Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.32.40
The pain had gotten to him today.
Our pet beagle Roy had lived a full doggie life, longer than what most beagles live for. 15 years.
Roy had been blind for about half of his life because of cataracts, but in the past year he had been suffering from intestinal failure. He passed away this afternoon. We had him for 14 years, getting him less than a year after we moved into a current home. We were always with him and helped him through the pain until it was just too much to bear.
The house will be different without Roy. With his intestinal pains he had lost sense of what time of day it was. We would have to let him outside in the middle of the night, letting us know with a bark. That may seem like a negative example of "it's different without him" but we loved him more and more the more we know he wasn't going to be around for much longer.
We had a golden retriever in the past, but he had problems with his 1s and 2s to where we couldn't take care of him anymore. Plus, we weren't allowed to have animals in our house, and hid them when the landlady came by. We all loved him, and hated to see him go. His name was Simba (after the Lion King), and was the dog that helped Michael get over his fear of them.
We wanted another one now that we owned our own place now. I remember the first night he came home. Danny had never heard of a beagle before, but knew it was much different than a golden retriever. Danny thought beagle dogs would eat people. When dad brought him home through the back yard, Danny climbed on a dinner chair and was scared because he thought the dog was "going to eat me!"
Roy was a young pup full of energy. At first we kept him in a pet cage, and when he woke up - I swear it was like the wrestler Ultimate Warrior making his ring enterance. Then he got loose from his leash at times and just RAN! He got lost around Sterling a good six times when he was at his best. But every time we would eventually find him.
Just having a pet that was full of energy like us kids were was absolutely fun. I would take him for walks over town, have fun with a tennis ball and a laser pen. Of course after a while we all get older.
Roy had developed cataracts after about seven years and his sight was limited. We could tell with him hitting walls and such. While this limited him, it didn't limit our love for him. Thus, he was mostly kept indoors with us.
I never shared much about Roy with anyone, and that was probably because I'm not much into animals. I had a hamster that died, and that kind of traumatized the part of me that makes non-humans anthropromorphic. I wasn't able to play with him a whole lot because of school and journalism and things like that, but my younger brothers were.
Very late in life he became absolutely confused and deaf, and would often get in people's way when we were walking around the house. This bothered my parents somewhat when they would nearly trip over him. The mood got a little worse with them and Roy. But he would also be in my way, and I would nearly trip over him - and I didn't say anything. He couldn't help himself, and I understood it.
His potty breaks took place when I was watching TV late at night. Just a simple tap on the head, or a rub was the kind of language that Roy and I had when it came to getting around the house. Only the two of us shared this, and that kind of helped make me learn to enjoy having a pet around the house.
Dealing with Roy was a small factor in my earlier frustrations in this Blog. But now that the time has come, I can feel better for him. I've taken part in many funerals with the same pastor, and he always says the same thing.
Roy is in a better place. He is no longer in pain, and is no longer suffering. All his many wounds are now healed, and he will live in us forever.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Blog to be Temporarily Private, Old-Fashioned
Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.81.40
Current Song - Learning to Fly (Tom Petty)
Thank you for following this Blog for the past seven years. I do appreciate it.
I'm not going away, nor am I ceasing this Blog. However, some things have come up that have made me make the decision to actually write my entries on notebook paper.
This has always been the place to put the things that I want to get off my chest. A soapbox, if you will. The topics range from pretty much everything, and most recently personal struggles that I have had to deal with for the past seven months.
Things are happening right now that I really do not feel like sharing in public at this moment. But I still have to get them off my chest and onto something.
When I was in fifth grade, I was inspired by the Nick cartoon "Doug" to start writing a journal (the character had a journal, and some shows started off with him saying, "Dear journal:". Apparently nobody watched "Doug" on television in Sterling. They thought my journal was a diary. Then all hell broke loose - people trying to steal my journal and try to find a "flaw in the new kid". My journal actually was stolen in fifth grade, and that partially led to a decline in what people think of me. But it was stolen by a couple of troublemakers that wanted to act like idiots. That didn't keep me from writing things down, now did it? 15 years later, here I am.
I'm going back to the old pen and paper for a little while. Just try to steal this one, you knuckleheads!
I will inform through here and Facebook when this Blog will come back to full force. I may chime in from time to time, but probably about nothing too deep. Hopefully it will come to the point where I can start writing on here in peace.
Current Song - Learning to Fly (Tom Petty)
Thank you for following this Blog for the past seven years. I do appreciate it.
