Pet-a-palooza

Ever since the wonderful Howell Balloon festival Jonah wanted to see more doggie races, so yesterday Nat and I took him to the race track, and let him watch the greyhounds run around.

Just kidding. We did take him to see the Rock-N-Roll K-9's who performed at the pet-a-palooza in Sterling Heights. The show was cut a bit short because of the weather, but Jonah seemed to enjoy watching the dogs run around.

The goal of pet-a-palooza was for people to come and adopt pets, the Humane Society was there as well as many other adoption centers and things like this. We looked at some dogs that were sort of what we would be looking for, if we were looking for a dog. I gave Nat the OK, that if she saw one she really wanted we could get it, with some exceptions. We saw a golden retriever, but it sheds to much, and I'm not a big fan of having dog hair, or people hair for that matter, allover the house. There was one dog that we liked, but it was to expensive.

Don't apologize

I'm tired of reading Israel apologizing for what they are doing in Lebanon. Someone posted a comment on my last post that linked to a song about how Israel should stop killing children.

I'm not much of a songwriter, but lets see if you can comose something with this : If rockets shoot out of your building, leave the building/If the Israel Army says get out of the area beacause we will attack/Get out of the area. If you value the life of your wives and children/get out of town.

(I'm watching some panel on Fox News and they are talking about the possibility f a cease fire, and one guy said that if America pressured Israel to a cease -fire they would, and then Hizbullah said that they would also agree, no crap, this way they will be able to rearm without fear of getting caught, that guy is a moron)

I've been reading some interesting news on the "tragedy" in Qana, turns out the IAF bombed them at midnight, and the building collapsed at 8 the next morning...interesting - there may have been a secondary explosion - which means that Israel hit the correct buidling. I wouldn't put it past Hizbullah to sacrifice 50 kids for the cause. When a katushya rocket his nazertzh and killed some Arab kids, Narsallh apologized for "Martyring" the kids. So he kills all these kills, but tells their families that they are now Martyrs and Israel looks bad. The whole thing makes me sick.

Maggots

Friday is garbage day in town, so last night I went to take the garbage out to the street. I was surprised to see little white moving things all over the trash cans. I flicked on the lights and I saw millions, OK hundreds maybe thousands, of maggots. It was really nasty I had to put on gloves just to take out the trash.

For some reason one of the few things I remember from High School science has to do with maggots. Apparently back in the day it was believed that maggots were born from garbage, I guess they thought they spontaneously combusted from the trash. Many people didn't think this was possible, logical thought, but public opinion was that this was true. So some scientist, his name I don't remember, did an experiment - he took garbage, a sideways "S" shaped tube over the can, the plan was the maggots would get stuck in the "S" thus proving that they didn't come from the garbage. This happened and thanks to that we know that garbage doesn't produce maggots.

Now I have to clean out teh garbage and kill all the poor maggots.

Crazy story

In Ireland archaelogist discvered a book of tehillim from a few thousand years ago. Here is where it gets a little crazy - the book was open to Psalm 83 - which talks about the nations trying to destroy Israel.

Here's the text of Psalm 83:
"O God, do not stand idly by, mute and inactive, O God! For thy enemies are ranting, and they who hate Thee carry their heads high. They shrewdly forge a plot against Thy people; they consult together against Thy precious ones.
They say, "Come, let us wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel may no longer be remembered."
For they have conspired against a united heart; against Thee they make an alliance - the tents of Edom, the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gegal, Ammon, and Amelek, Philistia jointly with those who live in Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them; they have meant a strong support for the children of Lot. Selah."
The rest of the psalm is a prayer that God will humiliate and destroy them, ending with an acknowledgement that God is "the Most High over all the earth."

