Opening Day 2018

This afternoon at about 1:10 Eastern time at Comerica Park in Detroit (I almost said Tiger Stadium there in wishful thinking), Jordan Zimmerman will throw out the first real pitch of the 2018 MLB Season. The true American national pastime will be underway.

Opening Day in baseball eclipses opening day in any other sport. Sure, the fans of those other games games revel in the beginning of their seasons, and that's okay. To each their own. But their games don't hold a candle to our game.

The mystique of baseball is greater than the, well, I won't call what other sports have mystique. They have sheer brutality as in American football, and that is hardly a plus. Others may have speed, but that again is not the same as acumen, and acumen, true athletic ability, is what baseball has in abundance. The other big games simply don't have that.

Don't bother with complaints about baseball taking too long. Basketball is interminable particularly in its closing moments, and football has gotten that way too. All major sports other than soccer take 3-4 hours to play. Baseball is no slower, nor faster, than they are. Hell, I quit watching basketball years ago simply because the last 30 seconds take a half hour to play.

Baseball lets us enjoy the game. It is leisurely, even quaint perhaps, yet excitement still builds as we wait for the pitch or watch the action as men speed around the bases and fielders perform relays. And at least for today, my beloved Detroit Tigers are in first place.

The good bad ting

You're about to learn something about drain snake repair, but I'm sure it's a lesson which can be equitably applied to any and all repairs, whether at work or in the household.

The SC-10-A drive shaft on an Electric Eel Model C is held in place with (2) 5/16 allen screws. Most of the time they come loose easily. Yet as all things made by human hands, things don't always go according to plan. In the case of these screws, they sometimes seize. When that happens you either heat them with a torch in an attempt to coax them out, or do what I do. Put a length of pipe over the top of the allen wrench, a 'cheater' as me Pops taught me, to give you greater leverage turning the wrench. Now, I know there is a school of thought that you should never ever, ever use a cheater bar. Well, me Grandpa Joe and me Pops both believed in them, so I believe in them. So there.

Anyways, you turn the wrench with the cheater, increasing pressure as you go, and one of three things will happen. You will either (A) break the allen wrench, (B) strip the allen head on the screw, or (C) you will hear a tiny but sharp little 'ting' exactly as the wrench turns suddenly. That ting is either good or bad. But usually its good. Usually it means that screw has broken loose and you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Your job will soon be over.

The good bad ting. Listen for it when you do your own repairs.

The drain snake sameness fallacy

I'm sure that I've lamented this before. But I'm going to do it again. Because it just happened. Again.

I sell and repair drains snakes, as regular readers know. I took a call a few minutes ago from someone who had a snake to repair. So I asked the natural first question which any repairman of any product would ask: What's the make and model?

"It's got a big round cage, and it's on like a cart, and the cable's about as big as my thumb."

Heavy sigh. That simply doesn't help. It's like going to an auto parts store and describing your car as being a large metal thing with four rubber tires and an engine. As I've explained to people too many times, "Fords and Chevy are both cars, but Ford parts won't fit on a Chevy." Drain snakes are as context specific as most anything else.

I told him he had to bring it to my shop so I could see it, and he heavy sighed. But without complete information I can't help and that's all there is to it.

Palm Sunday 2018

Philippians 2:6-11

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD, to the glory of God the Father.

This is one of my favorite passages in all the Epistles. I get goose bumps reading it to this day. There are few greater explanations of the glory and triumph of Christ than these words of St. Paul. I hope that you may find the same inspiration in them as I do.

Rain delays

You know how one song can often get stuck in your head for it seems like days on end? For me lately that song has been Close to You, sung by Karen Carpenter. It really is a nice little soft rock song, and I genuinely like it. Usually. But not after hearing it over and over in my mind during my waking hours of the last several days. Even at that, I used to hate it even more.

