Monday Morning

Monday Morning

I am a sleepy, sleepy sunofagun.

Had one of those nights last night where I woke up every 45 minutes or so. I don't think I ever really fell into a good, deep sleep. Had one of those good math nights. You know, where you look at the clock, and you're able to instantly recognize just how much longer you're able to sleep? 2:12? I've got three hours and thirty-three minutes to sleep.

Just a couple of random thoughts.

I liked last night's Treehouse of Horror. Mostly for the Ned Flanders/Dead Zone segment. Homer trying to get his frisbee off the roof with a bowling ball made me laugh myself silly. Mainly because at the Goodwill job, I watched two co-workers trying their damnedest to heave a fourteen pound bowling ball 24 feet up onto the roof of the building. Mainly for the sheer hell of it.

The best part was the first time James tried to throw it granny style, and got too distracted watching it to realize that when it started coming back down, it would have landed on him.

I'm reading the late Stephen Jay Gould's collection of baseball essays Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville. Lots of good stuff. It's got the problem, though, where none of the essays were intended to be connected to one another, nor were any expected to work toward a common goal. So a lot of the essays tell the same anecdotes (Gould's father caught a foul ball off the bat of Joe DiMaggio, and he sent it to the Clipper to get it signed). But on the whole, it's good reading. I liked his essay written after DiMaggio's death, and also "Rough Injustice," on the playing of hunches in baseball.

I'm not a numbers guy when it comes to baseball. But Gould humanizes the numbers in a couple of his statistical analyses, and to my mind, that's the mark of a great science writer. I've enjoyed his talks in other areas in much the same way.

I recommend it.

Ah well. Let's wander off into the morning and get some work done.