So, if you’ll notice, M&M has a fresh look. I’ve had watermarks, as of late, due to some expired licensing on some of the images the blog designer used when I first started blogging, so my new designer suggested we just redo the whole thing to solve the problem and so it did! 

Also, Feedburner was discontinuing their email subscription service and I needed to have my email list transferred to another service before losing your addresses. Licensing, email subscriptions, web design- all significantly over my head, so Amanda from Cutest Blog on the Block helped me with all of my technical challenges and made it look really good in the process. Bless her sweet heart. 

So, if you aren’t receiving email notifications about posts and would like to, just enter your email address on the right side of the page. If you’re already receiving those, then there should be no interruption in service but if there is, just enter your address again. Also, there are links on the top right side to my Facebook and Instagram pages if you want to follow along there. I’m going to try to post more useless and meaningless stuff more frequently, so you certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on that. And now, this concludes the technical portion of today’s post. 

So, how about my Mississippi State Bulldogs winning the College World Series?? Is that something else or what!? I admit I’m not the avid baseball watcher. Unlike my son, I can’t tell you the scores from all of the 982 games they played this season or recall anyone’s batting average. As a matter of fact, if we’re being real honest, I find baseball to be painfully slow and, most of the time, just a little dull. I don’t mean to offend the baseball people, but it’s just a personality thing. I’m more of the impatient sort and require the constant action that football brings. But, while baseball’s not my favorite to watch, I do appreciate the skill it requires and I do so love Mississippi State! 

My brothers and I graduated from there. My husband and his brother. Our daughter and, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, our son will graduate next May. Our ties are strong and our love for maroon and white runs deep. Deep enough to make this football fan sit on the edge of her seat with a pounding heart for 3 straight nights watching baseball- which, I have to say, was rarely slow or dull. And anytime my precious home state gets positive attention of any kind, well, we’ll sure take it because it seems to happen so rarely. When we do make the news, it’s usually of the bashing sort, but we’ve learned to be ok with that. We know who we are and that’s all that matters. Those young men showed great athleticism and sportsmanship, this week, and they made our state so proud of the way they represented us. 

During my unusual baseball binge watching, I made some mental notations. 

-Men spit a lot. I never have gotten that. What is it that makes swallowing spit less appealing than spurting it out from between one’s teeth onto public surfaces? I’m sure my failure to understand is along the same lines as their failure to understand why we go to the bathroom in pairs. 

-I can imagine the mothers saying to their sons before the game- “Son, play hard. Give it your very best. Enjoy the experience. Take it all in. Represent God and your team well. And, please, for the love of all that is good, don’t pick your nose and embarrass your family on tv.” 

-If the bases are loaded with two outs and you’re up to bat, do you secretly wish it was somebody else’s turn? 

-Ball, strike, foul, foul, ball, ball, foul, strike, foul, foul, hit. This game seems the perfect fit for those who also enjoy driving slowly on the interstate, having their driver’s license renewed, and texting on flip phones in their spare time.  

-If you’re not from around these parts, you might have watched the CWS and been confused by the widespread misspelling of our mascot name. In case you haven’t noticed,  southerners like to shorten words. Some might even call us lazy in our speech. We shorten Bulldogs to Dogs and then put the southern spin to it- thus the spelling Dawgs. “D-ahhh-g” is a northern dog. “D-awww-g” is a southern dog. 

-Young people amaze me. Baseball for 50-somethings would definitely require a stool for the catcher and those wristband play cards would be an absolute must. Any sliding would be purely accidental and require emergency medical services. 

-The scratching and “situating” of oneself is generally considered to be a socially unacceptable behavior in the public square with the apparent exception of the baseball diamond where it is not only admissible, but expected. 

-The sweetest sound to TV sports announcers is clearly the sound of their own voices. 

-If you win the national championship, it doesn’t matter how bad you smell, people will still want to hug you. 

-No matter which team you cheer for, let us all agree that the whistling Vanderbilt fan is conclusively the most annoying human to ever walk the planet. Since we do not condone violence in any way here on M&M, I’d just say- bless his heart.