Friendly Confines

Today is Opening Day, and while the Cubs don't actually get to start playing until tomorrow, I find myself thinking back to my favorite major league baseball memory, September 1, 2003.

For my birthday, my wife had given me two tickets to the Labor Day showdown between the Cubs and the Cardinals at Wrigley Field. As a life-long Cub fan, this was to be my first trip to the Friendly Confines.

The forecast was gloomy, and on the drive from the hotel just south of the city to the Howard parking deck on the north side (where we would get on the L for the ride down to the ballpark), we dealt with a steady rain. While it seemed that the chances for a rainout were pretty high, nothing was going to stop us from at least walking through that venerable old stadium and gazing out at the field and the ivy.

The game was scheduled to start at 1:20, but as luck would have it, the tarp remained on the field for almost 4 hours. We were fortunate, though, as our seats were high enough down the right field line as to have some shelter under the upper deck. We sat next to plenty of friendly Cardinal fans (they do exist!), and just had a delightful time. In fact, those 4 hours seemed to pass by fairly quickly. Cheers would erupt from everywhere each time the rain let up, followed by the groans when the skies opened up anew. Still, the feeling was so electric, the fans locked in their seats or taking cover under the stands, you just knew that before the day was over, there would be baseball. And sometime after 5:30, the call came over the PA - the game would be played. Mark Prior then took the mound.

I don't remember all of the play by play, although I do remember a hit down the left field line by Ramon Martinez that scored Moises Alou and broke a close game wide open. Remember, this was back in the days when Mark Prior was a phenom, and Sammy Sosa was still in good graces and not yet implicated by the steroids scandal. Prior was on fire, and successfully shut down Albert Pujols for most of the game. I watched Sammy do his trademark run to the right field bleachers. Whatever your feelings are about night games at Wrigley, make no mistake - in person, Wrigley is simply stunning under the lights. By the end of the game, that beautiful old scoreboard displayed the final score of 7-0, and the W flag was raised on high.

In the end, we spent over 7 hours on hallowed ground, ate two meals, and witnessed some great baseball. And to top it off, by the end of the 5-game series that started on that Labor Day, the Cubs had moved ahead of the Cardinals in the standings and within a half game of the division leading Astros. The Cubs would go on to win the division, and come within 5 outs of the NL pennant before the inevitable collapse to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS.

Still, it is Opening Day, so I'll at least attempt not to dwell on the negative. Because that gloriously rainy day shines brightly in my memory. Cubs-Cardinals, Cubs win, 7 hours at Wrigley … almost heaven on earth. What a great day that was. Yes, I can feel it now: It's time for baseball.

A Rite of Spring

Life has more or less returned to normal in my house, now that the adventures of the adversely afflicted appendix have more or less come to an end. While I still occasionally get twinges of pain in my side (a sign of trying to return too quickly to the previous routine), these are but nuisances that haven't yet kept me from trying to fulfill my responsibilities to the weekly chaos that is our calendar. As many parents well know, the impact of such after school activities such as sports, scouts, piano, and karate frequently wreaks havoc upon a family, at least in the sense that family meals are all but impossible, and conversation is often reduced to "How was your day? Great, gotta go, see you later tonight."

One of these contributors to our schedule is an annual rite of spring - the return of little league baseball. Three nights a week, plus some Saturdays, I am out at the ball field with my son as his team works to get ready for the upcoming season. During the day, I sometimes groan inwardly about having to get home, get the kid fed and out to the ball field for an hour and a half or more of practice. But that all seems to change when I actually get to the park.

Baseball, as far as sports go, is my one true love. I grew up playing it, watching it, and dreaming about it. While I was never really good enough to excel at the game, those deficiencies did nothing to hinder the joy of being on the field, terrified and yet hopeful that the ball would get hit to me so that I could make a play. I stopped playing after the 6th or 7th grade, and when I entertained trying out for the high school team as a sophomore, I realized that I would never be able to catch up to what they were pitching. I would later settle for playing softball through college and the working years before the boys came along. It's been 10 years since I played for a team.

