* World Series time again. I don’t have an emotional investment in the Giants that begins to scratch the surface of Vanderbilt, or for that matter Cal football or the Redskins, but I enjoy having the World Series in town and I’d love for the guys to get another one. San Francisco doesn’t get the kind of run St Louis or Boston or New York do in the “great baseball town” department but I’ll put it up against any of them for sheer fun factor.
* Autumn has fallen like an anvil. Scant days after a mini-heat-wave took the lower Peninsula within an eyelash of 90 degrees, the rain arrived and took the highs down into the 60s. And since it coincided with being on call for jury duty, I’ve been driving to work in it all week, complete with sunrise times around 7:15 AM (thanks for nothing, Dubya). And I’m enjoying it. I missed fall, and now I have fall color plus cool and damp plus the pattering of raindrops out the window at night plus an ironclad excuse for jackets. Now if only I could settle on choosing between the Levis/Filson black tin cloth trucker jacket and the fog-colored ScottEVest Standard jacket…
* Jackets and fitting into them made me reflect a little more on yesterday’s announcement. Between an iPhone 4S (with a 5 on the way) and a third-gen iPad, I have absolutely no justification (or desire) for an iPad mini. However, the Nexus 7 is still tickling the fringes of my interest, because a) it’s an Android device that, by its Nexus nature and unlike most Androids, will get updated and b) it should fit in any ordinary jacket inside pocket in a way the iPad doesn’t, and c) it has Wi-Fi and GPS built in and could easily be tethered to the iPhone in a pinch. Given that the pixel space isn’t that much different from the iPhone 5, though (1200×800 as vs 1136×640), I wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze, especially when I already have a Kindle to handle the problem of the iPhone not being optimal for books.
* Speaking of books, I have two endorsements: Straphanger, by Taras Grescoe, a survey of the history of public transit in America and the current state of transit around the world, and Attention All Shipping: A Journey Around The Shipping Forecast, by Charlie Connelly, which I am about halfway through. It appears that my reading material has started to intrude on my jacket/footwear/bag glee as yet another indication that I’m ready to leave the country again. Or maybe it’s just a certain stuffed turtle poking me with his little flipper-paw-whatever and cocking his head toward the atlas.
* Or maybe it’s lingering election panic. Look, I moved as far as I could from Alabama, it’s not allowed to follow me. I’m not sure I’m ready for the prospect of governance by the Confederates. And the irony of it is, as a straight white male of Protestant extraction and reasonable affluence with a well-remunerated job and health insurance, I stand to make out like a bandit if the other crowd gets in.
* Well, I say health insurance. It’s only Blue Shield. Fuck those guys.
* The neck’s fine, it seems, or certainly less of an issue. Although I did go back on the diclofenac once I slept wrong and then raised my arm wrong and pulled a muscle on the OTHER side. In fact, right now my shoulders ache like I did weights. Which I didn’t. Getting a review and ruling next week and seeing what happens, and then it’s back to the gym because I need to strengthen up. Or maybe what I need is a long soak in the hot tub, a long soak in the steam room, and about 90 minutes of somebody who knows their way around deep tissue massage trying to beat the location of the Rebel base out of my back.
* The less said about Big Game, the better – I’ve said my piece elsewhere and stand by my assessment following the Holiday Bowl: Jeff Tedford is not fit for purpose as head football coach at the University of California and has not been for some time. A move is long overdue…
* Meanwhile, one shitty win over Auburn later, Vandy is a homecoming victory over hapless and winless UMass from turning its 1-3 start into a 4-4 record. Believe it or not, the possibility of winning out and posting an 8-4 regular season record and 5-3 in the conference – the first outright winning season on either since 1982 – is still out there and not unreasonable. As a matter of fact, get me that and I won’t need anything else for Christmas…