Three quick hours this morning, apparently to satisfy the state of Indiana, and now M. and C. are finally done with school.1 It’s been a long few days, as the district we live in wrapped up their school year last Thursday. So while the neighbors have been swimming and going to parks, we’ve still been on a normal school schedule. Not anymore, though. As with the stomach bug hitting the house over Memorial Day, I hope the weather today isn’t an omen for the rest of the summer.
34-Ton Bat - Steve Rushin Here we have a book that is perfect for summer and browsing through while a baseball game buzzes in the background. Rushin tells a story of the history of baseball not through on the field actions, but rather through all the ephemera that is attached to the game. The development of uniforms, where nachos came from, how the modern bat industry came about, the man who kicked off the game day giveaway craze (and in the process made the Dodgers a Southern California institution), and on and on.
When we jumped into this owning a pleasure craft thing, we knew there would be a significant learning curve involved. Neither of us had spent more than a few seconds steering a powered craft on water. Neither of us is mechanically minded, meaning we can’t quickly diagnose and then fix problems. Then there’s the matter of educating ourselves while making sure everyone on board stays safe. Kind of takes the pleasure out of pleasure craft if you dwell on it.
As a young lad, my summers were split into two, roughly even, segments. The first half consisted of baseball and day camp at the YMCA. Once baseball season ended, usually in mid-July, my mom would ship me off to spend a month or so with my grandparents in central Kansas. Her parents were farmers. They could pick up three TV stations (on a good day). Their home was small and few items from my uncles’ childhoods remained.
How did your summer 2014 start off? Ours had highs and lows. Breakdown? You betcha! I’m hoping the way our weekend began was not an omen for the rest of the summer. L. and M. both woke up with stomach aches Friday. It was L.’s last day of school, with her big bike parade on the agenda, so I did not want to be stuck at home with one or two sick kids.
There are many good aspects to being in your 40s. In a lot of other ways, though, it bites the big one. I could write for pages and pages about the downsides to being 40+. Rather than bore you with stories about how my back always hurts, my crappy eyesight, my deteriorating hearing, etc. I thought I would share this less personal observation. I’m beginning to question how I dress. Only mildly, mind you.
I was back on the diamonds last night, watching a game in the county baseball tournament. It was your average 21-0, 5 inning blowout. WHS scored four runs on four hits, two walks, and three wild pitches in the first. Then they went down 1-2-3 in the second. I went from thinking it would be a blowout to wondering if EHS could keep it close. They couldn’t. Ten runs in the third, seven in the fourth, game over in a tidy 90 minutes.
A quick administrative note. It’s a very busy week here. As I’ve mentioned, this is L.’s final week of pre-school. Thus, I’m trying to cram a bunch of projects into my final (now) 14 or so hours without a kid to get in the way.1 As you would expect, we have a busy holiday weekend on the horizon. And I’m getting out and working for the first time since basketball ended Tuesday night.
Finally! I not only watched a Bond movie for the first time in ages, but I knocked out the most recent one. The same movie I nearly saw in the theaters upon its initial release 18 months ago. The same movie I nearly bought the day it was released on disk. The same movie that has been in my Netflix queue for months. Better late than never, right? I forget how I did these in the past, so forgive me if I’ve strayed from the format I’ve used before, or if it’s extra disjointed.
The Royals have officially reached the maddening stage with me. They had a nice road trip last week, winning four of seven games. With one exception, they continued to get solid pitching from the starters. Those guys just can not hit, though. As Joe Posnanski and others have written about many times, what is especially infuriating is that this franchise hasn’t hit since the Golden Era. It doesn’t make sense. Yes, Kauffman Stadium is not a great home run park.
A few things about a few things. After our endless winter, we finally got a blast of hot over the weekend. It pushed well into the 80s both days, with a healthy dose of humidity to make it feel a tad uncomfortable. I swore not to bitch about the heat after the months of cold… This is the Midwest, though. The high Friday is supposed to be down in the 50s.
Kickball season ended last night. St. P’s got a gutty two-run win over the team they got their first win over a week ago. They ended the season 3-4, but won three of their final four games. As with the first game, last night was not without controversy. There were a series of contested calls involving foul balls late in the game. The OL coaches and parents were complaining especially loudly about two calls in the last inning.
Worlds collide to make the first post of the week an easy-to-name one. First, a few words about Naadir Tharpe leaving the Jayhawks basketball program. I felt sorry for Naadir all season. He was clearly miscast as a primary point guard for a national championship contending caliber team. But, thanks to several misses on the recruiting trail by Bill Self1, the job was his. And despite his obvious limitations, people looked back at his performance against Michigan a year earlier, when he played wonderfully, and expected him to be a step up from the always wild ride that was Elijah Johnson’s year at the point.
Just about everything Joe Posnanski writes is good. We’re luck that so much of it is great, too. He’s written many times about his hero, Duane Kuiper, over the years. His latest effort, centered around a trip to San Francisco for Kuiper’s bobblehead day, is one of his best ever. ...And I have seen my friends crushed after finally meeting the sports star at the center of their childhood, and this is where I'm lucky.
I was crazy productive on the book-reading tip in April! High Fidelity - Nick Hornby Another in my series of re-reads. Apparently I bought this while in Portland, Oregon for work, Halloween week 2002. How do I know this? Well, A) I remember, silly. But also, B) one of my Delta boarding passes from that trip, that I apparently used as my bookmark in my initial read, was still tucked inside.
Too many words about one kickball game. Man, what a kickball game last night! It was a highly emotional game as we traveled to the school where S. and her entire family attended grade and middle school, OL.1 St. P’s was 0-3 and badly wanted to put a whole game together. They had tended to do well early then blow leads late. Things started well. They were up 11-6 after two innings, and 16-13 after four.
Way, way back I wrote, rather brilliantly I think, that being the parent of a two-year-old is a constant reminder that you are an utter failure. Those little beasts are just constantly challenging you, and often by the end of the day, you’re at your wits' ends and barely clinging to your sanity. The bad thing is those trying moments never really go away, they just come from different angles and although not the constant barrage of toddler-dom, are sometimes even more stressful as your kids get older.
We’re nearly a third of the way through the year. There’s already been some great music. Since my year-end focus is always on singles, I thought I would use this opportunity to share some of my favorite albums of the first four months of the year. I’ll try to repeat this again in the fall. Lost In The Dream - The War On Drugs Ahh the breakup album. I do love them, when done well.
Trees are budding out, lawns are greening up, mowers are being pulled out, allergies are popping up, and I’ve already got the first sunburn of the year. Spring, at long last, has truly sprung.1 Which brings the annual wardrobe reevaluation, pitching aside shirts that have survived a couple of summers and are worse for the wear, or that I’m just no longer fond of, and going through the fun process of replacing them.
Most of us have thought, at some point, that we could sway someone with different political views to our side if we just presented them with cold, hard facts showing that our view was correct. Turns out even when the numbers support your argument, you are unlikely to change the opinion of someone from the other side. Presented with this problem a funny thing happened: how good subjects were at math stopped predicting how well they did on the test.