Category Archives: Baseball

Sign of the Week – Warning (part two)

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It’s Sunday morning and I am starting the day in the summer office. It’s cool for the moment, but today’s forecast calls for afternoon temperatures to reach a high of 93 (34C).

The Arizona weekend began with an early Saturday morning flight to Phoenix, renting a car, grabbing a bite to eat on the recommendation of a friend before finding the right spot for my ‘signature picture’ which I share with my brothers and a few friends. It’s a silly picture, but fun.

St. Louis – July ’23
the first ‘bad picture’ Seattle – May ’23
on the way to Sunday’s game, Phoenix October ’23
I had to find the ‘right’ cactus, Arizona September ’23

My hotel was within walking distance to the stadium, and I paced myself in the heat. Chase Field has a retractable roof, the first of its kind when it opened in 1998. The roof was closed because it was 100 degrees (38C) late in the afternoon before game time.

The Astros won Saturday night’s game 1-0 (nil) and clinched a playoff berth as did the Diamondbacks with a Chicago Cubs loss. I walked home and grabbed some tacos for dinner at the hotel.

Sunday morning, I woke early and planned the day. The hotel I was staying was architecturally cool. It was constructed in the 1930s and had been a bank before being converted into a hotel and legend had it that the penthouse was once inhabited by Alfred Hitchcock.

coffee Sunday morning in the hotel lobby…an impressive Art Deco building from the 1930s

I had a breakfast date with a fellow blogger, Ingrid from Live, Laugh RV: Our Next Chapter. She and her husband were originally from Chicagoland not far from where I love before moving west, then retiring and deciding to live the RV life. Ingrid’s posts left yearning for travelling in retired RV lifestyle from one location to another while exploring and enjoying being outdoors. Her photographs were always stunning. It was wonderful to meet Ingrid in person, and we were never at loss for something to say over breakfast. After breakfast, we took an ‘ussie’ and I headed back to the hotel to pack and get ready for the last game of the season.

Ingrid and I after meeting for breakfast, October 1, 2023

On the final day of the season, all baseball games begin about the same time Sunday afternoon. I arrived when the gates opened found my seat behind the Astros dugout in hopes of seeking out my favorite player, Maurico Dubón.

Mauricio in the dugout

Continue reading Sign of the Week – Warning (part two) →

Three things for the first day of summer break 2025

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Summer break, my annual audition for retirement began yesterday after I finished getting my classroom cleaned, organized (that might be a stretch), and stored for the summer cleaning and learning season.

most of my work is done on my mobile device, but I had to work with this one on my desktop…. a color vision is posted at the end of the post

This year’s edition is seventy days long. It will be filled with family, grandies, travel, baseball, creativity, and dogs. I can’t wait.

TRAVEL and GRANDIES
This summer my wife and I will be traveling to Europe for a two-week vacation starting in London, then Wales, back to London, then to Paris, and finishing in Amsterdam before returning home. I am excited and nervous all at the same time. This trip is similar to the one I took fifteen years ago to take my father’s cremains home, except this time we will return our step-mother’s cremains to where she wanted to spend eternity. Like that trip to honor my father, I plan to blog along the way.

seven months old and growing by the day… soon they will be crawling.

Summer would be summer without a few weeks as the lake.  This year we will host our grandies for the first time. We are excited and looking forward to the summer with the family.

CREATIVITY
Continue reading Three things for the first day of summer break 2025 →

Three things for the last Saturday of ‘24

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It has been a long time since my last post, rumors of my passing are greatly exaggerated as Mark Twain said or wrote. I haven’t been writing much, though I’ve had ideas and photos I’ve wanted to post, but I have been keeping up with other blogs.

from “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and Horse”

Since my last ‘real’ post in August (Day 64 – Dog Days) I’ve gone back to school (twice), our grandies – a phrase copied/borrowed/stolen from Beth at  I didn’t have my glasses on… -have arrived, and my wife has recovered from her hip surgery, and so much more.

Christmas
I’ve been on break from school for the past week and the week has screamed past. I have been busy, and it was Christmas the first with our grandies. Our daughter and her dog have been home on break, too and it adds to the festiveness as well. We hosted Christmas Eve afternoon and attended Christmas Eve service, it was a good service with the traditional candle lighting and singing of ‘Silent Night’ to close worship. I cannot sing ‘Silent Night’ without thinking of my last Christmas in wife’s hometown ten years ago. For Christmas our daughter roasted the prime rib and for the first time ever, it was perfectly done even though it was almost an hour behind schedule. We enjoyed it at the table before exchanging gifts with our son, his wife and the grandies. I expect the coming week and New Year’s will be as busy and pass as quickly as this past week had.

