Practice Makes Perfect

Okay, so maybe not perfect, but certainly much improved. At least that was the case for the intramural slow-pitch softball team, “The Framulators,” that a bunch of us meteo grads put together. Our first game of the season was this past Monday, and the first pitch of the game was definitely an omen for how things were to go. Walter lobbed the pitch in there, and their batter (who had the black marks on his cheeks that you always see football players wear in particular) absolutely CRUSHED it. I mean, this was a total moonshot to ultra-deep left field. So after one pitch we were trailing 1-0. We held the score to that until the second inning, when the wheels totally came off. Long story short, we lost 15-2 in just 5 innings. Ouch. I managed to go 1-for-2 with an RBI. But it’s just rough when you run into a team with several legitimate power hitters, especially when your team hasn’t had much of a chance to practice fielding beforehand.
So after the game Monday we spent another hour-plus doing fielding and batting practice, and the extra practice really showed itself in our game last night. It was pouring when we started the game, and when we fell behind 4-0 in the top of the 1st I was wondering if we were in for a repeat of Monday. But the rain abated and then our bats (and gloves) came alive. We didn’t give up a run after the 2nd inning en route to a 16-6 victory in 6 innings. Pretty much everyone played well, it was good to see. Frame even had a double! I was again 1-for-2 with an RBI (I think I had an RBI anyway) before I was subbed out halfway through, though on my hit I was thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double. I really should invest in some cheap cleats so that I can turn corners on wet grass…
So tonight I finally caved into peer pressure. Massive peer pressure. You see, every week there’s a Meteo Poker Night, and a bunch of people have been trying to get me to come out and play with them ever since September or whatever. I resisted their charms until now, when I decided just to give it a shot since I had nothing better going on tonight. So it was a small 6-player game with me, Jeff [Frame] (to mimic Action Allen’s notation), Robert, Jacob, Walter and Siewert over at Walter’s place. But I actually had fun tonight, and only lost $5 in the process. I was doing pretty well for quite awhile, but had a couple of “bad beats” and then had bad luck a third time when I was all in with a very good chance for a straight, but it was not to be, so I finished 4th. I doubt it’ll be as long as another 10 months before I go back for another poker night. 🙂
I’ve spent a fair amount of time the last few evenings working on making improvements to my webpage. The first and most noticeable change was to my Photos page. Previously it was basically just a big long list of photo albums separated by some section headers or whatever, but I’ve totally changed that up and created a bunch of postcard-style photos to click on to take you to a listing of the albums in that gallery. I really think it looks much, much nicer and more professional. And along those lines I did get a few albums from last summer created and uploaded, so I’m about half done with those, and then I’ll get a few Penn State or Arizona albums up eventually. Apart from a couple of other very minor new things, the other main addition I made to my website was sticking on a BBClone stats counter, which actually caused me a lot more trouble than I thought it would be; in fact, I still haven’t quite worked out all the little issues, but it’s working well enough for now. I still have the StatCounter counter tallying like it always has, but BBClone provides some interesting little stats that are visible to you, the viewing public, such as what countries visitors to my page are coming from and whatnot. The link to that is on the left sidebar right below where the counter is (at the bottom of the content in the left sidebar). Let me know what you think of these changes if you feel so inclined, I always like to hear feedback, good and bad.
This morning I got an email from my Mom with a link to the results of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. It’s a really funny contest in that the goal is for entrants to invent the worst possible first sentence of a story that they can possibly dream up. A bunch of them are so delightfully awful first sentences that I highly recommend you all check it out! You’ll see what I mean after you read a few of them. 🙂
Also, kudos to my friend Greg down in Dallas, who sent me a link to this television advertisement from Argentina this morning. It’s extraordinarily clever and thought-provoking — and this is the truth: somehow I doubt you’d see such an ad in the US. (You’ll know why I say that if you watch the ad, it’s only a minute or two long at the most.) I’d also be quite curious to hear what your thoughts are on it.
Many areas in the Midwest are going through a pretty bad dry spell this summer, with my home county in northwestern Wisconsin being hit pretty hard by drought. And the short-term forecast calls for more mid-upper 90s the next couple days at least, they could really use some rain.
And I have one more cool weather link for ya’ll, with some pictures of lightning and a rainbow together in the same shot. Now that’s not something you see everyday!