The Big DumpTruck

You work in a secure building. Try to find your badge before you get out of the car, and store it somewhere that you can easily put your hands on it. Don't give me a big sigh when I question you as you try to get in behind me after *I* open the door; you know we're not supposed to let in people we don't know who aren't displaying a badge. I mean seriously, I need to swipe my badge at least 10 times a day to get into various parts of the building. Why on earth are you keeping yours at the bottom of your messy purse?

If you see the paper drawer on the printer is open, and you also see a person walking toward you holding two reams of paper from the direction of the supply closet, don't close the paper drawer and start looking in the cabinet under the printer for paper. Because chances are, the reason the paper drawer was open is that someone already looked for paper and couldn't find any, and that the person you stared at, walking toward you with the paper, is carrying it for the empty printer.

Dork.

I know that technically summer doesn't end until next week, when when working Americans celebrate having jobs by not going to them. Or something like that. But Junior takes the bus to first grade Wednesday morning, so this weekend is the last one before the REAL marker of time, the first day of school.

We had our last campout at my sister's house Friday night. It was hot and sticky out, and the mosquitoes had a field day. It was also a very destructive campout, and I wonder if maybe they'll think better of doing it again next year. Items that were destroyed: a piece of their sprinkler system when the neighbor drove a tent stake through the hose/tubing. We didn't know until the next morning when he pulled it out and the water started flowing a la Jed Clampett discovering oil. And then part of my air mattress got caught in my truck latch and was destroyed. And someone backed into (slightly, no damage) Mr. Dump's car. You know, typical Friday night/Saturday morning.

Nature held off on the gross weather until this weekend, so we didn't go up to Canobe Lake Park, as I was originally thinking. I just hate doing that when there's really no place to go to get out of the heat the way there is down at Disney. Plus, there's no way Mr. Dump would have gone with us on a day like this. So it was low key, I did some cleaning, Junior and I took his RC car out for a walk around the neighborhood. It's ghostly quiet out there. I expected to see more people, or at least hear them. There are three in-ground pools within 6 houses of us, and as far as I could tell, at least two of them weren't being used (I couldn't see through the fence of the third, but I wasn't really hearing normal pool sounds). Where the hell is everyone? Am I missing something? Is there a parade? Free ice cream somewhere? What?!

We picked six strawberries from our five plants today. I'm not very good about taking care of them, or even checking output, so when we do it's a special treat. I think I'll plant more next year, just because Junior loves strawberries all of a sudden, so I haven't gotten to eat many of them.

So anyway, that's why I have time to write to you, because it's too hot to do anything outside, and I don't feel like cleaning the bathroom. Can you blame me?

Listening to the Zito and Jen show on WXLO this morning I learned that Shannon Miller, the gymnast, lives in our humble state, in the even more humble town of Grafton. She's up here attending school. That's pretty cool, actually. They got to talk to her about some of the Olympic gymnastics controversy, and hearing it from the point of view of someone who was IN the Olympics as a gymnast, it turned things a bit for me. I guess that's why people with experience should be the ones out there explaining it, not leaving it up to the Couch Potato fans to complain about. She said that South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young, the one who people are saying should get the Gold because his starting score was too low, actually made a mistake that should have had points deducted but didn't. She said it should have been an automatic 2/10s deduction, and that might have dropped him out of the top three altogether.

Gymnastics doesn't allow for instant replays, there are scoring mistakes made ALL the time, and the gymnasts just have to trust that for every time it works against them, there will be a time it works for them. If they are going to look back at Tae-young's routine, they have to also take off the deductions, wouldn't you think? And while they are at it, replay everyone else's routines so you can score THEM appropriately.

I can't believe the international gymnastics federation is asking Hamm to give his gold medal to the South Korean. Rubbish. You count on the subjectivity of human judges and hope that they see and note every little thing a gymnast does, and you have to take the scores you get. The judges weren't coerced into voting one way or the other the way they were in that skating controversy. It's like umpires in baseball. They make some bad calls, but that's the way it goes. Period.

I forgot to set the TiVo to get the Synchronized swimming on Bravo at 5pm. Poop.

Here's an Olympic event I could probably compete in, although I'm not sure how they can keep these people from breaking into a jog: Track & Field – Men’s 50k Walk. Do they hold this at a local mall?

It's just one of those days.

