All I see Turns to Brown, as the Sun Burns the Ground

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Whew! The heat has been off the hook lately! We have set several records for high temps and low rain fall amounts. Things are really dry around these parts. Our yard is scorched and has formed cracks in several places. Even with all the rain early in the year, we are running our water table dangerously low. Things are really in full swing again with our family. On Monday, we started a new era – that of the four children mornings. Due to Dee Dee’s new job, Grace will be with us in the mornings before school. This week was spirit week at the elementary school, so the three little kids were all done up by Ann each morning with not only outfits, but also hair coloring and face painting as well. In fact, on Friday Luke dressed as Johnny Appleseed, complete with a pot on his head! He did have a big white beard, but he wiped it off…and then of course wanted more but by that time, Mom was done with it. At work, it was budget time, so that was fun (not). We are trying to get everything in line before our parent company (PSI) is bought out by a UHS. That deal should be done in another month or so, which has folks on edge at work since you never know what to expect in a time like this. This merger will take the largest psych provider (us) and our next largest competitor (UHS) and combine us into a huge conglomerate, so the FTC has been looking long and hard at the whole monopoly thing over the past few months. That evening, as Mom O picked up Matt from football practice (with a signature Gatorade), Dee took Abby from jazz class to soccer where I caught up with her. I helped run Lukey’s soccer practice with Miriam. We had a great practice and worked the kids hard on game scenarios. I really think they learned a lot that evening. The kids brought home their soccer pictures, which turned out really good.

On Tuesday, I learned that one of my beloved childhood landmarks was traumatized by burglary and arson as the Frozen Custard made headlines in the online version of Lafayette’s Journal & Currier. It went on to say that one of their workers that everyone may remember recently passed away as well; the old cone lady. She was in her nineties and worked there for over fifty years! At work, we entered the next phase of our generator replacement project as we cut commercial power and tied everything in to our new transfer switch. We had several issues as our 3-phase system devices all ran reverse due to a crossed cable. The effects of which was not immediately felt, but progressed as the day dragged on. My right-hand man, Gary, and I arrived at work at 6:30 that morning and didn’t leave until that evening at about 11 pm, making for another very long day filled with the stress of not knowing what exactly to expect. The kids and staff felt it as well. We had one elopement as a 250 lb child used a 300 lb child as a battering ram and knocked through one of our double gates in our main courtyard. I heard the call come across the radio and jumped in my van and headed north of the facility and located him only a block of so from the facility. I caught up to him and waited for staff to secure the child until the police arrived and took him off to juvie for the night. We immediately bought and installed chains around all four of our double gates to secure the area. Once we had corrected the directional flow of power, we noticed several issues with our HVAC units. The next day, we were still having issues and had to have a vendor back out to address it for the second straight day. We were very, very lucky that none of our devices exploded, which could have occurred. We did lose one compressor that burned up due to the reverse rotation. We must’ve had a power surge as well as we had several electrical issues – some we could resolve with a reboot or reset switches, but others we could not and had to replace a couple items. In addition to our electrical issues, we somehow managed to break our water main as well and had a huge leak that was discovered accidentally. When I was asked to come out to the area, I first thought we had a gas leak but as I neared the “pit??? it sounded more like Niagara Falls! We eventually got everything worked out, but it made for a second day that was long and mentally taxing. Both Luke & Abby’s soccer practices were cancelled that night, so Luke & I went for a good bike ride. We spoke with one of our neighbors that I’d never met before that asked if we were planning to come to the Ryle Block Party in a couple weeks. We said yes and that we were looking forward to seeing Rusty Bladen again! All three kids brought home their school pictures. I thought they were all really good, even if Luke had a fake smile. I heard back from my high school and they requested my current address to mail me the official LP Football Hall of Fame information, so it’ll be real cool to see how that all plays out…

