RRPC: The Once and Future Season (Play Ball!)

A very different season.

For Carly's Round Robin Challenge: Not Of This Season, I present echos of baseball season. And I'm not talking about just any baseball season. No, I'm referring to the summer of 1993 - and the summer of 2009.

Rainclouds completely obscure the mountains in the January rain.

From my Picasa album Tucson Weather

Until late this afternoon, I was stumped on this Round Robin topic. Tucson was doing what Tucson nearly always does in January: getting a little winter rain in to hold us until the summer monsoon. (Tucson averages just under an inch of rain in January, a bit less in February and March, just a quarter inch in April through June, and then over two inches a month during the summer monsoon.) Frankly, a picture of Tucson in January looks an awful lot like a picture of Tucson in July. So how was I going to show something unseasonal in a place that barely has any seasons?

The humans get under cover from the rain - Pepper, not so much.

From my Picasa album Round Robin Photo Challenges

Then as I got near the dog park, I thought of Hi Corbett Field, which is also in Reid Park. Yeah! January is definitely not baseball season, but tickets for Rockies spring training are already on sale. Sure enough, there were people in the box office. But that's not what got me excited.

Welcome back, Toros! How I've missed you!

This is what got me all emotional: a Tucson Toros logo, adorning the Hi Corbett wall for the first time in over a decade. My favorite team is back! Sort of.

1993 Toros team autographs on a 1993 jersey in the 2009 Toros office.

This being only January, they're not really back yet, and when they do get here in May it won't really be them. The name is right. The venue is right. The colors are right. But the old Toros, the version that won Pacific Coast League championships in 1991 and 1993, were the AAA affiliates of the Houston Astros. 1993 was the year I discovered baseball, when John and I attended one game as a rut-breaker and liked it a lot. So we went to a ton of games over the next several years, and I got to do a lot of interesting things as a Toros fan, including being (at different times) guest scorekeeper, guest color announcer and guest interviewer.

Through a complex series of events, the Toros morphed into the Tucson Sidewinders in the late 1990s, with the wrong venue, the wrong colors, wrong just about everything. We stopped going to games, and so did a lot of other fans. Now the Sidewinders have gone off to Reno, and Tucson will have the new Toros, part of the independent Golden Baseball League.

The deserted concourse fills me with memories of seasons past - lining up for
giveaways, waiting for autographs, even a brief stint as team webmaster.

Nevertheless, I was inspired to go ask when Toros tickets go on sale, despite the fact that it was almost 5 PM and the ticket office was about to close. They directed me into the unlit concourse and through an unmarked door on the inner wall: the once and future Toros office.

I met a couple of nice people there, chatted briefly, looked at a seat map and took a few pictures. Season tickets and packages (basically ticket books) are already on sale, but not single game tickets. "They don't start playing until May, so check back with us in April," I was told.

Still. The Toros! Hi Corbett! Tuffy the Toro, the team mascot for which my recently deceased dog was named! Huzzah!

But the day wasn't done showing me unseasonable things to show you. Tucson gets almost no fall leaves, but a leaf on the ground in the Hi Corbett parking lot was so red I thought for a moment it was printed on paper for a promotion of some sort. Nope. It was a real fall leaf - in Tucson! In January! I thought of you, Jama, and knew you'd want to see it.

Here comes the sun.

And later we went out to my favorite Chinese restaurant (Peking Palace) to celebrate my new job, even though I got word today that I may be unemployed again by Monday. They still had Christmas ornaments hanging from their chandeliers. Maybe they plan to keep them up because they're pretty. I'm really happy with the photo because of the light pattern on the ceiling looking like a smiling summer sun.

Now let's go see everyone else's unseasonal photos:

Linking List

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Monica - Posted!
Photographers Choice
http://familyaffairphotos.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com

Terri - Posted!
Ways I See The World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com

gwenlyn **Welcome New Member** - Posted!
Greenchair
http://gtsgreenchair.blogspot.com

Vicki - Posted!
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Linda
Mommy's Treasures
http://www.mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Marina - Posted!
Milepebbles
http://milepebbles.blogspot.com

Jill - Posted!
South Bay Soliloquy
http://southbaysoliloquy.blogspot.com

Julie - Posted!
Julie's Web Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Kathy - Posted!
Through the Viewfinder
http://naliorf.blogspot.com

