April 23

As always, please visit my website at http://www.thomnichols.com/
Yeah, I know. There was no baseball today. The game was rained out. I was bummed too. So, the Rockies are going to play the Pirates tomorrow as scheduled and then a double header on Wednesday. If you need an update, we took two games from the Brewers over the weekend which was nice. We’re one game over 500 at the moment and everything is beginning to come together.

I had a horrible weekend. I got off of work at 6 in the morning on Saturday and tried to sleep for only a little while. I got about four hours from 8-noon. Then, I tried to stay up so that I could sleep in the evening because I had to be back at work at 6 in the morning on Sunday. I fell asleep about 10 or 11pm and woke up at 3am. I was really dragging the whole day. It was a 12 hour shift, but it was all overtime. When I got home on Sunday I didn’t even want to eat. I just turned on the TV and was out by 8.
The worst thing wasn’t the lack of sleep or the weird hours. The worst thing was that my right eye swelled up. At first it wasn’t hurting or anything. So I figured I got bit by a spider or something. But, around midmorning today, it started irritating me. I was visiting at my mom’s house and had to leave early. I had to put something on it. My wife usually has stuff, so I called her and she told me where this gel stuff was. The only problem was I had to put it in my eye. I pulled down the bottom lid and there was this big white sore on the inside. I put the junk in and it stopped the itching, but everything became very fuzzy. I decided to just rest. By the time I went to pick up my wife, it was crusted shut. My other eye works fine, so I went to work. Now, everyone is asking who clocked me. It looks like I have a black (Purple) eye.
On the good news side of the day, my mom got her electricity back today. She has been having problems for the last month or so with the electricity shutting off. None of the breakers were tripped, the electricity would just go out whenever she turned on her TV or bathroom light. She finally got the apartment maintenance to come look at it and he immediately knew what the problem was. He said that about a month ago one of the maintenance people installed a new outlet in the bathroom and kitchen of most of the complex. He said he’s had to fix about a hundred of them. So, during that entire month or more when my mom was having problems, she would call the office and complain. They would always blow her off with one excuse or another. If they knew that over a hundred of these things were broken, they should have sent someone over to look at it the first time she called or even sent someone out to all of the apartments that were upgraded to make sure it was working. The only way she got them to come out this time was to tell them that her refrigerator wasn’t working and she had to throw out all of her food. But, it is fixed now. She still isn’t going to buy anything for a few days just in case.
More good news, my youngest daughter finally filled out some paperwork for her college tuition. She’s getting about three thousand more than we originally expected. So, she’s starting at the same time as my eldest daughter. (Not the same classes though) My older one wants to be a teacher or a social worker or a psychologist. My younger one is going for a double major in computer science and linguistics. I hope they all do great.
My youngest daughter is taking a bunch of AP tests. (Advanced Placement) They qualify for college credits so she might not have to take some of the math, science, and English classes. That will be nice. She has a full schedule over the next couple of weeks. There are only 18 school days left in high school. She has the tests, the prom, and graduation. We’re also going to throw in a graduation party in there somewhere. My wife keeps telling me the date, but I can never remember. My daughter wanted to do something different for her graduation. She wanted the whole family to get together and go camping. It wouldn’t be the last gathering, but it would be her last gathering as a high school kid. But, we found out that we have to reserve the campgrounds a year in advance. So, camping is out. Now, we’re going to have a picnic party over by Lakeside. My wife already reserved the area with the benches.
We went to a Rockies game during the week last week. We took my daughter and my granddaughter. At first, my granddaughter didn’t want to be there. She is still afraid of people dressed up in costumes, and we had some awesome seats. They were in the 4th row right beside the Rockies dugout. We could have thrown peanuts at Todd Helton on first base if we were mean people and wanted to waste some perfectly good peanuts. The game was great, but Dinger the mascot came over before the game started so he could say hi to all the kids. Well, my daughter freaked out and during the whole first few innings constantly asked if Dinger could climb the little fence between the stands and the field. We assured her that he couldn’t, but she didn’t settle down until the clapping and cheering started. She did manage to spill two pops and mangle a hotdog. Overall, it was a very fun day. We should be able to get those seats again. They are season tickets and they belong to someone at my wife’s job. He can’t go to all the games so he sells them to her very cheaply. They even come with a parking pass. I had to work after the game, so we left right before the last out. It was in the hopes of getting to the car and avoiding as much traffic as we could. But, there was a little secret passageway out of the stadium parking. It took us a back way where there was only one other car. We bypassed all of the traffic and if I would have gone from there to work, I would have made it with time to spare. But, I had to take everyone home so I was only an hour late.
I’m a couple of chapters into Sliders. It’s turning out to be a fun book. I think I’m defiantly going to do it first instead of Gremlin Planet. So, I better get going. I’m putting some Grateful Dead, Elo, and Journey in the playlist tonight for background music. I’ll see you next Monday.
-Thom