I'm not going away, nor am I ceasing this Blog. However, some things have come up that have made me make the decision to actually write my entries on notebook paper.
This has always been the place to put the things that I want to get off my chest. A soapbox, if you will. The topics range from pretty much everything, and most recently personal struggles that I have had to deal with for the past seven months.
Things are happening right now that I really do not feel like sharing in public at this moment. But I still have to get them off my chest and onto something.
When I was in fifth grade, I was inspired by the Nick cartoon "Doug" to start writing a journal (the character had a journal, and some shows started off with him saying, "Dear journal:". Apparently nobody watched "Doug" on television in Sterling. They thought my journal was a diary. Then all hell broke loose - people trying to steal my journal and try to find a "flaw in the new kid". My journal actually was stolen in fifth grade, and that partially led to a decline in what people think of me. But it was stolen by a couple of troublemakers that wanted to act like idiots. That didn't keep me from writing things down, now did it? 15 years later, here I am.
I'm going back to the old pen and paper for a little while. Just try to steal this one, you knuckleheads!
I will inform through here and Facebook when this Blog will come back to full force. I may chime in from time to time, but probably about nothing too deep. Hopefully it will come to the point where I can start writing on here in peace.
Friday, April 13, 2012
May 17, 1997 - Moving Day & Saying Goodbye to Merrill
Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.31.40
Current Song - Daisy Jane (America)
It's 4 in the morning. Everyone's asleep everywhere. In my office hallway, in front of my computer, a light on a lamp post gives me the room to see.
On my desk is a stapled pile of papers. They contain many phone numbers. Numbers of places I have either been to, or never seen with my own two eyes before. But these numbers contain the key toward getting myself living again. I made some calls yesterday, and will try to continue today. But pretty much my life rests within these phone numbers, and an outside effort to reclaim the position that I was once at.
So here I am, with this packet of paper with phone numbers listed. This is pretty tight space that I'm working with, but this is the only space I have been restricted to in these past seven months.
My only links to everything else outside of this tight-bubbled quarters I have been shoved in are the memories of what life used to be like for me.
There was a time when I was much happier than how I am feeling now. When I think back to those times, and consider the position I find myself in now, I can only cry and tell myself that I'm nothing more than a shadow of what I used to be.
There was a time when I was destined to be really, really smart and had a great education and everything else like that. I can think back to my grade school days, when I started on my homework before everyone else (first grade), wondered why 55+55 didn't equal 1010 (second grade), knew all of the presidents both in order and backwards, and crushed my classmates in the "around the world" math game.
I was "the smart one" back then. Not only was I smart, but I had friends that I could play with and talk to - about anything. I miss those grade school days at Merrill. I never had any problems with depression, or trying to find a girlfriend, or anything like that.
I am crying and my head is rattling at this moment. That's because the memory of saying good-bye after 4th grade just came into my head. My family made the decision to move from Rock Falls to Sterling - and it was the right move, as we were now owning our own home. But we had to move away to do that. It was the best move for our family, but it was one that I'll never forget.
My best friend Jared and I had been in the same class every year from when I arrived in first grade to leaving after fourth grade. We lived across the street from each other for a while before he moved to another house in the same school boundary. Our neighborhood was full of many kids: Jared and Larelle, the Nance's (Alesha and Dan), the Williams's (Matt, Sara and Billie), the Risley's (Stephanie and Jeremy), the Mattox's (Mason and his little brother), the Pinkston's (Aaron and Chrysteena), the Limond's (Wesley and David), the Berogan's, Hay's and Claudin's to name a few more.
Along with some of them, and other friends from school, we would always be somewhere around the West side of town (as "crossing First Avenue" was a no-no for us back then). The baseball games in my back yard, where balls hit over the garage would be a home run (first base was the tree, second base was the garage door, and third base was a pile of sticks). The baseball games on the Sega (World Series Baseball) and Super Nintendo (Ken Griffey Baseball). The two-headed tree that all we needed was just a jump to be in the wedge between the branches.
It took me many years to realize that my parents were very happy to see me in the position I was in while living in Rock Falls. I had mild autism when I was very young, and all of this friendship interaction pretty much made the coping process better. Every day I was doing something after school, until dark.
First grade was when I learned that girls were indeed quite alright, and not full of cooties. Jared, ever so wise beyond his seven years, suggested that I call up the girl I liked on the telephone. First grade. I was always nervous to tell her, and I think she found out though Jared. Liking girls was all a part of life back then. Each one of us that "saw the light" (I think only a few) when it came to girls had that one girl we liked. In contrast, all of the girls had that one guy they liked (either Zach or Jake).
