Coaching in the Dark

I am managing the Manotick Blitz Fastball Club. The other night I was at the 7 pm game. Around the third inning, I asked one of the players to turn on the lights. He tried but he couldn't seem to get them to come on. So I asked another guy who I thought might know how they worked. He got them working. But I thought it was still very dark at the park that night.

A little while later, I was looking at the scorebook. It is easier for me to read fine print without my glasses. So I took off my glasses to look at the scorebook.  I realized that I was still wearing my clip-on sunglasses. It was funny that none of the guys on the team mentioned it when I was so worried about turning the lights on.

Glasses on a Chain

Barb always seems to be looking for her glasses. She has a number of pairs around the house for different purposes.

She likes to read at bedtime. So she has a pair of glasses in the bedroom she uses to read with. She always falls asleep when she is reading at night. So the glasses only have one arm now because the other one broke off.

The other day she lost these reading glasses. She couldn't find them anywhere in the bedroom. She looked all over. It didn't help that they have clear rims. Eventually after much frustration she gave up looking and got another pair from downstairs.

About two weeks later, I was changing into my fastball uniform. I had closed the door to the bedroom. As I was leaving the bedroom, I saw her glasses on the floor behind the door. They must have fallen out of her housecoat that she hangs on the back of the door.

Putting her glasses on a chain around her neck would avoid so much frustration.

Lights Out Coincidence

Barb and I went to Guelph to help Sarah set up her new place for the summer.

Barb had done everything she could to arrange the room for Sarah. She came down to the livingroom to tell me about it. Sarah and her roommate were still up in her room.

Barb felt that the livingroom was too dark. She tried to turn on the standing lamp. It didn't work. She noticed it wasn't plugged in.

She plugged it in and immediately heard a loud bang. We both thought that she must have blew a circuit.

We found out that Sarah had dropped a heavy mirror upstairs at the exact time Barb had plugged in the lamp. Barb didn't blow a circuit. The lamp worked just fine when Barb turned it on. It was an amazing coincidence.

A Wedding and a Funeral

Barb had to buy me new clothes for the wedding of the daughter of one her tennis friends.

We left a little late and got to the wedding just on time.  We sat with Barb’s tennis friends at the ceremony.  Somehow they were seated on the groom’s side of the room.  So unfortunately, we couldn’t see the bride’s face during the ceremony.

At the reception, the father of the bride made a funny speech.  When he reached into his pocket to get out his speech, a long roll of paper fell onto the floor.  He said that it wasn’t his speech it was the bill for the wedding.  Then we went on to tell many silly puns.

Barb and I enjoyed some of the dancing.  I remarked that young people don’t dance anymore.

Later in the evening, Barb was complaining that she didn’t like the music.  However, the young people were all up and dancing.  I guess they were waiting for all the old people like us to leave so that the DJ would play their kind of music.  

 

We do the same thing in Florida.  We have to wait for all of the old people to go home before the DJ plays the music from the 70’s and 80’s that we like.

It turned out that the clothes Barb bought me for the wedding would be useful soon after to go to a funeral.

One of Barb’s old volleyball friends’ son was attacked while protecting a girl from her ex-boyfriend. Barb followed the story on the news.  She also read all of the posts on his Facebook page.  The 21 year-old boy eventually died and the ex-boyfriend was charged with first-degree murder.

We knew the family well although we hadn't seen them for a while.  They organized get-together for families like us who all had babies at the same time.  We got together a few times with all the parents and kids.  Barb searched through her photo albums and found a couple of pictures of the group.

Barb and one of her volleyball friends went to the wake.  Then the next day, Barb and I went to the funeral.  It was a very nice ceremony.  One of the family friends, who we used to get together with back in the old days, was a pastor and presided over the ceremony.  He read a number of quotes from the boy’s Facebook page.  One of the boy’s friends played the guitar and sang two songs.  There were two very good eulogies.  Then one of the boy’s sisters read a touching poem that she wrote for the occasion entitled “My Hero”.

The death of someone so young helped put things into perspective for me.  My troubles with the fastball administration seemed very trivial in comparison.

Too Busy to Eat

I have been so busy working on my fastball leagues that I have not been taking time to eat.  I have lost 25 pounds since I retired.

Barb has had to buy me new clothes.  I fit into clothes that I haven’t been able to for years.

This week I had a doctor’s appointment to go over my blood test results.  The doctor said that my results were very good.  If I come up with similar readings at my next three month tests, he will start to reduce my medications.

