We won in 8 innings. A fun game, and very hot.

But 8 innings? That's NOTHING! I'm watching a repeat of the still-unfinished Isner/Mahut tennis match right now on ESPN3. It's incredible. I've never seen anything like it. I've skipped way ahead because I really don't have 8 hours to watch tennis tonight, but I sure wish I did. It is must-see television.

The final set alone is longer than any Wimbledon match ever played in the previous 133 years, and it's not over yet. Unbelievable.
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I just reached the end of the match(for the day). I skipped vast segments, but still watched quite a bit. I've really never seen anything I can compare with this match.

Does anyone care to know how to make a hot, hot day even more miserable?

A flat tire on I-64 works. That's really unenjoyable.

I screwed up not recognizing it earlier. It was my rear passenger side, so I generally won't see it in passing- I have to look for it.
And here is why I missed it, even though the car handled a little funny before I got on the interstate:
I got an oil change Saturday. Twice in the past, the oil change folks have screwed up replacing the splash shield under my car. They don't replace it correctly, and it comes loose. Each time, soon (once 1 day, once 2 weeks) after the oil change, I noticed a drag from the lose shield. It felt like a low tire, but each time it was increased drag from wind due to the hanging splash shield.
I noticed the same type drag this afternoon. Before the two splash shield incidents, I would definitely have thought 'low tire', but I now thought of the splash shield. I looked under the car and couldn't find anything loose, but figured I was overlooking it and would check it out further when I was home and more comfortably dressed.
Unfortunately, this time it was actually a low tire, which went flat soon after I hit the interstate.

Hot, hot, hot tire-changing weather, is all I can say.
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Another softball loss tonight. I only played the first inning. I did hit a double (a rocket off the fence is what it looks like in the scorebook, so I'll just pretend that's what it was) in my only at bat.
Jim arrived right at game-time and wanted to play. He'd been out all year injured, and now that he was available I knew he was really itching to get out there, so I offered to let him come in for me.
I spent the rest of the evening sipping beer and keeping the book, so the weather wasn't too bad.

Softball update

We won last night, 8-6 in nine innings.
We took the field, up 6-5 in the bottom of the 8th. Two hits and then an error by me made it 6-6, no outs, two men on base. I'd played a very good game up until then, but after booting a potential double-play ball I was kicking myself, then...
...we were let off the hook by what was potentially the worst baserunning I have ever seen (Chet notwithstanding). A hit to shallow right-center somehow turned into a 9-1-3-2-5 double-play. We then survived the inning, scored two, and won.
I won't even try to describe the double-play, but dumb, dumb baserunning was definitely to blame.

A Just-Under-The-Deadline Father's Day Post

Five things about my Dad, and rest assured I'm leaving out lots and lots and lots. I'm limiting it to five because it's past my bed time.

*My Dad could (and can) fix lots of things. And lots of it was stuff he wasn't at all sure he could fix until he did it.

*My Dad worked two jobs and yet was willing to coach my ball team on his 1 night off. I might not have appreciated that enough then, but be sure I appreciate it now.

*My Dad taught me to warm up my arm properly because I'd want to be able to throw a ball pain-free many years later. I sure wish I'd listened to that.

*My Dad was lots of fun to wrestle with when I was quite tiny. I might have been 1/4 his weight, but he was good at letting me believe I might win.

*My Dad (and I can't leave Mom out of this. It was a solid team effort) taught me right from wrong. I can't claim anything remotely close to perfection on this count, but when I err I inevitably find that it's because I strayed from what my parents taught me.

I'm very lucky. I have great parents.

Hodgepodge

A mix of topics to catch up.

Cooking- I attempted to make spinach con queso last night. I followed no recipe and had nothing more than a rudimentary grasp of ingredients or cooking method. It was fun!
I used Montery Jack cheese, spinach, crushed red pepper, butter, milk, a little bit of tomato and some chopped onion. My main criteria in determining that these belonged in the dip was that they were in my fridge.
I would have to rank it as a qualified failure. The result was not really recognizable as a queso dip. It was clumpy and runny and required more utensils to eat that I would have preferred. But it tasted pretty good- almost even recognizable as what I intended it to be- and I'm quite sure it was not healthy, so 1 and a half thumbs up!

Softball- 1st Sunday loss today. We had everybody there for the first time all year, fielded an outstanding lineup, and scored only 1 run (5th inning. I led off with a single, we loaded the bases with 1 out, I scored on double-play. It was that kind of outstanding offensive performance.) Pathetic.
Yogis-Tuesday we're pretty good. 1 loss. It's a decent league; we should be competitive. Our last game we won by a 20-run mercy rule in 3 innings, 25-4.
-Wednesday we've lost two. We followed our Tuesday outburst by fielding a better- and very solid lineup Wednesday, and we lost 18-4.
I'll never figure that out. But as a guy who makes out the lineup and wants to get everybody playing time, I have to say it takes a lot of pressure off. It really doesn't matter who sits and who doesn't; if we come to play we're fine, if we're lifeless then it really doesn't matter who is on the field.

