NiftyNiblick

I really don't want to cook today. I'm a little sore. I'd happily settle for takeout. Chinese. Italian. Mexican. You name it. But I woke up to find that my wife has already put out everything that she wants me to make. Now, in addition to cooking, I also have to figure out something I can do to piss her off.

To the uninitiated: if you think golf is expensive, try daughters

OK, Foz. It's 7 AM and you're already done playing? I'm up early because I couldn't sleep, but I'm still in my bathrobe.

Let me guess. Your Bulldogs aren't Yale, right? Or even SEC rivals Mississippi State? Do you play an ACC team that wears white at home?

I'm watching with the audio on. And my "audio" happens to be four foot tall JBL JRX-225s flanking the 70" flat screen in my man cave. I don't have the hearing that I used to, and those tiny internal TV speakers are useless.

Nobody loves dogs more than I do. Fidel, GRHS, is my avatar. Fidel was a communist. If you were eating anything--anything at all--he'd demand the Beagle Tax. My present dog is a Welsh Terrorist. She looks just like an Airedale only in miniature. The breeder, who's in hiding from me, called her a Welsh Terrier. I figured out the real name.

Red Sox--Rays.

I'd spend so much time trying to figure out the electronics that the physical golf shots would become an afterthought. You know that I've got a flip phone, right? If I ever get back onto the course, which is unfortunately looking like a pipe dream these days, I will seriously have to consider hickory. If everything about you screams "dinosaur," it may be best to simply accept it.

My wife being Irish and the mother of my half-breed, mick-dago kids, I obviously have to do the cooking. The height of Irish cuisine was the famine, after all. She does the laundry, but she doesn't iron my boxers like my mother did. They must not make them like that anymore.

I remember those days very well, although they were a while ago, now. Also renting vans as she moved from one Boston apartment to another. That probably did my back some good as well.

I was the roulette croupier at our union fundraisers, Always. Hated that job. They didn't make as much money as they should have due to the generous number of free drink tickets that the volunteers, usually plant and office union reps and their spouses or significant others, always got. Then, after closing, the Chinese food would arrive. When I was young, I'd get home using the Force. Local codes made us hire a cop who must have overlooked an awful lot from the people paying for his detail and Chinese food.. The cop wouldn't drink, of course, but it's a miracle how much Chinese food he could eat after all of that coffee and donuts he went through just hanging around.. He was there late, after closing, because he had to accompany the proceeds to the night deposit vault. Anyway, how could you not love big, red faced Mick cops from Massachusetts? Somebody has to keep the stereotypes alive, right? Bless their hearts. A bit more responsibility came with maturity, thankfully. That's when you start worrying about the young ones like you used to be. And then you know that it's getting close to retirement time.

I buy everything baggy. And if it's baggy on me, then it's a tent for a small family. The only exceptions are suits, which is why I own so many that I'll never wear again unless I can get back into them when I'm even closer to being dead..

Awake.

I feel you, Shankster.

I remember driving through the Carolinas in the 1950s with my parents before the big highways came in. There were so many roadside attractions back then. I seem to remember Stuckey's, South of the Border, some good BBQ joints, Burma Shave signs, and stuff like that. Also that gray stuff that grows all over the trees.

I strongly recommend the Bellagio--but then you might not have enough left to buy another house!.

You, like me, are a natural for gross Stableford matches. A nuclear hole just means a hole with no points. Meanwhile, you pile up points on the other holes. I've beaten better players than I under those stipulations.

The Rev always makes great points which is why I always enjoy reading his posts. The "take lessons" advice and the "get fitted" advice are points with which it's hard to argue. As to the course management issue, there's no question that most if not all bogie linksters overvalue their own skills in making management decisions. The right decision would doubtlessly improve their scores. But there is another consideration. Deep down, is the lowest possible score always preferred to playing the game the way one would prefer to play it? The quick answer might be "yes," but on further consideration, one must consider the possibility that the best way to play is the way that's the most fun. Now to the golf ball.: right now, it looks like I'm much closer to assisted living than I am to ever playing golf again. I had a Quixotic dream that I might be able to play wearing my back brace, but just hitting balls and practicing a few putts tells me that if I were a dog or a cat, the humane thing would be to put me down. However, when I was at my very best, an 8 or 9, sometimes even brushing up against 7, I played the universally maligned original Spalding Top Flite, often called, the Rock Flite. I absolutely loved that ball, the compression of which was too high to advertise. And I played my best golf with it. So I have to say, Rev, I just don't know.

It's clearly wrong to do it, I agree, but I suspect that anyone who would pick through those boxes were in pretty dire situations themselves.

Well, Kenny, the cat wouldn't be shy about taking Mickey out. We know that.

Lefties can be really weird. One of my son's youth teams had a left handed first baseman--nothing unusual there. That's the only infield position that they can play. But with the significant advantage to batting left handed--primarily the preponderance of right hand pitching--this kid batted RIGHT handed. Rickie Henderson was the only big time player that I can ever remember doing that. The boy lived with a single mom. Perhaps an in home dad would have corrected that at, say, age 5.

There a cute, tiny field mouse mocking me in my basement man cave. He pops up, and by the time I get up, he's disappeared. He's done it several times since I've been on line posting on the forum. I don't want to kill him. Mice are warm blooded mammals who eat with their hands and breast feed their young. I own four firearms and have never shot and killed a living creature. (Hopefully not even when I was young and in a place that I didn't want to be, but no more about that.) My present dog, a Welsh Terrorist, couldn't care less. Live and let live is her motto. The Beagle that you see as my avatar would have found the thing in thirty seconds and handed it over to me. He didn't like to kill anything either. All I want to do is catch the damn thing and let him loose outside. I've done that before. But if my wife sees him first, he's dead.

We don't even have a practice range at our club, but we do have several warm-up cages near the practice green. You can hear the "thwack-thwack, thwack" into the nets while you're trying to practice chipping. We all go to the Whirlaway practice range (named after a very popular horse from back in the day. Before closing down in recent years, Rockingham Park and Suffolk Downs were also a big part of our lives.) Half the guys have complete sets configured from the odd club bins at the Whirlaway You get to try them first. I once bought four at once, don't ask me why, and the bill was roughly the same as lunch next door at Al's Diner. (Lunch at the club, like gear at the pro shop, is a lot more.) We also have Field Turf tees at the club to reduce maintenance. It makes the place sound like a run-down muni, not that we have munis among our public courses, but maintenance is actually excellent, The bunkers have actual soft sand in them unlike many of the nearby public courses. Golf was an add on to the nice tennis and social facilities. We're a Golf and Racquet Club, now, but the tennis came first--then the golf. The fat ass bookies, morticians, union executive board members, and sub shop owners (Hi, Moe) needed something to do while their younger and thinner wives were playing tennis. What house lots are going for now, I don't understand how we have so many courses, private or public, at all. It really boggles the mind.

It's no bad, Tommy. And the way the hair on top is receding, it might make a nice alternative. (I wouldn't tease if I weren't a ******* cueball myself.)

I've got one walking course and one running course that I'll NEVER give up. 1. Recliner to refrigerator. 2. Recliner to bathroom.