While it's almost certainly only my childhood psychology of the time at work, back when most major league baseball games were on the radio rather than television it seemed as though every time my beloved Detroit Tigers were in a rain delay the first song the emergency deejay played was Close to You. I came to despise that song, because when I heard it meant that I was trying to listen to baseball while the game was under a weather suspension.

It's nothing against Karen Carpenter, who had a lovely voice. I think it even interesting that another song of hers, Rainy Days and Mondays, almost captures the same sentiment. Yet that still doesn't quite explain it. Karen Carpenter singing meant the Tigers weren't playing. I realize that that isn't even her fault. She had no control over what some radio station in Detroit played when it couldn't air sports.

Still, even right now, even 40 plus years later, even a few days before the next baseball season, I'm mad hearing the song because in my own mind it's means no Tiger baseball. I suppose that's little more than self imposed Pavlovianism. But man, I can't wait til the tarp's off the field.

He didn't really mean anything but...

He didn't mean anything by it. I could tell by the sound of his voice and the vaguely horrified look on his face. He meant well; his intention was to be helpful and considerate. He meant well. But still...
I met a customer in Toledo yesterday, to deliver a couple barrels of cable and a set of smaller cables. I grabbed both baskets of small cables and set them in the back of his truck. Then I went back to get one of the large barrels with the large cables. As I reached for them the young man, I'm guessing he is indeed about 30 years younger than I am, raced over and cut in front of me. "Let me get those, sir! I'm a lot younger than you!" he explained hurriedly.
I beg your pardon?
As I say, I know he meant well. And as too many people these days aren't considerate enough, I don't want to disparage an honest and real concern. But it was an unusual way to express it.
I had to be careful not to let the old geezer in me respond. "Now, lookee here, young feller, I been liftin' heavy loads out o'the back of trucks well nigh on 40 year. I know somethin' 'bout liftin' heavy things without hurtin' meself!" But I held geezer in check. I stammered something like, "Uh, okay, thanks."
It's funnier now than at 6 o'clock last night. Yet there is that part of me that's still a bit insulted.

Grandparents

Me Grandma Hutchins, we lost her in 1979. I believe it was June 18. It was something like that anyways.
I took the call from me Pops. He told me she had passed away. I remember my life was different after that. I remember feeling weird, lost, after that call. It was a bit after mid-day.
Apparently he had called his folks, me Grandpa Joe and me Grams, either right afore or after he had called home, where I and me older brother and just younger sister stayed while everyone else had went down south to North Carolina that year. It still seems surreal.
I had little reaction. I told me sibs. Then I went to the Shop, where me Grandpa Joe waited, alone for whatever reason, pulling on a cigarette, a Carlton, as he sat by the coffee table. I went back to work, just like that, like normal.
Seeing as Joe had a coffee, I made me one. And we sat.
Joe pulled again on the cigarette. "I'm sorry about your grandmother," he said, unusually quietly, after a minute.
"Thanks," I said. I sipped at my coffee.
After a bit I said, "Well, not many get to have four grandparents until they're 19. I guess I'm lucky."
"Yeah," Joe said. He pulled again at his Carlton.
And we sat there. We just sat.
Memories.

Vittles

There were two things in particular which I loved to hear me Grandpa Joe say and they were both associated with working for him. They were, "Let's get that coffee," and, "Let's get them vittles," whenever he decided it was time for a break.
It struck me even back then that his words sounded almost as though we had to hunt them, had to track them down, as if the coffee pot didn't just sit there on a table by the office or that the snacks weren't right alongside it. The vittles were the snacks which he always had me or me Pops or me Uncle John buy for the morning coffee break. Joe paid for them; I think he genuinely liked treating us, but I don't doubt at all he looked forward to them too.
Vittles were the height of the workday for a young boy like me. There were always single serve and two for everyone, an assortment of cupcakes, pies, donuts, and cinnamon rolls. I hoped every morning for a Hostess French Apple pie, which was really only their apple pie with raisins added, but it seemed significantly different. Joe and Pops and me and whomever else was there would lay into them vittles like we hadn't ate in days. Uncle John rarely did, and I don't know why. He would buy a paper and sit nearby reading it as the rest of us fell into sugar induced stupors. At times I wondered if something was wrong with him, but that was surely the kid in me thinking such stuff.
It was 15, maybe 20 minutes of the day. But man, I miss gettin' them vittles.