Merrill had Mrs. Dady and Mr. G. You cannot find a better music/gym combination on the planet! These years were when computer software for kids was starting to come out (on the small Macintosh's) such as Putt Putt and Fatty Bear, and Turbo Math. Turbo Math was the computer game where, if you got a math question correct a drag racer flew across the screen (and if you got a problem wrong, the drag car would crash at the end of the screen). Turbo Math was the game where I couldn't quite understand why 55+55 didn't = 1010. I was the first person, according to my second grade teacher Miss Last, that was taught to "carry the one" before the rest of the class did.
Lunch was in the basement, and I can still hear the "bang, bang" of lunch trays and scrap food going into the garbage.
Those were the days.
Then in the middle of fourth grade, my world turned upside down. We were moving to Sterling, and I was going to attend Lincoln Elementary in Sterling.
As the weeks toward the big day came closer, I began to understand that I can't cross the bridge on my bike and come see my friends again. This bothered me a lot.
Then the final day came. My bedroom was empty, as was my little brothers'. We had a connecting walk-in closet between our rooms. I wanted to hide and never come out. I laid on my stomach and saw my life passing me by. I cried.
Goodbye, Jared. Goodbye, Jake. Goodbye, Matt. Goodbye, Geoff. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Mallory. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Kody. Goodbye, Steven. Goodbye, Alesha. Goodbye, Dan. Goodbye, Brendyn. Goodbye, Johnna. Goodbye, Alisha. Goodbye, Kal. Goodbye, Antoino. Goodbye, Austin. Goodbye, Mason. Goodbye, Keelin. Goodbye, Zach. Goodbye, Sarah. Goodbye, Nicole. Goodbye, Jacob. Goodbye, Chris. Goodbye, Aaron. Goodbye, Ryan. Goodbye, Cassie. Goodbye, Stephanie.
I thought of every classmate one-by-one. And I cried doing so.
Then my parents found me, and I tried to hold back the tears as I took that last walk out of the house. As we pulled away on 5th Street, we went past 2nd Avenue and I caught a glimpse of the Pinkston house, where I had spent many days at. It was at that point that my life would never be the same.
I don't remember how I told everyone in the fourth grade, but they all knew by year's end that I wasn't going to be in fifth grade at Merrill. The first time I uttered it in class was the last day of school. Mrs. Sickler had read off the list of kids that were going to be in either Mrs. Gallardo or Mr. Stralow's classes. Jared's name was listed in one of those classes, and I remember him telling Mrs. Sickler that his family was actually moving to somewhere near Montmorency School. I recall a tear coming down his face as he said something to the tune of "I'm going to miss everyone."
My name wasn't on the fifth-grade roll. "Are you moving too?" someone told me. I just simply said a "yeah".
Our moving day was May 17. We still had two weeks left of school, so I was already in my current house on that fateful last day of school. By then, I had gotten over the biggest heartache of my life.
"You'll get to make new friends" was the theme of that first year at Lincoln. I only had two Merrill links (Brandon and Stacie) at Lincoln. As these years piled up, it was difficult to make new friends as I had missed my old ones. Eventually it takes time, and I had plenty by high school.
Heck, I even got to see my old Merrill classmates once again - now that I realized that, yes, I can cross the bridge any time I wanted to.
But after high school, all of those friends dissapear - off doing their own thing. College kind of helped me somewhat, but in the couple of years after graduating from Sauk, I kind of feel that I'm back to that same "square one" that I was at on May 17, 1997.
A couple of years after I had moved to Sterling, I happened to catch a youth softball ceremony at Wallingford Park. I met up with a couple of my old classmates. I remember one of them (Jake, maybe) talking about how smart I was. The word "Harvard" was mentioned.
15 years later, I am nowhere close to Harvard. Instead, I am looking at a packet with phone numbers on it. Trying to find a job.
And I am still in the same house I moved to 15 years ago.
Current Song - Daisy Jane (America)
It's 4 in the morning. Everyone's asleep everywhere. In my office hallway, in front of my computer, a light on a lamp post gives me the room to see.
On my desk is a stapled pile of papers. They contain many phone numbers. Numbers of places I have either been to, or never seen with my own two eyes before. But these numbers contain the key toward getting myself living again. I made some calls yesterday, and will try to continue today. But pretty much my life rests within these phone numbers, and an outside effort to reclaim the position that I was once at.
