Blame It On The Rain

Okay, so I’ve given you plenty of ideas on how to keep busy until spring training without getting arrested (no, it didn’t cover all the way until the regular season).  I’ve also provided some etiquette reminders just so everybody remembers how to behave themselves when baseball gets back into a park near you.  Finally, I provided some instructions on how to prepare your #ManCave or #WomanCave for the beginning baseball season.  It seems that the only thing I left out was a list of things to keep your crazy little brains occupied during 45-minute rain delays.  Really?  Getting a little specific and demanding, aren’t you?  Fine.  Like Prince Fielder’s shadow, I’ve got it all covered.

1. Indoor slip’n’slide.  Don’t ask me about cleaning it up later.  If it’s raining at the ballpark, it might as well be raining inside your house.  If you don’t have an actual slip’n’slide, then get some garbage bags and lay them down in your hallway.  Use duct tape to hold them together.  Add water…..and jello.  Invite your neighbors.  All of them. 
2. Create a homemade rocket using whatever you have just lying around the house along with some Diet Coke and Mentos for your propulsion system.  Think of it as October Sky minus the coal mine and Jake Gyllenhaal.  Refer to yourself as a rocket scientist.  If you happen to be an actual rocket scientist, then you should already have everything you need.  If you aren’t an actual rocket scientist, then I recommend using a small funnel, a small tube, and something to act as a launch frame to guide the ball in the general direction of “up”. 
3. Record a “History of Dance” video for YouTube.  Make a baffoon of yourself. 
4. Challenge your neighbor to a tricycle or Big Wheel joust.  Best 2/3.
5. Balance the US federal budget, and eliminate the annual deficit by 2020.  Eliminate the national debt by the year……4000. 
6. See how many words rhyme with “orange”.  Alternatively, see how many large marshmallows you can fit in your mouth at the same time.
7. Hand write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a long time and miss dearly.  It’s a nice personal touch.  If you don’t know what to write, try starting it out like this:  “I suggest that if you want to see <insert-your-name> again that you leave $<insert-amount-here> at <some-random-location>. ”  Don’t sign the note.  Don’t put a return address on the envelope.  Also, wear surgical gloves when you do all this.  It’s all about that personal touch.  (Geez, I’m totally kidding here…I would never hand write this.  C’mon!)
8. Baseball hat + poker cards + coat hanger.  Position the coat hanger in different locations in the room and try to toss the cards through the hanger en route to the hat.  Keep score.  Hold a championship. 
9. Make your own parachute.  Try it out.  Use a ladder, a tree, or a roof.  Your descent will be slowed by yelling the words “I’m Batman” either before you jump or as you are falling rapidly to your doom.  I can’t remember which it is, but I’m almost sure it will help.  Sort of.  Not really.  It sounds kinda cool, though, doesn’t it?
10. Start a blog.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be a blog about baseball.  I’d happily read a blog about burritos…..or food eaten primarily with sporks.
11. Invite your neighbor(s) to bring a grill over.  Play “Iron Chef Cul de Sac” edition.  Make the secret ingredient something really fancy and expensive….like SPAM or lettuce.  Avoid common things like Kobe beef, white truffles, and 100 year-old bottles of wine.
12. Write a beautiful poem about how you’ve never even been to Belize or some other exotic locale like Alabama.
13. Play the “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game using only athletes who appeared in movies.  Brett Favre?  Dan Marino?  Derek Jeter?  Terry Bradshaw?  Go for it!
14. Go adopt an animal from a rescue group or shelter.  Don’t ask your WAG/HAB (wife and girlfriend / husband and boyfriend)  for permission.  It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission when it comes to pets.  Don’t tell them that I suggested this, either.  There’s no sense in them being angry at both of us.
15. Make a carpet angel.  If you have kids, then implore them to make carpet angels with you.
16. Change the sheets on your bed.  Proceed to make bed angels.  Don’t actually make the bed.  That serves no real purpose.  You are just going to unmake the bed later, unless you are some weirdo who sleeps on top of the covers. 
17. Try sleeping on top of the covers. 🙂
18. Try doing a Google search on something that will really bring a smile to your face.  I suggest something really fun like “Beltran caught looking foolish and completely stunned by Adam Wainwright’s curve ball and unable to move bat during 2006 NLCS clincher for Stl Cardinals” or “Brad Lidge and Albert Pujols star in ‘Somewhere Over the Train Tracks’“.  Alas, you can also do a Google image search on “Chris Carpenter bubble Carp“. 
