Undershirt

It had rained last night and was cold in the morning when I went out to play softball.  I got to the diamonds and found that our diamond was being worked on because of the rain.  The first game of the day hadn't started and I had arrived for the second game.  I was told that they were going to start the first game when the field was ready and so our game would be delayed.  I decided to drive home to get an undershirt because I was cold.  Barb was surprised to see me home so early.  I told her the situation.  I put on an undershirt and headed back to the diamonds which were about 20 minutes drive away.  Not long later Barb got a phone call from the team captain asking if she knew where I was because the game was starting soon.  I guess they had changed the plans and had cancelled the first game.  So our game was going to start on schedule.  Barb told my captain that I was just there and I should be back at the park shortly.  When I got back to the park I was surprised to see my team on the field.  Fortunately, I had only missed the infield practice and I had gotten back in time for the game.  I was also warm because I was wearing a nice undershirt.

Trunk

I came out in the morning to go to softball and noticed that the trunk was open.  I checked that my softball stuff was still there and it was.  We don't lock the cars at night. So I thought maybe someone had searched the car in the night.  I thought that was highly unlikely because our community is very safe and we never see anyone strange around here because we are so far away from the main roads on a cul-de-sac.  Then I noticed that there was a trunk button on the keychain.  I must have hit the trunk button accidently yesterday when I got out of the car and opened the trunk.  I have never had a trunk button on a keychain before and never noticed this one.

Outlet

I was going to take a different way home than the way that I came to Sanford for the tournament because I didn't think they would have very good signs to tell me how to get back to my park because it is in an out of the way place.  It was a cold weekend.  So between games I went back to my car to warm up.  I was messaging Barb in the car when I noticed another outlet near the hand brake to plug in the GPS.  So I tried plugging it in there and suddenly it started to work and started to recharge the battery.  I told Barb I was happy because I wouldn't have to take the long way home.

Bic Pens

There were no score boards at the ballpark.  So I kept track of the score and the inning on my little pieces of paper.  I thought I had lost my pen.  So on the way back to the hotel I stopped at a drug store and wanted to buy a new Bic pen but I could only buy a pack of 10. Fortunately, the pack was only $2.  When I got back to my hotel that night, I found my pen on the coffee table.

Extended Stay Hotels

When I drove back to the hotel on Saturday night, I noticed a sign showing a different entrance to the Extended Stay Hotel before the entrance that I took yesterday.  So I drove in but it didn't look like the entrance to the hotel that I remembered.  So I drove out and looked for the other entrance.  I drove a little farther down the road and found the correct entrance.  When I went in the hotel, I asked the clerk why there were two Extended Stay Hotels right beside each other.  He said he didn't know.  I asked him if I had gone into the other hotel last night would they have recognized my reservation.  He said no they would have sent me to this hotel.  He said it is even worse in Philadelphia where there are three Extended Stay Hotels right beside each other.

CPAP

When I unpacked at the hotel, I realized that I forgot my CPAP.  I hardly had anything to remember for such a short trip.  I had even taken my CPAP carry case out the closet in the morning and put in on the floor beside my bed at home.  Before I left home, Barb asked if I had my pills.  I said yes and she said well that is all you need.  I forgot all about my CPAP.  So I didn't sleep well those nights at the hotel because I kept waking up when I stopped breathing.  Luckily I was only staying for two nights.

Interior Lights

After checking into my hotel, I drove back to the ballpark and this time it was quite easy to find.  Then after the final game on the day, I came out to drive back to the hotel and noticed that I had no interior lights.  So I didn't know how fast I was driving.  I just followed the rest of the cars on the road.  When I got back to the hotel, I was facetiming with Barb and she told me that she might have turned a switch on the dash board that turned off the interior lights when she was looking for the trunk latch at the garage.  I guess I never drove that car in the night time.

Reservation

I checked into the hotel and told the guy at the desk about the mix up with the reservations.  He said he could see a note on the computer about it and said that he would make sure that I didn't have to move rooms between the two nights.  However, he told me I would have to come down in the morning and check out and check back in.  I would have to turn in my key and get a new key to my room even though it was the same room.

