Monday, April 30, 2007

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me: I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed

This morning I weighed in at 232.5 lbs., so I’m down 5 lbs. from last week. I ate alright for the weekend, but not great. It was my first two Pirates games, so I had to try some of the usual fare at the ballpark, hot dogs, nachos, French fries, et al. As I said, it was alright, not as voracious as I’ve been in the past.

The real good news for me is that I actually practiced softball yesterday for the first time this spring. And after about an hour of practicing, we played another team in a scrimmage game. Not bad at all, although I will say I didn’t run too much, or too hard, and I didn’t play with my usual reckless abandon. But it was nice to be out there, and nice to be able to do it without any real pain. I’m sore now, but not in the neck area. Usual arm/shoulder stuff I get when I first knock off some of the winter rust.

I have my last PT sessions this week. I am hopeful that this is the end of my need for PT for this injury. I’ve been slowly getting better and better, so that is reason to be happy. Having said that, though, I hve thought that in the past and then woken up and been hit with the throbbing headache.

But I am being hopeful here.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

In the shotgun chance that scattered us, I've seen the error of my ways

I’ve been doing better on the diet this week. Monday & Tuesday I was just about at 1,600 calories, and yesterday I went up to 2,000, but, get this, the jump yesterday was due to green beans almondine and rice pilaf! (My office had some luncheon, and these were some of the leftovers. I was able to resist the pastries that were left over from the morning, but green beans almandine? NEVER!)

I figure, if you’re going to go over your calorie count, rice & veggies isn’t too bad a way to do it. And then a simple veggie wrap for dinner to finish a day and I was ready for bed.

I wish I could say the same thing about my exercise, but again it isn’t working out. Yesterday, the PT told me that maybe I should wait another month to start doing any type of running, and again stressed very light walking. Wherever the injury in my neck is, it seems to easily be aggravated. Easy like turning my head easy. Like that is what I did Monday, which caused something to be aggravated in my neck, which caused the headache, which made me want to put my head in a vice.

I am better now, obviously, but I do get tired of the pain. I think because it isn’t like any other injury I’ve ever had. I pulled a calf muscle, you stay off the offended leg and it slowly heals. I tore up the crown of me head in the accident. You staple it, and keep things from banging off it (which I failed to do yesterday getting out of my car) and it will heal. But this fucking whiplash. Look left and, whoops, that hurt. How do you stay off your neck?

As a result, my softball season is, at the least, delayed, and at the most, cancelled. I might not be able to play with my team, Crush, this season! This depresses me to no end. For the past 11 years, I’ve look forward every spring to softball; not just playing, but the camaraderie as well. The joy of playing the game you love in a competitive way with people you can be completely open with is amazing. And now, even the PT has advised me that she thinks me going to the game and turning my head the wrong way could cause a flare-up.
So here I sit, and I will continue to just sit. And when the sitting is done, I will sit some more. But at least I’m not allowing myself to turn the now-dormant treadmill into another place to keep my laundry. It is pristine and dust free, sitting all alone. Just like me.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.” – Douglas Adams

I was working at the movie theater Friday night, being an usher with Bryan, some 17 year old emo boy I work with. As we were approaching one theater, the movie hadn’t finished as scheduled, and Bryan says “That’s so gay” in reference to the fact that the movies were running late and therefore messing up our schedule. Then he looks at me and says “Sorry, no offense.”

