hawing

Reticent? I thought about mentioning Pizza hut as a joke... I'm thinking "remiss." So, I grew up in Monroe in the 1980s, when Pizza Hut was the bomb. Now it's only a gut bomb. *rimshot* Nowadays, the SO is diabetic and is reluctant to go overboard on pizza, and I'm not likely to order a full pie for myself. But - the original Ian's location on Frances in Madison is a 5 minute walk away from our libraries and we both enjoy a slice or two there. For SO to opt for frozen pizza at home, he pretty much needs a nutrition label to make sure it doesn't whack out his carb count, so we most often get Di Giorno. Not in bulk or anything. Earlier in our time in Madison, we lived near the first Pizza Extreme location, and used to regularly get their taco pizza. That was a good pie. There's no way SO would eat that much carbness in one meal anymore, and again, I'm not ordering a full pie for myself. But there are times I'd opt for that taco pizza again if it were practical. Another location is not far from our current house, so I experience no shortage of temptations. Rocky's...is a pie I got tired of after the fall semester 1985, when I ordered a sausage slice every Monday and Wednesday before I went to work at my college library gig. We more often go for the salad bar, which for that kind of establishment is more solid than you'd think. I do like Rocky's breadsticks, though.

That sounds so good. And I'm sorry about your wife.

I did not know that, and I've been a fan (not a superfan, just a fan) of the Badger Band for at least as long as the late 1980s. As an undergrad (mid-80s), I was fascinated by their cadence. Now I want to learn more about this connection.

What struck me more last night was how the athletic department keeps/tries to keep a sporting event entertaining without the band or spirit squad, since they're all in Pasadena. The AreaRed DJ got a lot more time to shine. It wasn't a better or worse vibe, just very different. Still, the crowd was pretty quiet until a point in the second half when the videoboard showed a dude wearing an Oregon T-shirt. The boos that rained on him were the loudest human noises made all night.

New decade*, new space to talk about what's not bugging you. I'll start! No matter how many times the Badgers have been in the Rose Bowl (a phrase I never would have imagined using while I was a UW student in the 1980s), it's always a thrill to see the Badger band march in the Rose Parade. *For those of you who recognize 1/1/2021 as the start of the new decade...it's okay. I'm making the change because two digits changed in the year, not just one.

It bugs me to think of how many terrible sight-related plays on words we're going to encounter this year. Though in hindsight, we should have expected it.

New year, new set of random thoughts. All ready for your hindsight/clear sight/any other sight-related plays on words.

Apologies for the veer off topic, but AJAY's statement reminds me of the train wreck that has been Madison's West Towne JCPenney's Brewers merchandise selection for YEARS. How much of a train wreck? Last time I looked, in November 2019, their shirsey selection included Weeks, Lucroy, Segura, Gomez, and one Nyjer Morgan. It appears the John Axford they'd had for *years* finally sold. They also have Braun and Yelich, and frankly that's kind of a surprise. I know (all too well) that Madison is primarily a Badgers and Packers town. But holy crap. I keep imagining some manager in charge of sports merchandise at that store saying YES, WE'RE STILL PUTTING THESE OUT. SOMEONE'S going to buy those Seguras some day. Based on their shirsey savvy, they might get 2020 logo merchandise by 2030. Okay, carry on.

One of our cats was looking out the back window this morning, clearly seeing something. He was chattering and pawing at the glass like he wanted to get through. He was focused on a cardinal. THAT'S MY BOY.

I remember when Tyme's used to be all over. Also, I live in Janesville, and work in Madison, and I have never in my life heard anyone call a drinking fountain a bubbler, except my aunt Hazel. Hey, I had a great aunt Hazel when I was growing up in Janesville. Hmmm. We didn't interact with her much, though, and I don't know her take on the public drinking fountain object.

Yes. Bubbler was originally Kohler's name for a specific type of drinking fountain, and some Wisconsinites (and a few others) took to calling all drinking fountains bubblers, the way I and others call all disposable tissues Kleenex. I grew up in Janesville and learned it as bubbler. This link should show a photo of that style of Bubbler: There are some on the grounds of the Wisconsin Capital.

The TaoTronics is actually just what I was eyeing. So thanks, you guys. Now I feel like there's a chance I can accomplish what we want without shelling out unnecessary dough.

