Zone Defense

We had big plans for this past weekend  Most of them went off without a hitch. On Friday we attended an Amarillo Dillas game as part of an Alumni get-together for Wayland.  Three players on the Dillas are Wayland alums themselves.  There was a barbecue dinner before the game got started.  We arrived a hair late but still enjoyed a lot of good brisket, sausage and potato salad.  The only downside to the meal was the wind blowing upwards of 20 mph.

When the game was about to start we moved from the picnic tables over to where our seats were.  We all decided (our kids had already latched on to the Petty’s so this had to be a joint decision) to move up to the “nosebleed’ section and enjoy the game in the shade.  We would have cooked to a crisp in our original seats.  Fortunately it was not a sold out crowd so we had our pick.  Plus, I’ve never heard of the “seat police” coming to move someone from the worse seats to the better seats.

We left around the fifth inning because we had a long trip ahead of us.  Little did we know just how long.  We had planned to visit my parents in Canadian for the weekend.  After picking up all the pets from my grandparents house in Amarillo which we had dropped off before the game, we made our way toward Canadian.  Just about 8 or 9 miles shy of Pampa, disaster struck.  The front right tire on the Trailblazer had a blowout.  It didn’t shred itself but it went flat suddenly.  The first of the bad news was that it was well after dark, almost 11:00 pm.  The second item of bad news was that we never obtained our owners manual for the Trailblazer so we were left to figure out how to get the spare down from under the cab, where to find the jack, and how to properly use the jack.  Finding it was easy, lowering the tire took a while, and piecing together the various bars to make a crank for the jack was a long time coming.  But it all happened leading up to the real bad news.  The spare was flat.

At first, I thought it was only low and maybe I could drive it the next 9 miles into Pampa and fill it up.  This was a bad idea.  I managed to ruin the tire after a couple of miles.  At this point, I was at a loss.  I called up Dad and asked for some help.  I managed to catch him well after his bedtime so good ideas on my plight were not easy to come by.  Suspecting that the spare might still hold some air, he agreed to bring me a tank and an air compressor to see if we might be able to make it into Pampa and perhaps all the way to Canadian.  After an hour’s drive from Canadian, we quickly learned that the tire would not hold air. 

I finally reached the last resort.  I called the wrecker service and they sent out a tow truck.  He tried to air up the spare tire as well but to no avail. It had quite a large hold in the back, I am supposing from my driving on it.  He hauled the Trailblazer into Pampa, while all seven of us (Mom, Dad and my crew) followed in the Impala.  Now, the Impala is a spacious sedan but 7 plus three pets is probably beyond its specs.  The tow truck left the Trailblazer at Walmart at about 2:30 am and I wrote him a check for $115. We finally made it back to Canadian around 3:30 am. 

First thing next morning, I made sure the Wal-mart Automotive Department would be open all day.  Dad and I headed to Pampa, where I had them put two new tires on the front of the Trailblazer and move the extra tire to the spare.  This ran me about $285.  Add in the gas, and that made for a pricey weekend to see the folks.  The rest of the weekend was great, we took it easy, celebrated Mom’s birthday with some cake, and watched a few superhero flicks.  Kids had a great time as well and I just about caught up on the missed sleep by the time the weekend was over.

Lesson learned: When checking the pressure in your tires, don’t forget to check the spare!!!

written by DaddyFranklin

written by DaddyFranklin

I attended Timothy’s Hawaiian end-of-year party at his school.  Despite the fact that Timothy was proud to wear his grass skirt (hula) and some “jewel” stickers, it was a lot of fun for me.  I followed the class around as they went on a scavenger hunt finding each element of their outfit before going back to their classroom for lunch.  I, then, entertained a few kids by dancing my own version of hula dance and sticking paper umbrellas in my cap.

Tomorrow will be Zachary’s party.

written by DaddyFranklin

Today, I went with Timothy’s class on a field trip to a place in Lubbock called Kenny’s Korral.  It was a blast, as you can probably tell from the pictures and videos.

written by DaddyFranklin

Timothy celebrated his 5th birthday last Wednesday and we gave him the privilege of being in charge most of the day (like choosing where to eat.) We had his birthday party at Ready, Set, Go! in Lubbock which is a gymnastics place like the one in Plainview. Several of his friends attended (all girls, if you must know). We had a great time. Check out the pics below:

written by DaddyFranklin

We had an amazing trip over Spring Break this year (March 17 - 21) in San Antonio, followed up by an excellent Easter visit with Lori’s family in Granbury.  I still have every intention of posting a full report of what we did along with pictures, mainly for the sake of my own memory.  Here’s a compilation of photos in the form of a slide show.  Enjoy:

written by DaddyFranklin

This morning was the first T-Ball game for my oldest boy, Timothy.  This is his second year to participate in a T-Ball league, though last year we were in Plainview and there are quite a few differences between last year and this year.

First of all, Timothy paid attention the entire game. And just to refresh your memory of Timothy’s first season in T-Ball, here’s a picture of Timothy from last year.

