Into The Woods
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 97.5%
Well That Took Longer Than I Thought
By the time I got to watching TDPM yesterday, it was kind of late. Discretion being the better part of valor, instead of staying up really late (comparatively), I opted to stop at about a half hour in, instead of watching the whole two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
After breakfast and my 10-mile bike ride, I watched another hour or so. Made some lunch and watched another 30 minutes or so. Stopped again so I could go to Dairy Queen with a friend from the community. Once home from that, I finished the last twenty minutes of the movie.
I was so enamored with the movie I even added a separate tag: TDPM. This stands for That Damn Pirate Movie. I’d swear I wrote a metric crap ton of posts, but clicking on the tag returns a mere 20 out of 6,845 posts.
All five of the movies are available on Disney+. I might be able to watch the second one over, but the rest? Not a chance. While looking at all of the movies, you can probably see why, both IMDb’s star rating and Metacritic’s rating number start out high and, in movie release sequence, go steadily downhill.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 96.1%
We Named The Monkey Jack
Just got out of a chat with a friend where the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was quoted. I really don’t have anything worth blogging about tonight, so I’m going to go watch the movie; feel free to watch it for yourself tonight too.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 97.4%
Well, That Didn’t Go According To Plan
Before this four-game Yankee series, they were saying that all the Red Sox had to do was split the four games and they would capture the home-field advantage in the wild card round of the playoffs. Right now these same two teams are on a collision course to meet in the wild card round. The problem with that “home-field advantage” thing is that it only kicks in if the Sox and the Yanks end up with the exact same record. Before today’s game the Yankees are three games ahead of the Red Sox.
Today’s game ended in a 16-1 rout by the Yankees. So now they are 4 back of the Yanks, and that possible home-field advantage vanishes in a puff of smoke. Right now the only way the Red Sox can get the home field for the 3-game wild card round is to make up 5 games on the Evil Empire with only 25 games left.
This year’s 6-team playoff to get to the World Series: the top two teams get a first-round bye. Tampa Bay has the best record in the American League, so they will get a first-round bye, and New York and Boston are almost a lock for two of the wild card spots. Right now in the last spot is the Cleveland Gaurdians, but the next two teams chasing their tail are Baltimore, one game back, and Toronto, 1.5 back. If the Orioles or Blue Jays supplant the Guardians, there will be 4 of 6 American League teams in the playoffs from the same Eastern Division.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 94.3%
Was It Ladies Night?
Tere and I always make an early arrival at Celebrities. We want to eat some food, get a couple social lubricants in us, and get to chat a bit before the band starts up. By the time the Northwest Transit Band got to playing, the place was starting to fill up. But I was one of maybe three males in attendance, and there were about twenty single women.
Tere and I are just friends, and we both feel that is just the place for our relationship, so I can kid her about this being a target-rich environment for me, and maybe she should move to a table by herself. There were 6 ladies right in front of us; I think if I did really know how to dance, I might have asked any one of them onto the dance floor.
By the time we left, about 3/4 of the way through the second set, the male/female ratio was a lot closer to 50/50, and the dance floor was really full. Next time they are in town in late September, I’ll be in Utah with the Everyday Driver guys for their 4-day adventure trip, so I’m going to miss it. Maybe it’ll be Ladies Night again when that band returns in October.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 92.0%
Your High Beams Are On
A couple months ago the right turn signal started to not turn on every time I tried to engage it. It is not a big deal to most folks, but I was taught very early on to use my blinkers. It is not too hard, and it is just part of driving for me. But the car is a quarter-century old, and things are not going to stay working forever.
A little more than three weeks ago I took it in to the dealer to have them do a 5,000-mile service. While I was there, I asked about how much it would cost to fix the blinkers. They said they’d have to troubleshoot to see if it was broken and then find out even if they could get a new one. The next day I was told it is not repairable; if you want to replace it, it’ll be around $500 for parts and labor. Or we can just put it back in, and that’s going to be just $75 for the diagnostics. I’ve already dumped enough money into the car; what’s another four hundred bucks? They wouldn’t get the parts in before I was headed on the Arizona trip, so I told them, “No worries, I’ll pick it up when I get back.”
So on Wednesday, I went to get the Miata back. Nice, it works every time, and there is a brand-new turn signal stalk feel. This morning when I went out to go grocery shopping, you could tell fall is coming, it was still slightly dark, so I turned on the headlights, and the high beams were on. I could see the high-beam dash light on. You push or pull the stalk fore and aft with the center being normal, forward with a click for high beams, and a spring-back pull backwards for flash-to-pass. The stalk position was centered, not in the high-beam position. I wiggled the stalk, and the high beams would go off or on.
After grocery shopping I just drove the Miata back to the dealer. They wanted to verify the issue and see if there was an easy fix. Half an hour later I was told they have to get another new stalk. Here’s an interesting thing about the replacement stalk, it’s the second one they had to order. The first one was lost in transit. It was the last one in the US. Remember, a 25-year-old car and the last time they used them in Miatas was in 2015. This one came from the motherland, Japan, and they expedited it so they could have the car ready when I got back. They aren’t going to expedite this one, so they are going to put the old new one back in, until the part gets here.
At least from Japan to here, the part doesn’t have to transit the Strait of Hormuz…
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 85.8%
The Reacher Problem
I have a Reacher Problem. I have enjoyed most of the books but like anything, once you’ve written about the same character for so long, you kind of run out of situations to put him/her in. Then Amazon decided to do a TV series, they had twenty-something situations to use. But because of the different media, changes have to be made to get the near 300-page book into an eight-episode show. I am right now just past the midpoint of Season 4. In the fifth episode our two main baddies are in a car chase with three of Reacher’s “accomplices.” Carnage ensues, automatic weapons are fired, police arrive, and the two female bad girls jump off a bridge into a rapid river to avoid arrest; this is where I hit the stop button.
So let’s talk about the changing things to make the Reacher TV series. Season 1 did a good job, so there were just a few things that didn’t represent the book. Unfortunately, in each successive season, the changes have been increasing. This season started out okay, but as it went on, it started veering way off course. The automatic gunfire in a car chase that never happened in the book and then the bridge jump, which, pun intended, was a bridge too far.
To get the link to “the books” above, it took me to the author’s home page, which had a button to go to a blurb about the forthcoming 30th book, which I clicked on. Actually sounded interesting, so you know what that means: I’ll buy the book and then complain about it.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 87.5%