Festive Again

All the years that we lived in apartments, we did not have a real tree for Christmas.  One of the benefits was not having the care and upkeep.  No watering the tree.  We didn't have to anchor it to the wall because it was uneven in the tree stand. There was minimal clean up from the 'needles'.

There wasn't a ton of advantages to the artificial tree.  Yes, it was a tree but there was just something missing.  We use to buy pine scented air fresheners and put them in the tree to try and create the atmosphere but it didn't last that long.  Last year we got our first real tree.  It was wonderful.  Because of this, I feel like we can't go back to artificial tree.  Sure we don't have that special go out and illegally cut the tree down in the middle of the woods before any law enforcement people show up moments because we buy pre-cut trees, but it is great to have a real one in our house.  Every once in a while you'll get a whiff of pine when you walk by.  It can just bring back so many childhood memories of this time of year.

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Dec 7, 2018 at 6:47am PST

So, once again this year, we have gotten a real tree for Christmas.  And it is fantastic to have.  

Literary Mountain

Last night I finished reading the longest book I've ever picked up.  'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy is now sitting on my bookshelf after being read cover to cover.  I started reading it last year in December and it took me nearly a year to finish.  I did take some breaks from reading it.  If I had forced myself to just read this book, it might have been done a month or two earlier.  Being labeled as one of the great novels of all time it had always had my interest.  I've wanted to read it for forever, it just sat on my bookshelf for the better part of a decade before I read it.  It's daunting.

With over fourteen hundred pages it gives the reader time to grow to love the characters.  Unless that character is Pierre.  He is one of the main characters and dear god is he insufferable.  I just didn't like him at all.  Even from the get go.  The book kept going and going and I was waiting to start to identify with this guy, but it just never happened.  The rest of the characters?  Good, some even great.  Just not Pierre.

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I have done it! I finished #WarAndPeace. It was enjoyable. It was anguishing at some points. I loved and hated certain characters. It took me less than a year!

A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Nov 7, 2018 at 8:14pm PST

This isn't a book report.  Go read it for yourself if you want the rundown.  No more classic Russian novels for me.  One was more than enough. 

Deck Work

One of the great things about owning a house is that you can make any improvement that you want.  The one terrible thing about owning a house is that you have to do the improvement.  Even if you have a decent concept about how much time, effort, and money a project is going to take, there always seems to be a point when you look around and wonder why you would do something like this.  The payoff, however, is great.  We are very happy the way it turned out and cannot wait to tackle our next project.  Even if it is a small one.

A wonderful feature in our house is the back deck.  It is large enough to have our grill, a couple of chairs, and a few more things if need be.  It was in fairly rough shape though.  The paint was peeling in several places and needed to be redone.  We got help from both of our families at different points in this project.  That is another reason why it is nice to live close enough to family to have that network of support.  We are also a stone throw away from our neighbor's house.  One thing that my wife wanted to put in was a privacy fence on the deck to give us just a little separation from them.  As fun as it is to look right into their house, the fence just adds a little bit more to it.

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This is a picture of the deck after we got everything was stripped and the privacy fence was added.  

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Oct 29, 2018 at 9:07am PDT

The color for the deck turned out great.  We used this product called Deck Over which is suppose to fill in cracks and screw holes.  It is extremely thick and is the same consistency of pudding.  We joked that it looked like chocolate pudding and made us both hungry as we were painting over the course of a few days. 

Hot Take Recap

The 2018 Detroit Tigers baseball season has ended.  Sadly.  But also mercilessly.  Anyone paying attention knew that this season was going to be a bit of a struggle as they traded off any and all pieces that made them contenders in the past.  The fun thing about cheering for a team with low expectations is that if they do well for a stretch of games it feels like some grand accomplishment.  While the prospects the team is waiting for are still in the minors, we fans got to see some pieces of the future play throughout most of the year.  Guys like Jemier Candelario and JaCoby Jones played the majority of the season and both showed what they can contribute to the club going forward.  Christian Stewart got a quick cup of coffee with the club at the end of the season and showed off his bad defense and big bat. 

