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.

Star Wars - The Emperor Lives

Forget what you saw in the movies. The emperor lives and is plotting a return to power. Here he is, taking a nap and sitting across from me on a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta last week.

I guess being an evil dark lord is tiring.

Aroma

I was walking through the Minneapolis skyway the other day on my way to work and passed a Subway restaurant that had just pulled out a tray of fresh baked bread. Immediately the smell reminded me of the lunchroom at Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Florida, where the lunch ladies made fresh rolls for the kids every day. Funny how certain smells, good or bad ones, can take you back to another place. Got me to thinking about other great smells,
2. Babies
3. Newly cut grass
4. Sun tan lotion on skin at the beach
5. Cigarettes and coffee, early in the morning
6. Gasoline
7. Old Spice after shave
8. Tomato plants in the South in July
9. A baseball glove

The power of free

During lunch today I walked by the event shown in this picture and muttered aloud, "people standing in line.... at Arby's?" I should have known. The idea of getting something for free is a powerful motivator. It will make people do the oddest things, like stand in line for a free turkey sandwich. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a former employee of Arby's and have not eaten there since leaving the company in the mid 1970's.)

Of course while it is free to these people in line, they know it isn't really without cost. The owner is paying the cost of the sandwich, ( the ingredients and labor to assemble and distribute) in hopes of gaining customers who will buy something else on this, or some future, visit.

Lots of other things aren't free. Someone else is paying for them. We know that. But when it comes from the government, as middleman, it's harder to make the connection to those who provide these things. It makes people do the oddest things, like vote for the people in office, as though they had something to do with creating these free things. Free prescription drugs, free school lunches, free flu shots, free digital cable adapters, free money, free armaments. Thank the unborn, and even the unconcieved, if they survive to their delivery date, they may get to pay for this, or like us, hand it off to someone else. 

Got the Lake house

We got the house on the lake that we have wanted for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing how the seasons change on this little acre of ours. We haven't moved in yet, that will come after we sell the current house. For now we'll be spending a lot of weekends here, moving a few things in and doing the yard work. This photo was taken yesterday from behind the house and looking out on the lake, while I was cutting the grass.

Roan Mountain Shopping list 2012

This is the shopping list for the annual family trek to Roan Mountain, Tennessee. It's not all the groceries, just what my family needs to navigate through the meals supplied by others. While most years I buy from the local "American Owned" Ingles grocery in Newland, NC, this year I went to Walmart in Columbia, SC. Why I had those two to choose from is for another posting.

Bacon

Bananas

Bath Soap

BB Cards

Biscuits

Bread

Buns

Cereal

Charcoal

Cheese - Wisconsin

Cigars

Coffee

Condiments

Corn Chips

Crackers

Crystal Light

Dr Enuf and other sodas

Eggs

Esquire, etc.

Flour

Foil

Fruit

Hamburger for 8

Lighter Fluid Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies

Lunch Meat

Margarine

Matches

Milk

Mt Olive Bread and Butter Pickles

Onion

Paper Plates

Paper Towels

Peanuts in Shell

Pinto Beans

Pork Roast

Potatoes?

Potted Meat

Pringles

Salsa

Salt and Pepper

Sausage

Sugar, SweetLo, etc

Tabasco

Tomatoes

Vienna Sausage

Wasp Spray

Wood Chips

The things scratched out will remain on the list for next year, we didnt need them this time, but you never know when we might. As usual we had too many condiments, too much charcoal, not enough margarine, just enough cigars. In addition to buying this stuff, there were numerous trips to Jacks grocery for more ice, more tomatoes, more onions. The mysteries surrounding the closing of the Davis Girls Peach shed in Roan Mountain and the unusually hard peaches at the Hump Mountain Produce Stand will remain unsolved until another year.

It was another weekend well spent. Included a nice drive with Mom from Columbia, SC to the mountain. A trip to my grandparents gravesite. A minor league game between the Elizabethton Twins and the Burlington Royals. Rain delayed the game but we got to walk around the park and get some souvenirs. A drive with cousins Becky and Barbara to Fred's General Store in Beech Mountain. Lunch at Bob's Dairyland for bbq sandwiches. The best steak dinner of the year. Hiking around Carver's Gap and the torturous jog up to the Miller homestead. Sunday morning sermon at the campground, a bit rambling but heart-felt and full of truth. Kevin's story of Inez and Aunt Bill at Harry's wake, which seems to get funnier and weirder each time I hear it. Numerous games of dominoes. NT's passion for Moose Tracks ice cream. And no gathering is complete without a few heated family arguments about things important and things trivial. A good time.