On Thursday, I headed in early to attend and help set up for our All-Staff Meetings that occurred throughout the day. At this meeting, I received a certificate for 15 years of service as well as a nice laptop bag with the CBC logo imprinted. It was very cool and I received a few “Atta boy??? emails and an Above and Beyond reward for helping steer the facility through the fog of the last few days. 😛 After school, Mom & Sandy took Abby out to the women’s varsity soccer game where she and her team were recognized at halftime. Abby also got to be a ball girl for the game. Afterwards, Bu went to tap class at Dixon Dance Studios before spending the evening with Grandma and Gigi. Meanwhile, Ann & I left work early to travel down to Aurora, IN to watch Matt’s freshman football team take on the South Dearborn Knights. The Pirates came out a little flat, early on; but after a questionable call on fourth down that pissed off the team and especially the rowdy crowd from Greensburg that made the trip down south, the team was fired up. After that drive (that produced the only score for the Knights), the Pirates dominated the game that resulted in the most lopsided victory of the year, 32-6. Matt started at defensive tackle and special teams and just like in the two previous weeks, played several snaps on the offensive side of the ball again. Matt had 4 or 5 solo tackles and was in on several others, cutting through their line like a hot knife through butter at times. He also caused a fumble and had a pancake on one of their safeties! With this victory, the freshman Pirates raised their record to 5-0! This day was also Ann & I’s 15th year anniversary! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been together for so long; those years have absolutely flown! I joking asked if she too was going to award me with a certificate for 15 years of service! LOL This was such a special day, as it is each year – not only because it is our anniversary, but also due to all the damn birthdays, such as Ann’s brother Keith and Grandpa Scheumann – both of whom we called to wish them a Happy Birthday and also Aunt Sharon, who we posted a Happy Birthday note on her Facebook page. I finally got around to picking up the new Rush documentary, “Beyond the Lighted Stage??? that is simply incredible. Any Rush fan will be overjoyed with this release. Also, there was a new release this week – possibly one of the most important of the year – I picked up the new LP by the super group Black Country Communion, made up of blues great Joe Banamassa on guitar, royalty in the form of Jason Bonham (son of late John from Led Zeppelin) on drums and the amazing and immortal Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple & Black Sabbath fame on bass and vocals. It is a throwback classic English heavy blues rock album that is hard to put down once you put it on. I didn’t think anything would top the debut release of Them Crooked Vultures from early this year as my favorite new band / album, but this one is seriously giving them a run for their money and definitely needs more listens…

On Friday, the kids brought home midterms. Luke is making great progress and is ahead of schedule in his learning, especially with reading. He now reads to us each night and is getting better each week. Abby was the cream of the crop again, achieving straight A’s!! We are so proud of her efforts!! Matt has done well so far this year at high school…with one exception. For whatever reason, he is struggling in one of his best subjects – math. Ann & I are wondering if it is a teacher issue. Matt seems to have the algebra concepts down and will not accept any help from me (what would a math major know any how, right?), stating he understands how to do the work. Ann & I need to meet with his teacher to figure out what is going on in that classroom. Amy told Ann that Baili had been chosen as her class’ princess and representative at homecoming. She seemed a little young to be the princess of anything, especially seeing her in some of the old pictures of her lately. That evening, Matt dressed for the homecoming game. Although he again saw no action, he was excited to have a front row view of the Pirates win a close one over Franklin County to even their record at 3-3. I enjoyed staying up late to see the Reds take on the Padres since the game had playoff implications for both teams. I couldn’t believe it when their phenom pitcher, Aroldis Chapman threw the fastest pitch in baseball history at 105 mph!! Although the Reds were able to lower their magic number this week down to 2 games, they are not playing well and if they make it to the playoffs, they better get it together fast or they’re gonna be leaving early. We were up early the next morning for Luke’s soccer game. Although Bu had a bye week, Luke’s team played in their seventh straight game of the year. They played the Comets again for the third time this year. This game was a blowout from the first quarter on, as they Blazers torched the Comets for 5 goals and gained another shutout, obviously winning 5-0 to raise their overall record to 6-1 for the year with only one game to go. Luke started at goalie and made a couple of saves. He then moved to forward and had four or five shots on goal, but none went in the net. He next played defense for half a quarter and then defense to again in the fourth quarter to end the game. He hustled the whole game and again dominated the field of play. He’s ready now to move up to U-10 next year…

