avuncular

That is how I am feeling these days, based on the exciting news from up north that my brother and sister-in-law are expecting. It is an exciting time for the family.

I have a nephew on Becky's side of the family, 14 months older than Katie. But this will be the first cousin of Katie's I can expect to be in her life a month down the road. Katie adores her cousin the two times a year or so she gets to see him even though he lives just across town. But I have never felt close to him. Perhaps it is because his parents were such a miserable couple; each of them alone nice people, but together absolutely horrible. Throw in the fact that Becky's family simply isn't close, that they don't put in any kind of effort to actually see each other, and I think I always just knew that this was not a child that would be much a part of our lives, as sad as that is to admit.

And even more sad is what a relief that is to me. After the disaster that was our trip to Austin in September for Becky's brother's wedding reception, I am glad that they are a marginal part of our lives.

But that is all the negative, when the overwhelming positive is that there is a new cousin on the way.

Hugs to Caroline

I had planned on posting this before midnight, but played too much poker. Thursday was her 10th wedding anniversary. And today the church secretary was making plans to travel to Denver for her parents' 70th anniversary. Such an amazing thing. And yet 70 years would have been far too short to be married to Becky, or for her to be married to Alan.

Hugs to you on this day.

a great tournament

I just won $353 on Poker Stars tonight, coming in fifth in a $10 tournament with about 700 players in it.

In the first ten minutes, I was down from 1500 to 140 chips after my pocket aces were cracked by pocket queens. I got him all in after the turn (one card to come) and he hit is two-outer, a 5% shot. Sadly, it was a harbinger as I had aces cracked three times in the tourney.

But I battled through and played well. Got lucky to stay alive when I had about 600. I had A6 against AQ, and moved in when an ace hit the board. Fortunately the board then paired and a K came on the river for a split pot as neither kicker played. I won a race with ten players left to get down to the final table and played well there. I was chip leader for a brief moment - just one hand, I think - but was always in the top three or so. And then I called a dude's all in with AJ when he had 10-4. And he caught a full house with it to stay alive. Two hands later, I picked up pocket aces, and the dude moved in behind me with KQ, but made two pair on the turn to crack those aces. And so instead of being a prohibitive chip leader, I was the short stack and ended up in fifth place.

But it was a blast and the second biggest payday of my online poker career, so I will certainly take it. I really thought it would come down to me and a player from Dallas; he was solid. But it wasn't to be.

the five biggest shots in Spurs history

I have been thinking for a day about where Brent Barry's shot ranks in modern Spurs history. Modern being since 1986 when we moved to San Antonio.

Here are the biggest shots in the last 20 years in Spurs history, according to me:

5. Avery Johnson hits the game winner to clinch the 1999 NBA title. This would rank much higher - after all, it is their first title - but the Spurs clearly outclassed the Knicks that season. And losing game five would have just meant we would have partied here instead of watching them cry there. (Which brings up an interesting point. I always like it best when the Spurs clinch on the road. This is especially true when playing a hated team like the Lakers. What could top all of those celebrities leaving the Forum bawling like babies? We can have a parade in our town a couple of days later and do all the celebrating we need to. Winning at home deprives us of watching the other team and its fans having their spirits' crushed. Am I alone in this?)

4. Willie Anderson to David Robinson for a 50-foot alley-oop in the regular season finale in 1990 against Phoenix. Robinson's rookie year, winning this game won the Midwest Division by a game over the Utah Jazz and completed the best turnaround in NBA history. The game was nip and tuck throughout. Nervous fans are watching this game and the Utah game. The Spurs edged out a bit, and then this play was simply amazing. Hemisfair Arena was the loudest I ever experienced it, and the party was on. We won't talk about the Rod Strickland no-look pass to no-player in game seven of the Western Conference semifinals. This is the play within the game within the season that put the Spurs back on the map in the NBA.

3. Tim Duncan over Shaq in game five of the 2004 Western Conference Semifinals. This is the shot that should have put Timmy in the pantheon of all-timers. Series tied two games each. The winner of this game is all but certain to go to the Finals as the lowly Wolves await in the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs would have put Bowen on Cassell in that series and it would have been all she wrote. Duncan hits an 18-footer fading left with .4 seconds left to give the Spurs a one point lead. We won't talk about what happened next.