As we head to the mountains one more time

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”


― Madeleine L'Engle

 

Don't believe this

But I do, I was there, I saw it happen.

246pm, grabbed a cab in downtown San Francisco on a Tuesday afternoon. Around the 500 block of Market Street.

315pm, same day 29 minutes later, I'm sitting in a plane bound for Phoenix.

Cousins

Cousins are interesting relations. When you're growing up they are a measuring stick for how your life is faring versus that of others in your extended family. Your parents and their parents were siblings so you sense that the parenting should be the same. Would be nice if you could pick what you like best from the attributes of each. You would think that at a minimum the rules would be similar, as in, "mom, why do we have to go to church today? Aunt Trudy lets her kids skip..."

You feel that you should also in some way be on equal ground with them when it comes to the material things of this world. "Dad, can we get a motorcycle like Uncle Ted?" Somewhere along the way the comparing ends as lives just get too complicated and too different. Deaths, births, college, work, illnesses, family crises affect us all in different ways.

If you're blessed, as my family is, you finally get to the place where you simply enjoy that shared experience of having a same set of grandparents. It is something special to to share, and I do so with thirteen other people. One of these is my cousin Barbara.

Barbara and her daughter, my cousin Becky, came to visit us last week. Barbara was, to her family, what my daughter Rachel was to ours, the first grandchild. Supposedly the chosen one, as they might both think. The one lavished with attention for something they had nothing to do with, landing on earth ahead of the hoard to follow. 

When we were growing up the age difference between us seemed massive, so I have few childhood memories of Barbara. She was the grownup cousin who was so old she hung out with my aunts, and at places only teenagers could understand, with mysterious names like "The Blue Circle". She was in the background as I did things with younger cousins. Now the difference is not so big, as I am catching up on her in age. And it is good that after all these years we have that family bond and a long list of similar experiences to draw us together. She and Becky serve as the best reminder to all of us, that after the parenting is over with, parents and children can be very good friends. They enjoy being together and it shows.

Becky and I have the unique shared experience of once having ordered blistering hot coffee in an outdoor restaurant overlooking DC in the middle of the hottest night of summer. It was an atmosphere so sweltering it could have been the waiting room of hell in some old movie. It was about the stupidest thing to order but it seemed like the thing to do. Because that's what our family does when family gets together. We drink coffee and then we drink some more coffee. This may not seem unique but we really had no control over the situation. It was something our people do.

The funny thing about cousins is that you know tons about each other as it relates to family travails and experiences, but often know little about their real lives. And that's why at this stage in life it is so good to spend time with them. To compare notes on experiences shared and unshared.

I am glad they are both my cousins and I am especially glad that in the year 2012 I enjoy their company more than at any time in the past.

Monday at Carver's Gap

This is where I spent last Monday, hiking around Carver's Gap, along the Tennessee/NC border. I had a meeting in Knoxville on Tuesday and decided to go a day early and roam some old haunts in Carter County. I flew in to Johnson City on Sunday, spent the night there and spent Monday night at Beech Mountain.

All in, it was a wonderful day. I spent about two hours here, up and down hills, an hour out and back. Some of it I walked and some I ran. Odd to be there by myself, as I'm always here with family. The day included a drive through Roan Mountain State Park, the villages of Roan Mountain, Banner Elk and Beech Mountain. Breakfast in Elizabethton and a drive down Main Street. Lunch at Bob's Dairyland in Roan Mountain, a treat I waited too many years to enjoy.

It was election day in Elizabethton and for an hour or so the tea party was out in full force at the Monument, protesting the latest proposed tax increase. Benny was on the porch, but I didn't stop to chat. I should have.

At Beech I stayed in a non-descript little motel called Archer's Mountain Inn. Nice views, nice rocking chairs on the porch, and good neighbors in the other rooms.

Walmart-Maplewood Missouri-10:16 pm

Last weekend we spent a day in St. Louis. No Cardinals, just family. Had a wonderful day at the lake house of my daughter-in-law's family and got to know her mom and dad and aunt and uncle a little bit better. It's a strong family and it makes me feel good about the way life is unfolding for my son.

We went to Walmart on Friday night. Nothing special happened. Just the normal stuff of life. At these visits even the mundane seems special, because you're with those you love and don't see often.

So for about 48 hours tiny little things like getting gas, and donuts, and petting dogs, and discussing the health of tomato plants seemed bigger and more full of life than they otherwise would. It's great being around family for holidays, but in some ways being together on the ordinary days is even better.