Chris**Welcome New Member** - Posted!
Camera Obscura
http://yecap1970rrc.blogspot.com

-rRose - Posted!
WAIT-NOTYET-MOUNTAIN RIVER WHISPERS
http://wait-notyet-mountainriverwhispers.blogspot.com

Annie
Pictures of Craziness
http://krspkrmmom.blogspot.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com

Basir Seerat **Welcome New Member**
Basir Seerat's Photography
http://basirseerat.blogspot.com

Connie - Posted!
Far Side of Fifty Photos
http://farsideoffiftyphotos.blogspot.com

Wammy - Posted!
The Ellis Family Cincinnati
http://theellisfamilycincinnati.blogspot.com


How about you? Are you playing along this week? Check the Round Robin blog for info on how to join in. That's never out of season.

Karen

EMPS: Bells, Bows, and the Edge of Winter

Carly offers us a multiple choice topic for this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot: EMPS #16: Autumn Meets Winter or Alternative EMPS #16A: BELLS or BOWS. There's so much to play with here that I'll probably make more than one pass at these topics, but here's what I was able to come up with so far.

It only snows here about once every three years, but in January we usually get some rain after a dry and sunny autumn. This Sunday we had what I like to call "Syracuse weather," with a temperature in the forties, wind and a bit of rain under bleakly cloudy skies. For Syracuse that would be fall weather, typical of September or October. Here it's what passes for winter. Let's see what a day like that does to the Tucson-style Christmas display at the house with the Big Tree:

The glory of the Big Tree Christmas display is all but lost on a damp and chilly afternoon.

Closeup on the decorations by dreary daylight.

Colors of autumn, weather of a Tucson winter. (Photo taken on my phone.)

Another way of marking the edge of winter: lighting the Advent candles.

The change of seasons is also marked out with traditions and rituals. In the Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches, Advent runs through the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. It's the start of the new Church year, and straddles the end of fall and the very beginning of winter on the secular calendar. The Advent wreath has four candles, one for each of the Sundays. The first week only one candle is lit, the second Sunday two are lit, and so on. The third Sunday's candle is rose colored, a symbolic reminder that Jesus is coming soon.

On to the bells and bows. Due to a combination of discouragement and plain old procrastination, we haven't gotten the Christmas stuff out yet. But I can find one Christmas bow peeking out through the translucent white plastic of a large storage box:

Christmas is still in storage here.

Other than that, I have a few dolls' clothes and toys with bows or ribbons, and three small bells I ring at the Easter Vigil mass. Let's put something together to represent all of these:

Excalibear has a bow on his neck and bells on his toes.
Valentine Kitty also has a bow, and is listening for whom the bell tolls.

The blue bell was rusty, but now we have freshly cleaned clappers.

The large bell was dusty, and the blue bell was rusty. I cleaned them all with TarnX. The big bell will never be completely shiny - it's not that well made to begin with. But they definitely look better than they did.

Be sure to check Ellipsis every Monday for each week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot topic, and for links to the previous week's participant entries.

Karen

Sneezing Season

The golden sun of late afternoon

I can hardly believe it, but autumn has somehow reached us here in Tucson. It's not the full fall workup, with red and orange leaves, frost in the morning a a promise of snow to come; but it is chilly enough that we didn't use the air conditioning at all on Sunday. John has opened windows all over the house, with the consequence that the house is just on the cool edge of comfortable and I'm having a major allergy attack. Ah-Choo!

Big weekend turnout at Miko's Corner

Looking at these dog park shots from Sunday, you may wonder whether perhaps the leaves change color in Tucson after all, at least to a pale greenish yellow. I must admit that when I resized these shots just now, I kind of wondered that myself. But I think it's mostly a quality of the light just before sunset. Here's a shot of some of the same trees, taken the evening before:

Fall colors? Nope. Still dark green leaves.

See? Still dark green. Even so, I'll pay more attention next time I take the dogs out and report back. Some leaves do change here, but not many and not by much, and they don't actually fall of the trees.

What now?

Speaking of the dogs, they love the bedroom largely because of the air conditioning, and only secondarily because of the bed and pillows and blankets. With the rest of the house equally cool, they are almost equally happy on the couch.

Cayenne tries to negotiate with Pepper.

Or would be, if that other dog weren't hogging it!

