Ian

You suck.

Tim Wakefield is going to come after you all with a very slow, wobbly machete some day.

One of our summer projects is Getting To Know Michigan. We've taken a couple of day trips to places here and there, and we're planning a longer vacation in the upper peninsula in a couple of weeks. Last weekend, we went to Frankenmuth (the one that Michael Moore keeps showing in Roger and Me). It's a very, very touristy town, overpriced and generally not very interesting. We did enjoy a riverboat ride, and admired the covered bridge, but that was about it for Frankenmuth.

Yesterday we had a more entertaining trip. We started off by filling Amy's dim sum craving with a decent restaurant in Warren, MI -- about an hour's drive from here -- and then dropped by the nearby Cranbrook Institute of Science. I had never heard of it before, to be honest, but their web site came up in a search and looked interesting. It was quite a success; the kids enjoyed it. The Institute doesn't actually have a ton of exhibits -- a mastadon, a T. rex, etc; but they make the most of what they have (the T rex exhibit is focused on links between dinosaurs and birds, done quite well; the mastadon exhibit goes into detail of archaelogical links with hunting -- how do we know that humans hunted mastadons?) and they had a really nice traveling bat exhibit, with lots of live bats on a swapped day/night cycle for the kids to admire. The stegosaurus statue on the right is from the Institute.

After Cranbrook, we went to Detroit. We've never been there, oddly enough, so this was kind of a scouting expedition. We went to the Riverfront and (after a quick trip on the carousel) wandered up and down a bit (at one point trying to squeeze four of us under the single inadequate umbrella as it started to pour). We agreed that it was nicer than we had expected, as well as much easier to get to (I had expected big-city gridlock, but the drive was s trivially easy) and that we will definitely return on a nicer day; perhaps trying to connect the Riverfront with a Tigers baseball game some time.

We got a tent a couple days ago, and sleeping bags for the kids and air mattresses. We are not certain if we'll go camping this summer, but if the opportunity strikes we would like to be ready.

As soon as we got home, Matthew commenced asking, every ten minutes on the dot, if he could camp out that night. It threatened rain that night, but last night was clear. I asked the kids if they wanted to try camping in the back yard, and they agreed with breathless excitement.

I set the tent up, literally, 18 inches from the house, two feet from the steps to the deck. Inflated air mattresses and set up sleeping bags (I hooked the two up together, figuring that Matthew at the least might need the moral support of his big brother, and who knows, William might not object to a little support either). All through the process, I kept checking with Matthew, pointing out that I would not be in the tent, that it would be dark, and so on -- expecting him to back out; but no, he retained his enthusiasm, as did William; and even begged to go to bed early.

We tucked them into their warm jammies -- it was a cool night -- so the intrepid explorer set off for his adventure in footie jammies with space ships on them, just like Lewis and Clark. I bundled them into their sleeping bag, read them a story, demonstrated the proper use of the flashlight and explained that I would come back to check on them. And that, basically, was that.

There was one moment of activity. It turned out that Mommy had short-sightedly assured Matthew that should he be caught short in the night he didn't need to rush in to the inside potty; in case of emergency he was allowed to water the little tree near the tent. This, of course, was the most exciting idea ever, and he managed to squeeze a teeny dribble out of his bladder at least once before I realized what had happened and intervened with a much stricter definition of emergency.

After I left I fully expected to retrieve them in an hour or so, or to have them scurry in with news of bears, wolves, ogres, and monsters. But I was completely wrong. After about fifteen minutes of occasional whispering and giggling (the tent was directly under my office window, so I could call a stern warning as necessary) the tent went quiet; and when I slipped in half an hour later, both were sleeping the sleep of the expert outdoorsman.

The next morning, there was still silence until around 7:30, when I heard some rustles (plus obligatory giggles and whispers); fifteen minutes later, they made a concerted rush for the potty, and then returned to the tent, where Matthew may actually have drifted off again briefly before the both came inside for the day, around 8:00. They assured me that they had slept soundly, and asked hopefully if they could camp out again tonight, to which I was forced to quickly come up with a number of excuses.

That said, when Matthew was sent upstairs at 10:00 to get dressed, there was suspicious silence (always a bad sign, with Matthew) and Amy found him fast asleep on our bed, where he slept for three hours. So I wonder just how soundly they actually slept in the tent.

