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I have seen a number of ceremonial first pitches this last week. Between the Biggest Loser homecoming show and the American Idol homecoming show, there were a few clips of the contestants throwing the ceremonial first pitches at the closest big-league stadia.

I have a couple of things I wonder about the ceremonial first pitch, in general.

The first is this: why is this ceremony limited to baseball? If I were to be some temporary ceremonial celebrity, I would want to perform the ceremonial first kick-off at a football game. Or even the ceremonial first puck-drop at a hockey game. But baseball?

Some of you may have noticed that I forgot to say that I would want to perform the ceremonial first basketball toss-up thingy. I didn’t forget – I don’t care much for basketball or baseball. I think I would rather be invited to a baseball game than a basketball game because at least baseball is outside and there are things to do other than watch the game.

The second is this: why does no one ever try to throw out the runner at first? If I were invited to throw the ceremonial first pitch, I would pull aside the first baseman and warn him to be ready. And I would have him tell the ump to prepare to call an out. Then, instead of throwing the first pitch to the catcher, I would instead throw it to first base.

In case you’re wondering why I would try to throw out a runner when there’s no one on first base: why throw out a first pitch when there’s no batter?

We had a birthday party the other weekend. It was a surprise party, so we were to arrive at a certain time. Leaving the house at a certain time is never easy with young kids, but we actually did it this time.

But we almost didn’t make it to the party.

We were last in a line of cars on the road. About a mile and a half from our house, three things happened at once:

• I saw a car, one that was several cars in front of us, swerve violently off the road, crossing through the oncoming lane to do so;
• I heard my wife yelling something (I forget what at this point, probably “look out!“); and
• I saw a tree falling across the road.

“Get your phone!” I said to my wife. She called 911, but it went to a “please hold” message so she hung up. We noticed other people on their phones as well, so we figured someone would get through.
Read the rest of this entry »

At dinner one night:

And at dinner another night, when we were having salmon:

This was at a park:

We looked, and sure enough, there was a gummy bear lying face down on the path. I wouldn’t have thought much about it normally, but since Beta implied that it once had life, I suddenly felt sorry for it.

Someone in the household may have left her razor in the bathtub, and the boys may have found it during their bath. This is the exchange that occurred when I checked on them. Note that the Snug Tub now has an aftermarket hole in it, and the boys have been instructed not to touch razors anymore.

Alpha has taken our teaching to heart.

For those who don’t know the story, go read the original Pblk Education first.

Okay, now that you’re back, take a look at his recent paper (click on the picture for a larger version):

Every single word has the wrong number of boxes for letters. I’ll give them the one box for “sh” since that’s one sound and that’s the lesson for the day and they made that box slightly larger. But they’re still short by one letter every time.

Alpha adds boxes where boxes should be. If they don’t give him enough spaces to spell a word correctly, then he makes the spaces himself. The curriculum might not know how to spell, but he knows that he knows how to spell and he tries to do things the right way (okay, “shrit” isn’t exactly right, but we’ll tell him that and he’ll learn that it’s “shirt”).

There are a bunch of ways I could go with this topic, but I’ll choose this one: it’s good to know that my child is listening to his parents over the school. I hope it stays that way. And it’s good training for the future – “I don’t care if the government says it’s legal; it’s still wrong.” He has already learned that people in power can be wrong.

Except for his parents, of course.

My goal is that he learns something more than spelling – that there is right and wrong and that is ultimately determined by God. He needs to do what is right regardless of the culture.

There are gray areas too, and he should understand that not everything is either 100% right or 100% wrong. But we’ll work on that concept later. Spelling, grammar, and math work better without gray areas.

In cooperation with MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday. Head on over to her blog if you want to
see what she has been doing, or not been doing, this week.

• My child did not yell “Let’s go, slowpoke!” just after a jogger passed by us. If that had happened, it would have been because my child and I were having a race and I was letting him win, and he had no clue there was a jogger nearby.
• My children did not yell “Fire in the court” from the back of the minivan while I was driving. And then they did not throw a sock all the way up front, hitting the dashboard and obscuring the gas gauge (it’s okay, we weren’t close to E). My children know that throwing things in the van is not proper behavior.

  Plus they also know the correct phrase is “fire in the hole” (or “order in the court”, I’m not exactly sure which one they meant). And if that had happened, I would not have had to stifle my laughter so as not to encourage such behavior.

• We had pancakes for dinner. They were plain pancakes, not the usual chocolate-chip pancakes. My children did not make up for the lack of chocolate chips by grabbing the Hershey’s syrup and pouring it on their pancakes. And I did not let them know that chocolate sauce isn’t for pancakes. And they did not reply that it says “syrup” on the bottle and we do put syrup on pancakes and also mom said it was okay

And we’ll wrap this up with a Not Me:

• I did not ask Alpha and Beta, who were sitting in the back row of the minivan, to check for oncoming traffic when I was backing the minivan out of a parking space and couldn’t see through the SUV parked beside us. I know better than to trust my driving to the observation skills of kids in car seats.

