More comments about comments...

“I said it last night, and I’ll say it again…that umpire should not be here. Not in this series. You put your best players in the All-Star game and you put your best umpires in the All-Star game. It’s the same thing with the World Series. You have meaningless games being played right now with very capable umpires and here we get stuck with this guy. It’s ridiculous…and that’s a fact.” (Ken Harrelson, White Sox announcer) Which puts the question in my mind….why can’t we have the best announcers for such a critical series? Maybe Vin Scully or Bob Uecker could make an appearance.

We had a teacher inservice Friday, so there was no school. Which was…good and bad. Good because I wore a Twins shirt to the inservice and I don’t know if I would’ve met a “professional” dress code wearing that to teach. I think that’s where that Twins polo comes into play. It was bad because I really would’ve loved to see the response of the little Sox fans who continually think they have something on me. I know, I shouldn’t be saying anything…but in my defense, I don’t begin the conversations…its them telling me how bad MY team is…I think they’ll get a lesson on Monday on how it feels to be in 2nd place. I’ll take pictures and post them on here…unless the Twins are on such a high that they refuse to take advantage of the divisional lead.

Twins Tidbits

Interesting comments that the White Sox announcers made during the game vs. the Twins on Wednesday:

-“You’ve got to be kidding me. The Twins will be happy tonight with the umpire on their side the whole game.” (First batter of the game…4^th pitch of the game)

-“That’s one thing that MLB needs to change. They need to realize that this is a big series and they need to send the best umpires to make sure the game is called fairly.” (In the bottom of the 2^nd inning)

-“You’ve got to have some sort of a rating system, because this is absurd.” (Still ranting about the umpires in the top of the 3^rd)

-“I don’t care if we play them at Midway Airport, the Grand Canyon, or Grant Park, as long as we don’t have to play them in the Metrodome” (Top of the 4^th)

-“You know what’s amazing..is that we’re playing that bad and we’re going to leave here tonight with a 2 ½ game lead” (In the bottom of the 4^th with the Sox down 3-2)

-“I’ve seen the Twins go up to the plate with hairline cracks in their bats because they’re going for those cheap broken-bat singles” (Bottom of the 6^th)

-1: the number of half innings that the attempted Gomez pickoff WASN’T shown as some sort of “Freeze Play”, “Game changing play”, “Story of the Game”, “Game Summary” or any other excuse that Ken and D.J. could think of to explain why the Sox weren’t winning. (I think it had something to do with your 3-4-5 hitters going a combined 1-11 with no RBI, but I’m no professional announcer)

-Final Score: 3-2 Twins

-To put it in those infamous words…THEY GONE!!!

Put that on the board…

Weekly News

Since I've been on the cycle of writing once a week, I figured I would give you what's happened this week, complete with the title of "Weekly News", which Linds told me not to put because its...boring.

• Well, whether I believe it or not, this past week was the first full 5-day week of school. It somewhat amazes me when I think about the attitude of some of these kids here. Don't get me wrong, there are these kids all around the world, but I say here because well...I'm here. I thought the slow start may have been because it was summer, and they didn't have to do anything for a couple months. Well, to end the babbling, I had 10 kids not turn in the Lab sheet Friday...and it was something we did in class. I just wonder what was going through their mind when I said "It's due at the end of the period" and "Pass the papers to the right". Maybe I was the weird kid, but I couldn't hand anything in late, blank, or not hand it in at all after I went through all that work.

• Continuing with the "boring theme from Linds", she told me I was boring this week Monday-Thursday because again, for some reason, allergies hit me. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm young enough to feel invincible at times, but these allergies really kick my butt. Its especially tough to teach all day when the Puffs with Lotion tissues kept calling my name (I keep a special stash, the kids get the sandpaper) So...it was a week of going to bed at 9, multiple trips to Walgreens, and choking down Airborne (which I don't know if it worked or not, but it tasted bad enough that it had to do some good)

• Friday night I went with Linds and some of the varsity v-ball team to watch the DePaul v-ball team take on Univ. Texas-San Antonio. The head coach of DePaul is married to the varsity assistant at Timothy, so he got us all in for free. So I guess now officially...we made it downtown! We took a minibus with the 12 of us from school and drove to DePaul (which is north of downtown, fairly close to Wrigley) They lost in 4 games, but it was pretty fun to watch, and alot of fun to see where the DePaul men play their basketball games. We also saw the George Miken banners for being All-American and Player of the Year back in the 40's. Afterwards we stopped downtown and got ice cream at Cold Stone before heading back to school.