That’s still one of my favorite pictures of all time.  Some may recognize it as my facebook profile pic.  This year, in both innings (yes, there are only two) Timothy “made a play”.  In T-Ball that means that he was able to get to the ball first and throw it to first base.  Actually, he made two plays.  It just so happened to be the third play and the last play of the game.  For his first play, there were a number of people on the field that were helping their kids and not all of them had been at the practices so they seemed to be unaware of the rules for this version of T-Ball.  Kids at this age aren’t quite ready to handle the intricacies of where to throw the ball and how to get outs.   Instead, everyone bats every inning and the ball is always thrown to first base.  The last batter of each team will automatically get a grand slam home run.  Well, back to Timothy.  The third hit was to him at third base and he was able to get the ball first.  Following the instructions of many of the shouting parents, he ran to third and tagged the base, instead of just throwing it to first as he’s been instructed for the last two weeks of practice.  He did what he was told and got the runner out.  Apparently the announcer of the game was also uninformed because she announced the next batter was coming to the plate and there was one out in the inning. After that, I think everyone began to get the picture that the rules of baseball are over the heads of these 4 and 5 year olds.  In the end, Timothy was able to get the only “out” of the game, at least the only announced out.

Another difference for Timothy has been his ability to hit and throw.  While he still has a long way to go on throwing while looking where he’s throwing. He’s much better than last year.  Also, his hitting was much better and he hit the ball farther today that he has before, even including previous practices this year.  I’m very proud of the guy.

I don’t have any pictures on my camera so I am going to defer to Lori to post her pictures from the first game as well as a couple of videos.  But as soon as you see the pictures you’ll see another major difference from last year.  This league, or at least our team, is much more gung-ho on looking the part of baseball players.  They’ve had us purchase baseball pants and socks for the team.  Another parent was able to have their employer sponsor the team and buy every player a batting helmet.  So, if nothing else, they look like a baseball team.  Timothy’s team is called the Express, with a logo of a locomotive.  His jersey number is six, which begs the question of whether he is actually number nine when he plays outfield (see picture above, HT: Joel)  But the truth is, Timothy is much better at focusing on the game and the grass in the field is less interesting than the batter at the plate.

One other fun note about today’s game was the opposing team’s pitcher.  No, there is not really a pitcher but there is player on each team that will stand on the mound.  In general, they will get the most catches since the batted ball tends to travel short of the mound.   On the opposing team today, their pitcher was very funny in that he insisted on catching just about every ball and once he had caught it, he insisted on tagging out the base runner.  This led to a number of tackles and chases.    So, in truth, this kid probably had a lot more outs than Timothy but, still, they weren’t announced.

Have I told you how proud I am of Timothy?

Timothy’s coach is a computer programmer so he’s set up a website for the team, so you can visit www.fybexpress.com to keep posted on Timo’s T-ball Team.

written by DaddyFranklin

Timo made my day.  This evening we had a 6:30 meeting down at a local coffee shop / Supermarket with Timo’s T-Ball coach.  He’ll start playing T-Ball in a couple of weeks and tonight was an introductory meeting.  It was just me and Timo.

A little before dinner, Lori was explaining to him that he was going to a meeting.  He asked if everyone was going.  Lori told him that it going be just him and Daddy.  His response:

"Yeah, I Love Daddy!"

Nice.

written by DaddyFranklin

It was a rather long day today.  I happened to be in Plainview for most of the day since I was handpicked (or randomly selected, I’m not sure) to represent the division in a meeting for the on-site review from our accrediting agency.  Every 10 years, Wayland is put through the ringer to prove that our degrees are worth their salt, so to speak. It’s a BIG deal, but luckily my meeting was not regarding any major issue that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) were concerned about.  For three days during this process a SACS committee visits our campuses and has dozens (maybe hundreds) of meetings covering all sorts of institutional effectiveness issues.  As I mentioned, I was selected to participate in one of these “exciting” meeting.  It forced me to commute an extra day this week.  The unfortunate part of the story is that the meeting was only from 3:35 - 3:55 this afternoon, but I carpool to save gas money.  My carpooling colleague was also selected for a meeting that occurred around 4:30, but he has class at 8:50 on Tuesday so we left Lubbock around 7:45am and didn’t get home until after 6pm, all for a 20 minute meeting.  I did manage to get a few more things done at my office than I am usually able to get done on Tuesdays, working from home.

On the way home I got the dreaded phone call from Lori that she had “blowout” some time during shuttling Emily to and from her first cheerleading practice.  Once I got home, I spent the next hour and a half solving this problem.  It’s a shame to have to buy a brand new tire for a vehicle that you only expect to use for another 2 months at the most.

We’ve had problems with this tire already.  It had a slow leak for a while and we took it in to get fixed, learning that it was too worn in one place for Discount Tire to repair it.  We decided take somewhere else that would repair it.  It lasted a good long while but finally gave up the ghost. Everyone’s safe and the van has a very nice, if out-of-place, new tire.

written by DaddyFranklin

As was pointed out in a comment to my previous post, Walking the Dogs, I omitted a picture of a key player: Buttercup.  So, here ya go.

written by DaddyFranklin