It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Royals. The biggest reason for that is because the last time I wrote exclusively about them, they went in the shitter for the next week. My life without superstition would be empty and meaningless. But here we are on July 21, the trade deadline is 10 days away, and the Royals sit 47–47, nine games out of first place, six games out of the Wild Card spot.
Summer continues to fly by. We’re just three-and-a-half weeks from school beginning. Today is our annual trip an hour north to watch the girls’ cousin show his pigs at his county fair. Taking the city kids to the county fair is always fun! Last week we watched Apollo 13. The act of watching it was nearly as epic as the flight of Apollo 13. One of the girls learned about the flight at school way back in the winter.
Well, that was a pretty good All-Star Game. I mean, it wasn’t the total Royals takeover from last year. But Ned Yost was still making the lineup and calling the shots, Kelvin Herrera had a nice 1–2–3 inning in relief, and Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez had the two biggest hits of the night. Off former Royal Johnny Cueto for added KC flavor. It was a good, competitive game to watch that really summed up where baseball is today: the team that got to the middle of the game with the lead had an immense advantage as they rolled out one dominant reliever after another.
June Books Time for our mid-month review of last month’s books. Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me - Steven Hyden. I’ve been waiting for this one for quite awhile. Hyden has been my favorite music writer for some time now, going back to when he wrote for the AV Club and Pitchfork. His Grantland profile of The War on Drugs before the release of their masterpiece Lost In The Dream album is the modern standard for the epic band piece.
This morning I was thinking about where we were in the summer calendar. Then I took a look and realized the girls go back to school one month from today. Yikes! So much still to do. We better get cracking. This weekend was much better than last, at least weather-wise. Perfect lake weather during the days as we hosted our good friends the Heberts. Saturday night was clear and pleasant as we dropped anchor to watch our lake’s annual fireworks show.
Between swim practices and meets, family visiting, daily errands, and general laziness, I somehow started two posts late last week that I never got around to posting. So much for using interesting links as the jumping-off point for my own writing! We’ll get there, pop. We’ll get there. Anyway, a couple sports notes. KD to GS Man, color me shocked when Kevin Durant announced he was signing with Golden State on Monday.
We had big plans for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately Mother Nature got in the way. The Fourth of July weekend is normally a family gathering time at our lake house. This year we had our family from Boston coming in, along with most of the locals. Which meant we added a one-year-old to the mix. Plus two babies. In a small house. And then it rained most of the weekend.
This is year 13 of this site.[1] That’s kind of crazy. Over the past maybe year or so I have, for the first time ever, struggled to find things to write about. It’s not because I lack time. I have plenty of that. It’s not that I don’t want to write. That’s still something I feel compelled to do at times. And since I don’t enjoy phone conversations, this site has always been my way of staying in touch with friends who are scattered about the country.
We’ve been lucky through our first two lake weekends of the summer. Excellent weather both times: hot, but not oppressive, and free from rain. Excellent company both times, kids relatively well behaved each weekend. This past weekend was a little extra special, though. L finally went tubing. To reset, despite being our most athletic, most daring kid, L has had issues on boats and water. It all goes back to a ride she took on a friend’s boat four years ago.
I’ve written about storms a few times in this site’s history. Here are three past examples: Some New Action Storm Chasing The Lost Week Time for another entry in one of my favorite things to write about. It’s been awhile since we spent a night in the basement. We broke that drought last night. For two days the weather folks had been warning of serious storms Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
The girls and I are headed down to the lake today to take care of some administrative tasks and hopefully get a swim or two in if the weather holds. Seems like the perfect day to clear out the queue of links I’ve hoarded over the past three weeks. We’ll begin with a couple older, and lengthy, pieces I held on to for our Boston trip. To kick things off, Tom Verducci’s wonderful profile of Vin Scully.
One of the odder aspects of my life is how, although I love sports and have written about them for money over the past 7–8 years, I watch a lot less sports than I used to. I still watch a lot of football and basketball, but significantly less than I did a decade ago. I watch/listen to probably 80% of Royals games. But I almost never watch the NBA or golf anymore.
It’s becoming habit that I wait well into the new month before I share the list of books I read the previous month. Which, as I always say, makes it hard to write about the books I read six weeks earlier. I’ve been doing this over 10 years, and I still always put off writing my summaries until well after I have finished the book. Old dog, new tricks, etc.
A few random notes. Swimming The girls swim season is off to a solid start. L moved up an age group this year, and is now swimming full, 25-yard lengths of the pool instead of the 6-and-under, 12-yard lengths. It’s been a good challenge for her. We were especially proud of her last night. The team we were swimming against has a family that we’ve had a minor conflict with over the years.
The first lake weekend of the summer was a success. It was just about a perfect weekend, weather-wise. It was up in the high 80s, low 90s both days without being too sticky. The water was still surprisingly cool, but was refreshing given the air temp. Saturday night was clear and beautiful. We had three families from St. P’s down, so nine kids total. They were all pretty well behaved for the most part.
Summer got off to a quick start for us. The girls wrapped up school last Wednesday. Thursday afternoon we were flying to Boston for our summer trip. This was my third trip to Boston, but first one that I would be spending most of my time in the city proper. Overall, we had a fantastic vacation filled with several firsts and lots of great memories. The first first of the trip was our family’s first Uber ride.
I realized last week that I hadn’t documented my thoughts on the Royals season since early April. Which isn’t much of a surprise given it took me awhile to get into this season. There was missing the first week of the season while we were on spring break. There was the coming home to four nights a week of practices and games, which meant the girls stayed up a little later than normal, which meant some nights I flat forgot to turn the game on.
We had a very solid, if slightly less hectic than usual, Memorial Day weekend. L and I kicked it off Friday with her class field trip to [Conner Prairie]. This is the one field trip I’ve done with all three girls. As always, it was a lot of fun. The forecast has us worried we would get wet, but the storms never popped up and while it was warm, it never got super hot like it did for M and I four years ago.
I can’t seem to sit down and knock out a couple of the ideas I have for longer posts. I have a few projects around the house. I spend some time each day on my sports coordinator activities. And, let’s face it, I’m an epically lazy person; I can put shit off with the best of them. So rather than finish one of those ideas this morning, I’ll take care of something else I have not done in far too long: share links!
They’re the worst. Two stories of awful people I’ve encountered recently. A couple weeks back I was at the grocery store. I rounded one aisle and turned into the next. A woman - probably 45–50ish - was looking at some items on the shelf. She had her cart parked so that the entire aisle was blocked. The way she was facing, she should have been able to see me clearly; it’s not like I’m a small dude.