I heard the bat crack my name ... wait, that doesn't quite work: Today in Anticipation of Baseball Today

My upstairs neighbor is a lunatic and I hate her. She is constantly vacuuming up there, probably to clean up her goddamn gigantic pet macaw's shit, because I think it roams around loose. Squawking and screaming. I don't think it can talk, but it seems to be able to do a pretty damn good impression of Yoko Ono.

I don't remember hearing so much hubbub upstairs with other people, but with her, I can hear her talking baby talk to that thing all the time, and yapping on the phone, and listening to frickin WXRT. And I won't get into the ceiling-fan-shaking sound effects that resulted the last time a "special friend" visited.

But, as people like to tell me, That's Urban Life, Buddy! That's The Big City For You!

Welp, starting in March I can get revenge, because the Spring Training baseball games will start up on the radio, and I can play them real loud while I am washing dishes, so I can hear the radio over the noise of the faucet, like I do almost every day from April through October -- which I have to imagine might be pretty annoying to an upstairs neighbor, maybe.

Anyway, I know that it's NFL playoff season and the Bears are the belle of the ball right now, but we're almost midway through January, so it's only a little over a month until pitchers report for spring training. The Bears are going to be finished by next Sunday anyway. After that, it's all baseball, baby. Total monopoly on futility and pointlessness for the next six months. Until the Bears begin training camp in Bourbonnais in late July. Those are the sports nerd solstices: "Pitchers Report" and ... uhh ... I forget who shows up first for football training camp. Anyway, that's presumably an important date for some people, the beginning of football training camp. I wouldn't really know.