So here I am, with this packet of paper with phone numbers listed. This is pretty tight space that I'm working with, but this is the only space I have been restricted to in these past seven months.
My only links to everything else outside of this tight-bubbled quarters I have been shoved in are the memories of what life used to be like for me.
There was a time when I was much happier than how I am feeling now. When I think back to those times, and consider the position I find myself in now, I can only cry and tell myself that I'm nothing more than a shadow of what I used to be.
There was a time when I was destined to be really, really smart and had a great education and everything else like that. I can think back to my grade school days, when I started on my homework before everyone else (first grade), wondered why 55+55 didn't equal 1010 (second grade), knew all of the presidents both in order and backwards, and crushed my classmates in the "around the world" math game.
I was "the smart one" back then. Not only was I smart, but I had friends that I could play with and talk to - about anything. I miss those grade school days at Merrill. I never had any problems with depression, or trying to find a girlfriend, or anything like that.
I am crying and my head is rattling at this moment. That's because the memory of saying good-bye after 4th grade just came into my head. My family made the decision to move from Rock Falls to Sterling - and it was the right move, as we were now owning our own home. But we had to move away to do that. It was the best move for our family, but it was one that I'll never forget.
My best friend Jared and I had been in the same class every year from when I arrived in first grade to leaving after fourth grade. We lived across the street from each other for a while before he moved to another house in the same school boundary. Our neighborhood was full of many kids: Jared and Larelle, the Nance's (Alesha and Dan), the Williams's (Matt, Sara and Billie), the Risley's (Stephanie and Jeremy), the Mattox's (Mason and his little brother), the Pinkston's (Aaron and Chrysteena), the Limond's (Wesley and David), the Berogan's, Hay's and Claudin's to name a few more.
Along with some of them, and other friends from school, we would always be somewhere around the West side of town (as "crossing First Avenue" was a no-no for us back then). The baseball games in my back yard, where balls hit over the garage would be a home run (first base was the tree, second base was the garage door, and third base was a pile of sticks). The baseball games on the Sega (World Series Baseball) and Super Nintendo (Ken Griffey Baseball). The two-headed tree that all we needed was just a jump to be in the wedge between the branches.
It took me many years to realize that my parents were very happy to see me in the position I was in while living in Rock Falls. I had mild autism when I was very young, and all of this friendship interaction pretty much made the coping process better. Every day I was doing something after school, until dark.
First grade was when I learned that girls were indeed quite alright, and not full of cooties. Jared, ever so wise beyond his seven years, suggested that I call up the girl I liked on the telephone. First grade. I was always nervous to tell her, and I think she found out though Jared. Liking girls was all a part of life back then. Each one of us that "saw the light" (I think only a few) when it came to girls had that one girl we liked. In contrast, all of the girls had that one guy they liked (either Zach or Jake).
Merrill had Mrs. Dady and Mr. G. You cannot find a better music/gym combination on the planet! These years were when computer software for kids was starting to come out (on the small Macintosh's) such as Putt Putt and Fatty Bear, and Turbo Math. Turbo Math was the computer game where, if you got a math question correct a drag racer flew across the screen (and if you got a problem wrong, the drag car would crash at the end of the screen). Turbo Math was the game where I couldn't quite understand why 55+55 didn't = 1010. I was the first person, according to my second grade teacher Miss Last, that was taught to "carry the one" before the rest of the class did.
Lunch was in the basement, and I can still hear the "bang, bang" of lunch trays and scrap food going into the garbage.
Those were the days.
Then in the middle of fourth grade, my world turned upside down. We were moving to Sterling, and I was going to attend Lincoln Elementary in Sterling.
As the weeks toward the big day came closer, I began to understand that I can't cross the bridge on my bike and come see my friends again. This bothered me a lot.
Then the final day came. My bedroom was empty, as was my little brothers'. We had a connecting walk-in closet between our rooms. I wanted to hide and never come out. I laid on my stomach and saw my life passing me by. I cried.
Goodbye, Jared. Goodbye, Jake. Goodbye, Matt. Goodbye, Geoff. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Mallory. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Kody. Goodbye, Steven. Goodbye, Alesha. Goodbye, Dan. Goodbye, Brendyn. Goodbye, Johnna. Goodbye, Alisha. Goodbye, Kal. Goodbye, Antoino. Goodbye, Austin. Goodbye, Mason. Goodbye, Keelin. Goodbye, Zach. Goodbye, Sarah. Goodbye, Nicole. Goodbye, Jacob. Goodbye, Chris. Goodbye, Aaron. Goodbye, Ryan. Goodbye, Cassie. Goodbye, Stephanie.