According to Focus On Jerusalem, Library the nations where the ten ancient people groups and tribes mentioned in Psalm 83 live today, are Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories within Israel.

hat tip - Westbankblog

long gross story

Ahhh the joys of fatherhood. I had some nice bonding time with my boy today. This afternoon I took him to the Dr. to check out his ears. Lately he has been waking up in the middle of the night, tugging at his ears, and telling us that they hurt. During the day he has been perfect, but we figured we should check it out. We hung out forever at the docs office waiting to be seen, not really sure what the point of having an appointment if you're seen within an hour of the scheduled time, but that's a rant for a different time. I guess the wait was worth it because his ear is infected, and the doc gave us free samples of medicine to use.

We had dinner plans at the former Boston Zacks with my aunt, uncle and cousin, so Jonah didn't really get a nap and he was in a pretty crappy mood, had a few bites of pizza, but mainly stayed on my lap, with his head on my shoulders. Towards the end of the meal the wife somehow pulled a miracle, separated him from me and got him to play with his cousins.

Then my aunt offered to take everyone out for ice cream, and that's where the story gets gross. At this point, Jonah is in a pretty good mood, we got him a scoop of vanilla ice cream. He didn't want vanilla, he wanted my peanut butter and chocolate. He climbed back in my lap, and was trying to get some ice cream on his spoon. I wasn't really paying attention to him, when I felt a warm sensation on my stomach.

Nat was telling me that he threw up at me, I looked down, and sure enough I was soaked with vomit, I looked at him, and he threw up more, if you want a visual, imagine opening a shaken can of pop - it was spraying on me. He must have thrown up 4 or 5 times on me. I couldn't stop watching, no matter how gross it was, it was like a car crash, and I couldn't take my eyes off, or turn him away. My shirt was covered in chunks of food, I could see what he ate for the past 24 hours.
While he was puking, I couldn't stop laughing. I know I have issues, but it's not often you see someone projectile vomit from that angle, and I had to laugh. When he was all done, and Nat had taken him to the bathroom to go wash up (where he threw up one more time) I nearly lost dinner (like 6 pieces of pizza and ice cream) when the smell hit me.

I left the Baskin Robbins, went outside, managed to get my shirt off, then headed to my car, where I could get more privacy, and took off my shorts, so that I wouldn't nasty up my car, got in the car and went home.

Here's more grossness (is that a word?)

When I looked at my shirt I was sure that I saw beans in the barf, but I couldn't think of when he had beans, we didn't have cholent on shabbos. Nat was pretty sure it was raisins, but I was still positive that it was beans. As I am typing this, I realized that he had beans last night during a BBQ. So it safe to assume I also had last nights hot dogs on me. Now that you've heard the story you may see some pictures taken by my brother.

Cowardly Hezbollah

It was nice to see a the U.N. blame the "Cowardly Hezbollah" for the civiallian deaths in Lebabnon - instead of Israel

"The U.N. humanitarian chief accused Hezbollah on Monday of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel.

"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," he said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."

I don't remember if it was Condi Rice or John Bolton, US ambassador to the U.N., but they had a great answer to the question of "disproportionate force" by Israel - He/she ( I think it was Bolton) asked back, what would be "proportionate force" kidnapping two of their soldiers - that wouldn't solve anything. In general I have been very happy with the support from the U.S.

As fair and balanced as the news claims to be, and for teh most part they have done a good, I am pretty tired of hearing the plight of the Lebanese refugees and not a word about the fact that many Northern Israeli's including my brother and family have also been forced out of their homes with nothing but what they had on their backs. Where is the world sympathy for them? Just because they aren't using, or being used, as a human shield they don't make a good story.

I keep hearing that over half million Lebanese have left their homes but I have yet to hear anything about how many Israeli's are without homes tonight.

