Seeing Things

While channel surfing Friday night, I watched a few minutes of a college football game. On one play, a running back made a pretty good move. Pressed up against a stack of bodies, blockers and tackles frantically trying to shove each other aside, the ball carrier bounced to his left, into an opening. He gained 17 yards before he was brought down. 

A nice run, yes. One described by the color commentator as, "He was bottled up, then saw with his vision a hole and hit it for a good gain."

Ah. The football player 'saw' with his 'vision' and had a good run.

An incisive remark, to be sure. I heard it with my hearing, after seeing with my own vision. Then I smelled potato chips through my nose and tasted them with my tongue before chewing them with my mouth. And now I'm thinking (with my brain) that you, too, could be a football commentator.

Ooh boy.

A Little Too Quiet

Call me crazy - I'm sure most of you have by now - but some days I do worry that I am losing my mind.

The house is very quiet when I'm home alone during the day, working at my computer and absolutely not playing video poker (why would you think that?). It becomes, as the old trepidation goes, too quiet.

While I was working on my current writing project (and not, I stress, playing poker) I heard what I thought was a noise from the pantry. Great, I think, a critter has gotten into something. Do I have mousetraps? But checking the pantry found no evidence of a tiny rodent invasion.

A few minutes later I heard it again. Further investigation discovered no suspects, no scurrying activity. That's two strikes. At strike three, I'm going to tear the place apart, find that little miscreant, and settle our score.

Of course within a few minutes I hear more squeaking and creaking noises. I rose to storm the pantry, leaving pocket Aces at the table - I mean an incredibly important email unfinished - when I realize that it's the chair at my computer desk. When I shift my weight ever so slightly as I sit, I'm causing the noises myself.

I think I need to keep the radio or TV on as I work from home.

In a Pickle Loaf

Sometimes it's the little things in life which make a guy happy. Sometimes, in my case, it's very little things.

While out shopping yesterday I came across pickle loaf. It's really just bologna with slivers of pickle and slivers of, oh, what's that stuff, it looks like slivers of red pickle...pimento! That's it. Bologna with pickle and pimento slivers.

Anyway, I hadn't seen it in a long time. That's likely as not because I simply hadn't been looking for it. But yesterday it found me. Of course I had to buy some. And of course I had to have a pickle loaf sandwich as soon as I got home. 

And you know what? It did not disappoint. For a few lone minutes in this hectic world, I was a kid again eating the pickle loaf sandwich during school lunch which my mother had packed for me that day. It is sometimes the little things which make your day.

Check, Mate

The use of checks has become a very Boomer thing in recent years, as electronic payments have come to the fore. Still, this Boomer, genuflecting to The Future, has been paying most things electronically. Yet typically, I still averaged writing a check a month, for various reasons. Now I write two.

A couple of months ago I went to pay the household bills online. While I was at it I decided to pay the electric bill for the Shop. To my surprise and dismay, though I had paid that bill online for years now, Electric Company would only allow me to do so with a $9 surcharge, apparently because I am a business. By all appearances it isn't something innocuous like a one time set up fee. It's every month I try to pay electronically.

Well, forget that. I wrote them a check and mailed it, and will continue to do so so long as that added charge is demanded. What's more, and although we have turned the power off at the old barn at closing time for as long as I can recall, I now turn it off every time I leave. For example, if running to the hardware, a chore which typically takes about a half hour, I kill the lights. All of them. Even when I'm working I only keep on the ones necessary, such as above my workbench. The far end of the Shop? I turn on those lights only for as long as I need them. The side room we have? Ditto. I've turned back into a Dad about the lights.

The Shop bill is usually around $24, so I know I'm not depriving Electric Company much with my actions. But there's a principle at stake. I ain't paying nine bucks a month, adding around thirty five percent to my bill, for the privilege of giving you my cash, and if I only save a buck turning lights on and off frequently, well, it covers the postage on a check you must now process. 

So. There.

