Decision Made

We were trying to decide which car to get rid of when we get our new Honda CRV from the fellow in our park.  We like the Honda Civic.  It has been a good car for us but we have been having trouble with the air conditioner and even though we have spent a lot of money the garage has not been able to fix it.  So we were thinking of getting rid of the Civic but the Toyota doesn't have cruise control and even though it is a pretty good car and in good shape with working air conditioning, we don't like to drive it long distances.  So we were still undecided until Barb had to drive to Kingston and back in the summer heat.  We are definitely going to get rid of the Civic.

Taylors

Barb played in the pickleball tournament in Kingston and at all pickleball tournaments, they have a loud speaker to announce the next teams that are playing and which court they need to go to.  It turned out there were 5 Taylors playing in the tournament.  So Barb had to listen very carefully when they made an announcement in which they said Taylor to tell whether they were talking about her.

Dates

I often use memorable dates as part of my password on the computer.  I was using 1922 as part on my password on my work computer which is the year my Dad was born.  Today I was sending an email to my supervisor with the list of days that I had worked in the past two weeks.  It was lucky that I proofread the email before I pushed Send because I had put 1922 as the year instead of 2018.

New Players

Diana Dowthwaite, who played volleyball with Barb when she was in Ottawa, is now retired and is playing pickleball in Ottawa with her husband Paul Leck, who was a science teacher in the high school that Julia and Sarah went to in Barrhaven.  They won a gold medal in the 3.0 level of the Ottawa tournament. They were pretty good athletes and some of the 3.0 teams are pretty old and decrepit.  So they thought they were pretty good.  Then they went to Kingston to play in their age bracket.  They didn't realize that when you play in your age bracket you can come up against all levels, even 5.0 teams.  So they found out the hard way by driving all the way to Kingston which is two hours from Ottawa losing two straight games in a double elimination tournament and going home again.  Barb had to laugh because they thought they were so good when they won in Ottawa.

Crash

We were staying in Barb's friend Chrissy's basement while we were in Ottawa.  Chrissy was recovering from hip surgery and had to walk with crutches.  She also had a special toilet seat in the bathroom that we used on the main floor.  The toilet seat had legs and was much higher than a usual toilet seat.  Barb was sleeping of the air mattress and I was sleeping on the pull out couch.  Every time Barb moved on the air mattress, it made a loud noise.  So I heard her get up in the night to go to the bathroom on the main floor.  I was awake and I heard this loud crash and a lot of swearing.  I didn't do anything at the time, but I found out the next day that Barb had tripped over one of the legs of the toilet seat in the dark and fallen on one of the hand rails of the toilet seat and bruised her bum.  Her bum is having a pretty tough trip this time.

Cold Butt

We were staying at Chrissy's house in Ottawa and using her basement because she was getting renovations done to the upstairs bedrooms.  We were happy to be in the basement where it was nice and dark in the mornings because Chrissy doesn't have proper curtains and the sun comes in very brightly into her upstairs bedrooms early in the morning.  So we had brought our air mattress and thought we would use that in the basement.  Chrissy told us that she had a pull out couch in the basement that we could use.  Barb thought it would be uncomfortable to both sleep on the air mattress.  So I decided to sleep on the pull out couch.  On the first night, Barb found out that she was freezing her butt on the air mattress because she didn't have enough blankets underneath her and the air mattress wasn't very warm in the basement.  She wondered whether Laura found the air mattress cold when she was staying with us because Barb had never thought of putting blankets underneath her.

Anniversary

We happened to be going to Ottawa for a pickleball tournament and I took advantage of the trip to go into work and have a meeting with my supervisors.  Barb didn't know if we should celebrate Julia's birthday or just her wedding anniversary.  At the last minute, she decided to bring Julia's birthday present bag with us to Ottawa.  When we got there, Barb found Julia's wedding anniversary card in the birthday bag.  Had she decided to wait to celebrate her birthday, we wouldn't have had her wedding anniversary card to celebrate with her.

Las Vegas

Barb found herself in a photo about the Las Vegas US Open of Pickleball which she found strange because she has never been to Las Vegas.  Then she realized that her friend Anne had photoshopped her and all her friends into the picture.  Barb was amazed that it looked so realistic.