Grandies
A new role – grandparent was bestowed upon us by our son and his wife. Christmas Eve marked their two-month birthday. Continue reading Three things for the last Saturday of ‘24 →

W^2 – indecisive

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W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, September 11, 2024

I am back at school, sort of.

It is good to be back at school. To be teaching and learning with kids and helping them see things from a new perspective. To have a schedule and do something productive. To be with colleagues who share your passion. To be growing with a purpose.

But sometimes you must be step back and take care of things at home. Since this past Monday, I’ve been at home taking care of things here. It’s my turn to be the caregiver. It’s hard. But it’s where I need to be. Forty years and almost thirty-three of them, married. I am thankful.

At school, my kiddos at school are in great hands. These are the same hands that took care of my kiddos when I had my second knee replaced in December 2018 and the same one who stepped up at 2 AM when my son had his motorcycle accident, five years ago. She’s been their countless times when I needed to be somewhere else, or when I was too sick to be at school. I am thankful.

I’ve been talking to her and hearing what my kiddos have been doing with her at school, while I am at home taking care of home. I am thankful.

This past summer was a whirlwind of sorts. heck, this past year!

summer’s last sunset (and a beer) Lake Margrethe, Michigan, August 31, 2024 8:03 PM

Summer finished at the lake with all of us – W, O, and B at the lake to close it down for the season. That’s the first picture. Continue reading W^2 – indecisive →

Day 64 – dog days

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I could hear the gentle rain tapping on the roof this morning when I got up before Ivy. Yesterday the weather made a turn. It’s cooler today after several days of warm, sometimes hot, muggy stillness of the dog days of August.

Later this morning, we will be going home. It is both exciting and bittersweet.

Ivy was a puppy when I first started blogging, now she’s a senior dog, the senior dog. She doesn’t move like she once did, which is a blessing because I can remember many times trying to find her when she wandered away from the cottage and took off into the woods. We’ve learned a few things since those early days, but Fern is a lot like Ivy, but she will return when you call her. We have an Invisible Fence at home and both dogs know the boundary. At the lake we’ve been using a training collar, but that doesn’t contain either of them, especially Fern who has been known to return home with a deer leg, or two. It is bittersweet watching Ivy age, but it’s heartwarming seeing how Fern interacts with her. (NOTE – edited, last sentence added after publishing)

Fern and her deer leg from our trip here in April ’24

Continue reading Day 64 – dog days →

Tuesday’s Tune – Deep in the Heart of Texas

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It’s Tuesday and time for another edition of Tuesday’s Tune. A couple of weeks ago, I went home for a brief visit. Down Thursday, home Sunday.

the original ‘peanut photo’ taken June 2019

WARNING: While my trip how was brief, this post is not. It’s a long read.

Home is Texas, Sugar Land, to be precise. Sugar Land is a town southwest of Houston, though it’s hard to tell the dividing lines between the two these days.

The stars at night
Are big and bright
Deep in the heart of Texas
The prairie sky
Is wide and high
Deep in the heart of Texas

It was a business trip of sorts, my stepmother died in January after a brief illness. She would have been ninety, ten days ago on the thirteenth. When she died, in January, we sorted through her apartment  and dispersed what remained of her belongings. In the end, I  packed several boxes full of pictures, letters, family memorabilia and shipped them to her niece and nephew in England. What we couldn’t keep, we donated. I decided I wanted a cedar chest which had belonged to my paternal grandfather. At the time, I tried to have it shipped home, but I couldn’t find a cost-effective freight forwarder or another way to do it, so I placed it in the storage locker and planned to come back during the summer to pick it up.

Fly down, rent a car, and drive back. I wrote about the return trip, or at least a part of it last week in my W^2 – farming post.

There is a lot to process when you lose a loved one. Saturday was the fifteenth anniversary of my dad’s death in ’09. His death, and my grieving, is part of why I started blogging in the first place. Therapy of sorts, I am work in progress. Continue reading Tuesday’s Tune – Deep in the Heart of Texas →

Tuesday’s Tune – O Canada

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O my, I am dropping the ‘h’! and it is Tuesday and time for a Tuesday’s Tune, Canada style. I am in Toronto for my 29th baseball stadium. It’s been an adventure.

