Spring Cleaning, Insomnia, and Gustavo Chacin

We aren't very good about keeping the places that are out of the sight of visitors clean (and when there are no visitors, we're not always too good about keeping the rest of the place clean either). When you have a dog that sheds as much as Junebug, that's not a good thing, but neither of us are particularly enthused about the idea of housecleaning (and I'm worse than Kathy). So yesterday I got the idea that we should clean our bedroom. I'm not sure how long it had been in a sad state of only getting minimal attention, but suffice it so say that much of the stuff we'd moved in there during last spring's renovation was still there, and still in the way (though we'd learned how to get around it). So before we had time to change our minds, we attacked the room, and it looks a lot better -- papers have been thrown out or organized, miscellaneous crap was tagged for give-away or yard sale, things missing for a while were found. I thought about providing before and after pictures, but I was concerned that it would be too graphic for any children that might accidentally show up here.

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Kathy was much happier last night -- there are times, particularly in winter (when she is prone to getting depressed), when she's unhappy with the house (among other things) -- it's too big, too gloomy, etc. The spring cleaning did away with that state, and she went to sleep happy. I, on the other hand, did not sleep well. It took a few hours to fall asleep, because, while my body and mind were both ready to sleep at 11pm, by the time Kathy was ready to sleep 45 minutes later, for some reason my mind had awoken. While lying in bed, I went from rational worries to tangents to vacation plans to upcoming events to irrational worries to long-term goals and back again -- my brain wouldn't turn off. It wasn't how I wanted to spend my night. Ah well, hopefully tonight I sleep well, though I have no doubt I won't be ready to roll out of bed when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning.

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With the start of the baseball season, fantasy baseball has gotten under way. So far I'm doing fine, but it's too early to matter (just like it's too early to think the Yankees could end up missing the playoffs). With fantasy, you have to keep an eye on players who come out of nowhere that could help your team, and last night, after his third excellent game, I picked up Gustavo Chacin, a starting pitcher who zipped through the minors last year after several years of mediocrity, and so far is pitching great in his rookie season. At least until last night most experts said he won't continue to pitch well (I haven't heard any of them since then), but last night he had his best game so far, in a difficult place to pitch. So I picked him up, and though it might be a bad move, my sleep-deprived imagination concocted a reason why he'll succeed when the scouts and others have consigned him to failure: he made a deal with the devil. At least that's what he says when he's interviewed. It got me to wondering what would be the response by the fundamentalists (and others not so extreme) if he actually said something like this. Would there be boycotts? Would his success continue unabated? If so, would journalists deny him post-season rewards? Would baseball intervene? He plays for Toronto -- would immigration deny him entry to the U.S. (for unstated reasons)? Who (if anyone) would come to his defense? Feel free to jump in here -- treat it as something that came up in our cyber-conversation.