For Love of the Game

This is why I love baseball.
Last night, a great player reached an amazing milestone. Craig Biggio got his 3000th hit...and also his 3001st and 3002nd.

The excitement started building just 10 hits away. Then came the controversy when he was just a few hits away and they were going on the road. He had to hit 3000 at home. He just had to! But the cynics were whining, "He should just play because his team needs him, not sit out to reach 3000 at home."
He even said if he's needed, he'll play on the road.
He got a couple of hits on the road but luckily by the time they got home, he only needed three.
Last night, he not only got three...he got five hits!
When he hit #3000 and we knew it was going to be a base hit, the crowd went wild...I went wild!
It was something to remember.
But it didn't stop there. After the tearful embraces from his teammates and his wife and children, he grabbed Jeff Bagwell from the dugout and dragged him out to first base and the crowd went wild again.
The two poster boys for the Astros for 15 years stood out there, together again.
Dry eyes were impossible.

But wait! It doesn't end there!
This game is why we watch baseball. There was this history-making moment that will live on forever but then there was a tied game. Then the Rockies went ahead. Then we tied them again. Then in extra innings, with the bases loaded, Carlos Lee hit a walk-off grand slam that won the game. It was magic!

I get chills just thinking about it.
Sure, it sounds cheesy but it's baseball, baby! It's America!

“Every man dies - Not every man really lives.”

I can't let today go by without mentioning something that's been on my mind.

One year ago, today, the blogging world and the entire world itself lost someone very important: Rob Smith (aka Acidman) from Gut Rumbles.

After Rob died, the blogging world came together, for a moment. We all felt this loss that we couldn't explain. Many of us had never met this man but we felt like we knew him because he let us in. There was no bullshit with Rob. He was angry, melodramatic, sentimental, hilarious, raw, sensitive and compassionate...sometimes all in one day.
You never knew what you were going to get when you went to Gut Rumbles but you couldn't wait to get there because you knew it was going to be entertaining.

Some wonderful people are keeping Gut Rumbles alive so we can continue to be entertained but I still feel that hole in the blogosphere where Rob once reigned.

I saw this Winston Churchill quote and immediately thought of Acidman:

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

My blog is BAD, y'all

My blog is BAD y'all!

I got this from Rachel.

Mingle² - Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* shit (6x)
* fucking (3x)
* bitches (2x)
* sex (1x)

Actually, I'm surprised it's only NC-17!

Wining & dining myself

Recently, a friend and I had a phone conversation about eating alone at restaurants. He does it all the time. He calls it "Taking myself out to dinner," and I'm sure he gets lucky at the end of the evening, too.
I realized that I rarely go out to eat alone. If I'm by myself, I'll pick up something to go. I didn't think it was because I was uncomfortable or self-conscious, I just figured sitting in a restaurant alone was a waste of time.
He kept telling me how nice it is. He brings his iPod and listens to a good podcast or brings a book and enjoys the meal alone.
Maybe I was self-conscious. I guess deep down, I didn't want people staring at me thinking, "She must not have any friends," but then I thought about people I may have seen alone at restaurants and I never thought that about them.
Actually, I couldn't remember the last time I noticed someone eating alone. I normally don't pay attention to others in restaurants unless they do something to make me notice them.

Saturday, I was out at Barnes & Noble picking up a new book when I realized I hadn't eaten all day and I was starved.
This was a perfect opportunity to try out this whole eating alone thing. I also had several hours worth of Jim Rome podcasts that were piling up so this was a perfect time to catch up on that as well.

I drove to my favorite little sushi place and noticed about 3 or 4 other diners sitting alone. These were my people!
I was seated by the window and no one looked at me twice.
I ordered my seaweed salad, my pieces of sushi and a roll and listened to Jim Rome and loved every moment of it.
It was to be able to go to whatever restaurant I wanted without having to take anyone else into consideration. No one ever REALLY wants to go eat sushi with me, they tolerate it and order a Japanese meal if I can persuade them. I was able to eat without guilt. It was nice, also, to eat without conversation.
I love to talk as much as the next gal but sometimes I just want to shut up and enjoy the silence or the ambient noises....or in this case, the sound of Jim Rome.

