Unbelievable: A Prayer Request

My mom called me yesterday to deliver some disturbing news. My parents left their house on Friday afternoon to go to Tampa and stay with my brother and sister in law and then go to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers preseason game on Saturday night. They returned home on Saturday night/early Sunday morning and went to bed. Around 4am, they both awoke to the sounds of the doorbell being rung over and over again. Mom looked out the window, nothing. Dad opened the door, nothing. They went back to bed. Sunday during the day, my dad discovered his palm pilot and digital camera missing, prompting my mom to look around the rest of the house for anything else missing. A couple of her cheap watches were gone as well as all 3 sets (mom, dad, brother) of season tickets to the Buccaneers. Apparently, the house was broken in to while they were in Tampa overnight.

They called the police and filed a report, but the police don't expect to find anything. A dead bolt has been put on the door because the only thing my parents can figure is that the doorbell at 4am was the burglars coming back. Tampa Bay has been nice enough to reissue the tickets and parking passes for the season once the police report listing the tickets as missing is on file. So, if anyone tries to sell you Tampa Bay home game tickets Section 123, Row L, Seats 3,4,&5, don't buy them...they're stolen property, and they will be void when you get to the gate at the stadium. My parents are terribly shaken up by this. They plan to get a security system on top of the new dead bolt.

So please pray for this entire situation: the guilty party, my parents, and my parents' house. They've lived in that house for 21 years and this is the first disturbance they've ever encountered...besides Hurricane Charley two years ago.

Tidbits

• I can't tell you how terribly excited I am that I walked out of my house this morning to go to work and I actually got a little bit of a chill. The wind was blowing, I felt no humidity, and the high today is actually in the 80s. YAHOO!!!! Please can this stick around for a while?

• I was at a conference in St. Louis last week, so there was a drought on the blog. Sorry about that. A complete run down of my "exciting" time in St. Louis is coming soon.

• Last night the NFL team owners voted unanimously in the 5th ballot to name Roger Goodell (above, NFL VP and COO since 2001) the new commissioner, succeeding Paul Taglibue. This is exciting. I was pulling for this guy once the names of the finalists were released and Rich McKay wasn't one of them. If for no other reason, but that he was the only one actually on the NFL payroll. Others had done legal work for the NFL, but none of them had really started at the bottom of the barrel like this guy. He worked his way up from an intern position in 1982...and that's something I can really get behind. Interesting tidbit about the new commissioner's family...his father was an appointed U.S. Senator hired to complete the term of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

• The Colts' first preseason game is tomorrow (Thursday) night against the St. Louis Rams in St. Louis. (How mean is that...my conference was last week...it couldn't be this week...NOOOO!!) Tony Dungy has promised me the 1st string offense will run 15 plays. I'm holding him to that...while I hold my breath that no one gets hurt. 46 days until I see the Colts play in the RCA Dome in Indy.
  

• Tomorrow (Thursday) is my birthday...one year older...yippee.