Now I watch my son play. And not unlike the movie Field of Dreams, at times something magical seems to happen when I step inside the gate to the field, to stand inside the dugout to watch the 8 year olds practice. Suddenly, I'm no longer worried about the day or how tired I am. Instead, I watch with both terror and hope at each fly ball that heads toward my son, simultaneously wondering if he will catch it or get smashed in the face. I will him in my mind's eye to get in front of each grounder, with the glove on the ground to scoop up the ball and get it to first on time. My muscles twitch instinctively, as if I was the one on the field trying to make the play. I watch as he takes his swings at the plate, longing myself to hold a bat in my hands and do the same. And I fill with pride, at the end of each practice, when my son complains that practice is over "too soon," and that he wants to stay on the field and play some more. That's the joy I feel, even standing in the dugout, unable (at least for a few more weeks) to volunteer my time to help the coaches. Am I living vicariously? Perhaps a little. But I don't care.

Just to be out there between the lines, running the bases, smothering a liner with an outreached glove, making the play - that is the field of my dreams. I do love this game.

Wizard Spam

Email spam is one of the many banes of our modern existence. In simpler days, we might have been inundated with USPS-delivered junk mail or telemarketing calls that while irritating, are relatively benign. Much more, we had the ability to simply hang-up, throw junk in the garbage and move on with life. Email spam, however, opened the door to enterprises of much more malicious intent, whether it be the introduction of viruses, identity theft, not to mention preying upon the unsuspecting with promises of, well, certain augmentations, cheap software, cheap pharmaceuticals and watches. Information technology, in particular many internet service providers, are keeping up with such trends with ever improving filters that keep such junk from getting to our inboxes. Every now and then, stuff slips through, but on the whole we are spared from much of the worst.

Yesterday, however, our IT director sent out a warning against the latest spam trap. The text of this indeed gives one pause, insofar as those of us who work as government contractors are sensitive to communication that purports to come from government sources:

Hello,

This message is to inform you that your email address was recently discovered to be sending spam emails to government computer systems. In order to prevent your email account from being deactivated we need to you to verify that you are in fact the owner. Please visit this site to verify that it is an active email address and not a part of spamming activities.

Your prompt compliance with this notice is appreciated. No action will result in your email address being disabled.

Obviously, there are lots of red flags in the text above that would tip a smart user off that this is a phishing expedition. Anytime you receive an email that says "please visit this site" to correct some grievous banking or identity issue with an account you may or may not have, you should avoid it. The link will not take you where you think it will. Further, basic common sense would have you think of how such people (say a bank) would actually contact you - most likely via phone or USPS mail. At any rate, the great thing about this particular example is not the body of the email, but rather WHO sent it:

Thank you,

H.J Granger, CPWP, CHP
Compliance Manager
HSWW Government Services

Innocuous, right? Just some other big government agency you've never heard of trying to get you to verify that you have a legitimate email address? Not this time. Because unless our beloved Hermione Jean (H.J.) Granger of Harry Potter lore truly serves in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (HSWW) Government Services division of the Ministry of Wizard Spam, I think we can safely delete such an email. Besides, Hermione, as the brightest witch of her age, can certainly do better than chasing wizard spammers. Although, she does like following the rules.

I haven't figured out what CPWP represents, but one can infer that CHP stands for something-Harry-Potter. Nevertheless, I had a great laugh last night, the kind of laugh that only a Potter fan (geek) can appreciate.

A Quick Recap Before Moving On

Over the last few days, I have debated whether I should write this post, trying to determine the value of revisiting the obviously personal events of the last two weeks. While I am certainly prone to speak my mind (and put words to paper as it were), I still value a certain level of personal privacy. Additionally, while I certainly do not want to over-dramatize my health scare, at the same time I would be remiss if I tried to minimalize its seriousness and severity. I am skeptical that there is much therapeutic value to retelling the story, although I must acknowledge the presence of some deep seated emotions that I'm still processing. In the end, I've decided to press through, if only to free up my mind to re-engage with outward-oriented topics.

