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Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo collected his first official sunburn of the season this gergous day. (Robbo’s doctor has been fussing at him recently about Vitamin D deficiency. A few more outings per month like today’s and that problem ought to rectify itself.)
First, he spent the morning bench coaching the younger Misses Port Swillers’ softball team to a 12-7 victory. (They now stand at 8-1 on the season). Among other things, he was delighted to discover that the youngest gel has the apparent super power ability to become two-dimensional at will, this being the only explanation of how she managed to slide under a tag at home plate. I’d swear when she pancaked, she went absolutely flat.
Next, he spent the afternoon puttering about in the yard, mowing, trimming, weeding and (just to mix things up a bit), giving the front door portico its yearly scrubbing.
We are paying the wages for our sinful slothiness in not having got round to cleaning out the gutters last fall, insofar as one of the ones on the front of the port swiller mansion, chock full of dead leaves, mulch and new maple saplings, recently wrenched itself away from the fascia board and started bowing out ominously. Yesterday, we finally got them cleaned. Today, we had a local handyman out to re-attach the bowmeister. As I stood about jawing with him, I discovered that he is a licensed bow-hunter and helps the county with keeping the local deer population within something approaching reasonable limits. When I mentioned that I used to hunt deer myself in my misspent yoot and that venison sausage was amongst my very favorite foods, he replied that he makes his own (among other products) all the time and would I like to have some of it?
This looks like the beginning of a bee-u-tiful friendship.
So now it’s just a matter of waiting for five o’clock to roll around. As a treat for a productive day’s work, I hied me to the butcher’s counter at the local Gourmet Giant (pronounced “GER-may GEEE-aunt”) and nabbed one of their extra thick ribeyes. Yum. After dins, it’ll probably be Buckaroo Banzai. The Nats are playing tonight, but I feel I need a break from watching them strand so many base-runners. Not good for ol’ Robbo’s ulcer.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo spent his Saturday morning out working in the yard and is now sitting down to a tall, cold glass of iced coffee (aka the Sweet, Blesséd Nectar of the Gods), smug and complacent in the knowledge that he got all of the mowing, weed-whacking, raking and blowing over and done before the rains come in later today and tomorrow. There’s still some weeding to be done, but we’ve been suffering a bit of a drought ’round here and the ground is getting rayther hard, so I feel it’s best to blow off put on hold the weeding until after the skies let loose. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The port swiller yard has, I’m afraid, deteriorated a great deal over the course of the years, now consisting more of weeds – clover, dandelion, that little low-growing, round-leafed, blue-flowered thing - than of grass. However, I have become quite comfortable with this: So long as the stuff is green and can be cut neat and trim, I no longer really give much of a damn what it’s composition may be.
Whilst laboring in teh vinyard, so to speak, I heard my first catbird of the season. As much as I like catbirds (and they are among my favorites), I can never compute how the expression “sitting in the catbird seat” can possibly mean the same thing as sitting pretty or being on top of things. To me, catbirds sound fussy and neurotic, and always seem to be working themselves up into some kind of tizzy. “Eeeeeh! EEEEEEeeeeh! EEEEEEEEEeeeh!!” they say. After a while, I find myself answering. What? What do you want? What can I do? I can only think that the expression “sitting in the catbird seat” is a bit of mellifluous nonsense and was never meant to be any kind of observation on the bird’s apparent character.
Now, had it been mockies, then it would make sense. But I suppose “sitting in the mockingbird seat” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Speaking of sitting in catbird seats, how does the paterfamilias properly reply to the eldest gel’s, “Dad! Can I take my friends to see the Nats game this afternoon? Pleeeease!!”? Like this: “While I’m out working in the yard, I want this house cleaned top to bottom, or not a smell of the game do you get, even if it means calling your friends at the last second to tell them your dad banned you.” That’s how. And it works. Leverage. It’s all about leverage.
So Mrs. R and teh gels, together with their friends, are off to Nat’nals Park even as I blog. I’ve got a few more jobs to take care of and decided to stay behind, but will probably flip the game on teevee myself later.
Speaking of ballgames, may I just note here that the younger gels’ softball team has roared out to a commanding 4-0 record to start their spring season? Last evening, the middle gel got two doubles, a walk and 4 ribbies. And these weren’t your little league Keystone Kops defense doubles either, but a pair of ropes that she positively crushed to deep center. Then she ended the game by deftly one-handing an awkward grounder to short and gunning down the runner at first. Proud? Moi?