The last bark

"I'll be quiet, but I'll have the last word." I can imagine that's exactly what the old family pet would say about it.

Back when I was a teenager we like many families had a pet dog; I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. Well, this dog was an outside dog, and would take spells where he would bark. A lot. It would reach a point when me Pops would go to the back door and stick his head outside and bark himself. "Quiet!" he'd command old Cloyce. And Cloyce would get quiet. But before clamming up completely he always finished with one brief and small, "Woof." He had to have the last word.

I found that extremely funny one night as I lay awake in bed around 2 or 3 in the morning. I could hear Cloyce making a ruckus, barking incessantly at whatever, and I knew that eventually the old man would do something about it. Soon enough he did.

Mom and Dad's bedroom was on the first floor. My siblings and I slept on the second floor. I heard the downstairs bedroom door open. I heard me Pops stomping towards the back door. I listened, and could just hear him unlocking it. He stepped out onto the porch and demanded of Cloyce, "Quiet!" The dog shut up, and I heard Dad step back into the kitchen and relock the door. Just when the last lock clicked shut, I heard one last, low, "Woof."

I laughed until I hurt. I've always wondered if maybe Pops stood in the kitchen laughing at it too.

The wearing of the Green...Monster

Yesterday for obvious reasons I fished through my clothes to find something green. I came across my 'Green Monster' t-shirt which I bought while at Fenway Park in Boston in 2016. And that leads me to what I want to say to you today: that sometimes I'm slow on the uptake.

Fenway Park features a 37 foot wall in left field. It is painted green. As such, for years Red Sox fans have affectionately referred to it as the Green Monster. Are you with me so far? Good.

Anyway, sports teams tend to have mascots, and Boston is no different. Traipsing around the stands and on the field during the pre-game and between innings and what not was a costumed, human sized figure in a Red Sox uniform. He looked like a full sized Elmo or Cookie Monster, the Sesame Street characters. But rather than red or blue, he appeared to be made of up green shag carpet. And I could not figure out who or what he was supposed to be.

Until about the fourth inning, when it finally dawned on me. He was the Green Monster.

At times I really need things explained to me. At least it gave me green to wear on St. Patrick's Day though.

St. Patrick's Day 2018

Ah, the Irish. There's so much of them in every one of us. That's not really surprising seeing as there are so many more Irish outside of Ireland than still living on the old sod. And when you have St. Patrick's Day celebrations in such diverse places as exemplified by Buenos Aries, Argentina, you know that the Irish mystique pervades world culture.

Why is that? Might it be that the soul of the average Irish personality resides in most all of humanity?

An easy examination of Irish culture gives many examples of Irish fortitude, courage, allegiance, patriotism, and an appreciation of simple yet profound human relationships. Who does not, if they have any sentiment at all in their bones, shed a tear when hearing O Danny Boy? Whoever will not feel their chests swell with nationalistic pride when hearing God save Ireland are indeed cold towards patriotism and their homelands and their brethren. Even sublime romanticism exists, heard through tunes like Black Velvet Band.

The more rambunctious bar songs of Irish lore appeal to the common thread of humanity. Have you heard The Wild Rover? A loser comes into his fortune and wins respect; redemption and respect indeed, as dreamed of by so many. Do not we all dream of that, to show everyone else that we've triumphed after all despite our flaws? How can we not believe in ourselves when listening to those happy tunes?

