Recently in Just Stuff Category

Anyone that has known me from my high school days knows about 'The Shoes'. So its always a requirement to pay attention to stories like this from today's Detroit Free Press:

Weird 'shoe tree' in northern Michigan.

Now I know what we'll be doing on our next vacation! ;)

It was back in 2006 when there was a tragic traffic accident in Indiana that killed several students and an employee from Taylor University. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was an amazing case of mistaken identity between the sole survivor of the crash and one woman that was killed. Both victims and their families were from Michigan and the story received a lot of attention in the press and on a blog that was setup to provide updates on the survivor.

When Whitney Cerak recovered enough to identify who she was, the result was an incredible twist of fate for two families and their friends.

The story is back in the news with the release of a book that promises to give a more detailed look at what happened and how it affected the families. There are also plans for appearances on TV shows like Oprah.

It's really one of the more incredible real human tragedies that I can remember -- I bet that there will be a movie made about this someday soon.

Yes, I'm a recovering marching band geek. And back in the day (early 1980's), we thought we were pretty good too.

Wrong.

My old high school (Fraser) has a great marching band now:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

After months of putting it off, it's time to relaunch my blog. Once the back-to-school routine started with the kids, I pretty much lost interest in updating things here. It wasn't a case of not having anything to write about - in fact I still have notes sitting around about summer vacations and stuff that just never made it off paper and onto the computer.

Which means there will probably be some strange things coming to this blog as I get ramped back up again. Maybe reading about July in February will help all of us in Michigan start feeling warm and ready for another summer season.

It seems that blogging isn't as 'dangerous' as it used to be. Some of the things that were blogged by sports journalists from the major newspapers around here during the University of Michigan coaching search late last fall were incredible in their inaccuracies and overall nastiness. And it doesn't really seem to have had any effect on the day jobs of the real journalists that were writing them. I'm conflicted whenever I try to be nasty about things, preferring to use the golden rule instead. But it seems that in today's society, if you're not controversial enough, there just isn't any interest in what you have to say. The only thing that gets noticed is the bad stuff.

I'm not sure where that leaves me as I try again to find my voice for a blog. Of course, there will still be plenty of 'boring' entries too. Like this one.