Well, I suppose I had ought to go and finish up my chores so that I can spend the shank of the afternoon loafing in good conscience. And I do need a bit of R&R. Although I normally don’t post much about politics these days out of prudence, I must say that my nasal passages have been rubbed absolutely raw by the volume of beverages – hot and cold – I’ve been snarfing up over all those Dog Wars photoshops that have been appearing around the intertoobs. Hi. Larious.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo doesn’t mean to indulge in wanton self-pity, but really, this continues to be an absolutely miserable allergy season. The combination of symptoms makes me simply want to crawl back into bed and stay there until, oh, June or so.
It also knocks about twenty points off of Robbo’s cognitive skills, reducing him to gratuitous random posting instead of developing something longer and more in-depth. So here we go:
♦ Today is the home opener for Robbo’s beloved Nationals. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that baseball is once again in full swing. However, I was rayther startled to discover that over the off-season, MASN let go the lovely and talented Debbi Taylor, who has for some time served as their dugout reporter, replacing her with some, ah, young person named Kristina Akra. I can’t say that I’m pleased with this move. Change is bad, m’kay? (UPDATE: The Nats hold on to win a nail-biter in 10. And Life is Good.)
♦ Today is also the opener for the younger gels’ softball season. At practice the other evening, a ball caromed off the youngest gel’s glove and hit her in the forehead, raising a considerable lump over her eyebrow. Debate has raged in the port swiller household since then over whether the lump was the size of a marble, a golf ball or a grapefruit, provoking testy questions from Dad such as, “Haven’t you people got anything better to squabble about?”
♦ The past few nights I have awakened to the sound of an owl hooting in the woods. (I have a dim memory that I’ve posted on this phenomenon before, perhaps at about this same time of year.) Anyhoo, it’s a delightful sound – unless, of course, you happen to be a field mouse. Do different types of owl have different calls? This one goes, “Whoo-huh-whoo-huh-WHOOOO!”
♦ Speaking of nights, I had a dream some time during Lent that I rescued a Jesuit missionary from a lynch mob on the National Mall. I have no earthly idea what this was supposed to mean.
♦ Speaking of Lent, now that it is over, ol’ Robbo has got back to his regular reading schedule. As has been the case for some years past, the very first author I have revisited is Evelyn Waugh. It is my resolution this year to read and reread all of his works, finally getting around to Helena and also going back to Brideshead even though I don’t especially like it. This may surprise (and outrage?) some of you friends of the decanter, but the fact of the matter is that I find it too syrupy and earnest, too melodramatic. I much prefer Sword of Honour as his greatest literary achievement.
♦ A conversation:
Eldest Gel: Hey, Dad, why don’t you mow the lawn?
Self: Why don’t you mow the lawn?
E.G.: Okay!
We’ll see how long that lasts.
Greetings, my fellow port-swillers, and Happy 3/14!
It is, indeed, a glorious day ’round here, with a forecast high of something not far short of 80. The only thing marring the picture is the pollen count, which is causing ol’ Robbo to feel as if somebody absentmindedly left their bowling ball in his sinuses and forgot to fetch it. Do you suppose Blue Cross covers nose amputations?
At any rate, as of last evening, the sides officially came off of the ol’ Wrangler for the season, meaning whoever sits in the back seat between now and the next snowfall will be getting Ma Nature, in all her moods, right between the eyeballs.
Speaking of Wranglers, reports I hear from up north indicate that the Mothe is thinking of buying one herself. Not a soft-top like mine, and probably not a stick-shift either, but hey, close enough. Perhaps I can talk her into raised suspension and oversized tires? Also, I may send her a pair of Click n’ Clack fuzzy dice and Yosemite Sam “Back Off!” mudflaps.
Oh, and don’t forget, Mothe: Wrangler drivers have a custom of waiving to one another as they pass. (Seriously. I find it to be a most amiable custom.)
Last evening found ol’ Robbo on the mound pitching a scrimmage at the gels’ softball practice. Granted, I was serving them up specifically so that the batters would put the ball in play, but the number of line drives I had to duck or sidestep made me feel even more like Charlie Brown than usual. The rest of the coaching staff and players evidently found my efforts to avoid getting beaned to be comic gold. Gold, Jerry!