So I have to explain to him how gay means: happy or merry; bright or showy; a homosexual person. In order to use the term “gay” as a negative, you have to find the root origin of how & why it would be used to denote a bad thing. Are being happy, merry, bright or showy negative? No. Therefore, when used pejoratively, it is in connotation to the homosexual. I don’t think he understood, as he stared at me with his one good eye (being emo, hair covers about 3/5 of his face, and only one eye seems to be visible at any point in time.)
I tell all this because shortly after that, we were at the concession stand, getting drinks, and Bryan looked all mopey. I, of course, chalk this up to him being emo. Sandy, one of the high school girls tells him to cheer up and “skip around the lobby” of the theater to get some energy. He looks mortified (or as mortified as someone can look when you can only see a fraction of their face) at this idea. I decide to joke with him “That would be gay, Bryan.” He kind of laughs at that.
Then, the white trash woman who just started there looks over and says “Don’t do that. We wouldn’t want to turn you into a faggot.” She seems to notice the look of horror on the faces of Bryan & Sandy, so she looks at Bryan and says “No offense.”
I look at her and say “Well, if you don’t want to be offensive, don’t use the word ‘faggot.’” There were several moments where nothing was said, and then customers came, and everyone went about their business as if nothing had happened.
Alright, world, what is so fucked up here that someone can openly use the word “faggot” and we only get some stunned looks. I expected one of the other workers to at least agree that the use of the word is abhorrent and unacceptable. Instead, we get slack jawed yokels.
I decide that I will tell the manager to get her all riled up and let her deal with it. When an underling hears from management that it is completely unacceptable to use any type of hateful words, then we can feel safe in our work environment. The manager seemed appropriately shocked at the idea her worker said something like this, but then she responded “Do you want me to say something to her?” What the fuck do you think? Why do you think I said something to you? To spread gossip?
How am I supposed to respond now? If I’d have said some words that were considered racial slurs, I’d have been, at the least, escorted out the building. If I would have made any anti-Semitic remarks, management would have at least reprimanded me. Instead, when an anti-homosexual remark is made by an employee, management questions whether they should address the employee who said it.
Fuck it.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Oh it's full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back

Well, as much as I say that I am trying to get back to healthy, I don’t do it. I have been more than just unhealthy, I’ve been almost self-destructive in my eating habits.

This morning I weighed in at 237.5 lbs. That is huge, and dangerously close to the weight I was at for a long time before I ballooned up after my calf muscle injuries of 2005, which precipitated a lot of this exercise thing for me. I can feel it while I walk, sit in a car or do anything.

If I described what I ate over just over this past weekend, it would sicken you. Just thinking of the amount I ate sickens me. I mean, I knew it was bad, but I can’t seem to get the self control I need.

I have been, mostly, pain free in the neck & head. Today I have a slight headache, but it is this strange pressure I feel at the base of my skull, on the left of the back of my neck, that is bothering me. It is almost like someone is pushing some blunt object into one spot there, and it is intermittent at best.

It is other pains that are annoying me today. My right leg has been giving me problems recently. I actually hurt my left leg in the accident, just bruising and such. But I favored it so much that I actually strained my right leg. Well, I worked two nights at the movie theater this weekend, then did an MS walk with Gary & Lynne Sunday morning, and my back was in pain and tender upon palpation. I spent last night from about 6 pm on with the heating pad on my back on full heat. Even today, any lifting brings pangs of pain shooting up the right side of my back.

So let us review. Bitching about weight gain while sabotaging any food intake control and not being able to do anything to lose weight. Bitching about pain, so I do things over the weekend to put myself into more pain. And, on top of it all, I don’t feel like talking to my doctor about this, so it will probably linger for weeks until I get tired of it and break down and talk to him.

Today, I am getting back to eating healthy. And then, once physical therapy is over, I can slowly get back into running. I can’t believe that I worked for 18 months, and then, in the 5 weeks since the accident, I have undone almost all the hard work I put in. But there is no need to dwell on what I’ve done wrong recently, just get back to doing what is right.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

From the back to the middle and around again, I'm gonna be there til the end


Today is the first day I’ve woken up without any type of headache since March 22. It had gotten to the point where I thought if it was only a low grade headache then I shouldn’t consider it a headache.

There is still some tightness in the left side of my neck, but nothing like it was a few weeks ago, and it isn’t causing the shooting pain into my head. There is still some crepitus, but it isn’t what it was even a week ago.

So all in all, I am doing better physically, and I feel mentally better about it all right about now. Now, after a month of pain and not liking it, I find it interesting that this blog is entitled “No pain…no gain?” Of course, I did purposely put question mark in it because I wasn’t sure what the pain, or the gain, were all about.

I mean, I know that it is a cliché nowadays that, in order to feel like you are being healthy, there has to be some type of pain involved, whether it is the physical pain of exercise or the mental pain of having to give up types and/or quantities of food. I do agree that less food and regular exercise are the keys to losing weight, but it doesn’t have to be “pain” exactly, whether physically or mentally.