The tech-o-weenies thread has apparently not been used in 2019, and I'm tired of searching further for it - so I'm starting anew. The SO has a Grace Digital internet radio which he listens to overnight. He uses wired earbuds but it limits how much he can move around, plus one of our cats has figured out that a great way to wake him up is to pull on the cord with his mouth. I was looking into wireless earbuds as a Christmas gift for SO, but the internet radio doesn't have Bluetooth. A newer version of the radio does have Bluetooth, but the FAQs with it suggest that it won't work with wireless headphones. Would a wireless transmitter plugged into the headphone port work? My google searching suggests it might, but I'd rather not buy one if it wouldn't. Since the current radio fills his needs now, I'd rather not upgrade it if there's a less expensive way to upgrade his listening experience. (Yes, I know he could just stream from his phone to wireless earbuds. He really likes the radio.) Thanks, fellas!

As bensheeps can attest, my eldest nephew (now age 19) and Zach bear a resemblance. I felt fulfilled as a Brewer fan auntie when they got to pose for a photo together a couple of On Decks ago.

This part of the discussion is not new to Brewerfan, but the main reason I can manage these games is because we sit in the family section. That Sunday game will be in our loge seats in front of the press box, which is about as tame as we can get. Opening Day will be a different matter, as family sections are not maintained that day and we're due to sit in the terrace. That's a situation where I might just switch to Game 2, but under this schedule that would be a Saturday night game vs CHC. Not in the terrace! Mostly I'm counting on my general WOO BASEBALL IS BACK euphoria overriding the unpleasant fan atmosphere, and focusing on getting one CHC and one STL series out of the way quickly.

And Fonzie goes sailing over the shark.

This is my overall takeaway, based on the information we have so far (and on my memories of the ball-glove to Motre-Bame switch).

Someone wrote a letter to the editor that ran on madison dot com this week with mostly common complaints about the hassles of adjusting to a time change twice a year...then she ended the letter with "Let's change the time a half hour next March and be done with it!" A half hour. I'm not much into the generational fights (as seen on another off topic thread), but that letter felt to me like the reason why OK, Boomer has become a thing.

I feel both in the middle of and oddly detached from the current round of generational bickering. At the library I've long been surrounded by boomer colleagues and college age students, and relatively few people in my age group. For probably the first 15-20 years of my career, one colleague and I (both born in 1966, so we're Xers) were the youngest non-student staff! It's only in the last 5-10 years that boomer retirements at my work really got going. I can impress (I think?) my student employees sometimes by telling them stuff I remember that they wouldn't - but I don't really talk about my job hunting or student debt experiences, because I know they're facing a significantly different situation than I did on those fronts. If being young again meant I had to go to school nowadays, I don't think I would want to do it.

I was trying to remember which one of you had that theory! I think you're onto something, as the font that's sort of visible on the grainy Topps card image leaked previously made me think of that AFFOP font immediately.

