End of a season … start of what’s next

It was a beautiful afternoon for a baseball game — sunny, bright and pleasantly warm — but I decided to switch from the T-shirt and shorts I had been wearing all day to a long-sleeve shirt and jeans.

After all, the midafternoon start would mean a finish early in the evening, so I figured it would cool off once the sun started to go down.

As it turned out, between sitting in shadows and a slight, but steady breeze, I was happy about the decision starting in roughly the second inning.

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Someone says something dumb … and it’s not me!

A year ago, Suzi and I took a day trip to Rockport.

It was a little more than an hour away, but because last year was … last year … even that relatively short excursion was a nice getaway.

Five years ago, however, we were a little farther afield, as we were on vacation in Los Angeles.

The week gone by — Sept. 26

I am here to apologize.

No, it’s not to confess that I’ve been pretending to be a bland, middle-age guy from Massachusetts — because if you’re going to impersonate someone, that’s the first one you’d go for — and seek forgiveness for the scam I’ve been running on this here blog.

Instead, it’s to admit failure on a grand scale.

Everything new eventually gets old

OK, I’ll bite.

My words are worth more than any picture I’d draw

I recently saw a bunch of kids drawing.

They had paper and pencils and colored markers, and while I only watched for a couple minutes, it only took me that long to realize: “I can’t do this.”

The week gone by — Sept. 19

Just so you know, I make a reference to no longer being on this side of the grass (with about the same level of euphemism). If that bugs you, go ahead and skip to the part where I describe what I wrote this week. I won’t mind.

Like a picky child with a PB&J sandwich, I carefully picked all the crust off the bread that came with dinner.

Ironically, even though I was a picky eater as a child — including not liking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — and continue to be one as an adult, I’m pretty sure I never had any problem with crust on my bread, and if I did, it didn’t last long.

But I didn’t have to worry about seeds when I was a kid.

Another way the world is just so different now

Once I decided in fifth grade that I wanted to play the trombone, we had the option of leasing an instrument or buying one.

If my memory serves, buying a trombone would have cost $300, so if we were going to do that, my parents said I had to commit to it. There would be no trying it for a couple weeks or months or whatever and deciding I didn’t want it anymore.

By the time I stopped playing after my sophomore year in college, I think my parents had gotten their money’s worth.

A … slight miscalculation

I grew up in a small town.

“How small was it?!?!”

Small enough that cable companies didn’t think it was worth extending the lines to where we lived, so my TV experience was the three networks, PBS and an independent station we randomly discovered one night that eventually became the local Fox affiliate.

The week gone by — Sept. 12

Suzi and I were recently driving home and came across one of those signs that electronically displays your speed.

It’s better than having a cop let you know how fast you’re going, although if you’re going fast enough to get the police’s attention, you either didn’t know the speed limit in the first place or having your miles per hour up in lights wasn’t going to make much difference, anyway.

Suzi was going a little below the speed limit, and the sign greeted her with something neither of us had ever seen before.

A series of random observations (and baseball … and fireworks)

As Suzi and I stood by the rail, the fireworks went off behind the fence in right-center field.

The display had the usual excitement of the initial colorful explosions, followed by a series of small and medium bursts leading up to a finale that always looks like a last, desperate attempt to shoot everything off before someone comes to stop them.

Fireworks are among my favorite things, but I hadn’t seen them live in more than two years. Some things have happened in those two years — the obvious stuff everyone knows about, but other things closer to home.