A Clean Game After Only 40 Years of Bowling!

Don't know how it happened, except, I wasn't really paying attention to the score.  My mind was, as usual, on a hundred other different things and so I would just go up and roll the old bowling ball when it was my turn. Not until the score was tallied did they tell me it was a clean game! A clean game! A CLEAN game of bowling -- which means, no opens, just spares or strikes. Me! I actually threw that danged ball and either got a strike or a spare.


I think there's an award for that.  There must be, right? Used to be, but things have changed mightily since combining men and women into the USBC. Let's see if I can find out.  Oh, no! This is not good. Not good, at all.


What I found was that they have instituted a new program where you can print out your very own Certificate! Yes, it doesn't matter if you were sanctioned, or not, you can print out your certificate in the privacy of your home, without having to prove that you've actually performed the feat with witnesses. Just type in your name and a date and there it is, ready for framing and hanging on your wall.


This is very depressing. After all these years, what used to be quite an accomplishment has now been reduced to what anybody (with or without scruples) can say they did -- just print it out, frame it, and hang it on the wall. It's supposed to make things easier, but, I feel cheated.

Changes of Seasons and Things to Do

Gardening - It's time to be thinking about what I'll be doing with the summer vegetables and how to work around those early spring vegetables still blooming and producing food. There is no question that I have enough gardening space set up. Now, I have to make a decision about where I want to put what -- and, that is not my strongest point.

My self-watering planters are happily waiting for the transplants and, because all of a sudden we have had some unseasonably cool weather decide to show its face, I'm going to wait until after I have finished filming before sending them out.

Bowling - It's getting down to the wire for the winter league bowling and I find that I'm an interesting position, this year. On both teams, we have managed to finish sixth. It's all in how you look at it. The first league has 26 teams and so sixth place is very good. The second league has six teams and maintaining sixth place took considerable effort. (See? That's how you make lemonade out of lemons!) These are both daytime leaks and don't have anywhere near the stress that you can find on nighttime leagues, when the almost professional bowlers come out to play.

The best thing about bowling in the daytime has been discovering that I can still do most of the things I want to do in the evening without having to worry about finding substitutes. The best thing about bowling, for me, is that you can do it at any age and it just makes the feel good. Our oldest bowler just celebrated her 86th birthday. I can only hope that I'll still be doing my share of bowling at that age.

Clutter -I'm still trying to sort out craft supplies from pottery supplies from woodshop supplies, and it looks as though it may take the better part of the summer for me to finish. Even though I've made a big dent in getting rid of the trash, I'm still involved in a lot of back-and-forth between the two buildings, trying to find a final home for everything.

My favorite thing is actually getting rid of a lot of the stuff that I have been wanting to get rid of for, lo, these many years. With an incinerator close by, there's little chance of having to take back the decision, once I've dropped it into the flames. This is good.