Today, we celebrate Michael completing his 20th complete trip around the sun, using a photo of him surrounded by Angelina and Danny from last spring as we celebrated college graduations.
Tag / MDM
Fitbit XI – Week 11
The end of my quick trip to Dallas to see Michael helped keep me above 30,000 steps for the second straight week. The week got off to a good start on Sunday, finishing with 5200 steps after flying home from DFW. Going back to work on Monday left me 26 steps shy of 4000. A small increase on Tuesday put me 28 steps away from 4300. A day filled with meetings led to my worst day of the week on Wednesday, needing 24 additional steps just to reach 2800. A nice bounce back on Thursday had me 12 steps away from 3800. A night out on Friday to celebrate Danny’s new job pushed me up to 4600 steps. Powered by my first visit to Wrigley Field this season, Saturday ended up being my best day of the week, coming in 34 steps shy of 6200.
Total steps: 30,838
Daily average: 4405.4
Fitbit XI – Week 10
The start of the baseball season and a quick trip to Dallas to see Michael let to my best week since last July. The week got off to a decent start on Sunday, finishing with 4300 steps. Monday was just a little better, falling just 4 steps shy of 4400. Tuesday ended up being my low point of the week, garnering exactly 3700 steps. My last day of work on Wednesday saw my output jump up, coming 27 steps short of 4800. Thursday was Opening Day and my first trip to the renamed Rate Field pushed me up to 5900 steps. A trip to Texas on Friday pushed me over my daily step goal for the first time since February, ending the day with 7900 steps as we saw Michael’s dorm and did errands for him. A trip to the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth to see Clue on Saturday put me over 6000 steps.
Total steps: 37,007
Daily average: 5286.7
Spring Time
We start the second quarter of 2025, and kick off Michael’s birthday month, with a shot of him sitting at the dinner table last Thanksgiving. We also have a special appearance from Okapi okapi, Danny’s favorite stuffed animal.
Ballpark Tour: Rangers
With a little more than a month until the start of the 2025 baseball season, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we look at the Texas Rangers, a team you would think I would have visited more often due to its proximity to my father. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with the building originally named as the Ballpark in Arlington, the now former home of the Rangers.
Stadium Name: The Ballpark In Arlington/Ameriquest Field/Rangers Ballpark in Arlington/Globe Life Park
Years in Service: 1994 – 2019
Visits: 7
After spending their entire history at nearby Arlington Stadium, the Texas Rangers broke ground on their new stadium on April 2, 1992, and held their first game there nearly two years later, on April 11, 1994, against the Brewers. The stadium was known by the somewhat clunky moniker of The Ballpark in Arlington until May of 2004, when Ameriquest bought the naming rights. That deal ended in March of 2007, and the stadium was renamed again, this time to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Corporate money came calling again in 2014, when Globe Life and Accident Insurance Company purchased the naming rights. The stadium also features a Rangers Hall of Fame, which includes historical artifacts from the team along with visiting collections from Cooperstown.
I made my first trip to the Ballpark on May 22, 1998, to see the Rangers defeat the Royals during a visit to the Dallas area to see my dad. I returned in 2001 for two games, against the Tigers and two days later against the White Sox. In 2005, on my last trip to the area to date, I took in the entire four game series between the Rangers and the eventual World Series champion White Sox.
With Michael attending college in Texas, I should be able to add their new stadium, which opened in 2020, to my collection sooner rather than later.
2024: The Year In Live Performances
2024 was an exceptionally slow year for live performances, as I managed to get out just a single time to see a play.
At the end of February, Michael cashed in his Christmas present, and we headed into the city to see Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, my first trip to the theater since seeing Clue in 2022. It was, unbeknownst to me when I bought the tickets, a drag show, with gay men taking the parts of all of the characters. It ended up being a tad bit raunchier than the source material and it gave Michael and I a chance to hang together, something we haven’t been able to do much of since he got sick.
Here’s hoping 2025 has more opportunities for me to experience the live arts.
Never Brought To Mind
A new year is once again upon us, and with it, we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century. We kick off 2025 with the first photo from this year’s calendar, featuring Michael wearing Angelina’s graduation gown at Fair Oaks Farms prior to Danny’s graduation.
2025 Calendar
Now that Christmas has come and gone, we can unveil the cover to this year’s calendar gift, given annually to my mom and sister, and made up of pictures I have taken throughout the year. I imagine this will be the final edition, with both Angelina and Danny out in the workforce and Michael away at school despite still being mostly homebound. As in year’s past. the calendar was produced by the good folks at Shutterfly and we will unveil each month’s photo(s) on the first day of the month throughout 2025.
This year’s cover features all three kids posing prior to Danny’s graduation dinner at Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Indiana, with both Angelina and Danny in their respective caps and gowns.
Ballpark Tour: Twins
With the offseason underway, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we head north to the Twin Cities for a look at the Minnesota Twins. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with Target Field.
Stadium Name: Target Field
Years in Service: 2010 – Present
Visits: 2
After 28 seasons of indoor baseball at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the Twins moved back outside starting with the 2010 season when they opened Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. The first regular season game took place on April 12, 2010, with the Twins defeating the Red Sox. In 2014, Target Field hosted the All-Star Game, the first in Minnesota since 1985.
I took the long drive up to Minneapolis in the weeks after that All-Star Game, along with Danny and Michael, to see the White Sox take on the Twins. We picked two good games to see, as the White Sox offense came to life and they managed to win both games we attended against the Twinkies. We sat down on the first level, between home plate and third base behind the White Sox dugout for both games, so I didn’t get to sample the different areas of the ballpark, but I certainly liked what I saw. The one thing I didn’t like about the park was the configuration of most of the outfield. Between the large hitting background in center field and the high walls in left and right, there is a lot of dead space in the outfield that seems to put the fans far away from the action. Besides that, though, a good time was had by all, and I certainly wouldn’t mind returning one day.
Chestnuts Roasting
We wrap up the year with a photo of Michael working the jigsaw puzzle last November on Thanksgiving.