So I go to physical therapy tonight with high hopes that she will tell me I can run again. I do have some strange achy-ness in my upper right calf muscle and thigh, but I think that is just a bit of overuse from when my left leg hurt after the accident and I favored it more. Other than that, I feel healthy today for the first time in over a month.

I hope it keeps up and I can get back into the "gain" part of the title of my bog, and avoid the "pain" part of it. We shall see.

Monday, April 16, 2007

There is a midget standing tall, and a giant standing next to him about to fall

I have nothing good to say today. And when you have nothing good to say, it is good to say nothing at all. I don't know what else I can do this week. Physical therapy is going well enough. I forgot to immobilize my neck Saturday night and woke up with a headache that ruined my Sunday. I spent most of the afternoon and evening with my neck wrapped in a heating pad, and I still felt out of sorts until about 8 pm, so that sucked.

Wednesday is my last PT session, unless I start to regress physically, and I don't see that happening. I didn't get out of the car accident clean and easy, but I think that the worst should be over for me. I hope Carl & Darren progress as well and become pain free soon enough.

I am hating that this blog, which should be coursing my track to health, is instead becoming the place where I bitch, moan and cry about stupid car wreck shit. Fuck me.

Here is a picture of me in the Dam Square in Amsterdam from last May, with the Royal Palace in the background. I look at these photos and realize how much I love that city. And I have never taken drugs or had sex with a prostitute, so it isn't like I've been there fore the stereotypical reasons people assume.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city full of history and culture. It is a friendly city filled with people who don't seem to have any pretension about themselves, and no preconceived notion about you. "Be yourself" ought to be the true saying engraved on coat of arms of Amsterdam (engraved on the coat of arms currently is "Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig," of course meaning "Valiant, Determined, Compassionate," and that probably is better, but whatever.) The city itself is also very well organized and public transportation is logical and easy.

In Amsterdam, you can see the Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House Museum, and then the Rijksmuseum all in one day if you get up early, and still have time to get to the Pancake Bakery if you are willing to wait in line for a while, and it is worth the wait, even in rain (it rained most of our time in Amsterdam last year.)

And have I ever mentioned how I love Heineken, originated and still brewed in Amsterdam? The beer is so crisp, so clean and so refreshing, and the Heineken Experience tour at the original
Heineken Brewery is fantastic. You get about a one and a half hour tour that includes not only how the beer originated and is currently brewed, you get a look at the ad campaigns throughout the years, and interactive game room, 2 beers and a gift included, all for about $12.

This is a picture I took on the tour. This is the bottom of a glass enclosed display of different bottles throughout the years. I saw Carl taking a picture of it, so I thought I'd take one too, and it now is the wallpaper on my computer, at work and at home.

Man I wish I was going somewhere soon. I don't want to think of the future sitting on my ass doing work all year. Maybe that is what I will do this week on this site, start sharing more about my various travels, until I can get back to my regular exercise. This could distract me just enough not to hate my life right now (cause of the pain and physical therapy.)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

If you could return, don't let it burn, don't let it fade.

I don't know what to say today. Yesterday was a bad day, and I'm hoping today is better. I just feel like I'm floundering. One day, my neck feels good, loose with no headache, and the next morning I wake up with a pulsing headache that makes even tasting food unpleasant. Then the next day, I wake up and there seems to be no pain, though my range of motion is limited. It seems to baffle me completely.

I also get very frustrated when I ask questions of the experts and they either deflect any type of answer or, worse, turn into themselves. I asked the physical therapist about why I have such crepitus in my neck (the crackling, popping sound when I rotate my neck 360 degrees.) I never had it in my neck before and it annoyed me that I have it now. I was hoping that she could nicely explain why I had it now and then tell me how it will just get better and I won’t have to worry about it after everything is healed.

But she didn’t. She said “I don’t know why it happens. My neck has the same thing sometimes.” Alright sister, I am paying you to think about me, not you. I want you to think about it and make a relatively intelligent response. If you don’t know what crepitus is, then you shouldn’t by rendering physical therapy to me. Crepitus is a simple concept, and it usually can be helped by physical therapy. If you don’t know what it is, get out of the business.

