Let’s start with an idiot story; you know why? I’m an idiot. This starts immediately after I updated yesterday. I wrote about how I had a lot of time pressure and had to get moving. I was good and went right into the shower so that I could take my Donut Walk™ and be back home by 3:30 for the start of the Met game. I got out of the shower and found two messages on my phone. It was my therapist. We had a session that I had totally forgotten about. I immediately called her but lost over 15 minutes of my time. It also meant that I started the session undressed. You’re supposed to bare all to your therapist, right? I did have to stop for a minute while I put my shirt on, that’s difficult to do with earbuds in. I have succeeded but that would require too much of my brain while I was in session. What makes it a true idiot story is not forgetting my session ,but what led up to it. Last week when I went to schedule my future sessions I found out that my therapist would not be working on Wednesdays anymore. On Tuesday when I noticed my Wednesday session I deleted it from my calendar, figuring that I automatically put it in earlier. After I did that I wasn’t so sure I should have and thought of re-entering it, so I’d be prepared if I were wrong. Then I didn’t. I said to myself, “I’ll just take her call when it comes.” That lack of preparation for me being an idiot was what was idiotic. My plans must be foolproof as I’m the fool.
The upshot is that I got home from my Donut Walk™ just in time to see that the Mets were winning 4-0. I missed their offensive outburst. To make it even worse the Diamondbacks scored 5 runs in the bottom of the first so I didn’t even get to enjoy the Mets scoring. It all turned out well in the end, the Amazins won 6-5. It’s nice to have airtight relief pitching. Met fans have not internalized that yet, that’s been a weakness for a few years. The Mets addressed it over the winter, and they were projected to have the one of the best relief corps, and they do; the Met’s relief corps leads the majors in relief pitching WAR.
I didn’t have time between the Met and Knick games to make the dinner I planned, roasted chicken quarter, so I made my new invention, matzoh brei pizza. This turned out better than the first time as it held together better. When It was done I popped in the microwave for a minute to fully melt the cheese. Next time I should pop it in the oven, that’s one of the advantages of a cast iron skittle. That would involve preheating the oven. That sounds so good I want to try it right away.
Unfortunately, the Knick game did not go as well as they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. They have won exactly one playoff series since 2000. This year I had some hope, it was dashed.
I was worried about not having Gord’s Gold ready in time. I shouldn’t have. I managed to program the entire show yesterday and today I’ll record it. I have weekend plans and want to get it done before then. It’s due on Sunday night. Now I’m getting antsy about next week’s show. I got my average daily walk back on track, even though I missed three days when I was sick over the last 31 I’m averaging over three miles a day. Can I keep that up for a year? It’s much tougher in the summer when it’s hot and the winter when it’s cold but I’ll try. I wonder if it’s affecting my looks. Are my legs looking more muscular? My stomach looks flatter, but I have no faith in my judgment on that. I don’t think that I’m going to emerge from the pandemic and find myself a chick magnet. I never call women chicks and have found it offensive since at least college, but I can accept it as part of the idiom. I think that there’s too much language policing, but I felt funny about that one. The problem with language policing is the same as correcting people’s grammar. It’s rude because you are interrupting and distracting from what they want to say. I’m not saying it’s always wrong, when someone says something offensive they deserve to be called on it. We can change the way people speaking by the way we can speak. When I was a kid the polite terms for blacks was Negro or colored. Neither was meant to be offensive. The NAACP didn’t change its name because “colored” was no longer the preferred term. As for me when I heard people saying “black” I picked it up immediately. This was treating blacks the same as whites, nobody uses Caucasians in casual speech, so why use Negro? Black is the counterpart of white. When African American became the norm, I was a slow adopter and it’s still not my primary term. An Egyptian is as African is as a Nigerian, but it’s not what we mean. The other problem is that it doesn’t include blacks that aren’t Americans. I didn’t make changed because people stopped me while I was talking to correct me. I just heard what others said. There are times that I feel more comfortable with African American as it is more aligned with current usage. There is someone I know who when talking about baseball players will says, “officially negro” when asking color line related trivia questions. It grates on me every time he says it but I’m not calling him on it. If he hasn’t heard how off that sounds after all these years he has some sort of social issue. He never says anything remotely racists. On the other hand, there are racists who don’t want to say the terms that are universally recognized as derogatory, so they fall back on Negro and colored. It involves listening to the context. It’s not about hard and fast rules, but judgment calls.
Now breakfast beckons. I’m going to make my sausageeggandcheese sandwich with mozzarella today.
Wise Madness 