Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

As I sit on hold with tech support...

I could either browse the web for stories of last night's game, or I could peck out a few of my own thoughts. Since I got all the ballpark observations out of my system yesterday, today it's about baseball.

Nick Johnson looks great. I started to get really worried last year that the broken leg was a career-ender, and maybe it would have been for some. He clearly worked his ass off this past winter, and he's my new idol for that. I'm ordering a Nick Johnson poster for my home gym.

I miss Brian Schneider. Maybe someday when Lastings Milledge is stealing bases the way David Niven stole diamonds I won't miss Schneider as much. I guess it's part of the game...even if you've been with one franchise for years, even if you have tons of knowledge to pass on to the next generation...oh wait, I'm focusing on baseball. Bringing it back to baseball, I'm not ordering a Paul LoDuca poster.

So how about a 23-year-old face of the franchise, already a team leader, who makes the huge play at the critical moment? Seasons change, themes don't. I actually had a good feeling when Zim came up in the 9th. If Chipper Jones can put it out, I said, Zimmerman can, too. That was a cool way to end the game.

But um, there's that Chad Cordero unavailable to pitch because of tendonitis thing. I haven't read the paper yet, but that doesn't make me feel so good.

Overall, though, it doesn't bother me if the New York Times thinks we'll finish last in the NL East (I read that preview yesterday; I think most at least gave us a few games over the Marlins, for heaven's sake). Summer's coming, and this crazy baseball honeymoon of mine continues.

[Hockey? I'm afraid to say. I don't want to jinx anything. If I had a lucky tie, though, I'd be wearing it all week.]

And I mean it literally

Crap.

Whatever was leaving droppings in the ceiling stopped for awhile, and we sighed with relief.

Whatever it is is back, with a diet full of fiber.

This is a serious question: how do you go about finding a hole in your house? Every pest control web pages I've seen offers "plug up holes" as step one, then shows a picture of a foundation wall that looks like it's been shot with a howitzer. I don't see any holes, but I doubt the mystery animal slipped in through the front door then let himself into the ceiling, replacing the tile behind him.

Opening Day

Yes, I got tickets. No, I'm not going...I gave them to my dad and a friend of his, two old Senators fans who used to skip school to see opening day at Griffith Stadium.

I was more interested in seeing the park than I was in having the "opening day experience," which includes huge crowds, security, and in tonight's case, a game that might not be over 'til Monday. I saw the park last night, so I'm good.

In no particular order, my impressions:

It's pretty. It's really pretty.

There are ample places to part with your money. On our first walk around the main concourse, it looked like there was a vendor of some sort every ten feet.

By the third inning, you couldn't walk around the concourse because of the lines at the vendors. I'm not griping about that...one of the reasons for last night's dress rehearsal was to examine traffic flow, or lack thereof. I expect that in a few weeks, once the staff get a handle on things (people were literally bumping into each other behind the counter where I bought dinner) it will be much smoother. Tonight...if I were going, I'd pack a sandwich.

When we got to the park, the only line was at Ben's Chili Bowl. I waited until after batting practice to eat, and I only had to wait because my veggie burger had to be cooked. If I'd been eating normal food, I would have been able to grab it and go...possibly without even paying for it. The actual line logistics were a bit ambiguous, another thing I expect to see fixed pretty quickly.

We did climb up to our regular season seats, and I felt a little dizzy.

I will use this picture as wallpaper on my office computer, to inspire me to work harder to get better raises so that someday I'll be able to afford lower-level seats.

There was an actual baseball game being played, a fact lost on several people who were sitting in front of us. I can't figure out why, but some people decide the perfect time to get up to go stand in the half smoke line is just as a pitcher releases the ball. I suppose these are the same people who want to get up at hockey games as soon as a player gets a breakaway, or just after the snap at a football game.

A couple years ago at a Mets game, Victor observed that my aunt (who was then in a wheelchair, just before she died) could steal second on Paul LoDuca. This is still probably the case. I have to keep reminding myself that it wasn't Schneider for LoDuca, it was Schneider for Lastings Milledge. And I'll whisper a little mantra: Jesus Flores is the future.

The RFK shuttle worked out better than I hoped. We'll have a parking space for our regular season games (next to DOT; man, that is a nice-looking building), but if that turns out to suck, the shuttle seems quite viable.