I thought of every classmate one-by-one. And I cried doing so.
Then my parents found me, and I tried to hold back the tears as I took that last walk out of the house. As we pulled away on 5th Street, we went past 2nd Avenue and I caught a glimpse of the Pinkston house, where I had spent many days at. It was at that point that my life would never be the same.
I don't remember how I told everyone in the fourth grade, but they all knew by year's end that I wasn't going to be in fifth grade at Merrill. The first time I uttered it in class was the last day of school. Mrs. Sickler had read off the list of kids that were going to be in either Mrs. Gallardo or Mr. Stralow's classes. Jared's name was listed in one of those classes, and I remember him telling Mrs. Sickler that his family was actually moving to somewhere near Montmorency School. I recall a tear coming down his face as he said something to the tune of "I'm going to miss everyone."
My name wasn't on the fifth-grade roll. "Are you moving too?" someone told me. I just simply said a "yeah".
Our moving day was May 17. We still had two weeks left of school, so I was already in my current house on that fateful last day of school. By then, I had gotten over the biggest heartache of my life.
"You'll get to make new friends" was the theme of that first year at Lincoln. I only had two Merrill links (Brandon and Stacie) at Lincoln. As these years piled up, it was difficult to make new friends as I had missed my old ones. Eventually it takes time, and I had plenty by high school.
Heck, I even got to see my old Merrill classmates once again - now that I realized that, yes, I can cross the bridge any time I wanted to.
But after high school, all of those friends dissapear - off doing their own thing. College kind of helped me somewhat, but in the couple of years after graduating from Sauk, I kind of feel that I'm back to that same "square one" that I was at on May 17, 1997.
A couple of years after I had moved to Sterling, I happened to catch a youth softball ceremony at Wallingford Park. I met up with a couple of my old classmates. I remember one of them (Jake, maybe) talking about how smart I was. The word "Harvard" was mentioned.
15 years later, I am nowhere close to Harvard. Instead, I am looking at a packet with phone numbers on it. Trying to find a job.
And I am still in the same house I moved to 15 years ago.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Not Going There Again
Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.90.40
Current Song - Sweet Freedom (Michael McDonald)
If taping reciepts to my dashboard isn't going work, then perhaps the fact that I'm running low on money will motivate me to at least TRY to get healthy once again.
While running some errands on Friday, I went to the drive-thru and (again) declared that the last time. Let's see how long this holds up. One of my errands was to Sauk, and I drove past the old soccer pitch. Yes, SVCC at one time had a collegiate soccer team. The pitch has a asphalt track around it that hasn't been maintained for a long time, but I assume the XC team uses it for practice.
I took a glance at the track. Unlike the tracks at SHS, RFHS and RFMS, this one is tucked away in a pocket where no one can really notice me. I've always had this fear of people looking at me and bringing up the topic of me walking and starting conversations about exercise, etc. I get nervous when this stuff comes up. Really.
I told myself that perhaps I should start walking around it, and right now I'm thinking about either doing that M-F and/or walking inside.
When I went to Sauk, I briefly had planned out a walking course around the long- three-story structure. That was when I went away from my highest weight (338 at the time).
Let's see how long this lasts. As of this sentence, it is 2 a.m. and I have another Blog entry to write, bank accounts to reconsile, a whiteboard to write on and some website housecleaning stuff.
309 as of tonight.
I want to see at least 290 by mid-May.
Current Song - Sweet Freedom (Michael McDonald)
If taping reciepts to my dashboard isn't going work, then perhaps the fact that I'm running low on money will motivate me to at least TRY to get healthy once again.
While running some errands on Friday, I went to the drive-thru and (again) declared that the last time. Let's see how long this holds up. One of my errands was to Sauk, and I drove past the old soccer pitch. Yes, SVCC at one time had a collegiate soccer team. The pitch has a asphalt track around it that hasn't been maintained for a long time, but I assume the XC team uses it for practice.
I took a glance at the track. Unlike the tracks at SHS, RFHS and RFMS, this one is tucked away in a pocket where no one can really notice me. I've always had this fear of people looking at me and bringing up the topic of me walking and starting conversations about exercise, etc. I get nervous when this stuff comes up. Really.
