Why I Oughta...

With the baseball season in full swing (and my White Sox stinking up the joint), my mind - and attention - have begun to focus on America's Pastime.  One way or the other, I was turned on to this browser extension for the Chrome browser.  It is called "Baseball Player Search", but it really is a pretty amazing baseball lookup.  Once you add it, you can click on the little ball in the corner and down drops this toolset: You check as many of the boxes as you want, pop in a player's name and hit search.  Up pops as many tabs as you've checked and you get every bit of info at your fingertips. If you're not using Chrome, you should.  Seriously.  And....if you are a baseball guy/girl, this might just put it over the edge and convert you!

By normal standards, I am not your typical country music fan.  I'm not into *new* country like Rascal Flatts nor Taylor Swift.  But, much to Nat's chagrin, I *do* indeed like country music.  At least country music that sounds like this:  (go ahead...even though the player in Vietnamese, it is fine.  Plays just like a YouTube video.) That's a song called Corrine, Corrina as performed by "Willie and the Wheel"- which is Willie Nelson backed by a pretty rad band called " Asleep at the Whee l".  If you haven't already, click play in the little flash player then go on with your day in your other tabs.  I bet you'll come back and hit "replay" when it is done.  It is that good.  There's plenty of other versions of the song.

In addition to Holland  and St. Joe's , last week we spent some time in South Haven.  Like we do everytime we go to South Haven, we make a stop at both Cafe Julia and (for some reason) Decadent Dogs .  Decadent Dogs is your typical dog store: toys, collars, treats, etc.  They also have a big rack of guard dog signs.  Nat spun the rack and saw this one - which we couldn't stop laughing at. Nat's folks have a Bichon named Riley, so we could NOT pass this up.   Riley is....anything....but a guard dog!

The electricians (finally!) showed up and brought power to our garage.  Pay no attention to the butt crack in the photo. They trenched 18" deep and ran rigid pipe in the ground.  I also had them put in some outlets in the yard for a future project!

I rented a car last week in Benton Harbor, Michigan from Enterprise and spotted this "house ad" in their office. They're promoting their sponsorship of NCAA sports.  Take a close look at the kicker in the bottom left. (click the photo to blow it up)  That's totally the Ilini.  They stripped off the logos on the helmets, but they can't fool me!  Can't tell the vintage, but maybe it is  Jason Reda ?

Up at the Harding's Market in Michigan, there's apparently a problem with both employees and customers taking magazines into the bathroom.  The problem was so bad that they had to post this notice on the door: You're probably wondering what I was doing in the bathroom of the grocery store.  No....it wasn't an emergency.  (Although, that has, indeed, happened to me in the past.)  Rather, Michigan is a state where you have to return your cans/bottles back to where you bought them for $0.10/a piece.  Unfortunately, most folks don't really "drain" their soda cans/beer cans/beer bottles before they put them in the bin.  They leave a little bit of liquid in the bottom, so when they end up in our bags to bring back to the store, the whole thing is a big mess.  After putting the cans into the machine, I use the bathroom to wash my hands.   As a side note...make sure you shake out your cans/bottles in the sink, please.  So those of us who have to return them don&

We took the Babe for her second trip to Michigan this past week and were able to spend a bit of time on Silver Beach in St. Joe's.  The weather wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't "beach weather".  That didn't stop Nat from insisting that we take a walk on the beach after supper @ Silver Beach Pizza. First time on sand for the Babe and she didn't mind it one bit.  This bodes well for the summer - as we have a few weeks booked up in Michigan for vacation.  She'll be swimming before I know it!