My wife and I had been planning an anniversary getaway aboard the Disney Dream, a new cruise ship that would take us to the Bahamas the first week of March. My folks would come to watch the boys while we enjoyed some long overdue alone time together. It was not to be. Four days before departure, I came home from work with some discomfort in my gut. At the time, I figured it was simply some sort of a stomach bug or intestinal distress. Hours later though, what was discomfort crossed the boundary into substantial pain. Having had a friend recently go through emergency gall bladder surgery, I somewhat grudgingly decided that a trip to the ER was necessary. The attendants were nice, and the care was adequate. After an ultrasound and a number of other tests, the gall bladder, kidneys and whatever else they checked all came back negative, so they sent me home. Turns out, they missed something.

I ended up sleeping all day the next day. The discomfort did not decrease, nor did the pain. In fact, by evening, the pain became excruciating. I usually have a fairly high pain quotient - I may grunt a little bit, and my face may not hide how I feel, but in this case it was all I could do not to cry out - and I probably did. The epicenter of my agony had localized, and we made the call shortly before midnight to head back to the ER.

We found the same crew at the ER as we'd had the night before. Not only did they remember me, but I think it stands as my all-time minimum wait at the ER. In fact, after signing in, I never saw the waiting room again. They gave me some painkiller, and eventually wheeled me up for a CT scan. I remember very little after that, and what happened was related to me after the fact.

In short, sometime between ER visits, my appendix ruptured. The ultrasound didn't catch it. Even the CT scan was initially inconclusive until reviewed by the on-call surgeon. That surgeon put me at the front of the line, ahead of all the planned surgeries for the next day. The CT scan occurred around 2:30 am, with results by 3:30. I was on my way to surgery shortly after 5 am. According to the surgeon, who I saw every morning for the next 5 days, he not only had to remove my tattered appendix, but he had to clean up half a liter of gangrenous infection that had spilled out into my gut. While I do wonder if he was just trying to scare me into strict obedience to his recovery orders, he took pains to remind me every day of just how bad it was. I can only take his word for it.

I won't dwell much on the in-hospital stay. The first few days were very rough, but got better with each passing day. The care I received was more than adequate (lets face it, while not everybody has the same bedside matter, I have little to complain about regarding the care I received). I came home one week to the day of my first trip to the ER.

Recovery has been slow but steady. I'm still not up to full strength, and I get winded easily. I have not spent much time dwelling on all the negatives, though I do have to fight off those thoughts more frequently than I would like. My younger son seemed to absorb it all okay, but my oldest did struggle more than he originally let on. As I shared with him, (and thus counseled myself), the worst did NOT happen, God is always, always in control, and that while it's okay to be scared and even to cry, we can rejoice in the mercy, grace and healing that the Lord is providing even now.

I can only imagine if my appendix had ruptured while we were on the boat. But it didn't. My parents were already in route, and their timely arrival provided much relief to my wife. My in-laws were also nearby, ready to assist. We had trip insurance, so we didn't lose the money we paid for the cruise. So aside from the fact that I ended up burning a ton of vacation time for a decidedly non-vacation break, it is not an understatement to suggest that if this was going to happen, I am incredibly blessed to have had it happen when and where it did.

This is not to suggest that I'm clear of some of the more negative emotions. I'm still dealing with the after effects of fear and shock, as well as a bit of associated anger and bitterness. I regret deeply the scare I gave my family and my kids. I hate knowing that I'm heading back to work soon without desperately needed R&R. And my enthusiasm for returning to work is undoubtedly muted. I won't go so far as to say that this is one of those life-changing, perspective-altering events that precipitates some sort of intellectual or emotional crisis. But something is different. Maybe it'll pass once I get back to routine. We'll just have to see. In the end, I am well and getting better with each passing day. It is a far better thing to look forward, to be sure. And look forward, I will.

From Rupture to Recovery, With Love

Life took an unexpected turn last week, with an untimely adventure filled with pain, emergency room visits, and the eventual rupture and removal of my appendix. I'll be back soon with my usual witty and insightful repartee, but now is a time for resting and healing.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and well wishes!