Eric's House Of Ego

Having caught parts of the previous two Cards victories over the Cubs on TV, I headed down to Wrigley Field for the finale. Consistent with my history in such things, the Cards lost in entertaining fashion.

The first Cubs hit of the game was the most amazing cue ball shot by Pete Crow-Armstrong that I have ever seen. It was a dribbler toward the third baseman, Fermin, that suddenly developed a crazy spin and went running off toward the middle of the infield. Not too long after that, the run scored along with a second run to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead. The Cards were lucky that it wasn't worse.

But the Cards got two runners on base in the top of the sixth, so the Cubs manager, Counsell, changed pitchers to face Jordan Walker and gain the platoon advantage. And Walker drilled a homer into the left field stands for a 3-2 Cards lead.

I had thought that Marmol might pull Liberatore after five innings, but his pitch count was relatively low, so he came back out for the bottom of the sixth and promptly put the first two runners on base. At this point, Liberatore was pulled, which was shortly thereafter followed by the collapse of the Cards' defense, resulting in three unearned runs and a 6-3 Cubs lead.

The Cards managed to score one more run to make it 6-4 for the final.

In any case, it was a nice day for a baseball game. :)

After last night's thunderstorms and thunderstorms that rolled through the area earlier today, a lot of local fireworks displays were canceled -- except for the freelancers who have been firing things off for much of the evening.

We had originally planned to grill sausages with Jeff and Carol, who are in town for a visit. The weather made that look problematic, so we cooked them on the stove instead, which was *just* fine. A lot of good conversation was had.

After Jeff and Carol headed back to their hotel room, Gretchen said that she wanted to watch the taped "A Capitol Fourth", which seemed fair, but the Cardinals / Cubs game tonight was on Fox and had finally started after a one-hour rain delay. I got to my chair first and switched on the game before Gretchen got there. The game got to the end of the third inning and so did Gretchen, at which point I offered to put on "A Capitol Fourth". She initially declined, I argued, and we fired up the recording.

While that was going on, I was following the game on my phone and noticed that there was a new "weather delay". Huh? I checked and found that the game was being delayed by *fog*. That's pretty unusual, so I asked permission to interrupt the recording and go check out this mess, which Gretchen agreed was interesting.

After about 18 minutes, the game resumed, and Gretchen fell asleep. I took advantage of this to watch the rest of the game, after which we watched the remaining half-hour of "A Capitol Fourth", and all was right with the world.

Except the dogs *hate* the fireworks. Or else want to go out and bark at them and invite them in to play.

I'm not sure.

I am still recovering from whatever this is, but I am gradually feeling better, so that's good.

More sleep is clearly in order.

I continue to run a bit under the weather. With luck, this will clear up by tomorrow.

If not, well, we'll see how it's going. :)

I have been going through the list of my songs that have not yet made it onto an album (or which are not already in process for "Crosstime Bus") and conclude that there are easily enough songs that I can put together *two* albums without including anything that I'm not happy with.

There is, of course, some possibility that I'm not critical enough of my own work...

And then I dug through some of the older songs that got buried. *Three* albums, I guess.

Well, I'm retired now. :)