Kevin Gilhooly

Cubs Win!

Everyone needs an MLB team, even if you only sporadically follow them. You need a team because you are occasionally asked who it is – like being asked your religion – and you can be judged by your answer. I chose the Cubs years ago, but much like a Catholic who only goes to Mass on Christmas and Easter, I tend to only closely follow them during the playoffs.

I’ve tried to get into the Texas Rangers for years, since they’re my actual local team. It’s just they’re not really locals, if I can remember them moving from Washington (“First in war, First in peace and Last in the American League.”) I’ve (fitfully) cheered on the Yankees, because they’re my wife’s home team – and my in-laws’ home team, as well. However, if I was ever asked who my favorite team was, I would say, ‘The Cubs!”

Now, part of this was because I was born on the north side of Chicago, so they are my birth team, even if I did move to Texas when I was two. Part was that they are one of the teams that everyone knows and has an opinion about, like the Yankees or the Red Sox, but they’re from the Midwest.

Also, with the debut of the web, you can have your local team be anywhere – you just have to follow them online. (I follow Australian baseball because I know one of the players.) With cable and satellite TV, you can watch them just as if they were local, too. It’s not like the olden times, when you had to find box scores in the back of the sports section.

So, I am a Cubs fan.

There was a part of me drawn to the Sisyphus story, struggling to get the rock to the verge of the mountaintop, and then having it roll back down. Again and again and again.

There was a part of me drawn to the tradition – not just the “lovable losers”, but the observation that the fans and most of the organization respected and remembered that the team’s last championship was before the NFL even started. They had retired players who were recognized wherever they went. They had Harry Caray, even if he did start with the White Sox. The current team didn’t think the team started with them – they knew the team started in 1876 and they were a part of a long chain.

Then, there was a part of me that just likes being in pain. For many, I’m pretty sure that was the joy of being a Cubs fan – you knew that something was going to go horribly wrong at the worst possible moment, and it would be an even more original catastrophe than the last time. It would be more catastrophic than whatever happened at the office that day, so you would feel better about your job once in a while.

Seriously, what other team has blamed a goat attending a game (and being ejected) for a championship drought? What other team had a fan that brought a goat to a game?

I have attended one game at Wrigley – which is half of the Cubs games I have seen in person.

I saw one Cubs game in Miami that was technically a Marlins game, but I was with a guy from Chicago and two Brits who were just contrarians, so we cheered the Cubs. Loudly. The Cubs won, so we had the stands pretty much to ourselves by the end of the game. Technically, since it was a Marlins game, we had the stands pretty much to ourselves for most of the game. The two Brits were complaining that baseball games weren’t long enough to build a good buzz like a three-day cricket match. On the taxi ride home, one of the Brits asked the cab driver how the game ended “since we had left early.” The cab driver then bitched about the crappy Marlins all the way to our hotel. It was pretty funny, actually.

When I saw the game at Wrigley, I was in Chicago to teach a technical workshop, and my wife had gone along. We were looking for something to do, and then we realized it was baseball season – and by some miracle, the Cubs were in town.

We were having dinner at Harry Caray’s steakhouse the night before we went to the game and everyone was talking about Sammy Sosa’s corked bat (“It was for batting practice. Really.”) We even got interviewed about it. We had tickets for the game the next night, and it was everything I assumed it would be – and the Cubs lost.

The day before, the day the bat was found, the Cubs had won. So, I remember mentioning in the workshop the next morning that we were going to see the Cubs that night and that I was excited to finally see a game at Wrigley.

One of my students just sighed. I asked him what was wrong (I assumed he was a White Sox fan.) I said that the Cubs had won the night before, they were in first place in the division, everything seemed great – with the small exception of the corked bat, which I assumed would blow over. (Sosa got an eight-game suspension, I think.)

My student said he was a Cubs fan, as well. This confused me. Then, he said, “Don’t get too excited about the Cubs. They will break your heart. They always break your heart.”

I thought that was a bit harsh. I didn’t realize it was a mantra.

The Cubs won their division by one game that year. They lost in the NLCS. Broken heart.

I watched the Bartman game on TV because it was a playoff game. Five outs from the World Series. This was the year! Then, some random fan grabs a foul ball, and the team collapses. I remember feeling the doom envelop the stadium – you could feel the air whoosh out of there – and I was watching on TV. It was a new and horrible way to fail.

Broken heart.

I knew they were doing pretty well this year. I knew they had Theo. The next thing I knew, they were in the playoffs. It was time to start paying attention.