Tupperware

When we were in Florida, Barb was mad because she thought that she left the big tupperware dish in New Hamburg that she keeps leftover pizza in.  When she got back to New Hamburg, she couldn't find the big tupperware dish.  She thought this was very strange because it was so big she thought it would be hard to lose in our small house.  Anyway for some reason she opened the dishwasher which we never use because I wash all the dishes by hand and there are not that many dishes from just the two of us.  We don't cook anything fancy that uses a lot of dishes.  There she found the big tupperware dish that she puts the leftover pizza in.  It was still dirty.  So I guess she was trying to hide it one day last year when someone was coming over.

Guaranteed

Barb had gotten crowns on all of her back teeth last year before we left for Florida.  The other day, she broke one of her crowns.  So she went to the dentist and he said that they were guaranteed for a year.  So he would replace it for free. Well actually he charged our old dentist who did the original work.  So Barb got her tooth replaced and when she came home from the dentist she was hungry.  So she was eating potato salad because she thought that would be soft and wouldn't possibly hurt her new tooth.  However, because her mouth was still frozen she accidently bit a big chunk out her cheek while eating the potato salad.

Father's Day

The tournament was on Sarah's birthday and Father's Day.  I had told Sarah that our team wasn't very good.  So I was sure we wouldn't make it to Sunday.  That we would be eliminated on Saturday.  But we won 2 out of our first 3 games.  So we were still in the tournament on Sunday morning.  But we had the 8 am game.  I told Sarah that we would probably lose and I would be home in time to go to Cora's for our traditional brunch.  But we won at 8 am and had to play again at 11:30 am.  So Sarah and Barb went to Cora's without me.  I got home in the afternoon and they weren't home yet.  Barb had taken Sarah to the Thrift Store to buy her birthday presents.  I had a nap and when they got home they brought KFC which used to be one of Sarah's favourite birthday dinners.  So I hadn't missed everything.

Schedule

So we had the 9:30 pm game on Friday night and didn't get to leave the ballpark until after midnight.  Then we had the 9 am game on Saturday morning.  We had won both games.  So we had to wait around all day for the winners bracket semi-finals that evening.  I went home which was an hour away and had a nap.  We didn't actually get to start the game until 10 pm.  The game wasn't over until midnight and we lost.  So we had to play our next game in the loser's bracket on Sunday morning at 8 am.  We had to be at the ballpark at 7 am to hand in our rosters for the game.  We won the 8 am game and played again at 11:30 am.  We lost that game but we qualified for the World Tournament which we our goal.

Roads Out of Town

We played the 9:30 pm game on Friday night and didn't get to leave the park until after midnight.  I had stayed around after the game while the guys had a beer or two.  Then on the way home, I ran into the RIDE program where the police were checking everyone for drinking and driving.  I guess they had blocked off all the roads out the small town and our guys all got stopped no matter which way they were going.  I think they all had to get breathalized and may have been given tickets.

Safe Parking

A couple of years ago, I had the back window of my car blown out by a homerun at a tournament. So now I always try to find a safe place to park at the ballpark.  I was at a new ballpark in Monkton tonight and was driving around looking for a safe parking spot.  I was just about to park and then I noticed that everyone was looking at me.  Then a foul ball bounced in the empty parking spot beside me.  So this was definitely not a safe parking spot.  So I drove out of the parking lot and parked down the street from the ballpark and walked back.

Long Walks

I read somewhere that one way to make your walks more interesting and walk for longer than usual is to have a destination or errand to do during your walk.  So I regularly walk to the bank downtown or to other places downtown.  And when I walk down by the river in the park downtown, there are lots of geese and ducks.  The geese are kind of scary because they hiss at me if they are near the walking path but the baby ducks are cool.  They are very little but they can swim really fast from the shore to their mother and father in the river.  It is quite neat to see.

