Time won't let me

Another Saturday morning memory!



Enjoy!

~ Glenn

Here We Go!

Lonely Is The Night

This week it was Billy Squire leading off the show!

Loads of football talk as I am AMPED about the Steelers going for their record 6th Super Bowl win!

So naturally I played a lot of Steeler stuff. Pittsburgh fans love their team and they love to sing about them too!

One song I did NOT play, but I wanted to link anyway because it is good and the kids who sing it are 11 and 12 years old!



We did our LOST update and I'll try to be more concise next week but there was a lot of football stuff to talk about!


Next week: More LOST! A Super Bowl recap! Hockey (well, football is over ya know?) and the proud and long awaited return of the "People I Hate" segment!


Talk with you all then!

~ Glenn

Black Ice

So here's an interesting story!

Yesterday it warmed all the way up to 38 degrees here and rained.

Later in the day a cold front blew through and the temperature dropped 10 degrees in an hour. In fact all the wet roads and surfaces froze over pretty quickly.

Driving home I was very careful even though its only about a 5 minute trip.

As I approached the turn to my road I had to come to a full stop due to on coming traffic. Unfortunately I started to slide a little and actually went PAST the turn.

Luckily the only other car behind me was also be very careful and was a good ways behind me...or so I thought.

I looked into my rear view mirror in time to see his car sliding right at my bumper!

Note: Michelle and I had been discussing earlier in the day how happy we were that we were about to make our LAST PAYMENT ON THE TRUCK!!!!

To continue: The vehicle behind me continued to slide toward me so I tried to move over give him so room and he ended up sliding sideways into a drainage ditch. Just his rear passenger side tire...but enough that he was stuck good.

I circled back around and made sure the people in the car were OK and they assured me they were and they were going to call for a chain and a truck to get pulled out.

30 minutes later we were still on the road.

Fortunately two good things happened:

1) A PennDot truck came by. The driver stopped to see what happened and spread a large amount of ash in front of the car to help him get traction when he got pulled.

2) A man who lived within five minutes of here said he would be back with a chain to pull the car out.

While waiting (outside in the wind and cold) ANOTHER car started to spin out and head toward the stuck vehicle!

Fortunately two good things happened:

1) The driver of the truck coming the other way saw what was happening and had the good driving skills to swing down a side road and miss the on coming car.

2) When the sliding car went sideways he hit the ash and stopped! He drove away probably considering himself very lucky!

A few minutes later our good Samaritan showed up and in a few minutes the care was free and no damage was done.

The guy with the chain would not take any money. "Its what Americans do for each other." He said. Seriously.

Then we find out the guy who was stuck was leaving for a tour in Iraq this morning!

We both shook his hand and I told him that I hope he was safer there than he was on the road last night!

And we all went our separate ways.

Kind of restores your faith in fellow man to see how many people stopped to check on the car and the people inside.

~ Glenn

Baby, Baby

Yesterday was our daughter's 11th birthday!

Here is her story:

We had been married for just under a year when we found out my wife was pregnant. She had taken a test but didn't want to say anything to me until she was sure so she took another...and another. Three tests later we were pretty sure!

Our families were elated! This would be the first grandchild for both sides and we knew we were going to a a spoiled brat!

Everything went as you would expect and we were enjoying getting ready for our first child.

Unfortunately my wife started having some problems with her blood pressure. We learned this was due to pre-eclampsia (which reared its ugly head with our second child also).

With no history to go by the doctors were cautious, but optimistic.

However at 5 month my wife was put on bed rest. A couple weeks later she was in the hospital and and week after that I got the call.

I was working for a rental company at the time and my wife called from her room to tell me that they wanted to transfer her to another hospital because the baby seemed sluggish.

After calming her down I left to make my deliveries for the day with the intention of going Pittsburgh to see her that evening.

I had not even made it to my first stop when my mobile phone rang and a doctor on the other end was telling me that baby's heart rate was low and they were going to do an emergency c-section and they would NOT be waiting for me to get there!