So, this year, we watched the playoffs and the World Series with anticipation and a bit of trepidation. My wife had decided she was cheering for the Cubs, as well, which added another layer of stress for me – she is much worse at recovering from a sports broken heart than I am. I’m used to it – I have the Cubs for baseball and Jerry Jones owns the Cowboys. (I’ve pretty much given up football at this point.)

So, while I had a feeling after game 6 that 2016 was finally the year, I was a bit concerned that this could be the most elaborate way to break the fans’ hearts ever conceived. I really wanted to believe after game 5, but I just couldn’t bring myself to that point yet.

I watched game 7 with excitement. No matter what happened, I stayed positive. I’m not quite sure how, because as Cleveland came charging back, I began to hear my student’s voice in my head – “They’ll always break your heart.” I had to tune him out because I was also really concerned my wife was going to start having chest pains, and we would need to call 911. So, I was spending more time tuning her out.

When the rain delay was over, I felt a sudden calm. I’m not sure why – I supposed my psychic self knew there had been a team meeting, and that’s when the team decided to win.

Blown saves. Extra innings. Rain delay. Two runs in the tenth. Give up one run in the bottom of the tenth. The pitcher with the blown save gets the win. Wow.

The final out was sweet – a basic play, executed perfectly. 8-7 Cubs. Final. Cubs win the Series, 4-3. All the way back from death’s doorstep just a few days ago. A team that had to win three in a row, and did.

The Cubs will always break your heart. Until the night they don’t. That’s a very special night.

Genealogy From Spit

This is My DNA Profile that I received today. It’s not the most exciting set of results.

I’ve been working on my family tree off and on for years. I don’t really need to do a lot of work as my Mom’s Mom’s family seems to have an unofficial historian and there are lots of notes out there. My Dad’s family is not well-documented – I think I first discovered my grandad had a brother when I was in my forties. (Dad didn’t talk about his family much, and when I asked him once what “Gilhooly” meant, he said, “The bastard down by the stream.” He may have just been stressed that evening.)

My wife has done some work on her family tree, but some of the branches seem more interested in their own specific branch than where the entire tree goes. I think it’s pretty much you go as far back as the people you saw at Sunday dinner at Grandma’s, and call it good. That, and she’s Brooklyn Italian, so a quarter of the branches in her family tree end up in the East River.

When I found out about the AncestryDNA kits, it sounded like an interesting idea, but a bit far-fetched. I wasn’t sure want bodily fluid was required to extract your DNA (it’s saliva, so calm down), but it sounded scientific and mysterious.

Why trace people’s names when you could find out you were part Gypsy just by spitting in a tube?

The test is interesting – you actually do spit into a tube (up to the fill line), seal it with another tube that has preservative in it, shake it, drop it in a post-paid envelope, and wait for the results.

I may be the first guy who was looking forward to a DNA test coming back.

They tell you it takes six to eight weeks to get your results, but I was pretty sure that was setting expectations low. I was correct. I mailed off my spit in a tube at the beginning of the month, and my AncestryDNA test results arrived today. Actually, I got an email that said they were available on the web site.

There is nothing earth-shaking in them, which is good and bad. Good, because it means nobody has been lying to me about my origins, and bad, because it means I actually am descended from these whack-jobs.

My wife and I sent out samples in the same day, and mine are back, and hers aren’t, which just shows alcohol is easier to process than tomato sauce.

It did occur to me that genealogy would be a wonderful subject in high school, when everyone is desperately trying to prove they’re not descended from the tyrants at home.

I’m pretty sure my wife’s family will now buy kits for each other, since they all criticize each others’ cooking and eating habits, and the greatest insult is “You can’t possibly be Italian.” Well, let’s see, shall we?

My key results:

56% Ireland, which would be my Dad’s contribution, as his family is from a small town in northern Ireland – which is not to be confused with Northern Ireland. We’ve visited there, it’s beautiful countryside, and small farms. If you go far enough north in the beautiful countryside, you will meet British soldiers with tanks and automatic weapons. That would be Northern Ireland.

24% from Europe West, which must be mostly Mom’s donations – her family emigrated to Texas from Germany (probably technically Prussia) in the late 1850s, and my maternal grandfather’s family was from Alsace, which is either German or French, depending on who won the last war. Mom’s family left Germany since all of the sons would very likely be forced to go into the Kaiser’s army, but ironically got to Texas just in time for some of them to fight in the Civil War for the South. Ouch. Luckily, I don’t think any of them saw active duty, they just wandered around the State, not fighting Yankees, since they’re weren’t any in Texas. Yet.

