Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #43 - Liesel's Birthday

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #43 - Liesel's Birthday

Hi Mom, Today is Liesel's birthday.

I had to stay here for the stereo repair guy, so Piper and Liesel went to some the BLACK OWL CAFE this morning.

But then after they fetched Ivan from Driver's Training, we went to see the film Trainwreck, which we all agreed was one of the best movies we have ever seen. Next, an early dinner at Martini's and then off to get the cake at Mackenzie's before they closed.

Our power was out due to the storm, but it came on literally the minute we entered the house.

I know you like to know what people eat, Mom. Liesel had two yummy martinis and I had a hard apple cider. I had a Fettucine dish with pesto, broccoli, and grilled chicken. Liesel and the kids all had ravioli, though Adam Kemp had lasagna.



Liesel pronounced it all as one of her best birthdays ever and mentioned several times that she loves her family.

I am washing her work clothes for tomorrow right now, so I gotta go.

Look presents.......

This envelope is labeled this way in the theme of the card.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 44 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.17 - 20:30

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #42 - wedding anniversary

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #42 - wedding anniversary

Hi Mom, This is Dad's post on his Facebook wall today in honor of your wedding anniversary today (1958-2015).

I can think of nothing more fitting, eloquent, or beautiful to share today. So just this...

I know Marjorie likes this, too.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 43 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.16 - 19:14

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #41 - KUDL TOURNAMENT 2015

Pictured in the above photo: Back row: Nate Trela, Dylan Denison, Topher Barrett, Matt Fraaza, Brian Kirklin, Matt Bateman, me (chris tower), Lenny Stoehr. FRONT: Indigo McCollum, Sarah Allard, Little (Andrew Hamilton), Kaitlyn Toohey, Emily Pirog, Cole Dueringer. Not pictured: Andrew Hunter and Michelle Ringle-Barrett.


CONGRATULATIONS MOST SPIRITED TEAM: sLIMErs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And now for the award that really matters. KUDL voted Lime Green - sLIMErs as most SPIRITED team. Perhaps this spirit comes from the fact that all sLIMErs agreed that this was their favorite and best ever KUDL team! sLIMErs thank all of KUDL for their generous acknowledgement. They had a blast all summer, and it showed! Below: sLIMErs on costume night.


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #41 - KUDL 
TOURNAMENT 2015

Hi Mom,

Played in the KUDL Ultimate tournament today.

I had the best time at this year's KUDL torunament that I have ever had at any KUDL event. Chiefly, this great fun was due to my fantastic team. The sLIMErs team (get it? We're LIME green. Ghostbusters. "He slimed me!") put together by me and Sarah Allard was the single best KUDL team I have ever had the privilege to play on. Granted, we did not win the championship as my team did in 2010 (and I loved that team, too, with all of my heart), and I missed having my fourth finals appearance in our ten year history (my others were last year, 2014, 2010, and 2008). But this team?? Wow is all I can say. Sarah and I drafted for two things: experience and people with whom we wanted to play. As such, even with the people we didn't know yet, we assembled a team of people with whom we unequivocally wanted to play and with whom we had a BLAST all summer.

one of my ego taunts with the old KUSS trophy and my medal for winning the 2010 KUDL Summer League

Mom, I needed to have a blast because, you know...

I went to Ultimate two days after you died. Sarah sent around a card that everyone signed on both our team and the opposing team. I didn't even see her do it!

The mix of people was just right. And we played hard. We only lost one game in the "games that count." We were 7-2 overall and 5-1 in games that count.


At the tournament, we did lose the first game to a team we cannot seem to beat, a team that gave us one of our two losses, in Liquid Oxygen led by my good friend Lanny Potts.

We won the next game against Solid Gold: a Tribute. But then even though we were leading at halftime by two points, we could not finish off the Green Team who won the whole thing.

However, I discovered an ERROR in the standings. We were supposedly ranked as a 4-2 team because the score for the final week was misreported. ACTUALLY, we were a 5-1 team and clearly the second seed, which means we would have had different match ups in the tournament and MAY have played in the Finals instead of losing in the semi-finals.

Oh well. We won the award for most spirited team, which is what matters REALLY. Keep reading for more on that.


Above is my Twitter message that I sent after the tournament.

Actually, I fudged it a little. My surgery was actually on August 16th, 2013, my parents' wedding anniversary and the day before my wife, Liesel's, birthday. But the Twitter message seemed to work better the way I did it, so I went with it.

Here's the card my team and the opposing team SMOKESTACK signed.

Here's our record from this glorious 2015 season!!!

I am including on my blog text I wrote and sent to KUDL and posted to our web site. Here it is.

KUDL SUMMER 2015 TOURNAMENT: Huckable and strike cutty thank yous to all the glorious individuals who made KUDL’s 2015 and tenth anniversary season a ROUSING success. Obvious thank yous to our twenty team captains. But also re-iterated thank yous to Jordan Kuhl for masterminding KUDL shorts sales, Will Maddix for survey creation, Sarah Allard for award creation, Danica Keefe for tournament direction, Bruce “Fris” Johnson for tireless organizing super powers, and all our Brain Trust personnel. KUDL loves you all.