The guys at fastball have noticed how much weight that I have lost. 

It was funny that on my Glen Cairn team, our pitcher is a big guy like me.  Julia said that we looked alike when she came to watch a game.  He had lost about 50 pounds in the off season and everyone was very surprised to see him this year.  We still look alike.

Barvan in the Annual CORA Hockey Pool

I was invited to join the CORA playoff hockey pool even though I am retired.

So I got out my playoff prediction program.  I ranked the players in the order that I wanted to pick them.

A couple of days later, Barb and I particpated in a conference call with the other poolies.  There were 11 of us.  Barb and I were exactly in the middle of the selection order.

Our first pick was a defenseman from Pittsburgh.  Then we picked a forward from Vancouver.

Our next pick should have been a Montreal player.  Barb and I couldn’t bring ourselves to pick him because we thought Montreal was a low scoring team.

We ended up skipping over him and many other players.  We concentrated on just two teams.  We ended up with 7 Vancouver Canucks and 5 Pittsburgh Penguins.  My reasoning was that with so many poolies, the only way to win was to pick the final two teams.

The pool organizer named us Barvan . I thought that was better than Ivarb.

There was one poolie, Benoit Arbour, who couldn’t make it to the draft.  So he sent his picks to the organizer.  The organizer picked 12 players for him from the leftovers.  The organizer then challenged the other poolies to beat Benoit.  He called Benoit’s score the “Arbour-Line”.

We lost all of our Vancouver players in the first round when they were beaten quickly by the San Jose Sharks.  So all we had left was our five Pittsburgh Penguins.  They are good players but Pittsburgh, as a team, is not playing well in the semi-finals against Boston.  We will have a hard time getting over the Arbour-Line.

One of the poolies lost all 12 of his players.  He had players from four teams that all got beaten in the first round.  He was the first victim of the Arbour-Line stigma.

Driving Our Little Blue Honda

At the end of April, I drove to Guelph to pick up Sarah and bring her back to Ottawa.  She was disappointed that she didn’t get a co-op job for the summer.  She brought home most of her stuff. The car was very full.

She still had hope that she might find a summer job.  She continued to get phone calls from prospective employers.  They usually wanted her to come in for an interview.  Sometimes they would do a telephone interview.  Sometimes they would do a Skype interview.

One day Sarah got a call from her professor at Guelph.  Her professor said that she had a colleague who might hire Sarah for a summer job in their lab.  Sarah arranged to have a Skype interview but it was just a formality.  She got the job on Friday.  We were heading back to Guelph on Sunday night.

This time Barb came with us to help Sarah set up her new room.  We drove to Guelph on Sunday night.  We stayed with our friends Karen and Max in Fergus for the night.  Then we drove back to Ottawa on Monday morning.

The next weekend was the May long weekend.  

 

It was also our wedding anniversary on Friday.  Barb and I went to Cora’s for brunch.  

 

Then I was back on the road to Guelph to pick up Sarah.  We both went to Pike Lake to visit with Daphne, Truman and my Dad.

That was a lot of driving in our little blue Honda.

Buying a Bike Rack

Sarah insisted on bringing her bike back with her from Guelph.  Barb thought that she might be able to buy a cheap bike for Sarah for the summer.  She couldn’t find anything reasonable.  So she looked on Kijiji for a bike rake.

There was one for sale the day she looked.  It was selling for $20.  I did some research on the internet.  I found that it was a pretty good deal and a pretty good bike rack.

Barb phoned the guy selling the bike rack. He lived in Barrhaven.  So within a few hours, we had decided to buy a bike rack, found one and bought it.

It would turn out to be quite useful.

 

Randy Likes My Guelph Dad Sweater

Sarah’s friend Randy is usually hanging around when I am picking up or dropping off Sarah in Guelph.  

 

He tells Sarah that whenever he sees me, I am wearing my red Guelph Dad sweater.  

 

He is right I like that sweater. I always seem to be wearing it when I go to Guelph. 

 

He might not realize that I wear my red Guelph Dad sweater even if I am not in Guelph.

Guelph Dad Sweater Seen in Barrhaven

When I got back from Florida, I enjoyed walking around Barrhaven in the afternoon.

Sarah would get a text from her friend Lauren when Lauren saw me walking.  Lauren texted that I was always wearing my bright red Guelph Dad sweater.   She even took a picture of me walking to the library.

One day I was walking around the box stores. Lauren texted Sarah to tell her I was out walking.  Lauren said that her mother was at the box stores wearing her Guelph Mom sweater.