Life Updates

This is basically a Random Ramblings post, but I wanted to call it something different.

Wednesday was the 25th anniversary of my college graduation. Even though there have been notices about a 25-year college reunion and I know that 2022 is 25 years after 1997, this still came as a bit of a shock and surprise to me.

I might be a little addicted to online games. My 65-day streak on Wordle ended earlier this week when I couldn't solve DELVE. My favorite game might be Quordle where you have 9 guesses to solve 4 puzzles. I just reached a top streak of 24. Worldle, where you try to identify a country, is really difficult. My winning percentage is just over 50%. Finally, Heardle, in which you have 6 guesses to name a song in about 15 seconds, was made just for me. I'm at 83%, though I think that it counts as incorrect if I don't play on a given day.

If the Penguins held on to win against the Rangers on Sunday night and went on to make a deep run in the playoffs, this Jake Guentzel goal would be remembered as one of the best in team history. Oh well.

  

I'm friends on Facebook with someone I was friends with in junior high and high school. While he has always been a Republican to my knowledge, he seems to have turned into a big Qanon and conspiracy theory guy. After the recent hateful and racist mass shooting at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, he wrote a post with pictures of over 250 people accused of conducting mass shootings in 2021. Many of the people pictured are not white. His point seemed to be that the media doesn't cover all mass shootings equally and that money and political power drives the narrative. At least that's what I think his point was. I replied that maybe he should be more concerned with the unreal number of mass shootings instead of the media coverage and asked if he thought guns could be a problem. He has not replied.

My life is all about kids baseball these days. The Moose and Pedro Tulo have games or practices three days a week often at the same time and in different places. It's a lot of running around. 

Emergency Room Christmas

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that your 2020 is off to a good start. Today, I’m going to share a story that goes way back to a time when the Pittsburgh Steelers were 8-7 and still had a chance to reach the postseason. A time before Jake Guentzel of the Pittsburgh Penguins needed shoulder surgery. Yes, I’m going all the way back to December 25, 2019.

On Christmas, my family joined millions of others across the country by visiting a movie theater. We purchased tickets to see the animated film "Spies In Disguise" featuring the voices of Will Smith and Tom Holland.



We bought popcorn for the entire family to enjoy. Then, we sat in our reclining seats to eat our popcorn and watch the film. I should probably mention that patrons 3 and over are required to purchase their own tickets. Kids that are under 3, like Luigi (2) get in for free and have to sit on your lap. Not a problem.

During the movie, both The Moose (8) and Pedro Tulo (5) really enjoyed the ability to move their seats into a reclining position including an adjustable footrest. Near the end of the movie, Luigi decided that he had enough of sitting on someone’s lap and wanted to move around a little. There was plenty of room in our row to do this, and he could easily go between our four seats. Apparently not paying attention to his brother, The Moose closed the adjustable footrest...on Luigi’s foot. Luigi started screaming, so I quickly took him out of the theater. He calmed down after a few minutes, but he refused to let me put him down and he kept his head on my shoulder. We eventually went back inside because I had to know if Will Smith would turn back into a person from a pigeon. (I won’t spoil this for you.) I stood in the back with Luigi still in my arms. The movie ended, and we went home. Luigi was unable to put any weight on his foot though and cried whenever we tried to put him down to walk. With limited options on Christmas day (and agreement from our on-call pediatrician), my wife took Luigi to the emergency room while I stayed home with the older boys. The short story (since I wasn’t there) is that all of the X-Rays came back negative, Luigi was given some ibuprofen, and they came home. He also received Shaggy and The Headless Horseman as a gift from the hospital, so that almost made the trip worthwhile (especially since I haven't received a bill yet).

Oh, I also picked up some Chinese food. Christmas tradition!

Luigi limped some for the days following Christmas, and he still sometimes winces a little when we put on his shoe, but he’s fine. I think a New Year’s resolution for 2020 is to visit the emergency room less as a family this year than the two times we visited in 2019. In addition, between this incident and how I barely escaped Frozen 2, perhaps I shouldn’t take my family to the movies anymore!

Random Ramblings

* I discovered that Paw Patrol and popsicle sound exactly the same when being said by my three year old (Pedro Tulo), leading to much confusion.

* I'm glad that my kids (and I) don't watch Barney and especially Teletubbies. 20 years ago, I feel like this would have been unavoidable.

* After working as a soccer referee for a few games over the weekend, Ziggy decided that he had a much better use for my bag.

* When my six year old (The Moose) plays soccer, he winds up on the ground a lot. Either he gets knocked over or just manages to fall on his own. I mention this because I've watched Jake Guentzel of the Penguins be on the ice a lot during the Stanley Cup playoffs. If my son is trying to pattern his soccer game after Guentzel's hockey game, I'm fine with that based on the results. By the way, this is a cool article written by Guentzel about being an 11 year-old and seeing Phil Kessel play in college and now playing with him a decade later. He also seems to have made a new friend with Nick Bonino's daughter.

Great series. Excited to keep playing. Maze is pumped about her play date with the hottest Penguin in town @jakenbake20 @Shop412 #GoPens pic.twitter.com/FowPXGvKLj

— Nick Bonino (@NickBonino) May 11, 2017

* On the topic of soccer, I'm the coach of my son's team and despite the season starting on April 1st, there have only been two games because of rain and spring break. So frustrating.

* Finally, I received this trophy for winning my fantasy/rotisserie baseball league.

I think CBS patterned the bobblehead guy after Adrian Gonzalez of the LA Dodgers.