Speaking of buildings, I used to work on L Street; I'd walk from the Half Street exit from the Navy Yard Metro. I completely could not get my bearings down there last night, it's already a completely different neighborhood. (But not all new: my dad pointed out to me the building in the Navy Yard where my grandfather worked. He'd have loved having a baseball stadium across the street.)

Probably not too many people will be excited by the view of the old USS Barry in the Anacostia, but I'm sure there are a few naval history buffs out there who'll appreciate it.

Our seats last night were under the score board, so we just saw the backs of all the guys in suits for the opening ceremony. I didn't even bother trying to take pictures. Our first few Saturday games are afternoon, so maybe I'll have enough light to use the long lense and get some decent shots of the field and players then.

And finally, to prove I really was there:

Look for me I'll be in centerfield

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We're born again, there's new grass on the field.

Assuming the stadiumcam is still up and running for the exhibition game tonight, you'll be able to see me, the second section in from the Geico sign in centerfield. You can't miss me, I'll be wearing a red Nationals jacket.

Seriously, I'm getting awfully giddy. I woke up this morning feeling like it was Christmas, I was eight years old, and I was about to get the coolest present ever.

I saw my first baseball game at Memorial Stadium, and the details are not burned into my brain. The first time I went to Camden Yards, I thought it was nice, but I didn't really understand the fuss. And sure, from my seats at RFK you couldn't see deep right field, but I was ok with the place. I'm clearly not from the Ball Park-as-Cathedral school.

Yet I've been looking at the pictures coming out of Nationals Park this week and it is taking my breath away. Maybe it's because I'm really a fan now, which I was not in Baltimore. Maybe it's my D.C. civic pride. Or maybe it just really is that beautiful.

I'll know in about eight hours and I can't wait!

Hot damn

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

This is 63% LESS than other websites who took this test.

This is probably 96% less cursing than I do in real life.

Get out of Dodge

Instead of the usual talk show, the TV at the gym was tuned to Gunsmoke. Only thing was, there was no sound. Interestingly, you can totally follow the plot of Gunsmoke without it.

A tree grows in...my yard

I've mentioned before my indifference toward yard work. Well, it's not so much indifference as antipathy. But anyway, because of my lax landscaping, my weeds tend to grow like, well, weeds, and I have one in the back yard that got so big that when I went to pull it, I couldn't.

Victor hacked it down once, but it came back. I started referring to it as the space weed, and I ignored it. By last spring, the stem had become more of a trunk, and by fall the branches reached above the fence.

I noticed this evening...the branches are covered with fine pink blossoms.

I don't think it's a cherry tree (it's the wrong shape, at least as compared to the other trees around here that I know are cherry) but the blossoms are just as pretty.

I'm very glad I never killed it.

Like taking candy from a baby

After dinner last night, my niece and nephews had an Easter egg hunt. I found just one egg, and sat dejectedly at the table with them as they broke open the plastic eggs and sorted the candy that was inside. The biggest piles were root beer barrels, one of my favorites. I tried to trade my Twix for some, but the kids didn't bite.

Then I said "Hey, there's a root beer barrel tax, you know. For every ten root beer barrels you have, you need to give one to me."

[This would not have worked on me as a kid, but the Bicentennial was during first grade and the notion that taxation without representation was not fair! was deeply ingrained.]

Without question, my niece dutifully counted out her root beer barrels and handed one over to me. My nephew counted out his 15, gave me one, pondered how to give me a half of one, then shoved the whole pile across the table, saying "You can just have all of them."

Congress will love these kids someday.

The weakest link

So here's a phrase that doesn't make me feel very secure:

Many workshops that make crude heparin are unregulated family operations.

How many other chemicals used in drugs or food could you substitute for "heparin" in that statement?* Maybe I'll just sneeze today instead of taking that antihistamine.

The quote is from yesterday's New York Times article about the apparently-contaminated heparin, a story I've been following like I followed the melamine-in-dogfood last spring. Chemical mysteries fascinate me.

If indeed the oversulfated chondroitin sulfate was deliberately mixed with the heparin, I have to admit I'm impressed with the counterfeiters. Not actually being a chemist, I'm not sure how hard it is, but I think it'd take some effort to work backwards from the identity tests that the drugs companies will do on the chemical before they use it, then find another cheap chemical that won't show up on those tests. That's not a high school science fair project.

Of course, it's also evil. And if the supply chain is so long and unregulated that somebody who is so smart and so corrupt that they don't mind if people actually die can be a link in that chain...I'm not joking, that scares me.