A conversation: Eldest gel – “You people [i.e., Mrs. R and Self] drive me crazy sometimes!” Self – “Just returning the favor.”
Greetings, my fellow port-swillers!
This past Saturday marked the opening practice of this spring’s softball season and found ol’ Robbo and the two younger gels down the batting cages at the local fields, with Self dutifully manning the pitching machine and the young ladies of the Miracle on Dirt v.2 taking their first swings.
It was only yesterday morning that I suddenly realized I had left my glove at the fields. First practice and already I’m losing things. Sheesh.
Stifling both the urge to vent my irritation in unsuitable language and the pessimistic thought that I’d never see the glove (which I’ve owned for about twenty years) again, I kept my calm and said to myself, “Self, we’ll just swing by the fields on the way home this evening and see what we see.”
Well, damme if the glove wasn’t still there after all. Some thoughtful soul had put it in the equipment box next to the batting cages. (Thank you, whoever you are!)
A very small matter, no doubt, but nonetheless gratifying. The neat resolution of this problem got me wondering: Is there a patron saint of baseball, and, if so, who is it?
A quick search on the intertoobs brought me round to an answer posted by Dr. Taylor Marshall (with whom I actually had lunch about five years ago when first contemplating swimming the Tiber). According to Taylor, that position falls to none other than St. Rita of Cascia. Here’s the gunnegshun:
Saint Rita’s patronage of baseball is connected to the drilling of the Santa Rita Oil Well in Big Lake, Texas, in 1921. Two Catholic nuns who had invested in the well and named it “Saint Rita Oil Well” in honor of her patronage of “impossible cases.”
Meanwhile, the workers who worked on the well built a baseball field nearby for recreation. The oil well proved extremely profitable, and the nuns hit it rich. Hence, the blessed connection between the Saint Rita’s well and the sport of baseball.
I suppose the oil connection makes St. Rita an obligatory Rangers fan. On the other hand, given her patronage over lost causes and impossibilities, I suppose that within my own home division she’ll be pulling for the Mets this year.
Greetings, my fellow water swiggers!
Yesterday afternoon, in anticipation of the spring season that starts with first practices this week¹, ol’ Robbo and the youngest gel toddled over to a batting clinic given by one of teh local high school softball teams. The idea of the clinic was a sort of twofer: Teach the kiddies some technique and teach the coaches how to teach the kiddies. Whilst the gels were all off in the gym going round the various batting stations with assistant coaches and high school players, the little league adults were herded into what is normally the school’s band room to listen to a lecture from the pooh-bah of the high school program. (It was billed as a discussion of proper swinging technique, but most of the talk turned out to be a combination of a brazen recruiting plea and long, doddering reminiscences.)
All in all, not all that exciting (unless you’re one of us little league sharks² and even then it got a bit tedious), but I did want to pass on one interesting little nugget. For years, I have heard the movement by which the batter pivots on her back foot as she swings through referred to as ”squashing the bug.” However, in describing this movement, the high school pooh-bah went out of his way to emphasize that he preferred a different expression, namely “toe to China.” As in, “I’m going to dig on that foot so hard that my toe’s going to go clean through to China.”
Judging by the murmur that went through the audience of coaches, there seemed to be widespread agreement that this expression is preferable. Why, I don’t know. Is it because bugs are people, too? It seems to me that if one is trying to capture an eight year old’s imagination, messy insect elimination is probably a better tool than abstract exercises in geographical geometry, but what do I know.
Anyhoo, just thought I’d pass that along.
¹ It’s snowing out even as I type this.
² Both the younger gels will be playing AAA this season (on the same team, thank God). I’ll be coaching again and we’ll all be playing for the same manageress (and largely with the same team-mates) as we did at the AA level last spring when we won the city series champeenship. Regular friends of the carafe may recall me speaking of this team as the Miracle on Dirt.)
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As I post this, da plummah¹ is even now upstairs replacing the bit of piping which, as mentioned below, sprung a leak this time around. (It’s one of the lines into the gels’ bathtub. We replaced the other one about three years ago.)
