Leaving in 3 1/2 hours

My flight to Chicago leaves at 2 PM so we will not call a cab until 11:30 AM.  Of course there is still heavy security at all airports so we need to arrive early.  It turns out that Bob Dylan will be playing at Jones Beach on June 29th, so I will have to miss the concert.  He is 66 years old, so I never know when he will stop touring.  Until next time.

Seven Baseball Games in Eight Days

We went to the Met game at Shea Stadium today and saw the Mets complete a three game sweep of the Oakland A's by wiining 10-2.  John Maine was the winning pitcher while Jose Valentin hit a three run home run.  It seems that the Mets have ended their June swoon.

Tomorrow we are leaving for our second Jay Buckley Baseball Tour of the midwest (http://www.jaybuckley.com) .  If you check this blog for August 27, 2006, you will read my report of last years 4 day trip.  This year we are going for 6 days to Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinati, and Chicago(Wrigley Field).  I do not have a laptop computer, so I will take nots with pen and paper and report back here next week.  You only go round once in life and you may as well do things that you enjoy.

Juggling Saturday Night Oldies with the Mets and Yankees

The Yankee game started at 3:55 while Saturday Night Oldies started at 6 PM as usual.  The Mets played the Oakland A's starting at 7 PM.  The Yankee game was lasted 13 innings as the Bronx Bombers lost 6-5.  Sorry about that Din.  The Mets and the A's were deadlocked in a scoreless tie until David Wright drove in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth.  I caught most of Saturday Night Oldies.

The fantastic three went to the movies earlier in the day and saw the Fantastic Four.

Getting Ready for our Second Baseball Trip

Today I almost repeated August 18, 2006 (http://journals.aol.com/bruces8852/BrucesJournal/entries/2006/08/18/baseball-books-for-my-baseball-trip/402)

Since I have Fridays off and Lee was finished with school, we drove over to Crocheron Park in Bayside.  Afterward, we went over to the Bay Terrace Shooping Center where we ate lunch at Ben's Deli.  From there we went over to the Barnes and Nobles Book Store where I bought the following 3 baseball books:

Tales from the Mets Dougout by Bruce Markusen

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwartz

After Jackie: Pride Prjudice and Baseball's forgotten heroes: An Oral History by Cal Fussman

I hope my librarian friends reading this blog will not cricize me for not using MLA or APA style guides.  I just wrote down the title and author.

There will be plenty of time on the plane and on the bus rides coming up.

 

Starting Vacation!!

No work until July 5th!!  I goet 20 vacation days plus 3 personal days a year.  This is one advantage of working for a university.  The big day will be Monday when we are taking off for our second baseball tour of the midwest.  We'll be taking it easy at home until we leave.  I don't want to go near a library :)

The Whitney Museum on Father's Day

I wanted Father's Day to be different this year.  We started out by having breakfast at Uncle Bill's Diner in the neighborhood.  I think this is the first time we have ever eaten breakfast out on a Sunday.  From there I drove with Lee to Forest Park where we found out that they were reconstructing the playground area so Lee could not play basketball.  Instead we took a long hike through the park.

 

In the early after noon we set out for the Whitney Museum (http://whitney.org) on Madison Avenue and 75th Street.  There was an exhibit called "Summer of Love - Art of the Psychedelic Era"  2007 is the 40th anniversary of the summer of 1967 popularly called the Summer of Love.  To quote the website:

Summer of Love revisits the unprecedented explosion of contemporary art and popular culture brought about by the civil unrest and pervasive social change of the 1960s and early 70s, when a new psychedelic aesthetic emerged in art, music, film, architecture, graphic design, and fashion. The exhibition includes paintings, photographs and sculptures by Richard Avedon, Jimi Hendrix, and Andy Warhol, among others.

Visitors of the museum were given an audio tour of the exhibit with an MP3 player that played songs associated with the artwork  displayed.  We enjoyed it.

 

Nice to have 3 day weekends over the summer

For the past 5 years or so NJIT is closed on Fridays during the summer.  There are not summer classes scheduled so they are trying to save money by closing down the campus.  The university administration estimates that it saves $200,000 each year since it doesn't have to provide air conditioning or lighting one day a week.  We have to work 30 hours over 4 days.  This is a clear advantage of working in academics.