6% Scandinavia, which I have no idea, but it explains why I like lingonberries. If it’s ancient DNA, then it’s just the invaders who went to Ireland to rape and pillage, and found beautiful countryside and small farms. Either that, or the invaders who went to Germany for Oktoberfest.

6% Italy/Greece which is probably just from the gallons of tomato sauce that Virginia has fed me over the last 16 years – some of it is bound to be in my blood. Either that, or it’s from my ancestors who left France to teach the Italians how to cook and make wine, or the ones who left Germany to teach the Italians how to make sausage, or the ones who left Ireland to teach the Italians how to make love.

4% Great Britain which is probably some of my Irish relatives getting lost going home from the pub. “Sean! It must have rained while we were havin’ a pint. I don’t remember having to swim across the street when we left the house.“

There are traces of random other stuff, but I’m not an African Prince, so don’t email me money, no matter how much I ask.

This is a wee bit more specific than “Irish and German” which is what I’ve been told all my life.

The results can’t say I’m German (it’s Europe West), since I think when my family left for Texas, they were Prussians. When my family left Ireland, they were technically British, but they were not happy about it.

I really didn’t think that I would ever pay a company $99 to process a vial of my spit for two weeks, but my cousin had done her DNA test a while ago, and we were discussing her results last month. Her results showed a lot of Great Britain in her DNA, which is interesting since her Mom (my Aunt and my Mom’s sister) and Dad are from the same small town in Texas and have roughly similar family trees. (My Mom’s home town had five or six founding families who all tended to marry each other.)

The DNA results did predict that my cousin and I were cousins, so that part of the test works.

There’s a part of me that was really hoping to find out I was descended from gypsies or pirates, but so it goes.

Now that I have my results, I have to get the dogs checked. Rocky cannot be all Chihuahua.

The Essence of Ripley

Two more memories of Ripley, both involving sleep.

When our first dog, Bubba, came home, he seemed to have some behavior issues. These culminated in his marking my side of the bed (ick!) His trainer said he was trying to assert dominance, and the procedure to stop it was easy: you tied him on a short lead to the bedpost, so he could sleep near us, but not on the bed with us. After a couple of days, Virginia caved and removed the lead – but Bubba slept on the bed, and no more dominance issues. He learned his lesson.

With Ripley, we decided prevention was better than cure. We tied him to the bed with a short lead, and went to sleep. In the morning, he was sleeping on the bed. On a very short lead. The rest of the lead was still attached to the bedpost. It was in his way, so he had just chewed through it, so he could sleep where he wanted. He learned a slightly different lesson than Bubba had. Advantage, Ripley.

Virginia and Ripley had an ongoing battle on sleeping by the side of the bed. They each wanted to sleep on the outside, nearest the side of the bed. (Ripley’s sister Katie sleeps next to me on the side of the bed now, but if she wants to sleep next to the side of the bed, I don’t care. It keeps me further away from the monsters.)

Virginia asserted her dominance and put Ripley between us, so she could have the outside lane. Once she was asleep, Ripley jumped out of bed, went over to her side, and started scratching on the bed. Virginia moved over. Ripley jumped up and slept where he wanted. Advantage, Ripley.

Ripley J Gilhooly (1998-2016)

Hey! My dog is over there!

Ripley J Gilhooly crossed the bridge on August 16, 2016. My wife Virginia and I adopted him in 2001 from Richardson Humane Society, so he had been in our family for fifteen years. He had been with us almost from the beginning. Bubba, our first dog, was a wedding gift, and Ripley was Bubba’s dog. (Ripley was in charge, but he let Bubba think he was.)

Bubba once had a playmate because my Mother-in-law visited for the winter and she had a Shih-Tzu named Flower. When Flower went home to Jersey, Bubba was lonely. So, Virginia decided Bubba needed a dog.

Sometime in the Spring of 2001, Virginia dragged me to a Richardson Humane Society garage sale fund raising event. It was a Saturday morning before dawn, I hadn’t had much coffee, and I was desperately trying to avoid any manual labor. I think she may have literally dragged me.

We passed a couple of puppies in a baby crib. (I’m a Grandpa now, so I know it was probably a Pack’n’Play.) I looked in, looked at Virginia, and said, “Hey! My dog is over there!”

That’s how I met Ripley.

Virginia had said Bubba needed a pet, but I think she had a short list of breeds in mind, including Shih-Tzus, and “stumpy mutt” was not on that list. So, Ripley was not her first choice. He may not have been in the Top Twenty.

