Lighten Up

Now that the Arizona Diamondbacks have graciously bailed out of the race for the National League West title, I find that I have a lot more free time and a lot less stress in my life. I think it is admirable that they stepped aside to allow other teams in the division to get a chance to compete and win a play-off spot. Surely that is the reason why they dropped six in a row and have lost nearly 26 games to the Giants since May 28. You have to admire a team willing to roll over and let the competition walk all over them. Okay, now that I have vented that last little bit out of my system, I feel much better or at least I did until I got home from work. It had been a tough night of watching the Arizona Diamondbacks lose, having to sit through yet another evening filled with tape delayed women's gymnastics, and then not getting a lot of sleep. Add to that a long day at work where just as I was ready to leave, management decided it would be a great time to have a meeting. After this past 24 hours, it surely couldn't get any worse. But to paraphrase the classic movie Airplane, "It can get worse, and don't call me Shirley." As I approached the house and pressed my remote for the garage door, nothing happened. I did what every other American man would do, I pressed it incessantly for several seconds. When that didn't work, I smacked it on the steering wheel of my Camaro. To my amazement, the door still didn't open. Now I am no different than anyone else, I have a garage door opener so I don't have to get out of the car. There I sat in the driveway without the ability to electronically open the door and honked my horn until one of the kids came out to see what was going on and opened the door. Well, at least now I am home and I can relax. I reached over to turn on the light switch in the kitchen and nothing happened. Again, American ingenuity won out and I smacked the light switch several times without any success in the lights going on. I was told that the light bulbs had burned out and needed to be replaced. When I asked the kids why they didn't change the bulb, I was met with confused stares and the comment, "Well it was light outside so we didn't need a new light bulb." I wondered if there were other places in the house where we were without light. The kids assured me that there were light bulbs out in nearly every room, some have been that way since the All-star break. I was told it was on mom's list of things for dad to do after baseball season ended. Ah, I may not be a rocket scientist but I knew where this was going so I headed back out to the garage and headed off to Home Depot where I bought one light bulb of every size and wattage. That should last us at least until spring training and I can scratch one thing off Trina's list. The darkness of the off-season already seems to be enveloping me and the season hasn't even ended yet.