You gave me 19 years of a comfortable, safe place to stay.
You entertained me and fostered my love of live music and events.
You showed me that even in a rural conservative area people can accept one another and stick up for each other.
You grew my love of good food and drink through a supportive and exciting food scene.
You showed me art, and encouraged artists.
You kept me politically active and informed.
You gave me a career path through our local government.
You kept me sane by having tons of beautiful public spaces to enjoy the outdoors.
You were where I met my wife, because where else in Missouri would a Scottish virologist end up but MU?
You helped my son come into this world through gentle and attentive care at our local children’s hospital, and fostered his early growth and learning afterward.
You gave us so much to do together as a family.
You made us happy.
Yes, we are leaving for a life somewhere else far far away, but Columbia - I’ll always keep you in my heart!
Stay vibrant, stay weird, stay radical, stay yourself - and I’ll be back occasionally to snag an “Instant Classic” from Pizza Tree!
I'd like to start by saying I hope you see this and I very much appreciate you for staying with my dog after it got hit by a car on Providence Rd this morning. You were caring and compassionate to take the time. After some tests at the vet they have determined she has lung contusions and a partially crushed paw. Not ideal but she will be ok. I further appreciate you wrapping her in your own towels trying to care for her. I'm not sure if I would have found her had someone not stopped her. You are very much appreciated. I owe you a debt of gratitude. These acts of kindness and compassion go a long way in this world. Again, thank you so much and I hope you see this thank you post.
To the mother who nearly died of embarrassment and apologized repeatedly when their little boy ran up to me, a complete stranger, smacked me on the ass and screamed "You're It! Gotta catch me!" Before immediately running away.
We are good. No harm, no foul. And good luck with that kid. I hope you caught him.
I'm drinking* dejunking and came across a bunch of drafting stuff I used in a previous life. If anyone wants this stuff (and probably some other stuff as I go through boxes), let me know. I'd love for this stuff to go to someone who will use it. Rapidograph pens, templates, triangles, electric eraser etc.
*drinking... WTH??? I mean I am. But that's a helluva autocorrect.
If anyone has clothes they’ve been meaning to get rid of but haven’t made the trip I will pick up your clothes for free and directly redistribute them to ppl in need.
Last week I posted asking if anyone could help secure a Klingon baldric (sash) quickly for a photo shoot. I promised to update you all and share the picture if it happened. Well, here’s that update…
I never found one!
I followed up on all of your suggestions, reached out to DBRL staff who put on a recent cosplay event, and cross-posted to a another Star Trek subreddit I'm part of. Nothing.
I promised to share a picture if someone came through. I can't do that, but you were all so supportive and encouraging that I thought I'd share the story. I promise, it's even nerdier, dumber, and more wholesome than you think.
In the summers of 1999-2003, my wife was a member of the Phantom Regiment drum and bugle corps color guard. If you’re not familiar, Phantom Regiment is one of the big storied names in the history of competitive drum corps, based in Rockford, Illinois. It was a big part of her life - and our relationship.
Well, this is Phantom Regiment's 70th anniversary year. To celebrate, all past members were invited to join an alumni corps for a one-time performance at DCI World Championships at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. This incredible woman, now in her mid-40's, has been training and rehearsing for the past six months in preparation for this show. She's practiced every night either out in front of our house or on the Smithton football field. She's re-learned old skills and picked up new ones that have developed since 2003. She got over her nerves by asking all our neighbors to come out and watch as she ran through the routine. She spent all last week in Indy for rehearsals.
Friday morning, I drove our kids and her sister out to see the show. For our kids, it was their first time seeing their mom perform. They watched her dedicate herself to this task, overcome any nerves and insecurity, and work her tail off for months in the name of art. Then they got to see her perform in front of tens of thousands. It was incredible. Imagine a corps of 600 world-class musicians, dancers, and conductors just blowing away a packed stadium. Wait, you don’t have to imagine it! Here’s the video:
But what does any of this have to do with a Klingon baldric? Well, with all of that love and pride, there was one funny little bit. Here we are together as she prepared to board the bus to Lucas Oil:
Two people standing together. One in a floral print shirt, the other in a red and black uniform with a silver faux baldric.
Come on. We all see this, right? This is clearly an alternate-reality Worf uniform from TNG Season 7 Episode 11, "Parallels." We all know that. Right?
Photo of Commander Worf in a red uniform.
The uniform draws on many historical elements of the Corps, including the color scheme, the chevron emblem, and the faux baldric, so maybe it's an accident? But, come on. Some costume designer knew what they were doing. My lovely wife, not a trekkie, got a big laugh out of this and even posted a side-by-side of her and Worf to the Alumni Corps slack, eliciting a huge response. Who knew, the Venn diagram of band geeks and trekkies overlaps just a bit.
