July 5, 2016: Holiday Partying

The Milkmaid and I had a great weekend at the cabin, leading up to the worst 4th we've ever had. Her uncle died in a bizarre accident at a holiday party in the wee hours of the 4th, which she found out yesterday at about 8 or 9 AM. Last night I went to get her some ice cream - her comfort stuff - and was hit by a guy running a red light, which broke my headlight and gouged up my fender.

Happy freedom, gang. Don't drink and drive.

25 thoughts on “July 5, 2016: Holiday Partying”

  1. According to bbref, five of our top ten in rWAR are relief pitchers. Jorge Polanco (he of the 32 plate appearances) is 11th.

    For all the ire he got earlier in the season, Dozier leads the team in both rWAR and fWAR.

        1. He fields well at first and he's still second on the team in rWAR. With game 81 recently finished, doubling his rWAR results in 3 rWAR and that total would make him underpaid (barely). More likely he's not going to repeat his April so more likely to finish with 2.5 rWAR which puts his pay roughly matching his performance.

    1. Saw these on a Revolutionary War doc we were watching yesterday, pretty cool. But, really a UK newspaper?

      1. At least one of them survived long enough to see the end of the Civil War & Lincoln's assassination? That's really something.

  2. My paternal grandmother, GRR (née GRK), passed away in the early morning hours of Sunday, after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's. She turned 89 on Saturday and celebrated her 69th anniversary less than a month earlier.
    She is survived by her devoted husband RHR, her son THR, four daughters, seven granddaughters and two grandsons, seven great-granddaughters and four great-grandsons, and two great-great grandsons.
    Before her illness, she was the most grandmotherly grandmother you can imagine. I don't know if I ever saw her do anything unkind or selfish. She taught me how to do newspaper crosswords, and I remember learning the capital of Norway from that first time.
    She baked wonderful bread, and many have tried that recipe without being able to get it right. Grandpa RHR started baking it once she started to lose her facilities, and while he's close, it's not the same.
    I was fortunate enough to be able to visit her with my wife and two eldest on her birthday. She was unable to move herself, but she could move her eyes. I don't know if she recognized me, but she saw me and saw someone kind and happy to see her.
    Grandpa RHR says he'll continue to go to the home as a volunteer; he knows the residents and nurses all by name, and he's better at understanding some of the residents. He ate lunch at my parents' house on Sunday, which was a break from his routine. He used to eat all of his meals at the home, or on off hours so he could be there to feed his wife.

    1. Your grandmother sounds like a fine woman. Your grandfather sounds like a fine man, too. You and all the family are in our prayers.

    2. Thank you for the remembrance. As Jeff A said, they both sound like they were/are wonderful people.

    3. Condolences to the entire __R family.

      Food is one of those wonderful repositories of memory. When we can't make the dish as well as our departed loved one – or figure out what they did to make it just so – that flaw keeps them present in our lives. It's a gift.

      1. There's a relief as well as a sadness. Grandpa (two months older than grandma) still has all of his facilities, even if his body has lost a few steps; I'm not sure if he'll be able to take better care of himself now, or if he won't because he doesn't have that objective anymore.
        I believe Grandma's most recent decline happened when he had some heart issues and had to be hospitalized for a few days, and his absence stressed her out.

        He mentioned that someone in town is starting a German club, just a place to speak only German. He learned English from the neighbor kids after the nuns at school tried to teach him through corporal punishment, and he still likes the opportunity to exercise his birth tongue.

        I missed out on a lot of her decline, first by having babies (and thus travelling less at the same time she couldn't travel at all) and then because my mother, JKR, had a series of mental health issues and wasn't up for putting us up.
        (I guess I could have found someone else in town to lodge with, but that would have made things very weird and uncomfortable, and like water, I flow downhill.)
        AJR has no memories of Grandma GRR, and LBR never met her at all. My Dad and Grandfather thought it best to have them avoid seeing her on her deathbed as their only memory of her (and again, I'm like water).
        The last two times I had been in town, I didn't see her, either. The first time (at Easter) because a bug was going through our household, and I didn't want to risk the lives of the residents.
        The second time, just weeks ago, we camped outside of town, and we made a conscious decision to not see everyone in town, as we were coming back to NU for last Saturday's wedding.

        1. I guess I could have found someone else in town to lodge with, but that would have made things very weird and uncomfortable

          When we visited my in-laws in Iowa, we nearly always stayed with the neighbors across the street. (Because my in-laws always had cats, and I have cat allergies.) It worked pretty well, in a strange sort of way. But it's the sort of thing I can't imagine happening anywhere other than a small town.

          Thanks for sharing your memories.

    1. There's a reason City of St. Louis proper has been losing population. I don't think any of these are at the ballpark, but it's tough to tell. I live (roughly, I believe) under the last "n" in "New Information"

  3. Well, we went ahead and purchased our new VW e-Golf today. After we told them what we were trading in and what down payment we could do, their payments came in a few dollars below what we had budgeted. They payment will end up being a few dollars over our budget after we added gap insurance and activated the lojack, but we felt it was worth the peace of mind, plus we have a 6 yr/72k bumper-to-bumper warranty and we're hoping having a lojack will lower our insurance premium enough to at least make it a net zero cost. We also got the color we wanted, the Pacific Blue.

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