Nevertheless, I was impressed by their fortitude.

One of these wordles is from my personal (Livejournal) blog; the other is from my professional blog. (Click for larger versions.)

Sitting at my desk just now, I noticed a faint smoky smell. I ignored it for a couple minutes, as one does, then started sniffing -- is it real? Maybe not? No, I think there's something ... Is my computer hot? (Checked CPU usage, not excessive) -- What about the cable? Or this drive, or that one, or speakers, or the dock here, or one of the adaptors. ... Maybe under the desk?

After spending ten minutes crawling about under the desk, and pushing bookshelves and furniture around, to sniff cables, I noticed that the teenagers having a pool party two doors down had built a little bonfire in their back yard.

I'm not much a fireworks fan, myself. They go up, they go bang, they go down, repeat. This is the first time I've even bothered to go to a fireworks show for years. (Amy used to drag me to them, but until last year the kids were too small and too easily alarmed to enjoy them; and last year, Amy and the kids were visiting Jojo in Georgia while I was working here on July 4th.)

Anyway, we went this year to the little local park, arriving around 7-ish for the 10:15 show. This is a heavily kid-oriented community, and the park was filled with kids and kids' games. We roamed around for a while, listening to the music and so on (there was a duo, I think called Moon June Spoon, ¹ unless that was their idea of a joke, who were doing 1920s songs; they weren't bad, in a cheerfully amateur way) for a couple of hours, and then settled down for the fireworks. The show was better than I'd expected, considering this is just a small park in a small community; it lasted a half hour or so, and the kids thought it was great.

This is the first time I've tried to photograph fireworks, fumbling with settings in the dark, and as you'd expect most of the pictures came out pretty crap. This one is the best I came up with, and it's not very good. Still, it was fun to try.


1. (Update) I'm pretty sure the duo is actually The Fabulous Heftones, so the Moon June Spoon thing was a joke. If you're wondering what the instrument she's playing is, it's a Heftone. Obviously.

Last night's baseball game was the end of William's season. (Baseball season here is short, squeezed between soccer at both ends and dealing with summer vacation plans.) William's team completely mauled their opponents, maxing out at 5 runs in all of their innings and shutting the other guys down; final score was something like 20-3. It got so I (as first base coach) was embarrassed to send the kids for doubles; though I mostly did anyway, because we're trying to teach our kids about hustle and running hard out of the box.

The kids have all improved dramatically over the season, throwing, catching, and hitting much better than they did before. The biggest contrast between our team and the opponents this time -- and what pleased me most about the game -- is that our kids all remained alert and focused throughout the game, remembering to play their positions and cover the appropriate bag and not drifting off. Last year, our last game was kind of like the other team this year -- some kids remained focused, but several just were tired of baseball and spaced out, building sandcastles in the infield dirt or sitting down in the outfield. I'm glad that our kids managed to pick up so much while still finding it fun.

(Undoubtedly it helped that they were at the business end of the drubbing, but still, I think they were into it.)

Earlier in the afternoon, I took off from the office and met up with the kids - also with some friends' kids -- for a matinee of Kung Fu Panda. It went over very well with William and his buddy Nicholas, who were heard guffawing uproariously at the butt jokes and were engrossed by the fight scenes; it also went over well with our Matthew, who was nervous at a few spots (a tiny voice whispered, "Daddy, can we go now?" a couple of times) but made it through and roared out into the parking lot shouting "HYAH! WAH!" while kicking and punching the air into submission. Our friend Matthew, slightly older than our M, did sort of drift out of the theatre a few times, but overall did well and had fun with it.

The tournament is over; we have one more game on Tuesday, and then William's baseball season is over. We ended up winning one game of the four we played, but it was the last game and sent the kids off in a good mood, especially as all got medals (not to mention snacks and juice).

William didn't quite hit 1.000 for the tournament (he got caught out once, this morning), or for the season (I am guessing his average was maybe .850 or .900-ish); he probably led the team in average and very likely in OPA. His defense is coming on, he made a couple of nice plays at first, though there are several players who probably do better. William needs to be a little more aggressive in games; in practice, at home, he vacuums up any fly or ground balls within 20 feet, but in a game he waits for someone else to get them.
( Team photo )

William's baseball team is having its season-end tournament; two games Friday afternoon, two games Saturday morning.

