Mitchell and Webb - Homeopathy

Bigfoot Goes South

Grandma Frey's cat Bigfoot has finally found a home with a retired veterinary technician in Florida who has a lot of land and a bunch of animals (rather like Grandma) and has always wanted an ocicat.  We tried a couple of ideas for getting him there, such as meeting by car someplace in between, and finally ended up deciding to fly him down there.  It turns out that Delta has a pet shipping division that does this all the time, using climate control all the way, and not as horrendously expensive as one might think.  I made his reservation the other day and took him to Syracuse this morning in a fancy enormous cat carrier that Dad kindly adapted to comply with Delta's safety requirements: metal hardware holding it together rather than the plastic that came with the crate, feeding bowl and water bottle clamped to the door.  It had to be enormous because Delta requires a certain amount of space all around the animal, and the required vet check beforehand revealed that Bigfoot weighs twenty-one pounds!  (I was guessing sixteen to eighteen.  Shows what I know.)

Bigfoot is now mid-air on his way to Tallahassee.  Maybe it's just as well that I didn't take a picture when I left him in the air cargo warehouse peering anxiously through the metal bars on the door of his great big cage.  While I'm very glad he finally has a good home, it was a little sad to say goodbye to the last of the many, many, many animals that were part of Grandma's life for so many years. 

Here's how he looks right this minute:

We gave in...

...and got Jamie's hair cut.

Pretty great set-up. A police car ("wa-wa") to sit in, and trains ("tain") to watch:

He wasn't thrilled.

It's getting good in the back...

And then he went home and played in our new above ground pool:

We shucked our own oysters for the first time tonight.

This little guy came along for the ride:

We didn't eat that one, but the others were delicious.

Bump

One of the best posts ever.

We just bought a new (used) popup (with a slide-out dinette and a bump-out vanity, and have spent three of the last four nights in the old popup parked alongside Plymouth Reservoir, so camping is on our minds.  We were trying to remember our previous camping trips and there one of them was.  On the blog!  Eight years running now!   

Awww.

Fun with probability

NESN's Twitter question of the day in the first game of the Sox/Rays doubleheader was introduced by Jenny Dell, who said something to the effect of how it's generally accepted that sweeping a doubleheader is rare, and asked Twitter: "Why is it so hard to sweep a doubleheader?" This has been argued in the past by baseball writers - in 2009 Joe Morgan said in an  ESPN column, "...in the history of baseball 80% of all doubleheaders have been split."

I'll tell you right now that Joe Morgan is way off, and NESN is starting from a false assumption as well. I replied to their twitter question, we'll see if it makes the broadcast. I'm sure it won't.

But my question is, what is the probability that a doubleheader is swept? What is the probability that YOUR TEAM sweeps a doubleheader? And does anyone else know how those probabilities compare to the historical rates of doubleheader sweepage?

"Speed Flying"

http://vimeo.com/36398302

Not sure why they call it that.  I'd call it parachute skiing.

For Mom

The New York Times demonstrates impeccable grammar.

The table needed stitches!