Driving East

There was free wifi at the ball park.  So I was messaging Barb during the game.  I told her about the GPS fiasco.  She was very upset with the terrible luck we are having with the Nissan.  She looked up the directions to my hotel.  The ball park and the hotel were on the same street.  So I thought it should be easy to find.  Barb told me the hotel was 23 minutes East of the ball park.  So in the late afternoon between games, I decided to drive to the hotel and check in.  I turned left out the ball park and headed East.  I drove for 25 minutes East and was in the middle of nowhere with no hotels anywhere in sight.  I drove a little further and stopped at a gas station and went inside to ask for directions.  The lady behind the counter had no idea which way I should go. Then a nice guy said if I could wait he would look it up on his phone back at his car.  So he looked it up and told me that it was back the other way.  I told me a way to get onto the main highway to Orlando which would be faster than just turning around.  In the end, it took me another hour to get the hotel.

Hugh and Billy

I arrived at the diamond in time for the first games of the tournament.  I was happy to see my good friends Hugh Murray who I used to play with in Ottawa and my friend Billy Carson who played for me in Kitchener when I coached the Kanata Storm in the World Tournament.  They were playing for a team from Oregon.  Billy was pitching and Hugh was catching.  In the first game, they were playing the team from Ottawa which had a lot of my friends on it.  It was an exciting game.  Ottawa won 1-0.  The only run scored on a passed ball.

Global Positioning System

I decided I would leave the Honda for Barb and drive to Orlando in the Nissan for the weekend tournament.  I was about a half hour from home when the GPS said low battery and then a little while after that it died.  I couldn't figure out why it died because I thought I had in plugged into the right place in the car.  I thought about turning around and driving home to get the Honda but then I decided to just keep going.  The tournament was being held at different diamonds this year and I had never been there before.  I had the address written down on one of my little pieces of paper.  I knew the diamonds were in Sanford a small town outside Orlando.  So I followed the signs to Sanford and ended up in the middle of downtown Sanford.  I drove around for a while and eventually found the road that the diamonds were on.  I drove down the road way out of town and the diamonds were way out in the middle of nowhere.  I got there just before the first game was starting.  I thought about the time when Sarah and I drove around St Thomas randomly until we found the diamonds where the Canadians were being held.

Neville

My sister reconnected through facebook with old friends of the family, the Smiths.  They were a crazy Irish family from Greystones who used to drop in on us in Burlington with no notice and sometimes decide to sleep over.  The daughter got in touch with Daphne and then me on facebook.  She gave Daphne the email address and phone number for one of the sons.  Daphne sent me his contact information and told me he would like to talk to me on the phone.  So I emailed him and gave him my phone number.  He called right away and left a message on the answering machine.  So I phoned him back.  I don't remember him but I remember his mother and father.  His mother was a crazy non-stop talker and a wild piano player.  She would come in our house and play our old piano and sing hymns at the top of her lungs.  The father hardly said a word because the mother never stopped talking or singing.  Neville told me he was looking up an Irish band called Ryan's Fancy on the internet that he remembered from his youth.  He found a video of them playing a concert in Hamilton and he was watching the video and there was my Dad in the audience clapping away to the music.

Bam Bam

Today Barb met a couple at pickleball who asked her if she was Bam Bam.  Barb was surprised because no one calls her Bam Bam here in The Villages.  They used to call her Bam Bam back at our old park.  The couple told Barb that they played up North in the summer with the Shainers who play in Sebring in the winter and they are always talking about Bam Bam.

Computer Lab

I went to the computer lab to print out the reservations for my hotel.  I had to print out two reservations because of the two bookings.  Unfortunately, the printer ran out of paper after I printed my first reservation.  So I tried to print out the second reservation on the back of the first reservation.  I ended up printing the second reservation on the same side as the first one only at the bottom of the page which was fairly clear.  So I thought it was readable enough.

Browns

I played for the Browns in the third game of the day but between games I had found out from the league organizer that I was going to playing full time for the Vikings.  I played well for the Browns and they won the game.  After the game, the captain asked me if I wanted to play for the Browns full time.  I said I just got picked up by the Vikings.  They said that was too bad.  Then they remembered that they were going to be playing the Vikings in the next game and they were happy that they had a scouting report on me as a new player.