We've been a pretty good, though not overwhelming, team this year. Everybody can hit the ball -- in our league, any contact at all has a reasonable chance of getting to base, because catching and throwing is basically a gamble; and all our kids can make contact. About four or five of them can hit reasonably hard, line drives into the outfield that have a reasonable chance of getting a double. (William is one of the four.) And about a half-dozen can catch and throw quite well.

I don't know our season won/lost record (we rarely know the score at the end of a game, though we generally know whether we won or not). I believe we're a couple of games over .500. (There was also one distressing game where we were leading with two outs in the bottom of the last inning, and in a close play Patrick, at catcher, tagged out a runner at home plate, which should have ended the game. But the runner was called safe by the opposing coach -- the runner's father, we found out later -- and our guys promptly blew five consecutive chances for another out and ended up losing the game.)

As a team, in general, our defense is pretty leaky. We expect that, and it's true for every team in the league. My biggest frustration this year is that somehow the kids have decided that they want to run the ball everywhere, instead of throwing it. This started, I think, because some of the older kids started to make plays at second or whatever by running to the bag instead of throwing to the second baseman, and that worked the first few times they tried it; while throwing the ball has about a 50:50 chance of being caught. Unfortunately, they've started trying to run the ball everywhere, getting into footraces with the runner and usually getting beaten. Even in the outfield, they've started trying to run the ball into the infield instead of throwing it in, which is just plain nonsense.

Anyway, the tournament. We've lost our first two games. The first, I think, was 14-9, and we were pretty much creamed; the other team maxed out their runs in several innings (there's a five-run mercy rule). A highlight, or something, of the game was William's double. He hit a nice line drive to center field. I, as first base coach, sent him to second, but the other team got the ball in faster than I expected. Nevertheless, William slid in under the tag nicely and was safe.

But he didn't realize this. The guys are all very shaky on when you need to be tagged out and when there's a force, and William thought that he was out because the ball got to the bag before him. So did the second baseman, who proudly called him out, and William gloomily got up and headed for the bench. Fortunately the other kids didn't understand what was going on and didn't tag him again, and when all of the coaches on both teams started shouting out instructions ("TAG HIM! GO BACK! TOUCH THE BASE! TAG HIM! GET BACK, GET BACK!" all the kids out there just blanked and stood around in a little knot, ten feet away from the bag, not moving, staring around at us and each other and wondering what was going on. Eventually we declared William safe, sent him back to the bag, took the ball from the bewildered second baseman, and carried on; William scored eventually and at the end of the inning I tried to explain to all what had happened, though I'm not sure the kids understood.

The second game, we lost 11-9, and we really should have won. We were losing 11-9 with an inning left to play, and we were the home team. Remarkably we managed to shut them down in the top of the inning, thanks to a strikeout, a force at third, and a double play with a tag at home and a force at third (yes, that's four outs, but the other coaches all lost track and I didn't press the point, since we aren't allowed to carry over extra outs anyway).

We had a very good chance of scoring three runs in our half of the inning, with several good hitters coming up. Our first runner got on base. Our second struck out (it happens, even with five strikes and a pitching machine). Our third hit a popup, that was, remarkably and by pure luck, caught. Our runner at first hustled back to first, trying to beat the throw, and it was a very, very close play; but I called him out, because he was safe, then his foot came off the bag just as he was tagged; then his foot got back on the bag. It honestly could have gone either way, and I was second-guessing myself, but I am almost certain I made the right call, and our other coaches who were close agreed that they had seen the same as me afterward. But I think that I actually made the call that way at least partly because I don't want to play favourites, so that most of my close calls tend to go against our team.

I still think it was the right call, but I am not certain.

Anyway, the kids were only a little bit upset, and now today we have two more games, if we don't get rained out.

