Not much happening this week.  Baseball is done.  Summer is in full swing.  The boys are going to the pool 3 days a week.  We are looking forward to the next 2 weekends.  The weekend of the 4th will be going to watch the Southwest Pony League allstar teams play in the 7th Annual Firecraker  in Cynthiana.    The weekend after is the Wallace Family Reunion at Mike Miller Park in Draffenville.   Mom says she has the building at the park for the whole afternoon this year.  So we are going to have E's birthday party there as well.

So I have been enjoying a slow week.  The next 2 will be back to the normal fast grind.  End of the month at work followed by lots of travelling.  I hope everyone has a great week.

Oh yeah go watch E's first trip to the batting cage.  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2143999281233

Closing Ceremony Today

It is the end of another baseball season. It is a bittersweet day.  We had another great year.  The boys both had a lot of fun.  I got to spend a lot of time on the ball fields and Beth did a lot of team mom stuff.  I know the boys and I get the best out of this deal.  Beth has become a great league supporter.  The boys have some wonderful friends that I hope they will keep for the rest of their lives.  I have found an outlet for my pent up frustration at work.  I even got voted on next years board for the league.  I do think I have ever won an election to anything even with as much as I love politics.

No all-stars this summer.  Gman was asked the be on the select team but Beth and I decided that it was not the best situation for him or us.  Both the boys are ready for pool time with at the B&G Club and a relaxing summer.  It will also give us more chances to drive down for a quick weekend in West Ky.  I know I will miss the baseball more than the boys will.  I am hopping to keep up with where the league teams go to play so we can go cheer on  are Southwest Pony Teams.

Sad news from this week was also from the league.  We lost a father of 5 kids (3 play in the league) to an unexpected death. Gman has played against the 9 year the last 3 years.    Mellwood Robinson passed away Wednesday.  The league is helping with setting up a fund for Melinda and the kids. Asking for all of your prayers for them.  The contact information for the fund is below.

 Citizens Commerce National Bank
c/o Jeff Kincaid
Payable to: The Mellwood Robinson Fund
P.O. Box 1028
Versailles, Ky. 40383

Any additional Donation Information e-mail: jkincaid@citizenscommerce.com 

The league really has became a great place for us.  I hope I can help it in the future.

We won so why am I sad.

Doing a lot of internal thoughts and kicking myself this week.  Gman won his first tournament game on Monday.  This should be a great thing especially for the up down season the Orioles had. I have had a terrible week thinking about the game.  We won because we intentionally walked a good hitter to get to a bad hitter.  As a baseball move we made the right call.  The next batter struck out.  We won woohoo.  I made 2 kids cry and a friend so mad he could barely contain himself.  

I am glad we have joined a league that is competitive and teaches kids about winning and losing.  I am glad that our league has very close in talent on the teams, this leads to very good games.  The look on the kids faces after the game hurt me.  There is a time and place for playing hard ball tactics in baseball and I am not sure it is with 9 and 10 year olds.  I then think that if it was any other kids in the league would I have hesitated to do the same move. The answer to that is no.  I hesitate  talking with other coaches on my team because who was at bat and who the next kid was.  If we were playing any other team in the league or any other coach I would have walked the batter before the one we walked as well to get to the bad hitter.  I got mad when another team did it to us and had thought I would never do it.  It comes to winning the game and I agree with the other coaches and decide that the win means more than letting the kids play.  I could not stop myself for saying yes lets walk him.  

I do not know what part of this I feel worse about.  The kids will get over it but I am not sure either will ever trust me again.  The friend says we will be ok but it will take time.  Do I feel bad just because of who we were playing?   I know it would not have bothered me at all it was not that team, coach, and kids.  Any kid on that team is like they were on my team.  

Well I feel like a heel. 