At the beginning of the season, I wrote a post with some hot luke warm takes.  I stayed conservative with most of the takes and didn't go too far on a limb.  When you are having fun with hot takes/predictions for a team that you know will struggle during the season, you can say things like Ron Gardenhire will get ejected seven times.  To recap, here are my ten bold predictions from the beginning of the year with what actually happened:

• The Tigers will go 72-90 (they went 64-98)
• They'll finish fourth in the division ahead of Kansas City (they finished 3rd)
• Jeimer Candelario will hit .270 for the season (he hit .224)
• James McCann will hit 20 home runs (he hit 8)
• The Tigers will send two players (Castellanos, Fulmer) to the All Star game (Joe Jimenez was the lone representative for the team)
• Joe Jimenez will end the season as the team closer and save 15 games (he had 3 saves and was the setup man the entire year)
• Dawel Lugo will end the season as the every day second baseman with Dixon Machado moving to shortstop (yes and no. Machado was DFA'd)
• Both of those predictions will happen because the Tigers will trade Shane Greene and Jose Iglesias before the trade deadline (nope)
•  Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez will both hit 25 home runs (lolz, no.)
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected 7 times (he was ejected 4 times)

Like I said, it's fun to do things like that so you can look back and have a good laugh.  The only thing that I came close on was Lugo being around and where they ended the season in the standings.  I look forward to doing this again next spring when we once again know the Tigers are going to flounder and we'll be there every painful step along the way.  

Moving On Up

When I look back at when I started to work in retail, one of the things I remember was thinking that it was not going to be a permanent profession.  Who grows up wanting to do this for a career?  This was back in 2006.  Fresh out of college and newly implanted in Wichita, Kansas I just needed money and a job.  Yes, my wife was working but I did not want to just sit around all day.  I went from October (2005) to February (2006) without work.  I was applying for jobs in the field I went to school for, history and museum studies, but could not find a job.  I couldn't even get a call back.  After the new year, I just wanted to find work.  So I did.  The rest, as they say, is (work) history.

I received a promotion earlier this week to a position World Market calls Lead Supervisor.  This is one step below store manager and for the most part is the person in charge of running the show on a day to day basis.  This is something that I have been working towards for the past year and a half.  The ultimate goal is to take that one last step and become a General Manager, but that is still several years down the road and honestly, I don't even want to think about that right now.  That is a large looming idea that will only distract from the now.  I have my annual hunting trip planned at the end of October, so this promotion is not going to happen until I get back from that. 

My wife and I joke quite a bit about how there are two of me.  One is the goofy, lackadaisical person that just kind of goes with the flow with whatever is happening.  The other is the professional me.  Whenever she comes in to shop around the store, the employees tell her how much they enjoy working with me and that I am constantly working on something or helping someone out with a project.  It is humorous.  I usually get the 'who are you?!' look from her.  She knows though.  All kidding aside, I do my best to keep everything professional at work but still have some fun.  The results are paying off.

The position will be at another store here in the Twin Cities.  It would have been great to stay where I am at now as this is the only store I have worked in, but that presents it's own challenges.  In order to develop myself into a more well rounded manager, I need to get somewhere new and different.  Is it optimal?  No.  I really enjoy working with the people I work with now, but it is time to move somewhere else outside of my comfort zone and familiarity and develop new traits and aspects of being a manager. 

Twelve is Enough

It is very common to have a conversation with someone about television shows.  It is even more common to discuss how quickly you finish a season of a show, especially with streaming options.  'I finished watching the latest season in a day and a half.' is a sentence that I'm sure most people have said.  The question I have is how long are these seasons that people are watching?  Is it a twenty four episode season that they are watching in one day?  How long are the episodes?  Because if you are watching a forty five minute long episode and if a season you are watching is twenty four episodes, damn that's a lot to take in during a short stretch of time.  Don't get me wrong, I binge watch here and there, but it's three or four episodes and I am done.  My brain reaches capacity for information.

And there are exceptions.  I binged my way through the first three season of 'Fear the Walking Dead' at a rapid rate.  Mainly to get caught up because the most recent season is airing.  Well, right now they're on a mid-season break (which is dumb, why does that exist?), but I am all caught up.     

I am currently watching season two of 'Jessica Jones' on Netflix.  It is thirteen episodes long.  A season you could watch in an entire weekend if you chose to.  I'm watching a two or three episodes at a time for a couple of reasons.  I enjoy the show so I want to stretch out the experience as long as possible.  I also want to ensure that I don't get to a boredom moment where I mentally check out on an episode and then miss something that is happening.  Streaming services make it too easy to watch the next and the next and the next episode.  It takes control to turn the t.v. off.