Rich Lenski is a well-known evolutionary biologist at Michigan State. (I know him a little; he's a very nice guy -- we mostly talk about our kids when we meet, though I have also pestered him about evolutionary genetics on occasion.) He has done a lot of very nice work, most recently publishing a wonderful result with E coli. Basically he started, 20 years ago, with a set of known E coli, and then has grown them continuously under specific conditions, examining their phenotype every few thousand generations. He's something like 50,000 generations in, and among the many cool things is that he has identified a new "species" arising; a new strain of E coli with novel enzymatic functions, that are actually normally used to prove something is *not* E coli.

His web site is here, his latest paper is "Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli" (I think it's subscription-only, ask me if you want a copy).

But that's not what I want to point out right now. Because this is yet more proof of evolution, the creationist loons have been crawling up and down and harassing Rich. Rich was polite the first time, and the second time he completely pantsed the morons. See the letters he wrote, and further commentary at The Loom.

A while ago, I managed to slosh some Guiness onto my keyboard. Quick action (no, I didn't turn the keyboard upside down over my mouth and drink the lost Guiness) saved most of the keys, and the only one that was seriously affected was the "V" key -- a minor key, that would not be used much except, unfortunately, by a virologist. I persevered with the keyboard for a while, but when I saw a good price on a replacement I picked it up and cast aside the old one.

The old keyboard was instantly snatched up by Matthew, who carefully set it up on the desk, beside mine. At first, for a monitor, he taped (with his vast supply of stickers) a piece of paper on the top, with a scribbled image of a monitor (he explained). Later, he found William's little hand-held Battleships game, which apparently has an acceptable monitor on it. He sits beside me, and gravely bangs away on his keyboard while I work on mine, occasionally pausing to loudly explain to William that he and I are the com pooter guys and we are WORKING hard on our com pooters..

Note the cup in front of him. It is filled with "coffee", which he gets from the tap, because one needs a cup of coffee when one works on a com pooter.

Matthew greatly surprised me last week with his bike. He's been riding a tricycle until recently, because William's old 16-inch bike is too tall for him. About three weeks ago, though, we picked up a little (12-inch) bike, with training wheels, and it was love at first sight. He spent the entire day roaring around our block (on the sidewalks; it's a very kid-friendly neighborhood, and everyone already knows Matthew, who greets people with ambassadorial dignity and investigates every aspect of their life on introduction).

At any rate, he was well pleased for a couple of weeks, and then began to pester me to remove the training wheels; they cramped his style. Given my experience with William, and with watching a few neighbor kids, I was hesitant to do so, because I figured I would be putting them back on the next day. But eventually I agreed to give it a shot. I took off the training wheels and suggested to Matthew that he wait for a few minutes, while I put away the wrenches, before riding his bike, so I could give him a hand. I took the tools to the basement, returned upstairs, and found Matthew cheerfully riding up and down the driveway, without so much as a wobble. Given permission to go around the block with William, he did so with style and elan, and has not had a spill of any kind in the subsequent week.

It's a hot, hot weekend here, and with my grants both off and out of my hands we've spent it doing Norman Rockwell, midwest-weekend type things.

Yesterday morning we took the kids fishing, for the first time. (Matthew has been fascinated by fishing for months, turning any stick he finds into a "fishing stick" with the help of any piece of string he can liberate.) The local Parks and Lakes department had a kids' "fishing derby" out at a local pond, providing rods and worms and gravely noting down the size of the tiny bluegills the kids delightedly brought in. Matthew had a wonderful time, casting five feet out and retrieving his bobber, examining it carefully and announcing "No fish this time!" and trying again -- he made it through the full 3 hours without complaint and asked to stay longer even though he didn't catch anything other than weeds (and leaves, and a tree, and our picnic blanket, and but for some fancy dodging my ear).

William actually did catch something, an 8 1/2 inch bluegill, to his delight; even though it fought, as Dave Barry put it, like a frozen bagel, and we didn't even realize we had a fish (as opposed to the weeds we very successfully caught all morning long) until it was a couple feet away and we could see it. Nevertheless, he was triumphant, and he and Matthew have been taking turns all morning today to ask me if they can get their own fishing rods and go back today. I will have to figure out which, if any, fishing licenses and so on apply here.