• Today...wow today. It has been raining since Friday morning. We saw this morning that O'Hare had about 6.5 inches already, and they have to be well above 7 by now. But, we decided that we were going to make a trip to....where else? Target! This was no special trip, however, because it ended with me running through the rain with a 32" big-screen tv in my hands. Dinner was put on hold while the setup procedures proceeded. I let the channel search do its thing to find stations, thinking it would take about a minute with our 12 channels to find. So we sat down for a sandwich, and watched the numbers keep going up................and up......................and up................and (you get the picture). Well, the sandwich was finished long before the channel search was complete at a number well into the triple digits. So we flip through the stations and it wasn't long before each time we were yelling with our new-found entertainment. Out came TBS, TNT, FX, Spike, Discovery, History, TLC (Linds favorite), and.....oh yes, ESPN and ESPN2, plus the Big 10 network. Well, pathetically, this afternoon has been spent watching full HD college football and MLB games, but I really don't feel bad about it at all...

• Well, that may be about the extent of the excitement for one blog. For those of you interested in Twins material, AG posted this link the other day which proves my theory from this past Winter/Spring about Bill Smith, its a pretty interesting read with WAY too many numbers, but the conclusion at the bottom is worth checking out. On the other hand, hindsight is always 20/20...unless you're a Twins nut.

• Big doubleheader today, looking good so far for the Twins...up 5-1 in the 7th. Obviously with all the rain we've had, the Sox aren't playing again, so it will be interesting to see when they make up their games with the Tiggers.

So long everybody...

So much has happened...

Really? Two weeks since my last post, can't imagine many people missed hearing my thoughts about the Twins, especially because there hasn't been much to talk about in the last two weeks. If not for Justin Morneau (you're welcome Tyler) racking up a .370/3/14 with a 1.101 OPS coming into today, the Twins may be rivaling the '99 Cleveland Spiders for most consecutive losses at 24. (That's the 1899 Spiders, and I know it hasn't been that bad, but it feels like it because I hear it about 25 different times a day living in Sox territory)

Since the last post, here's a little bit of what's happened...

• First day of school...it went really well, I gave some puzzle questions, told about myself, talked about expectations. Basically I wanted the kids to know me a little bit and not be totally freaked out by everything. Plus, we had a retreat coming up, so I didn't go too in depth with anything the first couple days.

• 8th grade retreat...we (the four 8th grade teachers) took 91 8th graders to Phantom Ranch, a camp in Wisconsin, for 2 days for a time of community building among the students to start the year. They had the chance to do activities like horseback riding, canoeing, and archery, among others. I was in charge of Team Building games, which went over relatively well, except for the food relay. Don't get me wrong, it was a big hit, it was just that some kids weren't able to, uh....hold it all in when they were done. It made for our cabin to be labeled the "sick bay" and lets just say that no one was sleeping alone.

• Labor Day weekend...Linds and I left early Friday morning (we didn't have school, I guess many of the families at Timothy have beach houses in Michigan that they go to for the weekend, so the school complies with that) for Linds' parents house and met up with them to head up to NW Iowa to catch Brent's cross country race and a couple volleyball games. It was a good weekend, it gave us both a chance to see family again and get out of the city for awhile. On the way back we took in the PC football game Saturday night before we came home Sunday night.

• Last Tuesday Linds had her first volleyball match, which you can feel free to read about on her blog. My interesting fact for the night was that I was roped into help line judge for the varsity match. The other official didn't show up, so I took a corner and the varsity coach's husband took the other. Even if we were biased, it didn't help a whole lot, they lost in straight sets.

• The next night was another late one...I had a fantasy football draft with some of the other teachers at TCS. We set up in the computer lab with our snacks and cheat sheets and went at it. I honestly had a blast, I could've done it for hours...or at least until the Dew ran out.

• Then the next night...Back to School night for K-8. Parents could come in if they wished and listen to the teachers talk about expectations and highlights for the year. It was a good time for the most part, a few questions caught me off guard, but oh well...

• For some unknown reason to me, I agreed to play basketball the next morning with some of the HS teachers. I know why I said yes...because I missed doing anything even remotely competitive, but as I was driving to school at 6 a.m., my competitive spirit wasn't exactly on fire. But it was a good time for the first half hour, which was when I slightly sprained my ankle. I say slightly because I wanted to keep playing, but still sprained because now as I look at it, its a little big and a little discolored. The worst part was that the average age of the rest of the guys had to be upper 30's to 40, and here's me by far the youngest guy out there and I get hurt. I just told them it was because I was the only one with my feet leaving the floor.

• I spent Saturday correcting homework and quizzes, which the class did fairly well in. The last bunch may have a few more questions marked wrong because I was in a worse mood as it was around the 8th inning of the Twins game where Reyes and Guerrier gave up 2-run bombs each to erase a 4-2 lead for Baker. It was the FOX game of the week, so its the first game I've seen since...July 31...I think. Wow, that's been a long time.

Well, that's probably the highlights of the past two weeks. For anyone who checks this as much as I check the blogs that are in my daily check, sorry I haven't updated. Hopefully I'll get a chance if things slow down a little now and then...

So long everybody...

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...