She, as seems to happen so many times, turned it into something about her. I don’t give a flying fuck if your whole body creeks when you crawl out of your hovel every morning: I care about my neck, which rarely ever had crepitus in the past, now popping & crackling like a can of cola poured over top of a bag of popcorn in the microwave every time I look to my left or right. And it isn't just a pop or two, it is a lot of popping/crackling going on up there. And I want to know if it will be going away sometime or if I am stuck with this for the rest of my life.

So we do the heating pad and electro-stimulation. That goes well and feels good most of the time (there are times when it makes my shoulder muscle seize up for a few seconds, but overall it is great.) We get into the cervical traction device [see right]. You put your neck in the middle of these two padded prongs on a board that they tighten so they are snug on either side of your neck. This board that the padded prongs are attached to is then hooked up by a cable to a machine that pulls the exact amount of weight to stretch your neck upwards.

Every time I’ve had this traction, the physical therapist puts a towel over the prongs so that my naked neck isn’t going directly on the board. This different PT tells me to put my head down, and when I ask for a towel, she says I don’t need one. When I say that I’d like one, she makes a face and stands there. I so wanted to scream “GET ME A FUCKING TOWEL!” but I decide to work this starting contest. After about 15 seconds, she sighs, fucking SIGHS, and then gets the towel.

Unfortunately that seems to ruin my ability to relax enough to get out of the traction what I should get. I was all tense and angry. But I had 20 minutes to think about it, and I think I was being too harsh. If I’d only had this new therapist and not the other one, I’d have never thought that a towel was needed (although I’d have been a little sketched out about putting my neck where others had put theirs, and based on the clientele that I’ve seen there, it would have been old, flabby, sweaty, liver spotted necks that would have been there before me.)

So now I’m sitting here, the next morning, feeling somewhat guilty at having been confrontational with the physical therapist, as after she would answer my initial question about crepitus, I think I just wrote her off, and anything she said I probably responded with just a little bit of attitude. I should have just let it go and asked my physician when I see him later this month after PT is done.

I got another PT session on Friday morning. I just want them to tell me I’m better so that I can run again. I don’t know why I think it is a panacea, but I want to run so bad. And even when I walk on the treadmill, I can feel it in my neck. I can’t imagine what would happen if I ran full out. And I've got softball starting up in 3 1/2 weeks. I need to defend my MVP status.

But I didn’t use the word “fuck” out loud towards her, and I dropped the f-bombs at work yesterday regularly, so that was a small victory. Yeah me!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known

I have been having a tough time getting back into any type of routine. I know I can’t run for a few more weeks, though I am walking on the treadmill at physical therapy, but it seems like all I want to do after work is sit around my house. Usually eating and staring at the television.

I feel like a fucking sausage today: fat, lumpy and ugly. I am wearing my fat jeans. [All the ladies in the crowd will get the “fat jeans” reference here.] And I feel like saying the word “fuck” a lot today. I have to be careful I don’t scream it on the phone with a customer.

I have been terrible this week on eating, and I still can’t run at all so I feel useless. I feel like I’m letting myself down, and I don’t like that feeling. Did I mention that the muscle on the left side of my neck is throbbing? Did I mention that the headache gets so bad today that I am actually getting lightheaded? Did I mention that I’m fat, lumpy & ugly? Did I mention that I’ve been listening to the entire The Smiths discography today?

I have physical therapy tonight, and I don’t feel like doing it tonight. I don’t feel like doing anything tonight. I don’t feel like doing much of anything today, except typing the word fuck. Over and over again. I just feel lame today. I need to start being able to run again soon, or I’m going to a fat fuck all over again, and that can’t be good. For me, at least.

Monday, April 09, 2007

I don't dream about anyone - except myself! Oh, William, William it was really nothing


Physical therapy is wonderful!

I went to physical therapy on Friday morning, maybe a little apprehensive as my last experiment with PT a few years ago was painful. I got electro-stimulation of the muscles in my neck and upper left shoulder with heat, then got some traction on my neck. Then she gave me several different exercises made to strengthen my neck muscles. All went extremely (and painlessly) well, and now I’m doing so much better.

Also, I am using a lot of the heating pad in the evenings while watching television, and that seems to be helping the neck muscles and I’m not waking up with headaches all the time. This is a good thing.

I still seem to always have a headache, but they are now just low-grade ones and not the throbbing/stabbing kind I was getting last week. I get PT 3 times this week and a few more next week and then I’m hopefully cured and done and happy and painless. Or at least whatever I was before the accident.

