Post from an Alternate Timeline

Man oh man, it was hot yesterday. Standing in the outfield, baking in the sun, with gnats swarming around me. If I didn't love this sport so much, it might've even been unpleasant.

Softball is the best sport in the world, truly the game of champions. It's like baseball, but without the fans. It's a cute pastime that the kids do for fun, but when you reach a certain age, it takes on an importance that is derived not from winning or losing, but from the competition itself.

What can I say, softball has gotten under my skin. I read all the softball websites, I let softball analogies work their way into my daily conversations, I even occasionally dream about softball. My boss doesn't get it, and I don't think any of my non-softball friends really get it, but I love it.

We're doing okay this season. I'm pretty damn mediocre, no matter how much time I spend in the batting cages. It sucks. I want to win!

All the weight I've put on over the past few years doesn't help, but it sure doesn't hurt. Maybe I can't run the bases as fast as I used to, but damned if it's not easier to put some distance in my hits. Having a little meat on my bones is probably healthier, anyway. A bit of belly is a small enough price to pay for all the beer I've consumed over the years.

Oooh, and it's Thursday today. That means it's Bar Trivia night at the Golden Rail! Cheap beer, easy girls, and Trivia competition, here I come!

So, you know what's awesome? My goatee. I think that without it, I'd look like some sort of Mirror-Mirror version of myself. Kinda weak.

Goatees... all the cool kids have 'em

Life is good, my dear audience. I've found a sport I love, and I have my dream career. Being a Widget Engineer for Spacely's Sprocket Co. is the best job a man could ask for. As long as I install enough widgets every day, nobody bothers me or asks questions, and that's just great.

It's weird, though... occasionally I have these ideas out of nowhere, and they consume me. The other day, for example, I was wondering if maybe there's some way to quantify the mechanics of how I swing a bat, to compare me to better batters. And last week, it occurred to me that a fielder predicts the trajectory of a ball in flight too fast for the brain to be the primary processor. I feel like maybe there's a body of research on this sort of stuff, like maybe I'd be really interested in it, in research itself...

Thoughts like that aren't easily shaken. So I drink a lot of beer, and that shuts 'em up but good.