19. Develop a really great excuse for something and plan to use it the next time you really need a good excuse.  “I’m sorry that I forgot to take out the garbage.  I was ironing my nose hair.”  “I failed to say hello, because I was distracted by my Google image search of “Chris Carpenter bubble Carp“. 
20. Teach your cat to yodel “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. 
21. Buy a bunch of Legos and build a miniature Busch Stadium.  Take pictures.  Alternatively, buy a bag of pea gravel and some chunks of asphalt, and you can build a miniature replica of ballpark village.
22. Do a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups.  Here’s a handy equation for how many you should do during a 45-minute rain delay.  TOTAL= [(AGE + (favorite player’s number) )/ 2] * 0 + 5.  Sooooo, 5 should about do it. 
23. Imagine that you’ve won $100,000 that has to be blown on the best family vacation ever.  Design your family vacation and the budget that goes along with it.  Opulence?  Your family vacation haz it! 
24. Practice your family emergency drill.  If you had 45 minutes to get your family out of the house and on the way to a safe location, what would you pack?  How would you pack it?  Where would you go?  Do you have enough gas in your vehicle(s) to get there?  Do you even have a plan?  Take your pets along.  Don’t be a jerkwad and leave them behind to fend for themselves. 
25. Sell something on eBay (like a really loud, annoying bird).  I’m not saying you have to sell a bird, but if you have a really annoying bird, and you have a really adorable infant who needs to sleep at night, I’m just saying.  (You know who you are.)
26. Eat 5 boxes of Girl Scout cookies.  Don’t even go there.  You’d do it anyway.  At least you can say that you saw it on a list somewhere on the internet, and that’s reason enough to do it.  Mmm, peanut butter cookies, Thin Mints, and those other ones, too.
27. Fire off at least 270 tweets in 45 minutes.  That’s something like a tweet every 10 seconds.  Go on a serious rant about everything you believe is wrong with the world.  Be prepared to lose followers.  Enjoy it.  It feels good.  Also, eat some Girl Scout cookies when you get done.   Ranting requires energy.  You need to replenish and hydrate. 
28. Create your own fake awards complete with fake categories.  Write everything down.  “And now the award for Most Pretentious, Hypocritical Tree-Hugger Who Deserves Flaming Poop in a Paper Bag Tomorrow……..My Neighbor Ron – the same guy who bought the hybrid car and still drives like he’s qualifying a rally car.  Congratulations, Ron.  Well done.  Close call on this one.  You just barely beat out your wife who is the same lady who insists that everybody recycle everything, even though she dropped $1500 on heavy duty lawn chemicals last spring.  Your lawn looks like a putting green at a crappy municipal course, and there isn’t a squirrel alive for a 50 mile swath downstream from you guys.  Nice work.”
29. Add a ringtone to your cell phone.  Pick something like the James Bond theme, or something from Mission Impossible or one of the Bourne movies.  The next time your phone rings, dive over something as you take the call.  In a very serious tone, speak quickly and explain that the call can be traced to where you are sitting at home, and then give your address. 
30. Put your superpowers to good use.  Change the channel to something like HGTV.  Don’t change the channel back until you are absolutely sure the game is back on, and don’t cheat on this one.  It won’t hurt you one bit to watch an episode of House Hunters.  Divine Design on the other hand may cause permanent damage, and so can Color Splash. 

TIDBIT:  I’m not completely kidding about #5.  The national debt goes up about $4 billion every single day.  I don’t care if you are Democrat, Republican, Martian, or Mitt Romney; that’s not sustainable.  Need some help grasping just how much $4-freakin-billion a day is?  Okay, try this.  The US gross national product is in the $14 trillion / year ballpark, so $4 billion is about 1 / 3500 of that.  If the entire US was a household making $70,000 a year, that would be like borrowing $20 a day every single day for a year.  That works out to $7,300 in a 365 day year.  Do you know how many burritos I could make with $7,300 / year? 

Like it?  How many do you think you can try during rain delays this coming season?  Follow gr33nazn on Twitter, and I’ll let you know how many I try!

Cardinals fan since I could hold a fishing pole steady. Accidental blogger. Opinionated. I could care less about what you think of me. Constantly confounded, bemused, and confuzzled (ie I'm a pc and a mac). I'm an IT infrastructure analyst with a penchant for breaking tech toys. I ate a sabermetric primer for breakfast. I love playing "All-powerful GM of MLB". The 2010 Cardinals represented a good, practical definition "cognitive dissonance". The 2011 version got by on duct tape and a prayer, and I'm fine with that. They just need new tape for #12 in 12.

Dennis

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