Vikings

I had played for the same team two games in a row in the recreational league.  The acting captain of the team thought I was a really good first baseman.  So he asked the team to vote on whether he should ask that I be placed on the team permanently.  Most of the players agreed that I should be on the team permanently.  So he asked the league organizers and they also agreed.  He looked around for me after the game but I had gone to my car to wait out the next game because I had put my name down to sub for the third game of the day.  So he went home and phoned the park administration to find my phone number.  They said they couldn't give him my number but they phoned us to tell us he was trying to get in touch with us.  Then he eventually found our number and talked to Barb because I wasn't home.  He said I must have stayed at the park for a few drinks and it turned into a lot of drinks.  Barb said I don't drink and she thought I must be dead.  Anyway, they had a great chat and he found out all about us and Barb found out all about him and I am officially on the Vikings as their first baseman.

Booking

Barb thought that she booked my hotel for two nights when it said Friday through Saturday but I told her that she needed to book the hotel for Friday through Sunday.  She was convinced she had done it right.  So she booked the hotel for me and then when she went to pay for it she noticed it was for only one night.  So she phoned the hotel to see whether she could extend the booking.  They said she should book another night at the hotel and then they would make sure that I didn't have to change rooms.  Barb will probably never make that mistake again.

Priceline

Barb uses a really neat website to find great deals on last minute hotel reservations.  She can never remember the name of the website and she asks me.  Fortunately, I have it written on one of my little pieces of paper.  So tonight she was looking on the website for a hotel for me to stay at when I go to Orlando for the big fastball tournament there.  She had just got on the website when I noticed that I was seeing advertisements for Priceline on my iPad.  The internet is just like Big Brother.

Disappointed

Barb was very disappointed that she had not won a medal at the tournament.  Then when she got home she thought it over and realized that she should have gotten a bronze medal because the two classes were mixed together and the 5.0's won the bronze medal but since she was in the 4.5 category she should have won the bronze medal for her classification.  So she emailed the organizer of the tournament who was new at organizing tournaments.  He agreed she should of won a bronze medal and offered to mail it to her.  She said don't bother she would pick it up at the next tournament when she saw him because he runs all the tournaments.  Then when she went to the next tournament they forgot all about picking up the medal even though he had brought the medal for her.

Storm

Barb was playing in a pickleball tournament a couple of hours south of Avon Park where we used to live.  So Barb and I drove down to Avon Park and stayed over night at my sister's house and then Barb went to her tournament the next day.  She came home earlier than I thought she would.  I was out with my old friend from softball watching the NFL playoff game at one of his friend's house.  I left the house at halftime saying I should see if Barb was home yet.  Meanwhile Barb was out on my sister's golf cart looking for me.  Eventually we found each other back at my sister's house and decided not to stay for dinner but head home early because there was a big storm coming through.  About half way home we got hit by the storm and I could hardly see the road.  I kept driving though until Barb said we should pull over into a drug store parking lot to wait until the storm passed.  I pulled off the road at the turn that I thought was the drugstore parking lot entrance but it turned out to be the entrance to a highway. So I quickly veered back on the road and found the exit to the parking lot.  We just got in the parking lot and the storm cleared.  So we didn't even stop the car, I just got back on the road and kept driving.  We could have been in an accident trying to avoid an accident.

Clear Windows

Barb came home in the afternoon and thought she might be going out later in the car.  So she left the windows open on the car so it wouldn't get too hot inside.  She eventually didn't end up going out and forgot that she had left the windows open.  When she went out the next morning early to go to pickleball, she thought to herself that the windows were really clear for a change because usually they are all covered with dew from the night before.  Then she got in the car and noticed that the dew was all over the seats inside the car.

Left Turn

I was coming home from softball and was behind two cars in an intersection waiting for the light to turn yellow so we could turn left at the yellow light.  The light eventually turned yellow and the first car turned left.  Then a car drove right through the intersection through the yellow light.  Luckily the second car saw him coming and hadn't followed the first car.  After the car went through the intersection, the second car went through on the yellow.  By then the light was red and I went through rather than being stuck in the intersection.

