Airports make you eat stupid

Airports make you eat stupid. This was my thought yesterday as I was walking through Midway airport in Chicago, and later as I sat on a plane drinking coffee and snacking on peanuts. Coffee and peanuts. You would never combine the two in real life. Only on a plane.

But it's the airport that makes people really eat stupid. Maybe we are thinking that because we're flying across time zones that the regular food rules don't apply. In recent weeks I have observed such oddities as,  people eating lunch at 10am or patrons of Manchu Wok devouring spring rolls and cashew chicken for breakfast. Folks standing in front of a Sbarro around 9am, wondering when the place will open. Grown men carrying a bag of gummy worms. It's crazy.

Charlotte airport, 925pm, gate b14

Four hour layover on a trip home from Houston. Sitting next to a woman reading an article titled "ode to autumn" in Good housekeeping magazine. She may be the only normal person here. Everyone else staring at small glowing rectangles and tapping them,including me

What in the world was i thinking when i picked this flight? After one dish of ice cream, one sudoku, one tasteless barbecue sandwich, and one hour in the famous Charlotte airport rocking chairs i am ready to go home. It snowed today and i missed it.

Painful

Hard to watch last night's game. I might have seen thirty minutes of it total, which was much more than I watched of the presidential debates. I was not a good fan. Had a bad feeling about it. Kept switching back and forth between reality shows and checking the score. Told myself I would tune in once we got ahead. It didnt happen. This morning a cubs fan came by my office to let me know the Cardinals had lost.

It's been worse, but it's been a while. I was at game five in 1996 when the braves beat the Cardinals 13-0 in game five (and then two nights late beat them 15-0 in game seven). Or 2004 when the redsox swept the Cardinals in four. Since then, it's been a sweet decade for Cardinals fans.

We won't talk about this at our house. It's like it didn't happen. Like the death of a loved one or some terrible family scandal, it just won't come up.

Feb 14 - pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

October at the Lake

This is a pic of the new place in mid October. Leaves gone from most of the trees. Boat docks off the water and on the shore. The evergreens beginning to stand out much more than in the summer. The cars on the road nearby sound louder, now that the sound barrier the leaves create is gone. One last cutting of the grass, and I'll be done with that until Spring. Time to put away lawnmowers and clean the dust off the snow blowers.

Crazy Stuff

Cards march on the NLCS, and play into the hallowed deep weeks of October.

Best quote from the NLDS. From Game 5....

“I think the last three outs are the hardest in baseball,” Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche said. “I don’t know why it’s so much harder than the other eight innings, but something about it. Crazy stuff happens in the ninth inning.”

Thinking about the changes to the MLB playoffs

Even though the new system extended the season for my beloved Cardinals, it has not made baseball better, or more exciting, as was claimed. It has hurt the credibility of the playoff process. The team with the fifth best record in the league (the Cardinals) should not be there. The fact that they beat the Braves in the first wild-card playoff doesnt really prove anything. It just means that on that day they scored the most runs. Match the two teams in a series and most of the time the home team with the better record would win (in this case the Braves).

One game in baseball proves nothing and thereis no time for a wild card series. Why? Because baseball is an outdoors, fair weather, sport. Unlike football, which can be, and is, played under miserable weather conditions, baseball requires good weather. Or so they say. Add a three or five game series for wild card playoffs and before you know it you are playing the World Series entirely in November. Try that out on the fans of northern teams, White Sox, Indians, Red Sox, Brewers, Twins.

In one game anything can happen. Bad teams can clobber good teams. Not so with a five or seven game series, then the better team by definition, always wins. Last year (and every previous year) the winner of the World Series could always claim that no matter whom they faced in the postgame, they were the better team. No more. This years winner will have fans wondering if they really could have made it past the Braves or the Rangers, two good teams that fell short in a one-game death match.