On my way back to the store to get my car my parents called to inform me they were going to visit my wife. I informed THEM that she would not be in her room as they were taking the baby now!

I had never been to Magee's but made great time on the trip!

I found my parents in the waiting room and my dad took me to the nurse's station so I could find out what was going on.

The nurse told me that my wife was fine, but still in the emergency room. While I was trying to get all the information processed my dad was behind me asking about the baby. The nurse wouldn't answer him and it took me a few minutes to hear him and I asked about our daughter. i was told she was being taken care of and we could see her soon.

She had come three months early at a length of 12 inches and a weight of 1 pound 11 1/2 ounces!

I got to see my wife and I had never seen so many wires and tubes connected to a person who was awake!

She ended up in the intensive care unit for 24 hours.

I was able to see Veronica (I didn't want to call her "Roni" but even the nurses did for that very first day!) withing a few hours.

She was small and red and I didn't know how she was alive!

It was over the next three months that we learned all you would ever want to know about preemie's and their care and survival.

Girls are stronger than boys.

The less time they are on a respirator the better off they are.

Babies have a tiny hole in their heart that closes before birth...preemie's are not closed yet.

They like to be touched...but not stroked.

The list goes on and on!

Roni was given a medicine to close the hole in her heart. If it did not work they would do another and then surgery would be a last option. the first dose worked.

She had been on the respirator for a few weeks when I told her as we were leaving from visiting one night that it had been long enough and she should start breathing on her own. That night we called to check on her and the nurse informed us that she had pulled the tube out on her own and was breathing fine! (Probably the last time she listened to me and did what I told her without whining I should add!!! LOL!)

We went through the training of how to bath her and hold her and dress her and wondered how parent brought a baby right home without all the lessons!

We watched as she had IV's placed in veins in her head because all the other ones had been used.

We transferred her to TIC so she could grow and get big enough to finally come home!Veronica the day she came home in April of 1998!

Through it all we never doubted that she would fine.

So far so good!

Roni is great in school, has a fantastic personality and is involved in many activities!

We were blessed that everything worked out so well for us. Twice.

Despite her believing that she is already a teenager i don't know how we could ever have been the same without her!

And despite the fact that she acts too much like I did when I was her age!

So I am the proud father of a pre-teen! How did that happen?!?!

But I am proud and I know my wife is too and I know the Veronica is special...because I saw her grow into what she is today from that cold day in January 11 years ago.

~ Glenn

January 27, 2016 Edit:

Roni at 18:

I can't drive 55

Look, would you people do me a favor?

If for some, person reason you are unable to drive the posted speed limit will STAY THE HECK OFF THE ROADS!!!

If I have to follow one more person leading their own personal parade through the back roads of my county I may have do something drastic!

I understand that some older folks feel more comfortable driving slower...perhaps they would feel even MORE comfortable after they PULLED OVER AND LET THE 20 CARS BEHIND THEM PASS!!!

And in foul weather a good many people want to be safe...and the safest thing for them to do is TO STAY THE HECK HOME!!!

Honest to goodness people...if the sign says 45 then do at least that. If you can't then get out of the way. You must not be any hurry anyway!

Oh, and to all you people who drive in the passing lane on the highway? The ones who are in the left lane long enough to declare residency? THE SAME GOES FOR YOU!!!!

Pull over!! If you are passing someone even slower than you (as if) then DO IT! And then PULL OVER!!

And if you are trying to keep ME from speeding? Well until they give you a badge and a siren YOU ARE NOT THE PROTECTOR OF THE SPEED LIMIT!

Its not even that I speed! I just want to get around the slower traffic and some moron is coasting along in the left lane for 100 miles while a trail of cars get caught behind them.

Of course George Carlin can explain it better than I ever could.

Enjoy!



~ Glenn

Good Morning!

Another collection for your Saturday morning!




Enjoy!

~ Glenn

Nothing on but the radio...

Jet kicked off the show tonight and then it was on to football talk!

My favorite team is headed to the big game and lots of fans have great songs out about them!

