-near death-

i was driving from mankato to new ulm on highway 68 this morning in my work truck. it was still a little dark and it was raining pretty heavily. there was a semi driving behind me for a good part of the drive. he wasnt riding my butt, and he showed no signs of wanting to pass me.

i am paid by the hour and company policy is "if you get a ticket, you pay for it"...so i generally go 57 or 58 in a 55 and 65 in a 65. theres just no good reason for me to go any faster than that. semi drivers are usually paid by the mile...so they are more prone to risk speeding...etc. many times on my route i get semis flying up behind me and passing me. 99% of the time they do it when it is safe to do so. in all honesty...truck drivers generally are incredibly polite in their driving habits. anything from waving hello to other drivers to switching lanes to help you merge to flashing lights to warn you that theres a cop down the road...etc.

anyways, back to todays jackass. this semi driver had many chances to safely pass me. there were many straight aways with no traffic. he had many chances. but he waited until i was going uphill in a NO PASSING zone. this hill is only about a half a mile long too. so all of a sudden he comes barreling up beside me to pass. i look over and say "are you kidding me? you frickin idiot"...i look back to the road. some poor guy in a car is coming over the hill about a quarter mile away. oh my god...this guy in the car is dead. what does the semi driver do? he cuts over into my lane forcing me to take the shoulder and slam on the brakes. i was missed by what appeared to be a foot or less. i shook for about a half an hour. i tried to catch up with the truck to get his info to call him in. (it would have been my first on the job tattle session...but this guy put lives at risk in a huge way and should be screamed at for it.) he must have been going 85 after the incident...i could get no where close to him. with all the life risking and all the speeding in a 80,000 pound vehicle he managed to get to new ulm about 30 seconds ahead of me. way to go jackass.

my opinion after today? truckers should not get paid by the mile.

-what the?-

on saturday it was 85 and humid. i took kleigh up to that little carnival and it was so uncomfortably hot that she chose to leave knowing she still had 2 tickets left. she even handed her tickets over to another kid. so...it was hot.

this morning? its 43 degrees with a windchill...a frickin WINDCHILL of 35. its almost june and im talking about a frickin windchill of barely above freezing. you have got to be kidding me.


ok...i suppose i should go do my route now. stupid route.

-stupid...argh...ick-

i HATE IT when long weekends come to an end. these 3 days have just flown by. i got a lot done around the house and spent some time with family and friends, so it was a good weekend. but my god, it went by way too quickly. im dreading the 5 am alarm tomorrow and the joys of trying to get back into the work routine. argh! ick. stupid work. (the sad thing is that i really dont even mind my job...imagine how grumpy id be if i had a crap job)

im in love with the bean bag game. its like horseshoes...only you throw bean bags at a piece of wood with a hole in it. what a great game. ive made it my aim to play more.

so the point of this post? end of long weekend=bad. tossing bean bags=good. arent you glad youre one of my 3 regular readers?

-why im a wuss chapter 1-

back in the day i could go on any ride at any fair. i could even go on the spinny upside down rides over and over again. in my mid 20's some of the spinny rides started to bother me a bit. not just from one ride, but a full day of rides at say, valleyfair might leave me feeling a little sick. today i took kleigh up to the carnival here in katopolis...up by madison east. she went on the little cars, the little boats, the little trains, etc. at the end of our time there she wanted to go on the dragon ride. the dragon ride is a ride that travels on a track in a circle and you sit inside the dragons...in the middle of each dragon is a round handle thingy (sorry for the long, confusing scientific explanaton) that you can spin to make your car spin. kleigh was too short to go alone so i went with her. i figured she wouldnt want to spin too fast anyway. so we started up...after 2 rotations around the track (without us spinning it) i was already feeling sick. the fricking ride went about 20 rotations! i was holding the circle in the middle to STOP it from spinning. ive been queezy ever since and for about 2 hours i was worried i was going to throw up.

and that friends is chapter one of why i am a wuss.