I must give the gels more credit for their response to the potty-overflow flood yesterday (although not more credit for causing said flood.) When they realized what was happening, apparently, instead of panicking they went to work shoving furniture out from under the flow, trying to plunge the potty itself and, as I mentioned, grabbing as many receptacles as they could. All in all, things weren’t nearly as bad as they could have been.
The eldest gel’s CYO basketball season wrapped up yesterday – single-elimination playoffs start next weekend. I do not believe I have ever seen the gel play so consistently and aggressively as she did against a tough team from the cafeteria-catholic church down the road from us. She’s a big girl and was using her size to really dominate under the hoops. I find now that her school is organizing a team to train for and run a 5K race and that she wants to go on to that in preparation for perhaps going out for cross-country when she starts high school this fall (yeek!). It’s things like this that keep me from pulling all my hair out over her attacks of Teenager Derangement Syndrome.
Messing about in the woods yesterday, the middle gel came across an old deer skull with an 8-point rack on it, which, being the packrat that she is, she immediately brought home and asked if she could keep. This brought back pleasant memories of my own misspent yoot, as for many years I kept a raccoon skull on my desk. (I also had a couple pairs of hunting trophy antlers mounted in my room which Mrs. R eventually made me get rid of when we started dating.) To her credit, Mrs. R, who is of a considerably less outdoor-oriented background than I am, did not suffer conniptions on being shown the gel’s prize, but instead tactfully suggested that she might want to donate the antlers to her class at school as a nature artifact.
The Family Robbo found itself going into a bout of early spring cleaning (or, as we call it, jihad) this morning, digging deep into closets to try and reduce the clutter somewhat. Excavation of the gels’ rooms left us with three or four very large bags of clothes no longer needed, which the youngest gel and I loaded onto her wagon and took down the street to the Goodwill drop box. It was very important to teh gel to haul the wagon herself both ways and to lecture me on the virtue of charity. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, and even a bit eerie, as I had already made up my mind that this Lent I really need to start concentrating more on doing charitable works.
Well, da plummah is about done, so I guess it’s back to jihad for ol’ Robbo.
¹ I’ve always said “da plummah” since watching this during my formative years:
A complete aside, but this also puts me in mind of Mark Steyn’s lampoon of Tony Curtis’s performances in Roman epic movies: “Yondah is da castle of ma faddah, da Emp’rah.”
Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!
Have you ever looked up at the summah sky to see big clouds that, with just a few extra torques of energy, could turn into thunderstorms, but somehow don’t? Robbo’s ideas engine is experiencing that same phenomenon.
♦ Sign-up sheets have now been posted for next spring’s softball season in my neck of the woods. Ol’ Robbo is mighty happy about that. Both the younger gels will be playing, most probably on the same team. And of course, Dad will offer his meager coaching skills for the Cause as well.
♦ In this article about the appalling decline in marriage rates in this country, I noticed the following editorial creep: “The proportion of adults who are married has plunged to record lows as more people decide to live together now and wed later, reflecting decades of evolving attitudes about the role of marriage in society.” Evolving? Project much?
♦ Caught the original True Grit on teevee the other evening and I’ve got to say flatly that I actually like the newer one more. Not that the original isn’t fine. Weakest part? Kim Darby as Mattie. Too much late 60′s gee-whiz about her. (A not uncommon type at the time, I believe.) And Glen Campbell hasn’t got a patch on Matt Damon.
♦ Last evening found the younger gels making clay models of historickal items for their class at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method. The middle gel, rayther ambitiously, opted to recreate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. When she mentioned the Neo-Babylonian Empire, I suddenly had a brain freeze as to who had conquered it. So I dashed into the library, scooped up my Herodotus and read aloud excerpts about the Persian Cyrus the Great, who was, of course, the man responsible. To their great credit, rayther than howling with boredom or horror, the gels were actually interested. Evidently, the nerd side of the Force is strong in them. Good. Gooooood.
♦ Somebody from RFEC recently asked Mrs. R if I was a member of Opus Dei. Whenever that name is brought up, I always bug out my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears, and say, “Boogie! Boogie! Boo!“
♦ Well I think it’s funny.
♦ Concurrently reading Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers and watching the HBO series dramatization of same, I’m impressed with the very high quality of both. The only thing I don’t like about the prose of the book is Ambrose’s constant insertion of what I call “Regular Joe” language.