2. Memorial Day Miracle. This shot by Sean Elliott finishes a ridiculous comeback in game two of the 1999 Western Conference Finals and was such a gut-punch to the Blazers that they never recovered. It was a remarkable design, and the degree of difficulty of the shot was very high. Sean is on his toes to shoot, and had his heels come down, they would have been out of bounds. Never mind the fact that he is playing knowing that he is months away from having to either go on dialysis or get a kidney transplant.

1. Robert Horry wins game five of NBA finals last year. Bottom line, this shot is the difference between winning a championship and not winning a championship. After being embarrassed in games three and four, losing five would have forced the Spurs to win games six and seven both. And even with the momentum of winning game five and the emotional high, they couldn't win game six. The whole game five fourth quarter should be included here, I think, with several threes and the dunk out of nowhere for Horry. Put it all together, and this shot is the greatest of all time.

So, all in all, Barry makes the top ten but not the top five.

And as my brother pointed out earlier, both of the top two were three's made right in the mug of Rasheed Wallace. I lost whatever sliver of respect I had for the Wallace brothers when they didn't turn over the championship belts after the Spurs won last season. It is why the Pistons won't win this championship. Bad karma. They have three whole seasons with no injuries, and someone will go down in the Eastern Finals and they will be bounced. Just one man's prediction.

home

The trip was lovely. Caroline was beyond hospitable. Vermont is beautiful. I cannot remember a day as gorgeous as what Friday was; I certainly didn't expect my first sunburn of the season to come there. In Texas, we could not have a day so sunny without the heat being ridiculous. But it was perfectly sunny and the temperatures were in the 70's.

I talked at length about the concert, but I don't think I could do it justice. If you are a fan, then you get it, I reckon. And if not, there is no way to describe the music intelligently. The energy of the crowd was palpable. As they were introducing Helmet Head, for example, they were teaching the crowd to respond to the song. And we all knew the song and how to respond. And you could tell he expected to chide the crowd, to try to get them to be louder and more enthusiastic. But we did it right the first time. We were enthused; we didn't need any more stinking encouragement than for them to just play the song. They knew it; they fed off of it; we reciprocated.

And I have a hockey puck out of the deal, too. Wins all around.

I don't have time to post all the thoughts I have about the weekend except to say that I felt very much appreciated, which was nice. And that I got the warmest welcome home anyone could ever want when picking up Katie from school this afternoon. And it is good to be back to my chaos.

There are times I think this grief journey should be stabilized; that the love and loss of Becky are now my companions the way they will be for the rest of my life. And then there are times when I think that my grief journey is still on the runway. Tonight is one of the latter times. It is not intimidating the way that statement would have been a year ago or more. But it does make me more reticent about dating, more determined to find myself, my voice, my vocation before trying to merge someone else into this mess. (That being said, I spent a delightful hour on the phone with Tina tonight, so maybe I am not really that reticent. If the right woman came along, ..... But at the same time, I am so content to let things move glacially with her. Maybe because I sense a real potential for this relationship that I have not felt in a long time, since Sally perhaps last April and May? Ah, who knows. It is late.)

I am excited by the prospect of the new Sunday school class. I read a delightful book called Affirmations of a Dissenter today on the plane. I would recommend it to anyone interested in spirituality and religion that is beyond the neoliteralism of the Religious Right in this country.

I have also started reading the Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote the Secret Life of Bees. Bees was simply delightful, though a story about a girl spending her childhood coming to terms with the death of her mother when she was four hit rather close to home. And within the first chapter, I was hooked to this story. I doubt it will take much more than a day or two for me to inhale this novel; she is a wonderful story-teller with an interesting subject and something to say. That makes for quite a combination.

And now to bed.

AMAZING

I am thoroughly exhausted after a day of travel followed by getting to see Caroline and the kiddos and then the best concert I have been to in years. Certainly the last one to compare would be seeing James Taylor in 2002 in Shreveport, but Great Big Sea is such a different experience, it is basically useless to compare.

They were brilliant tonight. They opened with a stirring rendition of Captain Kidd from their newest album. The show lasted nearly three hours. They played 80 minutes, then took an intermission, then played an hour, and then had three encores - probably nine songs in the encores - for another half hour. They played roughly half of the songs from the new album - Polina, Charlie Horse, and the Mermaid song in the first half. Come and I will sing you was one of the encores and well done. They did not play as much of Something Beautiful as I would have liked; I think that is their best album; they opened the second half with a stirring rendition of If I were King that had the place jumping. But I would have loved to hear the title track and Let It Go. But Sean's very emotional version of John Barbour may have been the high point of the show for me. And if it wasn't John Barbour, then it had to be the very mellow version of Sea of No Cares, which is a very meaningful song to me anyway.