After the fishing (oh, and the pond was a short walk away from a local farmers' market, so I got my tomato plants for the year, I hope -- four heirloom varieties, three of which I haven't tried before and one [Cherokee Purple] that did well last year; also I got some Scarlet Runner beans, though I am fairly certain the deer will eat them before they, the beans, contribute anything to our little household economy) we went to a lunch joint and had hamburgers and mikshakes for lunch, and then went home and changed our clothes to a very mildly dressier set so we could go to William's last piano recital of the year. I taped the recital with our new digital camcorder and there's a copy here, though I am not pleased with the quality; the room was dim with a spotlight on the piano and the camcorder, set on Auto, didn't handle that all that well. In retrospect I have changed various defaults that should make it much better, and have made note of the "Spotlight" setting, which should help even more.

Anyway, William ranked his performance as a "7" on a scale to 10, which we agreed with; he can do better, but it's his last of the year and we are generally very pleased with his progress. This is, I believe, a year and a half of lessons with the infinitely patient Mrs Tanimoto.

After that, we hauled out the barbeque and did up some chicken, corn, mushrooms and peppers, plus a couple hot-dogs for the kids. And after that, we strolled to the local schoolyard, where we met up with friends for an hour of sandlot baseball, while Matthew shot hoops and rode his little 12-inch bike (with training wheels) around and around the paths.

I put in the kids' window fans as well, and turned them on; but the hot day was succeeded by a series of violent thunderstoms at night. (Matthew, hearing the preliminary mutters, announced that he was scared, and we let him sleep in his big brother's bed for the night. Neither of them woke up even when the lightning was continuous and the thunder didn't stop for ten full minutes.) The rain came down so hard, after the kids were asleep, and so suddenly, that by the time I ran upstairs and shut all the windows, the window fan was literally filled with water -- after I took it out of the window a good quart splashed out onto the carpet. But no tornadoes were spawned, which we will call a victory.

Today's plans are more leisurely. With no scheduled plans Amy has gone to the office for the morning, and I will likely go in during the afternoon. We have penciled in a trip to the swimming pool near our office (the nearly lake park is open, but I am dubious about the water after last night's storm -- but we may go there if the word is good), and I may get a replacement sprinkler for the kids to run through.

• Updating last week's fiasco with the defective basketball hoop assembly: The replacement pieces arrived today, and the step of assembly that I struggled unsuccessfully with for an hour and a half last week was finished in five minutes today. I went on and finished the assembly while the kids biked off to the playground, and when they came back Matthew shrieked and ran in circles with joy at finding a brand-new basketball hoop in his own yard. It turns out that in the week since my last attempt Matthew has managed to lose his basketball, but he spent a half hour shooting hoops with a soccer ball instead and went to bed well satisfied.
• Not exactly an update because I don't think I've mentioned it before ... the lovely middle-aged ash tree in our back yard, shading our deck, has been infested with the Emerald Ash Borer this spring. Ash borers are spreading through Michigan (they arrived in 2002 and have killed over 30 million, not a typo, trees so far), so we've been expecting disaster, but we had hoped it would take longer since there are no other ashes nearby. However, this spring branches started to lose leaves, and over the weekend I found borer holes in the trunk -- so the poor thing isn't likely to last the summer. There are treatments, but on a tree this size they are not very effective. Not sure what we'll do about a replacement.

After not getting in to a sold-out game a month ago, we managed to take in our first single-A baseball game of the year when William's school made a group outing to the game tonight. I had seriously doubted the game would get in, considering the ominous forecast, but aside from about 4 drops of rain there were no problems. The Lugnuts won, 1-0, moving them into first place. Since many from William's baseball team were there they made professional assessments of the Lugnut's positioning and backing up and so on; it was a well-played game defensively, with a number of double plays and one error to act as an example, and overall William and his buddies had a great time. We had good seats, right behind home (I love the minor leagues!) and William & Co. quickly moved down to take control of some empty season-ticket seats a row behind home. He ate Dippin' Dots, drank Gator-Ade (a great treat in our house) and had a little tub of overpriced popcorn, and pestered me with baseball questions ("Could Manny hit a home run in that park? Why did the pitcher run around so much?" [Referring to covering first -- in William's league, right field plays so shallow that he can cover first instead] "What if that foul ball HIT the lights? Would they all go out?") all the way home until he fell asleep.