KUDL 2015 SUMMER WINNERS: Congratulations to KUPPA TROOP (Dark Green) and captains David Mandrick and Cody Winsborrow for winning the 2015 KUDL Summer League. See full team list and huckles on our web site (kudl.org). And please give them all love and hugs when you next see them. This is Cody’s second win a row making him the ONLY KUDL captain to win in back-to-back years. Cody also joins an exclusive club of captains with two summer wins, including Ed Kenny and now David Mandrick.

Pictured in the above photo: Back row: Nate Trela, Dylan Denison, Topher Barrett, Matt Fraaza, Brian Kirklin, Matt Bateman, me (chris tower), Lenny Stoehr. FRONT: Indigo McCollum, Sarh Allard, Little (Andrew Hamilton), Kaitlyn Toohey, Emily Pirog, Cole Dueringer.

SPIRIT WINNERS: Congratulations to sLIMErs (lime green) who you all voted as most spirited team. As one of the captains of that team, I cannot think of any accolade that means more to us. Thank you KUDL. We had a blast playing all of you this summer. Let’s do it again next year!

INDIVIDUAL TEAM AWARDS: Too many to name, but sometime soon, these will get posted to our web site. Revel in your glory there.

MVP WOMEN: Our all league KUDL woman MVP for 2015 was Alissa “Aslan” Neff of Rock Lobsters (red). Super Awesome!!

MVP MEN: Our MVP for men resulted in a tie between Clayton Cole Dueringer of sLIMErs (lime green) and Andy “Big” Momotiuk of Tropical Punch (aqua blue). Super Awesome!!

OLYMPICS: For those who may have missed it, Ultimate was recently recognized as a sport by the International Olympics Committee.

Read on at BBC NEWS.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 42 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.15 - 20:11 and 1508.16 - 19:26
and 1508.19 - 8:50

PHOTO GALLERY AND DESCRIPTIONS

We were the coolest team at the tournament with our own fan!

















More after jump.........

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #40 - depressed

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #40 - I have been a little depressed lately

Hi Mom,

I have been feeling a little depressed lately. Not that you can deduce that fact from this photo. But when the photo above was taken, you were still alive. It's a picture from sometime in the 1990s. I am fairly certain the picture was taken in my VW Rabbit, which I drove in the early 1990s before I bought the GEO in 1993. I guess this could be the late 1980s or even 1990. I am not sure.

I have been feeling depressed, and I am trying to shake it off. It probably did not help that I looked through a lot of old photos today.

Here's what I did today. Knowing that I am feeling depressed, I forced myself to be active and not sit around the house all day eating ice cream. I took Satchel to Camp Fido. I showered early and went to the Kalamazoo County Fair to see Alan Kazam, the magician at 10 a.m. I ran a few errands and went to your condo to wrap Liesel's birthday presents. I ordered her a cake.

I did a few other things, which I will tell you about later.

I also have a new way to describe this situation to people. It's like the Twilight Zone. It's like an alternate universe that I am only visiting, and eventually I get to go back to my home universe, where you're still alive.

I just ate some Chinese food.

I have the KUDL tournament tomorrow, and I will surely post about it after.

I love you, Mom.

I miss you.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 41 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.14 - 19:40

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #39 - the office and grading Hell

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #39 - the office and grading Hell

Hi Mom,

I have been doing final grades for my main school, or as I like to call it "Grading Hell."

I would like to say my office is extra out of control because of Grading Hell, and it is more cluttered, but it's been like this for quite some time. I do need to tidy up. It's out of control. In fact, I have had a re-design plan for two years and just have not taken the time to implement it, Maybe next week.

The photo at the top gives a panoramic view of my office during Grading Hell day, even though my computer is doing Windows updates. Annoying. See the yogurt with the spoon in it the foreground. Yes, I was eating. No, that had not sat there more than a few minutes. I do not leave "trash" lying about, though some may disagree depending on one's definition of "trash."

One another thing worthy of note: I have a new fan set up just the other side of the second monitor, which is dark, and in front of the wall calendar. I like blowing around a lot of air. I wish I felt like running those fans (there's two others, one hidden on the left side of the desk, and one visible under the window) year around.

Mom, I wanted to show you pictures of my office. You can probably see it better in pictures than when I tried to wheel you in here. It's a small room. The Tower room at the West Gull Lake Drive house (where I last had my office) was much bigger. Though you did not see that room when we (Liesel and the kids) lived there as we couldn't get you up those stairs.

As you can see from the first photo (up right), my speakers are in my office because Liesel thinks they're ugly. Stacked on top of them are magic books and a magazine (entitled Magic, cleverly). I will be delving into those as I continue to renew my interest in magic. Next to the speakers is a bin in which I supposedly organize bills, but actually the current bills are stacked on my desk. But you can see Hong Kong Fooey propped up there as I like to look at him. Below the bin is the cool Hawkman from Kingdom Come sitting on top of a stack of recently read books. You can see that the top one is The Martian as I recently lent it to Dad and he just returned it.

