Beer!

Overall, beer is a pretty good thing. I'm pretty sure of that. So I'll write a post that features beer.

I won't focus on different brands and styles and whatnot; I like pretty much all beer. My favorite depends on my mood, what I'm eating, the weather, who is buying, etc., none of which matters much. Oh, except for that last one.

Who is buying? That one has been on my mind a lot lately after softball games. My post-game beer economics have changed dramatically. I'm now paying some long-owed dues in that regard.

Years ago, as a 25-year-old new member of the team, and for quite a few years after, I made out pretty well in the post-game beer economy. I pitched in a minimal amount of money on the first go-round, made minimal contributions afterward, and consistently received good returns on my investment.

The last couple of years, however, as our older players have retired and I have assumed their role, I've noticed a substantial drop in my rate of beers-per-dollars. Where I used to be a hanger-on, benefiting from the "you want one more? I'm buying" question, I now seem to be the donor in these scenarios.
It's not like I NEED the beer. The situation just seems to unfold so that 4 or 5 guys are there late, not really wanting to leave yet, but needing a reason to stay. One more beer to be nursed for half-hour or 45 minutes will do the trick. But where I used to just have to answer "sure, I guess I can stay for another" I now just wait in vain for the question. And I end up asking the question myself and shelling out several bucks for all the other hangers-on.
Retribution, I guess, for my past freeloading. And sympathy for these young kids without my vast resources of hundreds and hundreds of Mexican pesos, which I've hidden in holes throughout the metro Louisville area.

Beer Part II: The Dark Side
For five weeks now I've had very little exercise. I play 3 or 4 softball games a week, but that just really isn't exercise. Knne pain and a quad strain have kept me off my bike and I don't really do much else.
And I've ballooned 10 pounds in 5 weeks. After having lost 15 pounds over the winter, gaining an acceptable 3 back over 3 months of softball/golf/hot dogs/beer/soft pretzels, I'm now right back where I was last September.


It is all very depressing because at right this moment I can't get any exercise that comes easy to me. I really like riding my bike- it's convenient, I can do it even when it's raining or 98 degrees, I can watch TV or video or even read while riding.
Without my bike I've been pretty much sedentary and yet eating and drinking the same things. If I can't start riding it again soon (without major pain) I might have to do something drastic, like change my eating habits.
I really don't want to do that.

No one has chosen to tattoo their self with any of my creations, at least not as far as I know, so my goings on are not as interesting as Mark's. I'll make do with a brief update anyway.
Started fall league tonight with a loss. After our game last night I said I would only be in the lineup in this St. Helen's league when we needed me to have enough players. But we had enough without me and I batted anyway. And now I've pretty much decided I need to be on the field. What the heck, it's only 5 weeks. I'll have all winter to stop hurting.
It's more painful to watch other people try to play my position than it is to play it myself.

I have a week's vacation coming soon. I scheduled a physical therapy appointment for the 1st day of vacaction, and I expect I might try and have two more during my time off. I'm hoping to learn some strengthening exercises for whatever might be strengthened around my knee that could help. I also have a quad strain that needs to be healed so that I can get on my exercise bike, since cycling is supposedly good for my knee but I can't really do it right now.

Our annual pool party/golf scramble weekend was fun, though I spent most of my time losing at cornhole and then losing at golf.

Billy and I are playing in St. Martha's fall cornhole league. It starts in a couple of weeks. Should be fun. Playing with a firefighter means I'll need to find a sub a third of the time, though. I might call my younger brother at times- at least on weeks that don't conflict with whatever he has going on in September. I can't think of anything he's doing that month, though.

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I've finally made a good dent in "The Satanic Verses." Wanted to read it for years, received it as a gift many months ago, and started it several times. I finally got into it. It's pretty good- seems sort of like an English/Indian, post-colonial, Thatcher-era "One Hundred Years of Solitude," except not as good.
'Not as good' sound like an insult, but I don't intend it as such. It's very good, but very few books are as good as "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

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Until recently I was watching a lot of "30 Rock" on DVD. I bought 4 seasons- a couple at used stores, a couple at Blockbuster's closeout sale, and I was breezing through them very quickly. Very, very funny, and I didn't realize until I started on the DVDs that there were a lot of episodes I hadn't seen.
But since I haven't been on my bike I haven't been watching much of anything.