Stretching

I thought Barb had dreamed about how a friend of mine from baseball had sent me stretching exercises for my sore back.  She said she definitely remembered me telling her the story just a few days before.  I told her no I didn't remember telling her any story like that.  Barb said you are really losing it in your old age.  I said no I never told her the story she remembered and she must have dreamed it.  Then a couple of days later I was talking to Stan on Skype and I asked him if there were any yoga exercises that he knew of that would help my sore back.  So he looked some videos up for me and sent me an email with the links.  I was doing the exercises one day soon after and I remembered the story I told Barb.  It was a fellow who I knew from fastball in Ottawa not a friend of mine who posted a story about how his doctor said that he had really tight hamstrings and that was the reason he had a sore lower back.  The doctor recommended that he learn to touch his toes to stretch his hamstrings.  He had some before and after pictures of himself learning to touch his toes and a link to a video called Touch Your Toes in 41 Days with some stretching exercises.  I had tried to touch my toes and I was about the same as him in his before pictures.

Tail Light

When we borrowed the Nissan Sentra from our friends in Avon Park, one of the first thing we noticed was that the back right tail light was out.  So Barb brought it in to the garage where she got the air conditioning fixed on the Honda.  As usual it was a zoo there with cars and workers all over the place.  Barb asked if should bring the car back some other time but Von said no he didn't want her to get into trouble.  So he asked her to pop the trunk but Barb didn't know how to pop the trunk.  The lever wasn't in the same place that we remembered from our old Nissan.  Together they found a switch on the dash board to pop the trunk.  He only charged Barb $2 but Barb wanted to pay $3 and he wouldn't take it.

The Canadian

Barb squats really low in pickleball when she is playing at the net.  That way she can smash overheads on even very low balls that just make it over the net.  The other ladies at pickleball call her smashes from the squat position "The Canadian".  She does that back in Canada too but the boss of the pickleball group makes fun of her and says she shouldn't play pickleball like a batcatcher.

Batting Tee

I bought a batting tee to practice my softball swing in the backyard of our house.  We have a really big backyard considering we are in a retirement village.  I use Barb's new bag of pickleballs to hit off the tee so they don't go too far because they are whiffle balls.  I had been out a few times hitting balls.  I told Barb that there were only 11 balls and I wondered how that could be because I would expect them to come by the dozen.  She said that there was definitely a dozen there when I started hitting them.  A couple of days later, I hit one of the balls in the flower bed under the big tree in the backward.  When I went to pick up the balls, I found 2 balls in the flower bed.

Elaines

Every Thursday a newspaper comes out here at our park with a list of the meetings the following week for the various clubs in the park.  There are over 2000 clubs here at the park.  The fellow at the recreation center who handed us the newspaper said that if we couldn't find a club to join using this newspaper there must be something wrong with us.  So I took a copy and was looking through it this weekend.  There were truly a lot of clubs for almost every imaginable interest.  There was even a club called "Elaine is My Name" for all women named Elaine to explore the history of the name and of course if you wanted more information you should call Elaine and it gave her phone number.

Disclosure

Every year while I am in Florida, I call CIBC Securities to make a deposit in my Tax Free Savings Mutual Funds.  So today I phoned them and the fellow was looking up my file and while we were waiting he asked me if I had a good holiday.  I said yes it was great because I am here in Florida.  He asked so you're in Florida now.  I said yes.  He then said could you hold the line for a second.  I knew what was going to happen next.  He came back on the line in a few minutes and he said that he couldn't handle my deposit because I disclosed that I was in Florida and he was only licensed to handle transactions in Canada.  I told him that I also wanted to deposit to my Registered Retirement Savings Plan Mutual Funds and if I have to wait until I get home to Canada in May I will miss the deadline for 2016.  I said so if I phone back and get another person but don't disclose that I am in Florida I can make the deposit.  He said he can't advise me on that.  He said he was sorry but there was nothing he could do for me.  I didn't phone back but I should have tried it.

Whitey

I was going up to bat today at softball and the 3rd baseman on the other team made a joke about my white legs.  I guess I haven't been outside much since I have been here but I should get tanned on my legs now that I playing softball 5 times a week in the late mornings and early afternoons.