Then we talked about the inauguration and the cult of Obama. Namely how some on the right have fogotten their deifying of President Regan. No links...just my opinions. Listen to the show for more.

Weird news!

1) A prophet claims the world will end before President Obama is sworn in...um, wait a minute...

2) The vatican changes its mind on something! Only 400 years in the making!

3) A bus driver won't drive his bus because it claims there might not be a God. God refuses to comment.


No specific novelty song this week but a couple football related clips from Mr. Bill Cosby.

Enjoy your week kids and NEXT week more Super Bowl talk and who knows what else!

Talk with you then!

~ Glenn

People are strange!

LOST is back tonight!

Does anything else really matter?!?!

I spent the first two season trying to solve all the mysteries...and then it hit me: Just relax and enjoy the ride.

It is one of the best written and presented shows on televsion and I am going to enjoy every minute of it!

In fact my goal is too live to see how it all ends!

~ Glenn

Hail To The Chief

Today was a very important day in our collective history as a country.

Today, for just the 44th time, a person has been sworn in to lead the United States of America.

I'm not going to provide links to the coverage or the speech because if you found this little out of the way blog you can surely find those, but I do want to put my two cents in.

I know a lot of you don't like President Obama.

Some people do not like his politics.

Some do not like the fact that he is a democrat.

Some do not like the fact that he is black. Yes you are out there...I work with some of you.

But you cannot deny the fact that it is STILL an amazing event to watch.

One man...chosen by a majority of the voters in this country to lead us for the next four years.

I certainly do not want that job! LOL!

Give him a chance. One person cannot change the world.

All politicians promise to do the best they can and all politicians have to deal with others who oppose their view. But I've already seen posts wondering why President Obama hasn't done anything yet!

It takes time and he inherited a really bad load of stuff to deal with.

Not everyone will be happy. Not now, not ever.

But you will get to voice your dissatisfaction in just under four years...if you choose to vote then.

Until then relax and enjoy the moment.

A moment that speaks to the freedom we have in this country.

We can agree to disagree...compromise is one of the tenants this country was built upon.

I know I'll disagree with some decisions...but only time will tell.

And for those of you celebrating that President Bush is now gone? Time will tell for him too.

Feel free to speak your minds...that is another great thing about the US of A!

But at least take a deep breath first and let the history of the moment sink in before you started yelling and screaming again.

~ Glenn

Happy Birthday

Just wanted to take a second to say happy birthday to my dad.

Dad with his dad around 1946 and his mother in 1945.

(I wanted to post this over the weekend but couldn't find the attached video!)

After graduating from high school in 1963 he enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed in Germany during the Vietnam war.

Returning to the states he met and married my mother in 1968.

Several jobs and years later we still rely on him as much as we did as kids.

Dad will probably not retire any time soon. He has no real hobbies and all the grand kids will be in school in another couple years.

But he does more for our families then we can ever hope to repay him for!

Hopefully he knows we love him and we would lost without him most of the time!

His 64th(!) birthday was Saturday and below is a slide show I did for his 60th birthday.

(Music is "Root Beer Rag" by Billy Joel)

~ Glenn

Laugh, Laugh, Laugh

For your Saturday morning enjoyment!



~ Glenn

Thank God Its Friday!

Really!



~ Glenn

Party On the Patio!

(Click on the title to go hear the episode!)

We kicked off the show with a great tune from ZZ Top off the El Loco album.

Then it was STEELERS, STEELERS, STEELERS!

A rare discussion of current events included that plane that crashed into the Hudson River just today. How can it be a miracle that all those people survived when flying is supposed to so much safer than anything else like they tell us?

Then we got a great novelty/comedy song from Aaron Wilburn!

Some weird news for the week:

1) Always a bridesmaid? Hell she's usually a pall-bearer!
2) why do people think its OK to to be rude to fat people?
3) Adolph Hitler was taken from his parents...last week.

That's it kids! Stay warm this weekend cause its FREEZING outside!

We'll be back next Thursday at 11pm!