Afterwards, Ann picked up Matt from football practice. Abby & I were prepared to drive to Columbus for a winter cover but found that it was nearly twice as expensive at Raft to Rafters than what we could get online for the same product (even the same manufacturer). So, hopefully we’ll be able to close this pool by next weekend. It was MUCH cooler this weekend. As I mentioned in the opener, we set heat records during the week, but dropped about 40 degrees over the weekend to the point where we were in sweatshirts at Lukey’s game. We got to open the house up for the weekend, which was a nice break. After Matt came home with Ann, we got the kids together and headed out to the Y. Earlier, while I was warming the kids up at soccer before the game, I received a call from Allen. He wanted directions to our YMCA. He had a speaking engagement that would culminate with a workout for anyone interested. We got over there late, as Matt couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to attend or not. We heard Al talk for about 10 minutes before taking questions. I had to ask him about any endorsement deals…of course I knew he hadn’t yet due to contractual constraints from NBC and The Biggest Loser. It was good to see Allen with Frankie. Abby was disappointed that Taylor wasn’t with them. However, she was happy that Megan came over to stay the day and then the night with Abby. The girls, Matt, Luke, Luke’s friend Brendan from down the street and his little sister all played out in front of our house, playing kickball for several hours – it was a marathon game…and Matt had the audacity to ask me to play – HA! No way, little Scheu…I remember how I felt the day after Rob & I played out there with you kids for a couple hours! No thank you… While they were outside, I used that time to update one of our old web pages that had lost all the links after we transitioned to our new domain. It was the 2007 Family Chronicle / Year-in-Review page, located off the Links page at our home site. You can get there directly by clicking HERE. Ann ended up going out scrapbooking with Amy for the late afternoon and all night up at Archivers on the south side of Indy. Ann and I were glad to see several of our favorite TV shows return this week after the summer hiatus, including The Simpsons (22nd season baby!!), Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, Bones, Fringe, House, Clone Wars, Stargate Universe, Cougar Town, Ultimate Fighter, Rehab and Human Target…as well as a few new ones like Chase, Blue Bloods, The Event and Hawaii Five-0. The only one we’re really missing is Saving Grace. The Boilers looked awful as their starting QB, Robert Marve, was out for the 2nd straight week as the Toledo Rockets (who came in ranked dead last in the nation in offense) put it to the Boilers who continued to make several mistakes and this time they couldn’t overcome them. If they continue to look like this next week and beyond, they won’t stand a chance in the Big 10 this year. Their record stands at 2-2 for now, with a very uncertain future. On Sunday, the Cowboys looked MUCH better versus the undefeated Texans. This is the same team that handed the Colts their jocks in the season opener. This time around, though, the Cowboys defense showed up and my boy, Demarcus Ware, had three sacks on the day. Plus, somebody was listening, as they actually had a plan to run the ball and got that offensive line straightened out as they won their first game of the year and are now 1-2. The Colts also looked good, despite taking on a good football team led by Purdue alum, Kyle Orton. It makes you wonder how long Denver will hold out until Tim Tebow is named the starting QB.

Now it’s time for the video portion of our weekly entry. The first two are home videos: The first one has Matt’s football game and the second one has Luke’s soccer game and then a little bit of Allen’s presentation at the Greensburg Y. The rest are Zeppelin-related music videos – mostly material that popped up this week on the ‘net…

And finally, here’s the Waybac feature for this week. Leading off, we have an old one of Maryann in the ‘30’s in a beached rowboat; Ann in her dance photo with her partner in approximately 1980; and then Ann with her mom, sister, and cousins at her uncle’s wedding in about ’89.

Next up are a bunch of pictures from Christmas Day in 1998 in our house on Main St.

In the final portion, we have several pictures from 2001, including Abby’s 2nd birthday party at Grandma & Gigi’s house in the Ryle Edition and a lovely one of Matt in his skivvies; Matt in our new mini van; and the kids and I doing hand stands in our new living room on Russell Dr., shortly after moving in:

Well that’s it for this version of the Scheu Family Blog. Thanks for keeping up with our family this week and we’ll catch up with you next time. Until then, have a good one. Later, Scheu