William's first baseball game of the season was today. No one was quite sure of the score at the end, but all agreed that William's team won. 14-11 seems like a reasonable guess.

Like last year's team, this year's is a mix of 1st and 2nd year players (first and second grade students). This year, of course, William is a senior. In comparison to last year I think we have more of an offensive juggernaut this time around. Last year, though just about all the kids could hit, only about 1 in 10 made it out of the infield. This year about half the kids -- most of the seniors, and even several of the juniors -- pounded it into the outfield consistently. (William got two outfield hits.) Importantly (as with last year's first game) every player on our team got at least one hit, so we're spared the pressure of waiting through the season wondering if Billy will get a hit this year or not.

Their fielding needs work, of course. They have only had 4 practices and they won't have any more official practices, it's all games from here on. In the practices they didn't take fielding very seriously (even using the standard 7-year-boy meaning of "seriously"). I think a few of them, from today's game, caught on to the concept that stopping the other team from scoring was just as effective as scoring yourself, so I hope that we will see some improvement in the next few games.

There were a number of other glitches that we can work on. William tore off for second on a fly ball, then screeched to a stop (remembering I had told him to run on a ground ball but wait and see for a fly ball) and tore back to first, even though the other team bobbled the catch -- so he and the batter ended up at first almost at the same time, and by the time he turned around again and went back to second they had corralled the ball and he was out.

I think they're going to be a pretty decent team, with no problem scoring runs, so if they can get a few outs they should do well. Most importantly, they all seem to be having a lot of fun.

We got a basketball hoop for our lane (our neighbourhood has approximately 1.3 hoops per house, on average, so we were bringing the tone down). It is a portable thing, with wheels and a base you fill with water or sand, and it come in pieces that you have to assemble. We got it home about 5:00, and I guess it would take a couple hours to put together (as well as the big vertical pipes and braces there are little ratchety parts and pawls and elevators you use to hoik the backstop up or down, so that Matthew and William will both be able to use it, so I figured the fiddly factor was about a 4 out of ten). And I was about right, up the the penultimate step, where it turns out that the holes drilled through the pipes are not, quite, perfectly in line; so that the long bolts that are supposed to go through end up just about 1/8 inch off the final hole.

And it turns out that in my enfeebled state I can't bend 4-inch steel pipe with my bare hands.

So we have a 90%-assembled, yet completely useless at the moment, basketball hoop taking up a slot in the garage, and we hope that we can call the manufacturer (toll-free number! Call for missing parts!) once the holidays are over, and they will forward us, we hope, replacement parts from China, on a boat, and then with luck I can finish the job; though with grants due this was really the window I had for this sort of thing.

William has been invited to one of his friends' First Communion.

What's involved?

On school days William needs to get up around 7:30, to be ready on time. But I'm usually up around 6:30, and William seems to like the peaceful company, so he often gets up earlier and we just hang out. Matthew (like Amy) generally sleeps later, but sometimes he also comes plodding sleepily in (usually carrying his pillow with him, for some reason -- in case he falls asleep while walking, I suppose). I figure it's fair to give them until 7:30 with no responsibilities before starting our morning dash. This morning, both William and Matthew got up early, and at Matthew's request William read to him from a Big Book of Fairy Tales. This is the Gingerbread Man.

Amy has been away at a conference for the past few days, so I and the boys have been doing guy stuff and skimping on homework and so on. (Most of William's homework is in Chinese, anyway, so I can't do much to help or even tell him what he's supposed to do. I have been insisting he gets some done, but only a couple of pages are complete.) William and Matthew have dragged me to the playground every day, for baseball and soccer and basketball and general clambering on play structures and slides and swings and running around.

William's soccer team is doing pretty well this year. If I haven't lost track, we have won three games and lost one. (I am vaguely an assistant coach again, which again means tying shoelaces and retrieving balls from the woods, because I still don't actually know the rules of soccer.) They have got the concept of positions and passing and much of the basics, and often remember them even in the heat of battle. The games are fun to watch; especially little Gage, about half the size of the rest of the team (and about a third of his size is eyes) but who whirs around at about 90 mph with his legs spinning, exactly like a Flintstone cartoon character; of course this mode of transport is unsuited for non-animated beings and Gage falls down about every 45 seconds, but the part of him that isn't eyes is entirely rubber bands and springs and he rolls back to his feet without missing a beat.