Another show that I watched is 'Arrow'.  It has been a while since I watched it after I finished the second season.  I like to jump around after I finish a season of something just to watch a new show and keep it fresh.  The problem with 'Arrow' is that the seasons are twenty some episodes long.  It is very daunting when you are starting off a season, especially when the episodes are forty five minutes long.  I like to finish watching a season of whatever it is that I am watching before moving on to the next show, so I have been very hesitant in starting the next season.  

A third example of a show I have watched is 'Frontier' (another Netflix original).  Two seasons have been released and each season is six episodes long.  That is almost too short of a season.  The nice thing about such a short season is that there are no throw away episodes.  No episodes that are around just to make sure that the season quota is met.  Each of the six episodes is carefully laid out and builds up the next one.  The problem is that you want the season to keep going.  You want to find out what happens next.  

Three different shows, three different season lengths.  So which one is right?  They're all right in their own way.  The main difference between the shows is that one (Arrow) is on t.v. while the others are exclusively on a streaming service.  With 'Arrow' the season is as long as it is, I'm assuming, because it is needed to fill the time slot and to earn money for the t.v. channel.  That is the nice thing about the streaming shows, it can be as long or short as the creators want.  The better the show, the longer the next season could be or the more seasons there can be.  I think that twelve episodes per season is just the right amount.  It gives time to develop both characters and story line without having to have an episode or two where you're wondering why it is even in the season.  Most shows have an episode like that.  You finish watching it and are left wondering why you even spent the time watching it.    

Slow Burn

I just recently finished watching 'The Terror' from AMC.  It was a ten part mini-series about an English expedition to find the Northwest Passage.  It was really well done.  The acting, the sets, the writing, everything.  As I was making my way through it there was something about it that kept me from getting really into it.  About half way through the series it dawned on me.  Nothing was really happening.  I mean, there was stuff going on, but it wasn't engaging.  It's like a movie that people say is almost perfect in every movie making technical way, but it's boring.  Like a Stanley Kubrick film.  Not the good ones.  Like Barry Lydon. 

The show did not pick up steam as far as plot points and action until episode eight.  The last two and a half episodes were amazing too.  By that point you're invested in the show, but you start to wonder why.  I almost gave up on the show.  I was giving it to the halfway point before making my decision as to whether or not to keep watching.  And then they threw in a huge plot point and hooked me.  All I kept thinking was 'why wait this long?'.  I understand that they need to have some episodes to set up character dynamics and story line, but it just felt like it took too long.  Is this just part of the new television and movie watching era?  If we do not have something resembling instant gratification in something we are watching, do we just give up on it? 

I don't think that this is a new phenomenon.  How many times have we heard people talk about shows where you need to get past the first season before the show starts to get better?  Or the first movie in a trilogy isn't that great, but the second and third ones are higher quality.  I've had that problem with books too.  'Oh, just get past the first one hundred pages, it gets better.'  WHAT?!  You need to hook the audience not make them wonder if they should be flossing their teeth instead.   

Deck Work

We have moved to the exterior of our house for our next house project.  When we first bought our house, we knew that the back deck was something that was eventually going to need attention.  Not structurally, but aesthetically.  The paint and stain was starting to peel within the first year, and it just got a little worse over the past winter.  Both sets of our parents, along with my sister and her kids, came out for a visit and helped with the project.  While the project is not one hundred percent done, the heavy lifting has been completed.  All that remains is the painting which can be done over the course of a weekend. 

The first steps were taken at the beginning of the month.  We stripped away all the old paint from the planks, but struggled to decide what to do with the spindles that lined the deck.  We eventually determined that it was going to be much easier to remove the spindles, there were only two screws per, and sand the paint away.  Over Memorial Day weekend, my in-laws came into town.  We had plans to make some decent progress, but Mother Nature had other ideas.  The entire time that they were here we were in the midst of a mini heat wave.  It was topping out in the mid to high 90s, with heat index topping 100.  Because this project is something that we can take our time on, we did not feel rushed to work on it.  We got everything removed and stripped a good number of spindles, but it was just too hot to do anything.  I mean, why would you exert yourself on a project that does not need to be completed quickly?