So, let’s review our first impressions.

Me: “Hey! My dog is over there!”
Virginia: “That is the ugliest dog I have ever seen.”

Her sister and niece also thought he was ugly. Apparently, Ripley was tearing up a blanket in the crib, but I had not noticed. All the women did. Apparently, this was a warning sign. I ignored any warning signs.

He was my dog, that was all I knew.

I still don’t know how I knew he was my dog. I have met a lot of dogs since. We have three others in the house now (Murphy, Katie and Rocky). We’ve lost four in the time we’ve been married (Bubba, Sparky, Max and Flower.) So, I am quite familiar with dogs. When Murphy ran into a glass wall – twice – in five minutes, I said, “He’s dumb enough to live with us.” We inherited Flower. When I saw the look Virginia gave Rocky after she rescued him, I said, “He’s not going anywhere.”

Ripley was just my dog from the moment I saw him.

Ripley, of course, thought he was Virginia’s dog. I’m not sure if this was a neurotic need to win over the one who voted against him, or if he liked a challenge, or if he just figured out rather quickly where the food came from.

Somehow, the ugly dog became her dog, and then he wasn’t ugly any more. (He was my dog very briefly, when somebody had to bathe him after he managed to dig up the garden an hour before both families arrived for Christmas dinner, but there was little doubt the rest of the time.)

We always assumed he was not loved very much in his original home, especially after we found out he and his sister had been dumped at the shelter, but the family came back the next day, and picked up his sister. They abandoned him twice in two days.

He had spent time at a number of foster homes with Richardson Humane Society – when we took him to a reunion one year, everyone seemed to know him. I never understood why nobody else had adopted him, because everybody loved him. I think he really was supposed to be my dog. Well, Virginia’s dog. Our dog.

Food was Ripley’s passion. When Ripley moved in to our house, he discovered we were free-feeding Bubba. Bubba was very good at self-regulating, he would eat until he was satisfied, and then he would go play or sleep or annoy one of us until we played with him. Ripley parked himself in front of the food bowl and ate. The bowl was magically refilled by his new favorite parent. He ate some more. It was filled again.

Eventually, I found him, lying next to the food bowl, just flicking his tongue in and out to eat without having to stand up.

The vet weighed him at his first checkup. He was no longer underweight. In fact, she uttered whatever the veterinary term is for “Holy crap!”

We stopped free feeding.

Ripley would eat, and then go help Bubba finish his food.

We started feeding them in their crates, which we still do today.

It took a long time to figure out what breed Ripley really was, because the shelters tend to just put down whatever pops in their heads, and rescues will label a dog whatever they think is an adoptable breed, and it’s not like anybody has medical records for them.

Ripley was a “terrier mix” for a long time until somebody finally said he looked like a PBGV (which is Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, a French breed that nobody had ever head of. PBGV sounds very sexy (the full name sounds sexier, but only with a French accent.) Translated, it’s a Small (Petit) Low To The Ground (Basset) Wire-Hared (Griffon) from Vendeen. Everything sounds better in French.

Ripley was small. He was low to the ground. He had wired hair. We’re pretty sure he was a native Texan, though – he would always bark at cows or horses on the TV.

After we met Ripley at the RHS event, we found his foster Mom, arranged a playdate with Bubba, and after they seemed to get along, we decided we would take over fostering him. We did the paperwork to be a foster, but nobody believed it. We were foster failures. He never left.

Until today.

We’ll never know how old Ripley was, since he was rescued. People figured he was born in October 1998 or so, so he was probably at least 17 years old. We know he left us on August 16, 2016.

After he passed 10 and had survived three back surgeries, I had actually thought he was immortal. That’s not exactly true – after he had torn the skirting off the couch, chewed the bottom of a $3000 dining table and dug up the garden an hour before family and in-laws arrived for Christmas dinner – all within his first year with us – and survived all of that, I thought he was invincible.

If I ever got caught doing something that really annoyed my wife, I was planning to just say, “Ripley said it was OK.”

Ripley was not very good at training. Someone who is married to me thought he was stupid, but later realized that he’s just stubborn.

Bubba flew through training, so we took Ripley along one week. Ripley appeared to struggle. The instructor had a firm policy to never say “No!” to a dog – you would redirect from bad behavior to good.