In the picture on the left, you can see some really messy stacks that need culling out. I need some way to store hats that allows them to be easy to get to and SEEN. I have this thing about seeing my things so I know what I have. I would be happy living in a small museum in which everything in my life is on display. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

The Museum of Chris Tower. This thought is helping with my depression, which I will write about in tomorrow's blog entry. YES, I AM PREDICTING THE FUTURE. NO, IT'S NOT ALREADY TOMORROW AS I TYPE THIS... okay, yes, it is, but go with it. It's funny.

You cannot really see them in the picture, but there are some books above grief under those pens in the foremost stack. Such is how I have progressed in working through grief: books in a stack.

What to say about the photo below.... oh boy. Scroll down...

See? There's that stack of bills in foreground left. I cannot even begin to easily (because I could do it) describe everything in the photo. Do you like that Liesel's picture is dead center?

There's the Fakini Balls I bought at Abbott's, manipulation of which is helping with my tendinitis (x-rays of my hand did NOT show arthritis).

On the right, you can see my to-do list, that thing on the clipboard oriented horizontally. Yes, that's actually a to-do list. And the bottom right corner of the list is where the grade items are waiting to be crossed off.

Here's another view of the desk on the right side where you can see my calendar and a new Tigers phone case and one of my favorite pictures of you, Mom.

I am also quite fond of my Vision and Sleestak bobble heads that watch me work.

I know you are interested, Mom, as I have shown you pictures before (this is how I solved the inability to do a full tour thing), and I hope that a few readers had a glimpse in here. I am fascinated by work process and today I shared a glimpse of it.

That's all for now.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 40 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.13 - 20:00 and 1508.14 20:00
and 1508.15 7:16

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #38 - The End of All Things

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #38 - The End of All Things

Hi Mom,

Gee, look what arrived the mail yesterday, the day it was released to the general public.


It's John Scalzi's new book!!

I am already reading The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne, so I cannot start this lovely tome immediately (though I am tempted to abandon Byrne for Scalzi), but it shall wait, right with Armada and other delicious fictions.

Final grades due to tomorrow morning, so this one is short as I hammer through tons of work.

How do you like that dramatic sunlight in the photo?

I caught just the right moment.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 39 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.12 - 19:55

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #37 - assorted for Tuesday August 11 2015

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #37 - assorted for Tuesday August 11 2015

Hi Mom,

Today is dedicated to assorted stuff, much like our phone calls always are. Just catching you up on what's going on with me. I love this picture, above, of you and me. Dad sent it to me originally claiming it was taken at Pinkster's on Pine Lake. But first off, I doubted that you EVER dressed in that special yellow sun top (it's terry cloth, right?) at the Pinkster's summer office party. Secondly, I do not remember playing in a row boat there, and lastly, the shore beyond definitely looks exactly like the point just beyond our beach at the Traverse City house on Long Lake. Upon review, Dad agreed that it was indeed a photo from Long Lake.

Do you think you were about to get in the boat, Mom?

Was this to be a boat ride with just you and me?

I have good memories of you wearing that yellow sun robe or whatever you called it.

Dad reminded me of a great memory of that spot on Long Lake. I would wear a life preserver and he would tow me as he swam us over to that point. There was a drop off of about 20 feet beyond the sandbar that the point forms. We would skim for Petoskey stones, and when I was older, we would snorkle and dive down and down that drop off. I never swam to the bottom of it, so the 20 feet thing is a guess. Too dark. Too cold.

Things are just okay. I have taken to telling people that things are just okay, or I am just all right but not great. I usually tell people I am great, but I have not felt "great" lately.

I have final grades due this week for CTU.

I laid out at Ultimate last night. I dove for the disc and caught it pancake style in mid-air. I am proud. Can you tell?

I have been struggling lately. For days, I operated as if on the verge of tears. I have some friends who have lost parents. I feel I need to talk with them and gain some perspective.

Liesel just called. She is leasing a car.

I am grading and doing laundry. I should be in my Calculus class, but I am skipping today because I have applied for a hardship withdrawal. I told you about the Calculus class in Hey, Mom! # 10. It has become abundantly clear that I cannot pass, and so I have requested a hardship withdrawal, which is not something I knew existed until yesterday.

Here's what I wrote on my test #3 last week (on August Fourth = 1508.04) in lieu of attempting any of the problems:

Dr. Freudenberg, You are an excellent instructor. I appreciate such excellence in instruction as I am an instructor myself. I want you to know that I am learning some of this math, but it's quite an uphill climb for me.

I will make this one easy for you as I don't wish to waste your time.

Just give me a zero.

My mother died one month ago today. 

I am off to a conference this week and just in no way able to even attempt most of this math. But give it back to me in class, and I will use it to study for the final exam.

With respect, - chris tower

Work, work, working happening. More tomorrow.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 38 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1508.11 - 19:18 & 1508.12 - 20:00