I told myself that perhaps I should start walking around it, and right now I'm thinking about either doing that M-F and/or walking inside.
When I went to Sauk, I briefly had planned out a walking course around the long- three-story structure. That was when I went away from my highest weight (338 at the time).
Let's see how long this lasts. As of this sentence, it is 2 a.m. and I have another Blog entry to write, bank accounts to reconsile, a whiteboard to write on and some website housecleaning stuff.
309 as of tonight.
I want to see at least 290 by mid-May.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Reasons I Struggle Writing This Time of Year
Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.40.40
Current Song - Promises, Promises (Naked Eyes)
As the years pile up in my high school sportswriting career - this August will be ten years at it - I'm starting to collect all of my frustrations with writing articles in late March and early April.
Sportwriters consider late February/early March and late October/early November as their moments of little patience. This is no different for me and NISB, as we cover over 90 high schools.
I'd like to add the timeframe of late March/early April to that. This is the transition from the winter sports season to the spring sports season.
Here's why:
1. Air conditioned gymnasiums, pools and bowling alleys give way to blustery winds and potential hypothermia. Adding to this is the bad habit of leaving Sterling with the weather feeling nice, only to arrive at my game 60 miles away when the temprature fell 20 degrees.
2. There are too many stats and technicalities involved with baseball and softball, compared to basketball, wrestling, swimming and bowling. I have to read, re-read, and read again many statistical items: such as whether a fielder's choice counts as a hit or an at-bat, and the difference between a earned run and a run. I'm so used to the winter sports that the knowledge of hardball technicalities just doesn't roam through my head.
3. I can't decide whether to stand or sit. Every winter sport, except for swimming, involves sitting at a table. Then if I do decide to sit, I'm lugging around my lawn chair as if it's a backpack on a Siberian hike.
4. The games get over by 7 p.m. - free time!
5. The best games are being played in Timbuktu, or Disney World.
6. I have always had compromised dexterity, hence my absolute need for a recorder. Then the wind gets real bad where you can't hear anything.
7. "Oh, crap! It's Honor Roll season!"
8. This thought bothers me when it happens: The timeout call of "time, blue." I never hear "time, gray" in wrestling, "time, yellow" in soccer, or "time, stripes" in other sports. Is this just another excuse to make short grunting noises in place of actually saying words?
9. Being distracted because I'm playing the game of "guess the indicator" with the baseball coach (all to the tune of Divinyl's "I Touch Myself")
10. Those 4:30 start times. Or is it 4:00?
Current Song - Promises, Promises (Naked Eyes)
As the years pile up in my high school sportswriting career - this August will be ten years at it - I'm starting to collect all of my frustrations with writing articles in late March and early April.
Sportwriters consider late February/early March and late October/early November as their moments of little patience. This is no different for me and NISB, as we cover over 90 high schools.
I'd like to add the timeframe of late March/early April to that. This is the transition from the winter sports season to the spring sports season.
Here's why:
1. Air conditioned gymnasiums, pools and bowling alleys give way to blustery winds and potential hypothermia. Adding to this is the bad habit of leaving Sterling with the weather feeling nice, only to arrive at my game 60 miles away when the temprature fell 20 degrees.
2. There are too many stats and technicalities involved with baseball and softball, compared to basketball, wrestling, swimming and bowling. I have to read, re-read, and read again many statistical items: such as whether a fielder's choice counts as a hit or an at-bat, and the difference between a earned run and a run. I'm so used to the winter sports that the knowledge of hardball technicalities just doesn't roam through my head.
3. I can't decide whether to stand or sit. Every winter sport, except for swimming, involves sitting at a table. Then if I do decide to sit, I'm lugging around my lawn chair as if it's a backpack on a Siberian hike.
4. The games get over by 7 p.m. - free time!
5. The best games are being played in Timbuktu, or Disney World.
6. I have always had compromised dexterity, hence my absolute need for a recorder. Then the wind gets real bad where you can't hear anything.
7. "Oh, crap! It's Honor Roll season!"
8. This thought bothers me when it happens: The timeout call of "time, blue." I never hear "time, gray" in wrestling, "time, yellow" in soccer, or "time, stripes" in other sports. Is this just another excuse to make short grunting noises in place of actually saying words?
9. Being distracted because I'm playing the game of "guess the indicator" with the baseball coach (all to the tune of Divinyl's "I Touch Myself")
10. Those 4:30 start times. Or is it 4:00?
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