Sunday, September 22, 2024

Arboretum Events 9/22

Gratitude Walks with Anna Finch

October 13th | 10:00-10:30 AM

Location: The Frances Plecker Education Center

Join Naturalist and Positive Psychology Practitioner, Anna Finch, on a brief but meaningful walk through the lovely arboretum grounds. You will be guided on a mindful journey filled with gratitude, heartfelt prompts, and questions to connect deeper to yourself and the natural world around you.

Bring a journal if you would like to reflect along the way and share with others if you feel comfortable in doing so! 


Harrisonburg Songtuary

Saturdays, September 21, October 19, and November 16| 1:30-3:30 PM

Location: The Pavilion

Harrisonburg Songtuary is a community song circle that seeks to propagate co-enchanting cohorts of contemplayful singers, sponsored by the Arts Council of the Valley and the Office of Creative Propulsion.

Sunday, June 9, 2024

June 8 Sports

Here are my next two Orioles season highlight videos, the first one starts with Gunnar's leadoff home run vs. the Yankees that we saw at Camden Yards and has all the highlights from the game we went to. And the second one starts with the conclusion of the Orioles Yankees series and goes through the series vs. the Reds, including John Means' absolutely sensational return to the mound.

#7:

#8:


That Mavericks alley-oop stat is absolutely insane!!!!!!!!!!!! They have almost as much as every other team in the playoffs combined!!!!


That is so insane Aroldis Chapman threw 104 again.


They showed this during the Orioles game on June 5, on that day in history in 1992 Mike Devereaux for the Orioles made this absolutely out of this world home run robbery!!!!



I found the dates for the Shenandoah Valley Track Club meets this year, apparently they're doing them at HHS right now:



Austin Hays for the Orioles has been killing it since coming back fully from the DL, it's so good to see. He started off the season struggling like crazy hitting like .100 before he went out with a calf problem, and after he came back he was only playing sporadically for a little while. But he's really gotten going recently. In the Orioles' first game of the series vs. the Rays on May 31, we were down 1-0 in the 6th and we'd gotten a couple people on a couple times but hadn't been able to score. We got 1st and 2nd again and Austin Hays came in as a pinch-hitter, and he drilled a single up the middle to tie the game!!!!


And then Mateo absolutely clobbered a double off the wall and suddenly it was 3-1!!!! 


And that's the score we won by. The next game Ryan Mountcastle and Anthony Santander went back-to-back, Mountcastle smacked two 2 run home runs, and we won 9-5. In the next game, the last game of the series on June 2, Gunnar smacked another leadoff home run!!


But absolute tragedy struck when Mateo was leaning over in the on-deck circle and Mullins' bat swung back and hit him in the head, and he went out with a concussion. Mullins made this incredible catch the next inning to bounce back:


We were up 3-1 but the stupid Rays scored 1 in the 7th and 2 in the 8th and we lost 4-3.

We left Baltimore after that to head up to Toronto to start a 4 game series the next day. In the first game, Austin Hays showed he is back by hitting his first home run in his last 118 plate appearances!! And then his next at-bat he smacked another!!!!


And we won 7-2. In the next game, Ryan Mountcastle, continuing being out of this world unstoppable whenever he's in Toronto, smacked a 2 run home run and then a 3 run home run to make it 7-0, for his 2nd 2 home run game in 4 games. Then Connor Norby who we just called up and had made his debut the day before in the first game of the series smacked a 2 run home run for his first hit in the big leagues!!!! 


That made it 10-1, which is how it ended. 

So going into the next game, we were 10-2 since being swept by the Cardinals and losing our two year long sweepless streak, the best record in baseball during that time. We were also first in the MLB in that time in home runs, runs, batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS, so we really bounced back.

Unfortunately we lost the next game when, after it was 2-2 the whole game since the 2nd inning, Isiah Kiner-Falefa walked it off for the Blue Jays. The next day, Cade Povich a promising lefty we just called up made his debut on the mound, he throws exactly like Max Fried. He started off really good, he struck out the first batter of the game and put the Blue Jays down 1-2-3 in the 1st, including getting Vladimir Guerrero Jr. out for the 3rd out. Unfortunately he smacked a 3 run home run off him later in the 3rd inning, and we were down 6-1 heading into the 8th. But Adley, who had hit a home run from the right side for our first run earlier in the game, smacked a 2 run home run from the left side to make it 6-3!!


It was the first time he hit a home run from both sides of the plate in the same game in his career. And then with two outs in the 9th, after Austin Hays got drilled in the ribs, Ryan O'Hearn came in as a pinch-hitter and with 2 strikes absolutely obliterated one to make it 6-5!!!!


It looked like we might be about to have an absolutely miraculous comeback, unfortunately that's where it stopped.

But the next day we went down to Tampa Bay to start a 4 game series vs. the Rays, and we won the first game 6-3 for our 40th win of the season!! For the third time in 6 games, Anthony Santander started off the scoring in a 0-0 game by smacking a home run, he has been absolutely on fire. After being in a big slump for a long while and not being able to catch up to the fastball, and looking not quite right at all physically, he is well and truly completely back, he was only hitting like .205 but now he's completely back to himself, that was his 4th home run in the first week of June and he is smacking hits all over the place. These are his 3 game-opening home runs:


So Hays and Santander are both completely back, now we just need Mullins to get going.