-a new, important poll-

ok...we are naming the top 3 of the wine cafe order. to the right there...no libbey, not there, yeah...there. is the poll. 15 to choose from. please...oh god please choose wisely. this is very important and will probably impact the rest of our earthly lives. you have 1 week...so sleep on it if you need to. but for the sake of the children...dont wait too long.

-lets name something-

its friday night. im tired. gonna go to bed in about 2 minutes. woo hoo for going to bed early on a friday night.

on thursday night we have four schroeders on our team. the top of the order looks like this...

1)andy schroeder

2)sam schroeder

3)paul schroeder

so im thinking we should come up with a nickname for the 3 of us who all bat in a row there. ive come up with a couple ideas. heres one: "the schray-schray-thray". or how about this one: "the onna-rolla-shray". or maybe "paul and the ball slaps"?? huh? uh.

got any?

-the streak ends-

the wine cafe is no longer undefeated. argh! argh i says. we lost 20-14. we played like crap for the 1st 2 innings again and couldnt recover even though we outplayed them for the last 5 innings. too many guys on the team gave up after 2 innings and didnt get back into the game until it was too late. im really bummed about this loss. i know its only softball, but we have a really good team this year and we should not be losing the way we lost tonight. we didnt hit...and there were too many errors in the field. we usually dont make many errors.


the good news? i had a career game and should probably retire now because i will never do this again. i had 3 homeruns. 2 3 run homers, and one grand slam. 3 homeruns, 10 rbis. as chris meyers would say "thatll never happen again". gunnar nelson had a great game tonight. thank you gunnar.


other good news? im feeling better. im still coughing...and my nose is still full of gunk. but both have improved and i feel like im on my way up. a long weekend and a week off of softball should help me get some rest. i hope.

-mankato free press story-

click here to see the mankato free press story about my cousins house-

-its only tuesday? seriously?-

i got off of work at about 3 today and kleigh and i drove over to new ulm to watch dylans last baseball game of the season. i got home and found out my cousin sarahs house over in peteropolis is on fire. her, her husband and their son are fine. (they werent home) but between the flames (i was told they were really shooting out), the smoke and the water it sounds like they may have lost a lot of their stuff, if not all of it. (i dont know if they have renters insurance or not) so...thats the really bad news for the night. and it obviously overshadows anything else i may blab about here in this post. please keep your thoughts and prayers with them.


now im going into complain mode. cell phones are the devil. im starting to hate them. people drive while talking and dont even realize they would have just gotten hit if i wasnt paying attention to them and their inability to drive and talk at the same time. people talk loud in restaurants, send text messages and even recieve calls in the movie theater...etc.


tonight at dylans game there was a married couple. im guessing they were 45 or so. theyre sitting in their lawn chairs watching the game, side by side. the woman was on her phone for the 1st hour and half of the game. why? cause she really needed someone to record dancing with the stars for her cause she was missing it due to the baseball game. i was sitting about 50 feet away and could hear every frickin word of every frickin conversation she had. she literally called about 30 different people. her side of the conversation was always this..."hello?...hi! how are you? (obviously rushed and disinterested) "do you have a vcr?..does it work?..oh...cause im missing dancing with the stars cause im at a baseball game... oh no thats ok...bye". 5 seconds of silence...its starts again..."hello?" after the 10th call i was ready to just freak out...you came here to watch someone play baseball...watch them play baseball! my god lady. the funny thing is that i sat near them for about 2 hours...for the entire 2 hours she said nothing to her husband. not a single word. he just looked annoyed and neglected. i wish he would have just grabbed her phone and chucked it into a puddle somewhere. i would have stood and applauded.


this stories point? cell phones have made us all rude and self important. no one cares to hear your phone conversations! the other point...old married couples dont talk to each other anymore, cause they hate each other.


i took kleigh into the school in new ulm cause she had to go potty. some nice boy had peed all over the bathroom floor. nice. real nice. i had to tip toe around while carrying her to avoid it.


i have a couple more stories to tell from tonight. but im realizing this all just adding up to be a list of things im annoyed with. and honestly, i dont even wanna hear about it...