Acceptable extremes appear quite obvious in Irish lore. But do they not appear prominently in all human thoughts? The drunkard who believes God will forgive him if he makes Mass and does the occasional earthly good deed as did Darby O'Gill; will he not be forgiven by his faith in the simple acts which are the primary hope of redemption within the means of the most persons? The music was his, after all, wasn't it? Why? Because he did what he was asked to do within a legitimate frame.

The Irish are fightin', the Irish are sad and humbled; the Irish have been under the boots of their oppressors for centuries. Yet they hold true to what is true about who and what they are and about what defines them: their God. They recognize it even in their shortcomings. Their Irish guilt won't let them admit it, and rightly so.

Yet humanity requires that sort of odd pride, doesn't it? Something found in that profound and nearly humble comment of the rebel Irish soldier to the union Irish soldier near him at Appomattox, when Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant in April 1865. The Confederate leaned into the Unionist and remarked, "You only won because you had more Irish than we did".

Ah, the Irish. They can teach us something, can't they?

The day before St. Pat's

Everybody always looks ahead to St. Patrick's Day. So be it. But other things happened other days, you know. Why, the day before St. Patrick's, March 16th, has a few notable events in its history in fact.

The America League was announced as a major baseball league on March 16, 1900. That's good for Detroit Tiger fans. Did you know that the Tigers are the only AL team still in its original city, dating from the formation of the Western League (which evolved into the AL) in 1894. Yep. Just us.

For my Canadian friends, or I suppose hockey fans anywhere, The Ottawa Senators beat Port Arthur for the Stanley Cup on March 16, 1911.

Of interest to both Canada and the US, the two countries signed a migratory bird treaty on 3/16/16. Okay, that's a yawner, but still a 3/16 event.

Hitler ordered German rearmament on this day in 1935. Surprisingly, not every event can be good. The Nazis also occupied Czechoslovakia on the date in 1938.

The Allies secured Iwo Jima on March 16, 1945.

The United States Senate accepted the Panama Canal Treaty on March 16, 1978, which provided for the return of the Canal Zone to Panama.

There's more of course, but these are a few, just to whet your whistle. You surely can find these and more with a simple web search. No reason I have to do all the work for you.

I hate DIY shows

They make it look so easy, all those home improvement shows with all their do it yourself tips. Put a board here, a splash of paint there, and your house is now the freakin' Taj Mahal.

BZZZZZ! Wrong answer! They're experts, people! They've worked years to be able to work as quickly and smoothly as they do on their shows.

You're not an expert. If you only handle a saw twice a year you're gonna make bad cuts. Period.

Plus, they get outtakes, which we never see aired. Do you get an outtake? NO! You get your wife telling you how easy it was on TV to add a deck and a dormer it's so simple why can't you do it just like they did and what kind of idiot did I get stuck with Mom was right I should have married Roger. That's what you get.

It just ain't that simple, folks. Especially since your house is probably fine just like it is.

Am I right?

Profiteering

I wasn't really sure what to title this post. Free Ice? didn't seem right. The thousand percent profit margin is a bit wordy. What I chose is a bit too cryptic. Oh well.
The things you see on the road. A party store I drove past in a small town yesterday had a sign out front advertising its current sales. That's common enough. Some of the prices in fact looked pretty good. But perhaps the best sale on display was: 0 lb. ice for $1. For a buck you could get no ice.
Yes, I know that's not what it meant. I'm sure that the number 1 which was surely in front of the 0 had fallen off. But that's simply not funny, is it? And obvious, rational explanations make Jack a dull boy. Further, they avoid the next natural question.
Could you afford to actually get ice?

Joe and Don, Don and Joe

My weekend saw the dreaded words 'In Memoriam' on the subject line of an e-mail. I soon learned that my week would begin with another such letter. Two good curling friends, Joe Livermore and Don Warthman, have passed away.