2026 Tigers Rant

The 2026 baseball season is over for the Detroit Tigers. To call it a disappointment feels like understatement. Profound understatement. I don't think I've been this downhearted since the 2006 World Series loss.

There were some good signs. It will be an injustice if Kevin McGonigle is not the American League Rookie of the Year. Hao-yu Lee also had a solid rookie season, and Max Clark has looked good since being called up around mid-year. Dillon Dingler has shown he's an everyday backstop. The team had a couple of feel good moments to boot. Justin Verlander's farewell counts as one, of course, but the emergence of Eduardo Valencia ranks high as well. He spent a lot of time in the minors yet has shown his mettle in the bigs. From a position player standpoint, the future looks good.

Pitching, especially relievers, failed miserably, so we should expect an overhaul in that department. The Tigers lost too many games against division rivals, and that 6-22 month of May alone likely killed the season, although the 3-16 stretch in August, right as they were on the cusp of controlling a playoff spot, cut deep. 

They lost too many one run games. Their record was a dismal 19-28 in contests decided by a single score. But how do you improve on that? Even the nerd boys in the sabermetrics office believe that one run wins or losses are basically matters of luck, and they eat numbers like Garfield scarfs lasagna. If they have nothing to offer, what else can be said?

I'll still watch a lot of the playoffs because, hey, it's baseball, and we have a whole 'nother month of games yet. But 26 just seems like a classic 'what if' season for the hometown Nine. They should have been better.

I Don't Get It Either

Ah, September. I do love you, and October afterward. Fall is my favorite season. Only I'm not really sure why.

The energized colors on the trees as they change are exhilarating. Crisp fall air is a delight. Hot coffee is tastier, hot cider and hot chocolate wonderful warmers. Pumpkins and harvest feelings, things coming of age, are hints of maturity and grace. Yes, I like all that.

Yet Autumn also means winter is peeking over the shoulder, and I do not like winter at all anymore. Well, fresh snow is pretty, and cleansing of all it covers. Then it becomes dirty and brown and murky and uglier than what it hid. And cold, cold, cold. It all comes after fall, so I should look upon autumn with a fair dread.

I don't. I love it. It helps that I'm not really a fan of summer. Take away baseball and golf and summer would mean nothing to me at all. That means, rather oddly I'll admit, that I find in Spring (other than the beauty of things growing) greater dread. Spring heralds hot and sticky discomfort, and I profoundly dislike heat more than cold. I prefer neither, but that's not an option.

So here it is, my favorite time of the year. Even though I'm not entirely sure why.

Official Everything

I am as big of a free market capitalist as anyone I know. I firmly believe that free market forces, people working and exchanging among themselves with no government interference whatsoever, could cure what ails society much more quickly, efficiently, and especially peacefully than government order and regulation. Still, there are times where I wonder if there is a line in the sand, the other side of which is absurdity.

While at Fenway Park in Boston with me boys recently, we came upon a samples table. They were giving away free small tubes of toothpaste, Dr. Sheffield's Original Toothpaste for what that's worth. Apparently it's a marketing ploy, as Dr. Sheffield's is the official toothpaste of the Boston Red Sox, the baseball nine who call Fenway their home. 

Isn't that a bit much? Do major league baseball franchises need official toothpastes? And what's more, we were given samples of four different types. The first was extra whitening; no surprise there. Then there was peppermint, an okay taste, followed by cinnamon, which is beginning to strain the flavor parameters of mouth care yet is still not particularly outside the park. 

Outside the park...a little sports humor reference there.

The fourth tube is chocolate flavor. I'm not sure at all that that's an acceptable toothpaste flavor. But more so: I don't really understand why anyone would want or need such a range of dental care products. 

There's nothing wrong with any of this of course, other than that it's all rather bizarre. Still, it does leave me to wonder what it might cost me to become the official drain snake salesman of the Detroit Tigers. I have actually sold them snake cables and parts, so the relationship is already established. Could I get a sign on the outfield wall for a reasonable price though?