TV Coverage

I'm watching teh news and they are showing Israeli troops at the border getting ready to enter into Lebanon. The anchor and analysts have all mentioned that they are surprised that they have been allowed to show this footage. If they are surprised that they are allowed to show it, because it will give Israeli tactics shouldn't they just pull the plug? Or does Israel want it shown to teh world to either instill fear in Lebanon or as a decoy as they are going to enter from another spot (that would be really smart, I should run a military unit)

Just sitting here watching, I felt the need to say tehillim for the soldiers, thanks to al tishali oti for listing the perekim of Tehillim to say

Good Shabbos to my family, and everyone else in Israel (and around the world also) may you have a quiet peaceful shabbos

What is fun

Who determines what is fun? Isn't it up to the individual person? I ask because I have come under attack by both the wife and the neighbors who have decided that I am a grumpy old man, because I didn't think what they wanted to do was fun.

This started a few weeks ago when Nat (thanks to the O's fan family) fund out about a hot air festival about 40 minutes from our house. I went, by was told that I was a downer on the whole trip. You may wonder what happens at a hot air festival - well we got there after the Hot Air Balloons had already left, and the skydivers already fell (I didn't think it would be that much fun to watch other people fall out of planes) We saw the end of dog races, which Jonah (the 2 almost 2 yr old) loved and still talks about to this day, and that was all. We walked around, saw some rides we didn't go on, and lots of food we couldn't eat. I couldn't find one entertaining moment in this trip.

Today the family went blueberry picking, which in my mind is a waste of time. There was a time when it was important to go berry picking, of course these were the days before we had stores. Now you can go to the local store and pick up a whole bunch of blueberries - but instead the fun people would rather go pay someone for the right to pick their berries for them. This trip I didn't go in because I had work to do.

Mentally not there

For year I've heard that ball players were "mentally out if" or "their head wasn't in the game" and I never really understood how you can be playing a game and not really have "your head in the game" It's no you're doing anything else at the time.

Lat night, playing in the substitute home court of Tuesday Night Ball, I was mentally not there. I don't know why, physically I was fine, didnt feel any more tired than normal. But I couldn't concentrate for more then a few seconds at a time. I knew it at the time, which made it all the more annoying, and then I would "get in the game" for a play and then just lose it. I was running in the spots, letting my guy uncontested offensive rebounds and tip them in, throwing teh ball away, probably missed 90 percent of my shots - All in all a disaster of a game

I can't really explain what happened, I just hope it doesn't happen again.

Miss me?

A couple people have noticed my blogging absence, which honestly kinda surprised me : )
I was thinking of hanging up my keyboard and retiring from the blogging world, I lost the joy of the joy of the game, and no nobody offered me a multi-million multi year contract. But I just couldn't pull the plug, so here I am trying to resurrect my career. I just hope that I don't end up like Willie Mays, Michael Jordan and many others who hung around too long. Rather I should be like Roger Clemens, after the Sox gave him up for dead he went on to win many more Cy Young awards and then received the ridiculous contract for a few months of his service.


Quick Hits

As if people don't have enough problems with Jews, did they have to name the latest Depression/tropical storm Beryl?

The Tigers got shelled like the Hizbastrads today, losing 7-1 the White Sox in the opening game of a big divisional series.

Family Guy, even in reruns is still the funniest show on TV, sorry Simpson's Colbert Report and Daily Show.

Jonah has taken a big step in growing up, he actually got into the pool for about 20 minutes the other day.

I have started watching CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC instead of ESPN, ESPN2 and FSN and Comedy Central. This means two things, one I actually know what is going on in the world, and two, my blogs may actually have substance to them, although I wouldn't come back just for that, because it won't be that often.

Changing the rules in the middle

A month or so ago Nat recieved two vouchers for free tickets to a Tiger game. It had some rules- you can't use it for Opening day and the NY Yankees series. I went to the box office to get some tickets for the upcoming Chicago White Sox series this afternoon. The guys said that they added the White Sox to the list of teams that they aren't giving tickets away to. It's amazing what a little winning will do to a team. A few years ago they were begging for people to come out and watch the team play, now they got arrogant and are changing the rules mid season

So I ended up getting tickets to the Minnesota series in early August.