• Lileks has a great piece today on parenthood. All of it completely true. I laughed out loud when he said he went to the web to find the rules for checkers, because I did the same thing when Junior and I first played. And I've since forgotten the king rule, so if we played again today, I'd have to look it up. That and the spidey-sense thing and the having to lie about not being sad? Well, the last one actually brought a lump to my throat because been there done that. And he's so right...you have to lie because your heart breaks into 20 million pieces but you can't show it because you want the child to be happy to be broadening his horizons. Okay, enough weepy talk about kids until after the first day of school next week. I promise. Maybe.
• At work we have a default intranet home page and one of the little bricklets you can add is the weather forecast. Today I looked and the picture for Saturday is the word "HOT" with wavy lines behind it. It's the last Saturday of the summer, for all intents and purposes, and this is the first time they've used that icon since last summer. Unreal.
• As a follow-up to the Leominster School Department thing, I wrote a note to the superintendent of schools, and got an amazing reply back. Based on this reply and my belief that she will actually do the things she says, I will increase their grade to a B. And maybe my note venting my frustrations will benefit some other 1st grade parent next summer.
• Why is it that I can drink gallons of the filtered water at work (with ice, natch) and never ever get that "oh my God, I drank too much water" feeling that I get if I drink that much at home? Same with restaurants. Is it the ice?
• I returned something at Circuit City last night, and ended up spending almost the same amount on new stuff. But this new stuff is worth every penny. I got 5 compilation CDs of 80s music, almost no repeats on any of them, and the average price per CD was about 6 bucks. That's my new measure. At 99 cents a track, is it cheaper to buy the CD (or songs) on iTunes? In this case, no way. While there are a couple of throw-aways in the bunch that I'd NEVER buy on iTunes (We Built This City? Uh, no thanks), there were enough on each that I got WAY more than the 7 per CD that would have made iTunes a better deal. So next time you're at that store, try browsing the compilations. There are some VERY good deals out there.

I got #4 on yesterday's Top Five list . I love making the list. Lately, whenever I get off my lazy butt and submit, 90% of the time I actually make it to the big list (i.e. Not the runner's up or honorable mentions). Do you think that would incent me to contribute more often? No. But I am trying to be better. I'm also trying to be better about contributing to the Probe. What is it about this time of year that gets my ink flowing? Do I miss going back to school? I don't think so. I do miss sitting in the back of the room and writing poetry instead of taking notes. You just can't do that in a staff meeting. Not that I've tried, but when it's 6 of you sitting around a little table, someone might notice.

So go sign up for your own subscription. If you get the paid one (c'mon, I know you have the money) you'll get a new list every weekday, and you'll get to see when I make the runner up list. If you do subscribe, tell Chris Jody sent you. It's always good to suck up to the boss.)

With all the woodpecker excitement on Sunday, I don't think I appropriated enough coverage to the big news of the day:
I wiped up the minigolf course with my family. I scored 1 over par. I have NEVER scored close to that before, not even back when I'd cheat. There were 5 of us, and Junior came in 3rd! We rock.

One week from tomorrow I get to bundle Junior up on the bus that will take him to first grade. I can't even believe he's old enough, until I look at him and realize he's a big kid, and he's ready to head out and do big kid things. And so the letting go continues. I have to hope he has good school experiences because unless I want to step in and homeschool him, he's under someone else's care for seven hours a day.

And might I just tell the Leominster school department that I think they do a sucky job of preparing parents and students for this big transition from kindergarten (half day and one school with only other kindergarteners) to first grade (elementary school, K-4). I have no idea what he needs to bring with him, if I'm supposed to give him a name tag, nothing. School starts one week from today, and the bus routes have not been posted anywhere. You have to call and ask. Hello, is this effective? What the hell is your web site for?

The aftercare portion of the website is also content-free. No price information. No information about how to sign up for it. Once again, I had to call, and they tell me that registration is tomorrow and Thursday during the day. Let me just point out something really simple to these folks. The people who need aftercare need it because they are working. Working during the day. During the day, which is when you expect us to go to your office and register. The only people this is convenient for are those who don't need aftercare. At least put the danged form on the website so I can fill it out ahead of time. Sheesh.