*Not a rhetorical question, but one to which I haven't found an answer. I did see an estimate "75-80 per cent of all active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used by US drug manufacturers are now imported, mainly from India and China, along with 40 per cent of finished dosage forms from various global locations" in this December article from in-Pharma Technologist.

Full time job

Trying to keep track of spring training and a playoff race takes up a lot of time and brain power, then there's my usual seasonal depression (this year's focus for morbidity and mortality is our oldest rat, who has a terminal tumor).

I've let my fingers hover over the delete button for this blog a few times lately, just because I'm not really doing anything useful...not that I ever was, but at least I was more prolifically useless.

On the other hand, I could turn this back into a useful mental exercise, if I had a bit of discipline...and I'm always thinking that a bit of discipline is going to appear tomorrow.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

I've been wearing a watch since kindergarten (an analog Timex that was color-coded and was supposed to teach kids how to tell time) and I've pretty much worn a watch every day since I got that one. (You can see my tan line even in March.)

So it was with disbelief that I read "Ask someone on the street what time it is and they'll nearly always whip out a phone. "

That doesn't even occur to me.

And it made me feel a little sad, until I decided that cell phones are pocket watches on which you can make phone calls.

There's really only so much puttering one can do

Things got a little hectic last week after the initial search for our mystery resident, and we never got around to digging up the foundation in search of entry holes, nor did we purchase traps. Evidence suggests that the critter has moved on, or at least it has stopped using the ceiling as a litter box. (Frankly, if I weren't concerned about it gnawing though a wire and setting the house on fire or introducing a virus that would run up my vet bills, I wouldn't even care. I can vacuum up poop.)

Speaking of introducing viruses, I got one, of the gastrointestinal variety. I've been home since Wednesday. Actually, I felt ok (just dehydrated) on Friday and tried to go back to work, but then symptoms you don't want to have at work resurfaced. I don't want to go out infecting innocent people if I'm contagious, and I don't want to stray too far from plumbing, and I'm subsisting on a very unsatisfactory diet of chicken soup and ginger ale, so simply shifting laundry from the washer to the dryer is exhausting. Wouldn't you know, today is the most perfect day for hiking we've had in months?

I'm bitter. And bored. I'm almost wishing I'd hear footsteps in the ceiling, so I could chase the mystery animal around.

Eatin' o' the green

I'm on a bunch of cooking- or food-related e-mail lists; today I saw a message about celebrating Saint Patrick's Day by stirring green food coloring into your pudding or mashed potatoes and sprinkling green sugar or candy on cookies.

I was thinking "or you could just have a salad," but I'm not all that festive.

(My grandmother is Irish, by way of Boston, but not a single old country family recipe has survived. I suspect there is a reason. I should have celebrated Saint Casimir Day on March 4.)

To catch the [mystery animal] you gotta think like the [mystery animal]

Which means identifying the mystery animal. So we spent the morning taking down ceiling tile and insulation. Now we know that we have an animal, and it has plenty of fiber in its diet.

We found what looks like rat droppings, and I'm no stranger to rat droppings. However, we found no nest, we found no ripped-up paper in the rec room where it stole material for a nest, we found no food, we found nothing chewed up. Our rats can only go ten seconds without gnawing if they are asleep. We did not find a sleeping rat.

We also found no holes. I was hoping for one of those cute little archways you see in the cartoons, because that would be easy to fill in. Instead, I still have no clue how it gets in...whatever it is.

(My working theory, and this one is serious, not like the poltergeist theory: chipmunk. I've seen chipmunks in the yard, front and back, plenty of times. They live in tunnels with specific areas for sleeping, food stashing, and defecating, unlike rats, who are pretty much ok with an efficiency nest. Maybe we got a chipmunk who decided our basement made a good luxury bathroom. I just wish I could find where the basement ceiling and the rest of the tunnel intersects.)

Commence Carl Spackler impersonation

Something is walking around the basement ceiling.

I've been hoping it was just a poltergeist or demonic spirit, but Victor caught a glimpse of something small but corporeal running away when he lifted the ceiling tile to investigate the foot steps.

And actually, I held out some hope until I put a Yogie [the preferred snack food of our invited resident rodents] up in the ceiling, and it disappeared. I doubt demonic spirits eat.

So now we have to figure out what it is, how it got in, evict it, and seal up the holes. Which sounds easy listed like that, but it requires pulling down insulation, maybe ripping up the patio, and I'm sure sit-com hilarity as the rodent will find clever ways to eat our bait and not get trapped.