Contact List

I was trying to transfer our contacts from our old phone to our new Androids.  It was taking a long time because I had to do them one at a time.  I was putting in my sister's number in the Android and accidently pushed the wrong button and called her by mistake.  It was 11:45 pm. So I hung up right away and hoped that I didn't disturb her or wake her up.  Then I accidently phoned her again thinking I was hanging up.  I hung up again.  Then a couple of seconds later I got a call from my sister asking if everything was okay.  She was worried that something was wrong because she got these strange phone calls.

The Chase

We were hoping for a quick final series in the NHL Playoffs because I only had 2 players left and was in second place.  I was being chased by two other guys and they had 3 players each.  I was hoping Las Vegas Knights would win not only because I had 2 of their players but also because they were a first year franchise and nobody thought they would have any chance this year.  If they had won, which they didn't, the bookies in Las Vegas would have lost millions of dollars.  So anyway, the Washington Capitals won for the first time in their history and I finished second in the hockey pool and won $60.  I took Barb out for dinner at McDonalds to celebrate because I had used her strategy to pick my players.

Beaver

I was sitting around on a Sunday afternoon and got a text message which I thought was from Barb. I don't know Barb's cellphone number by heart.  The text message asked if I was playing tomorrow.  I said no I was playing on Wednesday this week.  Barb doesn't really keep track of my fastball schedule so I didn't think it was unusual for her to ask.  When I told Barb about getting her text message, she said she didn't send me any message.  She looked at my phone and checked the number and realized it was from Patricia Beaver asking her if she was playing pickleball tomorrow.  Barb had not given Beaver, her new cellphone number.  So Beaver texted Barb's old cellphone number which was now my cellphone number.

US Tournament

Barb was going to a pickleball tournament in New York State.  She typing Courtland, New York into the GPS and nothing came up.  So she looked it up on Google maps and found out that it was Cortland, New York.  So then she typed Cortland, New York into the GPS and found that the estimated time to drive there was one hour longer than what Google Maps had told her.  Then she realized that she had Avoid Tolls on the GPS.  When she turned off Avoid Tolls, she got the same route as Google Maps.

If You Could Read My Mind

I was talking to Stan during our video chat tonight about pdf editors.  I was talking about it.  Then after we had talked for a little while, I typed into Google "Open Source" and the search engine added "pdf editor".  How did it know?

Letter

Sarah sent me a letter attachment as an email today.  I read it.  I didn't understand it but it looked very legal and such.  So I thought she was in some kind of legal trouble.  It turned out to be sort of a joke.  She sent this letter of agreement to her supervisor which tried to get him to commit to take her with him if he ever leaves the company.

Up Early

Barb has learned to stay up late with me and sleep in in the mornings now.  She gets her 7 hours of sleep every night and then she is good for the next day.  I usually sleep for 10 hours each night.  Anyway it is no trouble for her to get up early in the morning if she needs to.  She has been on European time for the past two weeks (5 hours ahead) because she is getting up early to watch the French Open tennis tournament live on television.

Fallacy

I was reading this book on Clear Thinking which described all these fallacies.  Near the end of the hockey pool, Barb kept asking me how Dave Mason could get all the best players on all the best teams.  And I tried to convince her that she was thinking about it all wrong.  Dave Mason was in first place because his teams had gotten this far and he had good players on the teams.  If I was in first place, I would have all the best players on all the best teams.  She is getting cause and effect all mixed up.

Birds' Nests

A whole flock of birds are building nests in the fur tree in front of our house.  They are constantly flying in and out of the tree and sitting on the roof of the house above the garage.  They just love to poop on my car.  Today there were 5 poops on my windshield.

Android

Barb always said we don't need two cellphones since we can always take the shared cellphone with us individually because we almost never go out at the same time.  But this weekend she found that it was difficult for her friends to reach her using her cellphone if I have the cellphone.  So when I got home from Cobourg I found out that Barb had gone out and bought another SIM card and was investigating cellphone plans.  She was disappointed that the pay-as-you-go plan that we have on our current phone is no longer offered.  So she looked into the options and decided to buy a plan from Rogers.  That was just the beginning of our problems.

iMessages

I was getting ready to head home after the tournament and I stopped at Tim Hortons to message Barb to tell her I was leaving and should be home in 3 hours.  I hooked into the Tim Hortons wifi and sent her an iMessage not realizing that we don't use iMessage now that we have Android phones and use Facebook Messenger.  Fortunately, Barb keeps her old iPod around because she has all her contact information on it and not on her Android.  She heard her iPod beep and so she got my iMessage.  She didn't tell me that she doesn't use iMessage anymore until I got home.

