Well, I was hoping for some gigantic appliance sales in today's paper, but so far, no dice. We don't get the major blowout sales here that I see in some larger markets. That goes for cars, major appliances, whatever.
I have a plan to get a dishwasher (a cheap one, but essentially brand-new) into the house, but still need to figure out how to get a washer and dryer in there. After that, I just need to cross my fingers and pray for the health of the fridge. I figure it'll go bad one of these days, but in the mean time, the ice-maker works and the thing is still functional. If I can get a couple years out of the thing, that'll be a big help.
I am ready to submit my transfer paperwork for that Contracting unit in Fort Worth. I'm looking forward to it. I'll have to pay my own travel to and from there, and rent a car, but the Navy will pay for my lodging while I'm down there. The upside is that some of my very best friends live down there. So, it'll give me a chance to see them somewhat regularly.
They'll also allow me to double up on drills so I don't always have to fly down there every month, necessarily. That'll save me some airfare and let me work around schedule conflicts, etc.
I also really need to get a new car. I drive about 3,000 miles a month. (Don't ask me how.) My current ride gets maybe 17 MPG. Getting a 30 MPG car would save me enough money in a month to take care of the car payment and insurance. It would also put less wear and tear on my gigantic highway dinosaur. Plus, if I can't get good airfare and have to make the huge drive to Texas, I'll really be glad to be driving something that's a gas sipper versus a guzzler.
I'll still probably use the dinosaur whenever, for instance, I have a long road trip with Logan. But otherwise, I'll use the little economy car.
Right now, I'm thinking a Honda Civic.
Travel baseball is proving to be every bit the committment that I thought it would be. The regular season hasn't started just yet, but the team is doing unofficial scrimmages about once every 2 days.
I have had to learn to keep a scorebook, and although it was rough at first, I think I have it figured out, now. It's amazing how much information you can keep in those little tiny squares.
I also am doing much of the team's administrative stuff, paying the umpires (the rec. gives me a check and I pay the ump every game), managing the team's equipment (the team has 4 team batting helmets and a set of catcher's gear.) I also arrange for hotels, etc.
Basically, I'm the team's den mother. I was relieved the other day to see one of the mothers with a massive SLR with gigantic lens. So, I don't have to be the team's photographer.
Being a photographer for events would be fun, I think, but at a certain point, it really starts to interfere with your enjoyment of events. Half the time I took a camera to a social event, I knew that doing so caused me to miss out on half the social event. You can take video or pictures at a sporting event, but that's all you can do. So, with keeping the scorebook, there's no way I could get pix, too.
This is going to be pretty intense. Season starts mid-April and ends mid-July. The team will play over 50 games. It's well worth it, though. I can see from the scrimmages that we have one of the more talented teams. Stands to reason because of the tryout process to get on the team.
The guys still haven't attained machine-like efficiency, but they're just now learning to play together. And other than the two main catchers on the team (Logan and another kid named Bailey), the kids don't really have positions, per se.
I am amazed at Logan's progress at catcher. Bailey is a stud at catcher and his family has an older brother who catches and his father catches. Logan started off so far behind Bailey, that I was afraid he'd really feel bad. Now, he is getting to where he's really closed the gap.
I wasn't that excited about Logan playing catcher, but he really enjoys it and he's getting good at it. Logan and Bailey will get most of the work, but there's 3 other kids in there, too. On defense, I think catcher is, by far, the most physically demanding position, not to mention wearing a ton of equipment in the middle of Summer. So, it's important that these kids get breaks. Otherwise, they'd be exhausted in the course of a normal tournament.
I'm starting to see a strategy that could have me living in my new house pretty soon. Had a bit of an unwelcome development. The windows upstairs are in bad repair. I could probably live with them, but I think I could replace them all with vinyl clad windows relatively inexpensively. Home Depot has a line where each window would be probably $120-150 each. That's still a major chunk of change, but the house is well-shaded and I could probably get by without A/C for most of the year if I could get good enough air circulation throughout the house.
I just have to get it to where it's liveable and take on the remaining tasks one at a time.
And that's all there is on this amazingly beautiful Easter Sunday.
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