A lady sat across the restaurant reading her book while she enjoyed her meal. Two other people sat, separately, at the bar watching the plasma screen TV.

Everyone was doing there own thing, couples chatting, groups of friends laughing and the lone diners, reading, listening to their podcasts or catching up on the news for the day.

I thought about this lone-dining phenomenon and wondered how many people do this regularly.
This morning I started searching the internet and found whole websites dedicated to the dining alone experience.
One website had lists of "loner-friendly" restaurants and one had a tongue-in-cheek guide to eating alone.
There is a forum for single people appropriately called Single Life. One woman declared that she was too self-conscious to eat alone. Did anyone have that same problem and how do you solve it.
From what I read, not many had any good solutions, they just shared their own experiences. Most of the people who didn't like eating by themselves said the same thing, "I feel like everyone is staring at me".

I don't know why we care so much about what total strangers think of us but after my purposely positive dining alone experience, I think I'll be making this a regular date.
Hey...at least I KNOW I'll get lucky at the end of the evening!

Three Years

I knew it was coming but I wasn't really paying attention to the date.

My dad died 3 yrs ago today. I don't know what I'm supposed to do or to say.
I guess I just wanted someone to know I remembered it....I remember every single moment about his last days and the last breath he took.

It will be with me always.

Pit Bull Part 2

After my sister's attack, the police caught up with the pit bulls right away. They had killed another cat along the way so they just followed the trail of dead animals.
Animal Control took possession of the dogs and euthanized them immediately.

What is unfathomable is the fact that 30 minutes later, the school bus let off a group of kids at the bus stop which is right in front of my sister's house.
Those 12 yr old kids wouldn't stand a chance against two adult pit bulls had this happened half an hour earlier.

The owners were fined and litigation against their home owner's insurance company is still on-going.
The insurance company keeps making offers that won't even cover the medical bills. She had to have surgery on one arm to repair the muscle and tissue damage. Then multiple surgeries to have pins and bolts put in her wrist. She was in a cast for months and completely unable to move her left arm. She was using her right arm for so much that she developed severe carpel tunnel and will have to have another surgery to repair that.
Not to mention the hospital stay and the therapy and pain and anxiety medication she's had to take.
She had nightmares for months. She looked into the eyes of those dogs and she knew without a doubt that they were going to kill her.
I guess it's hard to get over looking into the face of death. Especially when that face has powerful jaws and crazy killer dog eyes!

There are theories all over about ways to control the pit bull population.
One is to demand a certain insurance policy to be purchased for pit bull owners. Some say all pit bull owners should be registered and some want to ban them all together. I don't know what the answer is. It's just frustrating that we all have to suffer for the actions of incredibly stupid fucktards.

It pisses me off to NO end when I see some asshole, walking around with the crotch of his pants hanging down to his ankles, hat on sideways, tight white wife-beater clinging to his scrawny chest holding a leash attached to a vicious looking pit bull with a spiked leather collar.
First of all, they look ri-fucking-diculous! Seriously, do you have to dress like everyone else? Do they have any idea how fucking stupid they look?
Oh and then the dog. Having a chihuahua as a fashion trend is pretty dumb but having a potentially deadly pit bull as a fashion accessory just goes to show how few brain cells these people have.

But what upsets me the most is the cruelty of it. Pit bulls are bred to be strong. Yes, I've known people who had gentle, sweet pit bulls but what happens when something sets that sweet dog off? We hear about it happening all the time. Why would you think you'd be any different?
But it's mostly the people who teach their dogs to be aggressive.
Do you know what they do to make their pit bulls mean?
First, they're mean TO them. Then they give them baby kittens to kill. It's the blood lust that drives them.
That's part of the reason why they attacked my sister. They had just killed her cat and the blood lust made them crazy so they went after her.

When they fight these dogs some get so badly injured that they die from the injuries and it's not always quick. They suffer and die.
It's heartless, it's senseless and further more, it's illegal.
When or if the authorities finally crack down on the pit bull fighting rings and seize the animals, they're not fit for anything but euthanasia. Again, their death is senseless but at least it's not painful and cruel.

