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I Know Nothing About Baseball

Oh I am laughing at myself. If we are talking about college basketball, I usually have a pretty good idea of what is going on with one team, the Kansas Jayhawks. Outside of that, I couldn�t tell you what is going on in the wide world of sports unless something is making headlines worthy of NPR � say an 18 inning baseball game. I heard about that. A lot of the people I am interested in are highly engaged in watching the post-season baseball games and cheering on their teams whereas I prefer to brood and shake my fist at Fox who has interrupted their regularly scheduled programs for baseball all the way through Halloween. DAMN THEM! I NEED THE O.C.!

Anywho! I was sending an email to a business contact who I know is a huge Astros fan. To show that I was paying attention to the group discussions about baseball at a recent meeting, I decided to throw in a personal note about the Astros� progress thus far. In order to write the following sentence, I had to do about 10 minutes of research:

�I�ll be crossing my fingers for the Astros tonight. Hopefully, they can finish off the Cardinals in 9 innings versus 18!�

Issue 1: Were the Astros still in the running since our meeting a couple of weeks ago?
Issue 2: Ah, they are! When do they play next?
Issue 3: Who do they play?
Issue 4: St. Louis! Great! But she always refers to the Houston team by their mascot, the Astros. That would mean that I should probably refer to St. Louis�s team by their mascot to be consistent � I mean its just good writing. What the hell is the St. Louis team�s mascot?
Issue 5: The Cardinals. Fabulous. Should I feel guilty about cheering on a Texas team versus a Missouri team? Nah. Fuck it. Alright � the Astros were the team that played that unusually long game. How long was it?

Each of those issues required a separate internet search. I don�t think I spent that long on the Sports Illustrated website since the Jayhawks made it to the National Championship (and lost). It is crazy what we do to keep those connections with people. She probably won�t even give a shit that I emailed her about the Astros. And if she does give a shit, she�ll probably respond with either a correction to my stupid sentence or she�ll assume I�ve taken an interest in major league baseball, and then where are we? The last thing I want to do is start cheering for a team in the post-season when I barely even know anything about any of the teams. And besides, I would totally cheer on the White Sox because I think there is some underdog story going on there, and that�s always nice. Whatever. The first rule of writing is stick to what you know. Now I know why breaking that rule is dangerous!

In other news, we have an infestation of little tiny black gnats at our house. They are all over the screens of the windows and even in the pits of the stucco on the house. So freaking gross. They show up in the spring and the fall when it is cool outside, and they make it miserable to be in the yard. We are supposed to have someone come exterminate next week, but I�m sure whatever they spray won�t kill the gnats. On top of that, we have someone coming to bid on storm window replacement because fuck me heating a 94 year old house will be expensive this winter and we are rushing to tighten down the hatches prior to the first freeze. Plus the previous owner put on the cheapest storm windows known to man and they are rusted and look like shit. Anyhow, I�m guessing that the storm window guy is going to tack on an extra charge for dealing with those nasty bugs. Fuckers.

Alright, I think I�ve reached my quota for using the word �fuck� today, so that means it is time to wrap this rambling journal entry up in a nice little bow. Of course I have no bow, so instead I bid you adieu.

9:53 a.m. - October 19, 2005

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