William is doing pretty well. He handles the fundamentals pretty well, but lacks a killer instinct and isn't very aggressive about getting the ball away from defenders and driving to the goal. When playing our defense he works out fine, but on offense he tends to be rather passive and wait for the ball to come to him instead of taking it. However, he doesn't mind playing defense, and we have several power forwards already. Most importantly, William has a wonderful time at games and practice.

Even so, he's still more enthusiastic about baseball. We go to the park to throw and catch and hit most days, and he's improving. His batting is good; even though I am not good enough to adjust his batting stance all the time, he usually gets some good hits. He'll be playing baseball as soon as soccer season ends. This year he'll be a returning veteran; the teams are machine-pitch first and second grade, same as he was on last year.

Matthew is also keen on baseball, though not as obsessive as William was at that age. When William was four, he had been batting well for nearly two years; Matthew has just got interested. He throws well, and occasionally catches a ball if I can manage to throw it precisely into the center of his glove; much to his leaping pride and excitement. This is his last week in day care for the summer, as Amy now has the summer off and will hang out with Matthew (and William, when his school ends) for the summer.

Last year around this time, we went to the Lansing Lugnuts/MSU Baseball team first annuals "Crosstown Showdown". This year William and I tried to go again.

Unfortunately, so did about 15,000 other people. This year's game presumably got a lot more publicity, and was a much nicer evening as well, because whereas last year we waltzed in and had plenty of room (about 6000 people attended last year, I see) this year's crowd set a park record of 12,862 people, and William and weren't among them. There was a gigantic line for tickets, and an equally gigantic and slow-moving line to actually enter the park after you got your ticket. We stood in line for over half an hour, arriving at the window about 25 minutes after the game was supposed to start, and learned that there were only standing-room-only tickets left, on the lawn at the far end of the park, where you can't actually see home plate or first or third base. With another half hour to wait in the other line before getting in, and the game only supposed to be a 7-inning job, I decided it wasn't worth it and walked out.

(I had actually tried to buy tickets online, but their web site refused to cooperate. As it happens, I noticed yet another ridiculously long line, at least a half-hour wait, to pick up will-call tickets! --again followed by the wait to get in to the park. So that would actually have been just as bad.)

With just the $5.00 parking fee to pay, and a very disappointed William at my heels, I tried to cheer ourselves up with a trip to a pizzeria; where I left behind both my baseball cap and William's. (I lose more hats that way. But I phoned back and will retrieve them tomorrow.) But the pizza was decent, and we watched hockey on the TVs there, and William eventually decided to take it philosophically. We'll go back for more Lugnuts games this summer, when they're not so popular.

This weekend was the first really warm one of the year, and we spent it doing appropriately spring-like things.

Saturday was William's first soccer game of the year. His team from last fall has reformed completely intact, and in their practices last week -- aside from a vast excess of 7-year-old-boys-freed-from-winter goofiness and easily-distractedness -- they picked up more or less where they left off in fall, remembering that positions do exist and sometimes staying in them, occasionally passing to each other, and usually not actually tackling players on their own team. What's more, the kids grow and gain coordination so fast at this age that there are dramatic improvements in their skills, especially a couple of the kids (I asked if Gage and Jordan had spent the winter practicing, but no).

Last year's first game was a scoreless tie, and their second a 0-1 loss. This year they broke through the barriers right away with a 3-0 win -- all three goals coming courtesy of Jordan, who drove through the other team's mob at about 75 mph and slammed past the keeper. William did pretty well, playing on defense throughout and doing a good job of positioning and moving the ball forward -- not so much on passing, but his teammates still haven't figured out how to be available for passes, so that's not his fault.

Afterward, and much of Sunday, we worked on the yard and stuff -- I put in the front screen door, replaced the broken trackwheel on the deck screen and put it back up, we cut down last year's garden and cleaned up a half-dozen bags of yard waste and turned over the vegetable garden, and so on. I also stopped by MSU's plant sale, but only picked up a few things. It's still a little early for planting and I didn't want to be moving wagons-full of flats back and forth next cool night.