Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 9:00 a.m. in "The City." Yes, my loyal readers, even though fall/Autumn officially begins on Tuesday, my desire to stay in a nice warm bed is increasing exponentially. That, or I am just being lazy, Or maybe, it was due to my acquiescence to my age. Or... 

I spent some time in the kitchen yesterday making some vegan Italian meatballs which Mary incorporated into our dinner, so perhaps that was the impetus. Maybe it was the walk in the cemetery with the fur-children that used up my energy reserves. Or maybe, it was that I had once again decided to listen to the Cub's game on the radio last night. One of life's little mysteries I guess. 

I should mention that while I didn't wear my regular summer uniform yesterday, I did wear my new Michigan Irish Festival t-shirt. This was supposed to be the weekend we attended the festival in Muskegon, but due to the mishandling of the pandemic by you know who, the festival was canceled this year. Instead, as the saying goes, "Our family went on vacation and all I got was this t-shirt."

If you examine the pic of this model closely, you can see that the "I" is dotted by the Covid symbol. 

As I noted, we took the fur-children to the Lake Forest Cemetery for a walk, I didn't want to take along my camera, so our Senior Staff Photographer took hers. A good thing too, because we were in a relatively unexplored area when we encountered a family of deer grazing. While grazing deer are not unusual in the cemetery, the fact that we were out of the car and walking with the fur-children before we noticed them was.

Our Senior Staff Photographer snapped happily away and she got some great pix of the deer and of the nearby flora.

Although the deer were not frightened away, they were aware of the presence of the fur-children.

Seemingly, two generations or genders were present, as I saw the beginning of antlers on two of the family.

The cemetery provides some great opportunities for shots with contrast.

Same here.

It was time to head home and watch some TV and prepare dinner. The fur-children were torn between two options. They like to walk in the cemetery, albeit shorter distances for the Dowager Queen, and the chance for dinner, one of Gingers true passions. Dinner won out.

I fed the fur-children and as she cooked, Mary shared one of the fur-children's other favorite things, whole-wheat spaghetti noodles. The Dowager will eat either whole-wheat or chickpea spaghetti noodles, but Ginger, well you know how that goes. 

We sat down to watch some TV as Mary's secret recipe sauce simmered and teased the noses of our fur-children. I liked the end result, but Mary thought she could have done better. Each to his own.

As I said, I came up to the media-room and then to bed to listen to the baseball game. Sadly, only one of three outcomes was good.

The 31 - 21 Cubs had their five-game winning streak snapped with a 1 - 8 loss to the 32 - 22 Twins, who were elevated to post-season play with the win. Starting RHP Alec Mills, 5 - 4, gave up two early  home runs, but the Cubs had slumber in the lumber once again and couldn't mount any sort of comeback. The relief corps pitched terribly and the score became worse. 

Tonight's game against the Twins @ 7:08 p.m. EDT, features the stylings of starting RHP Yu Darvish, 7 - 2. The Cubs also lost one of their more solid relief pitchers, RHP Rowan Wick, to the IR with a strain of the oblique muscle. It is likely that he is gone from the post-season roster. 

My beloved, 19 - 34 Red Sox were never in the game, as they were pummeled once again by the 31 - 21 Yankees, 0 - 8. Today's game @ 1:07 p.m. EDT will see rookie RHP Tanner Houck, 1 - 0 continue his baptism of fire versus the Yankees.

The 22 - 29 Tigers took their game versus the 28 - 24 Indians, 5 - 2 last night. Many players stated that it was to honor the retirement of former Tigers' manager, Ron Gardenhire, who abruptly retired before last night's game, citing health concerns. He is just 62 years of age, but he is a cancer survivor who wants to put his health before baseball. Is that all there is to it? I dunno, but with the Covid-19 pandemic worries and his increased chances of illness, he was wise to go home. The Tigers will be under the guidance of bench-coach Lloyd McClendon to finish out the season, beginning with today's game @ 1:30 p.m., when LHP Matthew Boyd, 2 - 6 goes for the win.

Today, not much is planned and that's fine with me. I may watch some NFL football for as long as this season lasts. Or not. I will do more puzzle solving and more reading too. Mary will be crafting, reading, and cooking and I may go to the man-cave to drop off some furnace filters. 

The sun rose here @ 7:30 a.m. and it will set later @ 7:45 p.m. In between, we have a current temperature of 43º that feels like 41º due to the 4 mph winds. Today's high is forecast to reach 70º under sunny skies, before we dive down to 50º overnight. Ciao.