LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

baseball

Tea for two (erm, one)

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Lauren said, and I quote, ” You have to write the post tomorrow. No tag backs.”

Late last week, one of our sixth grade teachers –sixth graders are our youngest students– was anxiously hanging out by that new fangled coffee maker that you put one tiny cup of coffee in, and out comes a full sized cup of coffee. You know what I’m talking about?

Well, it was taking much longer than she had anticipated, and she was worried about getting out to her room on time. I didn’t have a class 1st period, so I said that she should just go out to her classroom, and I’d bring her coffee out to her.

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Everything was going along smoothly, until I turned the cup of (and at this point I realized that it might not, in fact, be coffee) around and noticed the logo on the cup itself.

This was a real problem. I couldn’t just be seen walking this cup of what I was gradually coming to realize was tea around the school. People would talk. Long standing agreements and treaties would be compromised.

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Frankly, I was a little bit surprised. I thought I knew on which side of the fence everyone around me stood on this issue. But this sixth grade teacher –I’m withholding her name, not to protect her innocence, but because I have blotted it from my mind– really threw me for a loop.

But I had said that I would deliver her pale, hot drink, and deliver it I would. It didn’t take very long to make the switch. All it took was a color printer and a little bit of packing tape. Well, there might have been a little more packing tape involved than was strictly necessary.

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I wanted to include a photo of her with the mug, but she didn’t think that was a good idea.

 

 

It’s Lauren’s fault

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Lauren said it Friday night. Deborah was here and heard her say it. Deborah’s response was quick and too the point, “Bite your tongue.” Meanwhile, I, confused and taken aback said, “That’s a hell of a thing.”

The thing is, I’m not really sure that Lauren can even pick the baseball out of the pictures below.

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But now the series is tied 1 apiece, and you can all blame Lauren.

The Old Ball Game

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Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. While the Cardinals have been playing well enough to be in first place in their division, I have been a little disappointed in some individual performances thus far in the season. So we went down to St. Louis over the weekend.

There were some other reasons for the trip, but Lauren will be talking about those tomorrow. But primarily, it was to spend a little time talking to Albert and Chris.

I think it’s safe to say that they both took the little pep-talk to heart, and will be bringing their A Game for the rest of the season. Albert put his considerable skills to use while we were there to enjoy it, sending two balls into the stands including the game winning walk off homerun in 12th inning. Chris threw a nice game the following evening, but we were not able to stick around for it. The Cardinals swept the Cubs, and that was nice too.

Lauren spent most of the game worried about when the sun would finally reach us. At game time the temperature was 94 degrees, and luckily it never pushed past 95. We were in the nose bleed section, but at least we were in the shade until the 7th inning with a nice cool wind. Moving back one row kept us in the shade for the 8th, but spending the 9th inning in the sun was too much for Lauren. We spent the time between the next three innings finding cooler seats.

Here we are in the 10th inning:

The 11th inning:

And the 12th inning:

If you’re a member of my side of the family and you’re reading this, you should know that, as is our custom, we do not mix Sommerer visits to St. Louis with Hofman visits to St. Louis. Trust us, this is for the best.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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This was a big experiment. I (1)wanted to see if the video on my phone was good enough that I could reliably use it when things needed to be taped. I (2)needed to learn to use the latest version of iMovie.

About 4 years ago Apple completely rewrote their video editing program that comes with every Macintosh. They rewrote it and cut out about 50% of the features. Everyone was upset about it, and so they made the old version available as a download.

I’ve been using that old version at school for Multimedia Application and Video Editing, two of the classes that I teach. Every year they add back some of the features from the old program, and this last semester some of my students wanted to use their own laptops for their video projects. Nothing wrong with that, except that Apple no longer allows downloads of the old software, so they had to use the new software.

And they liked it. They told me I should try it. The annual Sommerer family ball game seemed like my chance:

My verdict? It’s good enough to use now, but I don’t really like it. Lots of features are hidden and the layout does not seem as intuitive to me. But it is easy to make a nice video.

P.S. If you are related to me, you should post comments on the Sommerer Family Website.

Fantasy Baseball Files

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This collection of fantasy baseball files was created by readers of the Fantasy Baseball Cafe Forums. It includes documents for preparing for a draft/auction and documents for running one.

If you have a document that has worked well for you and you want to offer it to others, please email it to me, and I’ll add it to the list. Please include a brief description like the ones below and whether I can add your email address. If you’ve significantly modified a file that is already here, I’d like to include that as well.

Sunday wrap-up

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No photos today- reason posted below.

Sunday was Fantasy Baseball Auction Day, or – as it is for Lloyd, Christmas.  The day began with early church, not regular church, because Lloyd needed lots of time to set up for his baseball party at school.  (They do it up pretty slick – computers, projectors and giant screens to keep track of everyone’s bids, plenty of pizza and pop for the crowd.)  Anyway, there would be some wonderful pictures of it, since he took the camera along….but he didn’t take any photos.

My day was pretty good – TWO naps (the first one before 11!), some laundry, and some chores.  That’s about it.