Recently Melissa bought me a new jigsaw puzzle, a humorous 1000-piece painting of Yellowstone National Park with its Old Faithful geyser...I just completed it about an hour ago. Meanwhile, she has taken her sister Krista for an overnight stay at Ormond Beach...that's them out on the balcony. I'm glad Krista got this chance to get out on an excursion with Melissa...she has endured quite an ordeal with medical issues in the past two months and we are all praying for her recovery and a happy, healthy life. So here I am at home, being babysat by my dog Daisy. I hope that things are going well for you as well...
Early this evening, while Melissa and I were eating out with a couple of dear old friends, Gainesville experienced a freak hailstorm that tore through much of the city. We observed the spectacle from the restaurant window as pellets of ice bounced off the parked vehicles. On the drive home the streets were strewn with the green branches and leaves torn from surrounding trees when the ice ripped through them. The ice when we finally pulled up in front of our home was big enough to have come out of our freezer...pretty impressive, the most widespread hailstorm I can remember. But to top that off, a couple of hours before we left, one of our big shade umbrellas on our back porch was suddenly lifted straight up from its basin...either by an extremely strong gust of wind or a small tornado...and transported through the air above our house and deposited in our neighbor's front yard near the mailboxes by the street. We've had umbrellas blown down before, but never to that extent...
Earlier today the Masters Tournament, the first of the professional golfing four "majors" of the year, began in Augusta, Georgia. Justin Rose finished the first round at 7 under par, a three-stroke lead over defending Masters champion Scottie Scheffler. I watched much of the TV coverage, which was carried on ESPN. It was fun to recognize most of the golfers, and I was a little surprised by Rory McIlroy, who looked as if he might challenge Rose for the first round lead, only to experience some bad holes late on the "back nine" and find himself far back in the field. For this major tournament, the LIV tour, the established PGA's rival in golfing, contributed its own star golfers that I usually don't get to see, like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia...nice to see them out there all competing together with the PGA's own. Frankly, after watching some of the LIV "action" in some of their tournaments, I was disappointed, not only in this league's overemphasis on team golf, but also in the televised coverage that focused way too heavily on putting and over-hyping its biggest names. Now that some of them are back "down to earth" with the rest of the pros, let's see how they do. For one, I'd like to see Bryson do well: he's just one stroke behind Scheffler...
Congratulations to the University of Florida men's basketball team for winning the NCAA Championship Tournament tonight with an exciting come-from-behind 65-63 win over Houston. The Gators were trailing at half-time and fell further behind early in the second half, at one time twelve points in back of the Cougars. Yet as was the case in their previous two tournament contests, they mounted a comeback and squeaked it out in the end. This is UF's third basketball national title and the first under coach Todd Golden. Yet it isn't the same kind of feeling I had when Billy Donovan piloted the Gators to championships in 2006 and 2007. It's a completely different world in college sports, what with the transfer portal enabling schools to take in established players from other colleges...this version of Florida hoops is full of such transfers, especially their star, Walter Clayton Jr.. And their coach Golden had Title IX allegations investigated earlier in the season...and then suddenly dropped without comment. A lot of us aren't sure what that all means, except that they had something to do with women accusing the Gator coach of stalking. That being said, Florida won a hard-fought, close and exciting tournament...
It's now been four full months since I left my job at the United States Postal Service and began retirement. Unlike a few of my predecessors, I have never had the slightest urge since then to take up any part-time paid work. I do not miss in the slightest having to brave the often horrendous daily city traffic as I used to, arrive at my workplace, and then spend hours surrounded by cameras and spy windows trained on the workroom floor (and me) while enduring alpha male supervisors with pecking order complexes. That said, my main (MDO) supervisor was thoroughly wonderful and I do strongly miss working with her, as well as with the overwhelming majority of rank and file people who have blessed this organization over the years. As for the actual work I did, I treated it seriously enough to allow myself to get somewhat upset whenever something went wrong on the part of others...which was often enough. For the most part, I was allowed some autonomy in my work, which I appreciate. No job I imagine is completely stress-free, and mine was no exception. Still, I liked the structure of discipline it imposed on my time, although since leaving there I have been replacing it with my own personally fulfilling projects. Soon after my retirement, a reunion celebration was held at a local Mexican restaurant near my home, but I didn't attend. I'm glad I didn't, after seeing the posted photos showing who all was there. Sure, there were many good people, but also a couple of not-so-good as well. Since I retired I have had absolutely no desire to visit the place or know how things are going there. Absolutely none. During COVID, I felt that the people running this facility took a dangerously lax approach to the pandemic, and the decision to export our processing to distant Jacksonville only hurt customer service while limiting employee options. I was also tired of a few clerks over the years obviously being hired on a special fast track into management, given special cushy assignments and the run of the building with little accountability, in contrast to the rest of us who had to wait our turn on a register and often have to wait for years to get a preferred assignment. But here I am now, on the other side of all that...