It's like the music classes my sister is trying to sign my nephew up for. They offer three different times for the 5 to 8 year olds. The Saturday morning class is full. The weekday class at 1pm and the one at 3:30 are not. My BIL politely pointed out to them that at 1pm, all 6-8 year olds and many 5 year olds will be in school. So maybe they'll get the AM kindergarten 5 year olds who have a parent who can take them. Once again, if parents work, they are out of luck. And if school in that town lasts until 3:15, you've got to haul butt to get to the 3:30 lesson. How do people like this get to own their own businesses? And who suffers? All the kids who want to take music classes who, unfortunately, didn't get in to the Saturday class.

I can't even tell you how many working parents I know. And this stuff happens ALL the time. The Church we belong to has religious ed classes scheduled for Monday afternoons. HELLO? How do you expect these kids to get there? This isn't the 1950s any more. Of course, if it were, we wouldn't be able to get him to those classes anyway because the stay-at-home mom didn't have a car at her disposal.

Okay, I guess that's enough of a rant for today. And if you are part of the Leominster School Department, consider your grade a C. And that's being generous.

I forgot to mention that Junior asked yesterday if he could keep the woodpecker as a pet bird if we couldn't get it out of the house. Um, no. No wild birds. "He'd peck you on the head looking for bugs." "Ewwwww!"

Let's face it, it would just be one more animal he named after himself. Which is really funny, when you think about it. It's like me calling all my pets (real and stuffed) variations of Jody. Well, there's Little Jody, Jody-kins and Jody the Fish. We could have Jody The Bird.

Not.

Wanted to post an update for the bird lovers out there. Junior and I successfully got Woody out of the house. And I am happy to say that while I was in the driveway scrubbing down the spark-guard-thingy, I thought I could hear a woodpecker over in the woods. That made me feel very happy, by the way. Before we were able to let him out I did put some grapes in the fireplace for him.

If someone knows woodpeckers, there was a slash of red on the back of his head, his wings were spotted, and the underside of his tail was bright yellow. Like I said earlier, he was just beautiful. And huge. I suspect that he was too big to actually fly straight up in as small a space as the chimney flue. Poor guy.

And poor me. Teach me to leave some ashes in the fireplace...do you know what beating wings do to ashes?

Oh crap, there was/is a bird in the chimney and it can't seem to fly UP the chimney, and at one point it ended up in the bottom of the fireplace flying against the spark guard thingy. We were trying to catch it in a butterfly net without letting it into the main house, but that wasn't working very well, mostly because this was a pretty big bird. We think a woodpecker.

Of course, it's Sunday, so we're having a hard time reaching anyone to help us out. This totally stinks. (p.s. Figuratively and literally.)

Man, we had a couple of days of reaaaaly bad storms. Last night we were rewarded with a drop in humidy and an amazing sunset. Here's one of the shots I got:

As a service to my readers (and other people who aren't my readers but could be if they would just type my URL into their browser's address field. Sheesh.) I have created a new page where all the "Still Life With Interview" pieces from the Daily Probe will live. The link is over in the right menu. Tell all your friends!

I have another interview over at the Daily Probe. Just as a heads-up, I am working on creating a new page here at the Dump to feature all the ones I write. Until I get that done, you can read the new one at the Probe.

How silly is it to get excited over something like a new CompactFlash card? I ordered two off Amazon last week...one of them was $163 OFF the list price (it's a high-speed 512meg card) and the other is a $10 after rebate (a 128meg card). Don't do the math, you can't just say "why not get 4 of the 128meg cards". It's not the same, when you're talking about not wanting to swap out cards in the middle of something. Plus high speed is good. I don't know that I'd buy a 512 regular speed card. The rate between photos would be slower, and I believe it's also a drain on the batteries.

Anyway, now I have a decent selection of cards, including two useless 8meg cards that we bought like, 8 years ago when we got our first digital camera. I can save about seven pictures on them.

I was able to capture my blood donating thoughts in my journal last night, and now I can share them with you all.

Well, I made it through the day and successfully donated blood. I was actually nervous this time just because I knew more since last time. Everything went well, even if the whole thing is a huge time suck. I guess no matter how many times you donate you have to fill out the exact same paperwork. If I have never lived more than three months outside the US the last time donated, and it hasn't been three months since then, can we maybe assume I'm clean? I guess I could have taken up sleeping with a gay male prostitute intravenous drug-using hemophiliac with SARS but, well, what are the odds, really.

