Fans scramble for foul balls at baseball games, cheerleaders throw t-shirts and mini balls and what have you into the stands for fans to scramble for. I have been going to sporting events for fifty years and have never gotten that treasured souvineer. Until tonight. Our seats at the Williams are in the first row of the balcony. Very few people can throw a t-shirt or a mini-ball up there. Janel McCarville is one of them. I couldn’t tell you who threw the ball up there tonight. I didn’t even see it coming right at my face until it was about three feet away. My reactions and hand to eye are still very good. I got my hands on it but bobbled it. The woman next to me got her hands on it and bobbled it. I managed to control it enough to catch it against my body.

I’ve always told myself that if I ever got a ball I would give it to the closest kid. I handed it to the teenage girl next to me.

We can’t scan these, the barcodes can’t be read because they’re reduced from tabloid to letter. Why are you sending us these reduced documents?

Our printer won’t print tabloid, those documents must be scanned, they are time sensitive. You are printing them the wrong size.

No, the size is automatically determined. There’s something wrong with your printer. You need to get it fixed.

This is time sensitive you must scan these.

We cannot scan them. It’s not our responsibility to maintain that printer. You need to get it fixed.

The printer company says it’s not the printer and the software guys say it’s not the software.

Have you checked the paper trays?

This has been going on for more than a week, no one wants to pick up the ball and figure it out and no one in the office where it’s occurring can figure out the problem.

Yes, of course, there’s paper in all the trays.

The problem get’s escalated up one side and down the other and an expert is dispatched to the remote office to investigate.

We will modify our process and put in a cumbersome workaround to ensure your time sensitive work gets handled.

The problem has been solved. Someone reconfigured the tabloid paper tray to fit letter size.

As we say in Minnesota, “Uff da!”

The natural law of human spacing was violated today in the whirlpool. I mentioned previously that the back corner of the pool, away from the steps, was the preferred spot. I was the second person in, the guy before me had not taken the best spot, but the one in the middle of the back wall. The next one down from the prime corner.

Now normally, when you’re the second guy in, you, out of courtesy, take the opposite corner, allowing your nieghbor the most possible space. But I elected to take the outside corner opposite the steps, the next best spot because of the crossing jets in the corner. Somethng primal would not allow me to take the ideal spot right next to the only other occupant. The third person arrives and takes the other outside corner. Two more gents arrive and things got really interesting. How would they space themselves when there was no obvious choice to keep the spacing as even as possible. They both sat on the inside wall on the other side of the first guy, the one in the middle. No words have been spoken. The prime spot is still empty.

Earlier as I was just coming into the locker room, listening to Hendrix on the iPod, in an endorphin daze, walking fast and too close to the lockers. A young guy comes barrelling out from one of the rows of lockers on a dead collision course with me. I stop in my tracks and he does a quick course adjustment the causes us to miss by about an inch. His quick feet and balance had to have come from lots of practice slipping picks, just like my ability to stop on a dime. I may not have the legs anymore, but I’ve still got reactions.

On another note. Let’s hear it for the people of Iraq, turning out to vote in huge numbers in spite of threats of violence. That gives me hope.