Karen

EMPS: Is It Autumn Yet?

Carly's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week is a tricky one for me:

EMPS #4: Welcome To Autumn!

She wants to know what the beginning of Autumn looks like where we are. Umm, well....

Perhaps an hour before sunset.

Distinguishing autumn from summer in Tucson is a tricky proposition. We pretty much haven't got an autumn. Very few trees change color at all, and I don't think any of them lose their leaves. As for cooler weather:

Cayenne is not concerned about the temperature.

The temperature at about 4:30 PM Monday, according to my car, was 95 degrees.

No better at 5:45 PM

The temperature in my car as sunset approached was still 95 degrees.

Mind you, 95 degrees actually does constitute cooling off. In summer it's usually more like 105 degrees. Another change: the monsoon is over. There were clouds in the sky - there were clouds all weekend too - but unless we catch the edge of a hurricane, it probably won't rain again until January.

So if it's not cool, and the leaves don't change, and the sky is the same as it's been for weeks, how can I tell it's autumn? Well, even here, the days are getting shorter. I can try to time the sunset at the equinox. First, let's look up some relevant details on the NWS Tucson site:

Local news and information
Fall began today (September 22nd) at 8:44 am

Okay, so the day should be about 12 hours long, right? And the sun should set around 6 PM, give or take wiggle room for latitude and longitude.

Here goes:

No, not yet.

Sunset did not arrive while we were at the dog park. So I dropped off the dogs and headed over to Safeway:

Close enough.

The naked eye gave the impression that the sunset was at 6:17. Or maybe 6:18. I've had to fudge this photo a bit; my camera could not get the sky and the phone in focus in the same shot.

A couple of minutes later. Score!

Turns out I was only a couple of minutes off. From another site:

Rising and setting times for the Sun

			Length of day
Date	Sunrise	Sunset	This day	Difference
Sep 22, 2008	6:12 AM	6:20 PM	12h 07m 23s	− 1m 57s

Be sure to stop by Ellipsis and play along, especially if, unlike me, you actually have a seasonal change to photograph! Carly will post the results next Sunday night/Monday morning.

Karen

The Predictive Power of Photos

Contrary to the impression given by this picture, which was taken Saturday, the dogs aren't getting along all that well with each other. Newdog has started bullying Tuffy a little, which upsets both John and me. As with Jenny and Noodle long ago, John wants to be able to designate the top dog by seniority, but of course it doesn't work like that. The best I can hope for is to catch Newdog in the act of snapping at Tuffy and correct her, often enough to make a difference.

John has rejected the names Tess, Martha, and Lady Madonna. He currently favors Lady Bigfoot. To his mild dismay, our semi-nameless Trouble Dog hasn't quite warmed up to John yet, either. I think it's because I've spent many more hours with her than John has to this point. He thinks she may not be as well-disposed toward men as women - or maybe it's just him. Not to worry; we'll get there. She's only been here four days.

Monday night I noticed the setting sun was peeking through an arch in the Subway building in the Safeway shopping center. I shouldn't have been surprised; as the ancient Mayans and the Beaker People knew, when the sunset is perfectly aligned through the Subway arch, it will mark the Vernal Equinox, followed closely by John's birthday and Easter.

As you can see, it has a week to go. The sun is still a little bit off to the south!

Karen

Sweet Seasons

I'm going to tie three rather disparate topics in with the title above. You get to judge whether the attempt is successful.

As Cold as Tucson in March

First off, let me report that since my comment about Tucson in March being too warm for the possibility of ice, it's been relatively cold and windy here. Last Friday we were up over 80 degrees, but on Monday it barely broke into the sixties. You're not exactly weeping for me, are you? Fair enough. But the thing is, it was in the forties and fifties all morning, and, as I said, windy. That translated into the temperature in my office at work being in the fifties at best, due to being along the outside wall and having no heating system in there whatsoever. And no, I can't run a space heater, 'cause it throws the circuit breakers in about two minutes.

Now, it's not a big deal, usually. I chose to keep my office with its temperature extremes rather than move to a more moderate cubicle. I wear sweaters, and add my jacket and make tea when it's especially bad. But it had been in the 80s, so I foolishly had worn short sleeves, a light sweater and no jacket. Brr! I had to go home at lunch form my sweatshirt. Ahh! Much better!

