The Severed Cortex

Just in case you wondered, I have still been hanging out with Robert regularly even if I haven't written about it. August marked our 3rd anniversary with BBBS and surprisingly he still likes hanging out with me. That's even after I tricked him and his sister into eating a hot pepper last week. His sister didn't fall for it so much. She just took a small nibble off the tip of the pepper. Robert bit off a chunk, and before it could get hot in his mouth he bit off another one. It got hot about 0.2 seconds after that and he desparately searched for ice cream, swigged a whole Sprite, and begged Nancy for milk to drink. And before you give me a bunch of grief, let me say in my defense that I did tell them the peppers were sort of hot. Hey, no one told me that the persimmons would suck all the moisture out of my mouth for hours when the camp counselor tricked me into eating one of those. It's a life lesson and it's not like I tricked them into eating a dog turd.

Since the last time I wrote about Robert we have done a ton of cool things. One of the coolest was going to the NHRA drag races at Gateway National. Extra loud of course but plenty cool. Our guy is Tim Wilkerson and he drives the top fuel Levi, Ray & Shoup Funny Car. Yes, you read that right. My company sponsors a professional drag racer. If you've never seen an 8,000 horsepower car drive 1000 feet in 4 seconds in person, let me tell you it is quite awe inspiring. Bring earplugs. I've had the pleasure of meeting Tim and he's a hell of a nice guy. How he manages to be so calm and collected after being subjected to the mighty G-forces a funny car produces is beyond me. I've heard the impact of opening the chute at that speed will make your eyeballs pop out if you don't close your eyes. Man, if it were me, I'd be wound tighter than a mantle clock at the Home for the OCD. For those not in the know of drag racing, and you can place me squarely in that category up until this year, there are four main classes: Top Fuel Dragster, Top Fuel Funny Car, Pro Stock, and Pro Motorcycle. Those are ordered by speed with Dragsters being the fastest at over 300 mph. Funny Car reaches speeds over 300 mph on occasion too. There are other classes of very serious drivers and teams besides those four, but the aforementioned are the main draw at a NHRA event. No offense to either Top Fuel class but I actually like Pro Stock best. The cars are fast but not so fast that the race is over in 4 seconds. Motorcycle drag racers on the other hand are just nucking futs. Why you would want to go 200 miles an hour on a motorcycle is beyond me. During the more boring parts we got to hang out in the LRS courtesy tent. Damn nice. Nothing beats free beverages and snacks.

We got to catch a Cardinals game on a lovely Sunday afternoon in June. The tickets were certainly decent but it did mark the first time since the new stadium opened that my seat was in the upper deck. I've been to probably 25 or 30 games since the new stadium opened and every time I've scored tickets in either the lower deck or in one of the party rooms. I even got tickets to Game 3 of the World Series in club seats. Lucky I guess. This game turned out to be the debut of Mark DeRosa, although we didn't know that until roughly 24 hours beforehand. He got a rousing ovation from the crowd, but didn't get a hit. He did make a very nice running catch in front of us. And of course Cardinal fans cheered the catch with great enthusiasm. The Cardinals lost to the lowly Twins that day but it was a fantastic day to be at a game. Here's the recap where DeRosa's catch is available on video. Afterward we went to Crown Candy Kitchen and drank malts.

We don't just go to sporting events. We've seen a couple of movies. Night at the Museum 2 was pretty decent. It was at least as good as the first one even if the museum comes alive thing had already been played out. We also checked out Monsters vs. Aliens. Before the movie I bet him Aliens would win and he took the bet. I didn't know he already knew that the Monsters win. Spoiler alert. Oh wait. That's too late isn't it? As winner of the bet he chose to eat lots of Sonic food despite the fact we gorged ourselves on buttered popcorn and Sqwigglies earlier.

I took him to our company picnic at Knight's Action Park. We swam around the lazy river and shivered like popsicles when we got out. It was a chilly 68 degrees, cloudy, and very windy that day. Instead of getting all pruney from playing in the water, we rode the paddle boats, played video games, and wore our hands sore from swinging in the batting cages. Robert swings a pretty good bat. It was disappointing that we didn't get to ride the cool slides but fun was had nonetheless.

Oh, wait. There was more sporting events. Kind of. We decided, or should I say I decided, to go to All Star Fan Fest. My thinking was that the All Star Game only comes to town once every 30 plus years and this may be our only opportunity at seeing it. After seeing it, I probably could have skipped it. It was somewhat interesting but Robert was totally not into it. We got there early and the place wasn't too crowded. A couple hours later the place started filling up. (I'm guessing at time here because when you wander inside a building as large as the convention center it is tough to gauge time) We learned, as we were leaving, that the Futures game being played that afternoon was delayed because of heavy rain. Most of those people opted to come indoors for the Fan Fest rather than wait around paying 8 bucks for beer in the rain. Because of that, indoors was mobbed. As luck would have it, we happened to run into an old coworker who had brought her son Ben. Ben and I talked Robert into doing some of the activities even though he wasn't crazy about any of it. Plus, by this time he was full of funnel cake and probably feeling a little ill. Fried dough will do that to you. The lines were crazy long but we stuck it out. The line to run the bases took about a half hour to get through, and once we got through it we were allowed to run three people at once. I lost to Ben by .02 seconds. Robert lost by .02 seconds to me. I think it was one of the better trios that ran all day as we all posted respectable times in the low 4's, complete with photo finish. We weren't in the top 10 for sure but we didn't embarrass ourselves either. The line for the batting cages took almost an hour and a half however. For our miserable wait I got to whiff at five pitches from a video Randy Johnson. Robert whiffed on all five tosses from video Mark Buerhle. At least the teenager didn't show us up. He whiffed five times too. I won't say who did manage a hit. You can figure it out for yourself, and yes I am embarrassed. It turned out to be an OK day, but I'm not sure I'd do it again. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone whose kid isn't really into baseball. I'm sure when it comes close to me again they will have something cool like virtual reality baseball and I'll talk myself into going anyway.

And then last week we went to the State Fair. Forty-three years old and I had never been to a State Fair. Living in Southeast Missouri makes you a solid 7 hour drive to Sedalia, home of the Missouri State Fair. Better pack a lunch if you want your state fair fix, and you can guess that it never happened in my family. I could barely talk my parents into the 1 hour drive to Memphis for the Mid-South Fair, which by the way seemed much larger than the Illinois State Fair. But, now that I live somewhere with handy access to (questionable meat product) covered in equally questionable semi permeable liquid substance) on a stick, I felt compelled to go. I should caveat that going to the State Fair with Robert and his sister was technically not the first time I attended a State Fair. That dubious distinction technically happened a week before when I met my friend Nancy there. We mostly just walked around and drank beer in the beer tents. With Robert, and his sister Keyani, no beer was consumed. Instead, we rode rides in a circle and checked out the butter cow, which was carved right next to the butter Abe Lincoln. If you postioned yourself right you could make it look like Abe had his mouth on the cows udder. That's my brain in action folks. My only regret is that I didn't have any crackers. And as with anything with the name Fair at the end of it, a good time was had by all, as witnessed by a ride on The Scrambler.