Gas, Meet the Teacher, Baseball, New Phone

I had meant to write about this last time, but I forgot. I guess it gave me more time to solidify my conclusion. The week of August 10, gas here was at $3.99 all week. Well, we were out and about all week and as it typically goes, the gas gauge eventually sat just above the “E”. We had Sarah’s wedding in South Holland on Saturday, so that morning, we went to fill up, only to find that gas was now $4.09! We just assumed that the oil price had risen again, and we were on the wrong end of the totem pole. Well, the weekend came and went, and when Monday morning showed up, the gas price stood at…$3.93. We just had to laugh at our unfortunate fill-up, but honestly I think its because all the people here leave on the weekend, and they fill up before they go, so gas prices go up. So…this week we filled up for the $3.93 price on Thursday night only to see it spike at $3.99 this weekend. So…for ALL of you people who are planning on visiting, don’t fill up here on the weekend, unless you want to get a taste of big-city $4.00+ gas.

This past Friday afternoon was a time for all the students and parents to come in and meet the teachers, find their lockers, and get their schedules if they wished. I think we may have had around half of the 8^th graders stop in, so around 45-50. I saw way too many new faces, new names, and I might have remembered a few of them. There were definitely some odd connections, which I should have seen coming, even though the Dutch/Reformed background now only accounts for about 40% of the school population. One woman came up and asked if I knew Van Schepen’s from Washington, which I don’t, but now know that there’s a pastor that preached there for awhile. I told her that my dad was from NW Iowa, and she responded by saying she was from Ireton and that she remembered my dad driving the bus to school “back in the day.” (direct quote dad, sorry) Another (and possibly the craziest connection I have ever made) knew the Van Schepen name and asked who my dad was, and my grandparents, grandma’s maiden name, and my great-grandparents names. Well, we sat down and pieced together what we both knew of the family tree and she discovered that my Grandma Alice and her mother Cora were cousins…I think that’s how it went. My great-grandma Maria and her grandpa ________ were brother and sister. Honestly, they probably went to church together in the early 1700’s back in the Netherlands…if they could’ve played cards back then, I’m sure they played Dutch bingo too.

Well, school starts Monday, whether I’m ready or not. The room is pretty much done, I think my planning is done, I just need to get my final class list (which still wasn’t finalized Friday afternoon with all the adds and drops) and I need to run off some sheets for my introduction to the class.

Five-Tool Performer is competing for the last day today barring a 150-point outing. With Rollins struggling for the past few weeks, and Kinsler on the DL, I just ran out of bench players to adequately fill in. The $10k will have to wait for next year…

Twins started out 2-0 on the road trip only to drop a should/could win against the Angels on Saturday. I saw Buscher had two huge errors that cost them, and Gomez misplayed one in center that Gardy based on lack of experience. It does seem like we’ve avoided that lately…misplays due to inexperience. But 74 wins is about what I had hoped for this year based on the offseason moves, so to be there with 5 weeks left and to have a ½ game lead in the division is amazing. Just so more of those “inexperience” plays don’t start showing up.

Last note…I just got a new cell phone/number with Verizon, so all of you Alltel people can’t talk to me free whenever anymore, which might mean I have to go back to the nights & weekends calling schedule. New number is 630-470-3293…but I’ll send out an email or Facebook message soon.

Until next time…

Farmer waves, Driver's License, and the Kane County Cougars

After living in a metropolitan area for a solid week, I decided that as nice as the people here are (it still is the Midwest), they aren’t near friendly enough. So I decided that whenever I find myself driving down a residential street, I’m going to give oncoming cars a little wave. I have a feeling that so far when I’ve done it, people are a little freaked out, and some just stare at me, wondering if they should know me. I guess they see my Minnesota license plate and wonder a little.