I dislike when you go into a pain clinic or physical therapist, and they give you a chart asking to rate your pain. How do I know when my headache is a 3 on the scale, or when it is a 4? Maybe my pain is such that it is a 12 on the scale and I am just able to handle it better. Or, more likely, my pain is a 1, but I am such a whiney, screamy baby who can’t handle any pain so thinks it is a 9.

Either way, I feel much better today, and hope this continues until the pain is all gone.

On one other note about the PT clinic, there were 4 female physical therapists working on Friday, and they were all smoking hot. If I were even remotely straight, I would have had a boner for the entire 90 minutes I was there. Fortunately for me, I am gay and don’t have use for women in the bedroom. Unless they are going to clean it or something.


And now, back to our regular scheduled program.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Take me back, take me home, to world that never was

I have done good this week with food. Been around 1600 calories, although on Monday, my first day back to food recording, I actually had 1,208 calories. I meant to eat a bit more but I was learning how to send files to another server while watching the Pirates game. So I downloaded FileZilla while watching my baseball team win in dramatic fashion.

I start physical therapy tomorrow, so I am excited in my own way, to start that. I just want the (usually) low grade headache to go away. But recently I have been finding some small memory problems, and that is scaring me as much as the physical aspect of it. A doctor I know has said he thinks it could be partially from the exhaustion I am feeling from the injury and part of it could be the natural depression that follows recovery following any type of chronic injury. And he told me to make sure I get to my physician as soon as possible.

And as if I’m not going through enough pain, Toby called me this week to fish around about moving back to Pittsburgh and wanting to move in with me. If you don't remember Toby, just click here, here, here, & here and read, there is something about him in there.

Of course, he, as usual, didn’t actually ask me. He mentioned first that he was not doing well living in Chicago, and that he works so much he has no life (he cleans a wealthy person’s home for a living and then cleans the home he lives in instead of paying rent: he lives on Lake Shore Blvd.)

Then he complained that he hasn’t met anyone, and even if he did, he isn’t allowed to bring anyone back to his place because of the rules (forgetting to that he has called me from the bar a few months ago, somewhat tipsy, telling me how he won a “Big Dick” contest in a bar full of hot men…and I’m supposed to believe not one of them offered the guy who just won the contest, ummm, at least companionship for the evening?) And this led to him complaining that he has no place to call his own (forgetting that he has told me on numerous times that he is able to save so much money he loaned a friend over $8,000 to help buy a house) and how expensive it is to live in Chicago.

(I want to pause for a moment here to tell you that at some point last year, after he moved to Chicago, the man Toby lives with sent him to a physician, and he was, after testing, diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, and he clearly has the social and communicative deficiencies described by the syndrome.)

This led to me pointing out to him that the last time he “lived” in Pittsburgh he ended up homeless, or some facsimile of homelessness, and I asked what has really changed since he left? People in Pittsburgh don’t pay $20/hour to their housekeepers. And that is when he said “If I moved back to Pittsburgh, could I stay with you?”

My blood ran cold. I don’t know why I feel this way, but it is like I have to work hard at not being nasty to him. And I don’t even want to be his fuck buddy anymore. I mean, I don’t have the guilt I used to have, but I still pick up the phone when he calls. But I can’t let him move in with me. That would just me making yet another horrific life-decision, and I’ve made enough of those.

Instead of being upfront with it, I just said “Toby, do you want it to be the way it was before? I guess you can visit me” (either guilt, horniness or a combination of the two, are in charge at that time.)

“You mean I can’t live with you?” I could hear the heartache in his voice.

“No,” I said. I need to be firm.

Fortunately, the next morning, yesterday, he called me to say that he felt better about Chicago. He was just feeling some pressure the night before.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Everywhere I look there's something to learn, a sliver of truth from every bridge we burn


Last Thursday my primary physician finally told me what no doctor in the hospital did: I have whiplash. So for those playing at home, at no point did a physician in the hospital tell me that I had a concussion, even after I asked, nor did any of them say a thing about whiplash.

My physician was quite annoyed that not one even advised me to be prepared for the signs of whiplash, as with the way I flopped around the car, he said he’d be surprised if I didn’t have whiplash.

