Monthly Archives: October 2007

20 Words for Sept/Oct

  • Very warm fall. Temperature tops 33C the day on Thanksgiving Monday (Oct 15). Still having 17-20 days. Temp finally dropped below 0 last night
  • Big Girl Bed implemented – lots more sleep
  • New washer/dryer. Who’d have thunk the technology got so much better over the past 20 yrs?
  • Stratford fair – OG a ride-freak. Enjoyed the teenager fights that are part and parcel to a small town festival.
  • Doe Lake family weekend replaced with Wiarton. The vote is in favour of a repeat. Personally I like the setup of Doe Lake (even if the golf course wasn’t there)
  • Olivia dressed as a skunk?
  • tickets to the Police (hmm — doesn’t this go against my theory about revived 70’s bands?)
  • Mom back home after 5 1/2 months at Freeport with Gillian Barre. The house has been modified for ease of use and Raymond is helping over the next couple months. Things are starting to get back on track
  • Estrangement? (We’ll see)
  • Booking Automation Tool. Free golf in the future?
  • Oh yeah, early exit in the NCR league playoffs. Finish 1st in the league and get ousted in the quarter-finals to the Dodgers (I blame it on the rain).
  • Golf H.I. down to 6.5. Consistently shooting below 80 now. But this is not a good thing for the Hi-Tech league because of all the sandbaggers. Still, it was a good final tournament and worth the cash next year. (Get a players card, a reason to golf each Monday, and a seriously fine dinner at the end of the year)
  • Can we go to Vegas again soon? I’m starting to get the itch again.
  • Jury Duty (I’m still sad I wasn’t able to help the jury provide a guilty verdict)
  • Finally, a snowblower. Anticipating a warm winter.
  • OG can’t stop singing!  I can’t even count the # of songs she knows and can recall from memory without prompting.  Same with books.

Dang those Cleveland Indians

When I was in Vegas last May I bought a ticket from the NYNY Sporst Book:  The Cleveland Indians to Win the 2007 American League Championship.  The odds back then were 4.5 to 1.  So I bought a $10.00 ticket.  In fact it was the first of my many tickets I bought during my 3 day visit.  All other bets were single game bets on games that were going on at the time.  I paid out well on those games since I knew the pitching matchups.  Of the 10 or so bets I made I think I only lost 1 or 2 of them. 

But my Vegas luck ran out last night as the Indians pulled off the choke of the decade.  Up 3-1 in the series they proceeded to crumble with last night’s game thankfully ending their demise.  After winning their 3rd game they proceeded to get outscored 30-5 over the remaining 3 games.  They lost last night 11-2.  It was 3-2 in the seventh inning.  The vaunted bullpen was not so vaunted. 

Anyway, my ticket remains posted on my corkboard at work.  I was all ready to mail it in for $55 depreciated US dollars but now I’ll keep it as a reminder of how close it was to winning a very difficult propositional bet.

 

Where is the creativity in nicknames?

Compare these nicknames to the names you see today in baseball:

Back then:

Willie ‘The Say Hey Kid’ Mays

Dizzy Dean

Joe ‘Ducky’ Medwick

Red ‘The Galloping Ghost’ Grange

Joe ‘The Yankee Clipper’ DiMaggio

Ted ‘The Splendid Splinter’ Williams

‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson

‘Goose’ Gossage

Wade ‘Chicken Man’ Boggs

Ty ‘The Georgia Peach’ Cobb

and my favourites:  Babe ‘The Sultan of Swat’ Ruth and Dennis ‘Oil Can’ Boyd

Nowadays, here are what we have to choose from:

Jeremy ‘Bondo’ Bonderman

Mike ‘Cammy’ Cameron

Ken ‘Junior’ Griffey, Jr.

Nook ‘Nook’ Logan

Orlando ‘O-dog’ Hudson

Alex ‘A-rod’ Rodriguez

There are some cool ones I admit:

Hideki ‘Godzilla’ Matsui

Travis ‘Pronk’ Hafner

Frank ‘The Big Hurt’ Thomas

David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz

Ivan ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez

But really, the creativity has gone.  I think baseball was a much more ‘romantic’ thing back in the early days when the only thing you knew about the games and players you had to read in the papers.  Naturally these players were glorified and the writers intended to make heroes out of these players for the general population that were going through depressions, wars, etc.  Today, with the ability to see every game real time, there’s not as much need for write-ups and ‘storification’ of games in the papers.

 

I broke down….

…and registered at FaceBook.  My curiousity of what ever happened to my high school friends just overwhelmed me.  I’m just starting to get used to the site but already am intrigued about being able to touch base with these people.  When I read the shortlist of people who I could meet from the good old days I wasn’t surprised at the names.  All of them had some inkling of what a computer was back in the day.  Since most of my fellow graduates were, well, a wee bit backwoodsy I’m not surprised that only a small portion have found their way to FaceBook. 

Let the good times roll.  I’ll start looking up my university alumnists to see who went on to bigger and better things.  The high-school mix didn’t really have any famous players…at least they weren’t admitting to anything.  I can see how this site can be quite a useless black hole of mis-information.  Call it everbody’s “FaceBook” alter-ego.  Gotta make sure you lived up to other people’s expectations!

I can also see how this network can get dangerous and expose oneself to predators.  As usual, any open social network inevitably has its fair share of undesirables especially when anonimity is feasible.

Feel free to send me a friend invite.  The more the merrier.  I gotta be loved!

Jury Duty

So, as should happen to everybody at least once in their life, I was summoned to jury duty this week.  After watching Law & Order I was all primed up to be grilled by the lawyers.  Had all my misleading answers ready to go so that I would make it on the jury for sure.  Only one problem:  we’re not part of the US yet.  In a couple of years yes, but not today.  So I was bound by Ontario law.  Here’s my story of my brief, yet mostly unexciting tenure on the jury panel for a trial being heard by the Supreme Court. Continue reading