It's George Washington's birthday. Time to take down the Nativity scene.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Christmas was over. New Year's Day came and went. Epiphany came and went. Ash Wednesday came and went, to say nothing of Mardi Gras. The Super Bowl came and went. The first two Sundays in Lent came and went. But in the fullness of time Washington's Birthday arrived, and today -- February 22nd, 2016 -- I finally took down our Nativity scene from the credenza in the entrance hall and packed it away in the garage for another year nine-and-a-half months.

Hello, my name is Bob and I am a procrastinator. I'm nearly 75 years old and it's time I admitted it.

Confession is good for the soul.

It could have been worse. One year it was mid-March and St. Patrick's Day was looming before I put the Nativity scene away.

In my defense (British, defence), I have had lots of other activities contending for my time, such as:

A. Watching my grandson play baseball. Here he is in the batter's box against Wabash College. [Editor's note. For readers who don't follow baseball, in this particular "at bat" (AB) the "bases were loaded" and my grandson "reached first base" when he was "walked" by the pitcher, and although he didn't get "a hit" (H), he was credited with "a run batted in" (RBI) because his "base on balls" (BB) caused the player on third base to "reach home" and be credited with "a run" (R). Statistics are everything in baseball. --RWP]:

B. Admiring Mrs. RWP's latest creations from her coloring (British, colouring) hobby. Here are four more:

C. Pondering life's really important questions, like "Where are the snows of yesteryear?":

I knew you would understand.

Here's one last look at you know what:

Bits and pieces, tidbits and gewgaws

That is my way of saying that this post has no central theme. It contains unrelated minutiae, perhaps even ephemera. But trivia? Never!

If you don't know what ephemera means, follow Rowan and Martin's advice from Laugh-In days and look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls. For the record, we never owned a set of Funk & Wagnalls. We owned a 20-volume set of The Book of Knowledge and a 20-volume set of the Grolier Encyclopedia. At school I used the World Book Encyclopedia or the Encyclopedia Americana or the Encyclopedia Britannica, but even the school library didn't have Funk & Wagnalls. You can safely assume, therefore, that I have never looked up anything in my or anybody else's Funk & Wagnalls.

Be that as it may, it can now be revealed that north Georgia is having its second snowfall of the season today as we speak. The first one occurred about two weeks ago and any trace of it has long since disappeared. Our area receives a lot more rain than snow in wintertime, and if the temperatures dip at the same time, we often get ice on the roads and the sidewalks and the trees and the cars. When it gets really bad, branches and even trees come crashing down. Life often comes to a complete stop until the ice melts and the debris is cleared away.

Moving right along, our oldest grandson turned 20 years old today and is no longer a teenager. On top of that, he is currently "batting a thousand" on his college's baseball team. I'm not kidding:

Sorry for the blurriness. I think my hand must have been shaking upon this momentous occasion. The baseball season has just begun and the team has won all three games played to date. Since Elijah played on the Junior Varsity team last year (which his school calls the Varsity Reserve), none of those Freshman-year statistics are included. Batting 1000 (that is, 1.000) is a very rare thing that cannot be sustained for very long. Ted Williams of Boston Red Sox fame, one of the best baseball players who ever lived, finished his career with a .344 batting average, meaning he got a hit about once out of every three turns at bat. In 1941, he posted a .406 batting average, making him the last Major League Baseball player to bat over .400 in a season.

The snow has turned to sleet. It may be a while before Elijah's career can resume.

P.S. -- This is my 1,500th post. It took only 8 years, 4 months, and 12 days to get here. The celebrating may now begin.

I have not blogged much of late

...but that doesn’t mean nothing is going on. Life goes on, constantly, until it doesn't any more. Mine is still a work in progress.

Mrs. RWP and I went to see the movie Saving Mr. Banks.

Mrs. RWP and I went to see our granddaughter in a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance at her school.

Mrs. RWP and I made a trip by automobile to our daughter’s home in Alabamistan and stayed a few days.

Mrs. RWP and I attended the NCAA Signing Day brunch put on by the Cherokee County School District for graduating seniors (12th-year students) from the six high schools in the county who have committed to participating in a college athletics program for the fall. Our oldest grandson was one of 56 students recognized this year. His sport is baseball. About 250 parents, grandparents, and little brothers and sisters attended the brunch.