So now I am learning exactly how frustrating & annoying whiplash can be. At any given moment, a sharp pain could shoot through my neck into my head, whether I turn my head or not. Any given morning, no matter what I do at night to prepare myself for sleep, I could wake up with a headache that both throbs and pierces from the neck into my head. I have to immobilize my neck when sitting watching television and when I am sleeping, in the hopes that it doesn’t get worse. At the end of the evening, especially after working 10 hour days in front of the computer keeping my head up, which is 99% of my job, I am so exhausted that I have little energy for anything else.

My upper back is starting to develop pains using extra muscles, or maybe it is pressure from the neck brace, or maybe that is just another fucking problem from the car accident.

And, on top of all of that, my physician doesn’t want me to use anti-inflammatory medicine, even over-the-counter stuff, because that masks pain and with neck problems, you can do more damage when the pain doesn’t tell you to stop.

Well, he didn’t’ tell me not to ever use, but he recommended that I let my body’s own defense mechanisms, pain, work to help me know when I shouldn’t use the neck muscles. I have taken this as an attempt not to use any of the OTC drugs at this point in time.

And, finally, I get to start physical therapy on Friday. For a few weeks, at least, 3 times the week I will go down to PT and they will do whatever it is that physical therapists do to create more pain. At least, that is my impression from the last time I went through PT. I had pulled a muscle in my back, and after 4 weeks of PT, I was in much more pain than I was before the PT, and that is when my physician gave me Vioxx...you know, the drug that was pulled off the market in 2004 for fears it caused heart problems with long term use. Granted, I only used it for 7 days, so no worries for me, but it gets me thinking how this one car accident could cause problems that could linger for years.

Oh, and my physician did point out that they did full body CT scans on me and I have a kidney stone and diverticulosis. If I pass a kidney stone, I’ll know it, but he doesn’t think that this is positioned to be passed. The diverticulosis will cause some minor pains & discomforts in the abdomen, but if they become infected then it develops into diverticulitis, or I got bigger problems.

Oh, and I’m not allowed to run on the treadmill. My doctor wanted me to get through PT and allow them to tell me when to start running again. I guess all that running can cause some jostling of my nck and can exacerbate the whiplash.

So things are going fucking great with me (although they ain’t too bad since the Pirates won last night!)

Monday, April 02, 2007

Today is the greatest day I've ever known. Can't wait for tomorrow; I might not have that long

Today is the best day of the year! It is the first day of Pirates baseball! No more grapefruits, no more purposeful 3 inning pitchers, no more bringing in 5 replacements for every position just to get some workout. Today, we start the real games, and every inning counts!

I don’t know why I love baseball so much. I watch baseball in person and on television, and I love it both ways. I get so tired of people saying that they like watching it in person but it is boring on television. That is complete bullshit to me. Baseball is the only sport I know where the entire game can change on each pitch. Baseball is the only major sport with no clock. You play until one team gets the final out.

(Here is a picture of me at last years MLB All-Star game. That is actually the shirt I am wearing today as well, although it is a little tighter on me now that I want it to be. But today is all about baseball, not about my fat belly, my eating habits, my whiplash or how hot it is in my office today. Nothing will get between me and my Pirates at 7:05 pm est...except another freakish car accident, but I can't be thinking that way at all. Today, baseball; tomorrow, back to real life while following baseball every day.)

I could go on an on, page after page, about what I love about baseball and why it is superior to all other major sports, but it would just be my own opinion, and it could bore some people. And don’t get me wrong: I understand the love of football, hockey and basketball. (I don’t understand the love of soccer the rest of the world has, but that is a discussion for another time.) But for me, it’s all about baseball.

And I know that being a Pirates fan is another reason people feel I should give up my love of baseball, but I can’t do it. Even if the Pirates have another 14 losing seasons, I will be watching them in 2021 (although, to be fair, I will probably not be a season ticket holder for another 14 losing seasons. I’ve been a season ticket holder for the past 6 losing season, but I can only pay directly for so much losing.)

So, starting today I am all about the baseball, and I will be all about the Pirates, because in baseball, much like life, anything can happen on any given pitch.
(This is my 200th post. And I can't think to do anything special about #200. So you get my picture, and a minimized rant on my love of baseball. Enjoy!)