Yesterday morning, I woke up early and drove from northern Michigan to Toronto, Ontario. It was a six-and-a-half-hour drive, and it was smooth driving, even when I got close to Toronto.

When Major League baseball released the 2024 schedule way back in July of ’23, I began looking ahead. At that time, I had my ’23 trips planned – Colorado, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Miami, and Arizona, which left two teams: the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox. When I planned my baseball trips for this season, I was looking for games when the Houston Astros played the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox to complete my bucket list of all 30 teams. For the Blue Jays, the schedule read four games: Monday July 1 to Thursday July 4. I didn’t realize the significance of the date of the July 1st game, I knew the significance of Thursday’s game – July 4th, but not Monday’s game.

July First in Canada is Canada Day and it’s a BIG DEAL.

It is the day Canada celebrates as it’s ‘birthday.’ But that is an oversimplification. It’s the day when Canada (Quebec and Ontario), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a country under the Dominion of Canada within the United Kingdom. It happened in 1867, two years after the ending of the American Civil War and two years before the founding of the first professional baseball league. Canada would add the remaining provinces to become the nation I know as Canada. But they are still part of the Commonwealth of Nations under the British crown. Continue reading Tuesday’s Tune – O Canada →

Day 24: Creativity

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It’s Thursday and it has been too long since I have posted anything on MtDC. Since summer began three weeks ago, I have been posting daily or almost daily on Instagram and if you follow along there, you’ll see the progress of my summer break. If you are curious, there is a sidebar of the blog – it’s a three by three graphic on the right-side.

Since my last post from 36,000 feet, I have been to Ohio and back, logged two more baseball games, served others at the food pantry, mowed the yard, spread mulch, cleaned up after a wild storm (which I slept through), collected the ends of branches the cicadas have snipped off, and much more.

When MtDC was in its infancy, I was posting almost daily. I don’t have the energy or creativity to keep up that pace today, though I do follow a couple of bloggers who do. If you are reading, you know who you are. It also seems the blogging community I connected with more than a decade ago has dropped off and their blogs are shutdown or static. At some point that will happen at MtDC, but for now I am simply too stubborn to let happen or stop. Continue reading Day 24: Creativity →

that California trip …

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It’s Thursday and I am sitting at the gate waiting for push back. After five baseball games and two days driving along the coast, I am headed home.

I am trying something new with this post. I am going to write directly into WordPress using my iPad and the plane’s WiFi as I fly home to Chicago. I have never posted from my iPad or typed directly into WordPress, so I’ll see how this goes.

the view from my seat over Colorado….

I was able to piece together the video below from Monday’s drive north along the Pacific Coast Highway. I uploaded the video to YouTube this morning and added the pictures at the airport before boarding.


It is Day Ten of summer break. This summer’s break is 76 days and like every summer before, I am going to Make the Days Count.

Yesterday, was a day game and a chance to spend an afternoon with my friend, Tonette. She and I worked together in the late 80’s until early 1990 when I lived in the Bay Area working in the restaurant business for Vie de France. All these years, we’ve kept in touch via cards, birthday wishes, Christmas cards, and Facebook ever since. The last time we saw one another was in 1995 when I was in Southern California opening a restaurant for Vie de France.

Won’t you get hip to this timely tip:
When you make that California trip
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six

Three baseball games in San Francisco, the first two were night games before yesterday’s day game.

San Francisco is not a new ‘baseball city for me, it was the third baseball city for me back in 1987. I moved to the Bay Area in June of 1987 when I worked for Vie de France. Monday’s baseball game was my first game in San Francisco since the World Series earthquake game was played on October 27, 1989; ten days after the devastating earthquake. Continue reading that California trip … →

Monday, Monday

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I am in California, along the Pacific coast in Aptos. I’ve been dreaming about this trip for over a month; now, I am here. It’s Day 7 of summer break and I am busy Making the Days Count.

I arrived Friday morning and have been to two baseball games, hiked in the coastal hills in Orange County, driven along the Pacific Coast highway, through a mountain pass, and up the Central Coast Valley before watching the sunset at Seacliff State Beach last night.

Both baseball games were fun to watch, and I even ran into a couple of Astros fans I met last summer in Denver. It is a small world. Continue reading Monday, Monday →