All of their old songs - Merry Mac, the Day that Patty Murphy Died, Rant and Roar, Consequence Free, Jack Hinks, I'm a rover, and on and on - they played. I would have loved to hear Boston and St. John, and I would have loved to hear She's Going Up. I am trying to think though of what I would take out to fit them in, and the only song I can think of is Helmethead, which I just have never really liked. But it did get a ton of audience participation, so what would I know.

Early on, Sean sang Forget-Me-Not, a beautiful ballad. And it was then that the show was emotional for me. I had such a good time at this show watching this band that Becky loved so much. I so wish she could have been there with me. Of course, I never would have met Caroline except for the ywbb, and so at the same time I never would have been at this show if she hadn't died. And that is so confusing and weird. It is something so true of my whole life. Except for my family, almost none of the people I interact with even knew Becky. Nobody at work and church. None of my widowed friends. None of the women that I have remained friends with through dating. When I think of how few of the people in my life actually knew her, it saddens me because they would all have loved her so. They know her through me, and the proof that they would love her is that they loved me, and what am I but what Becky's love transformed me to be? Which is a weird train of thought to have during a concert. But such is a widow's life, I guess.

This place was the perfect venue for the concert, too. I think it was called High Point or something like that. It used to be a movie theater evidently. There were no chairs, so we were standing, and dancing, and hopping, the whole time. I don't know how many it held, but the whole place was small and so every spot was an amazing one. And the crowd as a whole was well-versed in the music, and we sang and sang and sang, but none so much as me.

And now as the adrenaline rushes out of my bloodstream, the day of travel and standing for five hours and the lack of sleep last night are all catching up with me in spades. So I am off to bed. If you ever have the chance to see Great Big Sea in concert, do it. The music is catchier, more enthusiastic, more fun in person than on CD. It was an amazing event tonight. Not only did I get to see that, but now I have three days to spend with one of my best friends in the world, too. Lucky Me.

a big day

It has been quite a day.

Since I am headed to Vermont first thing in the morning, I had a ton of work to do so that the place can survive without me for a couple of days. Ha ha ha. One of the most interesting things in the book about the Ten Commandments we just did for Sunday school was that sabbath is a testimony of faith. Sabbath acknowledges that God is in charge and that the world will not go to hell because we don't work for a day. So I am sabbathing for four days this week.

I listened to Great Big Sea at work today, annoyingly singing along with all of the songs. So people knew I was in a joyful mood all day. I got a ton of work done, so all will be well until Monday I am sure. Not that there was much doubt before this.

My boss took me out to lunch today and told me he is likely going to be quitting his job during the summer. So it seems very likely I am going to be the business manager of the church and Corazon Ministries within the next couple of months. I think I have found someone to take over my job already, so that is a good sign. She is a great gal and her strengths match my weaknesses, so I think we would make a good team. She is very detail-oriented, very organized, works well with the people she will be involved with. The last one I am okay with, but the others, not so much. I may be an accountant, but I have basically none of the ordinary accounting traits.

But the good news financially is that this will be a big enough raise that I don't have to worry about pulling money out of savings on a regular basis. My budget works fine, but then when property taxes or insurance comes due, then I need to pull money out of savings. It has been less than I have made in my investments so far, but it would be nice to let that money grow and not need it.

Oh, and the day of Katie's baptism is set for May 14 - Mother's Day - at the 11:00 service. All are welcome.

announcements

Today was a big day for the Katie bug. She was one of the team from Mrs. Massey's marvelous kindergarden class to do the morning announcements, including leading in the pledge of allegience and the pledge to the Texas flag. (Why we should have allegience to the Texas flag I don't know. I am not in favor of littering on the highways or rampant pollution, but how would we be disloyal to Texas?)

Anyway, Katie had to be there early this morning, and of course I went in with her and listened to the announcements in the library. She did a great job reading her announcement; it included tough words to read like "reasonable" and "responsibility." Words that are not exactly in the wheelhouse of the average kindergardener, but she did great.

It is not everyday that gets to have a highlight by 7:50 am, but today was one. And the water in the pool is officially warm enough for swimming.

Happy Easter

We have had a very nice Saturday. I awoke to the sound of Katie crooning Joe McDermott songs on the karaoke machine and found a woman's t-shirt in my bed. I almost wondered if I had really forgotten something last night, but then remembered Katie went over to friends' house last night in one of her Easter dresses and changed into Maggie's T-shirt at bedtime. I sighed, and then thought it would be way worse to have finally gotten laid and not remembered it, and with that thought in my head I hit the showers.