A person who would enter into a world like this is not a good person and our society is full them. If they are missing that part of their brain that tells them that it's wrong and they shouldn't do it, then what's next? Killing children? Murdering the elderly? Where does it end?

Pit Bulls

Rachel has been talking about pit bulls lately. Her dog got into a fight with one that sailed over a 6 foot fence to get to them.

I have kept my mouth shut on the issue of Pit Bulls and their danger. I was one of those people that said, "It's how they are raised." because I knew people who had pit bulls that were sweet, funny dogs.
I don't feel that way anymore because I almost lost my sister because of two "sweet, funny" pit bulls.

Last September, two weeks after Crash died. My sister was savagely attacked by two pit bulls in her own driveway.

She was inside her house but her garage door was open. She heard strange noises and her inside dogs were barking at the door that led to the garage.
She opened the door and looked around. The first thing she saw was blood.
She looked further and at the end of her driveway where two pit bulls standing over something bloody and with orange fur. She knew immediately it was her cat, Rocky. The dogs had cornered her cat in the garage, killed him and dragged him out into the street.
The dogs were walking away from her cat's body so she ran out there to see if by some miracle he was still alive.
When she saw that there was no way he could be alive, she cried out.
The dogs heard her and turned and charged her.
Without turning her back to them, she ran back into her driveway but they were on her before she could do anything.
They were lunging for her arms and hands and trying to knock her down.
She was so terrified that she didn't notice they were tearing pieces of her flesh from her upper arms.
She backed herself into her garage but they had her cornered.
Her husband had a huge metal shop fan that he would turn on while he was working on his hobby, motorcycles, so she crouched down and tried to hide behind it but the dogs would grab her arms, trying to pull her out from behind the fan.
Even though traumatized, she had the sudden idea of turning the fan on. It was so loud that her own dogs and cats were afraid of it.
It worked. As soon as she flipped the switch, the sound of the fan startled the dogs and they ran into the driveway.
She took this opportunity to run to the door and hit the garage door opener/closer.

She then called 911, my mom and Sister #2.
She was hysterical. My mom couldn't understand what she was saying, she was just screaming and screaming.
Mom was at work and my sister was about 3 miles away and they both made it to Sister #1's house before the ambulance and police did.

On the way, Mom called Sister #3 and then she called me.

What Mom and Sister #2 saw when they got there will haunt them forever. Sister #1 was in shock and covered in blood. They had never seen so much blood. Sister #2 said her eyes were wild and her pupils were fully dilated.
Luckily, the ambulance arrived soon after and I actually beat the ambulance to the ER.
I didn't know the details of what happened, just that she had been attacked by pit bulls. Suddenly, everything I had ever heard on the news about these attacks came flooding back and the only thing I could remember were all the people who had been killed and I prayed the entire way there.

She was lucky. The dogs never got her face or her throat. She was able to remain standing during the attack but they ripped up her right upper arm, tearing tissue and muscle away from bone and she'll be forever disfigured. They also broke her left wrist. It was considered a compound fracture because they ripped the skin, exposing the broken bone.
That is how unbelievably strong these dogs are. One of them grabbed her wrist and broke it with it's jaws!
She had to have multiple surgeries and had a cast up to her armpit for months because it just wouldn't heal.

The story of the pit bulls was what has become a cliche. The woman who owned the house was keeping them for her ex. She didn't know they got out and claimed it was the first time.
Animal control said that they had picked the dogs up before, so no, it wasn't the first time. They had a history of getting out.

The story was immediately picked up by news stations and the newspapers and that began months long debates over the dangers of pit bulls. People fought about it day after day in the letters to the editor section of the local paper...all because of my sister.

The CBS affiliate interviewed a neighbor of the pit bull owner and he said "I let my 4yr old nephew play with those dogs all the time. They were really sweet."

All my sister said was, "I'm glad it was me, then, because there wouldn't be anything left of that 4 yr old."