As far as I recall, this is his first and final training lesson:

Trainer: “Sit, Ripley!”
Ripley rolled over.
Trainer: “Let’s try again. Sit, Ripley!”
Ripley rolled over.
Trainer: “Once more. Sit, Ripley!”
Ripley rolled over.
Trainer: “NO! NO! NO! NO!”

I have never been more proud of one of my dogs. I managed to not laugh until we were in the car, but I still giggle today when I think about it.

Here are the commands Ripley eventually mastered:

Do you want to go outside?
Let’s eat dinner
Let’s go take a nap
Let’s go get a cookie
Go in your crate (this required cookie bribes)

(He would sit occasionally. If I saw him about to sit, I would say, “Sit” just to take credit. He never really learned to roll over, so he just knew how to push a trainer’s buttons.)

Ripley would jump over our baby gates (used to keep dogs out of specific rooms, like the room with the skirt-less couch and chewed table) because we never told him he was not supposed to jump the gates. We have a video of him jumping the gate, wearing a SuperDog cape. We were stupid dog parents early on. Eventually, this lead to his back trouble.

Ripley had one of the most expensive backs ever.

Ripley ruptured his back at the start of Memorial Day weekend 2005, just before we were supposed to leave on a trip up North for my niece’s wedding. Nobody actually cared if I was there, but my Mom-in-law was coming in my car, as she wouldn’t fly. So, I had to go.

That was the weekend that we learned Ripley understood math, since his emergency surgery cost almost exactly the same amount as what we had saved for the trip. To those who thought we should just “put him down and get another dog”, I will say this: We did what we thought was required as good pet owners, we got ten more years to spend with Ripley, and I got out of a wedding. I think we made the right choice.

Ripley had another rupture and one more round of surgery a year later, but after that, his neurosurgeon must have paid off her yacht, because she suggested that we go to OSU and have disk ablation surgery. This procedure prevents further ruptures. (Wait. There’s a cheaper procedure that prevents doing that other procedure you’ve done twice?)

So, we spent a romantic weekend in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Of course, on the way to the pre-op exam, Ripley stopped short in the parking lot, and Virginia tore her Achilles, trying not to step on him. So, now I had two creatures limping. (I did ask if we could put my wife down, but the vet said “No.”)

Ripley was a very good learning experience for the student doctors. One held him gently while they were inserting an IV because “he was so friendly.” She learned quickly that if you poke a dog with a sharp object on one end, the other end is likely to bite whomever is holding him gently.

The vet leading the team said, “Well, she won’t do that again.” Ripley was a teacher.

Ripley was quarantined as a bite rísk while he was recovering from surgery. I don’t think anyone really believed he was a bite risk, but rules are rules. I had never had a dog in quarantine before. It made him sound tough. Ripley ended up in quarantine and on crate rest at the same time, so he slept twice as much.

He got much mileage out of his bad back, since he was the only dog in the house that could trip someone, and instead of getting yelled at, he would get petted to see if he was OK. I’m pretty sure he knew this and milked it.

Here’s another lesson we learned: Short dogs can’t get your attention easily, especially if they don’t bark much. The fastest way is to poke you in the legs, or nip at your ankles. So, Ripley did both. Actually, he only nipped my wife, but she’s slower than I am (probably from the ankle injury.) He would poke me.

One day, I was standing in the kitchen, and I felt a poke. I moved over a bit. Another poke. What was wrong with this idiot dog? I moved over. Poke. Move. Poke. Move. Then, my wife said, “You realize that now you are standing by the cookie jar. You’ve been herded.”

I gave Ripley a cookie.

He only did that a couple of times before I learned.

After that, I would just go stand by the cookie jar to begin with, mainly because Ripley taught Katie to poke me, too.

Ripley did learn one useful trick after his surgeries, so he was trainable, after all – we put ramps by the couches and bed, and he (mostly) stopped jumping on and off the furniture, and used the ramps instead. I do think it helped that they took less energy to use. Nonetheless, the one other command he (mostly) learned was “Ripley! Use your ramp!”, which was generally yelled from across the room as someone saw him heading over the side of the couch.

The ramps will stay, even though he’s gone, because all the dogs have learned to use them.

Ripley was a world-class napper. I was always afraid all of the energy he was storing up would come out at once, and we’d have a supernova. Unfortunately, it never happened. He just left us quietly.

You never miss a dog right away, especially if there are other dogs in the house. However, over time, you realize that all dogs are equally adorable and annoying – but in their own unique ways.

There will never be another Ripley.

He was my dog.

I miss him.

