Gabe just informed me that the comments to the posts are not working. How long has this been going on? I noticed that there haven’t been any comments for over a week. I just assumed it was because my posts suck, and you are all lazy and easily distracted. But it turns out the comments were broken, which doesn’t preclude any of those things from being true, but at least there is another reason. Anyway, I think I fixed it.
The Tigers have put all five starters on the roster for their playoff series against the New York Yankees. Game 1 is tonight.
Justin Verlander, Doug Fister and Max Scherzer are the first three starters against the Yankees. The roster also includes Rick Porcello and Brad Penny instead of an additional reliever.
Go Tigers!
[Update] Rain delay until Sat. at 8:30
Sorry, forgot to post for a couple days. I know you’re clicking the page all day long hoping for a post. And I disappointed you. Again. Well, dry those tears, here’s something boring and banal! At last!
Amanda invited John over for dinner. Gabe, Erin and Julian were supposed to come over, but Gabe isn’t feeling well, so they stayed home. Too bad – their loss. Amanda wanted a chuck roast, natch’. So we had that, potatoes and gravy, and those garlic beans everyone seems to like. And a red velvet cake. Yum! Good food and interesting conversation – a good night.
Oh, on a humorous note, while I was making the gravy, I unscrewed the pepper cap on one of those huge Costco bottles of pepper and, funny thing, someone had removed the plastic strainer from the bottle so I dumped about a pound of pepper into the gravy. HA! It’s funny because it didn’t happen to you! So we had powdered gravy mix instead. Delicious!
Last time we had the beans, Erin wanted the recipe, so here you go:
1# green beans – French style are nice
3 tablespoons or so soy sauce
1 tablespoon or so balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar or Splenda
2 tablespoons or so sesame oil
2 teaspoons of crushed garlic
Steam the beans until tender, but not too soft. Cook the garlic for a minute or so in the sesame oil. Mix up the soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar and dump that in with the oil and garlic, then add the beans amd mix them up so that they are coated with the sauce. Eat the beans.
Hey! I bought a new computer last night! Not that I need one. My Mac was only 10 years old – still good, right? I got a Toshiba Satellite laptop and am having way too much fun.
I plugged the memory card from my camera into the computer in order to play with images, and of course, there were no images on it. But I did find a 2 year-old movie of Nick’s first birthday. So I played with that. It was my first attempt to use the video feature on the camera. Sorry.
I see where REM broke up. To tell you the truth, I had no idea they were still together. I have a soft spot in my heart for them. They were the first so-called “alternative” band that got my attention back in the early ’80s. Based on songs such as “Driver 8,” and “Radio Free Europe,” I found college radio stations playing great stuff like the Pixies, The Replacements, The Smiths, and many others. Then I moved to the Washington D.C. area and found the wonderful WHFS playing all the great stuff (what ever happed to Weasel?). So, hats off to REM. Here’s a song:
Well, today is the last official day of summer. The autumnal equinox sweeps in tomorrow morning at about 5:00 a.m. (eastern time), like a seasonal grim reaper. So when I wake up tomorrow, It’ll be fall. And today it’s raining, natch’.
This has to have been the shortest summer ever. Of all the projects I planned to complete this summer, I got zero done. Yet, I didn’t make it to the beach anywhere near as much as I’d have liked. I just can’t believe how fast the time goes. What on earth did I do? I plan to spend the rest of the day sulking over another wasted summer, thus wasting the final day.
BTW, the sunset picture was taken in September, 2007, on the last day of our Labor Day week vacation at Duck, N.C.
Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.
-Gandalf (wizard)
If you’re going to kill a man you have to be sure, and there’s just no way to be sure with this guy.
Troy Davis, 42, was put on death row 20 years ago for the 1989 murder of a police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah following a fight with a homeless man over a bottle of beer. Since then seven out of the nine key witnesses who implicated him have recanted their evidence, several saying they were cajoled by police into giving false eye-witness statements.
Another 10 have come forward to point the finger at a separate man present at the scene of the murder, Sylvester Coles. BTW, Coles was one of the 2 of 9 witnesses mentioned above who did not recant – go figure.
Meanwhile, no forensic or DNA evidence linking Davis to the shooting has ever been found, and nor has the murder weapon.
Amnesty International’s US branch, that has championed the case, said: “Allowing a man to be sent to death under an enormous cloud of doubt about his guilt is an outrageous affront to justice. The case against Davis unraveled long ago.”
The public figures who have leant their names to the “Too much doubt” campaign to have Davis’s execution commuted include Pope Benedict, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former president Jimmy Carter, the former director of the FBI William Sessions, 51 members of the US Congress and many others. Bianca Jagger, who acts as the Council of Europe’s ambassador on the death penalty, said: “to execute Troy Davis in these circumstances would be a travesty. Executing an innocent man is a state-sanctioned murder.”
The parole board heard from one of the jurors who originally recommended the death penalty for Davis. Brenda Forrest told the panel she no longer trusted the verdict or sentence: “I feel, emphatically, that Mr Davis cannot be executed under these circumstances,” she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But the Georgia Parole Board denied clemency yesterday and Troy Davis is scheduled to be put to death today.
– From the Guardian (UK)
[UPDATE] A last minute appeal to the US Supreme Court delayed the execution about 4 hours. But they denied it, and so the State of Georgia killed Mr. Davis a little after 11:00 p.m. Davis maintained his innocence to the end. Strapped to his gurney he lifted his head and according to execution witnesses, told the family of Mark MacPhail that he was not responsible for the officer’s death and did not have a gun at the time.
For over 10 years, Brenda and I spent the majority of our weekends at Amanda’s soccer games. When she graduated from high school, she stopped playing, so no more soccer games for us.
But she’s playing again, this time on a co-ed team. The team is very good. They made it into the playoffs, won all their games, and last night they had their “Super-Bowl.” Brenda, Gabe, Julian and I went to cheer her on (and by “cheer her on,” I mean of course, “embarrass her”) . It was the first time I’d seen Amanda play since she was in high school. The level of play is very high. The combination of of the guys’ speed and power, and the finesse of the girls is fun to watch. The teams were tied at the end of the game, so it came down to a shoot-out. Sadly, Amanda’s team came up short and the other team won the game. Stupid shoot-out!
I have no pictures of the game, but I do have these 9 year-old pictures of Amanda playing soccer. And that’s pretty much the same thing, right?
I was putting hoses away this morning when I tripped and fell on a rock. I probably bruised…no, fractured…no, wait, broke…yes, that’s it, I broke a rib. The bone fragment is probably sticking out of my back where I can’t see it. Consequently, I was forced to sit in a La-Z-Boy chair all day watching football…for medical reasons. You understand.
I see where the mighty Lions had their most lopsided regular-season win in franchise history. They beat the KC Chiefs 48-3. The last time the Lions won the NFL championship game was 1957. I was 6. They have never played in a Super Bowl. This is the Lions’ year. Go Lions!
It appears that my local sporting franchise also performed in a tournament today. The Washington Redskins beat the Arizona Cardinals by one point. They went ahead with a minute and a half left to play, causing me to stop yelling at my TV. The Redskins outplayed the Cardinals in all aspects of the game, and should have had a game similar to that of the Lions, and probably would have if they had a quarterback who didn’t throw 2 interceptions and have countless tipped passes. Just sayin’…
