Mothers Day, 2015

It's our first without her. This is my Marilyn at her absolute best.....

I miss her.

Maybe it's time

It might be the right time to start "There You Have It...Again" again. It's been a couple of years. Much has changed. Life is very different. I am older, I have been recently widowed, I am just now ( after going through endless kinds of purges of fear,self pity and days of reliving the past) accepting that as a true fact, I have found some peace, I am looking for some contentment, and the list goes on. Politics which always has been a pleasure for me to follow and enjoy and eagerly participate in has changed even more than I have. Sure, I'll vote. But I have low expectations for the outcome with the entire country living in fear of everything and probably ready for letting the conservatives take over. We'll see and maybe before two plus years go by I will post here again.

...you never can tell

This is really for me, but on this day I always remember Bob D and Denis T. They could not have been more unalike. But they both did share this day and some of it's iconic images and themes. So, for them and me too.

Sorry about the ad , but capitalism still rules.

Waxing or is it Waning

Not to be outdone by my woods out back, here are my woods out front as they looked back in April of 2005, or was it '04. Doesn't matter really, but I just checked and it was 2005.

Waxing or waning...now that matters.

Still Looking for It

I did it again. Feeling a little more drifting than usual I sold my fairly new little Lumix DMC ZS7 and bought a brand new Lumix LX5. Both pretty nice point and shoot cameras. Then, and once again, the new camera while it has a sort of small cultish following of fanboys, didn't come with a manual that instructs inspiration, seeing, ambition, nor even techniques to substitute for same. Alas.

And worse yet, after I got the new machine and the accompanying remorse and second guessing I realized that I truly wished I still had my old early better than pretty good for it's time point and shooter the Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ30 for a whole bunch of "reasons" or rationalizations. So I threw out a bid on eBay and got one. Then spent the next day or so really in a state of self doubt and chastising myself for being an idiot. No, worse, a nut---a stupid nut at that.

So what's next. Maybe I will actually take a picture. Or not.

Feeling old.

It's Truck Day

Almost everyone knows what this means. Big league baseball is close to being back for another season. This winter will more than likely still be in evidence when an even bigger day, Opening Day 2011, rolls around but who cares. The games will begin and everything will be alright.

I am not too sure when these events started to be the big thing to me that they are now. I know they were not that big a deal back when I still played the game, nor later when I tried to play middle aged slow pitch softball, nor even later when I was all self absorbed in my old man worries as I turned into a pensioner. But after that time when I realized that it's all about expectations and they can be adjusted and refined that it happened. And it's been a pretty good ride ever since.

So, pitchers and catchers on the 13th I think. First spring training game on TV sometime in early March. What the heck else is there.

A Fake

I put up a fake Christmas Tree this year. Been threatening this for twenty five or thirty years and this was the year to actually do it. Mrs calls it our "holiday structure" after a cartoon in the Hartford Courant which referred to an artificial tree put up as Hartford's sort of official tree in Constitution Plaza this year.

Don't ask me why. I just wanted to. The rest of the season is about the same as it has been for the past fifty years. And the last two very faded links left from the paper ring garland that Mrs put on the tree in 1961 when I was sick are on it, as usual.

So, there you have it.

From the past...

 
Long ago, I took this picture and never printed it. I probably knew who it was then. I am not sure now. But going through lots of old negatives, most of which are just plain bad, I did find some that I like a lot. This was among the latter.

The Cuban Revolution

I can remember baby sitting with Mrs (before she became Mrs) for her older sister's kid on New Years Eve waiting for 1959 when we heard on the television that the revolution led by some guy named Fidel Castro against the dictatorial regime in Cuba was happening.

Later I became an admirer of the revolution and an avid listener to Radio Havana on shortwave 6.000 MHz.

I always have wanted to visit Fidel Castro's Cuba but never did and now never can.

It is amazing that this guy managed to survive the CIA, the american mafia and 10 presidents. Eisenhower,Kennedy,Johnson,Nixon,Ford,Carter,the dreaded and dreadful Reagan,Bush, Clinton, and the even more dreadful Cheny/bush over the past 47 years.

Viva Fidel.

I Do Not Care......

First and foremost, the Mitchell Report doesn't mean much. It really doesn't. Yes a bunch of guys were named, but I am certain that it's only a small percentage of the players who used the so-called performance enhancers during the time that was investigated.

Second, it says nothing about all the rest who used, and still do use , "speed" type drugs, and special vitamins and cans of spinach.

What else is new?

Spring Training is less than couple of months away.

It's almost Christmas.

A Season sort of Like the Past...

This season watching and listening to the Red Sox games has been pretty much like the past. Well, they did win the division, that was different. They didn't totally collapse, that was different too. The team did seem to get hot at the right time for the newish so called post-season. They won four straight games which would have translated to being World Series winners in the good old days when baseball was a game for the summer and winning a pennant was a big deal.

As of now though, they have lost a couple of games. They stopped hitting in bunches and rallying for the past 12 or 14 innings and the starting pitching seems to be very much like the old days, questionable. They may not be able to come back and beat the Indians ( at least they are playing a real old time team and not some sort of strange team from Florida or Arizona or Colorado ) for ignoble opportunity to play some team from the new new days called the Rockies. This isn't all bad.

So anyway, I get to listen to or watch at least two more games this year. Maybe more. So 162 plus 8 makes 170 games. It would be nice if there were a few more, but as of now I am pretty much satisfied with the season regardless.

I know, it didn't make sense when I first used it either. Sue me!!!!