They had a ton of people donating. I had to wait my turn to even have the initial screening stuff done. Two of us went over to the tables at the same time, and whether he knew it or not, I was racing him to see which one of us would finish filling our bags first. I won - I don't know if he had issues donating, but when he went over to the snack table he started to feel woozy so they made him go lie down and put cold compresses on his forehead, etc. Poor guy. He didn't stand a chance against me.

I didn't write that up on the computer last night because I was too tired. I blamed that on being down a pint combined with my dinner of American cheese slices. Cause it was late when I got home and I didn't want to stand at the stove or anything. And nobody would run to UNOs to get me a fish sandwich (have you HAD one of these? I'm addicted). I had a few crackers too. And water. Lots of water.

I wonder what kind of hits I'm going to get based on that sentence up there. You know the one.

I enjoy the oddball sports, I have to admit it. The first thing I did was look up when synchronized swimming happens, because there's nothing better for greasing the comedy wheels than a good synchronized swimming final. (That's the 22rd-26th, I think. I'll let you know when it's closer.

I did watch synchronized diving too. Hell, anything synchronized has to be good, right? On one of my mailing lists we were having the "where do they think up these events" conversations, and my thought is that the people at the highest levels in these areas (is there a World Diving Commission?) try to come up with another way to get more coverage at the Olympics, by having more events. More events means more people can become involved in the sport.

But as one person pointed out, did any little kid every have a pickup game of synchronized diving? No. He feels that Olympic events should only be things that little kids do for fun when left to their own devices. Basketball, soccer, swim races, running races, etc. Anything that isn't subjective in judging. You either came in first or you didn't. Anything that the average person could judge from their living room. Not whether or not a diver reached a full extension, or if a gymnast did enough dance in her floor routine, but which guy threw the shot put the furthest. It's the difference between speed skating and ice dancing, you know?

I like this idea. It will never happen, but I like it.

In my on-going effort to pink-ify myself, I am sporting the latest in fashion for the pre-school set - a ponytail holder that has sparkley little flower-shaped beads flowing off it. My 4-year-old niece and I picked them out at Target last week, but I forgot to leave them at her house. So I'm wearing one today. Because I can.

So far nobody has said anything to me. I think I'm relieved.

Did you already order (or pre-order) you copy of Mary Shomon's new book The Thyroid Diet? It comes out today!

(I saw her in June and she's lost a lot of weight following her own diet!)

I'm giving blood tomorrow night. Mostly because the Red Cross called me personally and asked if I would donate, given my blood type and the fact that nationwide there's a less-than 2 day supply. When something like Hurricane Charley happens, you realize how important that blood supply is. How important it is EVERY day.

So if you are a healthy adult, find your nearest donation center and sign up. If nothing else, do it for the juice and cookies! (If you live in the Leominster area, tomorrow they will be at the Elks from 1 to 7 or so.)

I'm just crossing my fingers that my iron levels are good enough for me to donate. I've been pretty good about taking my supplements, but you never know.

I forgot to mention yesterday that when I got home from work (late) Thursday evening, I had two surprises waiting for me.

(1) The neighbor's cat had taken a dump on my back stairs. The stairs we use. The stairs that heretofore had been catpoop-free. I was not happy.

So I went inside the house to get the jug of bleach and discovered that (2) Junior had left one of the fridge drawers slightly open when he grabbed a juicebox that morning, meaning the door had been propped open all day. Meaning I had to basically dump everything out of the refridgerator.

I just got back from grocery shopping, spent 127.26 buying my normal stuff, plus replacing everything that was in the fridge. I didn't want to take chances with anything that was open, and I know some people leave certain condiments out for long periods of time, but I decided it wasn't worth it, so I was even replacing things like ketchup, the little jar of minced garlic, the packages of cheese, half and half, eggs, etc. etc. etc.

I hate when that happens.

I'm working on a new series for the Daily Proble - interviews with inanimate objects. Eventually I'll collect them and put them here on my site as reprints, but for now you can read overat the Probe.

This week's guest: Maine.

There is so much information out there available to the average human with web access.

Did you know that you can get a report on mosquito activity in your area. I mean think about it...until now, you had to find out about mosquito activity by going outside and standing there holding a beer. Now, the internet does it for us! (Except for the beer part. My computer is underage.) Go to weather.com for your report.

Well, you know me. I love to spend money. So if I can use this Saturday's "tax holiday" as an excuse to hit the mall, I'll be there.

