Taking Care of Tootsie - and a Cleaning of the Craniattic

* Toots has a horrible cold, and a sinus infection in the bargain.  So I've been taking care of her as best I can.  It's not that onerous a task; really all she needs is to be kept in water and chicken broth, so my exploits as a caregiver lay mainly unexplored. Unfortunately it kiboshed my plans to attend, for the first time, a storage unit auction that was taking place in the next town over, and now I have to wait until next week some time. She's had the last two days off to be miserable, but she sounds a lot better today and an even better sign is she picked a fight with me.  She'll be back to work tomorrow.

* It took the better part of five weeks, but yesterday was the first day I've had completely without pain from having broken a couple of ribs.  I can breathe as deeply as I want, bend any which way my disgusting, gargantuan, ooze-filled body will let me, sleep on my right side, sneeze, cough, everything.  This particular long dark nightmare of the soul is, at long last, behind me.

* I just watched the Red Sox' ceremony commemorating the 100th birthday of Fenway Park.  I have to say I'm just a sucker for that kind of stuff.  They invited everyone who ever wore a uniform for the Sox to come back and be a part of it. From the most transient baseball B-player that ever passed through town on the way to baseball oblivion, to icons whose names will never be forgotten, every last one of them who showed up were honored.

For me, baseball came to be in 1975.  When the Sox made the playoffs and swept the A's in the ALCS, I had just turned seven. And the starting lineup of that squad is still burned into my head: Yaz, Rice, Lynn, and Evans in the outfield (spelled by Carbo); Petrocelli, Burleson, Doyle, and big Cecil Cooper patrolling the infield.  To see those guys, and the players of the '80s and '90s, that toiled in unheralded mediocrity, stand up and take one last bow in a Red Sox uni, was quite a touching sight.

* I leave for my cruise June 10th, a mere 17 days from now, with my wife and my mother.  If I don't come back, please remember I'm fond of you all, except for those of you of whom I am not fond.

I'm actually looking forward to it, not the least reason of which is that the ship spreads a $1/$2 cash game, my wheelhouse.  If things go the way they went last time, the table will be full of amateurs, slicksters with Fancy Play Syndrome (hey, Chi!), and youngsters trying to impress their arm candy who are sweating them and making faces when they see his cards. And every last one of them will be half in the wrapper on cheap cruise booze. I hope to make back the cost of the cruise; I really think it's a realistic goal. And shit - now that the cruise sails out of Boston, I might just take it all four times next year, get me a cheap indoor cabin instead of the suite I need when Toots is sailing with me, and make some VERY relaxing money. This I promise: I will return and regale all with tales of the table, whether the sweet side or the bitter.

Also they have a kind of steak they call "flatiron" that has all the flavor of a strip but is tender like a filet.  I really have to be careful because six or seven of those and I start getting the grumbellies.

* I have developed several guilty television pleasures recently: Storage Wars, Criminal Minds, and Duck Dynasty have become excellent ways to waste all kinds of time. Which is good, because even though Scrubs is on 35 times a day, one does want for something different.  I've never been a big TV guy, other than televised sports, of course. But as I get older (more indolent?) I find my quality standards dropping, dropping, dropping. And if there's a show that makes a half-hour go by without me having to think in any possible way, that's 30 minutes well-spent.

* History Friday's topic is still up in the air.  Finalists include the origin of the Jeep, the Hatfield-McCoy feud, and the 1914 unofficial Christmas truce.  Anyone have opinions or suggestions?  And yes, Carmel, I will shortly be doing one on Operation Mincemeat but it's long and involved and because of all the names and dates it will require research. So: later.

Well I suppose that's enough: it's 1:30 and I wanted to get some early sleep tonight. Fat chance of that, but I'm gonna try. Stay cool, cats and kittens! And remember: I think you're all grand.