We watched some videos from my new Great Big Sea DVD and sang some of the karaoke tracks on there. Very fun, though I think I would have to practice for five years before I could ever come close to MariMac. The concert is but a few days away. Woo-hoo.

Then we went and had some lunch and ran some errands. I cannot get out of Target for less than $100. I went in looking for lightbulbs, a half gallon of milk, and some underwear. By the time we were done, there was a soccer ball in there and who knows what all else, and it was right at $100 as always. And we got a couple of books at Cokebury. I was planning on getting the books for the Sunday school class, but they were not in.

And then we came home and played soccer for an hour or so. Katie has a sense of the game. She is a decent dribbler, and does a good job of keeping her body between me and the ball so I can't get to it, which is pretty good instincts. We were basically just having fun kicking it back and forth, but I got her leading me with passes. At first she would always just kick it at wherever I was as opposed to where I was going, but she got the hang of it. And she was even using the inside of her foot to kick most of the time by the time we were done. I didn't even tell her that, but I think she was copying me.

And so then all hot and sweaty, I watched the Royals lose again and played a little poker online. I came in second in a 45-er tournament, which took my cash total there back over $200, which is where I cashed it down to the last time I got money out. It had gotten down to about $60. The other tournament I played was just a one-table, so it paid three places. Down to four players, I was comfortably second, and third and fourth were both short-stacked. On three consecutive hands, I went to the river card with someone all in. The first one, the guy had three outs (A9 against A8 and down to needing an 8) and caught one. The second one, the guy had two outs (big pair versus small pair - needed trips) and caught one on the river. And then against the chip leader, I was all in and he had one out. I raised from the small blind with K7 and he called, and the flop was king high. I moved in, he called with 77. So only the case seven could help him, and he caught it on the river. So three, two, one outs against me on three straight hands all caught, and I was out on the bubble. Never had anything like that before.

But I played well in both tournaments, and ended up well ahead on the day, probably close to $50, and I am positive since cashing out for the first time since, so that is good, too.

And now I am going to bed so that tomorrow I can worship with clear eyes. Have a blessed Easter tomorrow.

in all her glory .....

one picture

I am having some trouble uploading. Not sure what the problem is, but here is one picture working. It may take a while.

Easter fashion show

Katie and I went out shopping for an Easter dress tonight. And because I am a sucker, and because Kohl's had a really good sale, we came home with three Easter dresses. And a hat and stockings, though they didn't have shoes. So tomorrow it will be off to Target or Payless in search of Easter shoes.

And then we headed over to my parents' house for a little impromptu fashion show. I also have a picture of both of us from the Easter Egg hunt we did at church yesterday. I don't have a scanner at home, so it may be a while, but I will put it up as well.

Enjoy.

Body Theology

I have been reading a delightful book called Body Theology for the last week or so. A friend of mine in my Sunday school class recommended it to me. I have found it fascinating. It is not a particularly recent book, written I think in the early 90's. But I have been trying to come to terms with my own sexuality within a Christian framework that is both true to myself as a sexual individual while at the same time embraces the sort of holiness and discipleship I am seeking.

Part of me just wants to make the proclamation to myself of "No sex until marriage." And yet for all the good reasons I can think of for making such a pledge, I don't think I can. Not just because I am horny as heck, though I am. After church I sat around the picnic table where we had lunch and an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos, and was surrounded by all of these beautiful married women with Coleridge lines and a bit from Matthew 5 or 6 running through my head.

But that is not why. That I think I could overcome with grace. But I know that when sex was taken away from us a few months before Becky died, that our ability to communicate was cramped. It put so much pressure on every other way that we communicated - almost like losing four or five letters of the alphabet and trying to get by without them. Losing that means of communication meant there was more that had to be carried with every word, with every look, with every touch. And that was exhausting to both of us. I didn't miss the sex then the way I miss it now. Then it was inconceivable to be looking for sex in some other fashion; it literally never occured to me. It was just part of the better or worse thing.

We wait so long to get married in this society. I wonder if it is practical or reasonable to think that celibacy until marriage can work again. And yet is that the measure of discipleship? What about the Christian walk is supposed to be practical or reasonable? But why would a couple headed towards marriage castrate their own alphabet? I am not looking to be slutty - it has a certain appeal, no question - but at the same time I want to be honest with myself. Making a proclamation now would be easy since there aren't exactly women lining up and being kicked out of my bedroom.