~ Glenn

Nothing from Nothing

You know sometimes (as hard as it might be to believe) I really have nothing to say!

That's why I don't blog everyday anymore.

I mean really, lets face facts, how interesting could I be? And while I have tons of opinions that I haven't even began to touch on yet I can't always think of something clever to jot down here.

So just enjoy the video!



~ Glenn

Don't Panic!

"I don't' get ulcers...I'm a carrier!"

That used to be a motto I lived by.

Not so much over the past few years as I have gotten older and had more things to worry about.

But for the past month I have really tried to live by that creed. And more recently I have defined it even more: Don't panic.

Panicking is NEVER good. Whether its a work, while driving or when drowning!

There is always room for anger and elation and frustration but you should never panic.

When you panic you make bad decisions that are rushed...and those will usually just lead to more bad decisions down the road.

After repeating this to several people over the past week or so I had a revelation. I had heard this somewhere else before.

Then it hit when when I woke up Saturday: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!

Douglas Adams tome on the destruction of the Earth and space travel (OK, its more than that...lol) put those words into my subconscious back in 1986 when I read the first book in the four book trilogy and there are even more true today.

Don't panic.

Two simple words that have allowed me to be more relaxed and to make better decisions.

Don't panic.

Try it...it works.

~ Glenn

You must have been a beautiful baby...

I was to post this yesterday (1/9/2009) but circumstances entirely within my control (you read that correctly) stopped it from happening so here we go...

Friday was my son's 7th birthday and here is his story.

My wife and I went through some tough times in the year 2000, but by May of 2001 we had worked out a lot of our differences and were moving on. Michelle had decided to go back to school and get her degree. To that end she enrolled at Penn State Fayette and was start classes in September. We had also decided to wait to have another (2nd) child until she completed her studies.

Not long after classes started we were sitting at the dinner table when Michelle said she had a craving for an banana split.

I told her that if she had said any other word other than "craving" I would have let it go...but I had a feeling she was pregnant.

I told her I was going to get a pregnancy test and she told me in no uncertain terms to NOT go get one while she was at class.

So when she got home the tests were sitting on the sink in our bathroom.

(As a side note I bought two tests, because when Michelle was pregnant with our daughter she took three to be sure! LOL!)

Seeing the tests Michelle told me she would take it just to shut me up about the whole being pregnant thing.

Several minutes later she told me I'd better come and look at the test.

Yes, she was pregnant.

Our first child was born premature (at six months) due to preeclampsia so Michelle's doctors were very careful and monitored her blood pressure and weight gains closely.

For the first six months there were no problems and we thought everything would go smoothly this time.

Then one Sunday we were sitting around waiting to go to our nieces birthday party when Michelle got an awful headache. A check of her blood pressure showed it was very high and we went straight to the emergency room.

There was a bad snow storm that day and it took awhile to get all the tests done being a weekend, but her doctor decided to not fool around and send her to a hospital in Pittsburgh (where our daughter as born also) just in case the baby had to come early.

The following Wednesday, January 9, 2002, I went to visit Michelle and found her throwing up. The nurse on hand said she had been sick all day. Eventually the doctors decided that it was a result of the pregnancy and preeclampsia and the only way to stop the problem was to take the baby early.

We both agreed and were moved to one of the birthing areas in the hospital.

Several hours passed as doctors were in and out and forms were signed, but at 10:10pm Joshua Daniel Heller was born at a weight of 2 pounds 10 ounces and a length of 12 inches!

He cried when he was born (I was in the room) and he looked a lot like me but they whisked him away to check his viability and to take care of Michelle.

The next morning (I had slept in a chair in the hospital room next to Michelle that night) a nurse came in and became concerned by Michelle's vitals.

Her blood pressure was low and she was very pale.

She was taken to the ICU and I was asked to leave the room so the doctors could do their thing. The keys to my car and my cell phone were still in the room so I was a man with no where to go and no information on what was going on with my wife and child.

For the next several hours I was not allowed in to the ICU, no doctor would tell me what was happening and I also could not get in to see our son in the NICU.

