Pick Your Pitch

I was chatting with Sarah on iMessage tonight.  Barb chats with her every weekend but I don’t chat with her very often.  I was telling her about how I was having a very bad season this year in slow pitch.  I was not batting very well.  She was sad for me but she said don’t you always say something when you are in the batters box to focus and concentrate.  I said yes I used to and it used to help but I couldn’t remember what it was.  Barb said wasn’t it ‘Clouds’ and I said no it wasn’t that.  Then Sarah remembered what it was.  I used to say “Pick Your Pitch and Drive It”.

I told her that I would try it in my next game.  It worked and I started hitting better.  It doesn’t work all the time but I am definitely doing better than I did before.  At one game, I had a couple of good hits and I was on first base.  The first baseman was the captain of his team.  He said he tried to get me on his team but I went very early in the draft.  He said that I had a great swing and the only reason that I wouldn’t get on base was if I swung at a bad pitch.

Ugly Christmas Sweater

Every year they have a CanAm golf tournament where the Canadians play a match play tournament against the Americans in the park: all the Canadians wear red and white and all of the Americans wear blue and white.  We don’t play golf but we go down to the club house to see the score and have a hamburger and pop with all the golfers and their friends.

Usually I wear the red jersey I bought at the Canadian Fastball championship in St Thomas but this year I decided to wear the red Christmas sweater that Laura bought me that says “Fragile” and has a picture of the leg lamp on it.

Street Party

This was the first year that both Barb and I could go to the annual street party together.  It was a potluck dinner for everyone who lived on Nicklaus Street.  Every year the organizer reads a letter signed from Jack Nicklaus because the street is named after him.  We are a very golf oriented community.

At the start of the dinner, we are all asked to stand up and introduce ourselves.  When it came to our time, Barb asked me to stand up and introduce us.  I introduced us and told people about our hobbies and sports.  I guess a lady at another table wasn’t happy with my humility.  After I sat down, she spoke up she said that Barb was a champion pickleball player and everyone should become friends with her on facebook to see all her pictures of her wearing the medals she has won at tournaments.

Owl on the Patio

Sarah posted some old photos she took in New Hamburg on her facebook page.  They were pictures she took when we were assembling the patio furniture.  She took a number of pictures of us sitting on the patio love seat.  There was one of Sarah sitting between us and we were each kissing her on the cheek as she made a funny face.  She took one photo of Barb and me sitting on the two individual chairs.  I noticed right away that I was sitting in front of the statue of the Owl on the fence of our patio that is there to scare the chickadees away.  It looked like the Owl was sitting on my head.

Ottawa Mail

We had our mail from Ottawa being forwarded to New Hamburg for four months and thought we had changed all of the addresses with the people who regularly sent us mail.  Then we had our mail forwarded to Avon Park from New Hamburg for six months while we were in Florida.

I guess the four months of forwarding the mail from Ottawa had finished on the first of February.  Fortunately, our neighbour JC has the key to our Ottawa mail box and checks it once in a while.  So he was surprised to find some mail for us in the mail box after all these months.  There were magazines from McMaster and Carleton.  There was a statement for Laura from PC Financial and there was some letters from CRA for Laura and Sarah.  There was also a letter about the Line of Credit from the Royal Bank.

Barb was surprised to hear that she got something from Royal Bank because she was sure she had changed the address.  She had received mail from Royal Bank here in Florida.  She found the letter and looked closely at it and saw that it had originally gone to our Ottawa address and then to New Hamburg and then to Avon Park.  So she phoned Royal Bank and got our address changed.

I tried to change Laura and Sarah’s address with CRA but I found that you can only change the address using the My Account logon.  I had set them up for Laura and Sarah but I couldn’t remember the passwords.  So I couldn’t get in and change the address.  So I found forms on the CRA and filled them in for Laura and Sarah and mailed them to them to sign and mail to CRA.

AAU on Facebook

I took some pictures of my Ottawa friends who were playing in the AAU Fastball tournament in Disney’s Wide World of Sports this year.  Two of my friends from the Greater Ottawa Fastball League were playing on the Washington DC Positive Brothers and three of my friends from Trend Arlington were playing for The Braves from New York State.

One of my Trend Arlington friends asked me to take a picture of The Braves team picture for him on his smartphone.  I had never taken a picture on a smartphone before.  So I tried to take a picture and it didn’t click.  I kept pushing the button and pushing the button but it never clicked like my iPod does.  I gave him back his phone and told him it didn’t work. He looked at his smartphone and said no it did work and I had taken about 20 pictures.  I guess smartphones don’t click when you take a picture like iPods do.

I posted the pictures to facebook and got a lot of comments from my friends in Ottawa who liked the photos.  One of my friends asked me if I was coaching a team in the tournament.  I said no I was just a photographer.

Kodi Update

Barb was enjoying the British television series Downton Abbey on Kodi.  However, the last season was giving her trouble on Genesis.  So she asked our friend in the park here about it because he was the fellow who originally told us about Kodi.

He said that Phoenix had a new service where she could find other streams of television shows.  We use Phoenix to watch live sports and other live television.  Barb found the service he mentioned but when she clicked on an the episode of Downton Abbey that she wanted to watch, she got Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I guess free services are not always worth it.