Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

I had this post all written...

...it was about my meeting with the lawyers, and it was really funny, but then I realized, you know, I'm still scared of lawyers.

A casual Friday dilemma

Victor got me this super-cool t-shirt.

What I especially love about it is that it doesn't say Caffeine in huge letters underneath the molecule. You gotta know some chemistry. (The shirts that explain the joke ruin it. I saw another one that I would have loved: it had the NFPA diamond with a 4 in the Reactivity corner. That means readily capable of detonation or of explosive decomposition or reaction at normal temperatures and pressures. But alas, the shirt included "Unstable" as part of the design.)

Anyway, I was all set to wear my new caffeine shirt to work on Friday, but now I have a meeting with lawyers on Friday.

Lawyers don't really dress down on Friday.

I'm also not sure that the lawyers appreciate chemist humor.

Baseball like this needs beer

None of the game reports I read this morning do justice to the painful ninth inning of last night's game. (The MLB comes closest.)

Cordero blew the save. He came in, it was 3-1; at the bottom of the 9th, it was 4-3.

But then...

Schneider singled, and Brandon Watson came up. Watson is fresh off an International League hitting streak record, and had two hits in this game. I still don't get why they wanted him to bunt. I can see you don't want him grounding into a double play, and maybe I don't see enough bunts work to really grasp the strategy, but damn.

But then...

Nook Logan with a double! I started to take back any mean thing I may have thought about Nook Logan.

They walked Guzman.

When Lopez came up, I started chanting to myself...No GDP. No GDP. If you can't get Schneider in, leave men on base for Zim. He's due. It's going to be ok.

It wasn't ok.

It could have been ok. Lopez grounded to the pitcher, who took the force at home. No score, two outs, men on for Zimmerman, fourth of July all over again...

I love the Nats radio broadcasters. I listen to the game on a walkman even when I'm there. They do such a great job of capturing the play. So when Nook Logan ran, here's what Charlie Slowes said:

What was Nook Logan thinking? What was he watching? Where was he going? I can't believe it!

Apparently what Nook was thinking was that the catcher would try to throw Lopez out at first, and that he could get home and score, tie the game and be a hero.

Which he, well, isn't.

Hearing the post game interview with Logan, where he's explaining his thought process, all I could think was Don't think. It can only hurt the ballclub.

By the time I calmed down and went to bed, I was actually feeling bad for Nook. I mean, I probably make ten mental lapses a day at work, but I don't make them in front of 32,539 people (although: it sounded like 16,269 were Indians fans. Are there than many Cleveland expatriates around here?), and they don't end the work day. But still.

I'm not going to be surprised, or especially upset, if Watson stays up when Fick gets back, and we don't see Logan again.

Updated to fix all the typos (hadn't had my coffee.) And Victor has explained to me many times why the bunt would have worked to advance Schneider and why it was the right play to call. I'm just not ready for the big leagues; I still would have let the man hit.

Well, past is past. Sun's out, and it's a pretty day for a ball game.

If you can't say something nice...

Hey, the Capitals have a new logo.

Well.

New jerseys, yep.

Hmm.

Oh, ok, the names and numbers are easier to read! That's good!

(Actually, I already hate it less than I did earlier in the week, when the leaked pictures first came out. You'd think, old-school as I am, that I'd appreciate the homage to the original logo, but...meh. I rather liked the Capitol dome. And I am not fond of red, yet all my favorite teams are using it as the predominate color.)

Workin' for the Weekend

Wednesday, my database broke into a million pieces.

I spent all of yesterday patching the pieces back together, using a two-week-old backup as spare parts. (Two weeks. That's like two years in summer database time.)

So today I was all rarin' to re-do two weeks of work when the server that serves my building crapped out, leaving us with no network connection for several hours.

I could go to the office this weekend.

Or I could drink a bunch of beers and watch baseball.

I'm leaning strongly in one direction and definitely not the other.

And is it one word or two?

I was on the phone with my sister as I typed an e-mail this afternoon.

"Straitjacket," I asked her. "S-t-r-a-i-g-h-t or s-t-r-a-i-t?"

"S-t-r-a-i-t," she answered.

She never even asked why I needed to know.

Reunion

I have a high school reunion coming up. We have a web page for people to post bios and pictures.

Most of the posts say "blah blah met my wonderful spouse...blessed with x beautiful children blah blah..."

I'm pondering whether to say in mine that I'm blessed with 11 beautiful rats.

Fashion advice

Do people still wear vests? Or rugby shirts?

I'm pretty sure I know the answer in regards to culottes.

My thoughts on the big stories of the week

The Sopranos: Dunno, I don't have HBO.

Paris Hilton: Is she the one who shaved her head?

The Washington Nationals sweep the Baltimore Orioles (in Baltimore): Yes! Yay! Yipee! Wooo-hooo! Take that, Angelos!

That sometime is now

Every laundry day for ten years I have put clothes away in my closet, contemplated the 1/4 inch wire shelf/rod support, and thought "This is totally inadequate for six-and-a-half-feet. Someday the whole thing is going to collapse."

I got home from work tonight and the dog was on the living room sofa. Lately she's been sleeping on my bed, but whatever. I took care of the dog, checked in on the rats, and went to change clothes. My first thought on entering my bedroom was "Why's my duffel bag on the bed?"

Then the sweaters on the floor registered.