Last Friday, Linds and I decided to get our driver’s license switched to Illinois’ licenses. We looked online and needed 4 forms of ID to apparently prove it was us. We needed our old license, SS card, Birth Certificate, and proof of address. We showed up and went from checking in to sitting in chairs waiting to giving our information and taking the vision test. Now, I should stop at this point and say that when we checked in, the lady didn’t ask Linds if she needed a book to study for the written test, but for some reason she did ask me if I would like to look one over. I asked her if she thought I needed one (in my most confident voice), and she just smiled and laughed and said “probably not”. Yeah, probably but not definitely. At this point in my life, after 17 years of schooling and now a certified teacher, I believe I know the difference between a good multiple-choice question and a bad one. So when I left 3 of the first 5 questions on the test blank after reading them, I should have thrown my red challenge flag because it had to be illegal what they were doing to me. They were questions such as, “When can a driver under the age of 17 drive at night?” and “You can lose your license for which of the following?” And here I thought this was a written test about driving, and here they were going to end up nailing me for the little nitty gritty details. Well, there were two pages of multiple choice, about 20 questions I suppose, and then a page of 15 street signs that you had to identify. I figured it was at least 15 free points until I got to the front and the young girl who was correcting my test must have had something else on her mind, because all of a sudden she went pen crazy and started making all these marks on my test. Turns out, Matt doesn’t know when 17 year-olds can drive at night, or when someone can lose their license. Furthermore, apparently Matt doesn’t know the difference between a merging lanes sign and a lane reduction sign. I didn’t ask how many questions you could get wrong and still pass, but lets just say I wouldn’t have made the honor roll with my test score.

But, as any baseball guru would say… “It’s a line drive in the book…”, because not 15 min later Linds and I both walked out of the office with new cards in hand…and mine didn’t say “This guy only got an 85% on his written test…”

After two weeks of living in the Windy City metro area, and it still being summer, one would think that our (my) attendance at baseball games would have at least begun, especially with limited teaching prep to do right away. Well, we didn’t make the connection that maybe there are teams around that don’t have little bears or clean socks as their mascots. Monday night we drove about 25 miles to the northwest to Geneva to watch the Kane County Cougars take on the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in a Midwest League matchup. The Cougars are a Class A affiliate of the Oakland A’s, and the Timber Rattlers (which I assume is either Paul Bunyan running from Duluth to Brainerd or some kind of snake) is a Class A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. We were surprised as to how many people attended the game, somewhere in the 8,000 range, which probably puts them right up with the Florida Marlins in average game attendance. We paid $10 a seat and sat 10 rows up from the home bullpen down the 1st baseline. The game went 13 innings, with Wisconsin winning 8-7. I only recognized one name between the two teams, pitcher Scott Hodson of the Cougars played for Azuza Pacific in the 2007 NAIA World Series, and if I remember right, he was NAIA pitcher of the year that year. We did get to see him pitch 5 innings of relief, and he did really well.

Like I normally do, I’m typing this at home because I almost feel bad typing on my blog at school. Like I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, or something like that. But we don’t have our gracious neighbor’s wireless internet right now, so I’m typing this on a word document. Not that any of this means much to anybody, but it does mean that there’s no official update on Five-Tool Performer’s quest for $10k. Things are bleak right now, after averaging over 40 points/day for 6 of the 7 days last week, it was the 7th day that really did me in. A TEN point day…I don’t remember having a TEN point day all year. I finished the week at 255 points when I was looking for 280. I figured that if I could get two 280-point weeks, I might not be going on, but at least I would have felt good about it. This week could be tough as well, because most teams are taking a day off at some point this week, with a few (Cardinals) taking two off, which really hurts the stats of Ludwick and Molina. I subbed Hernandez of the Orioles for Molina, but couldn’t get it in my heart to bench Ludwick for Alexi Ramirez. But, looking at last night’s drubbing of Seattle and Ramirez’ bomb, I may have been wrong.

Here are a few pictures of the Kane County game we went to…

Until next time…

August 11

Linds and I spent the day at school. She helped out at v-ball camp while I was getting more stuff ready in my room. In the afternoon, she helped me put stuff up on the walls and even made me a poster. I'll have to take some pictures and put them up as soon as I get the rest of the posters laminated and on the wall.

Some thoughts from the past few days...