♦ When I am emperor of the world, opera stars who give full-throated, vibrato-laden renditions of popular songs – including, especially, Christmas songs – will be publicly flogged.
♦ Did I mention that the eldest gel’s CYO basketball team won their second game of the season this past weekend? I don’t have much interest in or knowledge of basketball, but I will tell you this: Seeing the gel, who is a rank novice, drive right down the lane, hit the lay-up, draw the foul and sink the free-throw was a positive delight.
♦ Finally, today is the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Nashville, fought in 1864, in which Union General George H. Thomas effectively annihilated the Confederate Army of the Tennessee under poor old John Bell Hood. I don’t have anything illuminating to say about the battle, but instead use the occassion as an excuse to repost a favorite painting of mine:
So there you go.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers! The name of this post? Oh, what the heck – let Nordlinger sue! Shoe fits foot and that’s all there is to it.
♦ First, I was able to snag Mrs. R’s laptop over the weekend, so as my weekend traffic is usually terrible, you might want to review the posts below to better understand what I’m talking about here.
♦ Oh, and let me just say that I hate Macs! Infernal thing kept trying to tell me where to go and what to do. Bloody impudence. Give me a PC any time. And if that makes me a dinosaur, so be it!
♦ As promised in the post on the great chimney fiasco below, Mrs. R and I did indeed sneak off to a downtown hotel Saturday night. All in all, a relaxing and pleasant time, although once again ol’ Robbo’s inability to get in a good sleep away from home manifested itself. Whenever I stay in a hotel, I tend to drift back and forth between semi-consciousness and dream time without ever getting to the deeper part of the sleep cycle. And each of the dreams builds on the last, usually pursuing a theme of something starting out relatively simple, but getting progressively more complicated as the dreams wear on, and often incorporating what I half hear or see when in that dozy state between them. This time, I recall that my first dream involved the simple proposition of trying to cross a softball field to get to where my team was warming up. I don’t recall all the permutations of the thing as it progressed through the night, but certainly at one point later on I was being chased by Confederate cavalry.
♦ We decorated the port-swiller Christmas tree yesterday. A decorated tree on December 4. It just ain’t right. I derived some grim satisfaction by pointing out that the thing would be dead long before Twelfth Night.
♦ This morning I heard something odd, speaking of Christmas: In roughly the 43rd rendition of “The First Noel” I’ve endured since the beginning of Thanksgiving week, I couldn’t help noticing that in the refrain, “Born is the king of Israel,” the choir were pronouncing Israel as “I-Is-REE-el” instead of “I-Is-RYE-el,” which is the way I’ve always heard it sung. As the kids like to say (or do they still?), what’s up with that?
♦ Yes, I say “endured”. And the punch line is that, come December 26, which is actually in the Christmas Feast, all such musick will positively vanish from the airwaves. Fitting for the by-then withering tree. Time and place. I rave about everything having its proper time and place, and yet nobody listens. Feh.
♦ Or should that be humbug?
♦ May I finish up with a little bragging? I may? Thank you! Well, yesterday saw the eldest gel play her first CYO basketball game of the season. I’ll spare you any triumphalism about the game: We got crushed by St. Theresa’s, 33-9. In defense of our team, I will say that we only had seven players to their fifteen, which means we could only swap out two at a time while they had three functioning squads through which they could rotate. And they had some giantesses on their crew. Also, we’d only had our first practice on Friday and the ref had a real down on us for some reason. No, what I really wanted to praise was the gel’s attitude: I have never in all her years seen her so full of hustle and aggressiveness as she was at that game, flying up and down the court, going after the ball, taking her licks, cheering on her mates and…….not complaining at all. She tells me that she’s really not all that especially interested in basketball, but is doing this instead in order to become more socially active and to help out the school as best she can. That, my friends, shows that we are making progress.
A happy day to you all!
UPDATE: Oh, I should have noted that “CYO” stands for Catholic Youth Organization. From what I gather, it is a sort of diocesan club league, different from the regular parochial school league, in which the gel is also playing.
I was not aware that “butt to gut” was a recognized term of basketball positioning technique. But then again, I never took much interest in the sport.
Amazing what one learns when one shows up a few minutes early to retrieve one’s progeny from practice……
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