Rand Paul and Freedom of assembly

 I am starting off with a link to Salon about Rand Paul. I make no bones about not liking my Senators.  I find both of the them self serving and unable to represent me.  This audio clip from another of my least favorite person's (Sean Hannity) radio show gives me another example of why I thought we would never elect this idiot to the Senate.  I was wrong and we did elect him.  The clip is bad in what he says but it is worse when I apply my on bias (hi Keefer) to what I think he is meaning.

First, he is not saying that people are not allowed to say what they think about the government but they should be deported or put in prison for listening to what others are saying.  The Freedom of Assembly allows us to gather and to talk about anything as long as we do it peacefully.  This includes the crazy people who protest at funerals to the KKK who protested against them this past weekend to Greenpeace and Sierra Club in front of whale ships and loggers to Tea Party rallies talking about a 2nd Amendment to our problems to preachers in a pulpit talking about social issues and race.  We have the right to do this without the government tracking us, deporting us, or imprisoning us.  I find the clip very telling about the Senator and his libertarian ideals.  Government tracking and jailing people because of where they go and listen does not fit with the ideas he tries to project.

Secondly, my bias now comes out in 2 ways.  The first is with whom he is speaking.  Sean Hannity has made it a point link President Obama to his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright.  The pointed use in the clip on religious speech that people listen too made me think of the connection Hannity keeps making toward the President as being anti-American because he sit in Rev Wright's church for years.  Hannity does not mention it in the clip but my knowledge of his past programs made a fast jump to that.  If I can do it so can other listeners of Hannity's program.  The second point of bias comes from knowing a little about Rand.  The Aqua Budda issue helped  to get him elected last year because it was a question about his religious beliefs.  Now in this clip he is singling out religious speech as a problem.  He makes a point not to mean just Islam but all religions.  As a Christian this scares me as much as an American losing my right to freely assemble does.  He does not address the other types of assembly (KKK, Phelps family, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Tea Party).  He is saying we need to monitor the speech of people on religion.  This a jump that I made after listening to the clip a few times.

I am not going to take the time to get into the idea of deportation and the implied ideas there.  I will close with we need to start listening to each other, our pastors and even Hannity and Rand.  We need to listen and then use our good judgement as for what is true and best.

Just thinking today. I know its hard to believe but the steam has been rolling out of the ears all morning. I had to do my CE for my insurance licsense. I have to remind myself that some insurance can be helpful. I can not stop thinking that insurance is just another form of legalized gambling. The house, ie the insurance company, is going to win and we are going to lose. If we don't use it then the company keeps all the money. If we do use it then they lose some but the still have gotten the rake, earlier premiums. I am just working on life and casuality not my health CE. This is a broken system going back to a bunch of drunks in a bar called Lloyds in old London town. They were betting on if a ship would make it to China and back. We need to find a better way to limit risk in out society. Thanks all for letting me rant.

Happy birthday Gman

Just a fast post this morning.  My oldest turned 10 this morning. The day of his birth started very early and ended very late.  Beth did a wonderful job.  Gman spent his first couple of days in the NICU but has not slowed down since.  He is a great kid and I hope he has a great day, including cupcakes for his class today.

I do not want to be old.

In 10 days my oldest kid will be in double digits in age.  Gman turns 10 this year.  I know lots of friends and family that started younger and have older kids but it just kind of hit me today.

I was reading an article about why the Millenniums went out to the streets to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden.   The article states they went to the street to party as much as to be patriotic.  I then remembered the sights and sounds I saw coming from the Phillies game when the announcement was made.  The vibrant but refined response in the stadium as the news spread.  Older crowd at the game some with younger kids etc.  I found that I fit in the baseball crowd much more than the people in the streets.  I have no problem with the celebration but it is not how I responded.

I now see the generation gap.  I want to think of myself as a young person.  My aches and pains tell me that I am not that young.  My kids remind me I am not that young.   Gman was a baby and I was working as the General Manager at a Hampton Inn.  Now he is going to be 10 and I am taking over another office as the boss.  I hope the 10 years of age will help me to a better job.