A Season sort of Like the Past...

I Know The Fat Lady has Finished her Warm Up Scales and ....

...is getting ready to bellow it out. It's over. At least the thought of winning a division title that is. Sure, there is still an odds on chance that there will be a post season game or three thanks to the lame wild card baloney fat. But if there was any thought of winning a division title after leading the division for over five months , it went away last night after the Red Sox rolled over.

What's really pitiful is that the other night, after they lost a five run lead over THNYY in the eighth inning I couldn't get to sleep. God in heaven save me insert usual metaphorical disclaimer here) I am seventy two stinking years old and losing sleep over a bunch of millionaires and soon to be millionaires losing a baseball game.

If that didn't tell me something nothing will. What is it that some people say? Something about getting a life.

Well I got the message. Losing two of the last three since that stupid night hasn't caused me to lose anything. In fact, I can simply sit back and enjoy watching the game(s) with out meaningless expectations beyond each pitch, each at bat, each fielding play, and , well, hopefully you get the point. I do again. And thank god---there's that metaphor again--for that.

Two Tacks and One Jibe....

...and two short runs with the engine during a five hour sail down the Thames out of New London into the sound and over to the Dumplings returning back and by the entrance buoys a bit, then finally the jibe to head in and back up the river to Shaws Cove and the berth. Wind never blew very much over 10k and it was just nice and easy all day.

But.....this and this and the Yankees are coming, the Yankees are coming, the Yankees are coming.

So far, the Sox have provided all I need this Spring...

...and that's all there is to it. I didn't say it quite like this, but I should have. Incidentally, if your a Sox fan the link is a daily must.

As for the rest of the spring and the loooong summer to follow, we'll have to just see what there will be to see. So far, without the Sox wow's and the Yankees's woes, I'd be a melancholy basket case. But that is another longer and, sorry to say, tedious story which won't be told here.

Another "New Year" Day.....

...just as I was getting ready to post this comment on the day and the time, I got an email from MLB.com. Of course, I was going to talk a little about watching the first game of the Spring Season last night. OK, the first couple of innings anyway. The Red Sox were going after the Twins. Neither team had to travel far, they both do spring in Fort Myers.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I look at this first game of the season as another way to celebrate New Years Day. I also like Labor Day as a New Years Day along with January second as the opposite, sort of a final day of the year day. Having nothing to do, really nothing to do by choices made a dozen years ago and remade just about every day since, days like the first game of spring are big deals. On a par with the return of The Sopranos which occurs next month I think.

In case you think this is all trivial let me assure you that it is. That's the point.

By the way, that new goofy looking second baseman Pedroia ( or whatever his name is) got a base hit and Lugo, on cue with all the pre-season stories made a throwing error. Ramirez didn't play.

Happy New Year!!!

Valentine Day 2007...no big thing ...

...especially for this geezer. The giant snow storm that so many of the breathless weather newscasters tried to wish for the area hasn't materialized. We have a couple of inches of very tiny snowflakes and sleet mixed in as of the moment, but for crying out loud it's the middle of February isn't it?

The pitchers and catchers have already reported or will report in the next couple of days, but even for me I will have to suspend the reality of the absurd bloated egos and salaries of the players and try to just see them again as the boys of summer if I am to get back that feeling that all is right in the world which usually comes with the start of spring training.

The heart shaped box of Whitman's Samplers that I got for Mrs is still OK. But I bet that sitting here alone with me and her box of chocolates isn't exactly what she would really wish for today. Me either!

addendum added post the time of this story's previous posting an hour or so ago....It's not that she doesn't like me or vice versa. It's just that holidays lately don't mean as much unless one or more of the grandkids and/or kids are either here or at least in touch.

Valentines Day 2007. No big thing.

Take This Test....

I ran across this test today. I took it and the results put me near Gandhi. Believe me, I am not Gandhi. But Gandhi and I probably do share something. We both want things to be a "certain way". He did, or tried to do something about it. I do not. There are doers and there are watchers.

My score: Economic line -7
Social Lib/Authoritarian line -3.85

...take it.

When It Was Really Something.....

There are only 18 days or so until "it's finally over day". I don't like saying this but I am saying it. For the longest time I started the Christmas season very early, before Thanksgiving even. Larry Duhaime and I would take the afternoon off. He was a salesman and I was sort of his boss but we would both take the afternoon off and go toy shopping. We both had a bunch of kids and we both loved to buy toys. We would stash them in the car trunk, pile them up in the office around our desks, even sneak a few into the house when no one was home. This would go on and off for the next month or so leading up to Christmas Eve and scenes like this one when everything was simple....or at least seemed to be.

This little homely shot was in 1965. For a lot of reasons it was easy to ignore the reality of Vietnam, The civil rights wars, the recent near death experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis...all that kind of stuff and simply bask in the fun and anticipation of Christmas.

Now it's not the same. I fret and moan and mark January 2 down in my head as "it's finally over" day. The whole holiday season grinds to a halt and I begin to hope that something will happen in the next ten months that will let me get back to just "taking the afternoon off" and going toy shopping next Christmas.

Back in the Last Century....

As they say in the movies nowadys, back in the day I might have had a lot to say today. See the archives here at the old Thereyouhaveit.com.

Today, I only breathe a sigh.....maybe of relief that the bush/Cheney/Rove crowd didn't get another victory to call a mandate or maybe just relief that this election season is over.

Now I wait for about 105 days or so until pitchers and catchers report down in Florida.