I wondered why people were staring at me as I wandered around the hospital...I finally looked in a mirror in the restroom and realized that my lack of sleep and crying had made my eyes blood red and I had the look of a crazy person!

Finally I was told that Michelle's liver was bleeding into the thin film that surrounds it. Our options were to wait until the surgeon came in the next day or transfer her to another facility across town right now.

We opted for the quickest surgery possible and she was then moved to the next hospital where surgery was performed that evening. She remembers nothing after Josh was born until a day or so after the surgery.

Four days later she was sent home.

Three months after that Josh came home. We had two months in the NICU and one month at TIC just like we had with his sister.

Although he had a tougher time than his sister did with his lungs he only came home with a need for an oxygen tank and he was done with that within two months.

When a child is born premature there are many things that go wrong...and we have been blessed with two children who seem to have zero side effects from their ordeal and for that we are eternally grateful!

So here we are seven years later and Josh is in first grade and doing very well.

It amazes me how much faster time goes when you are watching someone else grow up.

~ Glenn

PS: Click on the title of the blog...Josh's middle name came from this song.

2016 Edit: The original link in the title is not there anymore...you can hear the song that was the inspiration for Josh's middle name here.


 And here is Josh today.

Ballroom Blitz!

Back to the grind!

Lots of football to talk about as my Pittsburgh Steelers are preparing to play the San Diego Chargers in the playoffs this Sunday!

Also I bitched a lot about work. Its good to vent!

Our novelty song this week was about an unfortunate brick layer and his request for a day off.

In weird news:
1) Nipples are bad on facebook.
2) Golf can damage your hearing?
3) She's a man, baby!
4) A divorce settlement that gonna REALLY hurt!

Check me out on My Space and Facebook, and read my (almost) daily blog!

Check you crazy cats next week!

~ Glenn

The Name of the Game

Just a quick update tonight about Dartball.

Dartball?

Yes, Dartball.


Its a game where you thrown wooden #2 darts from 25 feet at a board that looks like a baseball field.

You can hit singles, doubles, triples, home runs, errors,. sacrifices, double plays, foul balls, strikes, balls.

Teams made up of a minimum of 6 men play three games every Monday night from September to May!

Some leagues are different with different boards and drinking.

I have been playing in a church league since I was 13 years old.

The league itself was started in 1953!

Its a fun game and I get to spend time with my dad since he's been playing one year more than me.



~ Glenn

Back in Black

As I've said before genealogy and history are a big interest of mine.

When looking through old newspapers I am sometimes taken a back at the overt racism that was so prevalent even in the early 20th century.

Here are a couple examples.

Two comics taken from the Daily Courier January 5th, 1909...100 years ago this week.

Boy eating: Why doen' your fader raise melons?

Other Boy: Hes got chillun to raise

So's my fader.

What you spec he done raise?

Hawgs.

The 2nd especially! LOL! John Henry Johnson is basically drawn as an ape!

~ Glenn

God Bless the USA

This is an older news story that I had posted to my My Space page.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, but you can make your own judgements.


Veteran stands up for the American Flag


~ Glenn

Pleasant Valley Sunday

Well its a quiet day here at the homestead and all the Christmas decorations have been put away.

We start decorating the house for Halloween, then Thanksgiving, THEN Christmas!

I enjoy it, but its kind of nice to have the house back to "normal" after the hustle and bustle of the Holidays.

So since everything is put away I guess its time to post some pictures from Christmas!

Enjoy!

My family on Christmas Eve.

Our "kids" tree after Santa came!
The kids on Christmas morning.
The madness at my in-laws on Christmas night.

~ Glenn

Superstition

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season so far!

In order to continue that I present a list of superstitions associated with the first day of the new year!

One that I keep is being the first dark haired man to enter people's home. Its supposed to bring good luck to the homeowner and I will continue to do for as long as I have any dark hair left on my head! LOL!

Whatever your beliefs lets hope for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009 for each and every one of us!

Oh, and click on the title of the post for a great little surprise!

~ Glenn