Un Poquito Espanol

I have been dealing with our corporate team in Latin America lately. They are lovely people, very easy to work with, but their customers all speak Spanish. This has been a challenge. I took Spanish in prep school, never did that well, and never practiced after that.

The first internal call with the team, I apologized and explained I knew “Bar Spanish.” It is a very simple dialect:

“Una cerveza, poor favor.” (A beer, please.)
“Uno mas.” (One more – can be repeated.)
“Gracias.” (Thank you – after each delivery.)
“Manana.” (See you tomorrow.)

They found this quite funny (whew.) I did not cuss in Spanish, which I learned in college, although not officially. The problem with Bar Spanish is that it only works in Cozumel, and they all speak English there, anyway.

Most of the rest of the basic Spanish I remember is “Una cerveza y dos helados” which is “one beer and two ice creams.”

It was from a story we had to read in sixth grade, a picture book using basic phrases as captions for each picture. I never understood why a Dad would order beer while getting his kids ice cream. Then, I had my child.With grandkids, I would have to learn “one defibrillator and three ice creams.”

For the record, my former manager (current translator) told the Latin America team about beer and ice cream, and they found it hilarious. At least laughter is the same in English and Spanish. I hope.

There’s Trouble a’Brewin’

I started drinking coffee because years ago, one of my bosses had a secretary that would bring him coffee, and after we went out a couple of times, she would bring me coffee, too. It pays to sit next to your boss’ office. It pays to date the coffee maker. (The person who makes coffee, not the machine.) (Yes, this was a long, long time ago. At my current job, nobody has secretaries but upper management, and they have assistants, and they don’t make coffee. Well, they might, but if you’re in Dallas and your assistant is in Raleigh, it doesn’t help much.)

That started a long addiction to the bean-flavored hot water.

I’ve had fresh-brewed coffee, stale-brewed coffee, coffee from random machines, Starbucks (it gives me a headache), instant coffee, you name it.

Eventually, I became a bit of a coffee snob. I went from instant to brewed coffee to grinding beans just before brewing. I even roasted my own beans. Once.

I spent years on the Gevalia plan, getting overpriced coffee shipped to my door, so I could grind beans every morning, and make a fresh pot. (Being home-officed means you are in charge of your own coffee.) I finally gave it up to prove to the Spousal Unit that I could give up my frivolous spending, but it just encouraged her to increase hers, since we were saving money elsewhere.

If I had to go into the office, there was a QuikTrip on the way, and I like their coffee. Plus, the drive there was about as long as it took my diuretic to kick in, so win-win.

Over time, slowly, I stopped grinding. I suppose it was because I found that I could order Wawa coffee (after having it every day while visiting the in-laws) but they didn’t have beans, just ground. It may also be because I am getting lazy. One less thing to clean, one less thing to do.

So, Wawa is pre-ground. But it’s good.

So, I went from “Frankly, I feel that if you don’t grind your own beans, you are not receiving the essence of coffee” to “Wawa good. Brew now.”

That was the first step into darkness.

The next issue was that the Spousal Unit gave up coffee. So, now, when I made a pot of ten to twelve cups (aka three to four mugs) in the morning, I was drinking it. All of it.

Wow. That will raise your heart rate, especially when coupled with constant conference calls.

That is just too much coffee, even for me.

So, I needed a way to make less, and I really don’t like how coffee tastes when you try to brew only a couple of cups in a big machine. I got down to making about three mugs, which was less waste, but it still took a while to brew, and I was usually behind schedule in the mornings.

That lead to the … evil … K-Cup.

There were only a few things in the coffee world I had said I would never do.

I had made instant (shudder!)
I skipped coffee, had soda or tea and survived the mornings, but would have a headache in the afternoon.
I had used an Italian stovetop espresso machine (and not blown up the kitchen), after I had to go buy espresso cups.
I had used a French Press (Spousal Unit broke it.) Actually, I had a large one and a small one.
I had used a vacuum pot (Spousal Unit broke it.)
I had made cold brew coffee, the last time it was in vogue – it’s coming back again.
I had used an aluminum percolator like my Grandmother had, just without putting eggshells in it to mellow the brew.
I had used a single-cup drip coffee maker that was really just a filter holder that sat on top of a cup.
I had a four-cup machine, a ten-cup machine and a twelve-cup machine (Spousal Unit broke the carafe.)
I ended up with a twelve-cup machine with a reservoir for the coffee and nothing made of glass that the Spousal Unit could break.

However, I had never used a single-cup K-Cup machine.

I don’t know what my original objection was, since I’m old and rather forgetful, but it was a pretty strong objection, let me tell you.