I wonder what I have a better chance at before I die, Packers season tickets or getting the batting practice reward. Brewers should release an estimated time to get that reward. For what it's worth...we were looking over the Silver and Blue reward options last night and the SO wondered out loud how many accounts get the batting practice options (either actually batting or watching BP before a game). He didn't want to waste a high ranking on BP if only 50 accounts were going to get that award. So I emailed our rep last night and heard back today (clearly it's his offseason if he responded that quickly ). He said that in 2019, they had about 125 accounts receive the option to take BP, and about 150 accounts receive the option to watch BP. Also FWIW...we've been SSHs for the whole of this "early renewal reward" era and my favorite thing to date was the family play day, which we selected in 2017. You and up to three guests can play catch in the outfield, hang out in the visitors' dugout and the Brewers bullpen, and get a partial tour of Miller Park that (on our day) included the press box, Bob and Jeff's booth, the visitors' clubhouse, the Selig Experience and more. We had several hours to take all this in and only the ballpark tours were on any kind of timetable. Otherwise we were largely on our own. I was most taken with the Brewers' bullpen. The only restriction was the mounds were tarped. There were no employees even in the vicinity. I took a ton of photos: every motivational thing on Derek Johnson's bulletin boards (there were multiple boards), the Gatorade and Red Bull in the bullpen mini fridge, I had someone take photos of me stretched out on the bullpen bench (which is heated, fun fact). I even stopped in the bullpen bathroom - it's unisex! - though man, I drew the line at actually using the restroom. Despite its signage, it was a restroom clearly used primarily by guys. We brought my nephew (then 11) and his mom/my sister, but even without family along we would have enjoyed it. Would enthusiastically recommend. In 2018 we ranked the Bernie's Slide thing first and got it - I'm guessing because we have a lot of seniority as SSHs, because we definitely aren't huge corporate spenders. That's something I would do again too, but it was a lot briefer. We were assigned a 20 minute window on a weeknight in April for it, so no relatives could join us, so we invited Brewerfan veteran thablingster and his wife. We each got two trips down the slide and after the second slide for each of us they were like Welp, bye! It was cool and I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, but the round trip from Madison for a 20 minute experience wasn't necessarily the most efficient use of our driving time. For 2019 we selected and got the Yount autograph session, which again involved a lot of driving for a short opportunity, but a pretty sweet opportunity, because dang, we got to meet Robin Yount. For 2020 I'd consider the "watch a game with Brewers alumni" experience if I could find out in advance who the alumni are likely to be. Taking BP on the field makes no sense for me because I have zero baseball skills. The SO would enjoy it, but I'd be just standing around. I was pleased to see they're finally offering On Deck tickets as a Blue option. I'm mildly surprised they don't just give SSHs at a certain level or above (like 20+ games) free admission, for all the money we spend. I'd consider a Uecker or Yelich autographed print, but we honestly have only so much wall space in our house.

That flag repels me, because who wants a mashup of the ball-glove logo + Wisconsin's license plate design?! The apparent new ball-glove logo looks to me mostly like someone tweaked it for the sake of tweaking, which seems aesthetically unnecessary. I'm open to the possibility there could be some industry reason that would require a tweaked design, but branding is not my industry so I have no idea what that would be. Having lived through the shadow of the valley of the Motre Bame brand era, I'm mostly grateful the ball-glove logo appears to remain the basis of the new brand, and not something completely out of left field (pardon the pun). I don't think this means I live in the past; I have good memories of the ball-glove's primary era, but I have in-person memories of the early Miller Park era that are at least as good. I think the Times New Roman jersey font is bound to be on its way out. It's actually a weird font for a sports uniform, but it was OUR weird font, so I kind of liked it. Assuming they change the font, I hope they picked something relatively standard.

Ah ha ha. One of the ways in which our household flips gender roles is that the SO enjoys Hallmark Channel movies, has the app downloaded so he can keep track of all the premieres this holiday season (though he did draw the line at putting the premiere times in his online calendar). Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is the other network on board, so there are two sets of 24/7 holiday movies to keep track of. I can tolerate an occasional Hallmark movie - in part because of an online bingo card I created that includes many of the most common plot elements (and trust me, there are more than enough for a bingo card) - and I get that the world is arguably short on good news and these movies can be a valid escape. But holy crap, you guys, they're so formulaic and predictable, and already this season I've rolled my eyes enough to wonder if I will suffer retinal damage between now and the end of the calendar year.

We were there Saturday evening and there were still polos. It's an excellent event for people who wear S, M or 2XL, but there are a few things in between if you poke around enough. There are also some Big and Tall racks, which I did not peruse. I'd considered getting a postseason garment (mainly for the record, like Gyp above with the caps). The MKE and Let's get WILD shirts remaining were mainly in small sizes, and a third design wasn't very appealing to me. I did find a MKE hoodie in my size, which for a woman who's not a supermodel is no small feat. Sizing wise, I'm not going to 100% miss the Majestic era. Some whole product lines that I either usually see in the store or expected to see were just missing. One of my students asked me to look for a winter cap and there was nothing of the sort. That seemed weird since it's pretty much warm cap season, and there were some warm jackets. Other small lines like pins or headbands (I know, not the market for most of this board) were completely absent. I'm guessing they withheld some merchandise that won't be out of place in the new marketing scheme. If you have kids who like stuffed animals, and you don't mind the cognitive dissonance of stuffed parrots, frogs or rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?) with a ball/glove logo...you would be in luck for this event, as those shelves were fully stocked.

I have a Nats fan pal on Twitter who I think I just persuaded to send me a fruit basket if they go all the way.