This past weekend, my parents and sister came out and we finished the most difficult part of the project.  We built a privacy fence on one side of the deck.  We are extremely close to our neighbor's house.  In fact, their driveway butts right up to our property.  So it will be nice to be able to sit on the deck and not look into their living room or back den.  It ended up running the length of the deck (about eight feet) and is about seven feet tall.  We also replaced the lattice work that was on the bottom of the deck.  The previous owners just placed cheap white plastic lattice work around the edge and it looked terrible.  Over the course of time, the white plastic took on a green hue from all the grass being cut.  With the paint, we hope to avoid that. 

The last things that we have to do are reattach the spindles and paint the deck.  We bought it at the start of the project and that is what got the ball rolling.  It needs two coats and needs to be painted when there is no rain in the forecast for two or three days.  This is the most difficult part because not only do we have to work around the weather, we have to work around our work schedules.  Not having every weekend off will make this last part very difficult.  The nice thing is that all the hard work is done and we can still use the deck.  It'll just look incomplete until we have time to paint it all. 

New Closet

We have finally tackled another house project.  This time it was the closet in our main bedroom.  Not all home improvement projects are awe inspiring.  They aren't all new kitchens or living rooms.  Sometimes they are just boring small corners in a room.

 Here's the before:

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There was a lot of wasted space.  The shelves on the left side of the closet were pretty useless mainly because they were so small.  You could put just a handful of folded up shirts or pants on them.  And it wasn't exactly installed well.  One support bracket in the middle of the shelf across the back.  The back shelf also consisted of two cut shelves with a joiner bracket.  The shelves on the left were also supported with what can only be described as a cheap stripper pole.  So....just not good.  It's like they threw it together quickly as a fix for something.  

And now the after.

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Same type of shelving as before, but we wrapped the shelves around the top.  It utilizes what little space the closet offers.  We also added a second horizontal bar on the left side of the space.  A fresh coat of white paint made the closet brighter as well.  This could have been done over the fall or winter, but we were just too busy.  Plus, spring time kind of feels like the right time to do home improvement things for some reason. 
  

Merciless

This past weekend, we got our largest snow fall of the season.  It's the middle of April.  We got close to twenty inches dumped on us just after the snow from the actual winter was starting to melt away.  It was a weird random storm that just popped up and crushed everyone's dreams of the start of Spring.  We had a few days of mid forties weather.  The sun had been out.  What remained of the snow was that nasty grey stuff that everyone hates but are deep down happy to see because that means that Spring is just around the corner.  

As the snow accumulated throughout the day on Saturday, I kept looking out the front window and wondered where this was at the start of Winter.  Sure we had snow, but it was definitely late arriving.  When you think of Minnesota in December you automatically start to think of huge snow banks and kids sledding and canceled school.  At least here in the Twin Cities, it was cold no doubt, but the snow just didn't seem as bad as it was a few years ago.  At Christmas time, there was just enough snow on the ground to make it feel like winter.  There wasn't much of that magical Christmas feel to it.  

When you look at a calendar and see that it is April and then take a peek outside and see close to two feet of snow fall over the course of a weekend, it feels like a merciless winter.  As much as I love winter, it left a defeated feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I thought that I was done shoveling snow until later in the year, but I had to go out a couple of more times to clear the driveway and sidewalk.  It wasn't that nice light snow that you occasionally get either, it was heavy and wet.  The kind of snow that hurts your back after shoveling it for an hour straight. 

But still, when I looked to our front yard and saw that smooth clean look of freshly fallen snow, I still had a thought of how beautiful it looked.  I didn't shovel the front walk until Sunday afternoon, and every time I looked out the front window Saturday night, the snow brightened the evening.  It reflected the moonlight and the street lights.  It reminded me of why I love the winter so much.  Even if it was the middle of April. 

Slogging Through

At the end of December I made both the smartest and dumbest decision I have made in quite a while.  I decided to tackle one of the longest most in depth novels ever written: War and Peace.  I say smartest decision because it is such an engaging book.  There are such wide swings in topics in the book that it feels like at times I'm not even reading the same book.  I also say it is the  dumbest decision because it is such a long book.  Everyone knows that.  I have taken one small break in reading it just because I needed to read something different.  It was like a palate cleansing. 

