Tia Chi

Barb was interested in trying Tai Chi at the community center with the group that meets every week.  The group did a demonstration at the recent community picnic.  I guess she has Tai Chi on her mind because she often calls Sarah's Chi Tea, Tia Chi.

Marlin's Son

One of the players on my fastball team brought his four year old son to the doubleheader tonight. Marlin didn't play the first game. So he could take care of his little boy on the bench.  Marlin was going to play the second game and was warming up while his son sat quietly on the bench.  Then he started yelling, "Daddy" and Marlin didn't reply.  So he yelled again, and still Marlin didn't reply.  When he yelled a third time, Marlin said "What?" a little annoyed.  And the son yelled, "I Love You".

Mental Block

For some reason, Barb always talks about the back of the house and the front of the house and gets them mixed up.  She talks about the garden in the front of the house and means the garden at the back of the house.  It is a strange mental block like her Bingo and Darts problem.

27 Minutes

I was recording an LP and sitting in my chair across the room working on the laptop.  I kept an eye on the screen of the desktop while I worked to make sure the album was recording and hadn't reached the end of the side.  After a long while, I thought something was wrong because the side of the LP was way too long.  I got up and checked it out and noticed that the LP was skipping.  I had copied 27 minutes of the same song skipping over and over again.

Five LPs

With my old desktop computer, I can not play the LPs while I copy them to MP3.  The computer is too slow.  So I have to record the LP without hearing it and then I edit it into its various tracks.  Today I was very upset because I had copied 5 LPs at 45 rpm before I noticed it was at the wrong speed.  Somehow I found out that all of the albums sounded like The Chipmunks were singing the songs.

Dink, Dink, Lob

Barb is very frustrated with the way the game of pickleball is changing.  Lobbing has become the most important strategy that players can employee.  It is very difficult for older players to get back to play a lob that goes over their head after they have been up at the net dinking.  Even if the player can get the lob back, they don't ever win the point.  Today she played a fellow who had mastered the lob game and when Barb did get the lob back over the net, he just hit a short dink and she couldn't get back up to the net to get it after being on the back line.  She wrote a notice on the pickleball forum about it and said that people shouldn't lob when the players are older.  They could get hurt running backwards. Most of the comments she got back said that lobbing was part of the game and she would have to get used to it.  Then later she got an email from Coach Maddy with a video attached talking about safety and he mentioned that someone had fallen going back for a lob and hit his head and later died in the hospital because of the injury to his head.  Still the old people keep lobbing.  Barb says not only is it dangerous, it makes the game no fun to play.  The only strategy you can use is to lob before the other team lobs.  There are no rallies anymore.  It is just dink, dink, lob.

First At Bat

I got back from Ottawa and played the second game of the double header in my league.  I actually went in to bat for the first time since I had hurt my thumb.  I wore my batting gloves and two thumb braces for protection.  But as it turned out, they didn't matter because I struck our without ever touching the ball.