Stan

I was having a video chat with my friend Stan and looked up something called Intergovernmental Committee on Futures and Forecasting. I found a selected works of George R. Lindsey who used to be our old boss and the book listed Stan as a contributor. On the cover was a picture of George Lindsey as a young man talking at a blackboard with a drawing of a baseball diamond on the chalk board. George Lindsey was one of the first people to do scientific analysis of baseball statistics back in the 1950's. I had read all of his papers in the journals when I studied baseball statistics back in the 1980's.

Tee Shirt

Barb was commenting on the nice t-shirt her friend had on. Then a couple of days later, Barb got an identical beautiful t-shirt from the friend who has a screen printing business. Unfortunately, it was too small even though it was supposed to be a men's XL.

People in the Way

Laura gave Barb her iPad to film her routine at the competition but Barb found that no matter what she did there were always heads in the way. Then the girl beside us who heard Barb complaining explained to Barb that she had her thumb over the camera.

Cousin

Ali said that his cousin saw us a Starbucks in Milton the other day. He recognized us because of Laura's hair. His cousin said Barb slammed the door on him but he said I was very nice to him. I held the door for him and said I was sorry for Barb and Laura slamming the door. You see it is important to be nice to everyone you meet. You never know who is watching.

Fit to be Tied

Barb was fit to be tied when Laura only got third place in the competition because she thought Laura was so much better than the other competitors. The first and second place winners didn't do any difficult moves and were really boring. The audience didn't appreciate them, the way they reacted to Laura's routine. We were discussing it all the way home from Toronto and it took us a long time to get out of Toronto because we were caught in the traffic jam caused by the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game that ended at the same time as the competition. After a while I understood what happened although Barb still thought it wasn't fair. The judges started every competitor with 10 points and then subtracted points for every little mistake they saw. So Laura had a lot of little mistakes because she did a lot of very difficult moves. The first and second place finishers didn't do any difficult moves so they didn't get any points taken away and ended with a better score than Laura.

Hair

Laura's routine was really well received by the audience. They all were screaming about the great moves she did. After she was finished the lady sitting in front of us turned around and told us how great Laura had done. A girl from one of the earlier competitions came up to us to say that Laura had killed all her moves and she had never seen a better routine. When Laura came back up to sit with us and watch the remaining routines, the guy sitting beside us said he now he not only liked her for her hair but also liked her for her pole ability. They all talked about how great Laura's spatchcock was and Laura had been so worried about it. She talked about it nonstop for the whole week she was with us before the competition but it went great and everyone loved it. We finally found out what a spatchcock was. It has almost as stupid a name as pickleball.

Food

Laura and Barb and I went to Toronto for Laura's pole competition and got there in the afternoon but Laura's event was the very last one and was late in the evening. So we sat and watched all the events in the afternoon and early evening. Laura brought a bag full of snacks which came in handy because we were there right through dinner time. There were rules in the theatre against bringing food in and we had to sneak it because there was a theatre lady standing at the bottom of the stairs watching us all very closely all day.