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It has taken me just about four months to get 671 pages of my copy.  It is 1444 pages.  Still a long way to go.  My goal is to get through the book before the end of the year.  As it stands, I should be finishing up with it some time in October.  I have been getting through the book seemingly in twenty page chunks.  There are times when I can only get through ten pages and other times I look and I've read twenty five or thirty.  It all depends on the writing.  

Let's Get Bold

Around this time each year, I feel like this blog turns into a baseball-centric blog.  I get that itch to watch this sport that I love.  Today is Opening Day across the board.  Well, mostly.  The Tigers game has been postponed due to rain, but there are still plenty of games to watch.  The Twins game is on later this afternoon, so I'll still hear the crack of the bat and the thump of the glove.  We all know the Tigers are rebuilding, but that doesn't mean we can't be excited about the team.  There is less pressure to win a lot for the team.  Most everyone has come to terms with what the Tigers are doing.  So I get to have a little fun with some predictions for the Tigers.  I no longer have to wonder if they're going to win the division or make it past the first round.  For now anyway.  So here we go.

10 Bold Predictions for the 2018 Tigers season:

• The Tigers will go 72-90
• They'll finish fourth in the division ahead of Kansas City
• Jeimer Candelario will hit .270 for the season 
• James McCann will hit 20 home runs
• The Tigers will send two players (Castellanos, Fulmer) to the All Star game
• Joe Jimenez will end the season as the team closer and save 15 games
• Dawel Lugo will end the season as the every day second baseman with Dixon Machado moving to shortstop
• Both of those predictions will happen because the Tigers will trade Shane Greene and Jose Iglesias before the trade deadline
•  Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez will both hit 25 home runs
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected 7 times

 

So Your Team Is Terrible. Now What?

As a way to cope with the fact that the Detroit Tigers are going to be terrible for the next few years, I have been looking for reasons to be excited about the team.  This is something that the fan base hasn't had to deal with in over a decade, and I'm sure that other fans have dealt with this.  When we lived in Kansas, Royals fans were desperate for something resembling a winning team.  That didn't happen until we moved, but I remember some co-workers being excited about the minor leaguers that they had in the farm system.  Those minor leaguers are the ones that led the team to the World Series.  So that was cool.  

• Find a different team to watch for a couple of years.  Here in Minnesota, the Twins are starting to become relevant.  At least within the division and in the Wild Card.  They won't go much further than that, but at the very least they'll be playing meaningful games throughout most of the season.  It is difficult to deal with the fact this team is within the same division as the Tigers, but they're going to be on my television.  

• Dive into the farm system.  The farm system is the future.  There is still a ways to go for the fans to be excited about the players in the system, but it's the future.

• Relive the glory days.  This is a dangerous practice because when you actually see the record that the Tigers are going to have this year, it'll cause brain hemorrhages.  If you want to live in a nice little bubble, go nuts.  Only for those who are not ready for the fact that your favorite team is going to be struggling through the year.  

• Just suck it up and deal with it.  Embrace the pain and self hate you will deal with when watching a team struggle.  It'll make you bitter and angry, but you'd come out just fine.  It'll make the future, when they win more than seventy games, that much brighter.  

• Go watch a game in person.  Whether it is at the major league level, AAA, or some random independent league go to the ballpark.  Embrace the experience.  Get outside and enjoy the weather.  The sounds of the game, the smell of the ballpark, the warmth of the sun on your face can make you forget about how your favorite team is sitting in the basement of the division.  

A 6th Option

While my mind is on the Detroit Tigers, I thought of something the other day that makes me wonder if it would be a smart move.  In an effort to put less stress on the arms of the current pitching staff, would it be advisable to move to a six man starting rotation?  By all accounts, the prospects that the Tigers have won't be ready until 2019 and 2020.  And in some cases, even as late as 2021.  That is two, three, and four years that the pitchers will have on their arms for throw away seasons.

Teams work with a five man starting rotations.  During the course of a season, on average, guys are making about thirty starts.  The work horses of a team, the top two guys, will throw two hundred plus innings.  The magic number for a starting pitcher each game was once one hundred pitches.  Absolutely there are going to be games that a starter gets pulled early or could throw seven or eight innings.  There are going to be games when he is efficient with his pitches and games when he will struggle.  If you look at an 'average' year and called it thirty starts, one hundred pitches per start, and two hundred innings, that is three thousand pitches on a guy's arm.  I know it is not an exact science, and there are always going to be disabled list stints ans skipped starts.  For the sake of this argument, if you take just the top two guys (in the Tigers' case Michael Fulmer and Daniel Norris) that is a ton of mileage on your future rotation anchors for years that mean nothing.  By 2021, that can be close to nine thousand pitches thrown. 