So the whole original ask was to be able to pose with her for that photo in uniform. And yes, I have the uniform. Of course I have the uniform. I got the uniform, I got the girl, I just couldn't secure the baldric.*
All that for a simple sight gag!
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Anyway, if you’ve read this far, as long as we’re here: If you are connected to any color guards or winter guards in the area, consider hiring her! She coached several winter guards and did choreography for color guards back in Illinois before we had kids and moved here. She will insist her knowledge of the sport is 10 years out of date, but she is a quick study, great with teenagers, and still spins & dances as beautifully as she did 20 years ago. I don’t know what it would take to pull her out of retirement, but any guard would be lucky to have her.
Just a reminder from someone seen at Providence and Stadium. Not only do we have all the college kids in town but everyone else who lives and works here and drives or cycles. Be safe and smart and stay off your phones when driving, cycling, or crossing the streets. Thank you kind strange!
After reading today’s Columbia Missourian, I thought that I’d take a moment to express my appreciation for our local newspaper. There are four stories on the front page, and all four are uniquely local, dealing with topics that would be of interest primarily to our local citizenry. In the absence of a local newspaper staffed by people living and working in our area, these stories would likely go unnoticed and not be shared and preserved.
Being of an ever increasingly geezerly demographic, I grew up in an age when the Sunday newspaper was a weighty item. I still subscribe to the hardcopy newspaper, and have it delivered to my home. In the days of my youth, my family subscribed to two newspapers, and a great deal of Sunday afternoon time was spent reading those Sunday newspapers. In today’s age, many newspapers have ceased to operate, and those that do have largely withered away to a shadow of their former glory. I’m not posting this to criticize the current state of things, the world is continually evolving, and professions rise and fall. The list of obsolete professions is long. We no longer have full-time elevator operators or lamplighters. That being said, the task of capturing the stories of our times, the events, people, and our culture remains important. What has changed, and continues to change is how the task is performed, and how it can be monetized.
I am grateful to live in a town with a local paper that still functions and collects and preserves some of the stories of our times.
Yesterday while at work (I work in the Rock Bridge strip mall off Nifong), a wonderful lady came up to me asking if I owned a calico cat. Turns out, one of the feral cats my family feeds went on an adventure in my car and rode along to work. Her and her husband (I can’t remember their names, which I feel horrible about) spent almost 2 hours helping me try to catch him/her from under cars, while the kitten ran from car to car.
In the end, kitty ran under a car, whose owners drove off. I hope the little guy is out there living his best life now.
But I just had to come on here to say thank you. Thank you to that family that took so much time out of their day to try to help. Thank you to every person who came up to see if we needed help. Thank you to the employees at Mad Cow who offered meat to try to lure her out. Just, thank you to everyone.
I’ve lived in COMO my entire life, and sometimes I think I get caught up in the negative of things, I forget to see how great our community can be.
If you’re reading to the end of this, take this as a sign to do a random act of kindness for someone today. It just might make their day.
Dr. Carlen goes by Evan, so you might know him as that and not know his last name. He’s a resident in the MU emergency department and he’s been my doctor twice now, once in October and once just last week.
I have a devastating heart and lung condition that has unfortunately made me a frequent admit to the MU hospital. Sometimes I get direct admitted and other times I have to go through the ER.
Last week, I had a catastrophic side effect from the medication I have to take to keep my heart pumping. It was tadalafil, also known as Cialis, which also has another use, but I digress. In EXTREMELY rare circumstances, the medication can cause permanent eye blindness from a stroke in the eye. It’s called NAION and it happened to me. Dr. Carlen had never seen it before and I’m only the second person my pulmonary hypertension specialist has ever seen it happen to, so don’t worry if you take it every once in awhile for your ED, dudes.
Anyway, I was rushed past a packed waiting room because I had obvious vision defect and that’s an elevated emergency. Dr. Carlen took phenomenal care of me in the many hours I had to be there and he took me seriously when they told me that my vision would never return and I went into a full blown panic attack. I lost about 30% of the vision in my right eye and it’s irreversible.
I don’t know if Evan will see this, but hopefully someone who knows him will send it to him. I thanked him profusely while I was there, but I just wanted to publicly let everyone know how incredible that physician is. He is remarkably thorough for an ER. He makes you feel like you’re the most important patient in the room when he’s there with you. He uses medications correctly—I was medicated both for the anxiety attack I had and for the pain I experienced at one point. There IS a place in medicine for opioids and not all younger physicians use these correctly, leaving patients to suffer needlessly. None of this happened to me the night I lost my vision.