Anyhow, that is the process that led me to this book, though it is about much more than sexuality. Fundamentally, it is about the unity of personhood. It is easy to think of myself as my mind as separate from my body. But Christianity is in fact at its heart about incarnation, about the Word made flesh. There is no duality, no separation of mind and body, spirit and body. We are all "bodyselves."

One of the things that happened as Becky grew weaker with cancer is that she grew to hate her body. That is something I couldn't do, and I didn't understand that at the time. But I remember as she would be going to bed, I would ask her if there was anything I could get her, and she would reply, "A new body." And that always hurt me, though I didn't show it, because I understood where she was coming from. But I loved that body that had among so many other things brought our little girl into this world.

And yet, when I first got started dating, I had in my mind that I would have loved Becky in any body. What I have come to realize is that there is no way to know that. There is no Becky in this life outside of that body. I have a good friend in a new relationship, and she quoted something he wrote to her in an e-mail and made the comment that she would love him if he were just a brain in a jar. And as I thought about it, I think that is hogwash. I loved Becky's mind and spirit; her gentleness but fierce determination. But those all have to be seen within the context of her holistic person.

The mistake I made when first dating then was completely ignoring attractiveness as a feature. If I would have loved Becky in any body, mightn't I love this woman even though she really doesn't do anything for me? Which lead to a bunch of really lousy dates. (Duh.)

And then the pendulum swung too far to the other side, leading to dates with insipid hot chicks. Bad idea, though at least there is more short-term fun possible.

Online dating is weird, because it is possible to be really good friends with a person before actually meeting. It causes all sorts of problems, I think. Not that they are insoluble, but just so different than when I was doing this the first time. Because attraction can develop over time, but if you already develop this really amazing emotional connection with a person, it puts a lot of pressure on there being a physical attraction basically immediately as well. As opposed to that attraction sort of developing at the same time as the friendship or emotional connection. I don't know that there is an answer to that.

But the question I try to answer now before I meet in person someone I have met online is whether if there is no physical attraction, I would still like to be friends with this person. If I don't think so, then there really is no point to going out. I am not dating just to date. But if the emotional connection is such that this is someone I really value and treasure, then, hey, let's give it a whirl. It is more work this way. It is more disappointing if ultimately there isn't a romantic relationship. But at least I think it gives me a chance to find something meaningful.

I may write more about this book later. But for now, I am going to finish the chapter I am reading and get some sleep.

stuff you can't make up

Being a baseball announcer has to be a tougher job than it looks. It is a long, long season, and there are many games over the course of the season that are just not all that entertaining. And so sometimes you will find announcers talking about bizarre things in the booth.

But this doesn't excuse Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin "DJ" Jackson for this exchange. It was the top of the first inning after a major comeback. It was the first start of the season for both pitchers, so you could talk about their careers, their springs, something. Instead, we get this:

(In the middle there is baseball play-by-play talk, like "low and outside, ball three" and stuff like that that is deleted from the transcript.)

Hawk: It is a beautiful but cold, cold day here in Kansas City, especially in the shade.

DJ: I'm looking over at my partner and he has an icicle hanging from the tip of his nose.

Hawk: I wish it was an icicle.

DJ: (Laughs) My bad.

Hawk: I got my hanky on the ready.



Now, I have been watching Sux games on WGN for 20 years now, and anyone familiar with me or this blog knows just how much I hate the Sux. For the better part of 20 years, the only time I could see my beloved Royals on television was when they played the Sux on WGN or the Rangers on Fox Sports SW. (The baseball package is a must have for all baseball fans unfortunate enough to live outside the media market of their team.) And the WGN guys just insulted the other team left and right for three hours. Harrelson was partnered with Tom Paciorek, who is the worst color guy ever. And so I grew to hate the Sux over time. Which is kinda sad, given how horribly the franchise had performed over the last century or so. I mean, who hates the Clippers? But that is how bad Hawk and Wimpy were; they could make you despise a team so far on the fringe of the American sports scene as the Sux. (Wimpy was always worse in my mind. Hawk played for the Royals for a short time, and always has something to say about how great a teammate George Brett was, and now always has something pretty decent to say about Sweeney. It is the color guys who turn those comments into backhanded insults.)

