Hockey Goalie Mikayla Demaiter Actually Smiles On Instagram, Lara Travis Finishes Her Law Degree & JUCO Baseball Cheating
I'm playing injured this morning
Volunteering to run the pig race at last night's family fun night at our kids' school wasn't the issue. A faulty cheap ass hole puncher has three of my fingers absolutely shredded this morning because releasing the hole puncher used to give kids their punches which were redeemed for prizes required me to ram on the damn thing with my fingers to open it up so I could keep punching.
It feels like I decided to prune a rose bush without gloves. My fingers are shredded and when your moneymakers are your fingers, it's putting me at a blogging disadvantage this morning, but here I am putting in the effort for the readers who demand their piping-hot edition of Screencaps.
As for the pig race, it really wasn't fair. I helped run the race for an hour and the purple pig must've won 30 races while the black pig won like 8 races while green and pink never won. One of our neighborhood girls walked up and picked the pink pig. I tried to talk her out of that decision, but she was steadfast that the pink pig was winning.
Little did she know her pig was like 3000:1 against the field.
She lost, but I gave her a couple of extra punches for being a good sport and taking her loss so well.
Besides my fingers being shredded this morning, my other big takeaway is that if I volunteer again, I might take my own fan. Talk about a boiling gymnasium -- holy crap. A special shoutout goes to the cool dads wearing popped-collar sweaters and shorts who refused to take off the sweaters. Those guys must've sucked down a five-gallon bucket of water at home after losing so much fluid. Drug addicts could've sweated out the poisons and gotten sober in that room.
Eventually, we made it home and had our very first Yacht Rock/Patio Szn night and all was right in the world...besides my fingers feeling like they fought with barbed wire.
Mother's Day weekend message from Beau in Toledo
When Beau in Toledo writes on a Friday night, you take notice. Those are the rules. As always, if I catch an editor editing Beau's emails for spelling and/or grammar, there will be a fight on a company Zoom.
• Beau writes:
Yeah, doing #Fonbire on Friday after a #3MowThursday and my yard on Friday, and Brother sends this to me...
Might be a good #SaturdayVibe for #WeekendScreenCaps!
#HappyMothersDay to All!!
Kinsey:
Couldn't have said it any better. Happy Mother's Day Weekend to all who celebrate. I have to hurry and finish up this edition of Screencaps because my mother is in town, but she's leaving early this morning because she has a million places to be, so we need to do breakfast before she heads out for Florida, New Mexico, Columbus, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, Celina, Ohio, or wherever she's headed. I've lost track.
When she calls, I should get an alert from my phone..."Now calling, it's your mother checking in from...Santa Fe, New Mexico...do you accept this call?"
All joking aside, we had a nice meal here at the house last night before they went to the Family Fun Night sauna with us. It was a Grade-A suburbia night out with my mom my 80-something stepfather, Ray, who's jacked up over the newly released Zelda game.
The Ts are still in Mexico & Mike T. knows the salsa and lime bar photos always trigger my emotions
Look at those limes! Look at those fish and shrimp tacos!
Where are the Batman fans at?
Joey G. sent this over. Which one of you is buying this from Heritage Auctions?
Let's do another quick roundup of 'Dadvice' because I have to get to breakfast in 20 minutes
• Myron B. writes:
Something I have told every sports team I coaches and a few others: There are two riles for dealing with referees
1. The referee is always right
2. When the referee is wrong see rule 1
• Matt W. writes:
Joe attached is a book of wisdom one liners … not sure if Millennial Mike is looking to try and use the advice to create a similar book?! But I digress - it’s a good coffee table book; some of the good ones, I like are;
-Never shake a man’s hand sitting down.
-There are plenty of ways to enter a pool. The stairs ain’t one.
-The man at the grill is the closest thing we have to a king.
-In a negotiation, never make the first offer.
-Act like you’ve been there before.
-Request the late check-out.
-When entrusted with a secret, keep it.
-Hold your heroes to a higher standard.
-Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas.
-Don’t fill up on bread.
-When shaking hands, grip firmly and look him in the eye.
-Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be.
-If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point.
-You marry the girl, you marry her whole family.
-Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath.
-Experience the serenity of traveling alone.
-Never be afraid to ask out the best-looking girl in the room.
-In a game of HORSE, sometimes a simple free throw will get ’em.
-A sport coat is worth 1000 words.
-Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising.
-Thank a veteran. And then make it up to him.
-If you want to know what makes you unique, sit for a caricature.
-Eat lunch with the new kid.
-After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it.
-Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win.
-Give credit. Take the blame.
-Write down your dreams.
• Geoff P in SD writes:
Reading all of the Dadvice made me realize that I've started to give my own to the high schoolers that I work with.
This is particularly for the young men that are graduating, but it applies to the girls as well:
Call your mom. You leaving home is going to break her heart in all the right ways, but you owe her communication. Call her while you walk to the dining facility or the library, or in between classes so that you have a reason to "end" the conversation if you want, but call her most, if not every, day. You don't have to tell her everything (in fact, don't), but she wants to know that you're ok.