In the second game of the series vs. the Rays, Kyle Bradish was sensational once again, mowing them down and allowing only 1 hit in 6 scoreless innings, a leadoff infield single. We were up 2-0 in the 9th when Gunnar Henderson smacked a 3 run home run for his 20th of the season!!!!


That was also the Orioles' 100th home run of the season!!!! 

Then with two outs in the bottom of the 9th, Yandy Diaz hit a single for the Rays, only their 2nd hit and the first ball they hit out of the infield the entire game. That was all they would get, as we got the next hitter out and won 5-0. We are now 41-22, and after the Yankees lost the first two to the Dodgers we are only 2.5 back of the Yankees for 1st place!!

June 8

There's a relief pitcher for the Rays who went to JMU!!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_%28pitcher,_born_1997%29

I saw him pitching against the Orioles and they said about JMU. He grew up in Springfield, VA. Haha I also found his wife online, she's a doctor with an Iranian last name from Leesburg who went to Shenandoah University:




I really like the protest poem from 5/29, it's so good:

THE MEGA-GULLIBLE MAGA BASE,
THE DRUMPF’S MANY, MANY, MANY MANIFESTLY FALSE, OUTRIGHT, OBVIOUS VILE LIES, AND
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF AMERICA
The Base believe Tommyrot Lies!
They Swallow BS, supersize!!
They Heil a Loathsome Con!!!
Mistake Midnight for Dawn!!!!
Believe a Lifelong Liar—Why O Why?!?!!!
BAD!!!!!!!!!



This was a really good interesting article that was sent:



The giant melon-sized hail was so insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Haha this headline was incredible:



This was so insane!!!!



This was an amazing article that was sent, there are so many cool things on there that look like they would be really good to get for dogs, there's a lot of smart things that I didn't know there was exactly that kind of solution for things:

Saturday, April 27, 2024

April 27

1. So true:

"They're trying to get jurors killed. They keep trying to get judges killed. They're advocating killing protestors. They tried to kill the Vice President.

And yet we're overreacting when we say fascism. Ok then."

2.  Yeah you're right the Frankie Drake actress doesn't look as much like Sydney McLaughlin, but in certain pictures you can see how she does really look a lot like her too:


3. This was so insane and terrifying:


4. This was absolutely incredible and insane!!


5. This was so incredible too:


6. This was very interesting:


7. All of these pictures were really amazing, there was so much cool stuff in here:


    The sunflower is out of this world tall, I spotted the mistake on Robert Wadlow's height, the pink lake is absolutely unreal and unbelievable, I had no idea there could be square clouds like that, the picture with all the construction workers posing in the huge bank is really really mind-blowing, and I legitimately had no idea traffic lights were so big.

    I think my favorite, the most fascinating one is the pink lake. 

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

April 16 Sports

1. Haha this was the craziest day ever:

"NBA tonight:

— Celtics blow 30-point lead to Hawks
— Spurs beat the Suns without Wemby
— Wizards longest win streak in the East
— Rockets longest win streak in NBA

Happy March."


2. Adley Opening Day!!!!



3. These were all the craziest facts of all time from Andrew:

"Crazy Baseball Fact 

Vin Scully called a game managed by Connie Mack (born in 1862)

Vin Scully called a game pitched by Julio UrĂ­as (born in 1996)

That's 134 years of separation."


"Since moving to Oakland in 1968, the Athletics have the 6th best winning percentage (.514), are tied for the 4th most playoff berths (21) and are tied for the 2nd most World Series titles (4)"


"Seasons averaging 25+ PPG:

20 — LeBron James

20 — Jordan, Pippen, Hakeem, Isiah, Stockton, Bird, and Magic COMBINED" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April 16

1. Haha I stumbled upon someone on the internet pointing out this humorous birth announcement in a newspaper in 1914:

"Born, to Mr. and Mrs. Herman Richards on Thursday, April 23, a boy. Mother and child doing well. Herman may recover."


2. That is so cool that the Statue of Liberty used to be a lighthouse!!

3. Yeah 21 F is -6 C

4. This was so insane!


5. Haha this is incredible:


6. Yeah I knew competitive art used to be in the Olympics, haha it is one of the strangest and most interesting things ever

7. I read these, this is absolutely insane!!!!



8. Haha "Dear Mr. Donald, I hate you so much."

9. The fact that the last Civil War widow died in 2020 is absolutely insane, I had no idea that that was possibly possible!!!!!!!

10. "ON AMUNDSEN, SHACKLETON, SCOTT" was really good.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

March 19 Sports



    Hahahahahaha the headline to this is absolutely priceless

    -kareem top 10 skyhooks, it gets really epic near the end

    -kareem skyhook buzzer beater, it was magic's debut

     -the description under this video is really good

4. Brenan Hanifee, the Turner Ashby pitcher who the Orioles drafted back in 2016 who played on the same team at TA with and is good friends with a guy named Jordan I worked with at Ciro's, made his MLB debut last year!!!!!!! He made the majors, I had no idea. Apparently he left the Orioles system after 2022 and the Tigers picked him up, and that's who he made his debut for:




First pitch/at-bat:



Arboretum Events 9/22

Gratitude Walks with Anna Finch October 13th | 10:00-10:30 AM Location:  The Frances Plecker Education Center Join Naturalist and Positive P...