Joe is the reason I curl; I've said as much before, here and other places. One of the medals on my curling hat I won with Joe as my skip.Truth is, Joe won it and I was fortunate enough to be his novice lead that particular season. He was a true curler, who loved the game and always promoted it. Every time he saw me in recent years her always asked, "You still curling?" He liked telling folks how I grew up near the Detroit Curling Club when it was downtown, which it was until I was 19. I wish I knew Joe then, but I am very glad to have known him at all.

Don was always welcoming whenever I found him at the DCC. He was a guy you joke and laugh with; I called him the Donald well before that other Donald claimed the nickname. I used to tease that his hair looked like a helmet, every strand locked in place. He took that in stride. I still laugh at the time a group of us were leaving the curling club during high winds. I didn't realize Don was behind us. But when he stepped out into the stiff breeze he yelped, "Ow! My hair!" loud enough for me to hear. You gotta like a guy like that.

In a more serious moment at the Club he told me, after I'd been curling somewhere else for a while, "Marty, you're always welcome here. You come back when you're ready." Without going into a lot of unnecessary background, his telling me that, his personal support of my choices, well, it did and always will mean a lot to me. It was exactly the kind of thing a true friend would say.

One thing I will not say about either man was that the curling world suffered losses this weekend. They had lives outside the rink; I think it better to leave it as, the world lost two great men. And I will miss them.

Pops Advances to the counter

Once me Pops got the hang of something he took command of it. Total command.

Advance Plumbing Supply is a company we've dealt with for years. I was in there just the other day buying parts in fact. While I don't enjoy such privilege, Dad had the run of joint. It had gotten to where he would go behind the counter, get what he wanted, write his own invoice, put it in the proper tray (this was before computers), and leave. Simple as that.

But apparently the then owner of Advance, Ronnie Moss, hadn't known this. One day when he was out on the counter himself, Pops walked in. They exchanged greetings. "Hey, Bill." "Hey Ronnie." Just so you know, they were on very good terms.

Dad then walked behind the counter and began picking things off hooks, from cabinets, and the inside of drawers and boxes. He laid everything out on the counter, grabbed a blank invoice, began going through the price books, wrote everything down, totaled it, and dropped the paper in the new invoice box. All the while Ronnie watched incredulously, mouth agape and brows furrowed.

But he keep his cool and his humor. Before me Pops could take another step Ronnie barked, "Now put your money in the till and get the Hell out!"

I don't know what the problem was. It made Ronnie's job easier.

March 8, 1987

I'm not sure how certain memories stay strong in my mind. Especially what seem at the surface decidedly unremarkable.

Thirty-one years ago today, March 8, 1987, was an an unusually warm late winter Sunday here in Detroit. It hit 75 that day, and that may still be the record. I was with my son Frank, who was about 14 months old then. I don't remember at all where my wife and oldest son were, only that Frank and I were home alone most of the day.

My son and I ate hot dogs for lunch and went to a school park a block away. I held him in my lap and we swung gently on a swing; a couple times I put him snugly in the kids' size swing and pushed him a little less gently but never too hard. We climbed atop the small slide and slid down several times. Often Frank simply toddled around as I followed, picking up this or that for intense study before dropping it when interest waned.

The sun shone bright and, as I said, it was warm. And I've always remembered it as simply a nice day yet on a very deep level. If there's such a thing as sublimity, I learned it on March 8, 1987.

Squirrels down the drain

When you've dealt with drain cleaning and drain cleaners for as long as I have, you hear many stories. It's amazing what can find its way into your sewer. Potatoes, toys; once at my Church a candle holder, a flat brass circle about three inches in diameter, was somehow flushed through a toilet and was acting like a butterfly valve, allowing the commode to work only at its whim. Sometimes even animals can get into a line and die. Their bodies swell up and block the drain. It's yucky, to be sure.
Once an old plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, had to deal with a dead squirrel which had plugged a sewer. I won't go into details (remember, there's yucky) but Cloyce worked and worked until he removed unfortunate rodent by then a member of the choir invisible. Yet his heroics did not satisfy the old woman who owned the house where the chore took place.
"She got mad at me. She was yelling at me!" Cloyce exclaimed to me Pops one day, shock still in his voice. "She didn't want to pay. I said, lady, I didn't put it down there!"
"Well how else did it get in?" she demanded.
"How should I know?" Cloyce barked back at her. "I mighta come in from the city main. It maybe slipped through your downspout and got caught. But I didn't put it there and you owe me for opening your sewer!"
He got paid, but it was an effort. More effort, he told Pops, than the actual work.

