Major Mike’s Musings

At 5am – 7am we had thunderstorms, a tornado,  and rain totaling 1/2 inch and and hour and a half later we were out playing golf. Gotta love Florida.

    Here is an actual sign posted at a golf club in Scottsdale:

1. BACK STRAIGHT, KNEES BENT, FEET SHOULDER WIDTH APART.
2. FORM A LOOSE GRIP.
3. KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!
4. AVOID A QUICK BACK SWING.
5. STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
6. TRY NOT TO HIT ANYONE.
7. IF YOU ARE TAKING TOO LONG, LET OTHERS GO AHEAD OF YOU.
8. DON’T STAND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF OTHERS.
9. QUIET PLEASE…WHILE OTHERS ARE PREPARING.
10. DON’T TAKE EXTRA STROKES. 

WELL DONE. NOW, FLUSH THE URINAL, GO OUTSIDE, & TEE OFF.

Mrs Major continues to improve. She’s ditched the cane and now walks around even better than before the surgery. She’s still a little tentative, but she doesn’t waddle any more like her knees hurt. She’s cut way down on the pain meds. Maybe she’ll take back some of the household chores.

My golf game continues to improve. I’m pleased with that.

It’s hot. 98º with 50% humidity (5:30 p.m.).¹ It seems cooler, now. Around noon it was 91º with 80% humidity. At least we’re not burning down like California. Or flooding like the midwest did.

Is it just me or are our choices for President getting worse each election? I’ve got my clothespin for my nose all ready. I haven’t missed an election since I was 21 (yes we had to be 21 to vote once upon a time) and I don’t plan to miss this one, but I’m really tempted to stay in bed on election day.

I just upgraded my main Mac to OSX 10.5. I like it. It seems to run faster and has lots of new features I like. I ran into some trouble because all of my web sites I test locally on this Mac before I do major revisions to the Internet ones. When I upgraded, none of them worked. Turns out you have to turn on the programming language and databases with 10.5. Earlier versions were automatically turned on. No big deal…just a few edits to some configuration files, but it drove me crazy for about a day and a half.

1. I’m not complaining. I love the heat [↩]

I’m finally recovered from the trip. After watching the playoff and sudden death playoff, we took the redeye (10 pm takeoff from San Diego) to Philly then to Tampa then drove home. I got home around 2pm Tuesday. Too tired to do anything but veg until bed time. (more…)

Hooray! Tiger Woods birdied the 18th hole to tie Rocco Mediate at one under for the U.S. Open. Tomorrow at 9am we’ll be in the stands at hole one for the start of the 18 hole playoff.

Bonnie asked , “Why no cameras [at the U.S. Open during the competitive rounds].”

Good question, Bonnie. If you’ve ever watched the British Open, where they allow cameras and cell phones, you’ll often see golfers back off of shots and glare at the crowd. That’s because somebody was “clicking” their photo as the golfer was about to make his shot, interrupting his concentration. They have enough trouble trying to get some fans to be quiet during the shots, much less trying to get the “cool action photo”.

On practice days, they’re not trying to win a tournament, so they allow the clicking. They also allow fans to get autographs between holes. Practice days are very relaxed. Competition days are very intense. 

Thursday Son Major and I manned the thru board for hole 11.¹ We worked from 6:45 to 12:15. We got to see the entire morning round play the hole. 11 is a par three so we were able to see the tee and the green play. We developed a system that took the least amount of time so we got in the max amount of watching. The rest of the early afternoon we planted ourselves at the green on hole six, a 515 yard par 4. We wanted to see some long shots into the green. 

Yesterday, we slept in², had breakfast and headed out to the course. After watching a few shots on the way, we found seats in the bleachers on hole 3, another par 3 and watched almost the entire afternoon round from there. 3 is a tough downhill par three, 195 yards into the wind. The green is severely sloped and not too deep. We only saw two birdies while we were there and saw two double bogies and a triple. Great day. (more…)

1. The thru board posts the scores for the group that’s currently playing the hole through the previous hole [↩]
2. until 8 [↩]

 

Yesterday we went to see Old Dad and Pretty Betty. It’s about a two hour drive north of San Diego so we rented a car and headed out. We got to spend the whole day with them and Old Dad sprung for lunch.¹ Pretty Betty had a cable that worked with my camera, so I downloaded a bunch of pix and put them up on majormike.com. See them here. The photo to the left is Mike Weir.

On the way home, we stopped at Marie Calendar’s in Carlsbad for dinner and to catch the end of  game three of the NBA finals. The bartender, Paulina, had a tattoo of a Salvador Dalì artwork on her forearm identical to the one on Son Major’s forearm. They insisted I photo their forearms. Unfortunately, I left the camera on the table when we left. Fortunately, Paulina knew whose it was and gave it to the manager, Christine, who gave it to me when I drove back to Carlsbad this morning. Thank you Paulina and Christine. (more…)

1. Is anyone surprised? [↩]

I forgot to bring the USB cable for the camera, so I can’t download the photos until I get home. I still have room for 1300 more on the 2GB card in the camera, so you’ll have lots to see then.

Today was loads of fun. We walked the entire course—not in hole order, saw gobs of pros—but not Tiger or Phil¹, watched lots of shots, bought some U.S. Open goodies, and generally got sunburned from the long hazy day.

From our hotel, we walk to the trolley station, take the trolley to Qualcomm Stadium, take the shuttle to the golf course. It takes about an hour total, but is very relaxing…we don’t have to drive.

We’re looking forward to our trip to Seal Beach to see Old Dad and Pretty Betty. We’ll spend the whole day and part of the evening. 

Tonight, we’re beat and are heading for the rack right now.

1. We did see Vijay, K.J., Trevor, Michael Campbell, Bubba, Zach, to name a few [↩]

On Sunday at around 3:30pm, Son Major and The Major will depart for the Tampa airport to make the trek to San Diego and the 2008 U.S. Open Championship. We signed up to be volunteers almost a year and a half ago. We will be working the Thru and Leaderboards during the competition. We have passes for the three practice rounds on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and for the Championship on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If there’s a playoff on Monday, we’ll get to see that too.

The photo is of some of the gear we have. You can see the hat, shirt, parking passes, lunch vouchers (yellow), and of course the volunteer pass that gets us in for all the activities.¹

Much to my surprise, cameras will be allowed on the three practice days, so we’ll be snapping lots of photos. I might even get another card for my camera. No cell phones are allowed on any day, and not cameras are allowed on the Championship days. (more…)

1. We also received another shirt, water bottle, and jacket [↩]