Lost 2 straight tonight. As winners' bracket champs we were in great shape; win once and we win the tournament. But we got beat twice in a row.
Lack of offense was by far our biggest problem. I busted out of a slump by going 4 for 5 over two games, but I only reached 2nd base once. Complete lack of team hitting.

I was happy with my defense. Our opponent had a fast little leadoff hitter who relies on left side ground balls almost entirely. He's speedy and over the last 5+ years I've seen him get lots and lots of infield hits. But tonight he grounded to me 6 times and reached base on only one- I bobbled it for about a second and that was enough.

So I played pretty good. We stunk as a team, though. It's a lot more fun to complain about my own bad play after a win than it is to have the whole team moping after two straight ugly losses.

Two more Monday nights and 10 fall games and I'm done for the year. I've never looked forward to the off-season more. I need it.
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Batting slumps drive me nuts. Every time I'm in one it baffles me. And every time I get out of it- eventually- it's because I realize I'm doing some very basic thing wrong. Sometimes I realize I'm not really, really concentrating on seeing the ball as I hit it. Sometimes I'm just jumping out at the ball way too early. Sometimes I'm trying to force hits in a certain direction.
After a bad game or two I think about it and try to diagnose what I'm doing wrong, but sometimes it takes weeks before I figure it out, even though it's a simple problem.
This time I realized I wasn't swinging hard. How much more basic can you get? I was trying to aim hits into locations and neglecting to swing the bat like I meant it.
I've had a great year, but after three bad weeks I finally realized that very simple thing. So tonight I put zero emphasis on where the ball went, and concentrated completely on swinging the bat hard. The result was 4 hits that really zipped, and one hard line drive out. Duh! Simple stuff.

One Last Health Update

I don't intend to bring this up much again, mostly because the synopsis seems to be that my knee is always going to hurt and there isn't much I can do about it. However, since I've brought it up recently I might as well provide all the info.

Options for my knee are severely limited, at least until I need knee replacement. I have very bad arthritis, the bone is nearly exposed, and I can pretty much just take anti-inflammatories, infrequent cortisone shots, and do some exercises.

I still don't really understand why it started hurting so badly so quickly. I've had pain in that knee for a long time, off and on, but it's been generally milder pain, nothing as severe or as consistent as I currently have. Apparently it can just flare up like that very quickly, but it still surprises me.

If I'd paid more attention to all Dad's grimaces of pain over the years it wouldn't have been so surprising.

Today my doctor asked if the current anti-inflammatory was helping. The knee was still swollen, so there was no obvious improvement. I said "well honestly, I've played 7 softball games and a round of golf in the 12 days since my last visit, so I really have no idea. I think it might be helping, because it hasn't gotten any worse."

She seemed fine with that answer. Good for her.
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I plan on spending Tuesday night at St. Martha to watch the end of the cornhole tournament. All 4 Yogis teams are still in it. I'm pulling for Sam and Chris, who finished in 2nd place. If they win out through the rest of the tournament they'll finish the year with 1 loss- which came on the night I subbed against them. That would be pretty cool.
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Oh yeah, one more thing since I mentioned the round of golf. Round 5 on the year was an 89 at Glenmary Saturday. First round under 90 in 4 years. 48-41, and I screwed up a bit the last two holes to shoot the 41. Very encouraging.

CHAMPS!

I wrote my storm post early Sunday morning but couldn't get it to publish. So I'll add this to the front and push the storm stuff to the bottom.

Champs! We beat the home team twice tonight to win the Sunday league tournament. After a 1 and 6 start to the season I doubted our wisdom regarding entering a team in this league. But six straight wins to end the year- and the last two against the team Ron and I played with until this season- and a perfect tournament run certainly makes it look like a great call.

That was fun.

We have a good nucleus for next year. Most everyone will come back, and now that we've weeded out the non-ballplayers the start of the season should not be as ugly. I hope Brian plays, though he seems doubtful. Defensively, he was definitely our most under-utilized player. Mulitiple times this year we played inferior players in spots where Brian would have helped us more, sometimes because we didn't know better and sometimes to ease egos.

I held up fine, although I landed on my bad knee fielding one ground ball and the pain was very similar to my previously mentioned (see post a couple of months ago) ground ball to the groin. I had a force out at third, but when I stood I realized I couldn't run those three steps without collapsing so I threw to 2nd instead.
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Wow, that was quite a storm.