(softball adendum which I almost forgot: we play at 7:00 Tuesday at St. I's, and David thinks we play his team that night. He's not certain, and I'm clueless, but he was at St. Martha's watching volleyball tonight and that's what he thinks.)

Books- I finally read "Henderson the Rain King" by Saul Bellow. I've passed it up for years but finally tried it. I should have kept passing it up. I got nothing out of it.
Currently, I've just started Divisidaro, by Michale Ondaatje. I'm not really into it yet and I might put it aside for awhile, but it seems promising and I've liked his other work.
The only thing I've read lately that I really liked a lot was "Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron" by Jasper Fforde. Fforde has a very vivid and wild imagination and I have difficulty describing his work, so I'll just crib the entire Wikipedia description:

Chromatacia is a future society that exists five hundred years after the collapse of our own future civilization, referred to by the residents of Chromatacia as The Previous. All life is governed by The Rules as laid down by Munsell, the founder of Chromaticia. Most important of all is the ability to see colour, which is limited in most people to varying degrees of one shade, e.g., Red, or at most two. People without the ability to see any natural color are called Greys and are lowest in the social order, or Colourtocracy.

Eddie Russett is a Red who has been sent to the outer-fringe town of East Carmine to conduct a chair census, as punishment for a practical joke played on the son of a prefect. There he meets Jane, a Grey with a retroussé nose and a fierce temper. As Eddie tries to get back to his normal life and find a way to marry Constance Oxblood, he falls in love with Jane and with her discovers that the world he knows is far more controlling and ruthless than he had imagined.

I'm sure that doesn't help much. But it was loads of fun to read.

Weather- gosh it's hot. Did I used to sweat this much and I've forgotten, or is it just the difference between my various former weights and my current 205 pounds? 204 pounds. 203 pounds. 202 pounds... I'm sweating a lot!

(Not) Politics- Oil pouring into the Gulf is not Obama's fault. He's not a scientist, or an engineer, or Aquaman.
I blame Bush for a lot, but a hurricane which flooded a below-floodplain city was not his fault, nor were the weak levees. The levees were inadequate for 30 or 40 years. I wish Bush hadn't agreed with rebuilding a below-sea level city, and I also wish he hadn't done a long list of other things in his 8 years, but I don't blame him for Katrina. What was he supposed to do?
Similarly, what the heck is Obama supposed to do? He's a lawyer by training. As I would expect any intelligent person to do, he's relying upon the most qualified people to fix the problem. Unfortunately, the most qualified people work for BP.

This afternoon I fulfilled what I believe to be my patriotic duty; I watched almost the entire soccer/football/futbal match between the U.S. and England. I missed the first 10 minutes or so, but I watched the rest.
I don't care for soccer. But I certainly don't want to be one of those self-absorbed Americans who does not take any interest in the rest of the world, so every so often I'll tune in to a soccer game and try to work up some sort of enthusiasm, or at least see what all the fuss is about.
Thus, I watched the whole thing- nearly.


I'm not the type to make fun of soccer. Sure, I would rather listen to John Ashcroft sing than watch any more soccer for at least the next two or three years. I would rather watch old people eat potato salad (with buzzing flies) at a picnic. I would even prefer watching the NBA finals.
The sport is just so incredibly popular in the rest of the world- the shots of thousands of people watching on jumbo screens in Hyde Park were amazing- and I'm just so incredibly indifferent to it.
I think the main reason I tune in every few years is that I can't help thinking I must be missing something. There must be something to it that I don't see. But I just don't get the attraction.

Years ago, a group of Vietnamese used to play basketball on weekends on the St. Agnes playground. I (and Jimmy and Jay) would sometimes play with them. As they played, the Vietnamese kept up a steady stream of chatter in their native tongue. We would play and play and play, and they would all just keep talking and talking and talking, and then suddenly they would all start laughing hysterically at some apparently funny joke. It was baffling. And as a self-conscious 13-year-old I was aways afraid the joke was on me.
That's sort of how I feel when I watch soccer. I just don't get it.
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One thing that I think would improve the sport greatly: no one should be allowed to use their hands. The other 10 guys aren't allowed to grab the ball, so why make an exception for the goalie? There would be more scoring, and thus a lot less chance of a stinking one-one tie like they had today.