-bipolar softball-

as requested...a pic of THE windmill. please control your jealousy and keep your childish fits to a minimum. maybe someday, if youre good, you can have your very own windmill. it of course wont be as nice as mine, but at least youll have one.

softball tonight was horrible and great all at once. i was so excited to play...we had a doubleheader. 6:15 and 7:15. my favorite times to play. so we go in to game 1 all worked up and ready to go. after 1 inning were down 15 to 1. after 2 innings were down 25 to 1. what a fun game...i was having a blast chasing the ball all over the outfield. these guys were GREAT hitters. they are definitely in the wrong division. this was a division one team. anyways...they killed our buzz. we were hanging our heads like you wouldnt believe. strangely though we turned it around by holding them scoreless for the next 3 innings. 9 up and 9 down...which is very rare in softball...and we hit. in the last inning josh, me and derek went back to back to back. we lost 25 to 14 in 5 innings...but it could have been a lot worse and strangely we left that game laughing and feeling good. (i was 4 for 4)

the 2nd game we showed the other team how the 1st team made us feel. we scored 8 in the 1st and didnt look back. my cousin andy managed to be the 1st and 3rd out of the 2nd inning. good going andy. we won this game 16 to 3 and didnt give up the 3 until the 5th inning. i was 3 for 4. i had 7 straight hits tonight and blew the streak on my last at bat. i hit it hard but RIGHT AT the left center fielder. i dont even think he had to move. our clean up hitter derek ripped one that hit the third baseman in the bare hand. it looks like his hand was broken...but i dont know forsure...poor kid. i was on 1st at the time and i heard it crack. it sounded terrible.

what flowers did i plant on saturday?..i planted mini roses...pansies...marigolds...and some really cool, kinda strange looking one...not sure on the name. hows that for a random subject change?

im sore...im tired. im going to bed.

ps...click on the pic and take a look at the bigger version...look at the bottom support...yeah, its bent. know why? thats right...i kicked it. stupid windmill.

-you did what, when?-

my high hopes of a bedtime of 9 pm did not happen last night. it was closer to midnight before i finally fell asleep. so i hoped to sleep in...which of course usually depends entirely on kleighs morning plans. this morning i woke up at...ick...6:30 in the frickin am. i was just awake and could do nothing about it. you may wonder what i, paul do when up so early? well friends im going to tell you, and i hope to god this is the only time i ever utter these words: i got up and spent an hour putting together a windmill. "you got up at 6:30 am and put together a windmill?!" i got up at 6:30 am and i put together a windmill. 1/4 of the way into the project i was filled with deep regret for even starting. but i started, so...i had to finish. and finish i did. what a fancy, stupid windmill i have in the back yard! i am the envy of the entire town.

what else did i do? oh yeah...you know that picture series i took of kleigh? (the 6 where her coat is the only color) yeah, those...i ordered 8 by 10's of all 6 of those and threw them in some frames. they are now proudly displayed in my kitchen. i also tore down the dog kennel...which was a disaster and ended up being about a 3 hour project. and than friends...i planted flowers. "you planted flowers?" i planted flowers...what of it neely?

now? off to peterville for some grilling at grandpas.

ps...the kicker of this whole rant?..kleigh slept in until 10:30! are you kidding me? out of all the days she could sleep in, she picks today! unbelievable!

-poor poor tired pablo-

wine cafe is undefeated! woo hoo. 3-0 after tonights 10-6 win. i was 3-4 with a single and 2 triples. too much runnin again...i am now good and sore. 4 of our better players were out tonight so it was great to get the win. (there are 4 Schroeders on the wine cafe team...i was the only one playing tonight.) congrats to my cousin sarah on her graduating from dental school...(rick, sam and andy...your priorities are all outta wack)

tomorrow is friday. woo hoo. the weekend looks like its supposed to be really nice. after this week of work and being sick, im ready for the 2 day break. what to do? what to do? something outside...but what? someone PLEASE clear up my nose and make my throat stop hurting. thanks.

-silly wisconsins-

this story reminds me of something that just happened closer to home. its been 2 months! i dont think shes coming back. yuck.