Still, it is March. Soon my office will start to heat up, for the same reasons it's cold now. And no, there's no air conditioning, either. But I'm hoping we'll get something in between hot and cold for a bit first, some pretense of spring. Tucson doesn't actually have a spring, but that's what I hope for!

We Had Joy, We Had Fun

I'm thinking about that old Pete Seeger song for this next one, as made popular by the Byrds. Or you can think about Ecclesiastes if you prefer. You know it, right? To every thing (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn).... And there's that other song going in my head at the same time, Seasons in the Sun. Take your pick.

I suppose the season most Americans are focused on at the moment is primary season. One of the very few Republicans I've ever voted for clinched the Presidential nomination tonight. The Democrat I voted for on Super Tuesday, and the one I should have voted for instead, wait anxiously tonight to count the delegates they'll each get from Julie's and Scalzi's respective states.

Yeah, all right, that's important. Really, really important.

But I'd rather talk about Gary Gygax.

I never met the man, and perhaps you've never ever heard of him. But he died on Tuesday, and turn, turn, turn, his death underscores that a golden season in my past has long since gone to seed.

Gygax was the man behind Dungeons and Dragons. I once wrote at some length at about my fond memories of playing D&D in college, so I won't do that again here, save to say that my character Joshua Wander started out as an NPC (a Non-Player Character) in a live dungeon scenario beneath the Vincent Apartments. I haven't played D&D in over 20 years, but I'm grateful for those Saturday all-nighters, as my friends and I exercised our imaginations in a fantasy setting that existed in our minds and to a small extent on paper, with the help of books with Gygax's name on them.

Nowadays, the dice, books, hex maps and sheets of notebook paper must seem positively prehistoric to the modern gamer. If I really wanted to, I could send an avatar vaguely resembling JW across some virtual landscape online, exploring, solving puzzles, collecting treasure and (mostly, I suspect) killing things in the company of other players living thousands of miles away. Somehow, though, the idea doesn't appeal to me at all. Doom and World of Warcraft are unlikely to accommodate the house rules we worked with long ago: the god Murphy always does something, a magic backpack has whatever you need except money and magical items, and a creative and funny response to a situation is always better than something dictated by dice.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Gygax.

Finally tonight:

Is It Lent Yet?

Thanks for the tip, Julie! SeaMonkey, which I looked into once before without finding any indication that it had an HTML editor, does indeed have a slightly updated version of the old Netscape Composer. It's not perfect; a couple of times it froze up and would not let me select or unselect anything, and when I installed it a Windows Compatibility Assistant wanted to do something or other. Maybe I should have let it. And it didn't show the Hipcast play bar, which made me a little nervous about whether I managed to keep the code in the sermons page as I turned blog entries into a nice table. But it did work. The page has a bunch of new sermon links on it, and it looks nicer than before because I ran them side by side this time, two sermons across instead of a narrow bar down the middle of the page.

I was so encouraged that I took care of another page on the St. Michael's web site that's been languishing since last summer: the Seasons page.

(Aha!)

This used to a a somewhat complex and repetitive series of pages showing what church season we're currently in, which one preceded it and which one is next. I had them on my hard drive with names like seasonsepi.html and seasonslent2.html. In theory as each one came around, I'd rename that file as seasons.html and upload it. Only I hardly ever got around to actually doing that!

So tonight I deleted the bars with the previous, now and next seasons, and consolidated the rest into one master table showing all the seasons for the year, with major feastdays within each. Well, some of them, anyway. I had enough clipart to stick an appropriate gif or jpg in each season's cell. Much better! Only problem was that when I checked it just now, Firefox was reading a clear and correct html link to http://smallangelstucson.org/vestmts.jpg as the nonsensical http://smallangelstucson.org/smallangelstucson.org/vestmts.jpg, and therefore not displaying the picture. I specified actual size and supplied alternate text for the two affected images, and that cleared up the problem. Weird.

Silly Firefox! There was nothing wrong with my
link to this image of vestments for all seasons.

It still needs tweaking. There must be a church calendar widget somewhere that will tell people that if today is March 5, 2008, then we're in Lent. That will be more informative than either my rotating season pages or the new combined one. And I can probably get a photo of St. Michael's itself to illustrate each season, either instead of or in addition to the clip art.

But not tonight!

Karen