So we have been able to visit with all of our children and grandchildren in the past couple of weeks.

In between times we have been treated to endured two snow and ice storms that paralyzed the region. Perhaps you heard about them.

I have also been preparing myself mentally and physically for another (and, it is hoped, the last) “procedure” to be performed upon my person by the gastroenterology segment of the medical profession. Two days hence I shall be undergoing an enteroscopy (which my spies tell me is like a colonoscopy, only longer, the enteroscope going all the way into the small intestine). My old friend Wikipedia tells me that there are three types of enteroscopies -- single-balloon, double-balloon, and spiral (don’t ask).

In December I underwent a wireless capsule endoscopy in which one swallows a camera and waits for something interesting to develop, the main result of which, since it is a diagnostic tool only, was the scheduling of the forthcoming enteroscopy so that the aforementioned gastroenterologists can obtain a biopsy of something they thought they saw.

The fun and games continue apace.

I will spare you the details of the final preparation process except to say that I should emerge lighter, but wiser, on Friday.

Take me out to the ball game, especially if my grandson is playing

The following photographs were taken with my iPhone (yes, Virginia, I have an iPhone) on June 4, 2013, at American Legion Field in Canton, Georgia, USA. My oldest grandson, who is 17, plays first base.

My grandson warms up:



Here he is at the plate:



My grandson swings:



This game was painful, not just because American Legion Field is located along the banks of the Etowah River where the entire local population of mosquitoes and ants had chosen the evening of June 4, 2013, to go out strolling with their girlie where the dew is pearly early in the morning but also because my grandson’s team was playing against a much bigger and stronger team.

The other team scored 3 runs in the first inning, 8 runs in the second inning, and 3 more runs in the third inning. At the top of the fourth inning, the score was 14-0.

The good news is that my grandson was credited with an RBI on his team’s first run in the bottom of the sixth inning. The bad news is that my grandson’s team eventually lost the game by the very lopsided score of 18-2.

It goes without saying, of course, that he played first base magnificently throughout.

’Round Blogland

Every once in a while, whilst kayaking through Blogland, I find something I want to share with you. For example, for a good time, call 706-555-9372 and ask for Stella click on any of the items in blue below:

1. Direct from Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, here are some new ways of looking at the world. Literally.

2. The Bob B. who wrote this email isn’t me. I don’t care where you get your oil changed. But if I ever do become Putz’s twin, this is probably the way the transformation will begin.

3. Here’s the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness, and unless you have 20/15 vision like my amazing daughter who can read signs a mile away (I’m exaggerating only slightly), you will definitely have to click on the pyramid to read it.

4. Read this one only if you absolutely LOOOVVVE baseball (Reamus, this means you) or heartwarming stories involving several members of one family who play the same sport.

5. I really enjoy fiction in the form of a good short story and here’s one I enjoyed more than usual. To my way of thinking, a good short story is one that makes me wish it were not fiction.

6. Try as I might, I could not find a video clip called “ ’Round Blogland” to insert here. However, I did find “ ’Round Midnight” with Ella Fitzgerald doing the lyrics (3:17) and if that is not “pure jazz” enough for you, here is Thelonious Monk, the composer of “ ’Round Midnight,” giving us his wordless version on the piano (2:59). On this Fourth of July, you won’t get any freer than that.

I guess that’s enough kayaking for one post.

And the crowd goes wild!

My 15-year-old grandson, quite an athlete, has been a basketball star since he was six (can you say three-pointers? wicked hook shot? six-foot-one and still growing?) and a football star since he was 11 (can you say pass interceptions? team captain? crutches?). A year ago he began playing baseball also. This spring, as a ninth-grader, he earned a spot on his high school’s JV (Junior Varsity) team.

Last Saturday, he hit his first home run ever and his team’s first home run of the season in the last inning of the first game of a double-header on a sunny but very windy afternoon! And he was credited with two RBIs to boot! Unfortunately, his team still lost 9-5, but it sure was exciting there for a minute or two!

He’s a lefty and the ball cleared the right field fence, at least 308 feet away according to the big sign in the corner. His little brother was quite impressed when I told him that was longer than a football field. Encouraged by a whisper from another player’s mom, little brother darted away and returned a few minutes later with the trophy ball for big brother’s room, making the moment even more special for Mom, Dad, and Grandpa.