Disqualified

Barb went to the community center early in the morning to register for the tournament.  I went to the ballpark early for our first game.  We had another game around noon and then had a break.  So I went over to the community center to see how Barb was doing.  She told me that she was disqualified from the tournament because she was rated 4.5 and the tournament was restricted to no higher than 4.0 players.  There was another pair of players that Barb knew in the tournament who were also disqualified.  The organizers let her play exhibition games but they didn't count in the tournament.  It was okay anyway because her partner was not very good and they never hit Barb the ball.  So they lost most of their games.  I was coaching our last ball game of the day and Barb came over to the ballpark and told me she was going home.  My team wasn't in the playoffs on Sunday but I said I was going to stay and watch the playoffs anyways on Sunday.

Park and Community Center

I went to the ballpark in Friday evening to watch the games and found out that the ballpark was right around the corner from the Airbnb, no more than 2 minutes away.  I could have walked to the ballpark.  I also found out that the community center where Barb was playing pickleball the next day in the same complex as the ballpark.

"My Wife"

Our second tournament was in Cobourg which was about 3 hours away. So I booked an Airbnb with a double bed and tried to convince Barb to come with me because there was a pickleball tournament in Cobourg that weekend.  I kept telling her to get a partner and go to the tournament and then we could drive together but she kept saying she didn't have a partner and didn't want to go.  So I left for Cobourg by myself.  I got to my Airbnb at 7 pm and hooked up to the wifi and messaged Barb to say I got there safe.  I said that I got 2 phone calls on our shared cellphone on my way to Cobourg and got 2 texts as well.  There was a lady trying to get in touch with her urgently.  When I got to Cobourg, Barb told me that the lady was in Cobourg and her pickleball partner had injured herself and wanted Barb to come to Cobourg and play with her.  So I said I would ask the owner of the Airbnb if it was okay for "my wife" to join me.  She said sure it was okay and she didn't charge me anything extra. So Barb drove to Cobourg in the evening and we met at the Tim Hortons at 11:30 so I could give her the extra key and show her the way to the Airbnb and she wouldn't wake the owner.

Second Game

In the second game of the tournament, we had the same two umpires except the fat umpire who was behind the plate in the first game was now on the bases.  Again the game was tied late in the game.  We had a runner on third base with none out and our batter hit a fly ball to left field.  Our runner tagged up and when the outfielder caught the ball, he ran home easily.  The other team appealed saying the he left early and the home plate umpire said he did leave early.  So he was out.  There was no way that he left early.  He was going to score easily and didn't have to leave early to score.  But now we had two out and nobody on base.  We didn't score in the rest of the game and we lost 3-2 in extra innings.  So now we were out of the playoffs and we just as easily could have been in the playoffs if we had won those two games.

First Tournament

It was my first tournament as a coach of the Diamondbacks.  In the first game, the score was tied late in the game and there was a runner on first base.  Our batter bunted and the ball hit the plate and the catcher jumped out to get the ball and fell down.  Our batter should have been safe at first base but the umpire called it a foul ball.  The ball hit the plate which is in fair territory and bounced forward.  The catcher caught the ball in front of the plate and fell down in fair territory.  It should have been a fair ball and we should have had runners on first and second base with none out but the batter had to come back with another strike against him.  Then he struck out and we had missed a great opportunity to win the game.  The game went into extra innings and we lost 2-1.  I thought that was strange as well because the games had a time limit but also played extra innings to break the tie.

Never Trust Your Alarm

I had a 9 am game in St Clements about a half hour away. So I had to get up early the next morning.  I went to bed before midnight which I almost never do.  I set my alarm on my phone and went to sleep.  I woke up just before my alarm was supposed to go off.  Then the time passed and the alarm didn't go off.  I looked at the time that I set on the alarm and found out that I had set 9 pm rather than 9 am.  That was because I went to bed in the pm and not the am as I usually do.