School's out! (sort of)

Hi. My name is Oscar and I write this blog. Sorry I've been gone for the last week & a half. Now that the kiddie's last day is Tuesday, the schedule SHOULD free up for more things like blogging.

Anyway, too much time has gone past to do a day-by-day recap, but here's some of the things going on lately:

Black Bear Tri
Well, Beth ended up winning the Black Bear Triathlon and earned her spot in the Best of the US Race in Phoenix in October. That's pretty cool since my aunt lives out there. My parents may come out also. Just to throw it out there to brag a little about her, Beth won by 4 minutes and beat all but 7 guys. It was a smaller race, but that's still pretty darn impressive.

Start of Softball Season
For me, the fastpitch softball season finally got rolling. I play in a slowly dying league in Greensburg, but I still love it because it's fastpitch and I'm a small guy that likes to take advantage of the bunting and stealing. We played last Tuesday and Friday (another reason for no blogging in the evenings). Over the last four years I've started to dabble with pitching. If you're picturing those amazing gals at the Women's College World Series on ESPN, take about 20 miles/hr off the speed and a lot less movement. But, I enjoy it.

The best part about my pitching so far this year is I'm not as wild as usual. The last few years, I would average over a walk per inning. This isn't a good thing. But, so far this year, I've only walked three guys (and two were intentional) over 9 innings. I don't know if it's a matter of maturing in my mechanics or all the swimming I did this offseason (thanks Beth!), but things are clicking so far. We've got a double header tomorrow (pending the predicted thunderstorms), so we'll see what happens. I'll pitch at least one game.

My hitting is my usual punching-Judy style. I'm a skinny little distance runner, so I don't have much pop. I always tell Beth that I relate my batting game to Jason Kendall for those people who know baseball/former Pirates.

Pirates
Oh yeah, speaking of the Pirates, they are only 2 games under 0.500 after beating Randy Johnson and the D-backs this afternoon. AND, the terrible Washington Nationals are coming to town before interleague play starts. I still think they need to think big picture and build for 2009-10 (aka trade Bay, Nady, Grabow, and Marte), but we'll see what happens. They're still 8 or 9 games out of 1st place.

Also, the draft took place this past week and they got their coveted left-handed power hitter in Pedro Alvarez from Vanderbilt. Hopefully they can sign him. The Pirates were also aggressive in picking some guys who wanted bigger bonuses in rounds 2, 6, and some later rounds. If the Pirates can come to an agreement with these guys, it'll be a pretty good draft.

One complaint I have is it seems that, after Alvarez, the Pirates forgot about the short right field porch they have at PNC Park. They should be drafting left-handed hitting power bats (aka lefties greater than 200 lbs) out the wazzu and hoping a couple pan out. The next lefty power bat they took wasn't until pick 864: Komstadius, Kevin. You may be able to count 6th round pick Robert Grossman but he's going to cost a lot or else he'll go to the University of Texas. Last year, they didn't take ANY left-handed power bats until the 19th round!!! Oh well.

School's Out
Oh yeah, the kid's last day of school is tomorrow. We have a clerical day Wednesday and Thursday's a day for preparing for summer school. I'm involved with a program that's not exactly summer school called the summer elementary enrichment program where it's more like a summer camp. The topic of my class is called, of course, "Math in Sports." I'm going to integrate doing calculations involved in sports with actually playing sports it should be fun. It runs for four weeks which will pretty much take me into the start of XC summer practice....which leads to the start of the next school year....but I'm not complaining because I love my schedule and feel fortunate for my flexibility in the summer. I'll also do some work this summer with Carnegie Learning, the best math software and curriculum around.

Well, I've written plenty. I'm sure more will come as the week goes on and I have a little more free time.