<p>Some weekend notes.</p>

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<p>They did it! The Royals finally made the right moves and designated Jeff Francouer for assignment and called up second baseman Johnny Giavotella. Gio responded by going 3-4 Sunday and making a couple very good plays in the field. Eric Hosmer is warming up, David Lough has been fantastic. If they can just get Moustakas going they can get our hopes up for next year!</p>

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<p>A few weeks back I jokingly told a friend of mine that the Pittsburgh Pirates would be good about 2-3 weeks longer than they were last year. Because last year they were good about 2-3 weeks longer than they were the year before. Both years they came back to earth and finished well behind the pack in NL Central. Here we are on July 1, 2013, though, and not only are they in first place, but they have the best record in baseball. I don&apos;t know if they&apos;re for real this time or not; I haven&apos;t watched a single Pirates game this year. The odds are against them, with St. Louis and Cincinnati in the same division. But, despite the disappointing ends to their last two seasons, I do know that they&apos;ve given their fans hope for at least half of each season and are doing their best to make this year even more memorable. Which is all Royals fans are really asking for: a team that isn&apos;t out of contention before June 1.</p>

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<p><a href=’http://www2.kusports.com/news/2013/jun/30/report-t-rob-t-raded/’>T-Rob traded again</a>. I&apos;m reluctant to say he can&apos;t catch a break, since he&apos;s a year into a contract that&apos;s going to pay him in the range of $10 million before it&apos;s done. But hopefully Portland is a spot where he can settle, develop his game, and get a chance to play.</p>

<p>I&apos;ve heard KU fans say he&apos;s on his way to becoming another Drew Gooden. I know a lot of people view <a href=’http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/goodedr01.html’>Gooden&apos;s career</a> as a failure since he&apos;s A) never been a star and B) played for seven teams. But he&apos;s been in the NBA for 11 years, averaged 11 points and just under 8 rebounds a game, and made $56 million over his career. He may not have been Paul Pierce, but he wasn&apos;t Raef LaFrentz either. A solid NBA career that T-Rob would be lucky to mimic. If he wasn&apos;t such a flake and realized he just needed to go grab every rebound, I think he wouldn&apos;t have moved around as much and been viewed as one of the best rebounders of his generation.</p>

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<p>Completely randomly, I was at the grocery store yesterday and wearing a KU shirt. When it came time to check out the high school-ish girl who was running the register asked me if I was a KU fan. I said yes, asked if she was, and she responded, &quot;I used to be. I loved Thomas Robinson.&quot; I didn&apos;t ask more questions as to why she loved T-Rob, but I thought that was completely random that a white girl in Fishers, Indiana liked KU because of Robinson. She was pretty tall, so maybe she&apos;s a baller and just liked his game.</p>

<p>I didn&apos;t ask her more questions because the kid bagging the groceries is heading to Mizzou for school in a month. We&apos;ve traded good-natured trash talk in the past so I was asking him about when he was headed to Columbia, etc. He informed me he had been in C-town for orientation a week earlier. He responded affirmatively when I queried whether he had consumed any <a href=’http://shakespeares.com/’>Shakespeare&apos;s</a> while in town. Solid kid.</p>

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<p>Our local mall has a new <a href=’http://athleta.gap.com/?’>Athleta</a> store. Athleta, if you don&apos;t know, sells nice workout, swimming, and other active wear for women. I do not mind when their catalog arrives<sup><a id=’ffn1′ href=’#fn1′ class=’footnote’>1</a></sup>. Anyway, we went in to the store Sunday so S. could look at some stuff for the holiday weekend ahead. The store greeter was a friendly woman in her late 20s. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, full-length pants, and a stylish scarf that covered all of her hair. At the risk of be accused of stereotyping, I&apos;m 99% sure she was Muslim. Which, you know, good for her for wanting to work at an upscale store full of younger, active, healthy people. There are worse places to work, for sure. But I found it a little ironic that a woman who observes her religion in a manner that forces her to keep her hair, arms, and legs covered was working in a store that specializes in clothes that show off the body. The walls are covered with blown up images from their catalog: women riding surfboards, doing yoga, and other physical activities while showing off a lot of skin. She didn&apos;t exactly fit in with the image Athleta tries to project.</p>

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<p>It&apos;s going to be a very busy day/week. We have family visiting beginning tonight then a holiday gathering at our local vacation spot. I have a long list of things to do to prepare. Which always makes me feel like Ray Liotta in <em>Goodfellas</em> when he manically prepares for his brother&apos;s birthday party. Well, other than the cocaine delivery and coke-induced paranoia, of course.</p>

<p>ↁ</p>

<ol id=’footnotes’>
<li id=’fn1′>If you know what I mean. <a href=’#ffn1′>&#8617;</a></li>
</ol>