-wasted day-

so sick. slept all day. just got up at about 4:30. strange. this whole sickness thing seriously gave me absolutly no warning. i went from feeling fine to full on sick in about 10 minutes. ive never had a sickness like that before i dont reckon. thats right i said reckon...what of it? i have 5 tickets for the twins game tonight, woo hoo, said tickets are now going to waste. no dome dogs for pablo.

-a case of the mondays-

woke up today at 5 in the frickin am. why 5? i just woke up not feeling the best. not too chipper you might say. which was great cause i knew i had an 11 to 12 hour day ahead. how refreshing. so i went out and fertilized the yard...good times?...good times! than i started the long day.

today is dylans 13th birthday. happy birthday dylan. mandra and i took kleigh and dylan to applebees (dont blame me, its what dylan picked) to celebrate. god i miss the days of ross and ty doing the birthday announcements here at our katoland applebees. these girls just werent near as good. but they tried, and god bless em. dylan turned BRIGHT red...so funny. anyways, driving home from applebees (again, dont blame me, dylan picked!) i started to get an intense sore throat...just outta no where. and the spins...and body cramps. "argh!" i said to myself. so i came home and threw up all over the bathroom. "you did what paul?" i frickin threw up all over the frickin bathroom. "paul, didnt you have a softball game tonight?" patience friends...it gets better. 1/2 hour before said softball game the throwing up stopped. so i got ready and drove up hoping we would have 11+ guys so i could sit this one out...we had exactly 7! (minimum is 8...but with 8 you only get 3 outfielders and 3 infielders...or as i call it you have NO CHANCE OF WINNING! so we ended up playing the 1st two innings with only 8. after 2 were down 8-1. thanks to our coach for not making sure we had enough guys. phone calls could have been made, players would have played. i called 2 guys who showed in the 3rd. we lost 12-5. good times? good times! it was a very frustrating game which ended with two guys slamming gunnar nelson on the ground in anger...which of course led to me giving the team a lecture. "if you want to use my bat, stop slamming it in to the ground"...and so on... i may have said some angry words...i dont remember...its 300 bucks! i paid for it...im letting you use it...dont freak out on my bat! ok...i feel better now.

the good news? even with my sudden mystery illness and the wind blowing in at 20-30 MPH i was still 3-4 with a single, a double and a triple. (stupid wind kept it in) church team is now 2-2. the team we played honestly did not have ONE solid hit. not a one. they had 6 1 footers. (basically swinging bunts) and seven bloopers just outta the reach of the shortstop...so frustrating...its enough to make guys want to grab gunnar nelson by the handle and slam him into the ground.

-monday, stupid monday-

5:30 am on monday morning. what a refreshing time to climb out of my big refreshing bed. a big woo hoo for mondays.

the paper work for kleighs adoption has come back from the state. what does this mean you may ask? it means all that remains is a finalization date. in the next month or 2 K and i will go to court, sign some papers, take some pictures and this adoption will finally be wrapped up. the end to this is finally very close. thank God...even after all the mess of the last 2 years, and after all the nights i couldnt sleep because i was so scared that the county or state wouldnt let a single dad adopt...thank God it is finally happening. what a mess its been...but what a blessing she is.

its not even frickin light outside yet, why am i up?

-sunday-

i cant believe the news today,

i cant close my eyes and make it go away.

how long?

how long must we sing this song?

how long?

how long?

-u2-

-a comparison-

the last post was womens softball. heres a video that will you allow you to compare it to mens softball.

-the names nelson...gunnar nelson-

thanks for all who voted. gunnar nelson is the new offical name of my softball bat...and i couldnt be more proud of the little guy.

on a more serious note click here to read one of the best sports stories ive ever heard. ironically it comes from a softball game. below is a video of the event. good going girls.

-mums day-

happy mothers day to all the mothers out there!

-only 1 day left!-

1 day left to vote on the bats name friends. get those last minute votes in!