Ice Cube Maker

We have never had a refrigerator with an ice cube maker before.  It makes a knocking noise when the ice cubes fall into the tray and I always think the knocking is someone at the door.  Barb uses the ice cubes to keep her lemon water cold when she goes out to play pickleball but the top of the bottle that she uses is quite small and the ice cubes are quite large.  So she is always dropping the ice cubes all over the floor.

Sam's Club

Barb is very disappointed that there is no Costco near where we live in Florida.  She wondered whether Sam's Club might be a good alternative.  So she went to Sam's Club with her pickleball partner who has a Sam's Club card.  Barb didn't find many good savings there except for their very cheap and very big cooked chickens.  I guess they are very popular because the man ahead of her in line was buying 15 of them and the lady ahead of her in line was buying one for herself and 2 extra chickens for her dogs.

Gym Locker

Julia was at the gym in the change room and there was an old lady who was having trouble with the combination of her lock on her locker.  So Julia offered to help her.  The lady told her the combination and Julia tried it and opened the lock and the locker for her.  She was very happy and thanked Julia.  Then old lady looked in her locker and noticed that it wasn't her stuff.  She told Julia that she must have the wrong locker.  So Julia found another locker with the same type of lock on it and opened it with the same combination and this time it was her locker.  She wondered which was stranger the old lady who didn't know which locker was hers or the lock company who made two locks with the same combination.

Turnipseed

Barb is meeting a lot of new people here at our new park through her pickleball.  One of the ladies she met this week has the last name Turnipseed.  Barb said that she must really love her husband to take that name when they got married.  Soon after she mentioned that to me, I saw an article in the New York Times about the Director of Recruiting for the top college football team, Clemson, named Thad Turnipseed.  I told Barb that he MUST be related to her new friend.

License Bureau

Barb was upset that she hadn't received her new driver's license yet in the mail.  Our neighbour in New Hamburg who was collecting our mail for us said he had been checking all of our mail for the license and was sure it hadn't come yet.  Barb phoned the License Bureau and asked them if they had sent it.  They said that it had been sent. So Barb thought it must have gotten lost in the mail.  So she asked them to send another one in the mail.  The lady at the license bureau told Barb that she would have to write them a letter and fax it to them.  So the next day, Barb started writing a letter.  Then she got an email from our neighbour saying that he had found it in our mail and would send it to her right away.

Dart Baseball

Laura introduced us to dart baseball when she was here visiting us.  I asked Barb if she wanted to go again after Laura left.  There was a old fellow there named Jack who introduced himself to me and I told him I was here with my wife Barb and pointed to her practicing at the dart board.  He went up to her right away and said Barb it is good to see you again.  He had never seen her before and Barb had never seen him before.  Barb could not think of where she might have met him before.  She wondered about it all afternoon as we were playing.  Then when we were going home I told Barb that Jack was just fooling around with her, pretending that he knew her.  These old guys are just jokers.

Division 4

Here in our new place in Florida, you have to be evaluated before you can play in a softball league.  There are 5 divisions with division 1 being former professional baseball players and division 5 being players with physical disabilities.  When I finished the evaluation just before Christmas all of the teams had already been picked for the Winter season.  I was disappointed that I wasn't on a team but I found out that I could sub for teams that needed players.  After the evaluations, I received a sheet of paper that indicated that I was placed in division 4 and I was telling all my friends that I was just above those with disabilities.  I went out for the first game and put my name down to sub.  The organizers didn't have the sheet of eligible subs.  I got 4 hits in 4 at bats and helped my team win the game.  The other team was mad at the captain of our team because the two subs that he picked got 8 hits.  I was a little confused about which division I was in because the sheets that I submitted to join the league had R3 in the top right hand corner and I thought that might mean I was applying for division 3 even though the cover sheet specifically said I was in division 4.  So I emailed the president of the division 3 and asked him if I was on the sub list.  The next day he replied that yes I was on the sub list for division 3.  Then later that night I got a phone call from the president of division 4 and he told me I wasn't on the sub list for division 4 and that he had called the president of division 3 and confirmed that I was on the sub list for division 3.  I thanked him but I didn't ask if the team that I played for in division 4 was penalized because they had a division 3 sub on the team that day.  Now I am no longer just above the disabled league.  I am in the mediocre league.  Right in the middle of the divisions.