And so I expected today, when the baseball package wasn't carrying the game, forcing me to watch on WGN, to have an insufferable afternoon. Now that the Sux have actually won something through a series of seismic reactions it may take generations to understand fully, weren't they going to be more arrogant and obnoxious than ever. That is what happens to hometown announcing crews the year after a championship. I followed the Angels pretty closely through their run to the title in 2002. As it turned out, that was my first year in fantasy baseball, and I had Glaus, GA, Erstad, and Percival all on my fantasy team, and since I followed a midwest team, as soon as the Royals game ended, I would flip over to the Angels game and listen to Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler call the action. And the Wonder Dog is so energetic that it is sometimes tiring, but it is a good crew, and I was seriously cheering for the Angels throughout the post-season. But the next season, Hudler and Physioc were simply unwatchable. Every single pitch of every single game caused them to mention something about the play-off run the year before. I wanted them to win every game that post-season; I didn't give up when they were down 3-2 in the world series and 5-0 in game six. I knew they had it in them to come back. But the next season and a half, I just couldn't watch them. It was too brutal.

And so after all that, I thought it was going to be so much worse today. And it wasn't. I enjoyed this game today - except for the booger interlude - as much as I have ever enjoyed a Sux game on WGN. (Except potentially opening day a couple of years ago when they insulted the Royals for eight and a half innings only to have Billy Koch implode and the Royals score like six runs in the bottom of the ninth to win. But that was enjoying the game from vindictiveness.) This time, they were actually relatively unbiased. I would have enjoyed the game even if Sweeney hadn't gone deep in the bottom of the eighth to win it. Ok, I don't know that I would have enjoyed it, but the reasons I didn't wouldn't include the announcers. That is probably more accurate.

Maybe it is a new day. Maybe actually winning something - all winter I expected an apocolypse, something major, but nothing too bad has materialized - they have lost the chip on the shoulder that came from so many generations of suckage. Don't get me wrong: I still hope they finish 1-161 this season. But for the first time in my recollection, they might be watchable.

A deceptively large game for the Spurs

Of course every game is big when there are this few left and the race for homecourt is this close. But tomorrow night's game with the Grizzlies is all the more important because the outcome affects the tiebreaker between the Spurs and Mavericks.

With the win over the Hornets tonight, the Mavericks wrapped up a southwest division record of 13-3. The Spurs division record is 11-3 with tomorrow's game with Memphis and the finale April 19 at Houston. If the Spurs lose one of those two games, then they will lose the tiebreaker against the Mavericks. If the Spurs win those two games, they are assured of winning the tiebreaker with the Mavericks, since the next tiebreaker is conference record, and there is no sequence that allows the Mavericks and Spurs to finish with the same record unless the Spurs have more conference wins.

So it looks like winning tomorrow is just the difference between being a game ahead and tied in the standings. But in fact, it is closer to the difference between two games ahead and one game behind. A huge game tomorrow night.

slow Saturday

It has been a slow day today, which has been kind of nice. I played some with Katie this morning - she slept in some after having so much fun last night at the Blue Cactus. So we got up about nine or so this morning and played and watched cartoons. Then about lunch time I took her over to my parents so I could have some quiet time. I got some shopping done, talked to my friend Caroline on the phone for a half hour or so, got some work done, watched the Royals kick around the White Sux again. (There was the most bizarre exhange between the WGN announcers ever heard during the second batter in the top of the first. I have it TiVO'd so that I can go back to the tape and get it verbatim.)

Then we had dinner with my folks and brother, came home and karaoked for 45 minutes or so, then she left me watching some baseball while she watched a cartoon, time for the bedtime chapter of Narnia, and then she was off to bed. I am playing in a little poker tournament and then I will put away and the laundry and head off to bed.

My favorite day of the year!!!!

Is there anything that compares to the first Monday of April? The smell of chalk and grass clippings, beer and pretzels, and the crack of the bat?

Opening day is the best. The Royals are in first, and I could spend the afternoon at the office cheering against Tom Glavine because he is on this week's fantasy opponent's team.

And the White Sox suck.

Summer is upon us!

High of 93 degrees in San Antonio today. I have so far resisted turning the AC on. I try to make it six months of each year without any heating or cooling, which requires me making it at least a few more weeks. But I don't think it is going to happen. We have been playing in the sprinklers here to cool off - why they are watering the grass at the hottest time of day, I do not know. But I am grateful. I guess the good news is that the pool will open soon, which is such a blessing to our lives. Not just for the chance to cool down, but it is an easy way for us to play together. Too often I just watch her play, but the pool is more together.

In the mean time, I am going to throw down another bottle of Ozarka. At least I will get another blast of winter in three weeks when I go to Vermont.