This post is a continuation of a previous post.
Please start with that if you need some background information.

I’m done with all the pictures – now I have some stories about the trip to Idaho.

Cart Wheels

I will relay one incident on the flight over. We were sitting peacefully, nibbling on some pretzels and watching people. The airplane was not huge – there were three seats on each side of the one aisle. A lady, probably in her late 70s, was making her way back to her seat and was a few rows in front of us, facing away from us. The airplane wasn’t getting ready to land, but it was going through a bit of a descent, and we heard “Look out!” from behind us.

If that ever happens to you, make sure you turn to look without leaning your head into the aisle. Because the warning was to let us know a beverage cart – a metal, heavily-laden cart – was freely rolling down the aisle. As it passed me, I put out my hand and foot to slow it down, as did the guy in front of me. It ended up stopping a couple rows before the row where the lady was standing.

If the cart hadn’t stopped before reaching the lady, I think the cart would have won that confrontation.

It’s Not a Cookie

If you have a young child, do not opt for the “cookie” that they offer as the complimentary snack on the plane. It is a thinly-disguised teething biscuit. As many parents know, teething biscuits are just dried paste. Sure they taste fine, but the child’s saliva turns the biscuit into a goo that gets on any surface near the child. I was trying to clean biscuit paste off my shirt for the rest of the flight. Go for the pretzels instead.

And I know I could have titled this section “Snacks on a Plane” but I already used that heading in a picture post.

During the Flight

Beta: “What are clouds made of? Are they made of fluff?”

How could I tell him they weren’t?

I couldn’t. But I may have said something about fluff being made of water vapor.

One Side of a Conversation

Overheard on the way to Boise, during the flight:
“This is the plane that Captain Sullenberger landed in the Hudson River.”
(garble garble from the other person)
“No, not the actual plane, just the same model.”

Solid, Liquid, or Gel

We inadvertently found a way to stump the TSA. As a general rule, you are not allowed to bring liquids onto the plane. Liquids are not allowed, but solids are.

My wife likes cold water, so she stuck a water bottle in the freezer the night before the flight, and it was still frozen when we went through security. The TSA lady saw that bottle (since we had it with the other liquids to help keep them cold) and said she had to test it since it was more than 3 oz. When she picked it up and saw it was not liquid, she didn’t know what to do. She conferred with some other TSA people, then she walked off with our bottle. She came back a few minutes later and said it was good.

Oh, and yogurt counts as a liquid. In case you were wondering. Or maybe it’s a gel. Either way, they don’t like it.

Sharing

Our hosts were very nice. The daughter relinquished her room for the few days we were there, and all five of us stayed in that one room. Apparently they grow houses a bit bigger over there. Gamma stayed in a pack-n-play, which our hosts borrowed from their neighbors. The morning of our departure, we stripped the sheets off the beds, packed up the pack-n-play, and tried to restore things to how they were before we arrived.

I was thankful that we did not have to return the pack-n-play to the neighbors because they’re a little weird. Friendly people, and gracious to let us borrow their stuff, but weird. Phone first before stopping by their house.

Tonight is Frank Sinatra songs, as arranged by Harry Connick, Jr.

Aaron Kelly: “Fly Me to the Moon”

It was okay, I suppose. He looked a little different. Maybe they went overboard on the makeup tonight. He is trying to look the part, but it doesn’t quite work.

Conclusion: Not Frank Sinatra-y

Casey James: “Blue Skies”

He’s a good singer and a good performer, but this is just not his style. That’s two weeks in a row now that I’ve said that about Casey. Not a good sign.

What is that? Is his hair in a bun?

Casey’s voice is better suited to Frank Sinatra songs than Aaron’s. I thought he had a better stage presence than Aaron too, but for some reason the judges didn’t agree. I did think that he didn’t hit the high notes very well.

Conclusion: Not Frank Sinatra-y

Crystal Bowersox: “Summer Wind”

Very professional, although she almost didn’t make it to the mic on time. Didn’t move around the stage a lot, but she didn’t need to.

Conclusion: Somewhat Frank Sinatra-y, if he were female

Michael Lynche: “The Way You Look Tonight”

He is the first one who looks the part. Although his hat might be a bit small. But it worked.

And he sounded good. And he worked the stage.

Conclusion: Frank Sinatra-y

Lee DeWyze: “That’s Life”

Lee looks the part too, and he sounds even better than Mike. Lee always looks like he just got out of bed.

Conclusion: Frank Sinatra-y

Who’s going home: Harry Connick Jr.

My Favorite: Lee

I don’t know who’s getting voted off, but I’ll put a guess out there for the bottom two: Casey and Aaron.

Normally I’d recommend reading BooMama‘s re-cap of AI, but since she didn’t do one this week, I won’t. I’ll still recommend the rest of her blog though.