the Angles. Twins fans will recall the many superstars from the Twins migrated to the Halos later in their career. This team kind of sucks. Here are some stars and stats:

Rod Carew hitting .267

Lyman Bostock hitting .259

Dave Winfield hitting .238 (now that sucks)

Bert is the Ace at 7-4 with a 3.11 ERA
The rest of the team kind of stinks.  I will give a final update but I thinnk I am done at the third round.  It is good to be this far as I am in with the top 200 in this game (out of a few thousand),

Busy,busy,busy....

It has been a super busy time these last two weeks.  I managed to post a series of photos of the Girl playing in her pot.  Enjoy!

Q*bert

At one time Cruddy held the 3rd and 5th highest score on a Q*bert machine in Fargo.  Take a look at a former champ in action at an antique mall in Chicago. According to sources she uses a L-R-L-L pattern.

Pixies

We took the train from Springfield to Chicago to see the Pixies!

Here we are at the Aragone Theater with great seats

The Pixies on stage!

Black Francis

It was an outstanding show,  They opened with B-sides only.

They then played the Doolittle album out of order,

Kim Deal and David Loverling.

A neat stage shot.

Mr. Joey Santiago

Rock On!

Like I said, great seats.

Mrs. John Murphy a.k.a Kim Deal.

We had a drinnk at the Uptown first.

While walking the neighborhood with Polly and Christy I captured this sign with baseball significance,

Ozzie and Charity

This weekend Ozzie Smith made an appearance in Springfield. 

Here are some shots of The Wizard and his huge security guard.

On Saturday night we attended a charity event for Jacksonville Independent Living.  Here I am with the giant sheet cake our table won and Khara coming up a few digits short on a raffle ticket.

A shot of RJ and the table wine.

A shot of our President and her husband with Cori and Marc in the foreground.

The blog may be a bit rough.  The changed the tools and they are not exactly easy.

Concordia Publishing House Book Sale

As you can see, I made a killing at the book sale.
Some highlights:
Schlink's Theology of the Lutheran Confessions
J.A.O. Preus' The Life and Theology of Martin Chemnitz
Bente's Historical Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions
Schmauk and Benze's The Confessional Principle and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church
and
Reu's edition of the Augsburg Confessions

Concordia Seminary St. Louis LCMS

On Saturday after the huge book sale I took a walk around Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Above, you will see their fantastic Luther statue.

They have incredible grounds. Very German with much attention to detail. Check out this crest above the dining hall. Most would put 1517 to commemorate the 95 theses. I like that they used 1530 as a date, the year that Luther really started to put out high end reformation theology. Well done.

The Luther tower. Looks like the lightning strike of 1505, no?

A beautiful fall day to wander the grounds.

Amazing archways and superb courtyards.

Incredible attention to detail. As most of you know this seminary is of German extraction from Europe and Luther in St. Paul is of Scandinavian, particularly Norwegian. Now I would put our (Luther's) grounds up against any but there is a theological lesson to be learned here. When these seminaries were established this was the German pietist seminary. St. Paul was the home of Norwegian immigrants, especially Haugian Lutherans. Haugians reject pietism and lean toward confessionalism. Haugians eliminated all ornamentation in music, theology, art and architecture. Thus, the difference between the two.

Double archway.

Excellent doors all the way around.

Inside the chapel. Note the ship-like interior and it is hard to see but the trademark open cross off-set from center on the arch and stained glass windows.

As I said, what a great fall day. And I met Khara and Marc for a stroll around the grounds.

The Luther Tower.

Great building names like Wartburg and Wittenberg.

Halloween Night

We had 36 kids at the door Halloween night. Some of our favorites were a Rubik's Cube (he actually walked by), princess and the pea and an EMO. We gave out chocolate favorites and gummy bloody body parts. During the evening I dug out all the old Halloween costumes. Here I am as an Elvis Vampire.

Alien.

Weird vampire.

Cowboy pimp.

Our treat bowl.