Well, I needed to clean it out, as evidenced by my inability to find decent grownup clothes for that charity dinner last week. In fact, that's probably why everything broke...I disrupted the delicate balance looking for the Lost Blazer.

Before I go back underground for the week

My local A-ball team is the Frederick Keys (affiliate of the cursed Baltimore Orioles). Despite the Bawl'mer link, I've got a major soft spot for the Keys. I started going to see them back when Harry Grove Stadium opened in 1990, before the concession stands were finished and you bought subs from Cub Scouts on the way in. Also back then, I could leave my Rockville office, go home to Gaithersburg to change, and zip up 270 in plenty of time for first pitch on a weeknight game.

Man, those were the days.

Now that I have a major league team (you didn't think I could go two posts in a row without a proclamation of my devotion to the Nationals?) I haven't seen much of the Keys. But this coming weekend, the Nats' from Potomac (i.e., Woodbridge) will be in Frederick while the big Nats are in Toronto, so I have no conflict of interest.

Ha. I have a huge conflict of interest.

I'm like one of Harry Mudd's robots, trying to get conflicting facts to reconcile...I hate the Orioles, but I love the Keys. The Keys are playing the farm team of my beloved Nationals. That burning smell is from my brain as I try to figure out for whom I should cheer.

You gonna blog this?

That's what Victor asked during dinner. You gonna blog this?

Tonight we made poutine, and I did take a bunch of pictures of it. So the question was not out of left field.

I find myself composing blog entries all the time. I go to a baseball game. I go to a play. I read an article that refers to organic food as yuppie chow.

I just never get around to the typing.

Summer is a bad time of year for me. Not emotionally...I love summer, even the humidity. But at the office, 90% of my important and difficult work needs to be done in June and July, which sorta ruins the lazy hazy crazy days thing.

And I really don't have time to go to Quebec, so I made my own poutine.

Maybe this calls for a trip to Blockbuster

I've been thinking about the scene in Middle Age Crazy where Bruce Dern dreams about giving the commencement address at his son's graduation. I'm trying to remember the whole thing.

I think I was still in high school when I last saw the movie. But If I Google it, I'll find the speech online, right?

A Google strike out.

Not even a hit with the line "I build taco stands for a living; what kind of bullshit future is that?"

Take away the quotation marks, and "Most of you poor assholes can't even read" gets 1,190,000 hits; add the rest of the line ("you'll be lucky to catch on at the phone company" and it goes down to 280,000.

I wasn't interested enough to go more than 20 pages in the results, but none looked promising.

I can't believe nobody ever recorded "Give them back their silly fucking hats and stay 18 for the rest of your life!"

Or the closer: "You don't want to be the future. The future sucks."

I think I must turn away

End of the second. Anaheim is up. (That team has been around now, what, 15 years? And I'm still refusing to say their name, out of lingering disgust for the Disneyfication of a pro team.)

My heart aches for Ottawa. Not for the players...Anaheim deserves the Cup more that the Senators do. I feel for the city, for the fans.

In 2002, Anaheim was dead last in attendance, pulling in just over 12,000 people a game. Sure, everybody's a fan when you're in the finals, but I have a hard time imagining that Anaheim is a better hockey town that Ottawa.

Or, I suppose I can look at the silver lining...those 12,002 faithful who stuck it out, who kept showing up when the team was 29-42 -8, those guys deserve a winning team. I'll be happy for them.

They are living my dream.

You can dress me up but you can't...well, actually, you can't dress me up

I have a thing tomorrow for which I need to dress like an adult. My suit is a little too stuffy, and I'm having trouble coming up with an appropriate outfit.

I thought I had a linen jacket, but realized that I probably gave it away after the last time I tried to wear it, seeing as how it was a size 16, and I'm not.

I do have a pair of dress slacks, but apparently my dress blouses went the way of the linen jacket.

Finally, I found a navy twin set. I look like I'm on my way to a PTA meeting, but that's adult. Perhaps some jewelry...

...I only have one earring, because one of the rats helpfully groomed the other one out of my ear one night, and I didn't notice it right away.

All my metal watches have dead batteries. The only one that tells time is the plastic digital Timex Ironman.

I have a necklace with a clay yin-yang charm, and a yellow rubber Livestrong bracelet.

Oh, well. Hopefully somebody will show up tomorrow wearing Crocs, then I won't feel so bad.

CSC Invitational

We went to the CSC Invitational, the criterium in Clarendon, on Saturday. Ten years ago, the first time the race was staged, I would have told you that watching guys ride around a one kilometer circle for two hours was insane. Now, it's a highlight of my year.

I achieved a personal first: I filled my entire 1-gig memory card. Most of the pictures sucked, though. It's hard to focus on a subject that moves at 35 mph. I wonder how Graham Watson does it...

Here's what I got:

This is not the Tour de France, or even a spring classic. It's a pro race with a lot of small community stuff, like politicians, beauty queens, and a kid's race just before the pros take the course. Or if you have a slow kid and an eager-to-warm-up racer...

In the feed zone.

One of the team support guys making wraps for his riders.

What impresses me most about skilled riders is not their speed, it's how well the handle the bike. I wouldn't try to eat jelly beans while riding, much less a sandwich. These guys, if they weren't worried about speed, could make the freaking sandwiches and stay on the bike.

Yes, cycling has referees.

It comes to this

Dressing the dog in fan gear, and being desperate enough to use it as a post.