Summer (Ob)session? (UPDATED)

What's yours?  A couple of them -- baseball and beach sand -- are explored in depth on factotem.

UPDATE:  As promised:  Gabe (photo by Georges Seurat -- er, his dad, True Ancestor).

Comments

[Ron]

zero interest in the beach -- I don't swim.

But big baseball fan...I worked on Project Retrosheet for many years. It's an effort to record every play of every major league game ever played. See www.Retrosheet.org. I've hand input about 4000 games myself!

Also check out articles using PitchFX data which records the X and Y positions of all pitches...
See www.thehardballtimes.com under articles for cool stuff!

Sorry if I bore you with it there, Amba!

[Donna B.]

Air Conditioning. And it does deserve the capitalization.

Also, any pool in Phoenix after sundown in July/August. The water is near body temperature and the chemicals give it a silken feel.

You can almost feel your body rehydrating after a day of very low humidity and very high temperatures.

[amba]

Ron: thanks for so exquisitely illustrating my point about baseball obsessives. In fact, I wish you would copy your comment over there. You are what biologists call the "type specimen"! That's the one they name the species after!

Donna: the dry heat of the desert is something special. It really does dessicate you, which I prefer (I'm a desert rat at heart, believe it or not) to being marinated, like we are here (when we step out of the air conditioning).

[Khaki Elephant]

Another baseball obsessive here, though mine is coaching little league. Every year I say it's my last. It takes too much time. I'm too tired. But every year the kids magically transform me.

[amba]

My nephew plays Little League hardball. We're looking for a good picture of him pitching to post over there at NH. I'll add a sort of grainy picture of him pitching to the post, meanwhile.

[Ron]

Wow, thanks for the kind words Amba! I guess that makes me a "charismatic megafauna"! :)

BTW, I tried to encourage the man running the Retrosheet project that we would finish in our lifetimes (if we get the raw data!) and to keep track of our monthly rate of success. He named this rate "The Fisher Index" after my needling, Fisher being my last name! Thus, you pegged it!

We have every game back to the mid-1950's in the database. All games are free to download!

[michael Reynolds]

My summer pastime is bitching about the heat. When fall comes, I bitch about the rain. Followed by the cold and now (or lack thereof, I can go either way.) And in Spring it's pollen.

It's a full life.

[michael Reynolds]

now = snow.

[PatHMV]

Michael, I think "bitching about the now" is a very telling slip on your part... ;-)

Heck, that could be the name of a new blog for you!

[Dave Schuler]

Sorry. No time for obsessions this summer. Too busy with a folie à deux.

[michael Reynolds]

Pat:

Can you have a Freudian slip with your fingers?

Aren't you cringing, half expecting Ruth Anne to show up with some awful pun involving bitch, now, snow and Freud?

[Khaki Elephant]

I look forward to the grainy pic of your nephew. There is nothing like a child's love of summer to remind us of innocent happiness. No school, no homework, no obligations, just baseball. Ah, I'd like to turn back my clock 40 years. Oh, wait, then I'd have to go through Mrs. Cole's class again. Nevermind.

[Simon]

Not a summer obsession, but a summer avocation - I really like being able to get out into the garden, get us another project closer to completing the landscaping, grow some fresh herbs and vegetables. It just gets so perishing humid here that at times it's hard to pick up the motivation once we get into August. (Upside: climate supports growing tea.)

[amba]

Khaki -- thanks for reminding me. Comin' up.

Simon: do you grow your own tea??

[Simon]

Not this year, alas - I'd been meaning to, but time and space didn't allow. Next year, certainly. Already penciled in. My understanding is that there's a history of at least some limited tea-growing in the Carolinas?

[amba]

It seems to me I had heard that about the Charleston area?? How far are you from us, Simon?

[Simon]

Oh, several hours drive - I'm in western Indiana. I mention the history in the Carolinas mainly to show that it's not unheard of in the U.S., and because it's nearby to you. :)