IF, by chance, the Tigers wanted to do something crazy and throw in one more pitcher into the rotation, that could have a great impact on the guys that are up in the MLB right now.  A sixth man would drop an average year from thirty starts down to twenty five (again, a basic average).  That is five hundred fewer pitches each year.  Not only is it fewer starts and pitches each year, it is also an extra day rest and recovery.  Saving these arms for when the younger players are ready to make an impact could make the difference when it comes to a playoff run.  I know more goes into a starting pitcher's year than basic numbers I just happen to throw out, but can you imagine a pitcher's career being elongated one or two more years just because of something small like adding one extra starting pitcher for just two or three years. 

Would something like this work?  Most starting pitchers condition themselves to be ready to throw every fifth game.  Would changing your routine by one day make a difference?  Could these guys adjust to something like that?  Another idea that has been floated is 'bullpening'.  The main idea is that starters go three or four innings then the game is turned over to the bullpen.  Some teams are starting to build super bullpens where they add shut down guys.  It use to be a team would have a guy for the 7th, 8th, and 9th inning in a set role, now you see relief pitchers in all kinds of different innings.  Yes, this would limit starter's innings, but if they know that they are only going to be out there for four innings, won't they just go out and throw as hard as they can?  Empty the gas tank as it were.  I think the idea of bullpening is maybe a little more dangerous to the starters because of that.  They'll throw harder in a shorter period of time than they would if their starts were longer. 

Maybe we'll see a team here and there try something like this for a short period of time.  Maybe coming out of Spring Training there are a couple of guys fighting for that last rotation spot and the manager wants to see them duke it out for a few more weeks.  However, I don't think this is something that will catch on.  It wouldn't last all season.  I like any idea that could help preserve someone's career whether it is having a six man rotation or a super bullpen when relievers are coming out in the fourth inning.  If a guy can go out there and throw for one more year because he has pitched fewer innings in the past, wouldn't an idea like this be kind of worth it?  Besides, all it takes is one pitch for a man's career to be over.

A Difference in Terribleness

The next three or four years are going to be terrible if you are a Detroit Tigers fan.  Last year marked the end of an era.  They started the full rebuild process.  Well known players were shipped away and in return guys who won't sniff the MLB for another three years.  It's tough.  It is tough to give up on the level the Tigers have been at for the past ten or eleven years.  Coming to grips with how bad the Tigers are going to be for the next few years is going to be easier than when they were bad in the early 2000s.  For the main reason in that the future is bright.  Kind of.

The one main difference between the two terrible teams is that the 2018 Tigers are going to be launching off point for the future.  Yes, over the next two or three years the Tigers are going to be losing close to 100 games a year.  A good year will see them lose maybe 90 games.  This is not a positive outlook, I know.  The prospects that the Tigers got last year are so young and raw that they aren't on many peoples' radar.  It could be that they end up being just average players, but they could also be borderline stars.  They might just be what we fans are looking for.  They'll be labeled as the 'blue collar, lunch pail' guys that the city of Detroit will embrace.  This is how the Kansas City Royals did it.  Talented players but not super stars. 

The early 2000s Tigers were just bad.  There was no hopeful future.  Thanks Randy Smith.  It wasn't until Dave Dombrowski came in and started trading away prospects to get big name players that they started to get better.  They went out, they spent, and they are living with the contractual obligations.  The end of Victor Martinez's contract and career is dragging on the organization.  That'll be over after this year.  Same thing with Miguel Cabrera.  We all love Miggy, but it is getting close to the end of his career and he isn't who he use to be.

The times have changed though.  The days of seven and eight year, hundreds of million dollar contracts, for the Tigers at least, are done.  The young players are going to be around just long enough to get the Tigers back into the top teams.  Then, when free agency rolls around they'll leave to a team like the Red Sox or Yankees or Dodgers if they're good enough.  This is how baseball is now.  You develop the talent, use them to make deep playoff runs and then when it comes time to pay up big time, there are only a few markets that can oblige them.  Then it is back to square one.  This is where the Tigers cannot falter.  They cannot let up on drafting and developing young talent because as soon as the prospects they got last year are gone, the next group has to be ready for the Show.  This is what needs to happen in order to sustain long runs in the MLB now.  

