Irony and Other Cool Words

We have only seen two Spring training baseball games in person. One in Florida and one in Arizona - both many years ago now.  Of course, I don't have those pictures readily available in digital format.  They only exist in my mind (it's called memories people -remember them?).  

Anyway, the photo above is from our one and only trip to Wrigley...so it has nothing to do with the following story.  It just sets the mood for the story and for the use of the word...

Irony

The first Spring-training game we attended was really a scrimmage between the Cincinnati Reds and..... the Cincinnati Reds. Since this has been my favorite baseball team my entire life (yeah... that's what the red hat should be reminding all of you), it was a very good thing.  After all, my team was guaranteed to win.  

We won't think about the fact that they were also going to lose.

I got to see a guy named Hector Carrasco throw the ball at around 99 mph in the bullpen and figured out why Barry Larkin was an All-Star. It was some good stuff from my point of view.

It was a windy day and that tended to knock the ball down if it was hit to left field - so there were some well-hit balls that might have been a home run on another day.  

Roberto Kelly was the Reds starting center fielder at the time.  Midway through the game - he smacked a ball into left-field and he took his sweet time heading to first. Obviously, he thought it was a home run. Well, the ball died in left at the wall and when he realized this he sped up in an effort to at least get to second base. 

He was thrown out easily.

As he came back towards the Reds dugout, the first base coach, Joel Youngblood, gave him a continuous stream of, um, criticism. If you can picture a coach jawing with an umpire - you might get some idea as to how that went. There was, as you might guess, a fair amount of 'colorful' language. And, we were only a couple rows in back of first base - so we got to see, and hear, the whole thing.

Now - fast forward several years later and we are in Arizona, with an opportunity to see another Spring-training game.

This time, we had a chance to see the Milwaukee Brewers host the San Francisco Giants. The game didn't have much pitching, but it was fun to see nonetheless. We sat four rows back - not far from first base.

The irony?

The first base coach for the Giants was Roberto Kelly.  And yes, he had words for a player when they didn't hustle.

That story made me think of another story, which led me to a new cool word...

Iteration

Tammy and I have one television in the house, and it took us quite a while before we got a flat screen tv like everyone else in the world.  At the time this story occurred, we did not have satellite tv, we couldn't get cable, internet was too slow and the bandwidth wasn't there and we didn't have a converter box.  In short, the tv was there to watch dvd's.  That's all there was to it.

So, what should appear in our mailbox?  A large envelope from the Nielsen Ratings.  Yes, they wanted our household to tell them what we watched on television.  We realized they use a random sampling technique, so we should be just as likely as anyone else to be asked our opinions.  But - if they only *knew*!

We were just going to toss the envelope, but for some reason I opened it.  What should fall out but two crisp one dollar bills...  fresh from the printer (hmmmm).  They also included a SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope).  

 

So....why not?  

 

How did we answer the "What are your three favorite TV shows?" question?  Or the one about our normal TV watching time?   What we probably should have done was select some of the long since terminated shows we watched in the past, or maybe we should have just selected some things we had on DVD.  Maybe I should have said "Sesame Street."  You can't go wrong with that show. Regardless of what we ended up giving for answers, we feel that this is another ITERATION of the word IRONY.  That we, of all people, would be asked by Nielsen to give our viewing tendencies.

 

Fortuitous

We have typically worked hard to figure out our field plans and our seed orders as soon as we can after the prior season is completed.  But, for some reason, we often seem to be ordering our seed in February or March.  This can be a bit late if you want to order the bulk amounts of certain seeds that our farm often requires.  As a result, we find ourselves looking for substitutes.  

 

It's not the end of the world, but a bit of a pain.

One year, we were really looking to get our seed orders in earlier and break this pattern.  We received our first seed catalog and went through it from front to back the same day it arrived.  Evidently we were in the mood for this sort of thing.  Now that we had an idea of what interests us in one catalog, we needed some of the others to arrive in our mailbox.

What should arrive the next day? Another key catalog.  By the time the week ended, all of the catalogs we really needed were in hand!  That, my friends, is my definition for fortuitous.  (Fortuitous - when all of the catalogs you need are where you need them to be....)

Perspicacity

 

Now, here's a word I've always liked.  But, I can't always get my voice to say it without messing it up.  So, I'll type it instead!

Every so often, it seems like one or both of us pick up on things much quicker than normal.  In other words, we exhibit a higher perspicacity at those times.  Last week was not likely one of those weeks for me.  So, if I came across as a bit thick....sorry.  I got better (I hope).  At least I'm trying to refine my vocabulary....whatever that is.

 

Ostentatious

 

The word is, in itself, what it is.  So was that sentence.  But, other than enjoying writing big words in blogs, it is something neither Tammy nor myself wish to be.  But, because we are the Genuine Faux Farm, we have had to call attention to ourselves to make sales and promote what we do.  And we have found over the years that there is a fine line between honorable self-promotion and being ostentatious.

Case in point #1 - many years ago we would set up a trifold display with pictures and information about our CSA and our farm at the Harvest Market on a Saturday.  We both agreed that it was probably a good thing to do, but part of me wondered if it would not go over well with the other vendors who were there.  There is always a fine line to walk between attracting customers and belittling others who are also trying to attract customers.  And, if we went too far over the top with our own self-promotion, we wondered if they might conclude that we *were* ostentatious.

Case in point #2 - Social media.   If those web applications don't invite one to try to call attention to oneself, I don't know what does.   Some of you might not be aware of the 'metrics' each social media tool tries to use to indicate your 'success' at reaching people.  Let's just say they seem to reward those who are ostentatious.

 

We hope you had the perspicacity to enjoy this attempt at irony with respect to the ostentatious premise of this blog post.  We trust that its timing is fortuitous in that it will allow you to read it and....

we hope you have a great day!