An example of “practice what you preach”?
Tag: fun
So as the boys of summer gear up for another season of America’s game, we dreamers suited up for game two of our spring season. I only fielded 2 of the 5 innings, but felt much better this time around. I didn’t handle the ball as much as I would have liked, but simply felt more comfortable back in the position.
There was this great play in the second inning. The batter put a shot in to center left, and the runner on first came around second, heading to third. A great throw by Keith, the center-left fielder, combined with a second great throw by Gary, playing shortstop and acting as the cutoff man, nailed the runner while she was still two steps from the bag. It felt really good. Except for the knee she put in the side of my right leg, just below my knee. I didn’t know until about an hour later how big of a bruise I had. I know she didn’t do it intentionally, it’s just one of those breaks of the game, and my first injury of the season.
At the plate, I had a better day, going 2 for 3. No RBIs again, but that’s what happens when for one of those at-bats you’re the first man at the plate for the inning. The second injury of the season came during the fifth, and last, inning, when I scraped up my right shin while mis-sliding in to second. Still beat the tag, and it’s just that top layer or two of skin, which will scab over relatively quickly, so it’s a small price to pay.
The team we played is probably our favorite team to play against. I don’t mean that in any sort of insulting way, like they’re an easy win or anything. It’s the team from Flower Mound UMC, and they’re just a fun group of folks to play against. I see similar affections amongst the teammates, and we enjoy a certain good-natured ribbing and conversation with them during and after the game that we just don’t have with any of the other teams. I see them as kindred spirits; it’s great to win, and you play to win, but you really just want to have a good time playing ball. Truth be told, so long as they’re not playing us, I root for these guys and gals.
In the end, we managed to outlast them. After we went up huge in the third, FM UMC began a comeback, and looked to be on the verge of pulling it off in the bottom of the fifth. Our defense held and the final score was 15-11, putting us at 2-0 with 10 games left to play. Still a lot of season to go…
Though I don’t drink coffee, I would have to have a chalk mug if I found myself in the workplace again. This would have come in so handy to send subliminal messages to certain former co-workers…
Our softball league’s spring season began today. Most of the old crew was back, with a couple of new faces. We faced a new opponent for this first game, as one of the town’s Methodist churches is fielding a second unit this year. I was on third, as usual, playing four of the five innings. (With one extra man, we had a three-way rotation going.)
From a fielding perspective, I’m out of practice. My throws to first were a wee bit short each time. At the plate, I was much happier with my performance, going 2-4 with a walk. No RBIs this game, but I did advance runners each time I got on base.
Final score was 18-7, and we’re 1-0 to kick off the season. It was a good start, working a lot of the kinks out after being off for four months. My time off was much longer, due to the injury I sustained at the end of last year’s summer season, and it showed. Time to hit the cages, and get to throwing around more with the guys in the neighborhood.
One of our ladies took a shot to the head in the second inning. She was on third, and the batter at the plate, another lady, tattooed the ball right down the third-base line and beaned her before she could get out of the way. She was very woozy, but never passed out. One of the guys on our team is the assistant fire chief for the town, and has some EMS training, and we kept her under observation on the bench the rest of the game. We all encouraged, asked, and begged her to go to the hospital to get checked out, just to be assured there was nothing critically wrong. We’ll be checking up on her in the coming days.
This week is the week of site birthdays, I suppose. Lee’s Second Initial turns one today. Congratulations, compadre!
No, I’m not kidding. As if we needed another reason to lobby for copyright law overhaul.
So while ripping CDs and loading up my wife’s Shuffle, I decided to listen to a few tunes on it. I am still amazed that music comes out of this little chunk of plastic. One of the tunes I came across was Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough“. I remember it was used in a commercial, but the commercial made such an impression on me that I cannot recall what or whom the commercial was for. Anyone?
No, not a shotgun as in firearm (though those do rule, especially when it comes to room-to-room clearing), but as in calling “Shotgun!” when you’re about to take a ride. Yes, official rules for calling shotgun. Larry’s good for something now and again. 😉
So today I picked up the pair of Harley-Davidsons I ordered. To see a picture of these beauties, click below.
So I’ve been thinking about Daniel Pink’s article, “Revenge of the Right Brain“, over the past couple of days, and it’s amazing how much my own feelings toward a future career mirror his piece.
One would have to consult my parents as to when I may have first exhibited artistic sensibilities, but as I grew up, I was very fond of writing, drawing, and music. I was always doodling, tracing, sketching. Making up stories, or just bits of stories. In seventh grade, I started playing the clarinet in band, was quickly moved to the bass clarinet by Mr. Dawson, our fantastic teacher-director, and continued all the way through high school. I did not attempt to gain a music scholarship to LSU; I had a partial academic scholarship, and the Air Force wanted to pay the rest of my way, so long as I was willing to be an electrical engineer.
By the end of my freshman year, my Air Force scholarship was gone. My grades tanked, and they yanked it. I was not a party animal, I did not go hog-wild upon becoming a college student. I simply goofed off.
Looking back, maybe there was a subconscious effort on my part to sabotage my academic and future professional careers. I was a right-brain person, suddenly thrust in to a left-brain world. No longer burdened with studies related to engineering, I remained in Air Force ROTC, and switched majors: criminal justice. When LSU’s Criminal Justice department was terminated as a separate division the following year, swallowed by the larger Sociology department, I was forced to change majors again. Not particularly interested in a sociology degree, I opted instead for political science, a decidedly more right-brained course of study. I minored in history. I excelled in English classes, testing out of Freshman English 101, or whatever it’s technically called.
The large part of my professional career since college, however, once again led me in to left-brain land. I have been involved with computer technology, troubleshooting, and support, for over a dozen years. When I was laid off in October of 2003, I was both devastated and optimistic. My son was only two months old, and I was looking forward to spending a lot of time with him, which has been great. Perhaps this was the opportunity to move in to a new field as well.
I have not kept completely out of the right-brain sphere these past twelve years, however. I began volunteering as a copy editor with ATPM in the summer of 1998, and began writing the occasional review or opinion piece shorly thereafter. Today, I’m the Managing Editor, and quite happy to work with the fine staff of our little publication, all of whom do what they do because we enjoy the Macintosh platform. I also believe a goodly number of the staffers are like myself, and enjoy having this right-brain outlet, compared with the left-brain professions they may be involved with.
This blog, like its predecessor, is nothing more than an outlet for those right-brain skills yearning for exercise.
Which brings us back to Pink’s article, in which he hypothesizes that the coming “age” will be devoted to more right-brain activities, as opposed to where we currently are now, and have been, where more left-brain occupations have reigned supreme. I’m all for it. I feel as though I have a couple of books in me, and I love the editing thing. Just ask some of my online friends and acquaintances how many times I’ve annoyed them over misspellings and other grammatical gaffes on their blogs. Likewise, they are quick to point out my own brain burps, in large part because they know I care about such things. (Though with Lawson, I suspect it’s just out of spite.)
There is a part of me which has enjoyed my past dozen years in the tech field, and I would heartily welcome another job in that arena. Yet another part of me yearns for something different, something more right-brained, and this is reflected in some of my Monster search agents. In the mean time, I’ll concentrate on editing, writing, digital photography, and most of all, being a dad.