I have electricity, though it looks like there are only a couple dozen buildings in this little section of the neighborhood who are so lucky- at least as of 9 pm last night when I arrived home.

The high winds and torrential rain hit (suddenly! And I mean suddenly!) as I was in my car, waiting for the light to change at Bardstown Rd/Taylorsville Rd.
At first I thought I'd been rear-ended, but then I realized my car would not continue to shake for so long if that were the case.
The only things visible more than 20 feet from my car were the sparks from transformers.
I was heading to a cook-out but as I crept up Taylorsville at 5 mph I intended to turn back onto my street and wait it out at home. However, even at 5 mph I missed my own street in the blinding rain.
Plan B, I turned into a little lot near Stein Automotive. A few seconds later I felt some thumps and scratching on the roof of my car(oh no, the Hook Man!) and turned to see a tree fall across the road, then realized my car was draped in power lines.
I drove out from under the lines and parked on the other side of the building, then waited a few minutes until the storm's intensity decreased.
Then, after several detours around the neighborhood, I found a clear path back to Taylorsville Rd and headed to the party. Just about every traffic light was out, trees and branches were down everywhere, and both lanes nearest the curbs looked like Beargrass Creek. Branches and garbage cans and other debris were riding the rapids down Taylorsville Rd.
After a slight delay caused by trees down all over the street I was heading to, we all arrived at our destination and ate ribs off the grill.
Good ribs, worth the odyssey.

We won a good game Wednesday night in 8 innings.
I'm up writing about it because I first arrived home very late and then had a bit of insomnia. I'm sure I'll sleep soon, and if not at least I have nothing to do Thursday night.
So anyway, 1st, the health update: my knee hurts. But now that I have more detailed info it doesn't bother me as much. Still hurts as much, but doesn't bother me as much. I knew I'd strained my quad and I knew my knee hurt too, but the type of pain was causing much fear.
I now know that the biggest problem with my knee is arthritis. That stinks, but since I've had bouts of inexplicable knee pain for several years and suspected arthritis it isn't much of a surprise.
Now that I know it's much easier to handle; it's nice to not be afraid to take the next step just because the last one hurt like heck.

Wait, did I say "1st the health update?" Sorry, there will be no 2nd. I'm getting sleepy after all. Time for bed. Whatever I was going to type next was probably unimportant.

{What did Kevin intend to discuss before his abrupt halt? A) his stellar defense B) his craptacular hitting C) the incredibly bright moon of Wednesday night/Thursday morning D) all of the above E) none of the above
If you guess correctly you may or may not win a fabulous prize}

Softball and Medical Update

Not much news on the medical update. Knee generally feels better but not great, and it's making too much noise with movement for me feel splendid about it. Sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies at times. But the anti-inflammatory has helped.
I had an MRI Saturday but I don't know the results yet, other than that it cost me a lot of money.

We won tonight. I played- very poorly. Worst I've hit the ball all year. And I run like a turtle. I thought I was slow before, but a gimpy slow guy is much, much slower than a healthy slow guy.
I did make a terrific perfect throw on a short-to-third-to home double-play, though. I threw off my back foot and leaning the wrong way, right over the runner's shoulder and into the mitt for the tag. I was proud of it.

And on to the most important thing... we kicked butt on the 1st day of the Sunday tournament, taking care of business in our first round match-up and then knocking off the previously undefeated number 1 seed. Our pitcher the 2nd game walked a couple of guys in the 1st inning but then pitched a very good game. Personally, though, I give all the credit for that to the veteran replacement catcher who took over in the 3rd inning. He was a highly skilled, very smart ballplayer, and quite handsome, too.

Careful What You Wish For

Well, I said it would be a lot easier to figure out what to do if there was swelling.

Now my knee is nice and puffy. I'm going to my regular doc Tuesday. I expect him to poke around a bit and then tell me to see an orthopedist.

My insurance plan doesn't require me to see a primary care doctor first, but I'm doing it anyway with the assumption that in addition to poking around he will also prescribe anti-inflammatory medicine. Which would be nice.
And maybe painkillers. I don't really need those, because as long as I stay inactive it doesn't much hurt. But Tony Dollar$ can resell it for street value, which would also be nice.
Just kidding, Mr. Policeman. Carlos is keeping his nose clean now.