Healthy Cost

It seems like every once in a while I get this idea in the back of my head that I want to exercise and be healthy.  It's a dark, terrible thought as I enjoy coming home from work and doing nothing.  It is usually in the winter months when it gets dark outside early and we spend so much time in the house because of the cold.  Around the beginning of the year, I looked into a couple of local fitness centers and the YMCA that are close to us.  It should not come as a surprise, but exercising is expensive.  I was just curious about the cost and was honestly taken a little aback by it. 

I understand that the costs go into paying employees and the upkeep of the facilities and all that, but goddamn.  A membership for two adults at the local YMCA is just under $120 a month (or $70 for individual membership).  There are also facilities like Anytime Fitness, Snap Fitness, LA Fitness, etc. in the area.  Memberships ranging from $30-$50 dollars depending on the company.  That is just from a quick search of prices.  Who knows if there are any fees for registration or monthly dues.  Are those a thing?   

We could afford any of these places, but it would be something that we would have to budget out.  We are just getting over the fact that we replaced the furnace a few months ago.  Personally, it was a bit of a shock to see the prices.  Not a 'find me a fainting couch' type of shock, more of a 'huh, I was not expecting that' type of shock.  Like I said, I totally understand the reason for the prices.  It would be just as easy to go out and buy a bike and exercise that way or find some walking paths at local parks.  On the other hand, walking and biking during the winter months do not sound quite so fun. 

Being motivated to get out of the house and exercise is tough.  My thought is if I were putting money on a monthly basis towards a facility, I would want to get out and use it.  I'm paying for it, you know?  Wouldn't want to be wasting the money on something I don't use.

Classic Read

A little over a month ago, I made both a terrible and wonderful decision.  I picked up 'War and Peace'.  I got this book when I was in either high school or college.  I tried once to read it.  In fact, there was still a bookmark on where I left off.  I was a little over half way through when I gave up.  The copy that I have is 1444 pages long.  I started reading on 20 December and it is now 29 January.  So far, I am 323 pages in.  

A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Dec 20, 2017 at 8:15pm PST

I am a notoriously slow reader.  I feel like getting through fifteen to twenty pages a night is a wonderful progress.  There are spans in the book that read quickly others that are slow and extremely detailed in writing.  Tolstoy spends three pages describing a room with two people in it, but will only use up three paragraphs to describe an entire battle sequence.  It's weird.  The goal I have set for myself is to have the book read by 20 December 2018.  I am giving myself an entire calendar year to get through the book.  Should I have it finished by then?  Probably.  But you never know.  

Reboots

I fail to understand where the need to reboot or rehash old television shows.  I also feel this way about movies.  I mean, how many times are we going to see Spider Man redone?  You can only retell a story so many times before it just loses it's appeal.  I like to see expanding or continuing stories, but not for shows that have been off air for fifteen years.

Off the top of my head, here's a list of shows that at one time were off air but now are back on or coming back on:

• Hawaii Five-O
• SWAT
• Will & Grace
• Rosanne
• The X-Files
• Mad About You

Reboots are the new spin offs.  It use to be, and in some cases still is, that if a show is successful you would see a spin off show.  All the (terrible) CSI and NCIS spin off shows.  All the (redundant) Law & Order spin off shows.  It isn't anything new or exciting whether it is a spin off or a reboot show.  It's just a new way for creators to make more money.  Which, good for them, but it isn't exciting for the viewers.  Reboots have a sense of nostalgia for the viewers.  They bring back memories of how great shows were when we first watched them.  However, if you are a new viewer to a show, what do you do?  Do you go back and watch the old show first?  Do you need to know the characters and their intricacies or can you just jump right in? 

That is why seeing original content from streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) is great right now.  Especially because they can have better content and aren't restricted by the censors of network television channels.  Television executives are handcuffed by censors which might be why they just keep re-upping these shows.  Don't get me wrong, I watch both streaming shows and television shows.  It's just that television shows don't have anything new.  No new subjects to cover.  No new styles of shows.  How many cop/fire/ambulance shows do we actually need?  How many hospital shows do we need?