This isn’t my grandson. It’s some other fellow. But he better watch out.

(2006 photo by Kevin Rushforth)

It ain’t over till it’s over.

Legendary baseball player Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees said that.

In a comment to my previous post about about Atlanta having lost 1-0 to San Francisco in Game 1 of the National League Division Series (NLDS), Lord Yorkshire Pudding of Pudding Towers, Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, said, “Sorry Atlanta lost. Better luck next year.”

Not so fast.

Clearly, Lord Pudding doesn’t understand how Major League Baseball works in America. For everyone’s enlightenment, I will now kindly explain the baseball season to a waiting world. There are currently 30 major league teams (29 in the United States and one in Canada). Each team plays a 162-game season that began back in April. This “regular season” is now finished, but there’s still a lot of baseball left to be played. The top eight teams are now in a round of postseason playoffs, and Atlanta has at least two more chances to continue.

It goes like this (and I may have Easts and Wests mixed up. If I do, Reamus will set me straight):

The National League Division (East) series is a “best 3 out of 5” series between Cincinnati and Philadelphia. Philadelphia currently leads this series, one game to none.

The National League Division (West) Series is a “best 3 out of 5” series between Atlanta and San Francisco. San Francisco currently leads this series, one game to none. [Update, Oct. 9th, 2010: Atlanta beat San Francisco 5-4 last night in 11 innings after being behind 4-0 at one point, and this series is now tied at one game each. Do not look for another update after tonight’s game as there will be no game tonight. The teams have to travel the 2,134 miles between San Francisco and Atlanta so that the next two games in the series can be played in Atlanta. This distance is just about the same as the distance between London, England, and Cairo, Egypt. If you think you’re going to get this much detail about any of the other postseason series from me, you have another think coming. --RWP]

The winners of these two “best 3 out of 5” series will then meet in a “best 4 out of 7” series called the National League Championship series.

The American League Division (East) series is a “best 3 out of 5" series between New York and Minnesota. New York currently leads this series, two games to none.

The American League Division (West) series is a “best 3 out of 5” series between Texas and Tampa Bay. Texas currently leads this series, two games to none.

The winners of these two “best 3 out of 5” series will then meet in a “best 4 out of 7” series called the American League Championship series.

Then, and only then, will the winner of the National League Championship Series and the winner of the American League Championship Series play one another in a final “best 4 out of 7” series of games called the World Series. (Everything you could ever possibly want to know about the World Series is at that link.)

Note that it is called the World Series even though 29 of the 30 teams are in the United States and the other one is in Canada. As they say in Quebec, c’est la vie.

If the World Series lasts the full seven games, baseball will finally come to an end for this year on November 4th, and the “boys of summer” could have icicles attached to their noses.

If you want to follow the progress of the postseason playoffs, click here.

If you don’t want to follow the progress of the postseason playoffs, Yogi Berra has some advice, and here it is: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Otherwise, it’s déjà vu all over again.

Heartbreak

Last night, the Atlanta Braves lost the first game of the National League Division Series playoffs to the San Francisco Giants by a score of 1-0.

We were robbed.

(Associated Press photo -- click to enlarge)

Buster Posey, the player who made the winning run, is shown above trying to slide into second base on a steal from first base in the fourth inning. His foot is about three miles from second base, and he is clearly being tagged out by Atlanta Brave Brooks Conrad.

The umpire called him safe.

He went on to score the game’s winning run on a two-out single by Cody Ross later in the inning. Neither team would score again.

“I saw him safe,” said second-base umpire Paul Emmel. “That’s what I called.”

Did I mention they were playing in San Francisco?

To give the umpire his due, this is the angle at which he saw Posey’s attempted steal:

(Associated Press photo)

But clearly there’s a place for instant replay in baseball. Football has it, and everything stops until the referees review the play. If they were wrong, the call is reversed. Why not do the same thing in baseball?

In the meantime, let’s kill the umpire.

This is the first time in seven years that San Francisco has been in the post-season playoffs. This is the first time in five years that Atlanta has been in the post-season playoffs. So emotions and hopes are running high.

I’m beginning to understand why Yorkshire Pudding is so caught up with his team in whatever sport they’re playing over there.