Life of Wry

T’was the 85th annual Major League Baseball All-Star game tonight, this being about mid-season (already?!). We weren’t there, obviously, it was in Minneapolis, but MLB TV actually carried it (I take back all the terrible things I’ve ever said about them).

We have two TVs in our house. One’s an ancient, 27″ regular old TV and is in my office. It’s used for the Academy Awards and Netflix stuff. It’s like your grandma’s TV, but it’s actually hooked up to a ROKU box so we can watch real, current shows like Orange is the New Black and Louie. And it’s a color TV. We’re nothing if not modern.

The other is a big, fancy digital flat screen TV and is in Peter’s room. Jim and I never watch it.

But tonight, as it was the All-Star game, we did. We set up a card table in Peter’s room and the three of us actually ate dinner in there. Peter’s a huge Mike Trout fan so, seeing as he was named the MVP of the game it was a great night. Trout went 2-for-3, including a double, scored a run and drove in two. He also made a nice play in left. And he’s 22 and it’s his third appearance at an All-Star game and we saw him play in Anaheim a couple years ago. And… Mike Trout.

Mi mama’s not shaking this pneumonia bug. Matt took her to the ER today (or rather, the paramedics did) and they decided to admit her to get things under control. She’s always been someone who bounces back, so I can’t imagine she won’t.

She loves this view and I’m sure she’s itching to get well enough to get back down to the Esplanade so she can take it in.

So that’s my photo for today.

Photo essay on the day.

The Junior Legion game in Santa Rosa? Ehh. We scored two, they scored eleven. We got five hits, they got seventeen…  and that’s what I mean, the hits just kept on coming.. The boys just didn’t have it today. Lots of mental errors, no cohesion, no real energy.

But, they got through that..

And then we headed to Phyllis’ Giant Hamburgers to catch the end of the World Cup championship game between Germany and Argentina.  Gerrrrrr and Arggggggg!

I do believe that was more of a soccer game than I’d ever, ever watched–minus Peter’s one-year stint in AYSO at five years old. Grateful, for the billionth time, Peter leaned toward baseball instead of soccer.

Wes Young took a wonderful shot of the boys, as he does:

L to R: Gooey, Solly (Ray hiding in blue hat behind Solly), James, Peter, Mason looking down, Tyler and Jonah.

And we had a nice commute through the wine country… talking for hours coming and going with Matt and Solly.  Well, with Matt, anyway–always a great time.

Coupla iPhone shots through the windshield of a moving vehicle:

(These vineyards are just everywhere, man.)

The varsity team wrapped its summer season with a BBQ tonight, which we got back in time to attend.

Many hits today.

It arrived. He is now licensed to drive.

Couple things to know: ONE, this is a provisional license. His status as a driver is provisional until he’s eighteen, I think.  And maybe that’s why his license is oriented vertically?  I’d never seen that before. AND, TWO, because the boy’s never learned how to write in cursive, his signature is entirely his own interpretation of what it means to sign one’s name. Thus…

Feel like a true American now. Finally experienced the free Slurpee at 7-Eleven on the 11th day of July…

This one, after Peter’s final pitching outing of the season with the summer varsity team… somewhere down in Elk Grove…

I had the watermelon. Not bad, but not sure I need to do that again.

Enjoyed one of Davis’ finest two-square blocks tonight with Carrie.

One of the more interesting murals in town..

…what a relief..

Wine tasting at Putah Creek tasting room…

and then… QUICK… get some food into those two lushes..

Bruschetta, pulled pork sliders and ceviche w/ avocado salsa and homemade tortilla chips. Oh man. (Our House.)

Headed down to Fairfield for a baseball game this evening. With the exception of some of the walk-up music selections (maybe techno-funk-rap-thump), it was about as nice as an evening of baseball can be: beautiful setting; stadium seats; iPad on lap; sun low in sky; warm enough for sleevelessness, but cool enough to be glad you brought a sweatshirt, and gladder you didn’t quite need it; a functioning, readable scoreboard; bathrooms close-by; iced latte in hand; a field full of athletic ballplayers who played an errorless, close game (Davis lost). Exceptional.

Fairfield’s full of rolling, brown, sundried hills. Incredibly picturesque. Here are a couple futzed-with shots:

An HDR version of the hills:

And a filter they call, “seventies.”  Whatever:

The cars, barely visible, are driving along I-80.

This was the view of the field early in the game.. rich, isn’t it?

Routine summer day
A walk along Putah Creek
Coffee at Mishka’s

[I’ll come back here to fill in details later. For now, this is 3rd and C… hang out spot for David, home to the Compassion Bench. But its first resident was my neighbor June, born August 1921, who grew up in a house on this corner. Her mom planted that elm, now a 100+ year old heritage tree… which lost a branch a couple days ago, which is why the area is cordoned off. More on this later. Come back soon.]

So Peter got his driver’s license on Thursday the 3rd, and seeing as how it was his first day of driving, we cut him a lot of slack.

Sure, take the car, drive all over the place, knock yourself out.

He was on a cloud, so happy to drive by himself anywhere he wanted–to see friends, go get Subway, go to the creek to swim, or just drive.  He did all that. I even gave him my credit card so he could fill the tank. I’m sure he put in a lot of solo miles going absolutely nowhere in particular and felt like a totally rad teenager.

As far as we were concerned, this was exactly as it was supposed to be.

He ended up at a friend’s for a sleepover with a bunch of other guys and planned to return in the morning. Which he did.

But on his drive back home, he experienced a problem. Every time he turned the wheel, the horn would sound. At first he thought people were honking at him, but then realized it was his horn. It would sound long and loud for the duration of the turn which was confusing and embarrassing. And I guess people were staring. Mortified by this, he found a route with the fewest turns possible and ended up driving past our house, parking a couple blocks up the street. I’m not sure exactly what this accomplished, but I’m gathering panic had a lot to do with it.

He walked into the house saying something like, “Something’s wrong with the car,” looking shell shocked and laughing nervously.

He also mentioned that he’d been playing with a quarter (while driving!?) and maybe this had something to do with it…?

Parental units exchange pained, confused expressions.

Cutting to the chase, this is what happened: Peter was tossing around a quarter and it managed to lodge itself into a gap on the steering wheel between the horn and the airbag assembly. Or some such thing. So Jim, being Jim, did some Honda CRV airbag/steering wheel research and came up with a plan.

He disengaged the battery (so the airbag wouldn’t explode on him while taking apart the steering wheel), then proceeded to take apart the steering wheel.

Here are some pictures:

The steering wheel and airbag assembly, with nice fat gaps into which quarters can fall (should one be playing with a quarter while driving):

What it looks like after you’ve removed the airbag:

A close up of the slot where the quarter lodged… see it?… middle of picture, just above that yellow thing:

And now, quarter gone, steering wheel back together, turns executable without embarrassing honks. Yay.

And, all this is okay because Peter learned a couple things–how to open a hood, how to disconnect a battery–and that with some research and tools, there are some problems a person can address, certain things are easily fixed… stuff like that.

We’re thinking it might be a good idea for him to take some kind of car repair class to further demystify that freedom-on-wheels contraption he now has a license to drive.