Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Baseball and Burger World Champs
| Last week and over the weekend you may have caught the Little League World Series on TV. For the second year in a row, the team from Georgia won it all. Last year it was the team from Columbus, GA, and this year it was the team from Warner Robins. Yes that same Warner Robins I fled from about 6 weeks ago. In all honesty, I have never had a problem with Warner Robins. As a city it suffers from an identity crisis. In the beginning the area was called Wellston, but during World War II, they renamed the city after General Augustine Warner Robins, who is considered by the Air Force to be the father of Air Force Logistics. Warner Robins is an Air Logistics Center, one of three in the Air Force, and as the name implies, they're all about logistics. If you want to know all about logistics, look it up on Wikipedia because after having taught it on the base since January, I frankly don't want to talk about it anymore. If you follow the link above, you'll also find what is one of Warner Robins' minor civic problems. Since they essentially went from a pit stop to a huge military oriented city almost overnight, the town didn't really "grow up" like most cities do. It lacks a "downtown." If you look at it on the map you'll see stuff scattered all over. For this reason, Warner Robins has a repuation for "Annexing" chunks of land for no apparent reason. Partly because of that, Warner Robins (AKA "War-Town") is one of the fastest growing cities in the state. Unlike Macon, their neighbor to the north, whose government seems to be focused on making everyone miserable until they flee the city. Like I did. For those looking to flee Macon, I feel it only fair to tell you that Wilmingon is nice. The weather's about the same but at least we have a beach here. But no Krystals. YET! (pssst, yea hear that Chattanooga?) Even though I no longer claim to be "from" middle Georgia, I still am very proud of the boys from Warner Robins. Watching the news and tons of newspaper coverage you can tell these 12 years old are, at first, just kids. They goof off quite a bit and have fun. There's a few picture of them sliding down the hill behind the baseball field after they wont the world champsionship. That's a kid for you. But if you saw their maturity during the game and how they ran to console/congratulate the team they beat, Japan, after the game, you realize they're young men. They did Warner Robins, the state of Georgia, and the United States proud. My hat's off to you guys! Now while we are on the topic of world championships, that leads me to The Krystal Square Off Hamburger Eating Championships. The qualifying tournament is already underway. Sonja Thomas has already secured a seat at the table with another amazing 51 Krystals. You can check the schedule from the link above to see when the qualifier will be coming to a town near you. Sadly, it wont be coming to a town near me. Another sad fact of life here in Burgatory.  As a side note, yes that really is my handwriting on the calendar, and yes my handwriting really is that bad. Thats why I type. But those who know me know that I also type very bad, too. If you look closely you'll see that the Square Off Qualifier in Atlanta the end of Sept. was looking possible, but then everything started pointing towards my triumphant return to Perry for the second year. In addition to the Square off being there the weekend of October 5-7, that is also the weekend of the Big Pig Jig in Vienna, GA. And when the Big Pig Jig comes to Vienna, that means that my fraternity will be having a get together down that way. We have an alumni who cooks at the Jig every year and he's kind enough to stuff us full of good pork barbecue. And by now you know how much I love pork barbecue. He doesn't even mind if I bring my own sauce, as long as I try a little of his first. A weekend of Krystals, barbecue, and fraternity brothers. That's hard to beat. As for the Square Off Finals, they are again in Chattanooga, the home of Krystals, and this year they will be on October 28th. That is a Sunday. That is not good for me! You might recall last year I made it up to the finals. In fact if you dig around on the Square Off web site, you'll find a crowd picture from the event. Around this time last year we were playing "Where's Jason" as people attempted to find my boxes around the southeast. Lets play another version of "Where's Jason"  Well if you glance at my planner above, or any calendar for that matter, you'll see that the 28th of October is a Sunday. Last year the Square Off finals were on Saturday. It made it tough for me to get there on Friday, but relatively easy to get home on Sunday. This year, it will be impossible for me to get home in time. It is roughly an 8 1/2 hour drive each way, and I have class the following morning. Unless the Square Off ended early in the morning, I'd have no hopes of making it back for class in any sort of shape to actually teach. And with the Excel test coming 2 days later, my students are sure to need me in top mental shape. I am rather bummed about not making the Square Off this year, as this will be Krystal's 75th birthday. Technically it is on October 24th, but that's close enough. I can only assume Krystal is going to do something major to celebrate. I wanted to be there to see it. I thought perhaps they could track down the little girl who used to dance on the table at Krystal and get her in for a dance for old time sake. Best I can figure, she's probably my age, but perhaps she's trying to put that episode in her history behind her. I'd rather Krystal NOT go track down Cowboy Bob and his toy horse for a repeat. Do you remember when Cowboy Bob was "running" for President? And what the heck WAS his horse's name? If you turn a Krystal a little bit it sort of looks like a diamond shape. At least in baseball they call it a diamond even if it is square. (And the baseball reference, my friends, is called a "throwback.") So maybe for a short period of time they could call them Diamonds instead of Krystals. "Small, Hot, Diamonds" OK, well maybe the marketing folks can make up something better than that. As you can see from my schedule above, it's getting rather packed. I'll give you the lowdown on all of that tomorrow. But as you may have noticed, my students have a Quiz tomorrow, so for now I need to run and get that set up.  |
Labels: Macon, Warner Robins
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Alright Mr. Professor calm down with the Warner Robins baseball team. Before you get sooo excited about them winning everything, I watched an interview of the coach.
The question was asked. "School in GA started two weeks ago, are these kids going to school?" The response from their coach:
"Uhhmmm, ahh, hmm, wellll, their school books are on their way to us. They will catch up." Obviously, for the coach and the parents, an education comes second to baseball.
Second: The "Where's Jason" thing was funny. I found you straight away, you big ole' goofy sommna'gun. But my prize for finding you was not what I expected. I was hoping for some sort of secret Krystal link. Oh, well.
I played one of these with a "where's Jesus" subject and at the end, when I found all of the Jesuses, I got a screen that said: I was saved! Just saying.
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The question was asked. "School in GA started two weeks ago, are these kids going to school?" The response from their coach:
"Uhhmmm, ahh, hmm, wellll, their school books are on their way to us. They will catch up." Obviously, for the coach and the parents, an education comes second to baseball.
Second: The "Where's Jason" thing was funny. I found you straight away, you big ole' goofy sommna'gun. But my prize for finding you was not what I expected. I was hoping for some sort of secret Krystal link. Oh, well.
I played one of these with a "where's Jesus" subject and at the end, when I found all of the Jesuses, I got a screen that said: I was saved! Just saying.
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: 7:41 PM
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