Here's hoping that the other dad's out there remind their graduates of this!
Keep up the good work!
• Richard B. has some blunt, but simple advice:
Late to the party, some very good stuff already contributed.
But, here's some valuable adult Dadvice: If it flies, floats, or f_cks, rent it, don't buy it.
• Mike McC. writes:
Dad of four, here are the three we always go back to:
1. "I'm not good at that........yet". You never start good at something, you have to be willing to try it, and while I don't believe you can actually be anything you want in life, you can 100% get better at anything you want in life. "I can't dribble lefty". Yet. "I can't do multiplication". Yet.
2. I've got a sign hanging up over the door we use to leave the house that says "No One Owes You Anything".
3. As they get to be teenagers (I've got two so far), be the lighthouse, not the flashlight. A lighthouse has a strong, consistent light, and is always in the same place. You need help, you know where to find us. But you've each got to carry your own flashlight down the path you choose.
• Charles W. in Boaz, Alabama writes:
As a father of three boys losing one in an accident by a drunk driver at 24 I feel I did a pretty good job. Very successful with four grands from them and four from my wife.
The one thing I tell them regularly regarding their kids
The Days are long, the Years are short. Take in it and enjoy the ride.
Travel Ball from a lacrosse perspective
• From LSU fan Joe M. :
I live in Houston, and my son (12) plays Lacrosse. Far less expensive than dance, BTW. The recurring costs of dance are stupid, but it doesn’t involve flights at least. Cheer can take a long walk off a short pier, so I count myself lucky. Keep in mind I’m talking about a niche sport (LAX) and not something mainstream like baseball. This makes travel baseball seem even more ludicrous, to me at least.
The Houston metro area has nearly 7 million people in it. Add in San Antonio, Austin, and DFW (DFW has another nearly 8 million people by itself.) According to Scholarshipstats.com/lacrosse, 18,000k kids play college lacrosse in the US. “Travel” ball which consists of going to Plano, or Lewisville (both in DFW), College Station (yuck) or Austin (blech), no big deal.
There are *hundreds* of kids at every one of these events from Oklahoma, and all over Texas, sometimes Kansas, in all age groups. There is no freaking reason teams from any Texas city need to go to Chicago, Denver, or Boston, especially in the same season.
The competition isn’t “better.” Yet, I just had to book a trip to Denver for him (divorced, I don’t have much choice, but I have lifetime Marriott Titanium, so the food and bev daily credits buy me a tiny bit of goodwill. At least I hope it does.) As everyone probably already knows, there is not a lot of sightseeing that occurs on tourney trips.
I get that some portion of travel ball is vacation for the parents and sharing drinks in the Springhill Suites bar, but I’d rather many, many other things for my not-yet teenager than flying somewhere for no functional reason. I am endeavoring to teach him why showing up 2 minutes late and unprepared (not dressed and kitted up when he should be) means he’s failing his teammates (60% of which show up far later, unless I’m driving.)
Yep, I know we’re earlier than we need to be, but you don’t want to be the dude that is late. The real lesson is to be the best teammate you can be. I don’t need to be in St. Louis for that.
Playing games in places I can’t drive to relatively quickly is useless to his sport or other development. Never mind the logistics of flying with a D-pole, (he finally started smashing the hell out of kids, dad tears of joy ensued,) but we let the leagues get away with it.
If he played Lacrosse in Jackson, MS, I’d assume I’d be screwed seven ways to Sunday. But plenty of us live in places without that problem. To throw your state under the bus, does anyone that lives in Ohio need to travel far to do anything? Nobody in any kid sport should have to go any further than Pittsburgh to find “competition.” Nashville, Chicago, Indy, Knoxville, Cleveland, Cincy, Columbus, Lexington, all in Ohio or Ohio adjacent.
Yet, I bet there are plenty of Ohio dudes that are buying tickets to Minneapolis or Sacramento for an upcoming season, for what, exactly? Why is there a freaking tournament in Vail? I can’t vent honestly on why I think this happens, but this kind of scheduling is not helpful.
Would you really want to have six arms?
• Mike T. sent this in from Mexico where he's been drinking:
“Jizai arms is a supernumerary robotic limb system consisting of a wearable base unit with six terminals and detachable robot arms controllable by the wearer. The system was designed to enable social interaction between multiple wearers, such as an exchange of arm(s), and explore possible interactions between digital cyborgs in a cyborg society.”
That's it. I gotta get to this breakfast. Then baseball. Then probably the flower shop. Then home to lay some flagstones. Then...hopefully...a quiet end of the day listening to the birds chirp away while I ease into the evening with Yacht Rock and maybe a vodka like I'm actually on a yacht cruising into South Bass Island on a blazing hot July night.
Take care. Spend time with mom. Make sure to take photos of what you cook up on the grill to serve as inspiration for others heading into Memorial Day Weekend.
I'll be back Monday.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com