So, now I have a single-cup brewer. In my defense, it will also brew grounds and pods (if you can find pods), so I’m not stuck with just K-Cups. It’s a multi-tasker. Sort of.

Now, I can make one cup of coffee at a time. It takes two minutes, which is a lot less time than brewing a pot of coffee. In fact, I can get one cup brewed while I’m removing the previous cup from my system. Efficient.

Single-cup tasted better when somebody was bringing it to me. However, I’m not wasting a half a pot any more, and that bothered me a lot.

The only issue is that the K-Cup universe thinks 10oz is a large cup. Have these people never been to Wawa? QuikTrip? 7-11? (I leave Starbucks out, since I do not make enough to enjoy a large cup of Starbucks coffee.)

Luckily, the cups that came with our dish set are the perfect size for single-cup use. Now, I know why they were so tiny. Otherwise, you just brew twice into the same cup. This is non-optimal, obviously, because who has four minutes to wait for coffee?

I still make a pot of coffee on days I will need it – say, more than two meetings. The rest of the time, it’s one at a time.

Wawa sells K-cup pods.

Life is good.

Another season

It has been a long, long time since I posted here. Since I didn’t have anything to say, I didn’t force it – even though that is contrary to most of the bloggers in the universe.

The AirHogs are in the next phase of “let’s destroy the team” – the owners have decided to co-locate the team between Grand Prairie and Amarillo. So, now they are the Texas AirHogs.

This is quite possibly the stupidest move in the history of organized sports, other than just giving up and having a traveling (no-home) team. A team with two home fields that are 354 miles apart. WTF?

Reminder to the owners and league: Texas is not New Jersey. You can’t just drive across it in an hour. If Southwest flies between the cities, only crazy people are going to drive it.

We gave up our season tickets last year, because we just didn’t have the time any longer. I was back in the office across town, and by the time I got home, I just couldn’t face another half-hour on the highways to get to the game.

Now, I’m back home-officed, and half the time they’re playing away games, and half of the home games are in Amarillo. I thought driving to Grand Prairie was bad. I wonder if this year’s season tickets package includes a hotel room in the other city. Maybe you can just ride on the team bus.

Why not just kill the team and get it over with?

To fill the gap in home games, the Great Southwest Collegiate League was invented. It’s a wooden-bat, college-level league for college players around the State. Their games are played in whatever stadium the AirHogs are not in that day.

I may go to a couple of their games. They seem to have two games per day, since they don’t have access to the stadium for a full season.

The AirHogs have done almost everything they can to kill fan support. I guess having someone show up in Grand Prairie with a sign “Tonight’s Home Game is in Amarillo” is the final step in the plan.

NaPoWriMo

It’s April! Time to start writing poetry! Every year, I try to accomplish the goal of NaPoWriMo – write one poem a day for a month. This year, I actually have a couple of days head start, because this week has been fruitful.

It’s interesting trying to write on a regular schedule with a self-imposed deadline (I was going to post here daily – haha!) but poetry can be much easier than prose, because all you need is one line (“I am an Irish Pirate, I drink Guinness every night”), and then you work around it. With prose, you have to have a (relatively) coherent thought, which is much more difficult.

So, I think this is year three for me (have to go back and check.) I won’t be on a ship during the month this year, so there should be much fewer works about the sea.

Two down, twenty-eight to go!

Falling Off A Cruise Ship

Another tragic story this week – a Texas man fell off a cruise ship. A search is underway. I’m sure all of us send our thoughts to his family.

Here’s the issue: I’m pretty sure nobody ever falls off a cruise ship. I just finished my twelfth cruise last week, and they’ve all been on Norwegian and the missing passenger was on a Royal Caribbean ship, but I’m pretty sure I can say he didn’t fall.

It’s easy to say someone fell off a ship, but it also moves the implied blame to the cruise line. Apparently, Royal Caribbean has ships that passengers can fall from. We have spent too much of the past few years moving blame to innocent parties.

Why don’t people fall off cruise ships? Mainly, because cruise ships are designed to keep people on board. There are railings everywhere along the outside decks, and it takes work to get over them. There are partitions underneath, so you can’t just slide under. Some decks don’t have any open areas at all. It’s not like you can just walk up to the edge of the ship, trip and fall overboard. You can climb up and try to balance on the railings because your idiot friends bet you that you couldn’t, and fall off the railing, but that’s stupidity or drunkeness, not a fall. You can climb over and jump off the railing, but that’s suicide (and there are probably easier ways to commit suicide.)