I did have one thought about this earlier today: do they really think that this will account for a huge increase in sales? Isn't it possible that people who would have gone out to buy something yesterday, today or tomorrow are instead putting it off until Saturday? So yes, Saturdays sales numbers will be great, but the rest of the week will suck? I don't want to be pessimistic, I love the idea of not paying sales tax Saturday, but the reality is that there was something I was going to buy yesterday that I'm putting off until the 14th (saves me the gas driving up to Nashua, really). Do the malls look as abandoned today as I think they will?

Here's what's on my mind today.
[crickets]

No wait, here are the items.

1. I don't know where my sunglasses are. Did I leave them at my sister's house? I'll have to follow up. Luckily, it's dreary out, so I didn't need them. Maybe this is the heads-up I need to make an eye appointment anyway. Those sunglasses (prescription) are totally trashed, and a couple of years old. It's time for new ones.

2. I've never had a gas station attendant make a comment about how empty my gas tank was before. Today, I went to the place next to the Bagel Inn, where you pump first, and when I went to pay he said "Wow, you were really empty. That car holds what, 16, 16.5 gallons?" I suppose so, I never actually checked to figure that out. I was driving with the little gas light on, if that's any indication. But I was just thrown that he'd say anything about how much gas I'd crammed into my tank. Now I'm all self-conscious.

3. Today was the day to bring in the backpacks for the underprivileged kids. We were given a specific child (we only had first name, age, sex, sizes) and told to get them a backpack, school supplies, and clothes, etc. I had a 7-year-old girl, and I got her this awesome Hello Kitty backpack that came with a purse. We got most of our school supplies at Staples (of course) but at Target the other day I found the world's most wonderful Hello Kitty notebook that had pink lined paper in it, so I had to buy it to go with the backpack. Then the only issue was carrying it in to work today; how many people saw me and thought it was my backpack?

If you don't take down your birdfeeder in the summer, hornets will build a massive colony in it. I also learned that if you push it aside with your hand because you are mowing the lawn, they will all find out to try to get medieval on your punk, lawnmowing ass.

Luckily I escaped unscathed. But you can bet your booty that birdfeeder isn't long for this world.

I think having several beers by the fire made it seem like a much better idea to camp out. I did get some sleep, which is leaps and bounds better than last time when I didn't have an air mattress.
It was pretty danged cold out last night - my nose and ears were freezing. Junior was trying to burrow into my side most of the night - I think for warmth. While sweet, it makes it hard to sleep. But I like knowing that I'm making cool memories for him.
It's 6:35pm now and I'm ready for bed.

We were thinking of pitching our tent in my sister's front yard tonight, but it looks kind of icky out right now. What's up with that? I'm not sleeping out in the rain! So maybe we'll just camp out in their living room for a while, make some s'mores on the stove. Or buy some of the cereal. According to the commercial, it's a lot less work. *wink*

Okay, not a real review, in the sense that my taste buds have been dulled by years of eating Ragu spaghetti sauce and McDonald's products.

But here is my 11 word review, which was written as I sat in the chair by the elephant:
"My God it's loud in here. This steak is great! Volcano!"

Can you believe I'd never been to a Rainforest Cafe before? I think this says more about me avoiding the Burlington Mall than anything. See, I had a bad car experiences there, one when I was pregnant and scraped up the side of my Jetta because the curbs are twice the size of normal curbs (I lie not - please go and see for yourself) causing $1000 worth of damage. And then when Junior was about 7 or 8 months old, we were picking up glasses (the Lenscrafters kind) and some idiot punk kid jerk rear-ended us on that horribly scary ramp to Route 128 south that you need to get on to get on Route 3 North, that has idiots zooming in from the right at a full 60mph. The kid behind us didn't bother to notice that the car in front of us had stopped, which meant we had stopped. Everyone was fine. The Jetta wasn't. So you can see that if I have to pick a mall, why I go with Pheasant Lane in Nashua, or Solomon Pond in Marlboro.

Where was I going with that? Oh, right, so my sister's family eats there a lot, but it was our first time. I thought the food was really good, if it did take a long time to get to us. I hear that's par for the place. And the bill was in the stratosphere for 6 adults and 3 kids (over $200) but we had fun for Uncle Buff's birthday, and that's all that matters.