At the ballpark with Cloyce

My brother Phil had a good friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who spent about twenty years as a reservist with the Detroit Police. He never did much more than cover at baseball and hockey games but hey, it helped the regular cops out.
Once Cloyce was working at a baseball at old Tiger Stadium when, as part of his rounds, he stopped by the DPD office under the stands. The sergeant, indicating a sad looking fellow sitting over to the side, told Cloyce to escort the guy from the premises for public drunkenness. So Cloyce did.
About three innings later Cloyce was back by the patrol room, and the sergeant told him to show another guy the door. The same guy, in fact. "Isn't he the one I took out before?" Cloyce asked.
"He bought another ticket and came back in," the sergeant answered with a shrug. Warning the drunk not to return a third time or he'd face a night in jail, the sergeant gave him over to Cloyce.
Cloyce spent the rest of the game keeping a sharp eye out for the miscreant. He didn't want his own reputation soiled if the guy actually did get back in the stadium.

Tearin' up jack

I remember Amos. He was one of Grandpa Joe's best friends, and lived just up the street. Often he would walk down to visit Joe and if one of us kids were out, he'd stop to shake our hand and say hi. I always thought that was pretty cool of him.
He had a phrase for when he was going some place in a hurry. He'd say he was "tearin' up jack". One day his tearin up jack cost him an extra ten minutes.
Amos was coming down the Lodge Freeway here in Detroit, hurrying to get home. Now, I don't know if other parts of these United States have such things, but on Detroit freeways many exits have turn around lanes at the top of the ramps which allowed you to make a U-turn without making a left turn onto the street where you exited. Maybe you wanted the street a couple blocks back, say, so this way you could loop around to it without making two left turns. It was thought to help traffic flow, I've always guessed.
But anyway, there was often an entrance to the freeway on the far service drive after the turnaround lane. If the street merited an exit it merited an entrance too, right? In this case, Amos was exiting at Forest Avenue but wanted to double back to Warren, which was two streets north. So he intended to take the turnaround lane at Forest and double back to Warren.
"Here I am headin' south on the Lodge tearin' up jack', Amos explained, "And I fly up the ramp and take the turnaround tearin' up jack, and I get on the far service drive and run right down the entrance ramp onto the northbound Lodge." Yep. In his hurry to get home, Amos had become for an instant absent minded and tore up jack right back onto the freeway.
That's the peril of tearin' up jack. You can forget where you're supposed to go.

Right and Wrong

Me old Pops, he used to have said, yes he did, that what is right be right, no matter what some other body might say. And that was that.

And that were true. Is true.

What's right is right. What's wrong is wrong. There ain't nothing beyond that. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Simple as that.

Nothing else can be said.

The Eternal Party or, Party Hard

If you're gonna party then you gotta party hard. Not exactly a phrase you'd expect from a Christian, is it? But then, I'm not sure that Andrew W. K. is a Christian. Yet I wonder how much of what he says may in truth be compatible with religion.

I like his song Party Hard. It is arguably, perhaps obviously, religiously ambiguous. Yet in this secular world I think that its basic principles may well be applicable to Christianity. And his point may not actually be religiously ambiguous at all.

