Springtime Features

I hate to be a downer.  Well, hate’s a strong word.  I would rather not be a downer, but when there are flaws in a system, I feel the need to point them out.  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and all that.

The specific system of which I am currently critical is spring.  Thus, this week’s features will start with the top five things wrong with everyone’s favorite season (until summer hits…and except for lovers of autumn…winter is never anyone’s favorite…poor winter).

5. Mud – The warmer, wetter weather sees wiping the paws of my dog before he tracks prints through the house, but my sons and their friends are much faster and far less obedient.

4. Spring Fever – This is a real disease that scientists have determined (scientifically) attacks the productivity gland in working adults.  Symptoms include staring out the window all day, constantly talking about the weather and meaning it and an increasing urge to ride a bicycle.

3. Bugs – Springtime is synonymous with life and renewal.  Sadly, this includes the swarming masses of insects that have remained dormant over the long winter.  Now they arise and thirst for blood and rotting flesh…as well as flowers, garbage and poop.

2. Daylight Savings Time – I get the need for it and I love (and I mean love) it in the fall when I get an extra hour of sleep.  But the loss of an hour on a weekend really sucks.  I say we all get a week during which we can jump ahead an hour at any time.  You can even do it in intervals of a few minutes each day and skip ahead a little bit at a time, like during work or when The Celebrity Apprentice is on.  It would be live Tivo for life (and I don’t mean a life time subscription to Tivo).

1. False hope in the Cubs – “This is next year,” comes the motto every spring training and it is always wrong.  Not just because of the obvious impossibility of that statement but because no matter how well they do during the regular season, they always manage to suck come October.

This week’s cool-ass thing you will never own is…are(?) ninja skills.  The years of both physical and mental training required to master the martial arts and then to use them to virtually disappear from sight and strike your opponent with lightening speed and laser accuracy are beyond the reach of most.  This is especially true of people who sit in front of computers and read blogs all day.  Sound like anyone you know?

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that you are designing a program to submit every possible NCAA bracket prediction to one of the free contest sites for next year.  The problem is, once you finish your quest to submit all 9 quintillion plus brackets to your favorite unsuspecting sports website, you will need to develop a similar program to provide you with just as many email addresses to submit them from.  No rest for the nerdy.

This week’s nemesis is the park dog walker.  The large expanse of grass surrounded by the running track works just fine to let your dog off the leash and run around with their little poochie friends.  Or use the tennis courts in the offseason for all I care.  But when you use the baseball fields, the infield in the coming spring looks like the surface of a golf ball and I have to continually ice the faces of my middle infielders as ground balls hop chaotically into the air off the paw prints of your pet.  I don’t even want to think about what your kind has done to the percentage of dried dog feces mixed in with that dirt.

This week’s lesson learned is not to stay up playing Rock Band until 4AM when you have somewhere to be the next morning.

This week’s analysis is the result of my looking at the remaining contestants from our Geek Tournament and questioning the selection process due to the fact that the variety of those left is lacking.

Finally, this week’s Star Wars quote is, “This is madness.”

Thanks for reading.