Gone, remote control overload, community days

Has anyone else noticed that Missy, who used to be a routine reader and commentator on my blog has vanished?  In case you didn’t know, she was my first serious girlfriend in high school.  The last thing I knew she had a myriad of health issues going on many of which unfortunately related to her unhealthy lifestyle.  On her blog I commented as much, encouraging her to see these health problems as a reason to get healthy.  I don’t think she appreciated my suggestion.  Oh well, when we split up back in the 80’s it wasn’t exactly on good terms anyway. 

Yesterday during the class I was suffering from remote control overload.  I had my dual screens jammed full with various remote control sessions.  I was remoted to the instructor’s pc, my classroom lab pc, and my work pc which was in turn remote controlled into a couple servers at the office.  I found myself feeling very stressed out as I tried to multi-task between the various sessions.

There has been a lot of discussion on Facebook about community days starting back up in my home town of Shillington.  When I was growing up Community Days was a big deal for most.  It happens about a month after school left out so there was still plenty of summer left.  Many of the good looking girls from school showed up at community days to show off the tans they had been working on at the pool.  However I don’t recall doing anything that “fun” at community days.  I don’t think I ever rode on the rides as they were mostly cheap knock offs of real amusement park rides.  In fact I think the most fun I had there was spending a lot of time at the radar gun stand.

At that time I was in the middle of my dreams of being a major league pitcher.  As a pitcher I took pride in being able to throw HARD.  The radar gun booth was the chance for me to affix a number to exactly how hard I could throw.  There was one problem, the radar gun seemed to hate me.  Although I would be rearing back and letting loose with all my might I would rarely see a number that got out of the upper 60’s.  I think I may have clicked into the 70’s a few times.  I remember my frustration as I would make attempt after attempt that would crash into the background with a satisfying SMAAAACK,  only to have a number pop up that seemed ridiculously low. This HAD to be total bullshit.  I had several theories of why my numbers were low.     

I assumed the gun was positioned in a way to read a right hander’s throw since the vast majority of people throw right handed.  There also is the variable of where on the background you hit.  You could throw a ball with the same effort to two different spots and get a significantly different reading both throws.  Whatever the reason, I threw my arm out many times at community days hoping to pop a number that would be written on the high score sign.  It never happened.

Just a side note, when I was being scouted by MLB scouts at our high school games I was told they clocked me at right around 80 mph.  Not good enough to make the big show.