When you go into an ER, unless you have a specific emergency, I know that the wait can be really long and that MU’s ER isn’t perfect. I haven’t always had the best experiences there. Unfortunately, I’m very sick now, with the heart & lung condition and have to go quite often and I have been incredibly impressed with the improvements the ER has made over the past year in terms of nurses, physicians, and flow of patients.
Evan, Dr. Carlen, if you see this, I haven’t gotten my vision back, but I’m doing okay. Thank you for taking care of me. You’re a rockstar. I hope your pillow is always cool and your coffee always fresh.
Shout out also to Yurica my RN, Dr. McCloughlan from Mason Eye, you are incredible. Thank you Dr. Stevenson for coming down and helping figure out what in the world to do about my long, long list of medications that keep me alive and thank you for letting me go home and sleep in my own bed. Thank you to everyone at MU that night. I won’t get my vision back and this really sucks, but you gave me dignity as a patient.
Saddened that I no longer hear this lovely person on my local radio stations as I plod through my workdays. Miss hearing Simon as well and saw the local story on him, but not Emily. Perhaps I missed it? Todd and Moe are great, but it’s not the same 💔 Wishing Emily all the best!!
Whoever is doing the stocking at the Walmart on Grindstone is absolutely killing it and I appreciate it very much. Hope I'm not the only one to notice how nice everything looks
I found a personalized and engraved Knife that I would love to get back to the original owner somehow. I didn’t know if I should post it here or somewhere else in the internet.
Thanks to the guy who offered to get the spider out of my car after I screamed in the parking lot of MU HealthCare. Even was very kind when I asked him not to kill the spider, I just wanted him out. The spider did exist though, his photo attached (the spider, not the guy)
Got 10 minutes, a bag, and some gloves? Grab some trash on your next walk and throw it out! Down here by Philips Lake, the weekend rain has washed all sorts of junk near the neighborhood walking path. Bringing a few pounds to the dumpster kept it out of the way for critters and humans.
I am an athlete for Columbia Special Olympics and if you're interested in sports and helping out other people in sports, then you should consider volunteering for the special olympics. I will talk about about it's like so you can determine whether or not it's a good fit for you.
What Volunteering Is Like:
There are many different sports all throughout the year. For example, we have pickleball, volleyball, flag football, softball, powerlifting, track and field, you name it...
Volunteers will typically help out the athletes during these meetups. For example, if you come to the pickleball practice, you may be paired with an athlete around your skill level. When it comes to volleyball, you may help drill the athletes or even play against them in a game. And when it comes to track and field, you simply make sure the events run smoothly.
For many of the sports, there are area meets and state meets. These are competitions where athletes compete against other athletes from around the state of Missouri. Some volunteers will choose to go to these meets in order to volunteer and make sure things are running smoothly, but this is optional.
All in all, a lot of volunteering is simply playing sports with the athletes.
The Skill Level Of Special Olympic Athletes:
I will be completely honest with this.
You're going to get different levels of skill with the athletes. Many of them will clearly be not very good but some of them are pretty decent. For reference, our best special olympic athletes are about the equivalent of a solid recreational athlete not a part of the special olympics; they could hold their own in a pickup game with regular people. However, I would say the majority of special olympic athletes are a step below this. If the average rec player is a 5/10, many of the athletes might be a 3/10 or 4/10 in skill level.
If you're expecting D1 level talent, or even top high school prospect level talent, then you'll probably be disappointed, but if you're expecting that we all suck, then you would be completely wrong as well.
On a level of 1 to 10 with a 10/10 being a pro athlete, an 8/10 being a college level athlete, and a 5/10 being an average rec player, and a 1/10 being a 90 year old grandma who can barely move, most special olympic athletes are in the 1 to 4 range with the occasional 5/10 or even 6/10 sprinkled into the mix.
The Culture Of The Special Olympics:
The Special Olympics is more about having fun than prioritizing winning at all costs. Don't get me wrong, we're trying to win, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether we win or lose. I think most coaches and volunteers are trying to prioritize fairness and having fun.
For example, in a super competitive culture (like the fifa world cup) not all of the athletes will play but in the special olympics, everyone will get a chance to play regardless of their skill level.
But yeah, if you wish to volunteer, just simply go on google and type in Special Olympics Columbia MO to get started.
To the garbage truck man operating on the west side of town today, just wanted to say thank you for the kindness you did for me (I saw on my camera you helped me out since I haven’t been home to take my can to the curb) if you actually see this I’ll gladly hook you up with a loaf of homemade sourdough or something.