Hear me out. No less a Christian apologist than Mr. C. S. Lewis argues that Joy is the serious business of Heaven, and Heaven is a place where dance and frivolity, innocuous and unproductive in our world, is the Serious Business of Heaven. Add to this the secular comedian George Carlin's thoughts that in Heaven we may just be allowed to rave while the damned might be eternally condemned to a head bowed solemnity, I wonder if Mr. W. K.'s opinions are all that outrageous.

We do what we like and we like what we do, he chants. Well, we Christians claim to do that, basically. And we certainly claim that our actions in Heaven will be supremely joyful and we will like them, eh? Myself, I don't care what the secular world wants. I do what I like and I like what I do. I go to Mass every weekend and find it indescribably wonderful; I pray for others even if they don't want it; I want the best for them even though I might find their definition of the best differing from mine (believing nonetheless my dictionary superior to theirs, a view hopefully held with humility). I don't care if my opinion of the best concurs with their opinion of the best. I do what I like and I like what I do. Doesn't that fit their secular machismo (or feminiso, I suppose), by definition?

The Eternal Party. Without it, I do wonder if the secularists are missing something quite sublime?

New thoughts on old records

I saw on Facebook the other day a thread on a friend's page which asked, what was your first record? I began to offer a response there then thought, why waste such profundities on a mere internet post? I'll blog about it.

If you care to define ownership as simple possession of a record I'll lay claim to a lesser know Carl Perkins number, Dixie Fried. It was I'm sure originally owned by me Pops. I still sing it often when on the road, perhaps because it binds me to those childhood days. It was an old 78 on the Sun label, the label which launched many rock and country careers. Elvis, Perkins himself, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash all started out at Sun Records. The flip side was I'm Sorry I'm not Sorry, not a bad little ditty itself. That one had great piano riffs.

The first single I actually bought myself was either Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels' Too Many Fish in the Sea/Three Little Fishes medley, or the Beatles' Nowhere Man. Why either? I don't really know anymore. Likely as not I was enamored of 'Detroit' being on any such thing as a record, and to Nowhere Man I have to imagine that I had some idea that the Beatles were somehow important and that I should listen to them. I never bought anything else of Mitch Ryder's (although I still like that particular recording a lot) but I became quite enamored of the Beatles. They are definitely my favorite group ever.

The first whole album I bought was Paul McCartney's Band on the Run. Talk about an album that starts and finishes strong: Band on the Run, the full version, opens it, and in closing we have Nineteen Hundred Eighty Five, my personal favorite non-hit track on any album which I've heard all the way through. It builds fantastically and ends marvelously abruptly in the style of A Day in the Life. The fact that the actual 1985 was twelve years away when I bought the record ( 1985 is 33 years in my rear view now!) may have influenced my taste. Still, I'll argue it's a great closing track.

Other than the Perkins' one, which truly regret not having, I still have them all somewhere. Band on the Run is on a shelf behind me, while Mitch and the Nowhere Man are in a box in a third floor closet, having not seen the light of day since 1981. None of them were bad first picks in my mind.

Pot shots to start March

I find myself excited this morning at the prospect of helping others learn to curl. I haven't felt that way in awhile. We'll see what happens, but I guess this much is true: once a curler, you're always an ambassador for the game.

The last two books I've read were hardbound. They felt odd to me, and the typeface in each seemed ancient. Granted, one is a first edition from 1972, but the other was published in 2012. Still, they appeared odd in my hands, as some old fangled technology might. Different, and I like it. I feel more in touch with the books this way.

Is caller ID a good thing? Yes on the whole, I suppose. But now that you can see who's calling there's an extra dimension of dread added when it's someone you don't want to talk to, isn't there? At one time you had to actually answer the phone before your heart sank at the sound of a voice. That the opposite is true too, that you get extra delight in a caller you want to speak to, doesn't seem the same, does it?

Grapefruit League games are well under way and I've yet to see so much as a highlight. We're that busy. Or I'm that lazy. My vote is for busy.

Speaking of which, to work! I wish my boss wasn't such an ogre.