Cold, Wet Lawn and Hockey Misery

My Favorite Toy

It’s been uncomfortably cold the last few days but I had to get out on the tractor lawn mower last night for the first time this season.  The grass was growing uncomfortably long in several locations and with the rain scheduled for today and having to work all weekend I thought this might be my last shot at before it reached true jungle status.  I usually love mowing the lawn – simply because I have the riding lawn mower after decades behind a push version.  I like imposing order on the disorderly grass as well.  Yesterday was not as much fun because of the cold and it started drizzling when I was half way through.  Being cold and wet is not my definition of fun – I had too many sessions of this over the years in the infantry.  The neighbor joined me once he saw how bad his lawn would look next to mine and we shared a couple conversations about what idiots we were to be out in this weather.  He’s a great guy.  The Big Guy must have heard our complaints because a few minutes later there was a huge rainbow and the sun came out.  I planned on going on my usual swimming workout last night to warm back up but I was captured by the Bruins who were playing a do or die game 7 against the Washington Capitols.  I love the Bruins but Washington has been outplaying them at their own game for the entire series and did so again last night.  The Stanley Cup champs went down in defeat because they didn’t seem to have that same fire and passion they had last year – something that seems fairly rampant in today’s professional sports championship teams.  They seem to forget what got them to that championship level.  My wife is a hockey fan only during the playoffs so she was severely disappointed but I told her, at least we still have the Red Sox.  She gave me an incredulous stare following that remark as we watched the Red Sox try to blow a 7-1 lead.  I stayed up and watched the game to the end with the closer loading the bases in the 9^th before finally prevailing 7-6.  Once again, I was struck by how slow paced baseball is compared to other sports.  They should institute a rule against stepping out of the batter’s box after every pitch – that would knock an hour off every game.

Shit!