In this case, I just looked at the deck plans, and deck ten on The Navigator of the Seas is all cabins – private rooms – and the outside cabins have balconies. Balconies have railings. I’ve been in a balcony cabin. You can’t fall off a balcony without some work.

So, this is tragic, as it always is when a life is potentially lost, and it is also sloppy reporting or at least an extremely poor choice of words. (It’s also sloppy to say Royal Caribbean built the ship. Cruise lines purchase and operate ships. Shipyards build them for the cruise lines. Does American build their own airplanes?)

Coincidentally, before I heard about the accident, I had attended a Q&A session with the senior officers on the Norwegian Jade, and someone asked the Captain about what happens in a man overboard situation. The question actually was “Has anyone fallen off the ship?” One of his first statements was “Nobody falls off a ship.”

In a man overboard situation, the ship’s crew will drop flares to mark the approximate spot, turn the ship around (which may take some time – it can take a mile or more to stop a cruise ship) and launch a life boat or tender to do a search. In cases where the ship is within range, the crew can ask the Coast Guard for help – helicopters and planes search a wide area faster.

The Captain of the Jade made it clear that the sooner it’s reported, the better the chances of finding and saving the missing person. This should be obvious to almost anyone, but apparently, some people on cruises are idiots. That is the real reason you can have a man overboard.

A Royal Caribbean ship has a man overboard. The Coast Guard is assisting in the search for him. I know it’s hard on his loved ones, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t fall.

Survivor

My wife loves Survivor. She loves it so much she tells people we love Survivor. This particular usage must be the Royal We, because I do not love Survivor. I will watch it with her, but I actually prefer the Amazing Race, where contestants have some control over their own destiny. Survivor actually distresses me, although I couldn’t really articulate why.

Last night was the conclusion of another riveting season. Actually, all the players were returning contestants, so it was better than most seasons. Some guy who had been in the back most of the time managed to build a large enough alliance to get into the final three, pleaded that he was there to win for his family, and won a million dollars. He won one challenge.

I was incensed that he won, as he had minimal accomplishments. I thought the whole “for my family” speech was pandering to the jury. My wife was very pleased he won, since she liked him.

It’s today’s Corporate America in a nutshell, and that’s my problem with Survivor – it’s just too close to my work life to be enjoyable.

I’m hoping the producers originally envisioned a true contest of strength and endurance, where the cream would rise to the top, and the most powerful would be rewarded with riches. Assuming that a TV producer had ever read Darwin (a leap of faith on my part), the strong would survive, by natural selection. This is a good theory.

Here’s what actually happens each season on Survivor:

A bunch of random people are placed in a relatively high-stress situation somewhere in a remote location. They are not truly random, since the producers choose them ahead of time, and there always seem to be patterns. It’s almost like there were quotas to fill. There will be a big tough guy, an pretty boy, a nerd, a slightly crazy woman, a proud ethnic woman, an overly-sensitive guy, an old guy, a Mother Earth woman, someone with a secret, and a few others. The “random” people are placed on teams.

After a couple of days of assessing each other, some of the rather weak performers start to band together and methodically wipe out the stronger performers, simply because that’s the only way they will remain in the game. They swear loyalty to each other, but will switch allegiances whenever necessary, just to stay alive. If their friends are sacrificed, so be it. There are always one or two incompetents who manage to stick around week after week, just because they are no threat to anyone, even if they are an incredible annoyance to the people who actually know what is going on. Someone thinks he is in charge, but everyone is actually working behind his back to destroy him.

The truly weak are kept around because at the end, in theory, the best player of the few left will be crowned the winner. So, rather than surrounding yourself with strong players, you select weak players, since that makes you look stronger.

Each week, all of the contestants are required to complete a task which has no apparent actual value other than it was the task assigned. One of the teams will get rewarded based on how quickly they can do the task. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t master the task (except for losing the reward), since you will never have to do the task again. If you win, you get a reward and the other team gets told “I got nothin’ for you.”

After that, there is another random task, but this time, if your team loses, your team has to send someone home. There are hidden trinkets that you can find that can prevent you from going home, but only if you display the trinket at the proper time. In the end, some of the last ones who were vanquished are allowed to pick the winner out of the losers that are left.

It’s natural selection on acid.

It is also, my friends, the past thirty or so years of my life, except that on Survivor, nobody has to do annual performance reviews, mainly because they’re not out there that long. I’m constantly amazed I’m still here. I guess I’m just not a threat to anyone.