• I really hope anyone who is reading this is finding time to watch the Olympics live rather than just seeing highlights here and there. Watching that 4X100 freestyle swim and come from behind to win was absolutely incredible. Even right now as I type I'm watching the men's team gymnastics finals. It really gives you a sense of national pride...

• Glad to see the Twins come back after dropping the final game of the Royals series to take Game 1 from the Yanks. I see Perkins had a little extra motivation after the birth of his baby girl this past weekend. Even Adam Everett, after a huge throwing error on Sunday, comes back with a 2-run bomb to start the scoring on Monday.

• The good news about Livan Hernandez' return to the NL with his start for the Rockies against San Diego on Sunday? His manager still believes in him...somehow. A quote by Rockies manager Clint Hurdle..."His command wasn't sharp...he wasn't able to throw quality strikes on either edge, and the balls were hit hard." He went on to say that his ineffectiveness was a result of not pitching for 12 days. Just profound, an absolutely out of this world description about the game's best batting practice hurler.

• Well, the Five-Tool Performer gave Wrigley17 a run for the money but came up just 1 point short of the league title. An RBI single by D-Lee in the Cubs/Cards game Sunday night put him over the top. I now move on to the underdog bracket, where ending up with one of the top two teams is practically impossible. A formidible start thus far on Monday, scoring 30 points with Rollins getting 2 more AB's before his game is over. I'll have to average around 40 points a day to even have a chance. I had two players (Kinsler & A. Ramirez) with the day off, which is why I'm not reaching my 40-point goal. (Or so I tell myself)

Well, its back to school tomorrow, putting lessons together, figuring out the workings of the 8th grade retreat, and making my room somewhat inviting...

Updates

Just wanted to give a few updates...

• We've moved into out new place, Linds has a link to pictures of our place on her blog, which I have a link to on the right-hand side of the page. It's a pretty nice place, although we haven't been out alot to really enjoy living in a city. We know its a city because there's a lock to get into the building, and two more to get into our condo. We see planes flying overhead, which isn't weird I guess, except now you can see which airline it is and even this picture I took the other day...

• My fantasy baseball team, Five Tool Performer, continues its bid for the $10k prize, although I don't have quite the confidence as I did last week. After winning my semifinal match 288-216 last week and moving on to take on the #1 seed in the league, I find myself trailing by 32 points with two days left to play. Last week I outscored my opponent by an average of 10 points a day, so I really need to pick it up or be forced to enter the loser's bracket. As I write this, Jimmy Rollins is 4-4 with two triples, so he's pulling his weight. I'll definitely be watching for the Rays to mop up on the Mariners tonight too...I would love to see a shutout by former Twin Matt Garza...

• If you didn't get to watch the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics on Friday night, you missed one amazing show. I can honestly say it was nothing like I've ever seen before. I wanted to try and describe it, but I seriously can't find the words...

• For anyone looking to add to their daily blogroll, I would recommend checking out Brian Duensing's blog. He's a AAA pitcher in the Twins organization who is playing for the U.S.A Olympic baseball team. I'm hoping that he continually updates, his first two entries have been pretty good.

• For any of you who know me fairly well, you know that my favorite ball player is Doug Mientkiewicz. There's a number of reasons why, but if you watch him play, its pretty much because he plays the game right in my eyes. Anyway, after seeing limited playing time since leaving the Twins in 2004, he's finally found a place in the lineup in Pittsburgh. And I put lineup because its been a somewhat role reversal for Doug this year. With Minnesota, he was a Gold-Glove firstbaseman, who was average at the plate. This year, while putting up typical Doug-like numbers offensively, hasn't been able to find a regular spot in the field. Here are his games by position and fielding % for each:

3B- 30 G, 5 errors in 77 chances (.935 %)
1B- 26 G, 0 errors in 215 chances (1.000 %)
RF- 9 G, 0 errors in 17 chances (1.000 %)

• I guess when you play for the Pirates and your batting average is 2nd on the team at .286 behind Ryan Doumit's .336, the manager finds a position for you.

Well...that's all for now...