February 26, 2008
June 16, 2007
Getting the Belly
Mrs. Pinetar is afraid of McGonnigle, the cat. Not really afraid but she thinks he doesn’t like her and is wary of him. He has nipped at her hand in the past, apparently.
Today, I showed her that when he is nice and sleepy, he will be good and he purred for her and he even rolled over and “gave the belly”, or, felt comfortable enough to roll on his back for belly scratches.
She said, “yea, he gave the belly for YOU! He wouldn’t do that for me”
I said, “…you have to do it right. You have to approach slowly and let him smell your hand for a while, because that’s how he identifies you and assesses threat level. Then, you start with safe scratchies that he likes and keep doing that until he trusts you more and more and then slowly work the scratchies under him and he’ll just flip over and stretch and give you the belly.”
She said, “yea, sure, that works for you…”
–fog
April 26, 2007
Great wisdom from Buck
On XM Channel 175, Baseball This Morning Show (that soldiers on despite the absolute anchor around its neck that is Orestes Destrada) Buck Marinez made me smile today on the drive in. He said that when you are a manager and you are planning either (1) a team meeting or (2) a lineup shakeup, make sure you look at the starting pitcher that night so that you look smart! hahaha. So, so true. Most of managing is PR-101 (and didn’t we read that in Moneyball? all you naysayers out there!)
***
Going to Washington DC to catch the Mets @ Nats this weekend with my little buddy, Max, my 7 year old nephew. He’s pumped and has even told me what he’ll be wearing to the game (Red Sox 2004 Champs for some reason that only he knows). He has done road games in Philly and Boston and I thought that he should get RFK in as they won’t use it after this or next year and he can say he’s been.
***
The Ansky sure called that home game fast last night. What was it? An HOUR before game time? Unprecedented for Big Stein not to rip off those Joe Lunchpails taking their once-a-year trip out to the Stadium and buying concessions for hours of rain delay only to be disapointed anyway. I guess they wanted to rest their bullpen. Look, the decision, for once, was right, but I believe that the REASON for the decision was sinister.
“SINISTER”, there, I said it; the Yanks are Sinister.
***
Planted my cherry trees on the Gisela-5 rootstock in the yard and dug up the ones that were there and drove them down to Princeton to my brother’s. Now we’ll see what we get. Already, my Rainiers are popping their buds bigtime.
In other gardening news, last night while jogging in the rain (the best) I saw that the town had sodded the ballfield so back I went with the car and hefty bags to pick up scraps of sod. I want to sod a problem area near the driveway and seed just won’t get established there!
***
Giving a talk to the nursing home folks on my Mickey Mantle statue this afternoon. Hope that goes well.
***
Heard a great description of Florida from a reader: West coast is like the mid West; East coast is like the northeast and the panhandle is like the deep south. Exactly! –fog
March 27, 2007
Can you wear white with white after Labor Day?
Tonight at the poolroom, I lost in 9-ball but had a ball in Rotation, winning the first 3 racks. (more…)
March 25, 2007
March 17, 2007
Snows prevent me from planting
I got my 2 cherry trees in the mail on Monday.
Of course I have to wait all week to plant them in the yard… (more…)
March 13, 2007
White Lightning
While I went to the Islander game, my brother, cousin and father were in the back yard in their affluent suburban community in NJ making white lightning. Here they are boiling the mash. The condenser is right behind it out of sight. Hopefully this year, no one goes blind and the police don’t come around.
In other “Ag” news, I got my cherry trees in the mail! Rainier and Princess Anne. I know that I will regret not getting the Black Gold on the Gisela-5 rootstock but we’ll see how they do. I still may bring in a Black Gold as a fallback pollinator, as both the Raniers and Princess Annes need a pollinator and the Black Golds will do both while being self-pollinating themselves. Now I won’t be able to wait the three years to my first yield. Mochten Sie Kirschwasser, anyone? I was thinking if I won the lottery or something, I would buy a chunk of land out by Cochecton, NY and do the whole fruit-tree farmer thing. A dollar and a dream. Tonight to celebrate, I broke out the raw cherry juice. It’s 4 dollars a bottle so I try to take it easy.
After a hard, but productive day (a 4-hour call with a software vendor), I needed to go to the poolroom badly. Tonight, although I played horrendously against Ciro, I beat him badly at 9-ball and won 2 of 3 racks of Rotation. Do you know that the rare 60-point-tie-rack was in play tonight? After never seeing it, it came up two weeks in a row!
We did the math on the 5-ball combos that add to 60 in the rack. There are 72,072 combinations (unique) in the 15 ball rack. Only 7 of them add up to 60. I also tweaked the program and saw that only 98 combinations of 6-balls add up to 60 out of 600,600 combos. That’s 98/600,600 = 0.00016 so it is clearly, very unlikely.
Ciro was sitting on 45 points with three balls left: 13, 14, 15. I was shooting. If I make the 13 and 14, I have 60. If he pockets the 15, he is the SECOND shooter to attain 60 and he wins the rack. Phooey, right? I ran out! And some tough shots in there. I probably didn’t make 3 straight balls all night! But just the fact that the 60-point-deal came up again was odd.
And, as if on cue, Ciro’s wife called and as soon as he hung up the phone, he missed a pocket hanger. Hilarious. –fog
February 8, 2007
Nothing Kills This Stuff…
Kale. Nothing can kill it. I planted some last spring in the backyard and it is still growing! It didn’t even look bothered until last week’s first snow and now I see that under the snow, it is still edible and green! Amazing. This is Northern New Jersey which is…what? Zone 6? No tricks, no hothouses. This stuff has been outside all Fall and Winter. It’s left the Swiss Chard in the dust. –fog