-twitter-

if you recieved an invite to join twitter i apologize! i accidently sent an invite out to my entire address book. (i meant to send it to 2 people) im guessing most of you have no interest in joining. but if you do, go ahead. i never send out mass invites like that intentionally.

anyways. it was about 50 degrees and raining at game time. we still played. what a bad game...what a bad night to play. i hurt my arm (threw it out in the 1st inning...so painful) than i hurt my knee pretty bad. (lots of blood...well, some blood). than i pulled my hamstring. which of course feels fantastic. all in all...i wish i hadnt played tonight. but we did win 8-5...wine cafe is now 2-0. i was 2-4 with a single and a double. nothing fancy. i dont handle pain well. we had about 4 guys get hurt tonight. it just wasnt a good night. oh well...we lived through it.

anyways...not much to say. sore. tired. gonna get some sleep. g'night all.

ps...go eat and drink at wine cafe sometime soon! tell them the softball team sent you.

-what the holy hell?-

i left mankato and drove to peterland to watch the twins game at my dads place. that was a little before 7. gas prices at that time? $3.45. (or as i call it, bend over and take it) i just got back into town a little after 9 here. gas prices now?..$3.65. i dont even know what to call that. what excuse are they giving us for this now?

-old man nap-

i came home from work today at about 3:15, fell face first in bed and fell asleep within about 2 minutes. i was out cold for 2 hours. i done wore myself out last night. im not used to all this running anymore. too much base running and way too many balls hit to or close to me in the outfield. it was fun last night, but im feeling it today.

i am now over at my dads place watching the twins lose to the white sox. the sox just scored again to make it 3-1. the twins dont even have a hit yet. (through 5)

-what the heck, one more-

click here. look for the pretty one. the best part of hair metal?..all the man posing.

-still unsure?-

still cant figure out who gunnar is? heres another great video. again, hes the pretty one. very pretty.

-2 in a row-

our church team turned it around in a big way tonight. we won both games of our doubleheader. woo hoo for us. it was a perfect night for softball. so nice out. i was 7 for 8. a homerun on my 1st at bat again. and than 3 singles, 2 doubles and a triple, 5 rbis and 5 runs scored. (1 homer+3 singles+2 doubles+1 triple=way too much frickin running) i am way too sore and way too tired. i didnt get out until my last at bat and i am of course (in traditional paul style) thinking about that one at bat more than i am the other seven. "what did i do wrong in that one at bat?" its just what i do.

anyways...for those of you who dont know who gunnar nelson is...heres a video...hes the pretty one. goodnight all.

-picture series-

i just figured out how to do this color in black and white pictures. im only years behind. (im not the brightest bulb) but for now i think its really cool. so i did like 6 of them. heres one...check out the rest under pictures of me and the fam. they are all of kleigh...and her coat is the only color. this is what i did until 3 am last night.

-nelson-

...again, im not meaning to sway the vote here...but...

-my bats name...a survey-

ive been slackin on this survey thing. sorry. thanks to brawler for the great lists. i honestly havent laughed so hard in a long time. with all the great ideas i feel kinda bad having to narrow things down...but it must be done.

please vote for your favorite as many times as you like...(clear your internet history including cookies close your internet explorer...come back in and you should be able to vote again)

the survey is off to the right there. im giving you a week. lets name my baby.

ps...not to sway the vote, i wouldnt do that, but who would cousin larry vote for? something to think about.

-exhausted-

mens commercial tonight. the rain let us play. the wind was harsh though. it was blowing in so it was not a night for homeruns. we played really well in the field though and won 11-4. i was 2-4 with a single...a double...an rbi and 2 runs scored. i had a terrible at bat though my 4th time up. there was 2 guys on with 2 outs...our clean up hitter was on deck. i got it to a 3-1 count. the next pitch was outside...a ball...i swung and flew out...i shouldve taken the walk and loaded them up for the clean up guy. seems like common sense now. but its softball...we play to swing. no one on our team likes to take walks. softball is all about swinging the bat. but this is one time where i felt really selfish swinging the bat. its my fault we only won by 7.

tomorrow. kleigh and i are going up to the twins game. thanks to missy v for once again sharing her great tickets. i think they are about 12 rows up behind the plate. great seats. should be fun. i will eat $80 worth of food as usual...but it will all be delicious.

im tired, i got nothing tonight. g'night all.

ps..heres a story that backs up my theory that bush is the worst president ever.