i have a lease return on a 2024 EQS SUV in 3 months. i got it as a demo with 4,000 miles on it.
i unfortunately need to replace the tires now. mine are bald. what tires can I get that are acceptable to return it with and do they have to be done at the dealership?
My daughter signed up just before the deadline for AAA softball and it looks like they will waitlist here….basically she wont be able to play. Can she apply for a waiver, and is that an easy decision? How quickly are waivers approved? Would this affect her ability to play all stars next summer?
I am a ‘79, but have a ‘74 and ‘72 sister, so I have lots of Genx tendencies.
My 9 year old daughter got a retainer today, and it’s this tiny film of plastic that fits around her teeth almost like a clip. Super tiny and sleek.
She asked me about my retainer, which I lost in a flood a few years back. But good Lord, my wife still has hers, and she brought it out of the little case to show my daughter.
Remember when we used to learn about gangrene and the Civil War and like amputations and crazy doctors from the 1800s that did barbaric shit in the name of medicine?
That’s how my daughter made me feel as she reacted to my wife’s old-school retainer with the metal ring and the big ass red/pink plastic inside that went onto the roof of your mouth.
That’s it. She’s right. We lived in a barbaric, low tech world and it took my daughter who is 37 years younger than me to make me feel like I am 147 years old.
It drives me nuts. My daughter is a very cerebral kid, and her second at bats are always higher quality than her first. Her first at bats are good, too, it’s not like she is buried in the lineup. But she is scoping out the pitcher, figuring her out.
Anyway, it drives me to drink that when she lets a strike go by in an at bat coaches are like “you gotta swing” all panicked and hot. my kid is turning her head and watching it into the glove…..unless she is getting absolutely gassed, which has happened on occasion.
Dude, let the girl see the pitch, figure out her pitcher and work the at bat. She knows exactly what she is doing. Was that the best pitch she was gonna see in the at bat? Maybe. But her contact rate is very high, her strikeout rate low and her OPS is 1-dot, so just let her be.
Rant over.
So, this is a semi long story, but nothing crazy. I grew up playing tennis in Florida, and developed a rivalry for the Bollitierri kids I played in tournaments. I have only played 2 tournaments there, and both times I puked in the third set. Something about that place....
Anyway, I still live about an hour away, and my daughter plays a sport, and we decided to send her for a week down there so she could know what is our there, because, well, I never knew what was out there. She's lucky, I won't make it a habit, but i want her to know that a place like that exists.
And what exactly do I mean by that? Well, I mean, like the Disney World of elite athletics. Sure, there are people like my daughter who pay to go there, but that there are places like Bolletierri's (now IMG) are a testament to a crazy coach and a few awesome athletes.
The entire time I walked the campus, it was like going to see the White House or like the London Bridge or something. It was a bit of a pilgramage, a bit of a "wow this place sure looks different" 30 years onward, and just something I really wanted to experience.
All I could think about is it all existed because of some gifted kid from Las Vegas and a red-head from Brooksville. If Courier -- and really Agassi -- never realized their potential, this place would have never existed. It may exist in some form elsewhere, but the Disney world of sports training would not be in Bradenton, Florida.
That thought kept crossing my mind. As I walked out of the exit lobby, though, I saw a big matted photo on the left-hand wall and it caught my attention. There it was -- and there was the 5 faces smiling back at everyone as they leave, a bunch of kids with a coach.
I knew Agassi, I knew Courier, I knew Bolletierri -- like I don't know them, but I know of them. I saw the other guy at the end, and I said "That guy is David Wheaton" and then I saw the other guy -- the first guy in the photo -- and I said, "Holy Cow, that's Martin Blackman."
I was dumbfounded -- not because Martin didn't deserve to be in the photo -- but because I knew Martin for a summer, a summer back at the turn of the century when I crashed on my best friend's couch in Washington DC and I trained with him all summer long. And his new coach was Martin Blackman, and he was the nicest guy in the world.
The guy was so smooth on the court, and I remember just a few years earlier looking at a Kalamazoo book from like 1987 and knowing Todd Martin, and Pete Sampras and Michael Chang and a few other guys, and not knowing who Martin Blackman was.
Martin was a great player -- trust me, the little he did hit, it was so smooth -- and he always said he roomed with Wheaton and was buddies with those guys in juniors.
So, here I am, in awe of what Bolletierri's has become, and dumbfounded by the fact that when I was 20 years old, I got to work with one of the foundational blocks of that place, of what it became.
I must say, I can't stop thinking about it. I feel like I was blessed to work with a living legend, without fully realizing it until 27 years later. Like, I knew....but I didn't know, not until I saw that photo.
And even now, when I go to pull up the photo to link to you all, I find this article -- which I'm going to read after I hit "submit" here, because clearly someone else has the same awe I had when seeing this:
And as for Jimmy Arias -- I feel like he runs the place, anyway, or has some senior role, so even though he probably deserves a photo, he's making his own legacy there now.
I have an Excel Module that runs, and it should run in say 3 to 7 seconds. Sometimes it does, sometimes it literally shows every cell populating 1 by 1 and takes 5 minutes.
I'm exchanging this file from one company environment to another via Sharepoint -- the speed at which it refreshes sometimes is slow on my side and sometimes is slow on their side, though that may be coincidental. It was fast on my side until this latest version.
Any thoughts here?
Thank you.
I have an organization with a signed city affadavit that they submit Level II background checks for certain positions. They claim a person working with 9 yearmold children passed an FDLE version II and they still hired him. He had a wet reckless in Florida as his second, ordered to undergo DUI class and substance training and was on active probation. His fingerprints are public record, as part of probation and online.
How would the FDLE II miss this? Or is it that either 1). The organization didnt care or 2) the organization didnt run a level II?
How would I further pursue this, as it affects the safety of my child to play the sport in my hometown? She will never play for a coach with substance issues who was unknowingly to me, on active probation while coaching.
I have a friend who I play a sport with, and I have a business partner moving to my city. The business guy wants to see the golf course, and the friend has known me for 3 or 4 years, and has a high status because of his former profession.
So it was a big ask for me today when I said, "Hey, Bill, I have a business partner coming in town, and I know you're a member of the golf club, it's a big ask for me, but could you maybe let him see the course and play a round."
The guy looked at me and said "A friend of yours is a friend of mine, of course."
Talk about being a stand up guy, and making someone feel respected. It probably made my year.