Oh, NJMP will change the direction of its loud speakers and turn them off during the club races. That is not the noise I hear at my house. NJMP will change the start times for some races. Again, that does not affect the noise I hear at my house.

Finally, NJMP

also agreed to make a “good faith effort” with clubs to reduce noise emissions.

What? This means nothing.

NJMP co-owner Joe Savaro stated:

We do have noise that disturbs some folks, but it’s minor compared to the benefit we’ve brought in.

Translation: We don’t care about you.

Commissioner Finch and the rest of the “Noise Committee” were out negotiated. This is what happens when amateurs run things. The city conceded to what NJMP wanted. The city got nothing in return. Nothing!

My solution? Right now each and every City Commissioner is a “Hell No” for re-election. Each one. They are unfit to represent the residents of Millville.

I can’t wait to see these politicians explain once again how they will monitor the noise and look after us. It is clear that Finch, Quinn, Derella, Vanaman, and Shannon are incompetent.

I’ve been going to Phillies games for nearly 40 years. In that time I have had very good seats before. Never have I had the access I had today.

Four of us drove up. Upon entering Citizens Bank Park through the club opening, we received wristbands. These permitted us entry to the Diamond Club. We dined on hamburgers in the air-conditioned restaurant. There was an awesome salad bar, a brisket station, a panini station, some other station, and the hamburgers. There was a massive bar there too.

We discovered that the clubs’ batting cages are visible from the restaurant. That was very kewl, although we basically missed out on the players.

After that we took a private elevator up to the Hall of Fame Club. Wow! There is a lot of Phillies and baseball memorabilia there. The highlight for me was Harry Kalas’s scorecard.

We then wandered out to our seats. We didn’t have far to go. Out the air conditioned restaurant were our seats. These were tremendous seats. The seats were padded. We had waiter service. There was plenty of leg room. The spectators here were all well behaved and pleasant.

Last week was scorching hot. Today was pleasant. It was warm out, but there was a pleasant breeze. And as Phil commented, every time the restaurant doors opened, we felt air conditioning.

Interestingly, a few days ago my sister ordered tickets to this game. We were able to see each other from our seats. I took this photograph of her taking a photograph of me (I think).

Being a day game, we got to see the second team. Schneider caught, Blanton pitched, Gload was in right, etc. We fell behind immediately. Fortunately, the steroid user Jason Giambi plays for the Rockies. He made two egregious errors in the third that permitted us to get ahead 3-2. We added a couple more runs late. We needed those because Mitch Williams Brad Lidge pitched the ninth. He gave up a two-run blast and then loaded the bases before getting the third out.

This was a wonderful day at the park . . . far better than the disaster a few weeks ago. Perhaps I just need to go to games with the guys sans children and sit in the really good seats to enjoy the park. I would definitely sit here any time.

more photographs

Eighteen months later I am not done. I’ve made lots of progress. I’ve been able to create some home movies (I have been organizing the digital video too). I recently passed 56,000 photographs in my Flickr account. Yikes! There’s still plenty more.

I had set a 30 June deadline to finish, but I haven’t. Part of the problem is that I have multiple copies of directories, etc. They aren’t necessarily identical. It’s tedious at this point, but I am a completest. I will finish.

Also I have the book problem. Way too many books. Again I am entering them into my GoodReads account. It’s important to tag everything. I am a school teacher and I use a lot of this to be able to pull the correct book for specific lessons. But we will be unloading lots of these too. Rather than get involved with half.com or the like I am going to release them via BookCrossing.

I tired of the photos and the books were going slowly when I discovered another big organizing project. I have discovered that organizing is fun for me. Anyhow, I discovered our 600+ music CDs. They had been put away neatly, but they weren’t being used. Since then we have entered the iPod generation.

Well, with external hard drives so cheap, I purchased one and spent about a week ripping the music. Things are tagged and sitting on our home network. The physical music CDs are now better organized and once again put away neatly. The payoff is that we now have access to these 6500+ songs without really adding clutter. Wife would like us to offload the CDs now, but I like to do things legally so am keeping them.

So at least something has been accomplished.

On my end we have been smoking up a storm. Today was no different. We had some spare ribs, a Bacon Explosion fatty, and ABTs (Atomic Buffalo Turds).

We’re full.

Belch!

I e-mailed the company last Monday. Late that night Sean wrote back and asked me for the serial number of the grill so he could register it. I got back to him on Wednesday. He wrote back that a new lid would be shipped to me pronto. Wow!

On Saturday a package arrived. I was most surprised it shipped that quickly. Unfortunately, it was a lid for a different grill. I e-mailed Sean Saturday afternoon. He wrote back seven minutes later. He confirmed that he had ordered the correct item for me. He was dumbfounded why I was shipped a lid for a gasser. He said he would overnight a package to me Monday morning. Today my brand-spanking new lid arrived.

I could not be happier with Weber’s service. This is an excellent company.

That doesn’t include the pulled pork that smoked for 15+ hours . . . mmmmmeat!