the season is open

it always surprises me when i see i haven’t blogged in a week or more. it never feels like that much time passes, but i guess it does. i’ve been busy, which is a good thing. haven’t played any cards since my last post. erps, i’ve played Gin Rummy in a losing effort against the wife. that ended well though, so no worries.

i told someone I may follow baseball more intently this year, as i see a couple of nights of bartending in my upcoming summer. so, i may as well pick a western team to follow so i have something to do during the 10-1:30 part of the weekday shift. he advised me against following baseball closely as it seems to eat up a large chunk of his life. when you follow something from behind a bar, you aren’t in danger of being drawn in by the subtleties. they’re lost between filling beers. it’s not the same.

spent friday night with the wife camping. the kids were invited, but said “i can’t see spending all this money on a house if we aren’t going to use it”. so it was me and the mrs. wonderful time. great weather, campfire cooking that worked (yay for experience), the perfect amount of grog, water view of the lake, small heated cabin with electricity.

two things struck me. after five hours, conversation progresses beyond sharing “to do” lists and work stories. and, when the kids aren’t around, you can talk about the kids. it was really important to break through our routine for a while. 

FLYERS – the game on Easter Sunday against the wings I caught bits and pieces of.  i have a feeling that the announcers were saying that the flyers were playing with the passion of a team in danger of missing the playoffs.  i could be wrong.  to me they FINALLY looked like they had some fire under their asses.  but it looked like Every Day Regular Season fire.  that should be standard.  i’m not impressed.  if they make the playoffs, it’s because the NHL is weak.  they are not a playoff caliber team.  if they make it, we either have a miracle transformation or an early exit. 

Pronger is the real deal.  he’s the big off season acquisition, and he’s been doing his part.  superstars skate in on him, realize what they’re up against, and turn back looking for a trailer.  that, makes a difference.  if it weren’t for him, it’d be Worse.

somewhere, someone ought to write an essay pointing out that a SHOT is a Continuation of a play.  it is not by necessity the Culmination of a play.  it is often your DUTY to shoot, knowing full well that your chances of scoring are horrible.  and i’m not talking about taking bad point shots on a power play.  i’m talking about the spineless aversion to shooting that leads to pittsburgh penguins disease – the extra pass that turns the puck over – all while pissing away the momentum that is puck possession combined with players rushing to/standing in front of the net. 

BIG RED – both teams dropped their Sweet 16 games.  that’s ok though.  it’s nice to have gotten that far.  Cornell is not exactly known for it’s athletics.  some success is a ray of sunshine.  the flyers are looking at their goalie, fwiw.

GREASE – my “how to repair small engines” material arrived today.  haven’t gotten to look at it yet, but i’m looking forward to ripping apart my first carberator.  it took forever to arrive, and i have machines that are already in need of some love and attention waiting for me to get to them.

There Ought to Be a Word – i feel as though there should be a word for the process of taking your rifle apart and reassembling it, especially while blindfolded.  i asked every marine and army grunt i could find what the name of that process was.  it went like this . . .

  • “hey, did you learn to what-cha-call a rifle in boot camp.  rip it apart, and put it back together with your eyes shut?” 
  • “oh yeah.  blindfolded.”
  • “what did they call that?  gentlemen, today we learn how to . . . what . . . our rifles?”
  • “they didn’t call it anything.”

Ack.  an obvious deficiency in the English language.

Terrorists – i have the new World Almanac as a source for trivia questions.  in it they describe the Molly Maguires as a “terrorist” organization.  that’s kindof like describing Harriet Tubman as a thief because those slaves were someone’s property, bought and paid for. 

i am, without a doubt, a capitalist.  but there is such a thing as oppressive capitalism. 

i drove through a series of coal patch towns on the camping trip, and they were obviously set up to house miners and their families in the same way we house cattle.  it’s a temporary thing, until they die or are broken in the mines.  the coal barons owned the miners homes, they controlled the work, the bosses scraped off the top (a miner might pull out a ton and a half  of coal, and a boss would scrape a half ton for himself and then log the man’s work for the day as One Ton of productivity), they were forced to buy at the company store.  every aspect of their lives was controlled to provide profit to the company.  sooner or later you have to rise up. 

i don’t know.  if someone has the screws to you, and they own the law enforcement (and mind you 130 years later i’m still seeing semi-local law enforcement and judges that are on the books), you’ll have to use your teeth to get out of that situation.  or that’s how i see it.  that terrorist label caught me by surprise, and it was a bit offensive, tbh.

Parting Shot – we didn’t have any rain here.  this is a pict from my buddy’s lower 40, which used to be across the street from me.  used to fly kites with the kids in that field.  now i’m probably three or four miles down the road.  shortly after sunrise. 

April 8, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized

Leave a Reply