Rating: A for food, B- for speed of service, A for the waitstaff, D for prices. Oh, and D for the bathroom cleanliness, but to their credit, someone came in to clean them as we were leaving. But I've never seen more toilet paper on the floor in any bathroom anywhere. Could be due to the average patron age hovering near 5.

The ads I'm not supposed to talk about, over on the right? For two days now they've actually been non-you know what-related! They've actually reflected the current content! Mostly for hand sanitizers and Nissan Maximas, with back pain thrown in. (Oh, mine isn't gone, but it is better. I'm pretty functional now.)

I went to the sex offender registry, which is now able to give details (name and address) about level 3 offenders. It's scary to sit there and wait for the search results, hoping against hope that the closest offender is nowhere near your neighborhood. I feel pretty safe where I live, but who's to say what the neighbors have been up to? (Oh man, is this website ever slow. The headlines in the Telegram point out that the servers have been getting HAMMERED with people looking up their towns.)

I'm more nervous about my mom's neighborhood. It's never been the best place to live, and the apartment complex at the far end of the street isn't the most desireable place to live. Some poor woman was shot and killed by her freaky neighbor about a year ago. I'd be thrilled to find out there aren't any in the neighborhood, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were. It's certainly not the way it was when I grew up there.

Huh. We only have two that live in Leominster, and 3 that work here. And they don't live anywhere near me or my mom! Whew! I'm feeling a lot better all of a sudden.

The window is fixed. Now it goes down and then back up again. Can you imagine??!

Total cost for everything done to the car in the past week is in the $350.00 neighborhood. More than I wanted to spend, but less than I feared. Next up, the 90k mile checkup. Yucko. I'm going to have to figure out if I can do that one in pieces, if the going rate is over $500 for a 1992 Nissan Maxima. Which I assume it is.

I can't complain, I haven't really put money into the car since I got it two years ago. You can't count the $2000 in bodywork from when the guy backed into me, because, well, that guy backed into me. I didn't do it. It wasn't normal wear and tear for the grill to be ripped off. At least I hope it wasn't.

I wouldn't mind getting another minivan, because I still really really really miss my old one. But how can I justify it when this car, while older, runs so darned well and doesn't come with a coupon book of monthly payments?

Is my stiff neck getting worse, or is this a side effect of me favoring it combined with the radical stretching exercises I'm doing to see if I can get my muscles to relax a bit? I don't think it's anything terminal, given that I've had these before, but damned if I don't feel worse now than I did earlier. I did find the Advil about 30 minutes ago. I should probably unclench my teeth for a while, too. I wasn't aware that I was clenching them. I don't feel like there's anything clench-worthy in my life.

Also, I discovered a little cut on my hand the hard way. The hard way being "by using some of that Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer after I sneezed," which then burned the little cut with the fury of a thousand white hot suns. Or maybe 400 white hot suns.

Can't you see that I'm falling to pieces right in front of your eyes?

Geez Louise, what the hell was my body doing while I was asleep last night? This morning I'm all achy - stiff neck, sore hips and shoulders. Is this what "being old" feels like? Cause it's not good, not good at all. And nothing that you potty brains are thinking of happened last night, so that's right out.

Sheesh. I'd better go look for the Advil.

Also, what the heck is up with the fall-like photo they chose for August on my New England Travel and Events calendar? God, what a depressing brown photo. "Hey, let's get a shot of everything when it's all brownish green from the excessive heat of summer. Oh, and we'll take the photo late in the day so there are lots of shadows everywhere. We'll call it "Death to Summer" or something cheery like that.

A whole month I get to look at this. *sigh*

I think it's a shame, really. It's a shame in a couple of different ways. It's a shame that Nomar behaved so badly when he was trying to get his salary boosted. For someone who claimed to want to play out his whole career here, for any price, many of us were insulted that he decided to play hardball [sic] with management's offer. Bad move. The fans don't like that kind of crap, especially when the offer looks mighty good in relation to the level of recent play.

And then there were the endless weeks of injury, followed up by the less than impressive playing. Nomar, for God's sake, stop swinging on the first pitch!

Well, go ahead, I guess it doesn't matter anymore, does it.

Still, Nomar was my favorite for years. He was the team mascot. We all loved him. I think it's stinky that in baseball, it's nearly impossible to spend your whole career with one club. So ya, I'll miss Nomar. But I guess I'm not very surprised he's gone.